About the Book
New perspectives on transitions in human
history
This
book is about transitional periods of cultural and environmental change as seen
through the lenses of archaeology and ethnography. Incorporating data from
across six continents and tracing the human experience from the Late
Pleistocene to the present, these chapters offer a global comparative perspective
on transitional states. Questions
of causality are considered, as are hypotheses about the processes of cultural
change.
Archaeology on the
Thresholdfocuses on major transitions such as the shift from foraging to agriculture,
the adoption of new technologies, the emergence of large-scale societies, the
transition from egalitarian to inegalitarian leadership, and changes that occur
in socioeconomic and ideological systems as a result of climate change and
disease. Theoretical approaches range from processual to postprocessual,
humanistic, and interpretive. Methodologies include ethnoarchaeology, the use
of ethnographic analogy,
cross-cultural comparisons and large-scale data approaches, oral history, the
historical record, participant observation, and focus group discussions.
Challenging archaeologists to query long-held
assumptions and theoretical positions, this volume aims to refocus inquiry into
change-causing and larger evolutionary processes to problematize notions of
revolutionary, irrevocable change. These case studies examine and shed light on assumptions regarding the
linearity and oscillations of adaptations, with intriguing implications for
archaeological inferences.
