First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies

New
Illustrated
2004
$42.24

First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies offers readers an understanding of the origins and histories of early agricultural populations in all parts of the world. This book: uses data from archeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology to cover developments over the past 12,000 years; examines the reasons for the multiple primary origins of agriculture; focuses on agricultural origins in and dispersals out of the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the northern Andes; and, covers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo and Uto-Aztecan.

Synopsis

First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies offers readers an understanding of the origins and histories of early agricultural populations in all parts of the world. This book: uses data from archeology, comparative linguistics, and biological anthropology to cover developments over the past 12,000 years; examines the reasons for the multiple primary origins of agriculture; focuses on agricultural origins in and dispersals out of the Middle East, central Africa, China, New Guinea, Mesoamerica and the northern Andes; and, covers the origins and dispersals of major language families such as Indo-European, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo and Uto-Aztecan.

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More Information

Format: Illustrated
Pages: 384
Edition: 1
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Published: 16 Nov 2004
ISBN 10: 0631205667
ISBN 13: 9780631205661

Media Reviews

Winner of the AAP PSP Award for Archaeology and Anthropology 2005 A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year Peter Bellwood - 2006 SAA Book Award - The Society for American Archaeology annually awards a prize to honor a recently published book that has had, or is expected to have, a major impact on the direction and character of archaeological research, and/or is expected to make a substantial contribution to the archaeology of an area. Do not be misled by the humble title of Bellwood's book ... this volume stands alone in its scope and depth ... No student of anthropology, irrespective of subfield, should leave this book unread. It is and will remain one of the most important anthropological volumes of the 21st century. Choice This book is a superb advertisement for archaeology as part of a multidisciplinary approach to the problem of how, where, and why our ancestors settled to plough and pasture. Times Higher Education Supplement Bellwood is not afraid to challenge the established orthodoxy. This is a stimulating and thought-provoking assessment of one of the most important questions in archaeology today. Peter Bogucki, Princeton University This wonderful book is a fascinating treasure-house of information about human history since the origins of agriculture. It deserves to be a standard reference for archaeologists, linguists, geneticists, and anthropologists interested in the formation of the modern world. Jared Diamond, University of California, Los Angeles; author of Guns, Germs, and Steel A tour de force of historical anthropology. Rarely does one encounter a book with the sweeping historical scope of Peter Bellwood's convincing worldwide synthesis of agricultural origins and population dispersals. Patrick Kirch, University of California, Berkeley Global in its scope, Peter Bellwood's First Farmers boldly correlates the spreads of early farming with episodes of human population and language dispersal. It offers a powerfully coherent perspective, which challengingly sets one of the great themes of human history in a new and simplified vision. Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge Bellwood is a master at summarising complex information... the real strength of this volume is that it will make accessible to students such a wide range of data and interpretations. New Book Chronicle Unlike many books, Bellwood's represents the cogent unfolding of a complex argument that draws on disparate types of information ... It is certainly the most scholarly, single-authored review of global agricultural origins on the market. Austrlian Archaeology The book certainly contains a good deal of interesting data and analysis. Anthropology in Action

Author Bio

Peter Bellwood is Professor of Archaeology at the Australian National University. He is the author of Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis (co-edited with Colin Renfrew, 2003), Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago (2nd edition 1997), The Polynesians: Prehistory of an Island People (1987), and Man's Conquest of the Pacific: The Prehistory of Southeast Asia and Oceania (1986).