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ORIGINS AND REVOLUTIONS
What changed in the three million years of human evolution? Were
there tipping points that made us more recognisably human? In this
innovative study, Clive Gamble presents and questions two of the most
famous descriptions of change in prehistory. The first is the human
revolution when evidence for art, music, religion and language
appears. The second is the economic and social revolution of the
Neolithic. Gamble identifies the historical agendas behind research on
origins. He proposes an alternative approach that relates the study of
change to the material basis of human identity. Rather than revolutio-
nary stages, Gamble makes the case that our earliest prehistory is a story
of mutual relationships between people and their technology. These
developing relationships resulted in distinctive identities for our earliest
ancestors and continue today.
Gamble challenges the hold that revolutions and points of origin
exert over the imagination of archaeologists. He opens the door to an
inclusive study of how human identity, in concert with material
culture, has developed over the past three million years.
Clive Gamble is Professor in the Department of Geography at Royal
Holloway University of London. He is one of the world’s leading
authorities on the archaeology of the earliest human societies. His
many groundbreaking books include The Palaeolithic Settlement of
Europe; Timewalkers: The Prehistory of Global Colonisation; the 2000
winner of the Society of American Archaeology Book Award, The
Palaeolithic Societies of Europe; and most recently The Hominid
Individual in Context, edited with Martin Porr. In 2005, he was awarded
the Rivers Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute
in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the field. He was
elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2000 and in 2003 became co-
director of the Academy’s prestigious Centenary Project, Fr