Archaeology: An Introduction to Human Evolution and the Origins of Civilization
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2021
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An up-to-date, well-illustrated introduction to the techniques and results of archaeology, the study of humanity's evolution and ancient past. A fully-referenced and affordable text, well-illustrated with the author's trademark diagrams, maps and photographs from archaeological work worldwide and spanning early hominin studies to historical archaeology.
Cameron M. Smith, Ph.D., teaches human evolution and prehistory at the Department of Anthropology at Portland State University in Oregon. His professional training began as a student of Harvard University's early human archaeology field school at the Leakey research station in northern Kenya. After a year at the University of London's Institute of Archaeology, Dr. Smith earned a Joint Honors BA in Anthropology and Archaeology (Durham University, England) and graduate degrees in the US (MA, Anthropology, Portland State University) and Canada (PhD, Archaeology, Simon Fraser University). His courses emphasize adaptation and evolution as structuring facts of human prehistory. Dr. Smith has been widely published in both scientific journals and popular science magazines, including the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Structure and Dynamics, The Journal of Field Archaeology, Scientific American MIND, Scientific American, Evolution Education and Outreach, Archaeology and Spaceflight. He has written about evolution in The Top Ten Myths About Evolution (Prometheus, 2006) endorsed by the National Center for Science Education and the American Library Association, and The Fact of Evolution (Prometheus, 2011), endorsed by Science Daily and recently picked for the Scientific American Book Club. He has been significantly involved in Portland State University’s Wapato Valley Archaeology Project since 1991, and currently has a summer field program focusing on the landscape archaeology of the Lower Columbia River region outside Portland, Oregon. His archaeological experiences include ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology in Ecuador, where he and a team built a replica of a pre-Columbian sailing vessel and used it to navigate coastally towards Mexico, where many lines of evidence indicate that Ecuadorean mariners arrived as early as 800AD. Dr. Smith teaches a variety of 100-level introductory courses and 300- and 400-level regional and topical courses, including Neanderthal Europe, Prehistoric Europe, Prehistoric North America and Prehistory of the Northwest Coast. In the last decade he has added the distant human future to his fields of interest and scholarship, publishing about the human dimensions of space exploration and settlement in journals including Acta Astronautica, the Journal of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team, the Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments, and others, and in his books, Emigrating Beyond Earth (Springer 2012), Principles of Space Anthropology (Springer 2019). As of March 2021 he is writing Evolution and the Drake Equation: An Anthropologist's Estimation of the Probability of Intelligent Life in our Galaxy (Springer 2022) and The Archaeology of Prehistoric Europe: Perspectives from North America. In 2021 Dr. Smith will continue the 30-year progress of the Wapato Valley Archaeology Project, a collaboration of the Chinook Nation, Portland State University and the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, with the Cathlapotle Landscape Archaeology Project.
An up-to-date, well-illustrated introduction to the techniques and results of archaeology, the study of humanity's evolution and ancient past. A fully-referenced and affordable text, well-illustrated with the author's trademark diagrams, maps and photographs from archaeological work worldwide and spanning early hominin studies to historical archaeology.
Cameron M. Smith, Ph.D., teaches human evolution and prehistory at the Department of Anthropology at Portland State University in Oregon. His professional training began as a student of Harvard University's early human archaeology field school at the Leakey research station in northern Kenya. After a year at the University of London's Institute of Archaeology, Dr. Smith earned a Joint Honors BA in Anthropology and Archaeology (Durham University, England) and graduate degrees in the US (MA, Anthropology, Portland State University) and Canada (PhD, Archaeology, Simon Fraser University). His courses emphasize adaptation and evolution as structuring facts of human prehistory. Dr. Smith has been widely published in both scientific journals and popular science magazines, including the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Structure and Dynamics, The Journal of Field Archaeology, Scientific American MIND, Scientific American, Evolution Education and Outreach, Archaeology and Spaceflight. He has written about evolution in The Top Ten Myths About Evolution (Prometheus, 2006) endorsed by the National Center for Science Education and the American Library Association, and The Fact of Evolution (Prometheus, 2011), endorsed by Science Daily and recently picked for the Scientific American Book Club. He has been significantly involved in Portland State University’s Wapato Valley Archaeology Project since 1991, and currently has a summer field program focusing on the landscape archaeology of the Lower Columbia River region outside Portland, Oregon. His archaeological experiences include ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology in Ecuador, where he and a team built a replica of a pre-Columbian sailing vessel and used it to navigate coastally towards Mexico, where many lines of evidence indicate that Ecuadorean mariners arrived as early as 800AD. Dr. Smith teaches a variety of 100-level introductory courses and 300- and 400-level regional and topical courses, including Neanderthal Europe, Prehistoric Europe, Prehistoric North America and Prehistory of the Northwest Coast. In the last decade he has added the distant human future to his fields of interest and scholarship, publishing about the human dimensions of space exploration and settlement in journals including Acta Astronautica, the Journal of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team, the Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments, and others, and in his books, Emigrating Beyond Earth (Springer 2012), Principles of Space Anthropology (Springer 2019). As of March 2021 he is writing Evolution and the Drake Equation: An Anthropologist's Estimation of the Probability of Intelligent Life in our Galaxy (Springer 2022) and The Archaeology of Prehistoric Europe: Perspectives from North America. In 2021 Dr. Smith will continue the 30-year progress of the Wapato Valley Archaeology Project, a collaboration of the Chinook Nation, Portland State University and the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, with the Cathlapotle Landscape Archaeology Project.