Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Prehistory of Ordinary People

A Prehistory of Ordinary People

Smith, Monica L.

Paperback

ArchaeologyAncient History General

ISBN10: 0816526958
ISBN13: 9780816526956
Publisher: Univ Of Arizona Pr
Published: Dec 15 2010
Pages: 240
Weight: 0.73
Height: 0.57 Width: 6.07 Depth: 8.99
Language: English
For the past million years, individuals have engaged in multitasking as they interact with the surrounding environment and with each other for the acquisition of daily necessities such as food and goods. Although culture is often perceived as a collective process, it is individual people who use language, experience illness, expend energy, perceive landscapes, and create memories. These processes were sustained at the individual and household level from the time of the earliest social groups to the beginnings of settled agricultural communities and the eventual development of complex societies in the form of chiefdoms, states, and empires.

Even after the advent of civilization about 6,000 years ago, human culture has for the most part been created and maintained not by the actions of elites--as is commonly proclaimed by many archaeological theorists--but by the many thousands of daily actions carried out by average citizens.

With this book, Monica L. Smith examines how the archaeological record of ordinary objects--used by ordinary people--constitutes a manifestation of humankind's cognitive and social development. A Prehistory of Ordinary People offers an impressive synthesis and accessible style that will appeal to archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and others interested in the long history of human decision-making. List of Figures

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