The Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic

The Oxford Handbook of the Prehistoric Arctic
Author: T. Max Friesen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1001
Release: 2016
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199766959

Despite its extreme climate, the North American Arctic holds a complex archaeological record of global significance. In this volume, leading researchers provide comprehensive coverage of the region's cultural history, addressing issues as diverse as climate change impacts on human societies, European colonial expansion, and hunter-gatherer adaptations and social organization.

The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines

The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines
Author: Timothy Insoll
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 961
Release: 2017
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN: 0199675619

The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Figurines is the first text to offer a comparative survey of figurines from across the globe, bringing together myriad contemporary research approaches to provide invaluable insights into their function, context, meaning, and use, as well as past thinking on the human body, gender, and identity.

An Exploration of Prehistoric Ontologies in the Bering Strait Region

An Exploration of Prehistoric Ontologies in the Bering Strait Region
Author: Feng Qu
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2021-01-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1527564320

This book introduces readers to the belief and symbolism present in the prehistoric art of the Bering Strait region. For about a century, the archaeology of this area has mainly focused on material, economic, and technological perspectives, leaving studies of prehistoric spirituality, religion, and cosmology to be under-conceptualized. This text questions the nature of materiality, and the relationship between it and spirituality. It employs an analytical and methodological approach located within the frameworks of practice theory and animist ontologies to open up thought-provoking avenues for interpretive possibility. This book also provides new knowledge about the prehistoric material culture of ancient Inuit people, and offers an assessment of contemporary archaeological theories, such as cognitive archaeology, structural archaeology, and shamanism theory, in order to examine the reliability of these theories in the studies of prehistoric art. According to the ontological trend which has constituted a powerful challenge to traditional nature/culture and body/mind dichotomies, this book reconsiders prehistoric Inuit cultures, providing an analysis of therianthropic motifs on prehistoric ivories to explore potential shamanism within ontological and cosmological structures.

Thule Eskimo Prehistory along Northwestern Hudson Bay

Thule Eskimo Prehistory along Northwestern Hudson Bay
Author: Allen Papin McCartney
Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 1977-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1772820687

Ten Thule house ruins were excavated during 1968 and 1969 at Silumiut, Kamarvik, and Igluligardjuk, major winter settlements along Roes Welcome Sound and northwestern Hudson Bay. Radiocarbon dating places the occupation of these sites at the end of the twelveth century A.D. This work expands Mathiassen’s original investigation of Thule culture southward from Repulse Bay.

Alaska Native Art

Alaska Native Art
Author: Susan W. Fair
Publisher: University of Alaska Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2006
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1889963798

The rich artistic traditions of Alaska Natives are the subject of this landmark volume, which examines the work of the premier Alaska artists of the twentieth century. Ranging across the state from the islands of the Bering Sea to the interior forests, Alaska Native Art provides a living context for beadwork and ivory carving, basketry and skin sewing. Examples of work from Tlingit, Aleutian Islanders, Pacific Eskimo, Athabascan, Yupik, and Inupiaq artists make this volume the most comprehensive study of Alaskan art ever published. Alaska Native Art examines the concept of tradition in the modern world. Alaska Native Art is a volume to treasure, a tribute to the incredible vision of Alaska's artists and to the enduring traditions of all of Alaska's Native peoples.

Macroevolution in Human Prehistory

Macroevolution in Human Prehistory
Author: Anna Prentiss
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2009-09-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1441906827

Cultural evolution, much like general evolution, works from the assumption that cultures are descendent from much earlier ancestors. Human culture manifests itself in forms ranging from the small bands of hunters, through intermediate scale complex hunter-gatherers and farmers, to the high density urban settlements and complex polities that characterize much of today’s world. The chapters in the volume examine the dynamic interaction between the micro- and macro-scales of cultural evolution, developing a theoretical approach to the archaeological record that has been termed evolutionary processual archaeology. The contributions in this volume integrate positive elements of both evolutionary and processualist schools of thought. The approach, as explicated by the contributors in this work, offers novel insights into topics that include the emergence, stasis, collapse and extinction of cultural patterns, and development of social inequalities. Consequently, these contributions form a stepping off point for a significant new range of cultural evolutionary studies.

An Annotated Bibliography of Inuit Art

An Annotated Bibliography of Inuit Art
Author: Richard C. Crandall
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2015-07-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1476607435

Archaeological digs have turned up sculptures in Inuit lands that are thousands of years old, but "Inuit art" as it is known today only dates back to the beginning of the 1900s. Early art was traditionally produced from soft materials such as whalebone, and tools and objects were also fashioned out of stone, bone, and ivory because these materials were readily available. The Inuit people are known not just for their sculpture but for their graphic art as well, the most prominent forms being lithographs and stonecuts. This work affords easy access to information to those interested in any type of Inuit art. There are annotated entries on over 3,761 articles, books, catalogues, government documents, and other publications.