(Un)settling the neolithic / edited by Douglass Bailey, Alasidair Whittle and Vicki Cummings.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Bailey, Douglass W. (Douglass Whitfield), 1963-

Whittle, A. W. R.

Cummings, Vicki.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Neolithic period--Europe, Eastern.

Neolithic period.

Prehistoric peoples.

Eastern Europe.

Prehistoric peoples--Europe, Eastern.

Europe, Eastern--Antiquities.

Europe, Eastern.

Antiquities.

Physical Description:

x, 149 pages : illustrations, maps ; 30 cm

Other Title:

Unsettling the neolithic

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxbow, 2005.

Summary:

(un)settling the Neolithic is a radical redirection in the study of the central and east European Neolithic (6500-3500 cal BC). Attacking the essentialisms of traditional approaches to the period, the volume pushes forward with new thinking about how best to understand human existence at this time in a critical region. Containing major statements by the key authorities on the topic, (un)settling the Neolithic challenges scholars, students, excavators and teachers to think again about the fundamental conceptions with which the Neolithic has been defined since the origins of its academic study. Contributors attack existing definitions of sedentism, mobility, the Mesolithic/Neolithic boundary, cultural coherence, settlement, village, house, tells, flat-sites, seasonality, residential permanence, pottery and domestication. Indeed, questions are raised about the legitimacy of claiming that there is a single, general, phenomenon that is termed 'Neolithic'. The call is to move away from the comfort of the simple, general and easy explanations (such as the Neolithic equals settled farmers) and, then, to struggle with the complexities of the many diverse levels of (pre)historical specificities that flowed in and out of life over a 3000 year period starting in the middle of the seventh millennium cal BC. (un)settling the Neolithic is a call to embrace difficult, fractured and perforated traces of being in the Neolithic. It sets the agenda for a new examination of one of the most exciting periods of Europe's prehistoric past.

Contents:

1 Unsettling the Neolithic: breaking down concepts, boundaries and origins / Douglass Bailey, Alasdair Whittle 1

2 Across the border: unstable dwellings and fluid landscapes in the earliest Neolithic of Greece / Kostas Kotsakis 8

3 Deconstructing essentialisms: unsettling frontiers of the Mesolithic-Neolithic Balkans / Dusan Boric 16

4 Can seasonality studies be used to identify sedentism in the past? / Nicky Milner 32

5 Resettling the Neolithic: faunal evidence for seasons of consumption and residence at Neolithic sites in Greece / Paul Halstead 38

6 Plain talk: animals, environment and culture in the Neolithic of the Carpathian Basin and adjacent areas / Laszlo Bartosiewicz 51

7 Lived experience in the Early Neolithic of the Great Hungarian Plain / Alasdair Whittle 64

8 The role of pottery in agropastoralist communities in early Neolithic southern Romania / Laurens Thissen 71

9 Sensing the place: sounds and landscape perception / Steve Mills 79

10 Beyond the meaning of Neolithic houses: specific objects and serial repetition / Douglass Bailey 90

11 Weaving house life and death into places: a blueprint for a hypermedia narrative / Ruth Tringham 98

12 Memory and ordination: environmental archaeology in tells / J.G. Evans 112

13 The spatio-temporal organization of the early 'town' at Catalhoyuk / Ian Hodder 126

14 Settling the Neolithic: a digestif / Andrew Sherratt 140.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1842171798

OCLC:

62472378