For at least 2.5 million years, humans have been using tools, and until just a few thousand years ago their most important tools were of stone. The single most important and widely used stone in nearly every part of the world was chert, also known as flint.
“Comprehensive in its research, careful in its construction, this well-written volume brings together an extraordinary breadth of information with clarity and authority. It is both enjoyable and informative, and provides a substantial contribution to the field.”
— Barbara Borghese, International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 2017
“… a fascinating glimpse of a vital part of America’s heritage”
— Mark Michel, American Archaeology, Winter 1997-98
“The excavation was never fully published. This volume is the product of efforts to correct that fact. And it is much more. The team, led admirably by Dr. Ernestine S. Elster of UCLA, pulled together (not without strain) the “legacy data” and applied extensive analyses, including new scientific methods.”
— Barbara Voytek, Current Anthropology, 2017
The Late Bronze Age (ca. 1000-250 BC) was a crucial period during which the Chinese Classics came into being and famous thinkers such as Confucius (ca. 551-479 BC) laid the intellectual foundations of traditional Chinese civilization.
Excavations at Berenike, a Greco-Roman harbor on the Egyptian Red Sea coast, have provided extensive evidence for trade with India, South-Arabia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Scholars from Aristotle to Marx and beyond have been fascinated by the question of what constitutes value. The Construction of Value in the Ancient World makes a significant contribution to this ongoing inquiry, bringing together in one comprehensive volume the perspectives of leading anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, linguists, philologists, and sociologists on how value was created, defined, and expressed in a number of ancient societies around the world.
This festschrift honors UCLA professor emerita Susan Downey and her meticulous scholarship on religious architecture and imagery in the Roman/Hellenistic world. The iconography of gods and goddesses, the analysis of sacred imagery in the context of ancient cult practices, and the design and decoration of sacred spaces are the main themes of the book.
Professor Downey’s influence shines through in these discussions, which echo her mentorship of several generations of art history and archaeology students, and recognize her scholarly achievements.
“In all it is a thorough piece of reporting, efficiently compartmentalized, with all the evidence needed to support the discussion and conclusions clearly laid out. The editors and authors are to be congratulated in presenting such a range of complex data in so accessible a way.”
— Barry Cunliffe, European Journal of Archaeology, 2017
“As a whole, this volume is an invaluable contribution to the study of the cultural processes following the first encounters between Europeans and indigenous Americans. It captures the complexities characterizing the emergence of the early modern Atlantic world and should thus be of interest to scholars from a range of disciplines.”
— Ray Hernández-Durán, Hispanic American Historical Review, 2018