Settlement, Society and Cognition in Human Evolution: Landscapes in Mind

Fiona Coward · Robert Hosfield · Matt Pope · Francis Wenban-Smith

Jan 2015 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

This volume provides a landscape narrative of early hominin evolution, linking conventional material and geographic aspects of the early archaeological record with wider and more elusive social, cognitive and symbolic landscapes. It seeks to move beyond a limiting notion of early hominin culture and behaviour as dictated solely by the environment to present the early hominin world as the outcome of a dynamic dialogue between the physical environment and its perception and habitation by active agents. This international group of contributors presents theoretically informed yet empirically based perspectives on hominin and human landscapes.

About the author

Fiona Coward is Lecturer in Archaeological Science at Bournemouth University. Her research has been published in a variety of journals including Science, the Journal of Archaeological Science and the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, as well as in several edited volumes including The Cognitive Life of Things (2010) and The Sapient Mind (2009). She has been associate editor for archaeology for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute since September 2013.

Robert Hosfield is Associate Professor in Palaeolithic Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology, University of Reading. He has directed excavations in Britain and conducted fieldwork in Sudan. He is co-editor of Quaternary History and Palaeolithic Archaeology in the Axe Valley at Broom (2013). His work has also been published in the Journal of Quaternary Science, Quaternary Science Reviews, the Journal of Archaeological Science and the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society.

Matt Pope is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. His doctoral research, supervised by Clive Gamble, focused on Lower Palaeolithic archaeology at Boxgrove. He has directed Palaeolithic excavations, including his current investigation of the Neanderthal site of La Cotte de St Brelade, Jersey, and published on early human behaviour. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and a council member of the Prehistoric Society.

Francis Wenban-Smith is Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton. He has directed Palaeolithic investigations at numerous British sites including Swanscombe and Baker's Hole. He led Palaeolithic work for the High Speed 1 rail-link, leading to the monographs The Ebbsfleet Elephant and Prehistoric Ebbsfleet. He has published work in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, the Journal of Quaternary Science and the Journal of Archaeological Science, as well as many edited volumes.