The Lithic Garden addresses the formal, symbolic, and ideological functions of foliate ornament in medieval French churches, offering remarkable new insights on the complex relationship between organic and figural sculptures, interior and exterior design, sacred and profane spaces, and artistic form and liturgy.

"This book offers critical insights into lithic technology and cultural practices concerning stone tools"--Provided by publisher.

Newfoundland lies at the intersection of arctic and more temperate regions and, commensurate with this geography, populations of two Amerindian and two Paleoeskimo cultural traditions occupied Port au Choix, in northern Newfoundland, Canada, for centuries and millennia. Over the past two decades The Port au Choix Archaeology Project has sought a comparative understanding of how these different cultures, each with their particular origin and historical trajectory, adapted to the changing physical and social environments, impacted their physical surroundings, and created cultural landscapes. This volume brings together the research of Renouf, her colleagues and her students who together employ multiple perspectives and methods to provide a detailed reconstruction and understanding of the long-term history of Port au Choix. Although geographically focussed on a northern coastal area, this volume has wider implications for understanding archaeological landscapes, human-environment interactions and hunter-gatherer societies.

The Architecture of Landscape, 1940-1960 provides a groundbreaking collection of worldwide perspectives on a vital and underappreciated era of landscape architecture. It is also the first critical assessment of this period, with information and insight previously unavailable to English-language readers.

This collection of eighteen papers honours the long and productive career of Dr. William E. Taylor, Jr. They deal with a range of topics in Canadian Arctic archaeology from the Mackenzie Delta to Labrador and from the earliest Palaeoeskimo to historical questions such as the origins of the Copper Inuit and the mysterious demise of the Sadlermiut.

Written in Stone: The Multiple Dimensions of Lithic Analysis demonstrates the vitality of contemporary lithics analysis by examining material from a variety of geographical locations. This edited collection is primarily concerned with the link between craft production and social complexity, the nature of trade, and the delineation of settlement patterns and manipulation of landscape. While deconstructing the present to reconstruct the past, each chapter incorporates a technological dimension shaped by the type of analysis utilized. Methods include microwear analysis, which adds significant understanding of stone tool function, to the identification of obsidian sources, which illustrates the potential of lithic provenance studies for reconstructing trade. This book verifies and expands on the notion that lithics play an integral role in our understanding of past societies at all levels of complexity, from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to archaic states.

This collection of papers offers insights into the Dorset Palaeo-Eskimo occupation of Arctic Canada, Newfoundland and Greenland. Topics include biological relationships in the Dorset population; succession and discontinuity in Palaeo-Eskimo occupations; Dorset technology in soapstone, metal, and skeletal materials; and social aspects of the late Dorset stone “longhouses”.

This practical volume does not intend to replace a mentor, but acts as a readily accessible guide to the basic tools of lithic analysis. The book was awarded the 2005 SAA Award for Excellence in Archaeological Analysis. Some focuses of the manual include: history of stone tool research; procurement, manufacture and function; assemblage variability. It is an incomparable source for academic archaeologists, cultural resource and heritage management archaeologists, government heritage agencies, and upper-level undergraduate and graduate students of archaeology focused on the prehistoric period.

A uniquely collaborative analysis of human adaptation to the Polynesian islands, told through oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records Humans began to settle the area we know as Polynesia between approximately 3,000 and 800 years ago. Bringing with them both material culture, including plants and animals, and ideas about societal organization, settlers had to adapt to the specific biophysical features of the islands they discovered. The authors of this book analyze the formation of their human-environment systems by using oral histories, biophysical evidence, and historical records, arguing that the Polynesian islands can serve as useful models for how human societies in general interact with their environments. The islands' clearly defined (and relatively isolated) environments, comparatively recent discovery by humans, and innovative and dynamic societies allow for unique insights not available when studying other cultures. Kamana Beamer, Te Maire Tau, and Peter Vitousek have collaborated with a dozen other scholars, many of them Polynesian, to show how these cultures adapted to novel environments in the past and how we can draw insights from these cultures and their adaptations for global sustainability today.

Rapa Nui, one of the world’s most isolated island societies and home to the notable moai, has been at the centre of a tense debate for the past decade. Some see it as the site of a dramatic cultural collapse occurring before Western contact, where a self-inflicted ecocide was brought on by the exhaustion of resources. Others argue that the introduction of Western pathogens and the slave raids of 1862 were to blame for the near extinction of the otherwise resilient Rapa Nui people. Cultural and Environmental Change on Rapa Nui brings together the latest studies by prominent Rapa Nui researchers from all over the world to explore the island’s past and present, from its discovery by Polynesians, through the first documented contact with Western culture in 1722, to the 20th century. The exiting new volume looks beyond the moai to examine such questions as: was there was a cultural collapse; how did the Rapa Nui react to Westerners; and what responses did the Rapa Nui develop to adjust to naturally- or humanly-induced environmental change? This volume will appeal to scholars and professionals in the fields of history, archaeology and ecology, as well as anyone with an interest in the challenges of sustainable resource management, and the contentious history of Rapa Nui itself.