Product Description

In The Human Past, a team of leading archaeologists, all well-known specialists in their fields, provides a seamless yet uniquely authoritative account of human prehistory on a global scale. It highlights the enormous diversity of human experience and the ways in which archaeologists are able to learn about it. This includes the deep prehistory of human evolution, the more recent prehistory of postglacial foragers and farmers, and the literate civilizations of Egypt, the Mediterranean world, South and East Asia, and Central and South America. It provides an introductory account that takes the student through the human past using a regional and chronological framework, focusing as much on the archaeology of the everyday as on the spectacular and unusual. The text is accompanied by hundreds of specially commissioned diagrams and photographs, many in full colour, that illustrate key sites, artifacts and regions, as well as clear timelines, boxes on key sites, methods, discoveries and controversies, and maps.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112864 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 784 pages

Review
"'What an accomplishment!... Each chapter provides an incisive, up-to-date summary of its subject that will remain an authoritative source for years to come' - Professor Richard A. Diehl, author of The Olmecs; 'A brilliant synthesis and the best single account of the state of archaeological knowledge about our past' - Professor Ezra Zubrow"

About the Author
Chris Scarre is Deputy Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, and editor of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. He is co-author with Brian Fagan of the textbook Ancient Civilizations.

Customer Reviews

Actually...
This book contains a vast history of human life and covers many aspects of the development of human societies which is sympathetic and complimentary to students of anthropology as well as archaeologists.
Well referenced and presented with clean lines and good spacing makes this book informative and a pleasure to read with many illustrations to clarify and support the text.
There is also a 'further reading and suggested websites' section to conclude each chapter, acting as a starting point for further study of a topic.

In short: In-depth and informative.

And the language? Had not noticed... This book is on the undergraduate reading list for the Arch and Anth course at Cambridge, no one seems to mind.

A tremendous piece of work
I have always wanted to understand more about prehistory (The history before writing) and early history and this book has provided a unique resource for this, and all in one place.
The book is highly accessible and well written and informs across a broad range of subjects. For example, I never new that Africa went straight into an Iron Age, missing the bronze age altogether! dating methods such as Carbon 14 and mitochondrial DNA are well explained, together with limitations of the approaches.
I would recommend this book to anyone who seeks to find out a bit more about where we came from.

Highly recommended
The Human Past is an excellent way into the study of archaeology. It traces the development of the very first humans through to the period of the Classical World, all the time being global in scope. The book is very usefully organised, broadly chronologically but dealing with themes regionally. It enables the reader to better understand the vocabulary of archaeology as well as the major upheavals and causes of change (change being a main concern of the book). The way the book is organised makes it relatively easy to make comparisons across regions. It is possible, for example, to identify similarities in the development of agriculture between Mesoamerica and Southwest Asia, as well as major differences. Many of the discussions are quite theoretical, showing why archaeology is multi-disciplinary in nature; also, key debates are included in 'boxed' areas throughout the text. The contributors are experts in their various fields and illustrations and further reading is offered throughout. There are many other classic introductions to archaeology but not likely to many as thorough as this.