(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best archaeology books

Archaeologist here. We have a history of being a bit environmentally/geographically deterministic when it comes to looking at cultures. This has changed in the past couple decades to emphasize more the individual agency and multiple historical tragectories that contribute to the nature of a culture. Diamond isn't an archaeologist really, but he is still very much in that deterministic frame of mind.

Diamond has a history of simplifying things a bit to fit his narrative. The same thing happened in Collapse. The point you make about the strength of many African societies before colonization is just one among other possible exceptions to his sweeping rules.

I'm still glad that Diamond wrote these books though because they come up in conversations like these, and people who may not know much about the history or anthropology of these subjects can begin to grapple with these questions.

Another nice thing about it is that the publication and popularity of his books have spurred a bunch of anthropologists to publish critiques of his work. This one is a nice example: http://www.amazon.com/Questioning-Collapse-Resilience-Ecological-Vulnerability/dp/0521733669 which picks apart both "guns germs and steel" as well as "collapse.

As someone who has lived in two "Celtic" nations I know plenty about it! My dissertation supervisor actually wrote a book that delt with the subject, he received plenty of flak for it at the time. Dont mind a bit of "celtic pride" but it does get my goat when people take it further than that.

I love how they leave out the part where the Ottoman empire were one of the biggest slave traders ever known to mankind.

And the part where they declared Jihad, no longer allowed pilgrims to Jersulem and the systemic oppression and mistreatment of Christians in their lands that led to the first crusades.

Sources, the first on is by a Belgian author I sadly never learned about in school. Second one is a rebuttal years later and third one a rebuttal of that.(1 2 3 )

Have the book as a .pdf if you want should be public domain

Generally, by actual historians and anthropologists, it's not that controversial. It's been strongly agreed upon to be bunk. It's a popular science book and doesn't properly represent the subject its talking about. Which isn't helped by the fact that Diamond has no actual experience in said fields either.

Of course, his later book, The Collapse, was viewed even worse and prompted several people in the field to actually write an entire book of essays in response debunking it.

See here: https://www.amazon.com/Questioning-Collapse-Resilience-Ecological-Vulnerability/dp/0521733669

The bullshit is strong in this "article".

For every entry, I could write a paper on why it's all a bunch of crap. Would someone kindly message the author and plead him/her to buy this?

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Moravia-Archaeology-Century-Czechoslovakia/dp/0714105201

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801439779/local1-20

http://www.academia.edu/227715/The_history_and_archaeology_of_Great_Moravia_an_introduction

Can't believe this one hasn't been mentioned

History of Archaeological Thought

Here is some links about it or that reference it:

http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-pages/2012junefenncachepage1.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/ancient-clovis-cache.html

http://nautarch.tamu.edu/Theses/For%20Sam/Lassen-MA2006.pdf


Even a book about it: Not by Fenn though

https://www.amazon.com/Fenn-Cache-Clovis-Weapons-Tools/dp/0967091705

Il y a ce bouquin qui fait une critique complète de Collapse : https://www.amazon.com/Questioning-Collapse-Resilience-Ecological-Vulnerability/dp/0521733669 aussi. Mais à priori c'est moitié constructif, moitié rageux, un peu comme la critique qui était paru dans le monde diplomatique. Y a personne de constructif qui pour invalide son boulot, les critiques principales tournent autour n'inexactitudes ou de raccourcis pas du fond.

> This is Diamonds 2nd book. Collapse

This is a much better book

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0129035505/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_mw42CbF94BRHM

I have seen it a few places, but they pop up and disappear fairly quickly. Just watching it for now. That $5,000 process is absurd of course, but I could imagine how that might end up the only copy online eventually. :/ Damn scalpers. If you found a reasonable copy if be interested. :)

I'm most familiar with data from the 6th and 7th centuries, so forgive me for answering a few centuries earlier than the Viking Age. But in these centuries, it definitely makes a difference whether we identify biological sex from the human remains, or from the cultural, gendered objects found with the body. Not so much in the first half of the 6th century - there, only about 1 in 50 of the people buried with weapons are biologically female. But in the late 6th / early 7th century, 1 in 6 weapon burials is female (working from a national dataset I've compiled for my PhD, of about 700 weapon graves / 70 sites). This change in the 7th century mirrors other social changes - the rise of new elites, the restriction of weapon burial (and all furnished inhumation) to a smaller and wealthier subsection of society, the foundation of monastic centres by wealthy women - which all point toward a greater participation of women in spheres of power closely associated with the display, ownership, and gifting of weapons. To my reading, this suggests that (some) women's fortune seems to be rising along with their male family members, and this is opening new avenues for these women to enter formerly male spheres of authority. But we don't get to talk about this if we ignore the osteology.

We have the osteological data, but disagreements between osteological sex and gendered grave goods are typically dismissed as errors in the osteology (as, for example, in this study). My survey is finding a greater number of cases, though, than can be easily written off. And even though the weapons == male association is generally robust enough that you could confidently put money on the sex of a skeleton buried with a spear, the outliers seem to be telling an important story.

Hmmm. Looking further, you have posted a link to the 5th edition.

Publication Date: April 22, 2009 | ISBN-10: 0073530999 | ISBN-13: 978-0073530994 | Edition: 5


This one is the 6th:

http://www.amazon.com/Discovering-Our-Past-Introduction-Archaeology/dp/0078034914/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

Publication Date: March 4, 2013 | ISBN-10: 0078034914 | ISBN-13: 978-0078034916 | Edition: 6

I'll look around a bit more. I'm sorry. I know I can't help afford it at full price.

Happened to me this semester, but said I could use the older copy since I already owned it (took the class last semester; withdrew for medical reasons). I have another Professor who makes us buy his own books - and it might sound bad, but his books are actually interesting as opposed to other textbooks (this is the one I'm reading now: http://www.amazon.com/Frauds-Myths-Mysteries-Pseudoscience-Archaeology/dp/0078035074/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1380588501)

Alas! I cannot claim to have read any English book on the subject other than an obscure book on the deciphering efforts of the Indus Valley language a decade ago - which does not seem to be coming up in google search unless it’s this one : https://www.amazon.com/Deciphering-Indus-Script-Asko-Parpola/dp/0521795664.

The author of the book wanted to decipher the script with the conjecture that it was some form of Sanskrit. Not a book I d recommend for someone starting out in the subject since it will paint a narrative that will color your subsequent inquiries.

For those interested in a thorough, devastating academic critique of the Ancient Aliens nonsense, I recommend Frauds, Myths and Mysteries. In it, the author examines the alleged evidence, often showing photographs, and allows the reader to see just how much creative license is required for the alien explanation.

For example, Von Dankien alleges that one Aztek painting shows a space suited human lying in a spaceship cockpit, hands near the controls. Then he points out how the cockpit is really a stylized tree and the space suit is just a jaguar mask.

> Frauds, Myths and Mysteries, 6th Edition, page 169, by Kenneth Feder

Too bad the cost is inflated by textbook pricing, it sounds fascinating.

> Classes have always existed. Social stratification has always existed. Humans are not, nor have they ever been equal. Civilizations had a concept of private property for millenia. You are literally making that shit up.

Your ignorance is showing.
Nope, I am not making that shit up, these are facts of anthropology. As I already said, go read some history. I will even give you a suggestion for start:

http://www.amazon.com/Man-Makes-Himself-Thinkers-Library/dp/0851246494

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3915783-the-dawn-of-european-civilization

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/961180.What_Happened_in_History

http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Society-Classics-Anthropology-Morgan/dp/0816509247

Your understanding of society, history and Capitalism is naive in the extreme. Don't reply to me before you read up some more, any sort of debate requires competence from both parties.

It plays heavily into the fear aspect of society and culture. Bigbuddhabelly hits a big point since it looks at the worst case scenario that one idea must fit all. If you read or watch the documentary then I advise you also read [Questioning Collapse] (http://www.amazon.com/Questioning-Collapse-Resilience-Ecological-Vulnerability/dp/0521733669) just as open and intently.

>You don't think the Ark would have the same problem with rough seas?

There's nothing to indicate it faced rough seas so it's irrelevant.

Wikipedia listing something as mythical is not really a good argument to make.

If your argument relies on inductively making things up you are making a bad argument. Your argument does rely on inductively making things up.

>I think it still is unless you can find a successful, wooden-only ship of similar size to the Ark. All known vessels close to that size used steel and iron in their construction. And are very modern relatively speaking.

I did.

You can read more here, here, here, and more aren't difficult to find.

https://www.amazon.ca/Frauds-Myths-Mysteries-Pseudoscience-Archaeology/dp/0078035074

Read this for a course in university. It completely destroys the notion Joseph Smith was uniquely inspired, as it goes in detail how everyone in 19th century New England was doing the exact. Same. Thing. Ancient Israelites in America and everything. Also destroys biblical literalism and new-age doomsday preppers.

Sur la question de ses deux livres, je t'invite à lire Questionning Collapse, une collection d'essais de spécialistes des sujets qu'il traite, et qui expliquent en quoi ses interprétations sont douteuses.

La review suivante me semble assez parlante :

> Here are some basic observations about what this book is and is not:
>
> It is an edited volume of essays by various authors.
>
> It is not only about Collapse, but also about Guns, Germs, and Steel.
>
> It is less about Collapse and Guns, Germs, and Steel, than it is about (1) the issues and case studies addressed by Diamond in those books, and (2) the ways in which Diamond addresses those issues and case studies.
>
> Surprisingly, it is not dry or difficult to read, in fact if anything it is even more readable and engaging than Diamond's books (which have been praised for these very reasons).
>
> Here is why so many reviewers, myself included, have found themselves exasperated and even angered by this book:
>
> The essays collected in Questioning Collapse generally do not offer careful readings of Diamond's arguments. Some of the authors even take, at times, a rather unscholarly and strident tone. Some of the authors seem unfamiliar with the scholarly, or at least logical, principle, that good reading must be (among other things) both fair and charitable. This is especially perplexing because all the authors in this book seem to have the same overall goals and concerns as Diamond, as the book's introductory chapter points out.
>
> Here is why this book gets five stars:
>
> Its shortcomings aside, Questioning Collapse does offer detailed accounts and analyses of many of the historical events that Diamond has written on.
>
> The authors of each essay, unlike Diamond, have specialized and done primary research on the societies that each writes about.
>
> Most of Diamond's sources in Collapse (I imagine this is also the case for Guns, Germs, and Steel) are not primary but secondary sources. Not that there is anything wrong with secondary sources. However, of necessity they leave out most of the information to be found in the relevant primary sources. They also add a further layer of interpretation to the primary sources, which is problematic if one is not familiar with the primary sources as well. But perhaps the biggest problem with Diamond's over-reliance on secondary sources is that they lag, again of necessity, far behind the current state of knowledge in a given field. The reader of Questioning Collapse will find specific examples where these gaps and lags in knowledge, allegedly, massively impair Diamond's historical reconstructions.
>
> The historical reconstructions in Questioning Collapse are far more cautious than those of written by Diamond. That is, they are far more honest about what is not known, what is highly conjectural, etc. They are also far more explicit about why they think that one hypothesis seems more likely than another.
>
> The essays in Questioning Collapse are generally far more cautious about projecting modern, and modern western, concerns and values onto times and places where those concerns and values may have been significantly different (in ways that are relevant to the questions at hand). They are also careful not to project the technical and political capabilities of the modern world onto the non-modern world. This is also one of the criticisms of Diamond's work: that it sometimes inappropriately makes these projections, and that these errors impair his analyses. Very specific examples are given, along with counter-narratives that (it is claimed) do not make the same errors.
>
> Another shortcoming of Diamond's work is that it fails to adequately take into account factors such as "ideology" (i.e. belief-and-value systems), political-economic factors that are external to a society and yet control its course, and historical factors where past events unique to a given society continue to determine its present course and dynamics. Again, detailed examples from the authors' area of expertise and field research are provided.
>
> The examples and narratives in Questioning Collapse all concern the events that Diamond writes about. They thus provide a different version and a different analysis of what happened. For one who has read both Diamond's work and Questioning Collapse, the tension between these perspectives, reconstructions, and analyses, should provide them with an opportunity for far more critical [critical in a good way] and informed reflections on the problems collapse, decline, etc.
>
> In the end, this book neither refutes nor really even rebuts Diamond's work, but complements and continues it, albeit by way of critique. As a supplement, it most certainly changes that to which it is added. It probably could have been done better, and hopefully someone else will take up the challenge of doing so. Even so, Questioning Collapse is an important (and, quite honestly, a highly entertaining) read.
>
> In connection with this book and with Jared Diamond's work, I also recommend the following: The Environment in Anthropology: A Reader in Ecology, Culture, and Sustainable Living, and Anthropology and Contemporary Human Problems.