Part travel guide, part survey of Europe's prehistory,Exploring Prehistoric Europedelves into fifteen of the most famous, most important, and most exciting archaeological sites in Europe. The first volume in the Places in Time series, this beautiful book takes us to locales both famous and obscure, from Ireland to Poland to Malta, ranging chronologically from Terra Amata, a site in southern France occupied some 380,000 years ago, to Borremose, a Danish settlement that dates to Roman times. The author, archaeologist Chris Scarre, examines the haunting cave paintings of Lascaux, France; the stone circle and ritual complexes of Avebury, England; and the ever mysterious Stonehenge--as well as lesser known but no less intriguing sites around Europe. For each location, he conducts a careful tour of the existing remains, describes the history of its excavation, and then interprets how the site might have been built, used, or occupied. Readers will explore a variety of cultures and monuments, from megalithic stone circles to Neolithic villages to Bronze Age tombs, and see intimate portraits of the daily life of Europe's prehistoric ancestors. Perhaps equally important, Scarre has selected the sites with accessibility in mind--all can be easily reached by the modern tourist--and he also highlights local museums and visitor centers where further artifacts and information can be found. Beautifully illustrated with maps and full-color photographs,Exploring Prehistoric Europemakes the perfect companion for the historically minded traveler--or the reader who wants to curl up at home and wander at leisure through the distant past.

Part travel guide, part survey of Europe's prehistory,Exploring Prehistoric Europedelves into fifteen of the most famous, most important, and most exciting archaeological sites in Europe. The first volume in the Places in Time series, this beautiful book takes us to locales both famous and obscure, from Ireland to Poland to Malta, ranging chronologically from Terra Amata, a site in southern France occupied some 380,000 years ago, to Borremose, a Danish settlement that dates to Roman times. The author, archaeologist Chris Scarre, examines the haunting cave paintings of Lascaux, France; the stone circle and ritual complexes of Avebury, England; and the ever mysterious Stonehenge--as well as lesser known but no less intriguing sites around Europe. For each location, he conducts a careful tour of the existing remains, describes the history of its excavation, and then interprets how the site might have been built, used, or occupied. Readers will explore a variety of cultures and monuments, from megalithic stone circles to Neolithic villages to Bronze Age tombs, and see intimate portraits of the daily life of Europe's prehistoric ancestors. Perhaps equally important, Scarre has selected the sites with accessibility in mind--all can be easily reached by the modern tourist--and he also highlights local museums and visitor centers where further artifacts and information can be found. Beautifully illustrated with maps and full-color photographs,Exploring Prehistoric Europemakes the perfect companion for the historically minded traveler--or the reader who wants to curl up at home and wander at leisure through the distant past.

Identity is relational and a construct, and is expressed in a myriad of ways. For example, material culture and its pluralist meanings have been readily manipulated by humans in a prehistoric context in order to construct personal and group identities. Artefacts were often from or reminiscent of far-flung places and were used to demonstrate membership of an (imagined) regional, or European community. Earthworks frequently archive maximum visual impact through elaborate ramparts and entrances with the minimum amount of effort, indicating that the construction of identities were as much in the eye of the perceivor, as of the perceived. Variations in domestic architectural style also demonstrate the malleability of identity, and the prolonged, intermittent use of particular places for specific functions indicates that the identity of place is just as important in our archaeological understanding as the identity of people. By using a wide range of case studies, both temporally and spatially, these thought processes may be explored further and diachronic and geographic patterns in expressions of identity investigated.

Prehistoric Europe: Theory and Practice provides a comprehensive introduction to the range of critical contemporary thinking in the study of European prehistory. Presents essays by some of the most dynamic researchers and leading European scholars in the field today Ranges from the Neolithic period to the early stages of the Iron Age, and from Ireland and Scandinavia to the Urals and the Iberian Peninsula

Provides a comprehensive account of prehistoric Europe from the coming of the Stone Age to the fall of the Roman Empire, providing information on the changing landscape of Europe and responses and adaptations to these changes.

This book brings together a classic collection of Andrew Sherratt's work on the economic foundations of prehistoric Europe, which have put forward important new ideas about the development of farming, pastoralism, early technology and trade. In a series of contributions that have included wide-ranging syntheses and detailed local studies, he discusses their implications for the understanding of settlement-patterns, social structures, material culture, and less tangible aspects of prehistoric life such as the spread of languages and the use of narcotics.

Until around 10,000 BC art in Europe appears to have been in advance of the rest of the world and throws light on the total history of early man. The great masterpieces of cave-painting at Lascaux are well known, and one tradition of early sculpture is from the first surprizingly classical. With the shelter paintings of the Spanish Levant and the clay modelling and painted pottery of eastern Europe in the fourth and third millennia BC fresh artistic problems were tackled. Later still evolved the high technical accomplishment of the metal-workers, and this study concludes with an account of the new departures of Celtic La Tene art of the last four centuries BC.