A Record in Stone: The study of Australia's flaked stone artefacts

(Paperback)

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Description

Book & CD-ROM. This is a comprehensive investigation into the different ways in which archaeologists use flaked stone artefacts as a basis for reconstructing the distant human past. The authors not only describe the range of flaked stone artefact forms recovered from Australian archaeological sites, but also place Australian studies alongside the major international theories surrounding the description of stone artefacts. The book features: extensive analysis, clear and succinct definitions of technical terms and extensive use of illustrations; worked examples illustrating how collections of flakes, cores and rolls are analysed and interpreted; over 130 black-and-white labelled images of actual artefacts; an accompanying CD-ROM featuring over 450 colour images of artefacts; an up-to-date review of key theoretical approaches to flaked stone artefact analysis; an assessment of this historical development of Australian stone artefact studies; Australian perspective on the major international theoretical debates in the often controversial area of stone artefact studies.

Reviews

"A beautifully crafted account of the nature of Australian stone artifacts set in their intellectual and ethnographical perspective. Clear, concise illustrations, coupled with elegant summaries, make this book a must for professional archaeologists, students and enthusiastic amateurs alike." --Carmel Schrire Rutgers, professor, State University of New Jersey

Author Bio

Simon Holdaway is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He studied Palaeolithic Archaeology at the university of Pennsylvania and has conducted fieldwork in the south of France, the rainforests of Tasmania and Australia's semi-arid core. Nicola Stern is a senior lecturer at La Trobe University in Australia. She studied Palaeolithic Archaeology at Harvard University and has undertaken fieldwork on the earliest archaeological traces in Kenya and Malawi as well as the more recent archaeological records of Tasmania and semi-arid Australia.