• Prehistory of the entire world for the last two million years—Including Egypt, the Andes, Europe, China, South Asia, and the Amazon Basin.

  • Provides students with comprehensive coverage of both the big areas and the lesser-known areas of research.

• Detailed introduction to the practice of archaeology—Including the archaeological record and the process of archaeological research.

  • Provides students with an accessible and practical view of archaeological method and theory.

• Archaeological traditions as a basic organizational unit.

  • Introduces students to archaeological traditions that define a unique group of prehistoric cultures and provides a logical organizational framework for looking at prehistory.

• Focused discussions of regional archaeological sequences—Featuring an overview of the geography and the environment of the region, the archaeological record, and economic basis of the societies.

  • Introduces students to topical issues such as food production, technology, and urban life.

• Media Labs in every chapter—Focus on a particular archaeological method or site and are directly linked to the Companion Website™.

  • Interactivity of animations and video allow students a more dynamic learning experience.

• Integrated features within each chapter—Boxes focus on a particular site or archaeological method, running glossary defines terms where they are first encountered, sites and dates listed in the margins easily locate text for students, archaeological traditions located in the margins help students organize the material the first time they read it.

  • Gives students a better understanding of the material the first time they read it.

• End of chapter review material—Chapter summaries, discussion questions, essay questions, research project, key sources.

  • Provides students with questions and ideas that stimulate thinking and critical examination and encourages them to go beyond the text and find additional information through research.

Peter N. Peregrine came to anthropology after completing an undergraduate degree in English. He found anthropology's social scientific approach to understanding humans more appealing than the humanistic approach he had learned as an English major. He undertook an ethnohistorical study of the relationship between Jesuit missionaries and Native American peoples for his master's degree, and realized that he needed to study archaeology to understand the cultural interactions that ;Native Americans had experienced prior to contact with the Jesuits.

While working on his Ph.D. at Purdue University, Peter Peregrine did research on the prehistoric Mississippian cultures of the eastern United States. He found that interactions between groups were common and had been shaping Native American cultures for centuries. Native Americans approached contact with the Jesuits simply as another in a long string of intercultural exchanges. He also found that relatively little research had been done on Native American interactions and decided that comparative research was a good place to begin examining the topic. In 1992, he began to participate in archaeological work in Syria, and has since extended his areas of interest to Africa and East Asia.

Peter Peregrine is currently chair of the anthropology department at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He serves as research associate for the HRAF Collection of Archaeology and is co-editor with Melvin Ember of the Encyclopedia of Prehistory. He has published more than fifty papers and is the author of seven books. He continues to do archaeological research and teaches a wide range of anthropology and archaeology courses to undergraduate students.