What is the relationship between mind and ideas on the one hand, and the material things of the world on the other? In recent years, researchers have rejected the old debate about the primacy of the mind or material, and have sought to establish more nuanced understandings of the ways humans interact with their material worlds. In this volume alternative approaches are presented, deriving from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives. Contributors debate the significance of key thresholds in the human past, including sedentism, domestication, and the emergence of social inequality and their impact on changing patterns of human cognition, symbolic expression, and technological innovation. In its global coverage and its broad theoretical scope, this landmark volume offers an innovative and comprehensive assessment of current thinking and future directions.

In 1987, Colin Renfrew's Archaeology and Language challenged many perceptions about how one language family spread across large parts of the world. In doing so he re-invigorated an important exchange between archaeologists and historical linguists. At precisely the same time, a quite separate field, human genetics, was making considerable steps forward in the elucidation of human ancestry. These three parallel lines of enquiry into genes, words, and things have, over the ensuing two decades, entirely transformed our perceptions of the human past. This volume brings together contributors to that transformation from around the world, to honour Colin Renfrew with a series of key papers. They include a number of impressive synthetic statements, as well as case studies at the frontiers of three different branches of research. They range from global accounts of human dispersal through to archaeological, genetic and linguistic studies, illustrating what has been achieved over the past two decades, and the most promising avenues of research for the future.

The subject matter of archaeology is the engagement of human beings, now and in the past, with both the natural world and the material world they have created. All aspects of human activity are potentially relevant to archaeological research, and, conversely, the ways in which others, especially artists and anthropologists, have investigated the world are of interest to archaeologists. Archaeological artefacts and sites are also used by groups and nations to establish identity, and for financial gain, both through tourism and trade in antiquities. Colin Renfrew has actively engaged with art, with politics and with the antiquities trade, and has presented his ideas to broad audiences through accessible books and television programmes, as well as championing the cause of archaeology in many public roles. The papers in this volume, which have been written by colleagues and former students on the occasion of his retirement, relate to all of these subject areas, and together give some idea of the complexity of the issues raised by critical engagements with the material world, both past and present.

Tell Brak in Syria is one of the largest and most important multi-period sites in northern Mesopotamia. Excavations in 1994-1996 cast new light on everyday life at the settlement through several phases of occupation from the early 4th millennium BC to the 2nd millennium BC. Volume 4 in the Tell Brak Monograph series provides an account of the architecture, artefacts, and environmental evidence, supported by a program of radiocarbon dating. The results emphasize the indigenous nature of cultural development in Upper Mesopotamia during these millennia. Among the highlights are a small temple dating to the Ninevite 5 period (earlier 3rd millennium BC), which provides new insights into a phenomenon that has hitherto been little explored; and an exceptional hoard of precious materials and artefacts that underlines the importance of Tell Brak in the later 3rd millennium BC. The report is completed by studies of subsistence, diet, economy, use of space, and craft activities, which focus on the variabilities and continuities in daily life that underlay the shifting political and cultural forces. These studies highlight the unique position of Tell Brak in the long-term ebb and flow of regional interactions across Mesopotamia.

Linguistic diversity is one of the most puzzling and challenging features of humankind. Why are there some six thousand different languages spoken in the world today? Why are some, like Chinese or English, spoken by millions over vast territories, while others are restricted to just a few thousand speakers in a limited area? The farming/language dispersal hypothesis makes the radical and controversial proposal that the present-day distributions of many of the world's languages and language families can be traced back to the early developments and dispersals of farming from the several nuclear areas where animal and plant domestication emerged. For instance, the Indo-European and Austronesian language families may owe their current vast distributions to the spread of food plants and of farmers (speaking the relevant proto-language) following the Neolithic revolutions which took place in the Near East and in Eastern Asia respectively, thousands of years ago. In this challenging book, international experts in historical linguistics, prehistoric archaeology, molecular genetics and human ecology bring their specialisms to bear upon this intractable problem, using a range of interdisciplinary approaches. There are signs that a new synthesis between these fields may now be emerging. This path-breaking volume opens new perspectives and indicates some of the directions which future research is likely to follow.

Tell Brak, ancient Nagar, was one of the most important cities in northern Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC and a focus of long-distance trade. It was also, for about a century, a provincial capital of the Akkadian Empire founded by Sargon of Agade. This is the second of four volumes on the 1976-93 excavations at Tell Brak. The construction level of Naram-Sin's Palace, discovered by Mallowan in the 1930s, has been used as a point of chronological reference to provide the first well-dated corpus of archaeological material in northern Mesopotamia belonging to the second half of the third millennium. The major Akkadian buildings at Tell Brak are the first well-preserved examples to be discovered at any site, and include a great ceremonial complex and a unique caravanserai that housed the donkey caravans bringing metals from Anatolia. During the ritual closure of these buildings beautiful silver jewellery was deposited, along with numerous copper/bronze tools and the skeletons of some of the caravan donkeys. Specialist reports provide detailed historical, geomorphological, ceramic, faunal, botanical, microstratigraphic and other data.

In the early 1990s the University of Cambridge reopened excavations at the Neolithic site of Catalhöyuek in central Turkey, abandoned since the 1960s. In this volume, Ian Hodder explains his vision of archaeological excavation, where careful examination of context and an awareness of human bias allows researches exciting new insights into prehistoric cognition. The aim of the volume is to discuss some of the reflexive or postprocessual methods that have been introduced at the site in the work there since 1993. These methods involve reflexivity, interactivity, multivocality and contextuality or relationality.

The nomadic peoples of the great grasslands of the former USSR have left little in the way of settlement evidence, and archaeologists studying their history have had to rely on environmental remains to reconstruct their pasts. This book contains three major studies: The origins of horse husbandry on the Eurasian Steppe (M Levine) ; The eneolithic of the Black Sea Steppe: The dynamics of cultural and economic development 4500-2300 BC (Y Rassamakin) , and The Eastern Ural steppe at the end of the Stone Age (A Kislenko and N Tatarintseva) . Each presents evidence that has not previously been available to European prehistorians. The whole provides an important contribution to European prehistory, and provides background to the ongoing discussions on the prehistory of language.

This volume of essays examines the claim that a linguistic macrofamily can be identified which includes not only the Indo-European and Afroasiatic language families but also the Kartvelian, Uralic,Altaic and Dravidian families. The Nostratic case was put by Aharon Dolgopolsky in his The Nostratic Macrofamily and Linguitic Palaeontology , and it is here evaluated critically by linguists specialising in the language families concerned. Contents include: The Nostratic Macrofamily (A. Bomhard); Nostratic Languages: Internal and External Relationship (V. Shevoroshkin); Beyond Nostratic in Time and Space (G. Decsy); Nostratic and Linguistic Palaeontology in Methodological Perspective (L. Campbell); Family Trees and Favourite Daughters (A. McMahon, M. Lohr & R. McMahon); Linguistis Palaeontology: For and Against (I. Hegedus); Afroasiatic and the Nostratic Hypothesis (D. Appleyard); The Dravidian Perspective (K. Zvelebil); Altaic Evidence for Nostratic (A. Vovin); On Semitohamitic Comparison (R. Voight); Toward a Future History of Macrofamily Research (D. Sinor).

The Epirus region of north-west Greece has witnessed more dramatic changes of physical landscape than almost any other part of Europe. Tectonic activity has shaped a complex and dynamic topography, supplemented by the impact of a local ice sheet formed during the Glacial Maximum, and dramatic episodes of erosion triggered by changes of climate, vegetation and land use. These two volumes set out the history of Palaeolithic occupation over the past 100,000 years, bringing together the full range of studies carried out between 1981 and 1983 as part of the Klithi project. Volume 1: Excavation and intra-site analysis at Klithi covers the results of excavations at the rockshelter and analysis of finds, together with an introduction to the whole project and the AMS dating programme which played a key role in on-site and off-site interpretation. 336p, 187 illus, 121 tables Volume 2: Klithi in its local and regional setting deals with archaeological results from other sites and palaeo-environmental and off-site studies, both locally at Klithi and in its immediate vicinity, and more widely within the region concluding with a synthesis which brings together all the different strands of the investigation. 396p, 231 illus, 64 tables