Overview
Finding Time for the Old Stone Age explores a century of colourful debate over the age of our earliest ancestors. In the mid nineteenth century curious stone implements were found alongside the bones of extinct animals. Humans were evidently more ancient than had been supposed - but just how old were they? There were several clocks for Stone-Age (or Palaeolithic) time, and it would prove difficult to synchronize them. Conflicting timescales were drawn from the fields of geology, palaeontology, anthropology, and archaeology. Anne O'Connor draws on a wealth of lively, personal correspondence to explain the nature of these arguments. The trail leads from Britain to Continental Europe, Africa, and Asia, and extends beyond the world of professors, museum keepers, and officers of the Geological Survey: wine sellers, diamond merchants, papermakers, and clerks also proposed timescales for the Palaeolithic. This book brings their stories to light for the first time - stories that offer an intriguing insight into how knowledge was built up about the ancient British past.
Full Product Details
Author: Anne O'Connor (Former Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology, Durham University)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 16.40cm
, Height: 2.80cm
, Length: 24.10cm
Weight: 0.922kg
ISBN: 9780199215478
ISBN 10: 0199215472
Pages: 464
Publication Date: 16 August 2007
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
an excellent contribution to the history of the earth sciences in the United Kingdom... Anne O'Connor is to be congratulated on writing an absorbing book which sustains the reader's interest throughout. Peter Worsley, Archives of natural history This fascinating work by Anne O'Connor...provides a lively and entertaining view on the development of Palaeolithic archaeology and Quaternary geology... Ralph Fyfe Journal of Archaeological Science ...unprecedented wealth of detail... Nathan Schlanger Antiquity
an excellent contribution to the history of the earth sciences in the United Kingdom... Anne O'Connor is to be congratulated on writing an absorbing book which sustains the reader's interest throughout. Peter Worsley, Archives of natural history This fascinating work by Anne O'Connor...provides a lively and entertaining view on the development of Palaeolithic archaeology and Quaternary geology... Ralph Fyfe Journal of Archaeological Science ...unprecedented wealth of detail... Nathan Schlanger Antiquity
an excellent contribution to the history of the earth sciences in the United Kingdom... Anne O'Connor is to be congratulated on writing an absorbing book which sustains the reader's interest throughout. * Peter Worsley, Archives of natural history * This fascinating work by Anne O'Connor...provides a lively and entertaining view on the development of Palaeolithic archaeology and Quaternary geology... * Ralph Fyfe Journal of Archaeological Science * ...unprecedented wealth of detail... * Nathan Schlanger Antiquity *
Author Information
Anne O'Connor was formerly a Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University.
