Globalization in Prehistory

Contact, Exchange, and the 'People Without History'

Nicole Boivin, Michael D. Frachetti

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781108429801
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108648011
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Globalization in Prehistory challenges traditional historical and archaeological discourse about the drivers of social and cultural connectivity in the ancient world. It presents archaeological case studies of emerging globalization from around the word, from the Mesolithic period, through the Bronze and Iron Ages, to more recent historical times. The volume focuses on those societies and communities that history has bypassed - nomads, pastoralists, fishers, foragers, pirates and traders, among others. It aims for a more complex understanding of the webs of connectivity that shaped communities living outside and beyond the urban, agrarian states that are the mainstay of books and courses on ancient civilizations and trade. Written by a team of international experts, the rich and variable case studies demonstrate the important role played by societies that were mobile and dispersed in the making of a more connected world long before the modern era.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• One What’s the Point?
• Two Globalising Interactions in the Arabian Neolithic and the ‘Ubaid
• Three Domesticate Dispersal, Human Agency and Connectivity in Island Southeast Asia during the Holocene
• Four Bronze Age Participation in a “Global” Ecumene
• Five Prehistoric Globalizing Processes in the Tao River Valley, Gansu, China?
• Six Global Networks and Local Agents in the Iron Age Eurasian Steppe
• Seven Nomads and Caravan Trade in the Syrian Desert
• Eight Invisible Agents of Eastern Trade
• Nine From Rural Collectables to Global Commodities
• Ten The Tsodilo Hills and the Indian Ocean
• Eleven Christians and Spices
• Twelve Subsistence Middlemen Traders and Pre-colonial Globalization in Melanesia
• Index