Showing all 9 results
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First Footprints: The Epic Story of the First Australians
Artist/Author: Cane, Scott$37.00 Add to cartFirst Footprints tells the extraordinary story of the Aboriginal people of Australia. How they made their way out of Africa 60,000 years ago, and how they survived across this vast continent, from the harsh deserts of the inland to the glaciers of southern Tasmania. With photos from the ABC TV series of the same name.
Some 60,000 years ago, a small group of people landed on Australia’s northern coast. They were the first oceanic mariners and this great southern land was their new home. Gigantic mammals roamed the plains and enormous crocodiles, giant snakes and goannas nestled in the estuaries and savannahs.First Footprints tells the epic story of Australia’s Aboriginal people. It is a story of ancient life on the driest continent on earth through the greatest environmental changes experienced in human history: ice ages, extreme drought and inundating seas. It is chronicled through astonishing archaeological discoveries, ancient oral histories and the largest and oldest art galleries on earth. Australia’s first inhabitants were the first people to believe in an afterlife, cremate their dead, engrave representations of the human face, and depict human sound and emotion. They created new technologies, designed ornamentation, engaged in trade, and crafted the earliest documents of war. Ultimately, they developed a sustainable society based on shared religious tradition and far-reaching social networks across the length and breadth of Australia.
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Australia’s Volcanoes: An Extensive Guide to Australia’s Volcanic Past
Artist/Author: Ferret, Russell$34.00 Add to cartAustralia’s Volcanoes takes you on a journey of discovery through Australia’s volcanic landscapes. Every State contains evidence of past cataclysmic volcanic upheaval. Features such as Mount Warning in New South Wales, Tower Hill in Victoria, Cradle Mountain in Tasmania, the Undara lava tubes in Queensland, the diamond deposits in Western Australia’s The Kimberley and Mt Gambier’s crater lakes in South Australia are results of volcanic activity from thousands to millions of years ago.
The book explains what happened all those years ago to create the volcanic landforms that you see today. Most of the sites featured are accessible by car or foot and maps are provided to help you find and explore them.
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The Archaeology of Australia’s Deserts
Artist/Author: Smith, Mike$139.00 Add to cartThis is the first book-length study of the archaeology of Australia’s deserts, one of the world’s major habitats and the largest block of drylands in the southern hemisphere. Over the last few decades, a wealth of new environmental and archaeological data about this fascinating region has become available. Drawing on a wide range of sources, The Archaeology of Australia’s Deserts explores the late Pleistocene settlement of Australia’s deserts, the formation of distinctive desert societies, and the origins and development of the hunter-gatherer societies documented in the classic nineteenth-century ethnographies of Spencer and Gillen. Written by one of Australia’s leading desert archaeologists, the book interweaves a lively history of research with archaeological data in a masterly survey of the field and a profoundly interdisciplinary study that forces archaeology into conversations with history and anthropology, economy and ecology, and geography and Earth sciences.
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Geoarchaeology of Aboriginal Landscapes in Semi-Arid Australia
Artist/Author: Holdaway, Simon, Patricia Fanning$70.00 Add to cartThis book provides readers with a unique understanding of the ways in which Aboriginal people interacted with their environment in the past at one particular location in western New South Wales. It also provides a statement showing how geoarchaeology should be conducted in a wide range of locations throughout Australia.
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The Fifth Beginning: What Six Million Years of Human History Can Tell Us About Our Future
Artist/Author: Kelly, Robert L.$36.00 Add to cart“I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow.” This inscription in Tutankhamun’s tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity.
In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive, no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that started about AD 1500. Some might call it “globalization”, but the author places it in its larger context: a five-thousand-year arms race, capitalism’s global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network.
Kelly predicts that the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread shift toward world citizenship, and the rise of forms of cooperation that will end the near-sacred status of nation-states. It’s the end of life as we have known it. However, the author is cautiously optimistic: he dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity’s great potential.
Contents:
1. The End of the World as We Know It
2. How Archaeologists Think
3. Sticks and Stones: The Beginning of Technology
4. Beads and Stories: The Beginning of Culture
5. Bread and Beer: The Beginning of Agriculture
6. Kings and Chains: The Beginning of the State
7. Nothing Lasts Forever: The Fifth Beginning -
The People of Gariwerd: The Grampians’ Aboriginal Heritage
Artist/Author: Wettenhall, Gib$28.00 Add to cartThe People of Gariwerd draws on a new interpretation of the Grampian region’s archaeology by La Trobe University and Aboriginal Affairs Victoria in collaboration with Gariwerd’s Aboriginal communities. It tells how Aboriginal people have maintained an intense and unbroken relationship with the peaks and plains of Gariwerd since the last Ice Age to the present day. It recounts how, in the eons prior to European settlement, they lived together, managed the land, and used the landscape as a map telling them how to live. With over 120 rock art sites catalogued, the Gariwerd-Grampians ranges have a richer and more diverse record of Aboriginal occupation than any other place in southeastern Australia.
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A Little History of Archaeology
Artist/Author: Fagan, Brian$29.00 Add to cartThe thrilling history of archaeological adventure, with tales of danger, debate, audacious explorers, and astonishing discoveries around the globe
What is archaeology? The word may bring to mind images of golden pharaohs and lost civilizations, or Neanderthal skulls and Ice Age cave art. Archaeology is all of these, but also far more: the only science to encompass the entire span of human history – more than three million years! This Little History tells the riveting stories of some of the great archaeologists and their amazing discoveries around the globe: ancient Egyptian tombs, Mayan ruins, the first colonial settlements at Jamestown, mysterious Stonehenge, the incredibly preserved Pompeii, and many, many more. In forty brief, exciting chapters, A Little History of Archaeology recounts archaeology’s development from its eighteenth-century origins to its twenty-first-century technological advances, including remote sensing capabilities and satellite imagery techniques that have revolutionized the field. Shining light on the most intriguing events in the history of the field, this absolutely up-to-date book illuminates archaeology’s controversies, discoveries, heroes and scoundrels, global sites, and newest methods for curious readers of every age.
About the Author: Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, an internationally recognized authority on global prehistory, and the author of dozens of books on archaeological topics
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Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia
Artist/Author: Griffiths, Billy$37.00 Add to cart‘Deftly weaving together biography, history and literature, an immense variety of Australian landscapes and ecologies with many and complex strands of archaeology, Griffiths brilliantly charts the history of modern Aboriginal archaeology in Australia……Rich and absorbing and at times spell-binding’ Grace Karskens
This book investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the twentieth century and the uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia by pioneering archaeologists. It explores what it means to live in a place of great antiquity, with its complex questions of ownership and belonging.
‘Once every generation, a book comes along that marks the emergence of a powerful new literary voice and shifts our understanding of the nation’s past…. No other book has managed to convey the mystery and intricacy of Indigenous antiquity in quite the same way….’ Mark McKenna
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Between the Murray and the Sea: Aboriginal Archaeology of Southeastern Australia
Artist/Author: Frankel, David$50.00 Add to cartThis book explores the Indigenous archaeology of Victoria, focusing on areas south and east of the Murray River. Frankel considers the nature of archaeological evidence and what archaeology reveals about the Indigenous society.
