When Emil Haury defined the ancient Mogollon in the 1930s as a culture distinct from their Ancestral Pueblo and Hohokam neighbors, he triggered a major intellectual controversy in the history of southwestern archaeology, centering on whether the Mogollon were truly a different culture or merely a “backwoods variant” of a better-known people. In this book, archaeologists Jefferson Reid and Stephanie Whittlesey tell the story of the remarkable individuals who discovered the Mogollon culture, fought to validate it, and eventually resolved the controversy. Reid and Whittlesey present the arguments and actions surrounding the Mogollon discovery, definition, and debate. Drawing on extensive interviews conducted with Haury before his death in 1992, they explore facets of the debate that scholars pursued at various times and places and how ultimately the New Archaeology shifted attention from the research questions of cultural affiliation and antiquity that had been at the heart of the controversy. In gathering the facts and anecdotes surrounding the debate, Reid and Whittlesey offer a compelling picture of an academician who was committed to understanding the unwritten past, who believed wholeheartedly in the techniques of scientific archaeology, and who used his influence to assist scholarship rather than to advance his own career. Prehistory, Personality, and Place depicts a real archaeologist practicing real archaeology, one that fashioned from potsherds and pit houses a true understanding of prehistoric peoples. But more than the chronicle of a controversy, it is a book about places and personalities: the role of place in shaping archaeologists’ intellect and personalities, as well as the unusual intersections of people and places that produced resolutions of some intractable problems in Southwest history.

Recent archaeological discoveries from China and central Asia have changed our understanding of how human civilization developed in the period of some 4 million years before the start of written history. In this new edition of his Very Short Introduction, Chris Gosden explores the current theories on the ebb and flow of human cultural variety.

Helen Bainbridge takes us on a wonderful journey through the written history of prehistoric Swaledale, from a time when flint arrow heads were thought to be petrified thunderbolts, through the early and surprisingly perceptive antiquarians, and the certainties of the digging and writing clergymen, to the ground-breaking work of Robert White, Andrew Fleming and Tim Laurie which has inspired the 21st century investigation you can explore on the SWAAG website. We now know that good history and archaeology raise more questions than they answer, but the journey remains as exhilarating as ever. This publication will be of interest to both newcomer and well-seasoned enthusiast to the history of Swaledale and Arkengarthdale. Drawing upon a wide range of text focussing on local prehistory, fact, fiction and anecdote are connected with actual finds to create a lively trawl through time. Many of the illustrations have never been published and draw upon the riches of the Swaledale Museum archive.

This text offers a survey of human evolution from earliest times up to the advent of literate civilizations, providing a view of human prehistory. It also discusses advances in fossil discoveries, the origins of modern humans and theories relating to food production.