Best of
Prehistoric

1997

Song of the River


Sue Harrison - 1997
    Eighty centuries before our time -- in the frozen interior of a place that would someday be called Alaska -- a clubfooted babe was left in the snow to die...until he was rescued by a young woman ravaged by her enemies and sworn to vengeance.Twenty years later, the child, called Chakliux, has grown to manhood and occupies an honored place as his tribe's treasured storyteller, while his adoptive mother K'os has grown cunning and cold. But in the neighboring village of the Near River People -- where he has been sent to make peace by wedding the shaman's daughter -- a shocking double murder occurs that sets Chakliux on a remarkable journey. Driven by the ancient songs of sea and sky, earth and animals, the storyteller traverses a harsh, unknown, yet enthralling landscape in search of the strange truth about the offenses for which his people have suffered...and about the hateful, ambitious woman who raised him, who may be his most dangerous enemy of all.

Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia


Donald F. Glut - 1997
    Section I provides a thorough history of fieldwork, laboratory studies and paleontological research, and outlines several of the scientific theories of dinosaur extinction. Section II provides dinosaurian systematics toward the end of organizing the various taxa into a convenient and workable order. Section III is an alphabetically arranged compilation of dinosaurian genera. Section IV details the doubtful genera that have appeared in the paleontological literature. Section V lists excluded genera, or taxa that had been previously regarded as dinosaurian. This heavily illustrated volume contains many depictions of life models constructed by experts in vertebrate paleontology restoration and based on the original fossil material. Supplemental volumes do not repeat information from earlier volumes, but build upon them: view all volumes on the series page.

Luminous Debris: Reflecting on Vestige in Provence and Languedoc


Gustaf Sobin - 1997
    Drawing on prehistory, protohistory, and Gallo-Roman antiquity, the twenty-six essays in this book focus on a particular place or artifact for the relevance inherent in each. A Bronze Age earring or the rippling wave pattern in Massiolite ceramic are more than archival curiosities for Sobin. Instead they invite inquiry and speculation on existence itself: Artifacts are read as realia, and history as an uninterrupted sequence of object lessons.As much travel writing as meditative discourse, Luminous Debris is enhanced by a prose that tracks, questions, and reflects on the materials invoked. Sobin engages the reader with precise descriptions of those very materials and the messages to be gleaned from their examination, be they existential, ethical, or political.An American expatriate living in Provence for the past thirty-five years, Gustaf Sobin shares his enthusiasm for his adopted landscape and for a vertical interpretation of its strata. In Luminous Debris he creates meaning out of matter and celebrates instances of reality, past and present.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art


Paul G. Bahn - 1997
    The book also offers the first detailed account of how the world of scholarship became aware of the existence of prehistoric art, reproducing the very earliest drawings by explorers and surveyors from the 1600s onward to create a unique pictorial as well as discursive resource. With this powerful combination of illustration and analysis, Paul Bahn describes what prehistoric art is and the different ways in which it can shed light on the lives and preoccupations of our ancestors: sexual, humorous, social, economic, and religious. The result is a fascinating exploration: a book that Desmond Morris describes as a model of scientific restraint and objectivity....this is ultimately an art book, and as such it is endlessly provocative and engaging. Paul Bahn is an archaeologist and the author of more than 400 publications. He has authored or coauthored eight books, including The Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology. Dr. Bahn is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.