The Archaeology of Prehistoric Coastlines

The Archaeology of Prehistoric Coastlines offers a conspectus of recent work on coastal archaeology examining the various ways in which hunter-gatherers and farmers across the world exploited marine resources such as fish, shellfish and waterfowl in prehistory. Changes in sea levels and the balance of marine ecosystems have altered coastal environments significantly over the last ten thousand years and the contributors assess the impact of these changes on the nature of human settlement and subsistence. An overview of coastal archaeology as a developing discipline is followed by ten case studies from a wide variety of places including Scandinavia, Japan, Tasmania and New Zealand, Peru, South Africa and the United States.

1. The archaeology of prehistoric coastlines: an introduction Geoff Bailey and John Parkington; 2. Reconstructing past shorelines as an approach to determining factors affecting shellfish collecting in the prehistoric past J. C. Shackleton; 3. Holocene coastal settlement patterns in the western Cape John Parkington, Cedric Poggenpoel , Bill Buchanan, Tim Robey, Tony Manhire and Judy Sealy; 4. Tasmanian Aborigines in the Hunter Islands in the Holocene: island resources use and seasonality Sandra Bowdler; 5. Island biogeography and prehistoric human adaptation on the southern coast of Maine David R. Yesner; 6. Cultural and environmental change during the Early Period of Santa Barbara Channel prehistory Michael A. Glassow, Larry R. Wilcoxon and Jon Erlandson; 7. Variability in the types of fishing adaptation of the later Jomon hunter-gatherers Takeru Akazawa; 8. Coastal subsistence economies in prehistoric southern New Zealand A. J. Anderson; 9. Sedentary coastal hunter-fishers: an example from the Younger Stone Age of northern Norway M. A. P. Renouf; 10. A molluscan perspective on the role of foraging in Neolithic farming economies Margaret R. Deith; 11. Fishing, farming and the foundations of Andean civilisation Michael E. Mosley and Robert A. Feldman; Bibliography; Index.

The Archaeology of Prehistoric Coastlines offers a conspectus of recent work on coastal archaeology examining the various ways in which hunter-gatherers and farmers across the world exploited marine resources such as fish, shellfish and waterfowl in prehistory.