Morley Iain, Renfrew Colin (eds.) The Archaeology of Measurement: Comprehending Heaven, Earth and Time in Ancient Societies

Cambridge University Press, 2010. — 268 p.The construction of formal measurement systems underlies the development of science and technology, economy, and new ways of understanding and explaining the world. Human societies have developed such systems in different ways in different places and at different times, and recent archaeological investigations highlight the importance of these activities for fundamental aspects of human life. The construction of measurement systems constituted new means for recognising and engaging with the material world, and their implications, and the motivations behind them, also extend beyond the material world. Developments such as the precise reckoning of the passage of time highlighted patterns and causal relationships in nature. Measurement systems have provided the structure for addressing key concerns of cosmological belief systems, as well as the means for articulating relationships between the human form, human action, and the world - and new understandings of relationships between events in the terrestrial world and beyond. The Archaeology of Measurement explores the archaeological evidence for the development of measuring activities in numerous ancient societies, as well as the implications of these discoveries for an understanding of their worlds and beliefs. Featuring contributions from a cast of internationally renowned scholars, it analyzes the relationships between measurement, economy, architecture, symbolism, time, cosmology, ritual, and religion among prehistoric and early historic societies throughout the world.Iain Morley is a Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Research Fellow of Darwin College at Cambridge University. A scholar of Palaeolithic archaeology and the evolution of human cognition, he is also co-editor, with Colin Renfrew, of Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture and Image and Imagination: A Global Prehistory of Figurative Representation.
Colin Renfrew (Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, b. 1937) was formerly Disney Professor of Archaeology and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in the University of Cambridge, and Master of Jesus College Cambridge from 1986 to 1997. Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn is Fellow of the British Academy, Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and was the recipient of the Balzan Prize in 2004.