Article by Annie Nicholson and Scott Cane annotated separately.

Article by Annie Nicholson and Scott Cane annotated separately.

.".. 6th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East held in Rome on May 5th-10th, 2008 (www.6icaane.it)"--Foreword.

For more than a century, the study of hunting and gathering societies has been central to the development of both archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines, and has also generated widespread public interest and debate. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies to date, including critical engagements with older debates, new theoretical perspectives, and renewed obligations for greater engagement between researchers and indigenous communities. Chapters provide in-depth archaeological, historical, and anthropological case-studies, and examine far-reaching questions about human social relations, attitudes to technology, ecology, and management of resources and the environment, as well as issues of diet, health, and gender relations - all central topics in hunter-gatherer research, but also themes that have great relevance for modern global society and its future challenges. The Handbook also provides a strategic vision for how the integration of new methods, approaches, and study regions can ensure that future research into the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers will continue to deliver penetrating insights into the factors that underlie all human diversity.

Archaeological research on the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods has tended to focus on rock shelters, caves, large game kills, and occasionally butchery sites. Diversity in Open-Air Site Structure across the Pleistocene/Holocene Boundary examines a diverse range of open-air sites—bounded both naturally and culturally—in Siberia and Germany and throughout North America. Open-air sites are difficult for researchers to locate and, because of depositional processes, often more difficult to interpret; they contain many superimposed events but often show evidence of only the most recent. Working to overcome the limitations of data and poor preservation, using decades of prior research and new analytical tools, and diverging from a one-size-fits-all mode of interpretation, the contributors to this volume offer fresh insight into the formation and taphonomy of open-air sites. Contributors: Douglas B. Bamforth, Ian Buvit, Brian J. Carter, Robin Cordero, Robert Dello-Russo, George C. Frison, Kelly E. Graf, Bruce B. Huckell, Michael A. Jochim, Joshua D. Kapp, Robert L. Kelly, Aleksander V. Konstantinov, Banks Leonard, Madeline E. Mackie, Christopher W. Merriman, Matthew J. O’Brien, Spencer Pelton, Neil N. Puckett, Beth Shapiro, Todd A. Surovell, Karisa Terry, Steve Teteak, Robert Yohe

Mobile pastoralist activities occur at different scales across the landscape, including local, regional, and supra-regional scales. Most archaeological studies of mobile pastoralist social organization have focused on the latter two scales via the extant monumental and herding landscapes. Household levels of analysis figure much less in these studies. This volume brings together the work of archaeologists currently engaged in mobile pastoralist household research in different regions of the world to highlight the importance of household studies and the utility of both archaeological and ethnoarchaeological approaches in understanding mobile pastoralist household formation, continuity, and adaptation to environmental, social, economic, and political change.

A comprehensive investigation of household life during the Upper Paleolithic era. What was home and family like in Paleolithic Europe? How did mobile hunter-gatherer families live, work, and play together in the fourteenth millennium BP? What were the functional and spatial constraints and markers of their domesticity—the processes that create and sustain a household? Despite the long recognized absence of comprehensive archaeological data on such ancient homes and hearths, the archaeologists in this volume begin unraveling the domesticity of the Upper Paleolithic by drawing on both an immense trove of new material evidence and comparative site data, and a range of incisive and illuminating ethnographic analogies, theoretical models, and simulations. Five Late Magdalenian sites from the Paris Basin and one later Azilian site provide striking evidence of well-preserved camps of short duration, situated on valley bottoms and buried by gentle floods. Of particular interest and value is the site of Verberie, rich in lithic tools, faunal remains, hearths, and other indicators of spatial organization, which has been excavated continuously for twenty-six years by the same director and provides an unparalleled source of information on Paleolithic domesticity. The first group of essays and reports look at the technology and demographic evidences of domesticity; the second set seeks clues to the spatial patterning of Paleolithic households; while the final essays draw on ethnographic analogies to reconstruct and interpret gendered divisions of labor, perishable technologies, and other activities not directly recognizable from archaeological remains. “[The Magdalenian Household] should be required reading for anyone with an interest in Upper Palaeolithic behaviour and the evolution of the use of space.” — Antiquity “ because of the excellent syntheses of especially the long-term, high-quality research at Verberie, this book should be in the collections of all institutions with serious interests in Upper Paleolithic prehistory.” — Journal of Anthropological Research