Books

Books : reviews

Stephen Shennan.
Experiments in the Collection and Analysis of Archaeological Survey Data: the East Hampshire Survey.
John R. Collis. 1985

Stephen Shennan.
Quantifying Archaeology: 2nd edn.
Edinburgh University Press. 1997

The second edition of this extremely popular textbook introduces orchoeology students to the use of statistics in their subject in a straightforward and jargon-free manner. Based on the author’s undergraduate course, it explains the relevant areas Of statistics in terms easily assimilated by archaeology students. Instead of introducing statistics as it would be taught in other disciplines, working examples are drawn from archaeological sources. Exercises at the end of each chapter also relate directly to issues likely to arise within the study of archaeology.

This new edition hos been extensively revised to take into account feedback on the first edition and recent developments in the discipline. New areas include a detailed examination of correspondence analysis, estimation and testing with the normal distribution, randomisation tests, and a completely rewritten account of the issues raised by sampling in archaeology.

Stephen Shennan.
Genes, memes and Human History: Darwinian archaeology and cultural evolution.
Thames & Hudson. 2002

Stephen Shennan.
The First Farmers of Europe: an evolutionary perspective.
CUP. 2018

Knowledge of the origin and spread of farming has been revolutionised in recent years by the application of new scientific techniques, especially the analysis of ancient DNA from human genomes. In this book, Stephen Shennan presents the latest research on the spread of farming by archaeologists, geneticists and other archaeological scientists. He shows that it resulted from a population expansion from present-day Turkey. Using ideas from the disciplines of human behavioural ecology and cultural evolution, he explains how this process took place. The expansion was not the result of ‘population pressure’ but of the opportunities for increased fertility by colonising new regions that farming offered. The knowledge and resources for the farming ‘niche’ were passed on from parents to their children. However, Shennan demonstrates that the demographic patterns associated with the spread of farming resulted in population booms and busts, not continuous expansion.