Shennan
Biographic Data
| ID | 11256 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shennan |
| FAMILY NAME | Shennan |
| SIGNATURE | SHENNAN |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6605-064X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 122 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1589 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 122 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 23 |
The Biad Standards
This article presents a series of recommendations for the publication of archaeological data, to improve their usability. These 12 recommendations were formulated by archaeological data experts who mined thousands of publications for different data types (including funerary practices, accelerator mass spectrometry dating, stable isotopes, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany and pathologies) during the initial construction of the Big Interdisciplinary A…
Population, culture history, and the dynamics of change in European prehistory★
Despite many attacks on its shortcomings, culture history has remained in practice the dominant framework for describing and interpreting European prehistory. It has gained even more salience in recent years because the new information coming from ancient DNA about the genetic ancestry of individuals in prehistory seems to show that this correlates closely with the cultural affiliation of the archaeological material with which they are found, rai…
Understanding Cultural Transmission in Anthropology
The concept of "cultural transmission" is central to much contemporary anthropological theory, since successful human reproduction through social systems is essential for effective survival and for enhancing the adaptiveness of individual humans and local populations. Yet, what is understood by the phrase and how it might best be studied is highly contested. This book brings together contributions that reflect the current diversity of approaches …
The Nerd Dataset
To our knowledge, the dataset described in this paper represents the largest existing repository of uncalibrated radiocarbon dates for the whole Near East from the Late Pleistocene to the Late Holocene (15,000 – 1,500 cal. yr. BP). It is composed of 11,027 radiocarbon dates from 1,023 sites that have been collected comprehensively by cross-checking multiple sources (extant digital archives and databases, edited volumes, monographs, journals paper…
Chapter 12 Lineages of Cultural Transmission
Pottery spread in ancient foragers
A Neolithic population model based on new radiocarbon dates from mining, funerary and population scaled activity in the Saint-Gond Marshes region of North East France
Challenge and Response
Long-Term Demographic Trends in Prehistoric Italy
The Italian peninsula offers an excellent case study within which to investigate long-term regional demographic trends and their response to climate fluctuations, especially given its diverse landscapes, latitudinal range and varied elevations. In the past two decades, summed probability distributions of calibrated radiocarbon dates have become an important method for inferring population dynamics in prehistory. Recent advances in this approach a…
Style, Function and Cultural Transmission
Cycles in Stone Mining and Copper Circulation in Europe 5500–2000 bc
The authors of this article consider the relationship in European prehistory between the procurement of high-quality stones (for axeheads, daggers, and other tools) on the one hand, and the early mining, crafting, and deposition of copper on the other. The data consist of radiocarbon dates for the exploitation of stone quarries, flint mines, and copper mines, and of information regarding the frequency through time of jade axeheads and copper arte…
Cultural continuities and discontinuities at the Neolithic transition in Eastern Iberia
Neolithic population crash in northwest Europe associated with agricultural crisis
The focus of this paper is the Neolithic of northwest Europe, where a rapid growth in population between ~5950 and ~5550 cal yr BP is followed by a decline that lasted until ~4950 cal yr BP. The timing of the increase in population density correlates with the local appearance of farming and is attributed to the advantageous effects of agriculture. However, the subsequent population decline has yet to be satisfactorily explained. One possible expl…
British Neolithic Axehead Distributions and Their Implications
Neolithic stone axeheads from Britain provide an unusually rich, well-provenanced set of evidence with which to consider patterns of prehistoric production and exchange. It is no surprise then that these objects have often been subject to spatial analysis in terms of the relationship between particular stone source areas and the distribution of axeheads made from those stones. At stake in such analysis are important interpretative issues to do wi…
Mediterranean landscape change during the Holocene
This synthesis paper offers a comparative perspective on how seven different Mediterranean regions, from Iberia and Morocco to the Levant, have been transformed by human and natural agencies during the past 10 millennia. It draws on a range of data sources: notably (1) archaeological site surveys ( n = 32,000) and 14 C dates ( n = 12,000) as proxies for long-term population change, (2) pollen records as a proxy for past vegetation and land cover …
Holocene landscape dynamics and long-term population trends in the Levant
This paper explores long-term trends in human population and vegetation change in the Levant from the early to the late Holocene in order to assess when and how human impact has shaped the region’s landscapes over the millennia. To do so, we employed multiple proxies and compared archaeological, pollen and palaeoclimate data within a multi-scalar approach in order to assess how Holocene landscape dynamics change at different geographical scales. …
Tyrrhenian central Italy
This paper compares changes in vegetation structure and composition (using synthetic fossil pollen data) with proxy data for population levels (including settlements and radiocarbon dates) over the course of the last 10 millennia in Tyrrhenian central Italy. These data show generalised patterns of clearance of woodland in response both to early agriculturalists and urbanism, as well as the specific adoption of tree crops and variations in stock g…
The changing face of the Mediterranean – Land cover, demography and environmental change
This paper introduces a special issue on The Changing Face of the Mediterranean: Land Cover, Demography, and Environmental Change, which brings together up-to-date regional or thematic perspectives on major long-term trends in Mediterranean human–environment relations. Particularly, important insights are provided by palynology to reconstruct past vegetation and land cover, and archaeology to establish long-term demographic trends, but with furth…
Pollen-inferred regional vegetation patterns and demographic change in Southern Anatolia through the Holocene
Southern Anatolia is a highly significant area within the Mediterranean, particularly in terms of understanding how agriculture moved into Europe from neighbouring regions. This study uses pollen, palaeoclimate and archaeological evidence to investigate the relationships between demography and vegetation change, and to explore how the development of agriculture varied spatially. Data from 21 fossil pollen records have been transformed into forest…
Long-term trends of land use and demography in Greece
This paper offers a comparative study of land use and demographic development in northern and southern Greece from the Neolithic to the Byzantine period. Results from summed probability densities (SPD) of archaeological radiocarbon dates and settlement numbers derived from archaeological site surveys are combined with results from cluster-based analysis of published pollen core assemblages to offer an integrated view of human pressure on the Gree…
Prehistoric palaeodemographics and regional land cover change in eastern Iberia
Much attention has been placed on the drivers of vegetation change on the Iberian Peninsula. While climate plays a key role in determining the species pools within different regions and exerts a strong influence on broad vegetation patterning, the role of humans, particularly during prehistory, is less clear. The aim of this paper is to assess the influence of prehistoric population change on shaping vegetation patterns in eastern Iberia and the …
Holocene land cover and population dynamics in Southern France
This paper describes long-term changes in human population and vegetation cover in southern France, using summed radiocarbon probability distributions and site count data as population proxies and information from fossil pollen cores as a proxy for past land cover. Southern France is particularly well-suited to this type of study as a result of previous programmes of intensive survey work and excavation in advance of large-scale construction. The…
Supply and demand in prehistory? Economics of Neolithic mining in northwest Europe
The Origins of Agriculture in South-West Asia
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The Provenance, Use, and Circulation of Metals in the European Bronze Age
Bronze is the defining metal of the European Bronze Age and has been at the center of archaeological and science-based research for well over a century. Archaeometallurgical studies have largely focused on determining the geological origin of the constituent metals, copper and tin, and their movement from producer to consumer sites. More recently, the effects of recycling, both temporal and spatial, on the composition of the circulating metal sto…
The Development of Social Stratification in Bronze Age Europe [and Comments and Reply]
The emergence of a hereditary elite class in Bronze Age Europe is now widely interpreted in terms of the redistributive activities of a managerial ruling class. This fuctionalist account of elite origins goes against a uniformitarian understanding of what ruling classes do in complex societies. It also is poorly suited to the concrete evidence for Bronze Age cultures in Europe. The rise of hereditary, superordinate social strata in prehistoric Eu…
Reconstructing regional population fluctuations in the European Neolithic using radiocarbon dates
In a previous study we presented a new method that used summed probability distributions (SPD) of radiocarbon dates as a proxy for population levels, and Monte-Carlo simulation to test the significance of the observed fluctuations in the context of uncertainty in the calibration curve and archaeological sampling. The method allowed us to identify periods of significant short-term population change, caveated with the fact that around 5% of these p…
Demography and Cultural Innovation
In recent years there has been a major growth of interest in exploring the analogies between the genetic transmission of information from one generation to the next and the processes of cultural transmission, in an attempt to obtain a greater understanding of how culture change occurs. This article uses computer simulation to explore the implications of a specific model of the relationship between demography and innovation within an evolutionary …
Prehistoric population history
Archaeobotanical Evidence for the Spread of Farming in the Eastern Mediterranean
A major topic of debate in Old World prehistory is the relative importance of population movement versus cultural diffusion in explaining the spread of agriculture into and across Europe following its inception in southwestern Asia. An important set of data that has surprisingly been largely absent from this debate is the preserved crops and associated weeds of the earliest farmers. An analysis of archaeobotanical data from 40 aceramic Neolithic …
The First Farmers of Europe
Knowledge of the origin and spread of farming has been revolutionised in recent years by the application of new scientific techniques, especially the analysis of ancient DNA from human genomes. In this book, Stephen Shennan presents the latest research on the spread of farming by archaeologists, geneticists and other archaeological scientists. He shows that it resulted from a population expansion from present-day Turkey. Using ideas from the disc…
Radiocarbon evidence indicates that migrants introduced farming to Britain
Meta-analysis of zooarchaeological data from SW Asia and SE Europe provides insight into the origins and spread of animal husbandry
Comparing archaeological proxies for long-term population patterns
The Provenance, Use, and Circulation of Metals in the European Bronze Age
Bronze is the defining metal of the European Bronze Age and has been at the center of archaeological and science-based research for well over a century. Archaeometallurgical studies have largely focused on determining the geological origin of the constituent metals, copper and tin, and their movement from producer to consumer sites. More recently, the effects of recycling, both temporal and spatial, on the composition of the circulating metal sto…
Evolutionary Demography and the Population History of the European Early Neolithic
In this paper I propose that evolutionary demography and associated theory from human behavioral ecology provide a strong basis for explaining the available evidence for the patterns observed in the first agricultural settlement of Europe in the 7th-5th millennium cal. BC, linking together a variety of what have previously been disconnected observations and casting doubt on some long-standing existing models. An outline of relevant aspects of lif…
The impact of the Neolithic agricultural transition in Britain
The evolution of Neolithic farming from SW Asian origins to NW European limits
The spread of agriculture is here examined from the perspective of changes in the composition of archaeobotantical assemblages. We apply multivariate analysis to a large database of plant assemblages from early Neolithic sites across South-West Asia and Europe and show that there are coherent and meaningful changes in their composition over time, to a large extent driven by a reduction in crop-taxa diversity. We interpret these changes as being p…
The Archaeology of Human Ancestry
Human social life is constrained and defined by our cognitive and emotional dispositions, which are the legacy of our foraging ancestors. But how difficult is it to reconstruct the social systems and cultural traditions of those ancestors? The Archaeology of Human Ancestry provides a stimulating and provocative answer, in which archaeologists and biological anthropologists set out and demonstrate their reconstructive methods. Contributors use obs…
The spread of Neolithic plant economies from the Near East to northwest Europe
Spatio-temporal approaches to archaeological radiocarbon dates
Neolithic transition in Europe
Understanding the introduction of farming and the adoption of Neolithic culture continues to be a major research objective in Europe. The authors make use of a new database of radiocarbon dates from Mesolithic and Neolithic sites to map the transition. While the overall effect is still a diffusion into Europe from the south-east, detailed spatial analysis reveals fascinating local variations: in some places change was rapid, and one population re…
Demographic Continuities and Discontinuities in Neolithic Europe
Settlement and social change in central Europe, 3500?1500 BC
Long-term trends of land use and demography in Greece
This paper offers a comparative study of land use and demographic development in northern and southern Greece from the Neolithic to the Byzantine period. Results from summed probability densities (SPD) of archaeological radiocarbon dates and settlement numbers derived from archaeological site surveys are combined with results from cluster-based analysis of published pollen core assemblages to offer an integrated view of human pressure on the Gree…
Towards a Critical Archaeology
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Inferential mistakes in population proxies
Founder effect, drift, and adaptive change in domestic crop use in early Neolithic Europe
Species distribution modelling of ancient cattle from early Neolithic sites in SW Asia and Europe
Species distribution models are widely used by ecologists to estimate the relationship between environmental predictors and species presence and abundance records. In this paper, we use compiled faunal assemblage records from archaeological sites located across southwest Asia and southeast Europe to estimate and to compare the biogeography of ancient wild and early domestic cattle ( Bos primigenius and Bos taurus). We estimate the contribution of…
Mediterranean landscape change during the Holocene
This synthesis paper offers a comparative perspective on how seven different Mediterranean regions, from Iberia and Morocco to the Levant, have been transformed by human and natural agencies during the past 10 millennia. It draws on a range of data sources: notably (1) archaeological site surveys ( n = 32,000) and 14 C dates ( n = 12,000) as proxies for long-term population change, (2) pollen records as a proxy for past vegetation and land cover …
Northamptonshire
The Beaker Folk
The Development of Social Stratification in Bronze Age Europe [and Comments and Reply]
The emergence of a hereditary elite class in Bronze Age Europe is now widely interpreted in terms of the redistributive activities of a managerial ruling class. This fuctionalist account of elite origins goes against a uniformitarian understanding of what ruling classes do in complex societies. It also is poorly suited to the concrete evidence for Bronze Age cultures in Europe. The rise of hereditary, superordinate social strata in prehistoric Eu…
Malé Kosihy
Malé Kosihy: Osada Zo Staršej Doby Bronzovej. By A. Točík. Materialia Archaeologica Slovaca Volume 4. Slovak Academy of Sciences, Nitra, 1981. In Slovak with German and Russian summaries. - Volume 49 Issue 1
Ranking, Resource and Exchange
1. Socio-economic change in ranked societies Colin Renfrew Part I. The emergence of hierarchical structure : 2. Mobile resources: settlement and exchange in early agricultural Europe Andrew Sherratt 3. From minimal to moderate ranking Susan Shennan 4. Exchange and ranking: the role of amber in the earlier bronze age of Europe Stephen Shennan 5. Autonomy, ranking and resources in Iberian prehistory Robert Chapman 6. Social boundaries and land boun…
Monuments
The Excavation of a Ring-Ditch at Tye Field, Lawford, Essex
Central Europe in the third millennium B.C
Towards a Critical Archaeology
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Trends In The Study Of Later European Prehistory
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological ...Read More
The Excavation of an Early Bronze Age Settlement at St. Veit-Klinglberg, Land Salzburg, Austria
Since 1985 a team under the direction of the author has been carrying out excavations at the site of St. Veit-Klinglberg, Land Salzburg, Austria (see map, fig. 1). This interim report gives an account of the background to the work and the results so far obtained, and outlines current hypotheses concerning the site's function and significance. One more season of work is planned, but more importantly the analysis of the material from the excavation…
Archaeology as archaeology or as anthropology? Clarke's Analytical archaeology and the Binfords'New perspectives in archaeology 21 years on
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Archaeological Approaches to Cultural Identity
The nature of archaeological arguments
We try (most of us) to be logical in our work. We listen to arguments (most of us) and try to be persuaded by that argument which is better - because it is more logical, because it is more reasonable, because it fits the facts better. But how reliably does one tell which is better - except by illogical intuition? Computer-aided study of the structure of arguments may help
Qualifying Diversity in Archaeology
Quantifying Archaeology
Commodities, Transactions, and Growth in the Central-European Early Bronze Age
This paper suggests that recent studies of the beginning of the Bronze Age and the growth of a bronze 'industry' have placed too much emphasis on the importance of social ranking and the control of resources by elites. Copper had been in demand for over 2000 years before the beginning of the Bronze Age. What changed at this time was the emergence of a technology that gave access to virtually unlimited copper supplies and contributed to a process …
Settlement and social change in central Europe, 3500?1500 BC
Chiefdoms
l. The evolution of chiefdoms Timothy Earle 2. Chiefdoms, states, and systems of social evolution Kristian Kristiansen 3. The pattern of change in British prehistory Richard Bradley 4. Property rights and the evolution of chiefdoms Timothy Earle 5. Lords of the waste: predation, pastoral production, and the process of stratification among the Eastern Tuaregs Candelario Saenz 6. Chiefship and competitive involution: the Marquesas Islands of easter…
Grounding arguments about burials
Lohof's paper represents an interesting and important attempt to analyse and interpret Late Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age burial practices in the Netherlands. His suggestions are of wide relevance, not least because the phenomena he discusses were widely distributed over much of Europe. In what follows I wish to raise a number of issues which I think need clarifying, in order to elicit his response
Mind over matter
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Villagers of the Maros
Archäologie und Korrespondenzanalyse
Cost, benefit and value in the organization of early European copper production
How can archaeologists evaluate the ‘cost of production’ in prehistory? Stephen Shennan explores ethnographic examples, Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage and archaeological evidence from the eastern Alps in a stimulating discussion of Bronze Age production and exchange
Population, Culture History, and the Dynamics of Culture Change
If archaeology is to succeed in explaining culture change, it must view the archaeological record from the perspective of cultural “descent with modification,” in so doing returning to many of the issues addressed by the culture‐history agenda rejected 30–40 years ago. This involves a consideration of the processes affecting cultural transmission. Many of these are strongly affected by the history of the biological populations in which cultural t…
Archaeology (83 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (80 works) · Geography (76 works) · History (60 works) · Sociology (42 works) · Biology (39 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (38 works) · Population (36 works) · Demography (35 works) · History (34 works)