Specialization, Exchange and Complex Societies PDF Download

Author: Elizabeth M. Brumfiel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521321181
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 168

View

Book Description
This book, a comparative study of specialised production in prehistoric societies, examines approaches to specialization and exchange.

Author: Joseph Tainter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521386739
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

View

Book Description
Dr Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory.

Author: Zachary X. Hruby
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

View

Book Description
The contributions to this volume are introduced via a critical review of terms and concepts used in craft production studies today. Recent detailed contextual and technological analyses of artifacts from all aspects of complex societies have revealed interesting patterns that are difficult to conceptualize using a purely economic framework. Furthermore, interest in practice theory, and sociocultural theory in general, has shifted some foci of archaeological investigation toward the social aspects of production and specialization.

Author: Arnold Kling
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1944424164
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 223

View

Book Description
Since the end of the second World War, economics professors and classroom textbooks have been telling us that the economy is one big machine that can be effectively regulated by economic experts and tuned by government agencies like the Federal Reserve Board. It turns out they were wrong. Their equations do not hold up. Their policies have not produced the promised results. Their interpretations of economic events -- as reported by the media -- are often of-the-mark, and unconvincing. A key alternative to the one big machine mindset is to recognize how the economy is instead an evolutionary system, with constantly-changing patterns of specialization and trade. This book introduces you to this powerful approach for understanding economic performance. By putting specialization at the center of economic analysis, Arnold Kling provides you with new ways to think about issues like sustainability, financial instability, job creation, and inflation. In short, he removes stiff, narrow perspectives and instead provides a full, multi-dimensional perspective on a continually evolving system.

Author: Jennifer C. Ross
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315305623
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

View

Book Description
Through a detailed examination of the archaeological evidence and written records, this comprehensive text aims to develop a common understanding of what complexity means to archaeologists, and the methods by which they identify and analyze it. In this first new undergraduate textbook on ancient complex societies in two decades, the authors use vivid writing, textboxes on key themes and sites, and a glossary to keep students thoroughly engaged.

Author: Alexander A Bauer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315420031
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

View

Book Description
This volume focuses on the anthropological concept of trade as a fundamentally social activity concerned not only with the movement of goods, but also on the social context and consequences of that exchange. The distinguished contributors discuss trade on a range of scales—from a solitary confinement cell to trans-oceanic networks—in settings around the world and over the past 3000 years. They address themes such as exchange as a communicative act, the ways in which exchange transforms the relationship between people and things, the significance of agency and power in contexts of trade, and how sites of consumption and discard speak to processes of exchange. The volume merges traditional archaeological concerns about trade and exchange with more contemporary issues of agency, identity and social meaning.

Author: Sebastiaan Knippenberg
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9087280084
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

View

Book Description
This archaeological study reconstructs Pre-Columbian exchange networks in the Lesser Antilles based on lithic artefact distributions among the different islands.

Author: Sophie Bergerbrant
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
ISBN: 1784915998
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 460

View

Book Description
This collection of articles helps to explain why the Bronze Age has come to hold such a fascination within modern archaeological research. By providing new theoretical and analytical perspectives on the evidence new interpretative avenues have opened, it situates the history of the Bronze Age in both a local and a global setting.

Author: Graeme Barker
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415064481
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1267

View

Book Description
The 26 articles in this new Companion Encyclopedia provide an invaluable compendium of the themes, issues and background of this popular, but complex field. This two-volume set offers definitive coverage of the field as a whole, and is divided into three thematic sections:Part I "Origins, Aims and Methods" features articles on the history and theory of the discipline, and the techniques used in the study of archaeological evidence. Part II "Problems and Approaches" examines how archaeologists approach such themes as culture, identity, society, territory, population and beliefs across the traditional boundaries of period and place. Part III "The Development of Human Society" integrates the concerns which are addressed in the previous two sections and draws together the methods and approaches in studying hunter-gatherer societies, developing models for state formation, examining medieval demographic trends, and understanding early modern and industrial societies.

Author: Sophia E. Kelly
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607324830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 413

View

Book Description
Prehistoric economic relationships are often presented as genderless, yet mounting research highlights the critical role gendered identities play in the division of work tasks and the development of specialized production in pre-modern economic systems. In Gendered Labor in Specialized Economies, contributors combine the study of gender in the archaeological record with the examination of intensified craft production in prehistory to reassess the connection between craft specialization and the types and amount of work that men and women performed in ancient communities. Chapters are organized by four interrelated themes crucial for understanding the implications of gender in the organization of craft production: craft specialization and the political economy, combined effort in specialized production, the organization of female and male specialists, and flexibility and rigidity in the gendered division of labor. Contributors consider how changes to the gendered division of labor in craft manufacture altered other types of production or resulted from modifications in the organization of production elsewhere in the economic system. Striking a balance between theoretical and methodological approaches and presenting case studies from sites around the world, Gendered Labor in Specialized Economies offers a guide to the major issues that will frame future research on how men’s and women’s work changes, predisposes, and structures the course of economic development in various societies. Contributors: Alejandra Alonso Olvera, Traci Ardren, Michael G. Callaghan, Nigel Chang, Cathy Lynne Costin, Pilar Margarita Hernández Escontrías, A. Halliwell, Sue Harrington, James M. Heidke, Sophia E. Kelly, Brigitte Kovacevich, T. Kam Manahan, Ann Brower Stahl, Laura Swantek, Rita Wright, Andrea Yankowski