Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies
eBook - PDF

Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies

Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies

Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture

About this book

In this book, Lynne Kelly explores the role of formal knowledge systems in small-scale oral cultures in both historic and archaeological contexts. In the first part, she examines knowledge systems within historically recorded oral cultures, showing how the link between power and the control of knowledge is established. Analyzing the material mnemonic devices used by documented oral cultures, she demonstrates how early societies maintained a vast corpus of pragmatic information concerning animal behavior, plant properties, navigation, astronomy, genealogies, laws and trade agreements, among other matters. In the second part Kelly turns to the archaeological record of three sites, Chaco Canyon, Poverty Point and Stonehenge, offering new insights into the purpose of the monuments and associated decorated objects. This book demonstrates how an understanding of rational intellect, pragmatic knowledge and mnemonic technologies in prehistoric societies offers a new tool for analysis of monumental structures built by non-literate cultures.

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Yes, you can access Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies by Lynne Kelly in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Archaeology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-title page
  3. Title page
  4. Copyright page
  5. Dedication
  6. Contents
  7. Illustrations
  8. Acknowledgements
  9. Preface
  10. 1 Primary orality in the archaeological context
  11. 2 Knowledge and power in oral cultures
  12. 3 Primary orality and oral mnemonic technologies
  13. 4 Material mnemonic technologies
  14. 5 Animal and plant knowledge inoral tradition
  15. 6 Time and space
  16. 7 Case study: the Yolngu system ofknowledge
  17. 8 Case study: the Pueblo system of knowledge
  18. 9 Chaco Canyon in the Ancestral Puebloan context
  19. 10 Poverty Point in the North American Archaic context
  20. 11 Stonehenge in the British andIrish Neolithic context
  21. 12 Conclusions
  22. Notes
  23. Cited references
  24. Index