Palaeolithic societies have been a neglected topic in the discussion of human origins. In this book, which succeeds and replaces The Palaeolithic Settlement of Europe, published by Cambridge University Press in 1986, Clive Gamble challenges the established view that the social life of Europeans over the 500,000 years of the European Palaeolithic must remain a mystery. In the past forty years archaeologists have recovered a wealth of information from sites throughout the continent. Professor Gamble now introduces a new approach to this material. He examines the archaeological evidence from stone tools, hunting and campsites for information on the scale of social interaction, and the forms of social life. Taking a pan-European view of the archaeological evidence, he reconstructs ancient human societies, and introduces new perspectives on the unique social experience of human beings.

A major survey of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies of Europe, this book reviews the topical information and interpretations for scientific research. Palaeolithic studies are at an exciting point of transition. The explosion in ethno-archaeological studies has fundamentally challenged our models and interpretations amongst all classes of data and at all spatial scales of analysis. Furthermore the traditional concerns of dating and quaternary studies have also passed through their own revolutions and palaeolithic archaeology is the direct beneficiary. Dr Gamble presents in an imaginative but comprehensive framework our changing perspectives of Europe's oldest societies.

In this book, Jennifer French presents a new synthesis of the archaeological, palaeoanthropological, and palaeogenetic records of the European Palaeolithic, adopting a unique demographic perspective on these first two-million years of European prehistory. Unlike prevailing narratives of demographic stasis, she emphasises the dynamism of Palaeolithic populations of both our evolutionary ancestors and members of our own species across four demographic stages, within a context of substantial Pleistocene climatic changes. Integrating evolutionary theory with a socially oriented approach to the Palaeolithic, French bridges biological and cultural factors, with a focus on women and children as the drivers of population change. She shows how, within the physiological constraints on fertility and mortality, social relationships provide the key to enduring demographic success. Through its demographic focus, French combines a 'big picture' perspective on human evolution with careful analysis of the day-to-day realities of European Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer communities—their families, their children, and their lives.

Lithic Materials and Paleolithic Societies provides a detailed examination of the Paleolithic procurement and utilization of the most durable material in the worldwide archaeological record. The volume addresses sites ranging in age from some of the earliest hominin occupations in eastern and southern Africa to late Pleistocene and post-Pleistocene occupations in North American and Australia. The Early Paleolithic in India and the Near East, the Middle Paleolithic in Europe, and the Late Paleolithic in Europe and eastern Asia are also considered. The authors include established researchers who provide important synthetic statements updated with new information. Recent data are reported, often by younger scholars who are becoming respected members of the international research community. The authors represent research traditions from nine countries and therefore provide insight into the scholarly present as well as the Paleolithic past. Attempts are frequently made to relate lithic procurement and utilization to the organization of societies and even broader concerns of hominin behaviour. The volume re-evaluates existing interpretations in some instances by updating previous work of the authors and offers provocative new interpretations that at times call into question some basic assumptions of the Paleolithic. This book will be invaluable reading for advanced students and researchers in the fields of palaeolithic archaeology, geoarchaeology, and anthropology.

Gender studies - Arbeitsteilung - Frau - Urgeschichte - Jäger und Sammler - Ethnologie - Biologie.

For more than a century, the study of hunting and gathering societies has been central to the development of both archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines, and has also generated widespread public interest and debate. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies to date, including critical engagements with older debates, new theoretical perspectives, and renewed obligations for greater engagement between researchers and indigenous communities. Chapters provide in-depth archaeological, historical, and anthropological case-studies, and examine far-reaching questions about human social relations, attitudes to technology, ecology, and management of resources and the environment, as well as issues of diet, health, and gender relations - all central topics in hunter-gatherer research, but also themes that have great relevance for modern global society and its future challenges. The Handbook also provides a strategic vision for how the integration of new methods, approaches, and study regions can ensure that future research into the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers will continue to deliver penetrating insights into the factors that underlie all human diversity.

The British Palaeolithic provides the first academic synthesis of the entire British Palaeolithic, from the earliest occupation to the end of the Ice Age. It fills a major gap in teaching resources as well in research by providing a current synthesis of the latest research on the period.

In this study Clive Gamble presents and questions two of the most famous descriptions of change in prehistory. The first is the 'human revolution', when evidence for art, music, religion and language first appears. The second is the economic and social revolution of the Neolithic period. Gamble identifies the historical agendas behind 'origins research' and presents a bold alternative to these established frameworks, relating the study of change to the material basis of human identity. He examines, through artefact proxies, how changing identities can be understood using embodied material metaphors and in two major case-studies charts the prehistory of innovations, asking, did agriculture really change the social world? This is an important and challenging book that will be essential reading for every student and scholar of prehistory.

The British Palaeolithic provides the first academic synthesis of the entire British Palaeolithic, from the earliest occupation (currently understood to be around 980,000 years ago) to the end of the Ice Age. Landscape and ecology form the canvas for an explicitly interpretative approach aimed at understanding the how different hominin societies addressed the issues of life at the edge of the Pleistocene world. Commencing with a consideration of the earliest hominin settlement of Europe, the book goes on to examine the behavioural, cultural and adaptive repertoires of the first human occupants of Britain from an ecological perspective. These themes flow throughout the book as it explores subsequent occupational pulses across more than half a million years of Pleistocene prehistory, which saw Homo heidelbergensis, the Neanderthals and ultimately Homo sapiens walk these shores. The British Palaeolithic fills a major gap in teaching resources as well as in research by providing a current synthesis of the latest research on the period. This book represents the culmination of 40 years combined research in this area by two well known experts in the field, and is an important new text for students of British archaeology as well as for students and researchers of the continental Palaeolithic period.

This book brings together a classic collection of Andrew Sherratt's work on the economic foundations of prehistoric Europe, which have put forward important new ideas about the development of farming, pastoralism, early technology and trade. In a series of contributions that have included wide-ranging syntheses and detailed local studies, he discusses their implications for the understanding of settlement-patterns, social structures, material culture, and less tangible aspects of prehistoric life such as the spread of languages and the use of narcotics.