The Domestication of Europe (Social Archaeology) - Softcover

Hodder, Ian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0631177698 ISBN 13: 9780631177692

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 1990

Synopsis

reprint of 1990 ed, x + 331pp, inc many figs, laminated card, 8vo

About this title

Synopsis:

The Neolithic saw the spread of the first farmers, and the formation of settled villages throughout Europe. Traditional archaeology has interpreted these changes in terms of population growth, economic pressures and social competition, but in The Domestication of Europe Ian Hodder works from a new, controversial theory focusing instead on the enormous expansion of symbolic evidence from the homes, settlements and burials of the period. Why do the figurines, decorated pottery, elaborate houses and burial rituals appear and what is their significance? The author argues that the symbolism of the Neolithic must be interpreted if we are to understand adequately the associated social and economic changes. He suggests that both in Europe and the Near East a particular set of concepts was central to the origins of farming and a settled mode of life. These concepts relate to the house and home - termed `domus' - and they provided a metaphor and a mechanism for social and economic transformation. As the wild was brought in and domesticated through ideas and practices surrounding the domus, people were brought in and settled into the social and economic group of the village.

Over the following millennia cultural practices relating to the domus continued to change and develop, until finally overtaken by a new set of concepts which became socially central, based on the warrior, the hunter and the wild. This book is an exercise in interpretive prehistory. Ian Hodder shows how a contextual reading of the evidence can allow symbolic structures to be cautiously but plausibly identified, and sets out his arguments for complex dialectical relationships between long-term symbolic structures and economic causes of cultural change.

About the Author:

Ian Hodder FBA is a British archaeologist and pioneer of postprocessualist theory in archaeology that first took root among his students and in his own work between 1980-1990.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0631177698
• ISBN 13: 9780631177692
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 344