Jacques Cauvin has spent many years researching the beginnings of the Neolithic in the Near East, excavating key sites and developing new ideas to explain the hugely significant cultural, social and economic changes which transformed mobile hunter-gatherers into the first village societies and farmers in the world. In this book, first published in 2000, the synthesis of his mature understanding of the process beginning around 14,000 years ago challenges ecological and materialist interpretations, arguing for a quite different kind of understanding influenced by ideas of structuralist archaeologists and members of the French Annales school of historians. Defining the Neolithic Revolution as essentially a restructuring of the human mentality, expressed in terms of new religious ideas and symbols, the survey ends around nine thousand years ago, when the developed religious ideology, the social practice of village life and the economy of mixed farming had become established throughout the Near East and east Mediterranean, and spreading powerfully into Europe.

"The first truly global portrait of agricultural production patterns and environmental impacts, including maps of the production areas for each of 22 major commodities".--BOOKJACKET.

Few Americans know much about contemporary farming, which has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. In The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the award-winning geographer and landscape historian John Fraser Hart describes the transformation of farming from the mid-twentieth century, when small family farms were still viable, to the present, when a farm must sell at least $250,000 of farm products each year to provide an acceptable level of living for a family. The increased scale of agriculture has outmoded the Jeffersonian ideal of small, self-sufficient farms. In the past farmers kept a variety of livestock and grew several crops, but modern family farms have become highly specialized in producing a single type of livestock or one or two crops. As farms have become larger and more specialized, their number has declined. Hart contends that modern family farms need to become integrated into tightly orchestrated food-supply chains in order to thrive, and these complex new organizations of large-scale production require managerial skills of the highest order. According to Hart, this trend is not only inevitable, but it is beneficial, because it produces the food American consumers want to buy at prices they can afford. Although Hart provides the statistics and clear analysis such a study requires, his book focuses on interviews with farmers: those who have shifted from mixed crop-and-livestock farming to cash-grain farming in the Midwest agricultural heartland; beef, dairy, chicken, egg, turkey, and hog producers around the periphery of the heartland; and specialty crop producers on the East and West Coasts. These invaluable case studies bring the reader into direct personal contact with the entrepreneurs who are changing American agriculture. Hart believes that modern large-scale farmers have been criticized unfairly, and The Changing Scale of American Agriculture, the result of decades of research, is his attempt to tell their side of the story.

Describes the challenges and rewards faced by modern farms in the Midwest, and looks at the seasonal milestones of rural life

"This book--the first ethnography of water conservation on the Great Plains--provides an account of High Plains aquifer decline through an exploration of the different ways in which heartland residents inhabit and understand the imminent depletion of groundwater. This literary ethnography offers a vividly sketched look into the lives and stories of this community, based on interviews with members of the community such as fellow farmers and state regulators, woven together with historical data, journalistic documentation, and Bessire's personal reflections of his family's lived experiences"--Provided by publisher.

Man has been intrigued by the origin of pearls, sensitive to their beauty, and convinced of their medicinal value for at least 5 cent. A mixture of folklore and observation preceded the earliest scientific inquiries. Fishing and trade commenced in S. Asia, between India and Sri Lanka and around the Persian Gulf. In W. and Central Europe, Inner Asia and China, and N. Amer. Freshwater pearls were probably known and treasured before those of marine origin. A refined nomenclature points to a long familiarity with etymologically related words for 'pearl'. Pearls were prominent among the luxury products of world trade and were high among the objectives of expeditions to the eastern and western Tropics. Illustrations.

The Encyclopedia of Soil Science provides a comprehensive, alphabetical treatment of basic soil science in a single volume. It constitutes a wide ranging and authorative collection of some 160 academic articles covering the salient aspects of soil physics, chemistry, biology, fertility, technology, genesis, morphology, classification and geomorphology. With increased usage of soil for world food production, building materials, and waste repositories, demand has grown for a better global understanding of soil and its processes. longer articles by leading authorities from around the world are supplemented by some 430 definitions of common terms in soil sciences.

This textbook covers Plant Ecology from the molecular to the global level. It covers the following areas in unprecedented breadth and depth: - Molecular ecophysiology (stress physiology: light, temperature, oxygen deficiency, drought, salt, heavy metals, xenobiotica and biotic stress factors) - Autecology (whole plant ecology: thermal balance, water, nutrient, carbon relations) - Ecosystem ecology (plants as part of ecosystems, element cycles, biodiversity) - Synecology (development of vegetation in time and space, interactions between vegetation and the abiotic and biotic environment) - Global aspects of plant ecology (global change, global biogeochemical cycles, land use, international conventions, socio-economic interactions) The book is carefully structured and well written: complex issues are elegantly presented and easily understandable. It contains more than 500 photographs and drawings, mostly in colour, illustrating the fascinating subject. The book is primarily aimed at graduate students of biology but will also be of interest to post-graduate students and researchers in botany, geosciences and landscape ecology. Further, it provides a sound basis for those dealing with agriculture, forestry, land use, and landscape management.

Honey bees—and the qualities associated with them—have quietly influenced American values for four centuries. During every major period in the country's history, bees and beekeepers have represented order and stability in a country without a national religion, political party, or language. Bees in America is an enlightening cultural history of bees and beekeeping in the United States. Tammy Horn, herself a beekeeper, offers a varied social and technological history from the colonial period, when the British first introduced bees to the New World, to the present, when bees are being used by the American military to detect bombs. Early European colonists introduced bees to the New World as part of an agrarian philosophy borrowed from the Greeks and Romans. Their legacy was intended to provide sustenance and a livelihood for immigrants in search of new opportunities, and the honey bee became a sign of colonization, alerting Native Americans to settlers' westward advance. Colonists imagined their own endeavors in terms of bees' hallmark traits of industry and thrift and the image of the busy and growing hive soon shaped American ideals about work, family, community, and leisure. The image of the hive continued to be popular in the eighteenth century, symbolizing a society working together for the common good and reflecting Enlightenment principles of order and balance. Less than a half-century later, Mormons settling Utah (where the bee is the state symbol) adopted the hive as a metaphor for their protected and close-knit culture that revolved around industry, harmony, frugality, and cooperation. In the Great Depression, beehives provided food and bartering goods for many farm families, and during World War II, the War Food Administration urged beekeepers to conserve every ounce of beeswax their bees provided, as more than a million pounds a year were being used in the manufacture of war products ranging from waterproofing products to tape. The bee remains a bellwether in modern America. Like so many other insects and animals, the bee population was decimated by the growing use of chemical pesticides in the 1970s. Nevertheless, beekeeping has experienced a revival as natural products containing honey and beeswax have increased the visibility and desirability of the honey bee. Still a powerful representation of success, the industrious honey bee continues to serve both as a source of income and a metaphor for globalization as America emerges as a leader in the Information Age.

Combining mastery of existing scholarship with a fresh approach to new material, Born in the Country continues to define the field of American rural history.