Christopher Scarre

Discusses the ancient Minoan civilization of Knossos, Crete, as manifested by the excavations of that city by the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans.

Text and illustrations introduce basic facts about a variety of ancient civilizations including those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Persia, China, and others.

Part travel guide, part survey of Europe's prehistory, Exploring Prehistoric Europe delves into fifteen of the most famous, most important, and most exciting archaeological sites in Europe. The first volume in the Places in Time series, this beautiful book takes us to locales both famous and obscure, from Ireland to Poland to Malta, ranging chronologically from Terra Amata, a site in southern France occupied some 380,000 years ago, to Borremose, a Danish settlement that dates to Roman times. For each location, the author conducts a careful tour of the existing remains, describes the history of its excavation, and then interprets how the site might have been built, used, or occupied. Perhaps equally important, Scarre has selected the sites with accessibility in mind - all can be easily reached by the modern tourist - and he also highlights local museums and visitor centers where further artifacts and information can be found.

"Over the past 30 years, social archaeology has become one of the central fields of archaeological research, placing human societies at the heart of our understanding of the human past. Colin Renfrew has been a key champion of social archaeology, and the present volume brings together a series of papers on the occasion of his retirement. They have been written by colleagues and former students, and touch upon many of the themes that he himself has studied and about which he has written so persuasively and engagingly: the development of the human mind, trade and exchange, social change, chiefdoms and states, and the archaeology of island societies. These studies focus not on earlier work, however, but reveal the new directions that have developed in recent years, bringing the study of social archaeology firmly into the twenty-first century."--BOOK JACKET.

xv, 326 p. : 26 cm

A visual chronology from trhe origins of life to AD 1500.