Martin Jones

How Archaeologists Are Rewriting Human History with Ancient DNA

Unlocking the Past

Iosifina Foskolou

Blood is life, its complex composition is finely attuned to our vital needs and functions. Blood can also signify death, while 'bloody' is a curse. Arising from the 2021 Darwin College Lectures, this volume invites leading thinkers on the subject to explore the many meanings of blood across a diverse range of disciplines. Through the eyes of artist Marc Quinn, the paradoxical nature of blood plays with the notion of self. Through those of geneticist Walter Bodmer, it becomes a scientific reality: bloodlines and diaspora capture our notions of community. The transfer of blood between bodies, as Rose George relates, can save lives, or as we learn from Claire Roddie can cure cancer. Tim Pedley and Stuart Egginton explore the extraordinary complexity of blood as a critical biological fluid. Sarah Read examines the intimate connection between blood and womanhood, as Carol Senf does in her consideration of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula.

Blood

Memories of Childhood Holidays in a North Yorkshire Seaside Town

Where the Heck's Saltburn?

In Unlocking the Past, Martin Jones, a leading expert at the forefront of bioarchaeology—the discipline that gave Michael Crichton the premise for Jurassic Park—explains how this pioneering science is rewriting human history and unlocking stories of the past that could never have been told before. For the first time, the building blocks of ancient life—DNA, proteins, and fats that have long been trapped in fossils and earth and rock—have become widely accessible to science. Working at the cutting edge of genetic and other molecular technologies, researchers have been probing the remains of these ancient biomolecules in human skeletons, sediments and fossilized plants, dinosaur bones, and insects trapped in amber. Their amazing discoveries have influenced the archaeological debate at almost every level and continue to reshape our understanding of the past. Devising a molecular clock from a certain area of DNA, scientists were able to determine that all humans descend from one common female ancestor, dubbed "Mitochondrial Eve," who lived around 150,000 years ago. From molecules recovered from grinding stones and potsherds, they reconstructed ancient diets and posited when such practices as dairying and boiling water for cooking began. They have reconstituted the beer left in the burial chamber of pharaohs and know what the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter found in the Alps in the early nineties, ate before his last journey. Conveying both the excitement of innovative research and the sometimes bruising rough-and-tumble of scientific debate, Jones has written a work of profound importance. Unlocking the Past is science at its most engaging.

A leading expert at the forefront of bio-archaeology explains how this pioneering science is rewriting human history and unlocking stories of the past that could never have been told before.

Archaeology and the Search for Ancient DNA

The Molecule Hunt

A revolution is underway in archaeology. For the first time the molecular record of past life, emtombed for millennia in archaeological and geological material, has become widely accessible to science. Miraculous-seeming techniques now allow ancient remains to speak volumes about a past we thought lost.

Botanical Society of the British Isles. Conference

Association for Environmental Archaeology. Conference

University of Oxford. Committee for Archaeology

Human Influence on Th Evolution of Plant Communities : Papers Read at a Joint Conference ...

Archaeology and the Flora of the British Isles

In 1987, Colin Renfrew's Archaeology and Language challenged many perceptions about how one language family spread across large parts of the world. In doing so he re-invigorated an important exchange between archaeologists and historical linguists. At precisely the same time, a quite separate field, human genetics, was making considerable steps forward in the elucidation of human ancestry. These three parallel lines of enquiry into genes, words, and things have, over the ensuing two decades, entirely transformed our perceptions of the human past. This volume brings together contributors to that transformation from around the world, to honour Colin Renfrew with a series of key papers. They include a number of impressive synthetic statements, as well as case studies at the frontiers of three different branches of research. They range from global accounts of human dispersal through to archaeological, genetic and linguistic studies, illustrating what has been achieved over the past two decades, and the most promising avenues of research for the future.

Studies in Honour of Colin Renfrew

Traces of Ancestry

Stephen Littlewood

High above the mountaintops on the Isle of Mull, a huge bird is soaring. Its all-encompassing gaze records people in its Hebridean territory far below, but they are of no interest. The eagle is about its business: concentrating on the deer and fidgety hares out grazing in the morning sun, the urgent push of thermals beneath its wings, a threatening weather front way out at sea, and the restless chick back in its eyrie. This is Mull in its glory. This is what the excited, watching people have travelled so far to witness. They train their binoculars and admire, perhaps envy, the eagle with its vast freedom, knowing that such a self-willed being is part of another world - almost. This book guides the reader through that world. With superb illustrations and illuminating text, we are led to the wild side of Mull. Every facet of the island's natural history is considered, its diverse species and many stories - past, present and future. Along the way we are reminded that wildness is not somehow separate from the human world but influenced, and shared, by nature and people together. Here is the tale of a precious and unique place, a seaborne landscape that displays an uncommon biodiversity and rare wildlife experiences, although today it also faces its greatest challenges. Most of all, this book is testimony to the power of wild places and the duty we have to learn from and protect them.

Natural History Island Its

Wild Mull

Colin J. Bibby

Stuart Marsden

Expedition Field Techniques

Bird Surveys

Is sharing food such an everyday, unremarkable occurrence? In fact, the human tendency to sit together peacefully over food is actually rather an extraordinary phenomenon, and one which many species find impossible. It is also a pheonomenon with far-reaching consequences for the global environment and human social evolution. So how did this strange and powerful behaviour come about? In Feast, Martin Jones uses the latest archaeological methods to illuminate how humans came to share food in the first place and how the human meal has developed since then. From the earliest evidence of human consumption around half a million years ago to the era of the TV dinner and the drive-through diner, this fascinating account unfolds the history of the human meal and its huge impact both on human society and the ecology of the planet.

Why Humans Share Food

Feast

William Simpson

The third edition of Europe 1783-1914 provides a comprehensive overview of Europe from the outbreak of the French Revolution to the origins of the First World War. William Simpson and Martin Jones combine accounts of the most important countries, notably France, Germany and Russia, with the wider political, economic, social and cultural developments affecting Europe as a whole. These include: A survey of Europe c.1780: the social and economic background, forms of government, and the Enlightenment The impact of the French Revolution and Napoleon on Europe The spread of nationalism: the 1848 Revolutions and the unification of Italy and Germany Changes in the world of ideas: religious belief, romanticism, and cultural achievements in art, literature and music The age of imperialism: the expansion of Europe, Marxism and left-wing movements, international relations, 1870-1914 The reciprocal relationship between Europe and the United States Europe in 1914: shifts in the intellectual climate through the works of Darwin and Freud, scientific discoveries and the impact of new technologies, and changes in society and the position of women. Each chapter features a list of key dates, concise background information and suggestions for further reading, as well as a concluding ‘Topics for Debate’ section which contains relevant contemporary sources and outlines the contrasting views of recent historians on the key issues. The suggestions for further reading have been updated in every chapter by the addition of relevant and significant new books, published up to and including 2014. Extensively illustrated throughout with maps, contemporary cartoons and portraits, Europe 1783–1914 is a clear, detailed and highly accessible analysis of this turbulent and formative period of European history.

Europe 1783–1914

Michael Woods

Mark Whitehead

Rhys Jones

Matthew G. Hannah

Deborah Dixon

An Introduction to Political Geography continues to provide a broad-based introduction to contemporary political geography for students following undergraduate degree courses in geography and related subjects. The text explores the full breadth of contemporary political geography, covering not only traditional concerns such as the state, geopolitics, electoral geography and nationalism; but also increasing important areas at the cutting-edge of political geography research including globalization, the geographies of regulation and governance, geographies of policy formulation and delivery, and themes at the intersection of political and cultural geography, including the politics of place consumption, landscapes of power, citizenship, identity politics and geographies of mobilization and resistance. This second edition builds on the strengths of the first. The main changes and enhancements are: four new chapters on: political geographies of globalization, geographies of empire, political geography and the environment and geopolitics and critical geopolitics significant updating and revision of the remaining chapters to discuss key developments, drawing on recent academic contributions and political events new case studies, drawing on an increasing number of international and global examples additional boxes for key concepts and an enlarged glossary. As with the first edition, extensive use is made of case study examples, illustrations, explanatory boxes, guides to further reading and a glossary of key terms to present the material in an easily accessible manner. Through employment of these techniques this book introduces students to contributions from a range of social and political theories in the context of empirical case study examples. By providing a basic introduction to such concepts and pointing to pathways into more specialist material, this book serves, both as a core text for first- and second- year courses in political geography, and as a resource alongside supplementary textbooks for more specialist third year courses.

Space, Place and Politics

An Introduction to Political Geography

John Harrison

Anssi Paasi

This new international Handbook provides the reader with the most up-to-date and original viewpoints on critical debates relating to the rapidly transforming geographies of regions and territories, as well as related key concepts such as place, scale, networks and regionalism. Bringing together renowned specialists who have extensively theorized these spatial concepts and contributed to rich empirical research in disciplines such as geography, sociology, political science and IR studies, this interdisciplinary collection offers fresh, cutting-edge, and contextual insights on the significance of regions and territories in today’s dynamic world.

Handbook on the Geographies of Regions and Territories

High above the mountaintops on the Isle of Mull, a huge bird is soaring. Its all-encompassing gaze records people in its Hebridean territory far below, but they are of no interest. The eagle is about its business: concentrating on the deer and fidgety hares out grazing in the morning sun, the urgent push of thermals beneath its wings, a threatening weather front way out at sea, and the restless chick back in its eyrie. This is Mull in its glory. This is what the excited, watching people have travelled so far to witness. They train their binoculars and admire, perhaps envy, the eagle with its vast freedom, knowing that such a self-willed being is part of another world – almost. This book guides the reader through that world. With superb illustrations and illuminating text, we are led to the wild side of Mull. Every facet of the island’s natural history is considered, its diverse species and many stories – past, present and future. Along the way we are reminded that wildness is not somehow separate from the human world but influenced, and shared, by nature and people together. Here is the tale of a precious and unique place, a seaborne landscape that displays an uncommon biodiversity and rare wildlife experiences, although today it also faces its greatest challenges. Most of all, this book is testimony to the power of wild places and the duty we have to learn from and protect them.

A Natural History of the Island and its People

When Alexander is called home by his sister he finds himself drawn into a world of people trafficking. Unwittingly implicated in the murder of a migrant, he struggles to save himself and his sibling from a future arranged before them. Echoes weaves itself way through flawed characters and breaking lives as Alexander, beset by a second sight which plagues him, begins a journey that will change everything, forever.Set in London and East Anglia, Echoes is Martin Jones' first novel.

Echoes

Holley Martlew

The 'Archaeology meets Science' project is currently transforming our understanding of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations, through the in-depth application of state of the art scientific analyses to ceramic artefacts and skeletal material. This book is the fruit of this acclaimed research, which was carried out between 1997 and 2003, and presented in an exhibition in a number of museums across Europe and the United States, starting with the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Moving beyond the standard archaeological format of illustrations with descriptions of contexts, the book analyses each object from the inside , and consequently each has a different story to tell. Organic residue and stable isotope analysis has extended our knowledge beyond anything previously gleaned through conventional archaeological research, and we now have a much better understanding of the food and drink consumed by ordinary people in Bronze Age Greece. There are some fascinating insights, such as the origin of modern Greek retsina, which was traced first to the time of Agamemnon, then to Crete in the 17th century BC and finally to the Early Minoan Period, c. 2000 BC. The book provides the primary scientific evidence on which the world renowned scientists who have carried out this work have based their conclusions.

Biomolecular Investigations in Bronze Age Greece

Archaeology Meets Science

Mike Woods

An Introduction to Political Geography provides a broad-based introduction to how power interacts with space; how place influences political identities; and how policy creates and remoulds territory. By pushing back the boundaries of what we conventionally understand as political geography, the book emphasizes the interactions between power, politics and policy, space, place and territory in different geographical contexts. This is both an essential text for political geographers and also a valuable resource for students of related fields with an interest in politics and geography.

Martin Jones

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