Books in the New Studies in Archaeology series

This 1999 archaeological study considers traditional assumptions about social relationships in Greek households during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. It focuses on the domestic organisation of individual households, gender relations, and their links with outsiders and with the wider social structures of the city state, and how these changed with time.

Any explanation of political collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all complex societies in both the present and future. Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses.

A masterly account of prehistoric farming and its potential to influence today's industrial farmers.

In this revised and updated 1993 edition of a book first published in 1981, the authors synthesize recent research to provide a comprehensive survey of Mesoamerica, one of the most important areas for research into the emergence of complex human societies.

Problems in Neolithic Archaeology is a notable contribution to the debate about how we can write prehistory. Drawing on both processual and post-processual approaches, it reaffirms the central role of theory and interpretation while accepting as permanent the uncertainty which makes the testing of archaeological hypotheses difficult or even impossible.

Anna Maria Bietti Sestieri, one of the finest Italian protohistorians, deals in this monograph with a major archaeological site, the Iron Age cemetery of Osteria dell'Osa, near Rome. The cemetery materials provide rich insights into the emergence of the city-state in central Italy in the crucial period 900-580 BC.

The aim of Artefacts as Categories is to ask what we can learn about a society from the variability of the objects it produces. His invigorating study cogently questions many assumptions in material culture studies and offers a whole range of fresh explanations.

The development of European archaeology as a scholarly discipline in the nineteenth century was closely connected with the appearance of systematic methods for dating archaeological materials. Professor Graslund's book is the first in-depth study of what is now recognised as a crucial stage in the history of archaeology.

Thoughtful Foragers will appeal to specialists in European prehistory as well as to those interested in archaeological theory and method. It makes some very significant advances, which will be of real importance for the field of evolutionary theory in relation to human evolution and the evaluation of human social systems.

In this book Kenneth Hudson sets out to restore 'industrial monuments' to their place at the centre of the wider history they embody, social and economic as well as technical. Less than this, he claims, cannot properly be called industrial archaeology. The author provides fully illustrated examples from many countries.

This book is about post-Pleistocene adaptive change among the aboriginal cultures of the mountains and deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. Conceived essentially as a natural science alternative to the prevailing culture history paradigm, it offers a general theoretical framework for interpreting the archaeological record of the American South-West.

Originally published in 1986, the aim of this important study was to develop methods for reconstructing the processes of prehistoric exchange. Previous archaeological work had concentrated on mapping obsidian finds relative to source areas using trace-element analysis and on investigating the effect of trade on particular cultural groups.

How, when and why did inherited differences of wealth, status and power arise in human communities? At the heart of Emerging Complexity is the thesis that complex societies developed independently during the Copper and Bronze Ages in south-east Spain, and in the wider context of the Iberian peninsula and the west Mediterranean.

John Fox here offers a fresh and persuasive view of the crucial Classic-Postclassic transition that determined the shape of the later Maya state.

This innovative 2000 study of the great cultural and economic changes in the Near East between 10,000 and 7,000 BC as Palaeolithic societies of hunter-gatherers gave way to village communities of Neolithic food-producers argues that the Neolithic revolution must be understood as an intellectual transformation, revealing itself in symbolic activities.

Using as case studies his own observations of Australian Aborigines, and those of others, the author presents a unified theory of ethnoarchaeology.

In Stylistic Variation in Prehistoric Ceramics, the author proposes that many factors, rather than just two, cause design or stylistic variation on artifacts. He demonstrates flaws in the logic and method of previous studies and suggests that the ways in which designs have been classified and understood are often inappropriate.

Combining archaeological, literary and numismatic evidence, John Creighton paints a vivid picture of how people in late Iron Age Britain reacted to the changing world around them, and how rulers bolstered their power through use of imagery on coins, myths, language, and material culture. Includes full index of Iron Age coins.

This book examines the transformation of chiefdom societies in Neolithic China, giving rise to early states. With its wealth of detailed archaeological data and general theoretical paradigms it is essential reading for the student of prehistoric China and the student of global social evolution.

The Lake Chad region of Nigeria is an extreme environment. Professor Connah traces the story of human adaptation to and exploitation of this unusual environment from prehistoric to modern times.

Michael Shanks's challenging contribution to recent debates on the emergence of Greek city states in the first millennium BC draws on a range of disciplines. He interprets the art and archaeological remains of Korinth to elicit connections between new urban environments, foreign trade, warfare, and the ideology of male sovereignty.

Religion and Empire is an innovative and provocative study of the two largest states of the Precolumbian Americas, the Aztec and Inca Empires. By examining the causes of the formation and expansion of these two empires, the authors identify similar patterns and processes underlying their rise and decline.

The particular fascination of Maya archaeology is featured alongside developments of more general interest in anthropological archaeology to make a substantial contribution to the practice and theory of settlement studies within complex societies.

This 1996 volume uses analytical methods to approach architecture and its relationship to culture, politics, and religion in the ancient Andes. Jerry D. Moore's clear and richly illustrated discussion represents an original perspective on architecture and its role in the ancient world.

This study reviews 15,000 years of worldwide settlement growth in the light of the limits imposed by buildings, layouts, and forms of communication, and examines the great transformations of human settlements - from mobile to sedentary, sedentary to urban, and urban to industrial.

This book develops a theory of ceramics which elucidates the complex relationship between ceramics and culture and society. Drawing on the theoretical perspectives of systems theory, cybernetics and cultural ecology, Dr Arnold develops cross-cultural generalizations to explain the origins and evolution of the craft of pottery making.

Using approaches from several disciplines, Stahl reconstructs the daily lives of Banda villagers of west central Ghana, from when they were drawn into the Niger trade (around AD 1300) until the twentieth century establishment of British overrule. Stahl argues for closer integration of archaeology, history and anthropology in African studies.

Lynne Sebastian examines the transition of the Chaco system from a kinship structured society to a hierarchically organised political structure with institutional roles of leadership. She argues that the increasing political complexity was a consequence of improved rainfall in the region which permitted surplus production, not the harsh conditions as previously thought.

This study of the changing relationships between burial rituals and social structure in Early Iron Age Greece draws upon the ancient literary evidence and the relevant historical and anthropological comparisons to explain the transition to the city-state. It will be an invaluable resource for all archaeologists working with burial evidence, in whatever period.

Using archaeological research in conjunction with historical records and works of art, Anne Yentsch has reconstructed the daily life of an aristocratic British family in Maryland.