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5162 results in Prehistory

Page 70 of 259

Ritual, Play and Belief, in Evolution and Early Human Societies
  • Edited by Colin Renfrew, Iain Morley, Michael Boyd
  • Published online:
    06 December 2017
    Print publication:
    21 December 2017
  • The origins of religion and ritual in humans have been the focus of centuries of thought in archaeology, anthropology, theology, evolutionary psychology and more. Play and ritual have many aspects in common, and ritual is a key component of the early cult practices that underlie the religious systems of the first complex societies in all parts of the world. This book examines the formative cults and the roots of religious practice from the earliest times until the development of early religion in the Near East, in China, in Peru, in Mesoamerica and beyond. Here, leading prehistorians and other specialists bring a fresh approach to the early practices that underlie the faiths and religions of the world. They demonstrate the profound role of play ritual and belief systems and offer powerful new insights into the emergence of early civilization.

Ancient China and its Eurasian Neighbors
  • Artifacts, Identity and Death in the Frontier, 3000–700 BCE
  • Katheryn M. Linduff, Yan Sun, Wei Cao, Yuanqing Liu
  • Published online:
    13 November 2017
    Print publication:
    23 November 2017
  • This volume examines the role of objects in the region north of early dynastic state centers, at the intersection of Ancient China and Eurasia, a large area that stretches from Xinjiang to the China Sea, from c.3000 BCE to the mid-eighth century BCE. This area was a frontier, an ambiguous space that lay at the margins of direct political control by the metropolitan states, where local and colonial ideas and practices were reconstructed transculturally. These identities were often merged and displayed in material culture. Types of objects, styles, and iconography were often hybrids or new to the region, as were the tomb assemblages in which they were deposited and found. Patrons commissioned objects that marked a symbolic vision of place and person and that could mobilize support, legitimize rule, and bind people together. Through close examination of key artifacts, this book untangles the considerable changes in political structure and cultural makeup of ancient Chinese states and their northern neighbors.

  • Partnering with Pots: The Work of Objects in the Imperial Inca Project

  • Tamara L. Bray
  • Journal:
    Cambridge Archaeological Journal / Volume 28 / Issue 2 / May 2018
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    30 October 2017, pp. 243-257

  • New developments in the natural sciences are contributing to new thinking on the nature of matter, materiality and being. Such re-visioning of the natural world is, in part, responsible for ‘the ontological turn’, a trend clearly visible in recent archaeological discourse. In combination with evolving relational and symmetrical approaches to investigating the constitution of ‘the social’, the door is open for exploring logics, taxonomies and understandings of reality different from our own in studies of the past. Applying these ideas to the investigation of early imperialism, this paper offers an analysis of a key element in the repertoire of Inca material culture that forwards the importance of human–thing relations in the context of early state politics. Working from the basis of the imperial Inca ceramic assemblage, the study examines how these objects were deployed in the task of empire-building and what insights they provide into Andean ontological commitments during the late pre-Columbian period. An argument is developed that imperial pots were construed as animate beings and agents of the State. The study brings to the fore the mutually constituted nature of the imperial Inca project and suggests new avenues for future research that highlight the matter of early empires.

Page 70 of 259