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109
VI/1/2015
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Book reviews
Volume VI ● Issue 1/2015 ● Pages 109–110
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology
and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers.
Vicki Cummings, Peter Jordan, Marek
Zvelebil (Eds.).
Oxford University Press (April 24, 2014),
Oxford, UK, 1 360 pp., 123 illustrations,
ISBN: 9780199551224. £ 125 (hardcover).
Part I (
Theoretical Frameworks
) deals
with the concept of hunting and gathering
societies, mainly in terms of its evolution,
development, cultural and historical context,
as well as its current position in the scientifc
community (A. Barnard; M. Pluciennik;
A. Cannon). Presented within this scope
are some highly-discussed adaptive
approaches that emphasise the importance
of considering the social variables along
with the environmental ones (R. Garvey and
R. Bettinger). The last two chapters in this
part are devoted to valuable methodological
issues, namely ethnoarchaeological
investigations (P. Jane) and the impact of
gender studies on hunter-gatherer research
(K. Sterling).
Part II (
The Earliest Hunter-Gatherers
)
concentrates on the notion of foraging
itself with respect to early human evolution
(J. Robinson). This part concerns the
Neanderthals (J. Zilhão) and early modern
humans from the perspective of evolution
and extinction along with tracing their
biological and social traits. Much work
has been done in this area and the nine
subsequent chapters provide a critical up-
to-date and very valuable overview of
these processes taking place in various
areas involving: Africa (K. Kuykendall and
I. Heyerdahl-King); Asia (O. Bar-Yosef;
A. Derevianko, S. Markin and A. Tabarev;
M. Petraglia and N. Boivin; S. O’Connor
and D. Bulbeck); Europe (P. Pettit);
Australia (I. Davidson); and the Americas
(M. Kornfeld and G. Politis).
Part III (
Post-Glacial Colonisations
and Transformations
) looks at the post-
glacial epoch as a period characterised
by key environmental changes and the
human responses to them. To this end,
this part of the handbook outlines major
transformations and developments taking
place in the Mesolithic in areas of lower
latitude such as Africa (A. Smith) and
Asia (A. Moore; R. Rabett and S. Jones;
J. Habu), as well as in colder European
zones (J. Svoboda; G. Warren; F. Riede). As
the introductory chapter by V. Cummings
explains, a study into hunter-gatherers
in the post-glacial world has long been
a topic that is rather problematic to grasp
and deal with. As a consequence, several
remaining key issues for future research
in this period are stressed, including: more
detailed information on environmental and
cultural variability, along with a call for a
new integrative mode of thinking in order
to fully understand humans in the post-
glacial period in a broader sense.
Part IV (
Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer
Innovations
) aims to highlight the fact that
hunter-gatherers should be perceived as
active beings having an intrinsic capacity
for change and innovation, as opposed
to the traditional view of pre-agricultural
societies being passive recipients of external
infuences. Technological innovations in
material culture (S. Kuhn and A. Clark;
P. Hommel), artistic skills (J. Lewis-
Williams), the emergence of coastal
economies (C. Wickham-Jones), structured
and symbolic mortuary practices (L. Nilsson
Stutz) and the presence of more complex
societies in terms of transformations of
social relations (B. Hayden) represent some
of the key issues discussed in this light.
These are accompanied by other chapters
dealing with the active management
and domestication of plants and animals
(D. Harris; A. Outram), emphasizing its
roots among prehistoric hunter-gatherers.
Although much work on hunter-gatherers
engaged in individual innovations has
already been published, the key element
stressed by the editors here is the “agency”
of hunter-gatherers leading to new patterns
of behaviour in more general terms.
Part V (
The Persistence of Hunting and
Gathering amongst Farmers in Prehistory
and Beyond
) goes on to consider the issues
surrounding the emergence and spread of
farming from the perspective of prehistoric
hunter-gatherers. In this part, contributors
discuss the process of Neolithisation in
various European regions (D. Gronenborn;
D. Raemaekers; V. Cummings and
O. Harris; C. Damm and L. Forsberg) on the
one hand, and forager-farmer interactions
in south-east Asia (H. Barton) and North
America (K. Spielmann) on the other.
The core of this part lies in the contrasting
This huge handbook focuses on the
phenomenon of hunter-gatherers from the
perspective of two disciplines, namely
archaeology and anthropology. The
volume under review here is written by
a distinguished group of internationally-
recognised researchers under the leadership
of Vicki Cummings (Reader in Archaeology
at the University of Central Lancashire),
Peter Jordan (Director of the Arctic Centre
at the University of Groningen) and Marek
Zvelebil (deceased Professor of European
Prehistory at the University of Sheffeld).
The book is a complex piece of work
providing a detailed critical review of
several present-day investigations that
vary both in their scope and approach. The
61 essays are well-organized into seven
thematic sections, comprised of individual
chapters that cover specifc issues and case
studies from around the world.