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Cited by 585

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies, by Peter Bellwood. Malden (MA): Blackwell, 2005; ISBN 0-631-20565-9 hardback £60; ISBN 0-631-20566-7 paperback £17.99, xix+360 pp., 59 figs., 3 tables

Bellwood, Peter, Gamble, Clive, Le Blanc, Steven A., Pluciennik, Mark, Richards, Martin, Terrell, John Edward·2007·Cambridge Archaeological Journal
DOI 10.1017/s0959774307000078
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Abstract

There can be no doubt that Peter Bellwood's First Farmers is a major new statement which presents a robustly expressed solution to one of those classic problems which provides a benchmark for theorization and justifies archaeology as a field. But agreement stops there. Few academic books published recently have evoked such highly charged reactions. On the one hand, First Farmers has impressed many critics, reached audiences far afield from traditional archaeological readerships, and garnered major book awards from professional bodies such as the Society for American Archaeology. On the other hand, it has been subjected to a level of concerted criticism rare in the academic world. As the reviews below show, it has clearly hit a nerve; the gloves are off. First Farmers polarizes scholars in complex ways. Much recent work on agricultural origins, particularly in Europe, has had a strongly indigenist and particularistic tone, averse to mass movements of peoples and ‘grand narratives’ in general. But even advocates of grand narrative in general may take exception to Bellwood's ‘language dispersals’ thesis. Similarly, the very attempt to bring together linguistic, genetic and archaeological data in an account of the past is controversial to some, but even those who aspire to this kind of interdisciplinary synthesis rarely agree on how it can be carried out. Neither the book nor its critics here are likely to be the last word on the subject. But whether one agrees with it or not, First Farmers is a welcome addition to the agricultural origins scene, which, at least in Europe, has been evolving over the last two decades towards a sort of eclectic middle-ground consensus in which difference of opinion is accommodated by eschewing bold generalization.

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Metadata

Authors
Bellwood, P., Gamble, C., Le Blanc, S. A., Pluciennik, M., Richards, M., & Terrell, J. E.
Venue
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2007-01-30
Volume
17
Issue
1
Pages
87-109
ISSN
  • 0959-7743 (ISSN-L)
  • 1474-0540
DOI
10.1017/s0959774307000078
OpenAlex
W1994857410
Cited by
585
References
0
Type
book review
Language
en
Open access
closed

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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.