Desert peoples : archaeological perspectives / edited by Peter Veth, Mike Smith, Peter Hiscock.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

1. Global deserts in perspective / Mike Smith, Peter Veth, Peter Hiscock and Lynley A. Wallis -- 2. Theoretical shifts in the anthropology of desert hunter-gatherers / Thomas Widlok -- 3. Pleistocene settlement of deserts from an Australian perspective / Peter Hiscock and Lynley A. Wallis -- 4. Arid paradises or dangerous landscapes : a review of explanations for paleolithic assemblage change in arid Australia and Africa / Peter Hiscock and Sue O'Connor -- 5. Evolutionary and ecological understandings of the economics of desert societies : comparing the Great Basin USA and the Australian deserts / Douglas W. Bird and Rebecca Bliege Bird -- 6. Cycles of aridity and human mobility : risk minimization among Late Pleistocene foragers of the western desert, Australia / Peter Veth -- 7. Archaic faces to headdresses : the changing role of rock art across the arid zone / Jo McDonald -- 8. The archaeology of the Patagonian deserts : hunter-gatherers in a cold desert / Luis Alberto Borrero -- 9. Perspectives on later Stone Age hunter-gatherer archaeology in arid Southern Africa / Anne I. Thackeray -- 10. Long-term transitions in hunter-gatherers of coastal Northwestern Australia / Kathryn Przywolnik -- 11. Hunter-gatherers and herders of the Kalahari during the Late Holocene / Karim Sadr -- 12. Desert archaeology, linguistics stratigraphy, and the spread of the western desert language / Mike Smith -- 13. People of the coastal Atacama Desert : living between sand dunes and waves of the Pacific Ocean / Calogero M. Santoro, Bernardo T. Arriaza, Vivien G. Standen and Pablo A. Marquet -- 14. Desert solitude : the evolution of ideologies among pastoralists and hunter-gatherers in arid North Africa / Andrew B. Smith -- 15. Hunter-gatherer interactions with sheep and cattle pastoralists from the Australian arid zone / Alistair Paterson -- 16. Conclusion : major themes and future research directions / Peter Veth.