About this item
Humans and their immediate ancestors were successful hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, but in the last fifteen thousand years humans have gone from finding food to farming it, from seasonal camps to sprawling cities, from a few people to hordes. Drawing on her own fieldwork in the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, and beyond, archeologist Brenna Hassett explores the long history of urbanization through revolutionary changes written into the bones of the people who lived it.For every major new lifestyle, another way of dying appeared. From the "cradle of civilization" in the ancient Near East to the dawn of agriculture on the American plains, skeletal remains and fossil teeth show evidence of shorter lives, rotten teeth, and growth interrupted.
About the Author
Brenna Hassett is a bioarchaeologist based in London who researches the hidden histories of human lives using clues from bones and teeth. While her 'proper' research as an academic researcher (PhD, Dental Anthropology) tends to involve intense laboratory work with very very small structures in teeth, her archaeological experience has taken her to a variety of interesting places. She's been menaced by goats while walking very straight lines on an island in Greece that is four hours from anywhere, she's had interesting amoebic conditions relating to the quantity of camel urine present in the sand around burials she was digging next to the Pyramids at Giza, and been attacked by fire ants in a banana grove in Thailand. She writes on the subjects that fascinate anyone interested in human beings: why we are how we are, how we got here, and whether large parts of human evolution were even a good idea in the first place.
She is also one quarter of Team TrowelBlazers (www.TrowelBlazers.com) , an organisation dedicated to resetting imaginations and bringing to light the stories of women in the earth sciences -- archaeology, geology, and palaeontology -- who have had their contributions overlooked. As a proponent for women and girls participation in science she does a great deal of public speaking, from the schoolroom to the Royal Society, on the importance of a 'See It, Be It' attitude to role models, and even helped design the 'Real Fossil Hunter Lottie' doll.
