Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:21:53.101Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Temporalities and Periodization in Deep History

Technology, Gender, and Benchmarks of “Human Development”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Mary Jo Maynes  and
Ann Waltner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

For historians, questions about what to call particular eras and how to conceptualize the temporal dynamics of change become particularly acute as we take on revisionist projects, such as writing and teaching feminist history, examining chronologically “deep” history, or placing history in a material as well as a social environment and in a global perspective. Temporal frameworks influence historical research even when it is located within a very limited time frame; temporalities and periodizations operate more explicitly in the teaching of survey courses. The particular periodization problems we focus on here emerged from teaching premodern world history with a focus on family and household dynamics. In trying to connect research on the domestic group as a site of world history with a historical narrative that begins with the emergence of human society and draws on evidence from around the globe, we were struck again and again by the problematic perspectives embedded in conventional periodizations. New directions in archaeological scholarship offer global historians insights and approaches with which to inform their temporal frameworks.

Type
Special Section: Temporalities and Periodization in Human History: Conversations across the Disciplines of History and Archaeology
Information
Social Science History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Spring 2012 , pp. 59 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Ann Taylor (1999) “Feminism, social science, and the meanings of modernity: The debate on the origin of the family in Europe and the United States, 1860–1914.” American Historical Review 104 (4): 1085–1113.Google Scholar
Bachofen, Johann (1948) Das Mutterrecht. 2 vols. Basel: Schwabe.Google Scholar
Balter, Michael (2007) “Plant science: Seeking agriculture’s ancient roots.” Science (316): 1830–35.Google Scholar
Bolger, Diane (2006) “Gender and human evolution,” in Nelson, Sarah Milledge (ed.) Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Lanham, MD: Altamira: 453–502.Google Scholar
Boyd, RobertRicherson, Peter J. (2005) The Origin and Evolution of Cultures. New York: Oxford University.Google Scholar
Brumbach, Hetty JoJarvenpa, Robert (2006) “Gender dynamics in hunter-gatherer societies: Archaeological methods and perspectives,” in Nelson, Sarah Milledge (ed.) Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Lanham, MD: Altamira: 503–34.Google Scholar
Christian, David (2004) Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Conkey, Margaret W.Spector, Janet (1984) “Archaeology and the study of gender.” Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 7: 1–38.Google Scholar
Cook, Michael (2003) A Brief History of the Human Race. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Dahlberg, Frances (1981) “Women as shapers of human adaptation,” in Dahlberg, Frances (ed.) Woman the Gatherer. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press: 75–120.Google Scholar
Diamond, Jared (1999) Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Doyle, Alister (2006) “Botswana ‘snake rock’ may show Stone Age religion.” Africa News, December 4, www.namibian.com.na/index.php?id=28&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=22763&no_cache=1.Google Scholar
Ebert, VirginiaPatterson, Thomas C. (2006) “Gender in South American archaeology,” in Nelson, Sarah Milledge (ed.) Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Lanham, MD: Altamira: 860–61.Google Scholar
Engels, Friedrich (2010 [1884]) The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Fedigan, Linda Marie (1986) “The changing roles of women in models of human evolution.” Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 256–66.Google Scholar
Gamble, Clive (2007) Origins and Revolutions: Human Identity in Earliest Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gao, QiangLee, Yun Kuen (1993) “A biological perspective on Yangshao kinship.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 12: 266–98.Google Scholar
Gifford-Gonzalez, Diane (1993) “You can hide, but you can’t run: Representation of women’s work in illustrations of Paleolithic life.” Visual Anthropology Review 9 (1): 3–21.Google Scholar
Gilchrist, Roberta (2004) “Archaeology and the life course: A time and age for gender,” in Meskell, LynnPreucel, Robert W. (eds.) A Companion to Social Archaeology. Malden, MA: Blackwell: 142–60.Google Scholar
Hodder, Ian (1990) The Domestication of Europe: Structure and Contingency in Neolithic Societies. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hodder, Ian (2001) “Review feature: The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture by Cauvin, Jacques, translated by Watkins, Trevor.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 11 (1): 105–21. Google Scholar
Hodder, Ian (2006) “This old house.” Natural History, June, www.naturalhistorymag.com/htmlsite/index_archive.html.Google Scholar
Lerner, Gerda (1986) The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, Diane (2007) “A critical appraisal of gender research in African archaeology,” in Nelson, Sarah Milledge (ed.) Worlds of Gender: The Archaeology of Women’s Lives around the Globe. Lanham, MD: Altamira: 1–37.Google Scholar
McBrearty, SallyBrooks, Alison S. (2000) “The revolution that wasn’t: A new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior.” Journal of Human Evolution 39: 453–563.Google Scholar
Nelson, Sarah Milledge, ed. (2006) Handbook of Gender in Archaeology. Lanham, MD: Altamira.Google Scholar
Preucel, Robert W.Meskell, Lynn (2004) “Knowledges,” in Meskell, LynnPreucel, Robert W. (eds.) A Companion to Social Archaeology. Malden, MA: Blackwell: 3–22.Google Scholar
Shelach, Gideon (1999) “Marxist and post-Marxist paradigms for the Neolithic,” in Linduff, Kathryn (ed.) Gender and Chinese Archaeology. Lanham, MD: Altamira: 11–28.Google Scholar
Smail, Daniel Lord (2005) “In the grip of sacred history.” American Historical Review 110 (5): 1337–61.Google Scholar
Smail, Daniel Lord (2008) On Deep History and the Brain. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Solis, Ruth ShadyHaas, JonathanCreamer, Winifred (2001) “Dating Caral, a Preceramic site in the Supe Valley.” Science (292): 723–26.Google Scholar
Tattersall, Ian (2008) The World from Beginnings to 4000 BCE. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walde, DaleWillows, Noreen D., eds. (1991) The Archaeology of Gender. Calgary, AB: Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary.Google Scholar
Whitehouse, Ruth (2007) “Gender archaeology in Europe,” in Nelson, Sarah Milledge (ed.) Worlds of Gender: The Archaeology of Women’s Lives around the Globe. Lanham, MD: Altamira: 139–89.Google Scholar
Zvelebil, Marek (1986) Hunters in Transition: Mesolithic Societies of Temperate Eurasia and Their Transition to Farming. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar