Feed on
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Everyone has heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but amidst the conspiracies, the politics, and the sensational claims, it can be dificult to separate the myths from the reality.
Timothy Lim here presents the true facts and leading theories behind the cultural and historical background of the scrolls, and examines their significance for our understanding of [...]

Read Full Post »

The Mind in the Cave

Synopsis
The breathtakingly beautiful art created deep inside the caves of western Europe in the late Ice Age provokes awe and wonder in equal measure.
What do these animals and symbols, depicted on the walls of caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, tell us about the nature of the ancestral mind?
How did these images spring, sophisticated [...]

Read Full Post »

The Prehistory of The Mind

Illuminating theory of the evolution of human intelligence
 By A Customer

This is a wonderful book. It starts with the question of whether we are fundamentally different from chimpanzies in the way our mind works. Taking the perspective of an archaeologist, and blending that with the views of evolutionary biology and of human developmental psychology and [...]

Read Full Post »

Wisconsin Death Trip

After watching a film last night called The Village, it brought to mind a book I first read at art college, so I looked it up and it is still available. 
The last decade of the 19th century was, for some Americans, a time when great fortunes were to be made. For many others, however, the period [...]

Read Full Post »

The dig is the face of archaeology most immediately recognised by the general public, and is often what attracts both students and amateurs to the discipline.  Yet there is much more to working in the field than digging alone. Peter Drewett’s comprehensive survey explores every stage of the process, from the core work of discovery [...]

Read Full Post »

Oriental Carpet Design

 
I am sure most archaeologists have an interest in tribal rugs as often the designs to be found on them draw on ancient beliefs that pre-date Islam.  The contemporary weaver might be unaware of the symbolic meanings of these ancient patterns that they are weaving into rugs today and often mixes these motifs with new designs. 
An example of this is the iconography [...]

Read Full Post »

The Golden Deer of Eurasia

Spectacular works of art have recently been excavated in Filippovka, Russia. They were created from about the fifth to the fourth century B.C. by the nomadic people who lived on the steppes of the southern Ural Mountain region.
The objects include wooden, deerlike creatures overlaid with sheets of gold and silver, as well as gold attachments [...]

Read Full Post »

The Paleo Diet

Healthy, delicious, and simple, the Paleo Diet is the diet our genes were made for. It is humanity’s original and optimal diet, designed by natural selection.
Written by the world’s acknowledged scientific expert on Paleolithic (Stone Age) nutrition, The Paleo Diet presents readers with a revolutionary program that causes weight loss in overweight people–up to seventy-five [...]

Read Full Post »

The Archaeology of Shamanism

In this timely collection, Neil Price provides a general introduction to the archaeology of shamanism by bringing together recent archaeological thought on the subject.
Blending theoretical discussion with detailed case studies, the issues addressed include shamanic material culture, responses to dying and the dead, shamanic soundscapes, the use of ritual architecture and shamanism in the context [...]

Read Full Post »

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

  
Evelyn Waugh wrote a preface to the book, which is considered a classic of travel literature. In it, Newby describes encountering the legendary traveller Wilfred Thesiger in Afghanistan. Thesiger observed Newby and his companion Hugh Carless inflating their airbeds, and told them: “God, you must be a couple of pansies.”

Synopsis
A humorous overview of Eric [...]

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »