Prehistoric Society ([Or]) Quick reference
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (3 ed.)
... Society [Or] Membership organization founded in 1935 devoted entirely to the study of prehistory. The society aims to advance education and promote interest in all branches of prehistory and allied subjects, and to promote the conservation of the archaeological heritage for the benefit of the public. Publications include the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society...
Prehistoric Society
Local and Regional History: Modern Approaches Quick reference
David Hey
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...First and foremost should be the historical analysis of particular societies and their activities, studied as an entity and in relation to the wider world of their times; such societies must be understood in their geographic contexts. The second approach should be topographical: the study of landscapes and the interplay between man and his environment, revealed by both visual and documentary evidence. The third concern is with all the families that together constitute the local society that is being studied. The fourth is with regional popular cultures, the...
In the Beginning: The Earliest History Reference library
Michael D. Coogan
Oxford History of the Biblical World
...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 Shaw. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. A current summary. Orni, Ephraim, and E. Ephrat. Geography of Israel. 4th ed. Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1980. A detailed treatment. Postgate, J. N. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at...
Popular Culture Quick reference
Charles Phythian-Adams
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...Probably every township , for example, had some particularized sense of its own past: a myth of origin (usually associated specifically with either Britons, or Anglo‐Saxons, or Scandinavians) or even a prehistoric landmark around which had gathered some legendary or superstitious association (see L. V. Grinsall , The Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain (1976) ). Each local community, moreover, boasted its own annual cycle of calendar customs ( see folklore, customs, and civic ritual ) that owed as much to cultural variables (like the earlier...
Landscape History: The Countryside Quick reference
H. S. A. Fox
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...new journal Landscapes , published by Windgather Press since 2000 , and in Landscape History , the journal of the Society for Landscape Studies . In 2007 Windgather Press published the papers given at a conference held two years previously at Leicester University to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of The Making of the English Landscape , in three volumes: Andrew Fleming and Richard Hingley (eds), Prehistoric and Roman Landscapes ; Mark Gardiner and Stephen Rippon (eds), Medieval Landscapes ; and P. S. Barnwell and ...
Industrial History Quick reference
David Hey
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...Rhys Jenkins Collection of 177 boxes of notes on technical history. The Newcomen Society, the world's oldest learned society devoted to the study of the history of engineering and technology, was founded in 1920 and published its first Transactions that year; these are available online. The world's oldest local industrial history and preservation society was founded in 1933 as the Sheffield Trades Historical Society (now renamed the South Yorkshire Industrial History Society) by people from local industries and the University of Sheffield who were...
Folklore, Customs, and Civic Ritual Quick reference
Charles Phythian-Adams
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...(or nowadays ‘non‐’) scientific beliefs through which humanity seeks to explain (and, when need arises, to exploit) its place in relation to the forces of nature and the supernatural. The antiquity of such beliefs is not in doubt, but it is difficult precisely to prove their prehistoric origins in the way so much beloved of the earlier folklorists, beyond acknowledging the probability that belief in the existence of planetary influences and the worship of trees and wells antedated the conversion to Christianity. What matters more to the historian, however, is...
Place-Names Quick reference
Margaret Gelling
The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (2 ed.)
...are not recorded until after the Norman Conquest, it is frequently apparent from the vocabulary that they must have been coined in the Anglo‐Saxon period. As regards Welsh, Cornish, and Gaelic names, however, there is no automatic terminus post quem , as the languages are of prehistoric antiquity in Britain, and there are not so many obsolete words. The structure of names of the ‘phrase’ type (e.g. Ardnamurchan, Pontardulais, and numerous Manx names like Cronk ny Arrhee Laa) must be relatively late, but there may be older names underlying them which have been...
Natural Philosophy (Science) Reference library
An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age
...information, thereby implying that previous editions were partly obsolete. Division of intellectual labour was also manifested in the appearance of scientific societies devoted to a single subject. The Linnean ( 1788 ), the Geological ( 1807 ), the Astronomical ( 1820 ), and the Zoological ( 1826 ) societies were founded against the protests of Sir Joseph *Banks , the president of the Royal Society, the body which had formerly spoken for all sciences. It is also significant that many of these new institutions supported the natural-history sciences—in other...
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.)
...over time. 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...
1700 to the Present Reference library
Ronald Clements
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Bible
...physicist and Egyptologist who played a key role in deciphering the demotic text of the Rosetta Stone. Hulton Getty. More immediately pressing for biblical interpretation was the emerging awareness that the biblical evidence regarding the chronology of the prehistoric period of earth's existence posed difficulties. Isaac Newton had wrestled with the mathematical data, and Archbishop Ussher's contention that the original date of earth's creation was 4004 bce , with Jesus himself having been born in 4 bce , was increasingly cast into a...
prehistoric art
Prehistoric Archaeology
Thomas George Eyre Powell
proto-historic
Sir Daniel Wilson
