Prehistoric Archaeology Reference library
Andrew Sherratt
The Oxford Companion To Archaeology (2 ed.)
... Archaeology Prehistoric archaeology is a field of research that encompasses all of the pre-urban societies of the world, which by definition have no written records to provide direct accounts by observers and participants. It therefore has a distinctive set of procedures for analyzing material remains in order to reconstruct their ecological settings, materials procurement and subsistence practices, everyday life, social organization, and the patterning of symbolic codes in such extinct societies. Since this is the “purest” form of archaeology,...
Prehistoric Archaeology
Archaeology and the Bible Reference library
Oxford Bible Atlas (4 ed.)
... Tombs and burial practices Archaeology has revealed a great variety of types of burial, from simple interments or cave burials to elaborate tombs, with evidence from right across the historical and indeed prehistorical spectrum. The presence of various objects placed alongside the bodies suggests a belief in the necessity of making some sort of provision for the dead, though the extent to which such...
In the Beginning: The Earliest History Reference library
Michael D. Coogan
Oxford History of the Biblical World
... Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. A reliable translation of ten major Mesopotamian myths. Ehrich, Robert W. , ed. Chronologies in Old World Archaeology. 3d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. A comprehensive survey of the archaeological data for prehistoric chronology. Gonen, Rivka. “The Chalcolithic Period.” In The Archaeology of Ancient Israel, ed. Amnon Ben-Tor, 40–80. A detailed interpretive summary of the evidence. Grimal, Nicholas. A History of Ancient Egypt. Trans. Ian...
Industrial History Quick reference
David Hey
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...journal Industrial Archaeology Review , founded in 1976 , endorsed this view, but Arthur Raistrick , Industrial Archaeology ( 1972 ), argued against the emphasis on the Industrial Revolution and promoted the idea that the subject should include all aspects of industrial history, stretching back to prehistoric times. Another influential publication in the development of the subject was R. A. Buchanan , Industrial Archaeology in Britain (1972) . The standard work is now Marilyn Palmer and Peter Neaverson , Industrial Archaeology: Principles and...
Landscape History: The Countryside Quick reference
H. S. A. Fox
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...classify historic features in the present‐day landscape, a task which is useful and above all enjoyable. But this is not landscape history, because history is about people; it is a type of surveying which requires historical skills, a technique, just as medieval archaeology or industrial archaeology are highly useful techniques which serve wider historical aims. Local historians with a fascination for landscapes should, rather, see themselves as students of past milieux and of the two‐way relationship between those milieux and society: they were constantly...
Place-Names Quick reference
Margaret Gelling
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...English, and this supports belief in the presence of a large number of Anglo‐Saxon farmers. The change of name stock happened, however, not only in the eastern half of England, where archaeology attests a large Anglo‐Saxon presence in the early post‐Roman centuries, but also in counties like Devon and Shropshire, where there is no pagan Anglo‐Saxon archaeology, and where numerical swamping is highly unlikely. The place‐names of Shropshire have recently been examined in detail, and it has been suggested that a clue to the change may lie in the...
Domestic Buildings Quick reference
Malcolm Airs
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...Buildings Shelter is a fundamental requirement of human beings and the archaeological evidence for the ways by which this basic need has been met extend far back into the prehistoric period. However, it is only in the centuries following the Norman Conquest that the house as a standing structure survives in sufficient numbers to enable its three‐dimensional history to be written. Wealth and social rank are the major distinguishing features which have shaped the architectural forms taken by buildings with a predominantly domestic function, and these...
1 Writing Systems Reference library
Andrew Robinson
The Oxford Companion to the Book
...in southern France, which are probably 20,000 years old. A cave at Peche Merle, in the Lot, contains a lively Ice Age graffito showing a stencilled hand and a pattern of red dots. This may simply mean: ‘I was here, with my animals’—or perhaps the symbolism is deeper. Other prehistoric images show animals such as horses, a stag’s head, and bison, overlaid with signs; and notched bones have been found that apparently served as lunar calendars. ‘Proto-writing’ is not writing in the full sense of the word. A scholar of writing, the Sinologist John DeFrancis ,...
Chinese Family Names Reference library
Mark Lewellen and Horace Chen
Dictionary of American Family Names (2 ed.)
...One’s xing was generally obtained by inheritance. (Many scholars, noting the high frequency of the component for ‘woman’ in characters for various xing , as well as in the character for the word xing itself, argue that the xing dates back to matriarchal societies in prehistoric times and was originally transmitted through the mother.) As revealed by the records of oracle bone scripts and bronze inscriptions, eight major xing s, known as “Eight Great Xing s of Antiquity”, had already existed prior to the Shang dynasty. Eventually a particular xing ...
Historic Churches Quick reference
David Hey
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...was laid out at the centre of the new town at the end of the 12th century. However, some churches occupy what now appear to be strange positions because the early Christians took over pagan sites and adapted them for their own purposes. At All Saints, Rudston (Yorkshire), a prehistoric monolith, which dates from the late Neolithic or Bronze Age , stands over 25 feet high in the churchyard, 10 metres from the chancel. The place‐name has led to the suggestion that a Christian cross, or rood , was attached to the top of the stone. A local legend maintained...
1700 to the Present Reference library
Ronald Clements
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...promise. This lay in the archaeology of the Holy Land itself and of the neighbouring lands which had been the cradles for the civilizations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Although its beginnings are to be found in a survey of the historical geography of the region, which had begun in 1838–9 with the explorations of the American Edward Robinson, it soon grew into extended excavation of the most prominent sites. These led to the establishing of major institutes and organizations for the systematic prosecution of archaeological research in the region. Initially...
Prehistoric Society
Thomas George Eyre Powell
prehistoric art
World Archaeological Congress
prehistoric site
Archaeological Evidence of War in Prehistory
direct historical approach
