The First Farmers of Europe - An Evolutionary Perspective

The book shows how the spread of farming across Europe was the result a population expansion from present-day Turkey.

List of contents

1. Introduction: population, resources and life histories; 2. The origins of agriculture in Southwest Asia; 3. The first westward expansion of farming; 4. The spread of farming into Central Europe; 5. Maritime expansion in the Central and West Mediterranean; 6. Continental temperate Europe 7000-5500 BP: internal expansion and adaptation; 7. First farmers in southern Scandinavia; 8. The farming colonisation of Britain and Ireland; 9. Conclusion: evolutionary patterns and processes.

About the author

Stephen Shennan is Professor of Theoretical Archaeology at the University College London Institute of Archaeology, where he was Director 2005-2014. His main interest is explaining stability and change in prehistory in the light of evolutionary ideas. He has published over 120 papers and books, including Quantifying Archaeology (2nd edition, 1997), Genes, Memes and Human History (2002), and Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution (edited, 2009). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the Academia Europaea. He received the Rivers Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2010 and a Shanghai Archaeological Forum Research Award for his EUROEVOL project in 2015.

Summary

The book presents the latest research on the spread of farming by archaeologists and geneticists. It shows that it resulted from a population expansion from present-day Turkey and explains how this took place. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in archaeology, anthropology and the evolutionary social sciences more generally.

Product details

• Authors: Stephen Shennan, Stephen (University College London) Shennan, Stephen (University of London) Shennan, Shennan Stephen
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.06.2018
• EAN: 9781108435215
• ISBN: 978-1-108-43521-5
• Dimensions: 180 mm x 256 mm x 13 mm
• Series: Cambridge World Archaeology; Cambridge World Archaeology (P; Cambridge World Archaeology
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Europe, Anthropology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology, Life sciences: general issues, Population & demography, Population and Demography