image description
# 741770
USD 17.64 (Book Not in Ready Stock, will take 45-60 days to source and dispatch)
- +

The Tale of the Axe : How the Neolithic Revolution Transformed Britain

Author :  David Miles

Product Details

Country
United Kingdom
Publisher
Thames and Hudson Ltd
ISBN 9780500293874
Format PaperBack
Language English
Year of Publication 2021
Bib. Info 448 p,129 x 198mm
Categories Ancient History & Archaeology
Product Weight 400 gms.
Shipping Charges(USD)

Product Description

Focusing on the British Isles, the author explores a period of huge societal change – the Neolithic, or ‘New Stone Age’ – through the most iconic artifact of its time: the polished stone axe, using an ancient stone axe-head brought to him by a local quarry worker as a guide to the revolution that changed the world. These formidable creations were not only crucial tools that enabled the first farmers to clear the forests, but also objects of great symbolic importance, signifying status and power, wrapped up in expressions of religion and politics. Mixing anecdote, ethnography and archaeological analysis, the author vividly demonstrates how the archaeology on the ground reveals to us the evolving worldview of a species increasingly altering their own landscape; settling down together, investing in agricultural plots, and collectively erecting massive ceremonial monuments to cement new communal identities.

As a direct result of the invention, and intensification, of agriculture, the planet entered the Anthropocene, or the current ‘age of humanity’: an era in which we are changing the world around us in significant, accelerating and often unpredictable ways. As the author poignantly concludes, our ancestors set us on the path to the modern world we live in; now seven billion humans must face the challenges that presents.

Product added to Cart
Copied