The early Mediterranean village : agency, material culture, and social change in Neolithic Italy / John Robb.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Robb, John, 1962 March 18-

Series:

Cambridge studies in archaeology

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Neolithic period--Italy.

Neolithic period.

Antiquities, Prehistoric.

Italy.

Antiquities, Prehistoric--Italy.

Italy--Antiquities.

Antiquities.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 382 pages : illustrations. maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Contents:

1 Theorizing Neolithic Italy 1

A Sense of Loyalty 1

Some Necessary Concepts 4

Social Reproduction 4

Material Normality 8

Frameworks and Orientations: Time, Space, Landscapes, and Histories 9

Tools of Thought: Bodies, Habitus, Identity, and the Senses 11

Fields of Action and Projects of the Self 13

From the Point of View of Things 18

Making History: Creativity, Commitment, and Gulliver's Dilemma 20

The 1st of September, 5000 BC: A Note on Methodology 22

Time Travel 24

Neolithic Beginnings 24

The World at 5000 BC 27

Neolithic Italy: The Rough Guide 28

2 Neolithic People 35

Ideal Lives 35

Refractions of the Neolithic Body 36

Bodies Themselves: Skeletal Evidence of Social Biology 36

Presencing the Living Group: Model Demography 40

The Represented Body 43

The Corporeal Corpus 43

The Materiality of Figurines 46

Gendered and Ambiguous Bodies 50

Abstracting the Body: Communities of Figurine Practice 52

People in Death 56

Neolithic Italian Burial 56

Burial, Status, and Identity 61

A Meaningful Burial Programme 63

Being Neolithic 65

The Human Career 65

Gender and Its Limits 67

Politics and Difference 70

The Road Ahead 73

3 The Inhabited World 75

Places of Life: Houses and Villages 76

Houses and Households 77

The House as Embedded Technology 81

Houses and Meaning 85

The Lifespan of Houses 87

From Houses to Villages: Settlement Size and Boundedness 90

Houses, Sites, and the Dead 95

Heads in Houses 95

Burial at the Boundaries? 96

Villages as Ancestral Places 96

The Microgeography of Dwelling 98

Economy and Frequentation 98

The Perception of Time in the Landscape 102

Macrogeography: Cultural Landscapes, Regional Identities, and Translocal Action 107

Cult Sites, Cosmology, and Gender 107

Gendered Spaces? 110

Natural Places and the Inhabitable World 112

People Create Spaces; Spaces Create People 116

4 Daily Economy and Social Reproduction 119

The Archaeology of Foodways: From Calories to Cuisine 120

Cuisine 120

The Italian Neolithic Food Economy 122

Not on the Menu 122

Grains and Legumes: The World of Starches 129

Notes of Flavour 133

Animal Choices 137

The Sociality of the Food Economy 142

The Sociality of Herds 142

Eating: Rhythms and Tastes 144

Cooking 148

Culinary Prehistory: Neolithic Cuisine as Habitus and Taskscape 152

5 Material Culture and Projects of the Self 159

Archaeological Classics 159

Pottery and Meaning 161

Italian Neolithic Pottery: A Social History 161

A Bit of Historiography 161

The Genealogy of Pottery Traditions 163

Skill, Orientation, and the Layering of Local Knowledge 172

The Social Geography of Italian Neolithic Pottery 178

Fractal Styles and Impressionist Maps 178

Creative Process and Archaeological Patterning 181

Difference, Situated Perception, and Local Knowledge 184

Foreshadowing Patterns of Social Action 185

Obsidian and Flint 186

The Lithic Economy in Neolithic Italy 186

The Obsidian "Trade" 192

Obsidian and Cultural Practices: The Alternative View 197

Axes and Their Life-Paths 204

Axe Basics 204

Contexts of Axe Deposition 208

Axe Biographies and Agency 214

A Methodological Note on Artefact Analysis 218

6 Neolithic Economy as Social Reproduction 219

People at the Center of a Decentered Narrative 219

A Quick Recapitulation 221

Bodies 221

Places 222

Food 223

Artefacts 225

The Social Senses 226

Unfinished Business: Space, Time, Projects 230

Projects of the Self 237

Difference and the Organization of Value 239

The Commonwealth of People and Things 245

7 Neolithic Italy as an Ethnographic Landscape 250

Spatial Demography 252

Travel, Trade, Warfare 254

Culture Areas and Differing Lifeways 260

Village Farmers 261

Dispersed Farmers 264

Mixed Mountaineers and Lake Villages 265

Interpreting Regional Differences 267

Social Networks: The Calabrian Stentinello World 269

The Social History of Unique Places: Lipari 275

8 The Great Simplification: Large-Scale Change at the End of the Neolithic 286

Practice and History 290

Historical Practice: Life without a Primum Mobile 290

Temporal Scale, Regional Analysis, and Patterns of History 291

The Late Neolithic and Copper Age in Peninsular Italy and Sicily 295

Material Culture and Exchange 295

Settlement and Productive Economy 300

Burial, the Body, and Politics 305

The Great Simplification 311

Social Production and Intensifying Pastoralism 311

Place and Relatedness 313

Gendered Bodies 315

Agency, Aesthetics, and the Organization of Value: A New Synaesthesia 317

Processes of Change 320

Always in Transition 320

Re-Reading the Sequence 322

Causality and Spread 326

Coda: Malta - The Road Less Taken 329

Wandering through Tribespace: The Social Foundations of Prehistoric Italy 334.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 347-371) and index.

ISBN:

9780521842419

0521842417

OCLC:

78062466

Online:

Publisher description