Overview

The human body is both the site of lived experiences and a means of communicating those experiences to a diverse audience. Hominins have been culturing their bodies, that is adding social and cultural meaning through the use pigments and objects, for over 100,000 years. There is archaeological evidence for practices of adornment of the body by late Pleistocene and early Holocene hominins, including personal ornaments, clothing, hairstyles, body painting, and tattoos. These practices have been variously interpreted to reflect differences such as gender, status, and ethnicity, to attract or intimidate others, and as indices of a symbolically mediated self and personal identity. These studies contribute to a novel and growing body of evidence for diversity of cultural expression in the past, something that is a hallmark of human cultures today.

Full Product Details

Author:   Benjamin Collins ,  April Nowell
Publisher:   Berghahn Books
Imprint:   Berghahn Books
ISBN:  

9781805394600

ISBN 10:   1805394606
Pages:   326
Publication Date:   01 March 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Foreword: Culturing Emergent Bodies Rosemary Joyce Acknowledgments Introduction: Towards a Culturing of the Paleolithic Body April Nowell and Benjamin Collins Chapter 1. Enveloping Oneself in Others: Semiotic, Spatial, and Temporal Dimensions of Ostrich Eggshell Bead Use in Southern Africa Peter J. Mitchell and Brian A. Stewart Chapter 2. Manufacturing Social Landscapes: Bead Production, Exchange, and Social Connections at Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa Benjamin Collins, Amy Hatton, April Nowell, and Christopher J. H. Ames Chapter 3. Perspectives on Stone Age Sociality: A New Role for Ostrich Eggshell Beads Jennifer M. Miller Chapter 4. A Shell Bead from a Faraway Ocean: Significance Assessment of a Single Indigenous Ornament from Southern Australia Keryn Walshe Chapter 5. Building identities and social organization throughout the Early Holocene: Interpreting the personal adornments of the last hunter-gatherers in Portugal Lino André Chapter 6. Beads on the edge of the world: Atlantic identity and sociality during the Upper Paleolithic of western Iberia Nuno Bicho and Lino André Chapter 7. Constructing Identity: Body decoration and modification in the Swabian Aurignacian Ewa Dutkiewicz, Sibylle Wolf, Elizabeth C. Velliky, and Nicholas J. Conard Chapter 8. What’s in a color? Ochre use in the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa Tammy Hodgskiss Chapter 9. The Best Dressed Hominin: Clothing, tanning and textile production in the Paleolithic April Nowell and Aurora Skala Conclusion: Culturing Bodies in the Past: Similarities Across Diversity Benjamin Collins and April Nowell Index

Reviews

“As direct evidence for body decoration and modification is scarce, due to the perishable nature of most of the measures, the authors in this book give examples of evidence how archaeologists can find and reconstruct body decoration, as well as what these practices mean for humans in relation to their individual and social identity.” • Ewa Dutkiewicz, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte Archäologisches Zentrum

Author Information

Benjamin Collins is affiliated with the Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba, and the Department of Archaeology, University of Cape Town. His research explores social networks and connections among past forager societies.

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