Suchergebnisse

The texts presented here are extended and updated versions of the papers given at a session entitled "Archaeology and the global crisis - multiple impacts, possible solutions", held on the 17th September 2009 at the 15th annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) in Riva del Garda, Italy. As coorganisers of this session, we were particularly happy to see that over a hundred colleagues attended and took part in some lively discussions, where sober realism was mixed with hope and determination. The session furthermore benefitted from the friendly atmosphere and excellent organisation of the EAA meeting itself, as skilfully orchestrated by Franco Nicolis together with Martina Dalla Riva, their teams and sponsors. Indeed the European Association of Archaeologists as a whole, so we feel, has amply fulfilled its vocation as meeting-ground and think-tank for professional archaeologists from Europe and beyond (http://www.e-a-a.org). We are grateful in any case that our session at Riva del Garda was sponsored – in an intellectual sense – by three EAA committees or working parties. One is the "Committee on archaeological legislation and organisation in Europe", chaired by Christopher Young and Jean-Paul Demoule: the crisis and the structural changes that follow make the critical and comparative work of this committee more important than ever before. Further support was received from the "Committee on professional associations in archaeology", chaired by Kenneth Aitchison, a committee that is acutely concerned with working practices in European archaeology and how they are being affected by the economic situation. The third and most recently created of these EAA groups is the working party on "ACE - Archaeology in contemporary Europe: professional practices and public outreach" (www.ace-archaeology. eu) – a European Commission 'Culture' programme funded network gathering a dozen of partners from across the continent to examine together the fields of practice and social dimensions of contemporary archaeology. In addition to the invaluable material support provided by the ACE network, many of its partners contributed their comments and insights to the preparation of the 'Crisis' session, and also through subsequent meetings in Thessaloniki (with our Aristotle University partner) and in Budapest (with our KÖH partner). In this volume, ACE partners have contributed the chapters on the situations in the Netherlands, Spain, France and Poland. Another relevant European initiative is the "Discovering the Archaeologists of Europe" project (www.discovering-archaeologists.eu), a review of the archaeological labour market in twelve European Union states with the support of the European Commission 'Leonardo da Vinci' programme in 2006-2008. As data for the project were collected in 2007, at the height of the economic cycle, they give us very valuable information and insights for critical comparisons with the ongoing crisis situation. ; European Commission (through the Culture 2007-2013 programme) in the framework of the ACE project – "Archaeology in Contemporary Europe. Professional Practices and Public Outreach" ; Peer reviewed

Animals and Inequality in the Ancient World explores the current trends in the social archaeology of human-animal relationships, focusing on the ways in which animals are used to structure, create, support, and even deconstruct social inequalities. The authors provide a global range of case studies from both New and Old World archaeology—a royal Aztec dog burial, the monumental horse tombs of Central Asia, and the ceremonial macaw cages of ancient Mexico among them. They explore the complex relationships between people and animals in social, economic, political, and ritual contexts, incorporating animal remains from archaeological sites with artifacts, texts, and iconography to develop their interpretations. Animals and Inequality in the Ancient World presents new data and interpretations that reveal the role of animals, their products, and their symbolism in structuring social inequalities in the ancient world. The volume will be of interest to archaeologists, especially zooarchaeologists, and classical scholars of pre-modern civilizations and societies

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as "Seshat: Global History Databank." We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history.

Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as "Seshat: Global History Databank." We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of governance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history. ; This work was supported by a John Templeton Foundation Grant (to the Evolution Institute) entitled "Axial-Age Religions and the Z-Curve of Human Egalitarianism," a Tricoastal Foundation Grant (to the Evolution Institute) entitled "The Deep Roots of the Modern World: The Cultural Evolution of Economic Growth and Political Stability," Economic and Social Research Council Large Grant REF RES-060-25-0085 entitled "Ritual, Community, and Conflict," an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Grant 694986, and Grant 644055 from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (ALIGNED; www.aligned-project.eu). T.E.C. is supported by funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement 716212). ; Peer Reviewed