Archaeology
Elham Ghasidian
Abstract
In his book Stone Tools in Human Evolution, Behavioural Differences among Technological Primates, John Shea focuses on a new framework for analyzing stone tools to answer questions related to the evolution of human behavior. Although stone tools have great potential for understanding human evolution, ...
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In his book Stone Tools in Human Evolution, Behavioural Differences among Technological Primates, John Shea focuses on a new framework for analyzing stone tools to answer questions related to the evolution of human behavior. Although stone tools have great potential for understanding human evolution, the traditional archaeological approaches in analysis, biased our understanding on human evolution through them. Shea emphasizes that archaeologists must change their traditional approach and find new ways to study human evolution and behavior based on stone tools. This novel method will bring together palaeoanthropologists, palaeogeneticists and archaeologists and lead to a better understanding of the human behavior and evolution. The present paper tries to evaluate this new approach and see how close it is to achieve this goal. Reviewing the book shows that there is still a long way to go to understand human behavior and evolution through the study of stone tools. The book ends with many open questions, leaving readers wondering whether the author was able to tackle the traditional archaeological approach which Shea himself has been critical of throughout the book.
Art
Alireza Taheri; Batool Maazallahi
Abstract
While the study of Islamic art is not very rich in the study of the human image, Eva Beer’s book "The Human Body in the Islamic Art of the Past Heritage and Post-Islamic Developments" is one of the only books in this field. In this book, the author examines the human image in the art of Arabs, ...
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While the study of Islamic art is not very rich in the study of the human image, Eva Beer’s book "The Human Body in the Islamic Art of the Past Heritage and Post-Islamic Developments" is one of the only books in this field. In this book, the author examines the human image in the art of Arabs, Iranians, Gurkhas, and Ottomans. He has been a lecturer at the Museum of Islamic Art for many years and wrote the book in 2004. Although the author's efforts to collect research data are commendable, there are criticisms of the way research and methodological issues in the book are handled. Deficiencies in book methodology have led to the breakdown of communication between the book and the reader, despite the novelty of the research. The present article attempts to examine and explain the shortcomings of the methodology of the book and provide suggestions for their solution.
