Since the days of V. Gordon Childe, the study of the emergence of complex societies has been a central question in anthropological archaeology. However, archaeologists working in the Americanist tradition have drawn most of their models for the emergence of social complexity from research in the Middle East and Latin America. Bernard Wailes was a strong advocate for the importance of later prehistoric and early medieval Europe as an alternative model of sociopolitical evolution and trained generations of American archaeologists now active in European research from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages. Two centuries of excavation and research in Europe have produced one of the richest bodies of archaeological data anywhere in the world. The abundant data show that technological innovations such as metallurgy appeared very early, but urbanism and state formation are comparatively late developments. Key transformative process such as the spread of agriculture did not happen uniformly but rather at different rates in different regions. The essays in this volume celebrate the legacy of Bernard Wailes by highlighting the contribution of the European archaeological record to our understanding of the emergence of social complexity. They provide case studies in how ancient Europe can inform anthropological archaeology. Not only do they illuminate key research topics, they also invite archaeologists working in other parts of the world to consider comparisons to ancient Europe as they construct models for cultural development for their regions. Although there is a substantial corpus of literature on European prehistoric and medieval archaeology, we do not know of a comparable volume that explicitly focuses on the contribution that the study of ancient Europe can make to anthropological archaeology.
( 1982b ) ' Socio - economic change in ranked societies ' , in C. Renfrew and S. J. Shennan ( eds ) Ranking , Resource and Exchange : Aspects of the Archaeology of Early European Society , Cambridge ...
Sarunas Milisauskas· 1.1 INTRODUCTION The purpose of this book is four-fold: to introduce English-speaking students and scholars to some of the outstanding archaeological research that has been done in Europe in recent years; to integrate ...
The resurgence of nationalism was one of the most prominent features of the European political scene in the 1990s, when this book was originally published.
The book is organized around five main issues with the goal to stimulate discussion, research and practices within the field: Traditions and legal regulations of heritage and its management The teaching of cultural heritage; public outreach ...
This book, first published in 1990, presents a radical interpretation by Czech philosophers of science of the philosophical, social and political forces shaping archaeology from antiquity onwards.
This book describes how, beginning in the late eighteenth century, Europeans began a quest for a supposed original homeland, from which a small conquering people would one day spread out, bringing their language to Europe and parts of Asia ...
The authors are critical of monolithic constructions of Europe, and also of the ethnic and national groups within it. in place of such exclusive cultural, political and territorial entities the book argues for a consideration of the diverse ...
The role of the house in early Neolithic Ireland. European Journal ofArchaeology 9:229–258. Sommer, U. 2001. ... Change and persistence in the European Early Neolithic. ... In Neolithic houses in northwest Europe and beyond, eds.
This book provides a broad overview of the current research questions facing archaeologists working in Europe.
To address these questions, this book explores the scope, impact and ethics of European archaeological policies and practices in the Mediterranean area, the Near East, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America.