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Thinking Mesolithic

by Stefan Karol Kozlowski

Studies of the European Mesolithic have gone through a renaissance since the seminal Warsaw conference on the subject in 1973, and Stefan Kozlowski has been at its heart. This book presents a comprehensive, re-edited selection of his most important writings on the subject, along with new papers written especially for this edition. Kozlowski begins with thematic chapters exploring Mesolithic archaeology's key themes - the technologies people employed, the human ecology of Mesolithic communities and chronology. In a series of core chapters arranged according to European macro-regions, he then examines the diversity of Europe's Mesolithic cultures, remembering Kapuscinski's adage that 'for most people the world ends on the threshold of their own home, the outskirts of their own village, the borders of the valley they live in at the farthest.' He argues that the Mesolithic 'stage' resulted from the adaptation of Palaeolithic tundra communities to the new ecological conditions of the early Post Glacial, to a forested environment where the primitive agriculture that emerged in the Mediterranean region was not possible. With his eye simultaneously on both the continental and local levels, Koslowski offers a compelling portrait of a period in which Europe was characterised by a wide range of different human ecologies, and seethed with human activity from the Pyrenees to the Urals. 558p, 200 b/w illus (Oxbow Books 2009)

Review Quotes

"This is archaeology as it used to be done; archaeology on a grand scale."

C. R. Wickham-Jones
Antiquity, vol 84, No. 324 (June 2010)

"In general, this is an excellent book that shows the evolution of one scholar’s views over time, as well as how our ideas about the Mesolithic have changed. This is truly a magnum opus, and quite an achievement, for which Kozlowski should be thanked. The numerous line drawings and maps bring us into the Mesolithic world, and remind us that postglacial hunter-gatherers in Europe had a new and varied lifestyle."

Pamela R. Willoughby
PaleoAnthropology (2011)

"Thinking Mesolithic is an outstanding reference work suitable for Mesolithic scholars or advanced undergraduate/graduate students working on building a techno-typological view of Mesolithic Europe... [It] reflects the depth and breadth of the author’s knowledge and his contributions to a greater understanding of the European Mesolithic techno-complex... The historical perspective and level of detail presented in this volume provides a concrete road map for where the investigation and interpretation of the Mesolithic period has come and where it is going in the future."

John D. Rissetto
European Journal of Archaeology, 14.1-2 (2011)

Table of Contents

1. Definitions
2. What and How?
3. Where?
4. There!
5. When?

Part II: Regions
6. South
7. The South-East
8. The West and Centre
9. The East
10. The North
11. Castelnovian/Pre-Neolithic
12. Bone, Antler and Amber

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