Olga Soffer – författare

“This jauntily written, highly convincing analysis . . . argues that women of prehistory were pivotal in a wide range of culture-building endeavors.” —Publishers WeeklyShaped by cartoons and museum dioramas, our vision of Paleolithic times tends to feature fur-clad male hunters fearlessly attacking mammoths while timid women hover fearfully behind a boulder. In fact, recent research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality.The field of archaeology has changed dramatically in the past two decades, as women have challenged their male colleagues'' exclusive focus on hard artifacts such as spear points rather than tougher to find evidence of women''s work. J. M. Adovasio and Olga Soffer are two of the world''s leading experts on perishable artifacts such as basketry, cordage, and weaving. In The Invisible Sex, the authors present an exciting new look at prehistory, arguing that women invented all kinds of critical materials, including the clothing necessary for life in colder climates, the ropes used to make rafts that enabled long-distance travel by water, and nets used for communal hunting. Even more important, women played a central role in the development of language and social life—in short, in our becoming human. In this eye-opening book, a new story about women in prehistory emerges with provocative implications for our assumptions about gender today.“An engaging book that sets the record straight while describing current theories and trends in archaeology.” —Booklist“A much-needed antidote to the past hundred years of popular and scientific writing on prehistoric human life.” —Nature“Science writing at its best.” —Jean M. Auel, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Clan of the Cave Bear

From the American Side I went to the USSR for the first time in 1982 to attend the 11th meeting of the International Union for Quaternary research (INQUA) held at the Moscow State University. At that time relations between our two countries were anything but congenial and many restrictions were placed on our viewing the archaeological and paleontological collections and labora­ tory facilities. This was not the ideal climate for the free exchange of ideas needed for meaningful research. However, it was obvious to us that the strained relations did not extend to scientific discussions between scholars. We left that meeting well aware that if the problems of prehistoric Old World-New World relationships were to be resolved, it would eventually require cooperative research efforts within the world community of archaeologists. At that time, the pre-Clovis problem in New World archaeology was foremost in the minds of many North American researchers: tool technology and assemblages were being studied as a possible means of establishing cultural relationships across the Bering Strait, Clovis sites and mammoth kills were being looked at with new ideas for interpretation, and New World researchers realized that to resolve these questions they had to become familiar with the archaeological record of northeast Asia. A chance meeting of the writer with Olga Soffer in 1983 led to serious discussions of the sites on the Russian or East European Plain.

Involving contributions from archaeology, geology, ethnography, anthropology and prehistory, The World at 18 000 BP: High Latitudes (first of the two volumes, and originally published in 1990) surveys the world scene 18,000 years ago. Following an introduction (common to the two volumes) on the diversity of human adaptations at the last glacial maximum, Volume 1 covers high latitudes: Europe, Asia and the New World. Volume 2 covers low latitudes: Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia and Australasia.The volumes conation contributions from leading specialists on regional records. Each discusses the pertinent environmental settings, archaeological data, and cultural adaptations. This sampler of the way we were 18,000 years ago affords Pleistocene specialists a multidisciplinary conspectus revealing the diversity of past cultural practices as well as the innate universality of human nature. By stressing both the diversity and the similarity in human cultural practices, the authors contribute invaluable data for both theoretical constructs and a sound empirical basis for global culture history. the global nature of the work also reveals the covert biases hitherto present in reconstructions of the past and perceptions of past cultural change.This is a fully international and thoroughly interdisciplinary treatment of a key topic for the wide range of disciplines concerned with human prehistory and Quaternary environmental reconstruction.

Involving contributions from archaeology, geology, ethnography, anthropology and prehistory, The World at 18 000 BP: Low Latitudes (second of the two volumes, and originally published in 1990) surveys the world scene 18,000 years ago. Following an introduction (common to the two volumes) on the diversity of human adaptations at the last glacial maximum, Volume 1 covers high latitudes: Europe, Asia and the New World. Volume 2 covers low latitudes: Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia and Australasia.The volumes contain contributions from leading specialists on regional records. Each discusses the pertinent environmental settings, archaeological data, and cultural adaptations. This sampler of the way we were 18,000 years ago affords Pleistocene specialists a multidisciplinary conspectus revealing the diversity of past cultural practices as well as the innate universality of human nature. By stressing both the diversity and the similarity in human cultural practices, the authors contribute invaluable data for both theoretical constructs and a sound empirical basis for global culture history. The global nature of the work also reveals the covert biases hitherto present in reconstructions of the past and perceptions of past cultural change.This is a fully international and thoroughly interdisciplinary treatment of a key topic for the wide range of disciplines concerned with human prehistory and Quaternary environmental reconstruction.

Involving contributions from archaeology, geology, ethnography, anthropology and prehistory, The World at 18 000 BP: High Latitudes (first of the two volumes, and originally published in 1990) surveys the world scene 18,000 years ago. Following an introduction (common to the two volumes) on the diversity of human adaptations at the last glacial maximum, Volume 1 covers high latitudes: Europe, Asia and the New World. Volume 2 covers low latitudes: Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia and Australasia.The volumes conation contributions from leading specialists on regional records. Each discusses the pertinent environmental settings, archaeological data, and cultural adaptations. This sampler of the way we were 18,000 years ago affords Pleistocene specialists a multidisciplinary conspectus revealing the diversity of past cultural practices as well as the innate universality of human nature. By stressing both the diversity and the similarity in human cultural practices, the authors contribute invaluable data for both theoretical constructs and a sound empirical basis for global culture history. the global nature of the work also reveals the covert biases hitherto present in reconstructions of the past and perceptions of past cultural change.This is a fully international and thoroughly interdisciplinary treatment of a key topic for the wide range of disciplines concerned with human prehistory and Quaternary environmental reconstruction.

Involving contributions from archaeology, geology, ethnography, anthropology and prehistory, The World at 18 000 BP: Low Latitudes (second of the two volumes, and originally published in 1990) surveys the world scene 18,000 years ago. Following an introduction (common to the two volumes) on the diversity of human adaptations at the last glacial maximum, Volume 1 covers high latitudes: Europe, Asia and the New World. Volume 2 covers low latitudes: Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia and Australasia.The volumes contain contributions from leading specialists on regional records. Each discusses the pertinent environmental settings, archaeological data, and cultural adaptations. This sampler of the way we were 18,000 years ago affords Pleistocene specialists a multidisciplinary conspectus revealing the diversity of past cultural practices as well as the innate universality of human nature. By stressing both the diversity and the similarity in human cultural practices, the authors contribute invaluable data for both theoretical constructs and a sound empirical basis for global culture history. The global nature of the work also reveals the covert biases hitherto present in reconstructions of the past and perceptions of past cultural change.This is a fully international and thoroughly interdisciplinary treatment of a key topic for the wide range of disciplines concerned with human prehistory and Quaternary environmental reconstruction.

Involving contributions from archaeology, geology, ethnography, anthropology and prehistory, The World at 18 000 BP: High Latitudes (first of the two volumes, and originally published in 1990) surveys the world scene 18,000 years ago. Following an introduction (common to the two volumes) on the diversity of human adaptations at the last glacial maximum, Volume 1 covers high latitudes: Europe, Asia and the New World. Volume 2 covers low latitudes: Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia and Australasia.The volumes conation contributions from leading specialists on regional records. Each discusses the pertinent environmental settings, archaeological data, and cultural adaptations. This sampler of the way we were 18,000 years ago affords Pleistocene specialists a multidisciplinary conspectus revealing the diversity of past cultural practices as well as the innate universality of human nature. By stressing both the diversity and the similarity in human cultural practices, the authors contribute invaluable data for both theoretical constructs and a sound empirical basis for global culture history. the global nature of the work also reveals the covert biases hitherto present in reconstructions of the past and perceptions of past cultural change.This is a fully international and thoroughly interdisciplinary treatment of a key topic for the wide range of disciplines concerned with human prehistory and Quaternary environmental reconstruction.

Involving contributions from archaeology, geology, ethnography, anthropology and prehistory, The World at 18 000 BP: Low Latitudes (second of the two volumes, and originally published in 1990) surveys the world scene 18,000 years ago. Following an introduction (common to the two volumes) on the diversity of human adaptations at the last glacial maximum, Volume 1 covers high latitudes: Europe, Asia and the New World. Volume 2 covers low latitudes: Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia and Australasia.The volumes contain contributions from leading specialists on regional records. Each discusses the pertinent environmental settings, archaeological data, and cultural adaptations. This sampler of the way we were 18,000 years ago affords Pleistocene specialists a multidisciplinary conspectus revealing the diversity of past cultural practices as well as the innate universality of human nature. By stressing both the diversity and the similarity in human cultural practices, the authors contribute invaluable data for both theoretical constructs and a sound empirical basis for global culture history. The global nature of the work also reveals the covert biases hitherto present in reconstructions of the past and perceptions of past cultural change.This is a fully international and thoroughly interdisciplinary treatment of a key topic for the wide range of disciplines concerned with human prehistory and Quaternary environmental reconstruction.

Shaped by cartoons and museum dioramas, our vision of Paleolithic times tends to feature fur-clad male hunters fearlessly attacking mammoths while timid women hover fearfully behind a boulder. Recent archaeological research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality. J. M. Adovasio and Olga Soffer, two of the world''s leading experts on perishable artifacts such as basketry, cordage, and weaving, present an exciting new look at prehistory. With science writer Jake Page, they argue that women invented all kinds of critical materials, including the clothing necessary for life in colder climates, the ropes used to make rafts that enabled long-distance travel by water, and nets used for communal hunting. Even more important, women played a central role in the development of language and social life—in short, in our becoming human. In this eye-opening book, a new story about women in prehistory emerges with provocative implications for our assumptions about gender today.

Shaped by cartoons and museum dioramas, our vision of Paleolithic times tends to feature fur-clad male hunters fearlessly attacking mammoths while timid women hover fearfully behind a boulder. Recent archaeological research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality. J. M. Adovasio and Olga Soffer, two of the world''s leading experts on perishable artifacts such as basketry, cordage, and weaving, present an exciting new look at prehistory. With science writer Jake Page, they argue that women invented all kinds of critical materials, including the clothing necessary for life in colder climates, the ropes used to make rafts that enabled long-distance travel by water, and nets used for communal hunting. Even more important, women played a central role in the development of language and social life—in short, in our becoming human. In this eye-opening book, a new story about women in prehistory emerges with provocative implications for our assumptions about gender today.

Regional approaches to past human adaptations have generated much new knowledge and understanding. Researchers working on problems of adaptations in the Holocene, from those of simple hunter-gatherers to those of complex sociopolitical entities like the state, have found this approach suitable for comprehension of both ecological and social aspects of human behavior. This research focus has, however, until recently left virtually un­ touched a major spatial and temporaI segment of prehistory-the Old World during the Pleistocene. Extant literature on this period, by and large, presents either detailed site­ speeific accounts or offers continental or even global syntheses that tend to compile site­ speeific information but do not integrate it into whole c~nstructs of funetioning so­ ciocuhural entities. This volume presents our current state of knowledge about a variety of regional adaptations that charaeterized prehistoric groups in the Old World before 10,000 B. P. The authors of the chapters consider the behavior of humans rather than that of objects or features and present data and models for variaus aspects of past cultures and for culture change. These presentations integrate findings and understandings derived from a number of related disciplines actively involved in researching the past. Data and interpretations are offered on a range of Old \yorld regions during the PaIeolithic, induding Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe, and chronological coverage spans from the Early to Late PIeisto­ cene.

Regional approaches to past human adaptations have generated much new knowledge and understanding. Researchers working on problems of adaptations in the Holocene, from those of simple hunter-gatherers to those of complex sociopolitical entities like the state, have found this approach suitable for comprehension of both ecological and social aspects of human behavior. This research focus has, however, until recently left virtually un­ touched a major spatial and temporaI segment of prehistory-the Old World during the Pleistocene. Extant literature on this period, by and large, presents either detailed site­ speeific accounts or offers continental or even global syntheses that tend to compile site­ speeific information but do not integrate it into whole c~nstructs of funetioning so­ ciocuhural entities. This volume presents our current state of knowledge about a variety of regional adaptations that charaeterized prehistoric groups in the Old World before 10,000 B. P. The authors of the chapters consider the behavior of humans rather than that of objects or features and present data and models for variaus aspects of past cultures and for culture change. These presentations integrate findings and understandings derived from a number of related disciplines actively involved in researching the past. Data and interpretations are offered on a range of Old \yorld regions during the PaIeolithic, induding Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe, and chronological coverage spans from the Early to Late PIeisto­ cene.

The Upper Paleolithic of the Central Russian Plain examines the hunter-gatherer adaptations on the Upper Paleolithic central Russian Plain. The book offers both a culture history for the area and an explanation for the changes in human adaptation. It presents what has been found at 29 major Upper Paleolithic sites occupied over a period of some 14,000 years. The book presents details of the archaeological inventories and assemblages found at the 29 sites, together with the geography and geology of the study area. It then uses environmental data to model environmental conditions and resource distribution during the various periods of human occupation, as well as to predict optimal strategies for exploiting available resources. Subsequent chapters present the relative and chronometric dating schemes. The book also elucidates the man-land relationships, ensuing subsistence strategies, settlement types present in the archaeological record, settlement systems, and sociopolitical behavior. The text will be significant to archaeologists, paleoecologists, and anthropologists interested in hunter-gatherers and late Pleistocene adaptations.

From the American Side I went to the USSR for the first time in 1982 to attend the 11th meeting of the International Union for Quaternary research (INQUA) held at the Moscow State University. At that time relations between our two countries were anything but congenial and many restrictions were placed on our viewing the archaeological and paleontological collections and labora­ tory facilities. This was not the ideal climate for the free exchange of ideas needed for meaningful research. However, it was obvious to us that the strained relations did not extend to scientific discussions between scholars. We left that meeting well aware that if the problems of prehistoric Old World-New World relationships were to be resolved, it would eventually require cooperative research efforts within the world community of archaeologists. At that time, the pre-Clovis problem in New World archaeology was foremost in the minds of many North American researchers: tool technology and assemblages were being studied as a possible means of establishing cultural relationships across the Bering Strait, Clovis sites and mammoth kills were being looked at with new ideas for interpretation, and New World researchers realized that to resolve these questions they had to become familiar with the archaeological record of northeast Asia. A chance meeting of the writer with Olga Soffer in 1983 led to serious discussions of the sites on the Russian or East European Plain.