The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology

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The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology Edited by Andrew Sherratt
In the last decade archaeology has been revolutionized, and has in turn transformed our views of our own origins and of the early history of mankind. There have been dramatic new discoveries - two-million-year-old camp sites of early man in Africa, evidence of agriculture going back 10 00() years in Syria and New Guinea, traces of early Mesopotamian civilization halfway to India, and spectacular finds sueh as the third-millennium archive of Ebia or the tomb of Philip of Macedón. But more importantly, archaeologists have rapidly and radically extended the whole range of their enquiries: they have adapted powerful and sophisticated techniques of analysis from the physical and biological sciences: they have studied and applied relevant work from other human and social sciences - anthropology, geography, demography, economic history: they have proposed exciting new theories to reconstruct and explain the processes of... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology Edited by Andrew Sherratt
In the last decade archaeology has been revolutionized, and has in turn transformed our views of our own origins and of the early history of mankind. There have been dramatic new discoveries - two-million-year-old camp sites of early man in Africa, evidence of agriculture going back 10 00() years in Syria and New Guinea, traces of early Mesopotamian civilization halfway to India, and spectacular finds sueh as the third-millennium archive of Ebia or the tomb of Philip of Macedón. But more importantly, archaeologists have rapidly and radically extended the whole range of their enquiries: they have adapted powerful and sophisticated techniques of analysis from the physical and biological sciences: they have studied and applied relevant work from other human and social sciences - anthropology, geography, demography, economic history: they have proposed exciting new theories to reconstruct and explain the processes of cultural change that have taken man from hunter to astronaut in an instant of the evolutionary time-scale.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology is t he tí i st comprehensive review of these arlvances. It i.s eneyclf)!>edic both in time and in space, giving a global account from the emergence of the human species to the expansion of medieval Europe. It traces the whole development ofmofiern man through the revolutionary changes in language, culture and technology that took place in the last Ice Age and the succeeding developments of the postglacial period the beginnings of agriculture, which e.stablished a new relation.ship with the natural environment and which lefl to the great increase in human populations and to new forms of social organization in towns, .states and empires, taking mankind to the threshold of the modern world.
Each chapter is written by a specialist in the region and period, and the volume has been prepared within a unified framework with the advice of a distinguished international board of editors.
The maps and illustrations, many in full colour, set a high standard in visual presentation. They have been specially prepared to convey as directly as possible the primary evidence of archaeology and to interpret complex information and ideas in an intelligible form. They are supplemented with many other reference aids, including chronological charts, global maps, and bibliographies.
Cover: Copy of rock painting from Rhades. Tassili, Algeria, showing cattle-herding scene. Fourth or third millennium BC. Copyright: H. Lhote
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge London New York NewRochelle Melbourne Sydney
ISBN 0521 22989 8 Vissza