Clive Gamble

The notion of progress still bedevils our conception of prehistory, with human evolution persistently seen as a movement from inferior to superior, primitive to advanced, simple to complex. Timewalkers extricates prehistory from the myths and distortions created by this view of the past. By focusing on changes in behavior and stressing the deliberate human purpose our ancestors displayed in their migrations, Clive Gamble produces a fresh and frankly provocative synthesis of the archaeology of the last three million years. This new approach to human prehistory proceeds from a detailed study of global colonization rather than a conventional reassessment of fossil remains and stone tools. Gamble reconsiders the remarkable record of geographical expansion that began with the early hominids of sub-Saharan Africa who spread to new continents, to the marginal environments of desert and taiga, and to islands in the oceans and the Mediterranean. Through this astonishing dispersal of humans, which exceeds that of all other mammals, he traces calculated responses to variations in climate and environment. As he interprets these migrations in terms of behavioral change in a social and ecological context, Gamble offers a revealing critique of the attitudes of early European explorers, on which so much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century archaeology unquestioningly rested. Timewalkers makes the latest findings of prehistoric archaeology accessible in a readable, coherent form. Gamble's novel reinterpretation of this evidence, presented with wit and authority, enlarges and enlivens our understanding of human action and motivation in the distant past.

The Prehistory of Global Colonization

Timewalkers

Robin Dunbar

John Gowlett

Argues that the need for early humans to live in larger social groups and maintain social relations over greater distances drove the enlargement of the human brain and the development of the human mind.

How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind

Thinking Big

A major survey of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies of Europe, this book reviews the topical information and interpretations for scientific research. Palaeolithic studies are at an exciting point of transition. The explosion in ethno-archaeological studies has fundamentally challenged our models and interpretations amongst all classes of data and at all spatial scales of analysis. Furthermore the traditional concerns of dating and quaternary studies have also passed through their own revolutions and palaeolithic archaeology is the direct beneficiary. Dr Gamble presents in an imaginative but comprehensive framework our changing perspectives of Europe's oldest societies.

The Palaeolithic Settlement of Europe

A closer look at social history and the growth of the human brain When and how did the brains of our hominin ancestors become human minds? When and why did our capacity for language, art, music and dance evolve? This pathbreaking book proposes that it was the need for early humans to live in ever-larger social groups over greater distances—the ability to “think big”—that drove the enlargement of the human brain and the development of the human mind. This social brain hypothesis, put forward by evolutionary psychologists such as Robin Dunbar, can be tested against archaeological and fossil evidence. The conclusions here—the fruits of over seven years of research—build on the insight that modern humans live in effective social groups of about 150 (so-called “Dunbar’s number”), some three times the size of those of apes and our early ancestors. We live in a world dominated by social networking. Yet our virtual contact lists, whether on Facebook or Twitter, are on average no bigger than Dunbar’s number.

Ofer Bar-Yosef

Katherine V. Boyle

The Palaeolithic is the only period in archaeology that can be studied globally. In the last half century one prehistorian, Sir Paul Mellars, has changed the shape and direction of such studies, adding immeasurably to what we know about humanity's earliest origins and the timing of crucial transitions in the journey. The Upper Palaeolithic Revolution in global perspective is a collection of essays in his honour. Contributions cover both his own area of primary interest (Franco-Cantabria) as well as many other regions of the world, all of which he has considered while writing about the Human Revolution in its wider geographical context. Papers in this volume examine the archaeological record of the Upper Pleistocene from Australia, through eastern and western Asia and Africa to northern Spain and the classical Périgord region of France, a cornerstone region which Mellars has been researching and publishing on since 1965. To papers on chronology, typology, subsistence and social complexity are added historical and theoretical contributions, along with a biography. These illustrate not only Paul Mellars's impact on the current shape and direction of Palaeolithic studies but also how the subject has changed and continues to change.

Papers in Honour of Sir Paul Mellars

The Upper Palaeolithic Revolution in Global Perspective

A must for anyone considering the study of archaeology, designed to provide the reader with everything they should know when embarking on an archaeological course, whether A Level or first year undergraduate.

The Basics

Archaeology

In this worldwide survey, Clive Gamble explores the evolution of the human imagination, without which we would not have become a global species. He sets out to determine the cognitive and social basis for our imaginative capacity and traces the evidence back into deep human history. He argues that it was the imaginative ability to "go beyond" and to create societies where people lived apart yet stayed in touch that made us such effective world settlers. To make his case Gamble brings together information from a wide range of disciplines: psychology, cognitive science, archaeology, palaeoanthropology, archaeogenetics, geography, quaternary science and anthropology. He presents a novel deep history that combines the archaeological evidence for fossil hominins with the selective forces of Pleistocene climate change, engages with the archaeogeneticists' models for population dispersal and displacement, and ends with the Europeans' rediscovery of the deep history settlement of the earth.

The Archaeology of Deep Human History

Settling the Earth

Yannis Hamilakis

Paul Halstead

Eleni Kotjabopoulou

Animals have always been integral to life and culture in Greece. Recently the study of animal bones has played an important role in investigations of Greek archaeology. In this volume the current position is reviewed with papers ranging from the Palaeolithic to the Medieval periods and employing a wide range of techniques and approaches. The papers cover not only the themes of subsistence and methodology but also symbolism, ritual and the artistic representation of animals. The interdisciplinary and international character of zooarchaeology is confirmed and many new avenues for research are suggested.

Recent Advances

Zooarchaeology in Greece

A closer look at genealogy, incorporating how biological, anthropological, and technical factors can influence human lives We are at a pivotal moment in understanding our remote ancestry and its implications for how we live today. The barriers to what we can know about our distant relatives have been falling as a result of scientific advance, such as decoding the genomes of humans and Neanderthals, and bringing together different perspectives to answer common questions. These collaborations have brought new knowledge and suggested fresh concepts to examine. The results have shaken the old certainties. The results are profound; not just for the study of the past but for appreciating why we conduct our social lives in ways, and at scales, that are familiar to all of us. But such basic familiarity raises a dilemma. When surrounded by the myriad technical and cultural innovations that support our global, urbanized lifestyles we can lose sight of the small social worlds we actually inhabit and that can be traced deep into our ancestry. So why do we need art, religion, music, kinship, myths, and all the other facets of our over-active imaginations if the reality of our effective social worlds is set by a limit of some one hundred and fifty partners (Dunbar’s number) made of family, friends, and useful acquaintances? How could such a social community lead to a city the size of London or a country as large as China? Do we really carry our hominin past into our human present? It is these small worlds, and the link they allow to the study of the past that forms the central point in this book.

Thinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind

Martin Porr

This book explores new approaches to the remarkably detailed information that archaeologists now have for the study of our early ancestors. Rather than explaining the archaeology of stones and bones as the product of group decisions, the contributors investigate how individual action created social life. This challenge to the accepted standpoint of the Palaeolithic brings new models and theories into the period; innovations that are matched by the resolution of data preserving individual action among the stones and bones. The volume brings together examples from recent excavations such as Boxgrove, Schöningen and Blombos Cave and the analyses of artefacts from Middle and Early Upper Pleistocene excavations in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Archaeological Investigations of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic landscapes, locales and artefacts

Hominid Individual in Context

In this study Clive Gamble presents and questions two of the most famous descriptions of change in prehistory. The first is the 'human revolution', when evidence for art, music, religion and language first appears. The second is the economic and social revolution of the Neolithic period. Gamble identifies the historical agendas behind 'origins research' and presents a bold alternative to these established frameworks, relating the study of change to the material basis of human identity. He examines, through artefact proxies, how changing identities can be understood using embodied material metaphors and in two major case-studies charts the prehistory of innovations, asking, did agriculture really change the social world? This is an important and challenging book that will be essential reading for every student and scholar of prehistory.

Human Identity in Earliest Prehistory

Origins and Revolutions

R. I. M. Dunbar

J. A. J. Gowlett

This volume readdresses the past contribution from archaeology towards the study of evolutionary issues, and ties evolutionary psychology into the extensive historical data from the past, allowing us to escape the confined timeframe of the comparatively recent human mind and explore the question of just what it is that makes us so different.

The Benchmark Papers

Lucy to Language

The discovery of ancient stone implements alongside the bones of mammoths by John Evans and Joseph Prestwich in 1859 kicked open the door for a time revolution in human history. Clive Gamble explores the personalities of these revolutionaries and the significant impact their work had on the scientific advances of the next 160 years.

Clive Gamble

Books

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