England
agriculture Quick reference
A Dictionary of World History (3 ed.)
... Cultivation of the soil, including the allied pursuits of gathering crops and rearing livestock. The ‘Neolithic revolution’, the change from an economy based on hunting and gathering to one based on settled agriculture, is thought to have begun in many independent centres around the world, at very roughly the same time ( c .9000 bc ): changes in climate and population growth may have stimulated this process. Archaeological evidence suggests at least three independent centres of origin for agriculture based on grain crops (the Near East, the Far...
Ukraine Quick reference
A Dictionary of World History (3 ed.)
...crops. As the coal mining and much of the heavy industry are currently controlled by separatists, further strain has been placed on what was already a poorly performing economy. In January 2016, a free trade area was established with the EU. History Originally inhabited by Neolithic settlers in the Dnieper and Dniester valleys, Ukraine was overrun by numerous invaders before Varangian adventurers founded a powerful Slav kingdom based on Kiev in the 9th century. Mongol conquest in the 13th century was followed in the 14th century by Lithuanian overlordship...
Prehistory Reference library
Marcia‐Anne Dobres
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...of gendered divisions of labor were probably practiced across the Old World, there is no reason to assume that such divisions were based on a binary (heterosexual) model. In all likelihood at least some such cultures enjoyed third and fourth genders. Nor can we Neolithic Burial. Remains of a Neolithic woman discovered at Cys-la-Commune, Aisne, accompanied by ornaments attesting to her wealth, including sandstone and limestone bracelets and a necklace of small limestone disks and large cylindrical beads made from shell, c. 4500 b.c.e. Musée des Antiquités...
Central Asia Reference library
Jeannine David‐Kimball and Shoshana Keller
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...increased grain consumption. It can be deduced from this information that women milked the sheep, making cheeses for consumption immediately and later in the year, and that those not giving birth or caring for infants gathered wild edibles. Neolithic Period in Central Asia. During the Neolithic Revolution, in addition to pastoralism, agriculture developed c. 6000 b.c.e . as a second economic base in the southern Turkmenistan Djeitun culture. Houses were constructed of daubed and painted clay brick and averaged 20 to 30 square meters (215 to 323...
Agriculture Reference library
Cornelia Butler Flora, Pam J. Crabtree, Carolyn E. Sachs, and Christine D. Worobec
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...demanding, aspects of maize cultivation and distribution. Similar studies are also being carried out in the Old World. For example, in her 2002 volume Sexual Revolutions: Gender and Labor at the Dawn of Agriculture , Jane Peterson discusses the evidence of human skeletal remains from Natufian and Neolithic sites in the southern Levant and how this may help us understand the pre‐Neolithic sexual division of labor and the ways in which it may have changed with the adoption of agriculture. Her data suggest some sexual division of labor during the...
Textiles Reference library
Sandra Alfoldy and Irene Good
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...tradition of ancient textile study is in place. Eighteenth‐century bog finds in Sweden and Denmark occurred at the very beginnings of archaeology. Neolithic and Mesolithic Danish textile fragments of willow and poplar bast and tilia (lime bast; bast is the fiber derived from the inner bundled cells of a plant stem) have been found from sites from the Ertebølle culture off the coast of Jutland. Swiss Neolithic lake dwellings of the so‐called Funnel‐Necked Beaker Culture contained textiles and cordage of tree basts and also of flax; these textiles were often...
China Reference library
Lisa Raphals, Beverly Bossler, and Delia Davin
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...practices, including ritual prescriptions for the subordination of women to men, reinforced the authority of men over women. Nonetheless, limited evidence of social practices suggests that norms for these rituals were often disregarded in practice. The Neolithic and Shang Periods. Neolithic and Shang mortuary evidence provides some data on sex ratios, vital statistics, and marriage patterns, and divination inscriptions also offer perspectives on the status of women in the late Shang dynasty ( c. 1200–1045 b.c.e. ). The names of royal women such as ...
Food Reference library
Carole M. Counihan and Alice P. Julier
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...and indigenous cultures are the main preservationists of biodiversity through their seed saving. Agrarian Cultures and Communities. By the end of the Neolithic period, human societies in a number of areas had devised ways of storing rainwater and rechanneling rivers to irrigate land, increasing the ability to maintain plants as crops. The move from foraging to settled farming was not a fast revolution but rather a slow process of domesticating plants and animals through artificial selection, making them more productive and easier to grow, harvest, store,...
Europe Reference library
Joanna S. Smith, Ann Suter, Lena Larsson LovÉn, Liz James, and Merry E. Wiesner‐Hanks
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...J. Anthropomorphic Figurines of Predynastic Egypt and Neolithic Crete with Comparative Material from the Prehistoric Near East and Mainland Greece . London: Szmidla, 1968. Vitelli, Karen D. “Pots, Potters, and the Shaping of Greek Neolithic Society.” In The Emergence of Pottery: Technology and Innovation in Ancient Societies , edited by William K. Barnett and John W. Hoopes , pp. 55–63. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995. Whitehouse, Ruth D. “Gender in the South Italian Neolithic: A Combinatory Approach.” In In Pursuit of Gender:...
World Religions Reference library
Arvind Sharma, Katherine K. Young, Katherine K. Young, and Katherine K. Young
The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History
...Lucca, Italy/Scala/Art Resource, NY role that religions have performed in this regard is solemnizing marriage. At the origin of marriage was a primeval reciprocity, which involved two exchanges. Men provided the protein of big animals; women provided plants and, after the Neolithic revolution, the protein of small animals. Men protected and provided for pregnant women, mothers, and children; women provided their loyalty to these men, assuring them that they were indeed the fathers—which increased the involvement of fathers in family life and might have...
Neolithic Ireland Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Irish History (2 ed.)
... Ireland . The Neolithic period (New Stone Age) is often viewed as a mainly economic phenomenon, and is sometimes referred to as the ‘Neolithic Revolution’. It began in Ireland around 4500 bc , slowly displacing the Mesolithic , and ended with the transition to the Bronze Age at around 2500 bc . It is the combined traits of changes in food production, settlement forms, burial practices, and material culture that essentially define the Neolithic. It is now recognized that the Neolithic was not homogeneous throughout Europe, or even Ireland, and that...
Archaeology Reference library
Kevin Greene
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...human populations are bound up with effective exploitation of the biosphere. Studies of pollen, plant remains, and the bones of animals and humans reflect significant shifts in food sources, notably the transition from hunting and gathering to farming (sometimes called the Neolithic Revolution). Biomolecular analysis of bones and other organic remains is providing new knowledge about diet and health, and ancient DNA is shedding new light on the domestication of plants and animals and on human migrations. Scientific analysis has also stimulated experimental...
Nile Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
...than habitation sites, it is still uncertain whether, in addition to residual fisher and gathering groups, there may also have been distinct groups favoring farming activities or pastoralism. In both the Faiyum and Nile Valley, therefore, it is plausible that there was no “Neolithic Revolution.” Instead, it is possible that several groups of people with different ecological adaptations utilized the larger system represented by the Egyptian Nile, emphasizing complementary or only partially overlapping econiches. Alternatively, their economies may have been...
Thessaly Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome
...Thessalian men never lost their reputation as excellent cavalry and boisterous party-lovers fond of beef-rich and wine-soaked dinners featuring topless dancing girls. Thessaly supported a significant human population by the late Paleolithic Age that grew at the time of the Neolithic Revolution in Greece circa 10,000 bce , when the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals created settled farming communities. By the end of the eighth century bce , the region's fertility promoted the emergence of rich families that dominated politics in...
Periodization Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome
...systematically understood. Although historical narratives may tend to reify them, historical periods exist only as by-products of particular interpretations. An economic periodization, such as “the age of agrarian societies,” may be very long, stretching from the Neolithic to the Industrial Revolution; a cultural periodization, such as “the disco era,” may be very brief indeed. Periods have no objective historical existence, but are conjured to serve and advance interpretations of the past. Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The tripartite division of European...
Malaria Reference library
James L. A. Webb
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
...Other hemoglobin mutations, such as thalassemia and sickle cell, offered protection against falciparum, but they exacted a heavy cost. Following the expansion of Homo sapiens from Africa into Eurasia, malaria became more broadly distributed. In the aftermath of the Neolithic agricultural revolutions, malarial infections became more prevalent, as human population densities increased. Across the Eurasian landmass, vivax was probably the most common and was particularly dominant to the north of the subtropics, owing to the warmer temperatures required by the...
regional identities Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Scottish History
...access to good fishing grounds. Already in prehistory the cultural histories of the islands diverged. Orkney's neolithic monuments are large and impressive in their flat, green landscape. They are also world‐famous: Skara Brae, the Stones of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar. They betoken religious practices and class structures which we can only guess about. Shetland's chambered cairns, on the other hand, are small and clumsy, and her tiny neolithic houses—many hundreds survive—point to a more egalitarian society. During the Iron Age brochs appeared in both...
Agriculture Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures
...Las civilizaciones antiguas y su nacimiento.” In Historia general de América Latina: Las sociedades originarias , edited by Teresa Rojas Rabiela and John V. Murra , vol. 1, pp. 117–150. Madrid, 1999. Revealing examination that separates the different processes of “Neolithicization”—the permanent occupation and use of cultivated plants—from the birth of Mesoamerican civilization (the Olmec cultural system). Ochoa, Lorenzo . “Formaciones regionales de Mesoamérica: Tierrasmayas.” In Historia general de América Latina: Las sociedades originarias , edited...
Caribbean Sea Reference library
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History
...despite the reduced international market for sugar. The French Revolution of 1789 ignited a revolution in the French colony of Sainte-Domingue, where nearly half a million slaves worked plantations held by a small minority of white and mixed-race elites. The slaves defeated French armies sent by Napoleon to quell the revolt, invaded the Spanish half of the island, and gained abolition and independence in 1804 . The new nation was named Haiti , the Taino word for the area. The Haitian revolution ended the sugar trade from what had been the largest producer...
