Books in the Cambridge World Archaeology series

The Bronze Age was crucial in the formation of Europe emerging into history in the later first millennium BC. Focusing on the material culture remains of the period, Anthony Harding provides an interpretation of the main trends in human development during this timespan. The result is a comprehensive study for specialists and students.

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.

This book explores the roles of agricultural development and advancing social complexity in the processes of state formation in China. Over a period of about 10,000 years, it follows evolutionary trajectories of society from the last Palaeolithic hunting-gathering groups, through Neolithic farming villages and on to the Bronze Age Shang dynasty in the latter half of the second millennium BC. Li Liu and Xingcan Chen demonstrate that sociopolitical evolution was multicentric and shaped by inter-polity factionalism and competition, as well as by the many material technologies introduced from other parts of the world. The book illustrates how ancient Chinese societies were transformed during this period from simple to complex, tribal to urban, and preliterate to literate.

This book provides an up-to-date synthesis of Aztec culture, encompassing topics of history, economy, social life, political relations, and religious beliefs and ceremonies. The book integrates data, methods and theories from a variety of disciplines including archaeology, ethnohistory, ethnography and art history.

In the first millennium AD, the Classic Maya created courtly societies in and around the Yucatan Peninsula that have left some of the most striking intellectual and aesthetic achievements of the ancient world. This book is the first in-depth synthesis of the Classic Maya.

Authoritative synthesis of the evidence of the earliest inhabitants of Asia before the appearance of modern humans 100,000 years ago. Dennell sets out a structured framework of the first 2 million years of hominin settlement by integrating the archaeological, fossil and environmental evidence at continent level.

Africa has the longest record - some 2.5 million years - of human occupation of any continent. For nearly all of this time, its inhabitants have made tools from stone and have acquired their food from its rich wild plant and animal resources. Archaeological research in Africa is crucial for understanding the origins of humans and the diversity of hunter-gatherer ways of life. This book is a synthesis of the record left by Africa's earliest hominin inhabitants and hunter-gatherers, combining the insights of archaeology with those of other disciplines, such as genetics and palaeo-environmental science. African evidence is critical to important debates, such as the origins of stone tool making, the emergence of recognisably modern forms of cognition and behaviour, and the expansion of successive hominins from Africa to other parts of the world.

The Olmecs created the most complex social and political hierarchies of their time on the North American continent. Pool offers the most thorough and up-to-date book-length treatment of Olmec society and culture available. It will be of interest to academics, graduate, upper-undergraduate students of archaeology, anthropology and history of art.

In The Archaeology of Early Egypt, published in 2006, David Wengrow provides an interpretation of the emergence of farming economies and the dynastic state c. 10,000-2,650 BC. His conclusions extend beyond Egypt to consider the relationship between bureaucracy, sacrifice and the nature of state power.

This title traces the origins and development of culture in India and Pakistan from its earliest roots in Palaeolithic times, through the rise and disintegration of the great Indus Civilization to the emergence of regional cultures, and the arrival and spread of Indo-Aryan speaking peoples.

A synthesis of research on the material culture of Greece in the Archaic and Classical periods. The book shows how material evidence can be used to address historical questions for which literary evidence is often insufficient, and situates Greek art within the broader field of Greek material culture.

Southern Africa is central to many key debates in contemporary archaeology, including hominid origins, origins of anatomically modern humans and modern forms of behaviour, and the development of ethnographically informed ways of understanding rock art. This book is an archaeological synthesis of the region in fifty years.

The author examines the evolution of state-level societies and their relationship to polities in Japan and China, and the emergence of a Korean ethnic identity. Emphasising the particular features of the region, she dispels the notion that the culture and traditions of Korea are only pale imitations of those of its neighbours, China and Japan.

Farmers made a sudden and dramatic appearance in Greece around 7000 BC, bringing with them new ceramics and crafts, and establishing settled villages. They were Europe's first farmers, and their settlements provide the link between the first agricultural communities in the Near East and the subsequent spread of the new technologies to the Balkans and on to Western Europe. In this 2001 book, Catherine Perles argues that the stimulus for the spread of agriculture to Europe was a colonisation movement involving small groups of maritime peoples. Drawing evidence from a wide range of archaeological sources, including often neglected 'small finds', and introducing daring new perspectives on funerary rituals and the distribution of figurines, she constructs a complex and subtle picture of early Neolithic societies, overturning the traditional view that these societies were simple and self-sufficient.

Southeast Asia was the scene of one of the world's major civilisations, that of Angkor, until it was sacked in the early fifteenth century. Recent archaeological excavations revealed the region's dynamic development. This book focuses on the social world of early mainland Southeast Asia, beginning at its occupation, 12,000 years ago by hunters and gatherers.

This comprehensive study of ethnoarchaeology, the ethnographic study of living cultures from archaeological perspectives, uses a global coverage and includes theory, practical advice regarding fieldwork, and complete topical coverage of the discipline. Critical discussions of varied case studies make this a very readable book and well-suited to use in class.

The book presents the latest research on the spread of farming by archaeologists and geneticists. It shows that it resulted from a population expansion from present-day Turkey and explains how this took place. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in archaeology, anthropology and the evolutionary social sciences more generally.

This is an up-to-date account the Bronze Age of Southeast Asia. It explores the controversy of whether the earliest bronze working took place there. It illuminates issues of indigenous technological advancement and the influence of neighbouring civilisations, and maps the evolvution of the first South-east Asia states.

In this new archaeological study, Himanshu Prabha Ray looks at the maritime orientation of communities of the Indian subcontinent prior to European expansion. She uses archaeological data to reveal the connections between the early history of peninsular South Asia and its Asian and Mediterranean partners in the Indian Ocean region.

This is the first general study of the impact of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa from the immediate pre-Islamic period to the present day. Timothy Insoll charts the historical background and the archaeological evidence attesting to the spread of Islam, and analyses its methods of conversion.

How did Neanderthal societies differ from those of the first modern humans in Europe 35,000 years ago? This investigation of archaeological evidence from stone tools, hunting and campsites reveals much about the differing scale of social interaction and abilities to negotiate social worlds, and enhances our understanding of this period.

In this archaeological study of Micronesia, Paul Rainbird surveys the development of the islands beginning with the earliest process of human colonisation and places this development within the broader context of Pacific Island studies. The book draws on a wide range of archaeological, anthropological and historical sources.

This uniquely broad and challenging book reviews the latest archaeological evidence on Neolithic Europe. Describing important sites and problems, and addressing major themes, this revised version of Whittle's Neolithic Europe reflects radical changes in interpretive approaches over the past decade.

This was the first comprehensive presentation of the archaeology of Syria from the end of the Paleolithic period to 300 BC. Peter Akkermans and Glenn Schwartz outline the many important results Syria has yielded up from decades of excavations and field work, before providing their own perspectives and conclusions.

Situated amidst the Near East, Europe and Africa, the archaeology and culture of Cyprus are central to an understanding of the ancient Mediterranean world. This book examines the archaeology of Cyprus from the first-known human presence during the Late Epipalaeolithic (c.11,000 BC) through the end of the Bronze Age (c.1000 BC).

A scholarly yet accessible introduction to the prehistoric civilizations of Greece. The cultural history of the region emerges through a series of thematic chapters examining such issues as economy, exchange and foreign contact, and religion.

From the middle of the 3rd millennium BC until the coming of Cyrus the Great, southwestern Iran was referred to in Mesopotamian sources as the land of Elam. A heterogeneous collection of regions, Elam was home to a variety of groups, alternately the object of Mesopotamian aggression, and aggressors themselves; an ethnic group seemingly swallowed up by the vast Achaemenid Persian empire, yet a force strong enough to attack Babylonia in the last centuries BC. The Elamite language is attested as late as the Medieval era, and the name Elam as late as 1300 in the records of the Nestorian church. This book examines the formation and transformation of Elam's many identities through both archaeological and written evidence, and brings to life one of the most important regions of Western Asia, re-evaluates its significance, and places it in the context of the most recent archaeological and historical scholarship.

This book provides an overview of Bronze Age societies of Western Eurasia through an investigation of the archaeological record. The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia outlines the long-term processes and patterns of interaction that link these groups together in a shared historical trajectory of development. Interactions took the form of the exchange of raw materials and finished goods, the spread and sharing of technologies, and the movements of peoples from one region to another. Kohl reconstructs economic activities from subsistence practices to the production and exchange of metals and other materials. Kohl also argues forcefully that the main task of the archaeologist should be to write culture-history on a spatially and temporally grand scale in an effort to detect large, macrohistorical processes of interaction and shared development.

A comprehensive synthesis of Caribbean prehistory from the earliest settlement by humans more than 4000 years BC, to the time of European conquest of the islands. The Caribbean was the last large area in the Americas to be populated, and its relative isolation allowed unique cultures to develop. Samuel Wilson reviews the evidence for migration and cultural change throughout the archipelago, dealing in particular with periods of cultural interaction when groups with different cultures and histories were in contact. He also examines the evolving relationship of the Caribbean people with their environment, as they developed increasingly productive economic systems over time, as well as the emergence of increasingly complex social and political systems, particularly in the Greater Antilles in the centuries before the European conquest. Wilson also provides a review of the history of Caribbean archaeology and the individual scholars and ideas that have shaped the field.

This book provides an up-to-date synthesis of the rich histories of the peoples who lived on the Iberian Peninsula between 1,400,000 (the Paleolithic) and 3,500 years ago (the Bronze Age). It will be of interest to archaeologists, students, and tourists visiting Spain and Portugal, and is amply illustrated.