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The book is part of a collection, A New History of Ireland, which is the definitive history of Ireland in the early modern period and is a large scholarly project in modern Irish history. In nine volumes, it provides a comprehensive new synthesis of modern scholarship on every aspect of Irish history and prehistory, from the earliest geological and archaeological evidence, through the Middle Ages, down to the present day. This third volume elucidates an important phase of Irish development, opening with a character-study of early modern Ireland and a panoramic survey of Ireland in 1534. Twelve chapters of narrative history are included, with further chapters exploring a wide range of subjects, such as the economy, the coinage, languages and literature, and the Irish abroad.

This book provides the first modern synthesis of the archaeology of Skye and Western Isles: a region with some of the finest and best-preserved archaeological monuments in Europe. Our understanding of the region has been transformed in recent years through the results of new archaeological excavations, field surveys, and reassessments of earlier work from the nineteenth century onwards. From the ritual monuments of the Neolithic period, notably the great stone circles at Calanais in Lewis, to the spectacular Iron Age brochs and wheelhouses of the Iron Age, the exceptional preservation of key monuments offers insights into the broader currents of British and European prehistory. In later periods, the arrival of the Vikings in the Outer Hebrides is marked by a series of important archaeological discoveries casting new light on the nature and extent of cultural change. As well as covering the periods before the emergence of detailed written history, the book also addresses the archaeology of later periods, exploring the history of human settlement and society from earliest prehistory to the Clearances.

‘When, why, and how did language evolve?’ ‘Why do only humans have language?’ This book looks at these and other questions about the origins and evolution of language. It does so via a diversity of perspectives, including social, cultural, archaeological, palaeoanthropological, musicological, anatomical, neurobiological, primatological, and linguistic. Among the subjects it considers are: how far sociality is a prerequisite for language; the evolutionary links between language and music; the relation between natural selection and niche construction; the origins of the lexicon; the role of social play in language development; the use of signs by great apes; the evolution of syntax; the evolutionary biology of language; the insights offered by Chomsky's biolinguistic approach to mind and language; the emergence of recursive language; the selectional advantages of the human vocal tract; and why women speak better than men. The authors are prominent linguists, psychologists, cognitive scientists, archaeologists, primatologists, social anthropologists, and specialists in artificial intelligence. As well as explaining what is understood about the evolution of language, they look squarely at the formidable obstacles to knowing more: the absence of direct evidence, for example; the problems of using indirect evidence; the lack of a common conception of language; confusion about the operation of natural selection and other processes of change; the scope for misunderstanding in a multi-disciplinary field, and many more. Despite these difficulties, the authors in their contributions to this book are able to show just how much has been achieved in this area of research in the social, natural, and cognitive sciences.

During the second millennium B.C. hundreds of villages were founded in peninsular India. The people of the Deccan Chalcolithic period relied on farming drought-resistant barley and wheat. They raised cattle, sheep, and goats; maintained hunting and foraging traditions; and utilized the resources gathered from local lakes and forest habitats for subsistence, construction, and fuel. Throughout this time, Chalcolithic people successfully colonized the peninsula despite the challenges of living in a semi-arid climate and unpredictable monsoon rainfall. By 1400 B.C. their settlements were thriving, populations were growing, and large regional centers were established. Yet, around 1000 B.C., the majority of these settlements were deserted. This book uses evidence from paleoclimate research, archaeology, and human skeletal material to examine life and death at three villages occupied during this time. Innovative methods of bioarchaeological analysis reveal complexity in the interactions between humans and their environment and suggest a new model for understanding this period of India's prehistory. Questions about human interactions with the environment thousands of years ago in India are interesting from an academic standpoint, but the insights we gain into the past are relevant in a contemporary context as we face the consequences of continued population growth, unsustainable lifestyles, degradation of local environments, and large-scale climate change. Having a longer view of the challenges, strategies, and consequences of human–environment interactions may prove helpful as we all develop strategies for dealing with contemporary environmental change.

This series provides a significant scholarly project in modern Irish history. In nine volumes, it provides a comprehensive new synthesis of modern scholarship on every aspect of Irish history and prehistory, from the earliest geological and archaeological evidence, through the Middle Ages, down to the present day. This volume opens with a character study of the period, followed by ten chapters of narrative history, and a study of Ireland in 1914. It includes further chapters on the economy, literature, the Irish language, music, arts, education, administration and the public service, and emigration.

Classical archaeology has changed beyond recognition in the past generation, in its aims, its choice of subject-matter and the methods it uses. This book contains twenty-five chapters, some of them previously published only in rather inaccessible places, which have contributed to this change. The chapters cover four decades of work on pre-classical and classical Greece and some adjacent fields of scholarship, beginning in the 1960s when classical archaeology was not widely seen as a free-standing subject. They chart the progress of a movement for the intellectual independence of Greek archaeology and art, from history and textual studies and for recognition among other branches of archaeology. The key theme of the chapters is the importance of the Iron Age as the formative period in the making of classical Greece and the text varies this with comment on literature, history, anthropology, Aegean and European prehistory and Roman provincial archaeology. This collection represents innovative work in classical archaeology; challenges accepted boundaries and inhibitions; and is wide in scope, covering history, prehistory, art, literary interpretation, and field archaeology.

The Maritime Landscape of the Isthmus of Panamá provides a detailed overview of Panamá’s unique role as a land mass dominated by its relationship to the sea and how that relationship has defined the culture and history of Panamá for thousands of years. Ranging from prehistory to the modern era, with the well-known Panamá Canal as but one element in this story, the book discusses indigenous maritime culture over time, including the modern era, colonial and post-colonial maritime endeavors, the industrial age, and the creation of the canal.

Cave men are among the most widely recognised characters in global popular culture. They look like modern humans and inhabit a humorously archaic, but scientifically invalid version of the contemporary world. They battle dinosaurs, use comic technology like foot-powered cars, and drag women by the hair. This illustrated book is the first systematic investigation of the character’s evolution from pre-modern freak shows and fascinations with apes, to mid-nineteenth century evidence of dinosaurs, ancient hominids and evolution. Suddenly, long-held scientific and religious beliefs came into question, provoking public debates that inspired British satirical magazines, performers in the emerging entertainment industry, writers and eventually filmmakers and television companies. Ancient hominids were first depicted as explicitly simian and threatening, though by the end of the century the familiar, modern cave man had emerged. Humour has always been the most common tone for evoking human prehistory, because it allowed unsettling subjects to be addressed indirectly. As evolutionary ideas became more acceptable and Europe’s ancient past became better known, cartoonists began using prehistory to satirise contemporary middle-class Britain. Their cave men looked like the male, Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of that world, while the situations they depicted affirmed Victorian ideas about race, gender, nation and empire. This British cave man travelled throughout the English-speaking world, establishing the broad parameters within which our earliest ancestors continue to be depicted in popular culture.

The nine volumes in this series represent the largest scholarly project in modern Irish history. They provide a comprehensive new synthesis of modern scholarship on every aspect of Irish history and prehistory, from the earliest geological and archaeological evidence, through the Middle Ages, down to the present day. This volume, Volume II, opens with a character study of medieval Ireland and a panoramic view of the country c.1169, followed by nineteen chapters of narrative history, with a survey of land and people. There are further chapters on Gaelic and colonial society; economy and trade; literature in Irish, French, and English; architecture and sculpture; manuscripts and illuminations; and coinage.

One of the richest and most complex civilizations in ancient America evolved around Lake Titicaca in southern Peru and northern Bolivia. This book is a comprehensive synthesis of four thousand years of prehistory for the entire Titicaca region. It is a story of the transition from hunting and gathering to early agriculture, to the formation of the Tiwanaku and Pucara civilizations, and to the double conquest of the region, first by the powerful neighboring Inca in the fifteenth century and a century later by the Spanish Crown. Based on more than fifteen years of field research in Peru and Bolivia, the book brings together a wide range of ethnographic, historical, and archaeological data, including material not previously published. It brings together intimate knowledge of the ethnography and archaeology in this region to bear on major theoretical concerns in evolutionary anthropology. The book provides a broad comparative framework for evaluating how these complex societies developed. After giving an overview of the region's archaeology and cultural history, it discusses the history of archaeological research in the Titicaca Basin, as well as its geography, ecology, and ethnography. The book then synthesizes the data from six archaeological periods in the Titicaca Basin within an evolutionary anthropological framework. Titicaca Basin prehistory has long been viewed through the lens of Inca intellectuals and the Spanish state. This book demonstrates that the ancestors of the Aymara people of the Titicaca Basin rivaled the Incas in wealth, sophistication, and cultural genius.