Böcker av Peter Hiscock

In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors details, through archaeological analysis, the dispersal of our species, Homo sapiens, out of Africa and into Asia and Oceania.This book provides a comprehensive picture of early human migration and provides crucial information to our understanding of the global story of human evolution and cultural diversification. Chapters from an international team of experts provide the necessary geographical and temporal coverage for this ambitious book. Controversies around timing and pathways and competing models are explored in an area where archaeological data can be scarce. Genetic and archaeological data often seem inconsistent but this book uses the latest developments in archaeological science to maximise the amount of information from genetic data. This cutting-edge analysis is used to help plot the pattern of migration or migrations that lead to the contemporary cosmopolitan distribution of our species. In the absence of up-to-date treatments, this book provides the only comprehensive coverage of this important topic and is a major scientific contribution to archaeology and evolutionary anthropology that will help shape the direction of future research for years to come.In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors is an essential text for researchers and students of archaeology, anthropology and human evolution.

This monograph represents a new step in Australian archaeology. It presents a detailed quantitative, technological analysis of flaked stone artefacts, of a kind not published previously in Australia. The detailed nature of the analysis reflects the measurement of a large number of variables on each specimen, as well as the use of those measurements in an extended study of the archaeological patterns. The detail of these analyses can be judged by the fact that the monograph deals with only one archaeological assemblage: the stone artefacts from Capertee 3, a site excavated in the Blue Mountains immediately west of Sydney. This volume develops and tests models of artefact variation and production to an extent not seen before in Australia. More importantly,the analysis of data involves the statistical interrogation of quantitative measurements and is designed to reveal the magnitude and direction of morphological variation within the assemblage. The technological approach adopted allows for the first time in Australian archaeology an evaluation of the nature of changes in the manufacture of retouched flakes in a sequence spanning the entire Holocene. This evaluation enhances current understanding of cultural change in Holocene eastern Australia by allowing the testing of a number of propositions about the rate and uniformity of change in archaeological assemblages. In particular these analyses initiate a review of models of the Eastern Regional Sequence by creating a record of the stoneworking processes in one of the key archaeological sites that define the purported Eastern Regional Sequence.

Provides an introduction to the archaeology of Australia from prehistoric times to the eighteenth century AD. This book shows the diversity and colourfulness of the history of humanity in the southern continent. It presents a challenging view about how varied human life in the ancient past has been.