Time and Change: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on the Long Term in Hunter-Gatherer Societies

This volume explores long-term behavioral patterns and processes of change in hunter-gatherer societies from the Lower Palaeolithic to the present. In doing so, this volume questions the disciplinary distinctions between fine and coarse-grain understandings of hunter-gatherer societies in anthropology and archaeology and challenges the perception that these distinctions are inherent to the two disciplines. The volume brings together studies that specifically address long-term behavioral patterns in hunter-gatherer societies past and present. Some of the contributors also combine historical/archival data and archaeological evidence with anthropological work on contemporary hunter-gatherers. All the papers are based on case-studies that, taken together, cover a wide geographical and chronological range. They represent current research dynamics in anthropology and archaeology across the globe (North and South America, Europe and Australia), and a variety of theoretical perspectives. The papers range chronologically from the Lower Palaeolithic to the present, and encompass groups at various levels of complexity of social organisation and degrees of sedentism, interaction with farmers and 'pristine-ness'.

Table of Contents

Preface
Time and Change: Crisp Snapshots and Fuzzy Trends (Robert Layton)
Part I: Strategies for Long-Term Stability
Stability or Flexibility? Handaxes and Hominins in the Lower Palaeolithic (Robert Hosfield)
Moving Through Unstable Landscapes: Cycles of Change and Palaeolithic Mobility Patterns (Dimitra Papagianni)
Part II: Studying change over the Long-Term
Long Term Human /Animal Interactions and their Implications for Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology in South America (Sebastián Muñoz and Mariana Mondini)
Changing Places: North Australian Rock-Art Transformations 4000 - 6000 BP (Paul Taçon and Christopher Chippindale)
Catastrophic Events and Punctuated Culture Change: The Southern Bering Sea and North Pacific in a Dynamic Global System (Herbert Maschner and James Jordan)
Interactions Between Hunter-Gatherers and Farmers in Early Neolithic in the North European Plain (Arkadiusz Marciniak)
Part III: Ethnographic analogy
Group-Based Versus Individual-Based Approaches: Selecting an Appropriate Scale for the Archaeological Study of Prehistoric Hunting and Gathering People (Ariane Burke)
Changing Patterns of Sea Mammal Exploitation among the Makah (Michael Etnier and Jennifer Sepez)

edited by Dimitra Papagianni, Robert Layton and Herbert Maschner