View Table of Contents

Reviews

“Rob Swigart has written a most remarkable and imaginative short story collection. It is remarkable for its enthralling, in-depth portrayal of the lives of humans from their emergence as distinct beings… Each of these stories is told, not only with an acute sense of informed historicity and scientific accuracy, but with engaging writing. Reading these stories was not only an evocative intellectual experience but a heartfelt emotional one as well. It is the work of a master storyteller. Swigart brings the stories so alive one feels a part of them—as if you, I, we, truly are…A magnificent and often extraordinary sequence of stories.” • Jack.Boston.com

“Mixed Harvest is an unexpected take on human origins and early human societies, blending deftly written short stories with brief nonfiction segments… Readers will leave with a strong emotional grounding in the anthropological and archaeological record, and a large number of informational and thematic touchpoints for understanding this history.” • Joey Eschrich, Arizona State University

Description

In unforgettable stories of the human journey, a combination of storytelling and dialogue underscore an excavation into the deep past of human development and its consequences. Through a first encounter between a Neanderthal woman and the Modern Human she called Traveler, to the emergence and destruction of the world’s first cities, Mixed Harvest tells the tale of the Sedentary Divide, the most significant event since modern humans emerged. Rob Swigart’s latest work humanizes the rapid transition to agriculture and pastoralism with a grounding in the archaeological record.

Subject: Archaeology General History General Cultural Studies