Desert peoples
Subtitle: archaeological perspectives
By: edited by Peter Veth, Mike Smith, Peter Hiscock.
Contributors: Veth, Peter Marius.; Smith, M. A.; Hiscock, Peter, 1957-
Publisher: Blackwell Pub.
Published: 2005
Place of publication: Malden, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 308
Subjects: Desert people.; Archaeology.
Description: Desert Peoples: Archaeological Perspectives provides an issues-oriented overview of hunter-gatherer societies in desert landscapes. Studies of such societies have long been our primary source of information about human adaptability and how societies in marginal environments deal with risk. Desert Peoples combines archaeological and anthropological perspectives and includes a wide range of regional and thematic case studies. It brings together for the first time studies from deserts as diverse as the sand dunes of Australia, the U.S. Great Basin, the coastal and high altitude deserts of South America, and the core deserts of Africa. Written by an international roster of experts, Desert Peoples examines the key concepts vital to understanding human adaptation to marginal landscapes and the behavioral and belief systems that underpin them, including: notions of environmental variability, risk-minimization, flexibility in group composition and mobility patterns, information exchange, diet, and the role of graphic systems. Ultimately, Desert Peoples' comparative approach provides an overview of current understandings and debates about cultural and ecological processes affecting hunter-gatherer societies in deserts.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Table of contents: title: Global deserts in perspective / Mike Smith, Peter Veth, Peter Hiscock and Lynley A. Wallis; title: Theoretical shifts in the anthropology of desert hunter-gatherers / Thomas Widlok; title: Pleistocene settlement of deserts from an Australian perspective / Peter Hiscock and Lynley A. Wallis; title: Arid paradises of dangerous landscapes : a review of explanations for paleolithic-assemblage change in arid Australia and Africa / Peter Hiscock and Sue O'Connor; title: Evolutionary and ecological understandings of the economics of desert societies : comparing the Great Basin USA and the Australian deserts / Douglas W. Bird and Rebecca Bliege Bird; title: Cycles of aridity and human mobility : risk minimization amongst Late Pleistocene foragers of the Western Desert, Australia / Peter Veth; title: Archaic faces to head-dresses : the changing role of rock art across the arid zone / Jo McDonald; title: The archaeology of the Patagonia deserts : hunter-gatherers in a cold desert / Luis Alberto Borrero; title: Perspectives on later Stone Age hunter-gatherer archaeology in arid southern Africa / Anne Thackeray; title: Long term transitions in hunter-gatherers of coastal northwest Australia / Kathryn Przywolnik; title: Hunter-gatherers and herders of the Kalahari during the Late Holocene / Karim Sadr; title: Desert archaeology, linguistic stratigraphy, and the spread of the western desert language / Mike Smith; title: People of the coastal Atacama Desert : living between sand dunes and waves of the Pacific Ocean / Calogera M. Santoro, Bernardo T. Arriaza, Vivien G. Standen, and Pablo A. Marquet; title: Desert solitude : the evolution of ideologies amongst pastoralists and hunter-gatherers in arid North Africa / Andrew B. Smith; title: Hunter-gatherer interactions with sheep and cattle pastoralists from the Australian arid zone / Alistair Paterson; title: Conclusion : major themes and future research directions / Peter Veth.