Search results for ""Archaeopress""

De façon paradoxale, alors que le morcellement, la profanation ou l’abandon des dépouilles sont attestés dans de nombreux contextes archéologiques ou historiques, l’absence intentionnelle de rites funéraires n’a pas fait l’objet jusqu’à présent d’études systématiques ou comparatives d’envergure dans le champ des sciences sociales. Et au final, nous en savons donc encore bien peu sur ce qui conduit une société à priver ou dispenser intentionnellement un individu de traitement funéraire. Ainsi, les modalités de la privation de funérailles sont-elles toujours et partout les mêmes ? Ou bien varient-elles selon les contextes socio-historiques, en étant singulièrement reliées aux situations de crises ? Quels sont les différents enjeux qui président à la privation de traitement funéraire ? Plus généralement et de façon analytique, à partir de quels éléments factuels nous est-il possible d’identifier et de qualifier les situations de privation de rites funéraires ? Pour répondre à ce vaste ensemble de questions, nous avons rassemblé dans ce volume douze contributions d’archéologues, d’anthropologues et d’historiens, fruit d’un travail collectif mené lors de journées d’études qui se sont déroulées en 2021 et 2022 à Montpellier et à Marseille. Ces journées ont initié une dynamique interdisciplinaire et diachronique de réflexion, particulièrement riche et dense, sur la diversité des motivations qui conduisent à la privation intentionnelle de funérailles. Dans leur prolongement, ces douze chapitres invitent également à réfléchir sur le cheminement intellectuel qui permet à partir de données archéologiques, historiques ou ethnographiques, d’attester de l’absence de traitement funéraire, et sur les outils intellectuels et théoriques disponibles pour aborder la question de la privation de funérailles.

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The Assyrian Rock Relief at Yaǧmur in the Tur Abdin publishes a newly discovered rock relief in the Mazıdağı Plain, at the western end of the Tur Abdin in southeastern Turkey. The preserved remains include an image of an Assyrian king, divine symbols and traces of three panels of cuneiform inscription. Both the image and the panel preserving the most coherent section of legible text can be dated to the time of Tiglath-pileser I. The sequences which can be deciphered relate to the king’s penetration into the northwest undertaken in the course of his third campaign against the Nairi lands. The monument is studied in the context of our understanding of the Assyrian expansion in this sector, together with a review of the settlement pattern and political organisation of the Tur Abdin as presented in Assyrian sources.

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Agrarian Archaeology in Northwestern Iberia is devoted to the archaeological study of the societies and agrarian landscapes of Northwestern Iberia in the longue durée. The book brings together, for the first time, the results of some of the main projects carried out in recent decades from off-site records providing a fresh perspective for the understanding of historical landscapes. The papers evaluate the ‘manure hypothesis’ and other variables that have influenced the formation of pottery carpets in several territories of the Ebro and Douro basins. The record is interpreted through critical integration with other historical, ethnographic and archaeological evidence. In thematic terms, the processes of early medieval colonization, the transformation of rural societies between the Roman and medieval periods, the agency of subaltern groups, the transformations of agrarian practices from a social perspective, and the morphology of agrarian landscapes from prehistory to the contemporary age are analysed. In addition, singularities in off-site records in non-Mediterranean spaces are considered. In summary, this volume introduces new topics, concepts and case studies useful for developing a multiproxy agrarian archaeology.

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In this rich volume our articles range across all the main phases of Greek Archaeology from Prehistory to the Postmedieval era, and cover a wonderful range of topics. Studies of individual sites begin with an overview by Michael Boyd of Colin Renfrew’s research project on the Cycladic island of Keros at the truly remarkable prehistoric sanctuary centre of Dhaskaleio, but we also have an update by Corien Wiersma on the exciting new survey and excavations at the Mycenaean palace of Agios Vassilios near Sparta. Welcome news appears from Northern Greece, till not so long ago rather neglected by scholarship, with Bronze to Iron Age house and household cooking research papers from the Toumba mound and sites around Mount Olympus, by Kalliopi Efkleidou and Anastasia Dimoula. Landscape studies begin at the grandest scale with Bernard Knapp’s article on the interconnections of Bronze Age Cyprus and Kostas Sbonias’ article on the coastal economy of Corfu, then scale down geographically to Nadia Coutsinas’ analysis of long-term settlement dynamics in Eastern Crete and Natasha Dakouri-Hild’s high-tech survey project at Aphidna in Attica. Michalis Karambinis follows up his earlier study of the Roman cities of the province of Achaia (JGA 3, 2018), with a survey of the cities of Roman Crete. In a related topic, Anastasia Yangaki offers us an authoritative study of the archaeology of beekeeping on Late Antique Crete. We try hard never to neglect Greek art and architecture in our Journal, and are delighted to have a redating of the architectural history of the famous Archaic to Classical Athena Aphaia temple on Aegina by Hansgeorg Bankel, partnered by a study of the significance of its terracotta votive figurines by Maria Spathi. Andrew Stewart exhibits his immense learning in the field of Greek and Roman sculpture with an in-depth investigation of the statues of the Homeric hero Protesilaos. Always enthusiastic to keep up our coverage of the Medieval and Post-Medieval archaeology of Greece, we welcome two articles on Byzantine and Frankish ceramics from Nauplia and Crete, by Anastasia Vassiliou and Matteo Randazzo. Finally Michael Fotiadis dissects debates concerning the origins and nature of ‘Aegean prehistoric civilisation’ during the 19th century’s discovery and subsequent evaluation of Bronze Age Greece, a theme which has continued to be central to later and current approaches to ethnic and cultural continuity on the Greek homeland. - From the foreword by John Bintliff, General Editor

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The enduring legacy of the Silk Roads are the goods and ideas that they facilitated and the technology that they disseminated. However, these trade routes also encompassed a web of communication, crucial for our understanding of the development of cultures, yet obscured by lack of research. This volume centres on how the exchange routes transformed the frontier regions of the Silk Road. In doing so, it utilises a range of methods to reach an archaeological interpretation of the factors that linked people with the environment; movements, settlements, and beliefs. In contrast to historical perspectives that have dominated the field to date, the volume incorporates physical records that offer a more reliable and objective understanding of the past. Taken as a whole, the case studies provide an overview of current developments where multiple lines of evidence are employed to integrate and resolve different data sets. Because trade connected a diversity of cultures, interdisciplinary collaboration is fundamental to reach the full research potential. The papers demonstrate precisely this significance by stretching across Europe, Asia, and Africa from the 4th millennium BC to the 10th century AD. The book is particularly timely given the scope of the Belt and Road Initiative, which threatens numerous archaeological sites across the Silk Roads.

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The Côte d'Or in Upper Burgundy is a border area between the Seine and Yonne basins to the north, the Saône basin to the southeast and the Loire basin to the southwest, with reliefs above 600 meters. It is a zone of passage between basins more than an area of permanent settlement, except in the most temperate periods of early prehistory. The region is considered poor in terms of Palaeolithic sites, a poverty relatively belied by a detailed study of inventoried sites. The most numerous remains of occupation are dated to the Middle Paleolithic, at the end of the interglacial MIS 5 and to the Gravettian in the beginning of MIS 2. The complex stratigraphy in caves and cornice-base systems reveals many shortcomings that notably obliterated the fills of MIS 3 and the end of MIS 2. The Boccard cave, which has the most complete stratigraphic sequence in the region, is here the subject of a previously unpublished detailed monograph. Comparisons with the Palaeolithic sites of the Seine basin (Arcy-sur-Cure caves, open-air sites in the Vanne valley) and the Saône basin (Solutré, Vergisson, Germolles) show that the Palaeolithic settlement of the Côte d'Or is part of the larger settlement system of east-central France, knowledge of which is reduced by the sites’ incomplete fills and the brevity of the occupations.

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The Bell Beaker Culture in All its Forms contains the proceedings of the 22nd meeting of the ‘Archéologie et Gobelets’ Association which took place in Geneva, Switzerland in January 2021. The book is structured in three parts: Archaeological Material demonstrates how ceramics, lithics, wrist guards, and metal artifacts contribute to our understanding of the Bell Beaker Culture. Funerary Archaeology and Anthropology considers how the particular context of death and the human skeleton can be employed to gain information on Bell Beaker populations. The final section, Reconstructing Bell Beaker Society, builds upon archaeological evidence to discuss site interpretations as well as the wide-reaching topics of ritual, culture, and symbolism. With the publication of these proceedings, it is hoped that the conference interactions can facilitate future research and discussions on Bell Beaker societies and their roles within Neolithic Europe and beyond.

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During the pre-Hispanic period, the northern coast of Peru saw the development of numerous societies, such as those of the Virú-Gallinazo and Mochica populations that coexisted during the first millennium of our era. In this region, the morpho-stylistic analysis of ceramics allowed to constitute the chronological sequence commonly accepted, which makes the Virú-Gallinazo and Mochica populations two rival and contemporary societies. However, little is known about their relationship. The research presented here documents the Virú-Gallinazo and Mochica pottery traditions to understand both their origins, filiations, and contacts. This work consisted of studying the modes of manufacture of archaeological ceramics discovered at more than nine sites in the region, preserved at the Ministry of Culture of Peru and various Peruvian, French and American museums. Following the principles of ceramic technology, an innovative methodology for the Central Andes, the traces of manufacture visible on the potteries were studied to define the different steps of the operative chain. This research indicates that these populations had their own technical traditions, and therefore their potters were not anchored in the same learning networks. However, we demonstrate that these populations maintained frequent contacts by exchanging their ceramics, or by moving from one region to another to produce them. These results raise the importance of shifting the focus on ceramic material from a more classical stylistic approach to consider it from the point of view of their production, in order to restore the link between the ceramics, their producers, and the societies to which they belong.

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The Usage of Ochre at the Verge of Neolithisation from the Near East to the Carpathian Basin explores the cultural meaning of ochre among the societies of the Late Epipalaeolithic/Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic from the Levant to the Carpathian Basin. Firstly, the book attempts an accurate characterization of the material, ochre. Both its features as well as its possible outcrops and co-occurring minerals are outlined. The cultural background is described, in particular underlining the continuation of chosen elements and the visible dichotomy between sacral and profane areas of ochre application. On that basis it proved possible to discuss the meanings of ochre, underscored by that division. The discussion also focuses on the possibility of matching archaeological and natural samples. This in turn would allow the creation of a map of interconnections between societies and/or outcrops. To that end the project employed geochemical methods, such as SEM, EDS and a trial study with Raman spectroscopy. The main results demonstrate the possibility of ochre characterization based on laboratory results and the visible interconnections between Epipalaeolithic/Mesolithic and Neolithic societies.

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Dogs, Past and Present: An Interdisciplinary Perspective gathers contributions from scholars from a variety of disciplines to provide a comprehensive assessment of the importance of dogs through history. Over the last decades, countless studies have examined the lives of dogs and their current place in our societies as well as their crucial part in human life and history. Data and hypotheses have progressively increased, sometimes controversially, in each field of investigation. The domestication of dogs and its success during prehistory is a fascinating theme that scholars of various disciplines are involved with. However, there has not been a real exchange between those approaches and it is extremely complex to reach a complete view of the thousands of texts which are published every year. By contrast, this volume is entirely dedicated to dogs and it is focused on the necessity of an ‘interdisciplinary perspective’ to fully understand the fundamental role that dogs have played in our past. When, where, how and why were dogs domesticated? What is their story? What was their role in the history of humankind? What is their role in traditional and non-traditional societies today? The book originated from the conference ‘Dogs, Past and Present – an Interdisciplinary Perspective’ held at CNR (National Scientific Council) and at Sapienza University in Rome (14–17 November 2018), promoted by the Italian Association for Ethnoarchaeology and organised by the editors.

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Our Beloved Polites assembles a large number of studies presented in honour of one of the most remarkable historians of ancient Greece, Professor P. J. Rhodes, to celebrate his life and the splendidly scholarly work which has been and will continue to be a major reference for scholars around the world. The volume starts with an appreciation of the honorand by John Davies, followed by twenty-eight contributions from junior and established scholars, organised in four sections that map closely onto four prominent areas of P. J. Rhodes’ research into ancient Greece: History and Biography, Law, Politics, and Epigraphy.

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Laying the Foundations, which developed out of the British Museum’s ‘Iraq Scheme’ archaeological training programme, covers the core components for putting together and running an archaeological field programme. The focus is on practicality. Individual chapters address background research, the use of remote sensing, approaches to surface collection, excavation methodologies, survey with total (and multi) stations, use of a dumpy level, context classification, on-site recording, databases and registration, environmental protocols, conservation, photography, illustration, post-excavation site curation and report writing. While the manual is oriented to the archaeology of Iraq, the approaches are no less applicable to the Middle East more widely, an aim hugely facilitated by the open-source distribution of translations into Arabic and Kurdish.

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No Place Like Home: Ancient Near Eastern Houses and Households had its genesis in a series of six popular and well-attended ASOR conference sessions on Household Archaeology in the Ancient Near East. A selection of papers are presented here, together with four invited contributions. The 18 chapters are organized in three thematic sections. Chapters in the first, Architecture as Archive of Social Space, profile houses as records of the lives of inhabitants, changing and adapting with residents; many offer a background focus on how human behavior is shaped by the walls of one’s own home. This section also includes innovative approaches to understanding who dwelled in these homes. For instances, one chapter explores evidence for children in a house, another surveys what it was like to live in a military barracks. The middle section, The Active Household, focuses on the evidence for how residents carried out household activities including work and food preparation. Chapters include the ‘heart of household archaeology’ in their application of activity area research, but also drill down to the social significance of what residents were doing or eating, and where such actions were taking place. The final section, Ritual Space at Home, features studies on the house as ritual space. The entire complement of chapters provides the latest research on houses and households spanning the Chalcolithic to the Roman periods and from Turkey to Egypt.

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Archaeologiae una storia al plurale is dedicated to the late Sara Santoro by her friends and colleagues. Sara was an archaeologist and a multifaceted scholar, teaching at the Universities of Bologna, Parma and Chieti and working actively in Italy, France and Albania. The volume presents a series of contributions organised in six sections that correspond to the main interests of Sara, and which are edited by her colleagues at the University G. d'Annunzio of Chieti-Pescara. The first section, Semata, Schemata and Topoi includes studies on iconography, philology and history of art. Section II, Archeologia in Adriatico, is dedicated to contributions on Adriatic studies. The third section, Progetti e Ricerche, is dedicated to field research. Next, section IV, Valorizzazione, Progettazione, Disseminazione, focuses on valorisation and planning in cultural heritage. A fifth section, Insediamento Minore, concentrates on so-called 'minor' settlements, and their roles and networks. The final section, La metodologia e le scienze nella ricerca archeologica, is dedicated to methodologies in archaeology and to the application of sciences to cultural heritage.

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Plant Food Processing Tools at Early Neolithic Göbekli Tepe reconstructs plant food processing at this key Pre-Pottery Neolithic (9600-8000 BC) site, with an emphasis on cereals, legumes and herbs as food sources, on grinding and pounding tools for their processing, and on the vessels implied in the consumption of meals and beverages. Functional investigations on grinding and pounding tools and on stone containers through use-wear and residue analyses are at the core of the book. Their corpus amounts to more than 7000 objects, constituting thus the largest collection published so far from the Neolithic of Upper Mesopotamia. The spectrum of tools and of processed plants is very broad, but porridges made of cereals, legumes and herbs, and beers predominate over bread-like food. The find contexts show that cooking took place around the well-known monumental buildings, while the large quantity of tools suggests feasting in addition to daily meals.

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Les mégalithes du département du Morbihan aims at a better understanding of megalithism, or more precisely megalithisms, and presents a new approach to the relationship between standing stones (menhirs) and tombs (dolmens). The architectural analyses developed raise questions about their complementarity. They are based on a corpus of architectural plans comprising 1413 megalithic monuments from the Department of Morbihan, including 13,200 vertical slabs, the result of thirty years of research and field observations, and including more than 250 unpublished monuments. Two main approaches are discussed: descriptive architectural analysis of the plans on the one hand, and analysis of landscape and environmental elements on the other. The parallels between the stones erected in the open air and those, sometimes identical in their dimensions, their morphology and their geology, which constitute the rooms, the corridors, and the facings of the funerary monuments, consolidate and develop observations already made by other archaeologists on the reuse of these Neolithic standing stones. The observation that these parallels extend to the symmetry and aestheticism of the structures is quite new. These unprecedented and convincing results brought by this analysis of the alignments of standing stones and funerary architectures demonstrate how a subject that has been explored since the nineteenth century by many researchers can still reveal hidden truths.

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The Continuity of Pre-Islamic Motifs in Javanese Mosque Ornamentation assesses the continuity and significance of Hindu-Buddhist design motifs in Islamic mosques in Java. The research starts from a belief that typical Javanese ornaments were consistently used both in pre-Islamic Hindu-Buddhist temples and Islamic mosques in Indonesia. This phenomenon was a result of syncretic Javanese Islam, composed of mystic animism, Hindu-Buddhism, and Islam, which differed from orthodox Islam in the Near East and Arab world. The volume investigates four pre-Islamic motifs in Javanese mosque ornamentation from the 15th century to the present day: prehistoric tumpals, Hindu-Buddhist kala-makaras, lotus buds, and scrolls, all of which have symbolic connotations and are used to decorate sanctuaries. For a comparison between temple and mosque ornamentation, 10 Hindu-Buddhist temples and 30 mosques were selected, and a representative sample of each motif was taken during the researcher’s fieldwork. The findings revealed continuity in the four motifs across the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods, reflected in lines, shapes, forms, and rhythms. The symbolic connotations of the four motifs allowed them to continue, and their influence was dependent upon the creativity of the local genius in each epoch.

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Archaeology and History of Toraijin: Human, technological, and cultural flow from the Korean Peninsula to the Japanese Archipelago c. 800 BC–AD 600 explores the fundamental role in the history of the Japanese archipelago played by Toraijin – immigrants mainly from the Korean Peninsula – during this formative period. The arrival of immigrant rice-agriculturalists from the peninsula in the early first millennium BC was the first of three major waves of technological transfer between the continent and the islands. The second brought bronze and iron-working to the archipelago around the 4th century BC, and the third brought elite crafts and administrative technology as well as Confucianism and Buddhism in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. In light of the recently uncovered archaeological data and ancient historical records, this book presents a panoramic bird’s eye view of the fourteen centuries-long Toraijin story, from c. 800~600 BC to AD 600 or thereabouts by answering the following seven questions: Where did the Toraijin come from? What was their historical and socio-cultural background? Why did they leave their homeland? Where did they settle in the Archipelago? What did they do in the Archipelago? How did the Archipelago people treat the Toraijin? What contributions did the Toraijin make to the ancient Japanese society?

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Today the Upper Thames Valley is a region of green pastures and well-managed farmland, interspersed with pretty villages and intersected by a meandering river. The discovery in 1989 of a mammoth tusk in river gravels at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, revealed the very different ancient past of this landscape. Here, some 200,000 years ago, mammoths, straight-tusked elephants, lions, and other animals roamed across grasslands with scattered trees, occasionally disturbed by small bands of Neanderthals. The pit where the tusk was discovered, destined to become a waste disposal site, provided a rare opportunity to conduct intensive excavations that extended over a period of 10 years. This work resulted in the recording and recovery of more than 1500 vertebrate fossils and an abundance of other biological material, including insects, molluscs, and plant remains, together with 36 stone artefacts attributable to Neanderthals. The well-preserved plant remains include leaves, nuts, twigs and large oak logs. Vertebrate remains notably include the most comprehensive known assemblage of a distinctive small form of the steppe mammoth, Mammuthus trogontherii, that is characteristic of an interglacial period equated with marine isotope stage 7 (MIS 7). Richly illustrated throughout, Mammoths and Neanderthals in the Thames Valley offers a detailed account of all these finds and will be of interest to Quaternary specialists and students alike.

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Lithic Studies: Anatolia and Beyond aims to show networks of cultural interactions by focusing on the latest lithic studies from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans, bringing to the forefront the connectedness and techno-cultural continuity of knapped and ground stone technologies. Lithic studies are mostly conducted on a site by site basis, and specialist studies on lithics tend to focus primarily on technology and typology. As a result, information acquired through lithic research is presented as the identifier of the particular site with the addition of brief local correlations. This creates isolated islands of information. This volume is intended to bring these islands together to build the bigger picture, showcasing the fluidity of technological change, transitional cultural developments, and cultural formation by focusing on the interrelations between sites, localities and regions. Individually and collectively the wide range of papers in the volume give perspectives on Neolithization as seen through stone technologies, highlighting both regional trends and interregional relationships. The volume lays the foundations for creating an integrated understanding of Neolithic lithic technologies across the broad geographical regions of Turkey, Greece and the Balkans.

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Alexandria Antiqua: A Topographical Catalogue and Reconstruction is an attempt to find a way through an archaeological labyrinth of fragmentary evidence. Taking into account the last two centuries of systematic research into the topography of the ancient city while integrating the latest discoveries, the volume aims to catalogue the archaeological sites in Alexandria, from the recordings of the French expedition (1798-99) to the present-day finds. The attempt is also made to reconstruct the urban layout and landscape at the time of the city’s Graeco-Macedonian foundation in the 4th century BC, and then through the successive changes which took place up to the Arab conquest in the 7th century AD. To this end, a holistic approach to topographic reconstruction is adopted, where material culture is studied in conjunction with the historical record. The results are displayed in AutoCAD maps and over 340 illustrations.

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JHP is an independent learned journal dedicated to the research of ceramics and objects of daily use of the Hellenistic period in the Mediterranean region and beyond. It aims at bringing together archaeologists, historians, philologists, numismatists and scholars of related disciplines engaged in the research of the Hellenistic heritage.

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Spectacle and Display: A Modern History of Britain’s Roman Mosaic Pavements is the first narrative to explore responses and attitudes to mosaics, not just at the point of discovery but during their subsequent history. It is a field which has received scant attention in the literature and provides a compelling insight into the agency of these spectacular remains. Analysis shows how mosaics have influenced and have been instrumental in the commodification of the past, the development of conservation practice and promoting the rise of the archaeologist. ‘The most spectacular remains of Roman Britain’ is a familiar description applied to the discovery of mosaics floors. They are exceptional symbols of Roman life in the province of Britannia and each new discovery is eagerly reported in the press. Yet one estimate suggested that 75% of all known mosaics from Britain have been lost, and they are commonly displayed out of context, wall mounted as artwork in museums and exhibitions and far from their role as floors. This is a contested narrative in which spectacle and survival, conservation and fine art, ownership and curation provide the discourse and texts of contemporary attitudes.

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Hunde in der römischen Antike: Rassen/Typen, Zucht, Haltung und Verwendung deals extensively with the living environment of the dog in Roman antiquity, based on literary and iconographic sources as well as archaeological and archaeozoological finds. The knowledge gained from this is documented by numerous images. Older research opinions, some of which have gone unchecked for more than a hundred years, are examined and—where necessary—corrected. For the first time, a catalogue of the more than eighty dog breeds/types documented from antiquity is presented with their names, origins, appearance and the special characteristics of these animals. The ancient theories of dog breeding are compared with modern practices. A catalogue of the previously known dog names has been revised with around sixty new names added. The book examines how dogs were housed, what accessories were used and how the animals were fed. It sheds light on illnesses, medical treatment and the care of elderly dogs. A catalogue of epitaphs and extant canine tombstones gives an insight into the emotional world of grieving animal owners. Dogs not only served as guards, shepherds, hunters and lap dogs but also had other important roles such as sacred animals in temples or as waste disposers for sanitation. But they were also used corporeally: their fur was tanned, and their body parts were needed for magical rituals. In short, dogs played an important role in many areas of life, such that everyday life in the Classical world could not be imagined without them.

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London’s Waterfront 1100–1666: excavations in Thames Street, London, 1974–84 presents and celebrates the mile-long Thames Street in the City of London and the land south of it to the River Thames as an archaeological asset. The argument is based on the reporting of four excavations of 1974–84 by the Museum of London near the north end of London Bridge: Swan Lane, Seal House, New Fresh Wharf and Billingsgate Lorry Park. Here the findings of the period 1100–1666 are presented. Buildings and property development on sixteen properties south of Thames Street, on land reclaimed in many stages since the opening of the 12th century, include part of the parish church of St Botolph Billingsgate. The many units of land reclamation are dated by dendrochronology, coins and documents. They have produced thousands of artefacts and several hundred kilos of native and foreign pottery. Much of this artefactual material has been published, but in catalogue form (shoes, knives, horse fittings, dress accessories, textiles, household equipment). Now the context of these finds, their deposition in groups, is laid out for the first time. Highlights of the publication include the first academic analysis and assessment of a 13th- or 14th-century trumpet from Billingsgate, the earliest surviving straight trumpet in Europe; many pilgrim souvenirs; analysis of two drains of the 17th century from which suggestions can be made about use of rooms and spaces within documented buildings; and the proposal that one of the skeletons excavated from St Botolph’s church is John Reynewell, mayor of London in 1426–7 and a notable figure in London’s medieval history. The whole publication encourages students and other researchers of all kinds to conduct further research on any aspect of the sites and their very rich artefactual material, which is held at the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive. This is a significantly large and varied dataset for the archaeology and history of London in the period 1100 to 1666 which can be continuously interrogated for generations to come.

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The Cultures of Ancient Xinjiang, Western China: Crossroads of the Silk Roads unveils the ancient secrets of Xinjiang, western China, one of the least known but culturally rich and complex regions located at the heart of Asia. Historically, Xinjiang has been the geographic hub of the Silk Roads, serving international links between cultures to the west, east, north and south. Trade, artefacts, foods, technologies, ideas, beliefs, animals and people have traversed the glacier covered mountain and desert boundaries. Perhaps best known for the Taklamakan desert, whose name translates in the Uyghur language as ‘You can go in, you will never come out’, here the region is portrayed as the centre of an ancient Bronze Age culture, revealed in the form of the famous Tarim Mummies and their grave goods. Three authoritative chapters by Chinese archaeologists appear here for the first time in English, giving international audiences direct access to the latest research ranging from the central-eastern Xiaohe region to the western valleys of the Bortala and Yili Rivers. Other contributions by European, Australian and Chinese archaeologists address the many complexities of the cultural exchanges that ranged from Mongolia, through to Kashgar, South Asia, Central Asia and finally Europe in pre-modern times.

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Gandhāran art is often regarded as the epitome of cultural exchange in antiquity. The ancient region of Gandhāra, centred on what is now the northern tip of Pakistan, has been called the ‘crossroads of Asia’. The Buddhist art produced in and around this area in the first few centuries AD exhibits extraordinary connections with other traditions across Asia and as far as the Mediterranean. Since the nineteenth century, the Graeco-Roman associations of Gandhāran art have attracted particular attention. Classically educated soldiers and administrators of that era were astonished by the uncanny resemblance of many works of Gandhāran sculpture to Greek and Roman art made thousands of miles to the west. More than a century later we can recognize that the Gandhāran artists’ appropriation of classical iconography and styles was diverse and extensive, but the explanation of this ‘influence’ remains puzzling and elusive. The Gandhāra Connections project at the University of Oxford’s Classical Art Research Centre was initiated principally to cast new light on this old problem. This volume is the third set of proceedings of the project’s annual workshop, and the first to address directly the question of cross-cultural influence on and by Gandhāran art. The contributors wrestle with old controversies, particularly the notion that Gandhāran art is a legacy of Hellenistic Greek rule in Central Asia and the growing consensus around the important role of the Roman Empire in shaping it. But they also seek to present a more complex and expansive view of the networks in which Gandhāra was embedded. Adopting a global perspective on the subject, they examine aspects of Gandhāra’s connections both within and beyond South Asia and Central Asia, including the profound influence which Gandhāran art itself had on the development of Buddhist art in China and India.

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Pious Pilgrims, Discerning Travellers, Curious Tourists: Changing patterns of travel to the Middle East from medieval to modern times comprises a varied collection of seventeen papers presented at the biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) held in York in July 2019, which together will provide the reader with a fascinating introduction to travel in and to the Middle East over more than a thousand years. As in previous ASTENE volumes, the material presented ranges widely, from Ancient Egyptian sites through medieval pilgrims to tourists and other travellers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The papers embody a number of different traditions, including not only actual but also fictional travel experiences, as well as pilgrimage or missionary narratives reflecting quests for spiritual wisdom as well as geographical knowledge. They also reflect the shifting political and cultural relations between Europe and the Near and Middle East, and between the different religions of the area, as seen and described by travellers both from within and from outside the region over the centuries. The men and women travellers discussed travelled for a wide variety of reasons — religious, commercial, military, diplomatic, or sometimes even just for a holiday! — but whatever their primary motivations, they were almost always also inspired by a sense of curiosity about peoples and places less familiar than their own. By recording their experiences, whether in words or in art, they have greatly contributed to our understanding of what has shaped the world we live in. As Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest of medieval Arab travellers, wrote: ‘Travelling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller!’

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Community Archaeology presents the results of an investigation of wetland heritage in eastern Australia, with important contributions to the archaeology of the Tasmanian Midlands and the New England Tablelands. In this first substantial project in these bioregions since 1991, OSL and radiocarbon dating at lagoon sites provided dates going back to 8000 BP, significantly extending previous information. In both regions a range of stone artefact scatters were recorded adjacent to lagoons, suggesting associated ceremonial activities. Across the regions, new OSL dates were obtained for lunette formation. These were unexpectedly diverse, with OSL dates not clustered around the Last Glacial Maximum at 20k. With sediment particle sizes suggesting both wind and water deposition, quite individual local lunette depositional histories not closely related to global climates are indicated. The book also contributes to the important global field of community engagement and education. Unlike most projects where Aboriginal people are involved in commercial archaeology, this project focussed on research. Community Elders were research team partners during fieldwork and training. Work-integrated -learning, at University and on-country locations, proved very successful as a learning approach for young participants.

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From Hispalis to Ishbiliyya: The ancient port of Seville, from the Roman Empire to the end of the Islamic period (45 BC - AD 1248) focuses on the history and development of the ancient port of Seville, which is located in the lower Guadalquivir River Basin, Spain. This unique study is important because, despite its commercial importance, little has been known about the port, and so the purpose was to examine the topography, layout, and facilities of the ancient port of Seville, their history and development from approximately the 1st c. BC to about the 13th c. AD. This longue durée study was conducted adopting a holistic and interdisciplinary approach by examining a diverse range of information (historical, archaeological and scientific), a maritime archaeological perspective as well as a diachronic study of three different historical periods (Roman, Late Antique, Islamic). As a result, it has been possible to offer a description of the construction, development, and demise of the port. The study was one of the first comprehensive studies of an ancient port in Spain and one of the first to be conducted in a combined holistic and diachronic manner in Europe. This methodology has produced significant results not obtained with other simpler approaches, thus serving as a model for studies of other archaeological sites, especially those in relation with maritime or riverine culture.

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How did the Persian King of Kings Get His Wine? the upper Tigris in antiquity (c.700 BCE to 636 CE)' explores the upper valley of the Tigris during antiquity. The area is little known to scholarship, and study is currently handicapped by the security situation in southeast Turkey and by the completion during 2018 of the Ilısu dam. The reservoir being created will drown a large part of the valley and will destroy many archaeological sites, some of which have not been investigated. The course of the upper Tigris discussed here is the section from Mosul up to its source north of Diyarbakır; the monograph describes the history of the river valley from the end of the Late Assyrian empire through to the Arab conquests, thus including the conflicts between Rome and Persia. It considers the transport network by river and road and provides an assessment of the damage to cultural heritage caused both by the Saddam dam (also known as the Eski Mosul dam) in Iraq and by the Ilısu dam in south-east Turkey. A catalogue describes the sites important during the long period under review in and around the valley. During the period reviewed this area was strategically important for Assyria’s relations with its northern neighbours, for the Hellenistic world’s relations with Persia and for Roman relations with first the kingdom of Parthia and then with Sassanian Persia.

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Whereas animals are a frequent depiction on gemstones within the Greek and Roman periods, and play a key role in symbolic representations on these engraved gems, they have generally been overlooked with little in the way of focussed academic study. In the present research, a large group of Greek and Roman gems (intaglios) bearing depictions of animals was selected. The gems are presented through a detailed study of the themes described in an attempt to form a comprehensive approach to the depictions of animals and their significance on Greek and Roman gems. The work examines the associations between animal depictions and the type of gemstone and its believed qualities. The study also discusses the changes in representation of animals on gems compared to other, larger media, and questions the significance of these changes. It is concluded here that as far as animal motifs are concerned, the gems could be accorded with a deeper symbolism, such as good luck, abundance and fertility, health, success, and victory. All these motifs are perceived as capable of weakening hostile forces. The animals engraved can also symbolise nature's abundance and fertility, especially when represented along with their offspring, pasturing and grazing, or accompanied by such fertility symbols as cornucopia, ears of corn, and wine goblets. Other animals are related to certain gods, and even comprise their attributes, and thus it was believed that the owner of an engraved gem was accorded divine protection.

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This is the first reference book that deals specifically with all types of sewing-thimble made from copper-alloy or silver, or either of these metals combined with iron or steel, and found in Britain: also included is a seemingly rare gold specimen. Domed, ring-type and open-top (here the latter classed as a new type) sewing-thimbles are described, among them unusual examples and others previously absent from the known record. From Britain the earliest reliable dating for these humble yet fascinating tools is between c.1270 – c.1350, and continues through the medieval and early post-medieval period and into the 18th and 19th centuries. Dating from at least the 17th century, subjected to detailed attention is the largely neglected sailmakers’ and sailors’ palm-iron, a heavy-duty tool made from either iron, steel or copper alloy. Also described are the two known types of silver or copper-alloy finger guard, an 18th – 19th century tool used in conjunction with finer sewing-thimbles. The majority of sewing-thimbles and other sewing-tools catalogued here are credited to metal-detectorists or members of The Society of Thames Mudlarks, who also use metal-detectors. To show constructional detail, each object is archaeologically drawn. This information is essential for metal-detectorists, archaeologists, museum curators, sewing-tool collectors and dealers, or anyone with an interest, seeking to gauge the type or age of any particular sewing-thimble or palm-iron.

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Greek sanctuaries are among the best known archaeological sites in ancient Greece. However, after over 150 years of excavations and research we know surprisingly little about some of their aspects, such as the rituals enacted in the sanctuary, the nature of original local deities and how aspects of their character were assimilated into those of the Olympians, why sanctuaries were established in certain places, and how to determine who the sanctuary was established for when no epigraphical material is present. Artemis and Her Cult provides a first attempt to bring together archaeological and literary sources from two main Artemis sanctuaries, hoping to contribute to a clearer picture of her cult. An account of Artemis’ different characters describes her as a mother of gods, a goddess of wilderness, animals and hunt; a goddess of birth, infants and children (and young animals); as well as a goddess of youth and marriage and rites of passage. These descriptions are followed by an up-to-date account of the archaeological record of the sanctuaries of Artemis Orthia at Sparta and Artemis Ephesia at Ephesus. For the comparison the site of Athena Alea at Tegea is examined. The three accounts offer a full study of the architectural development and the range of artefacts made of different materials. The varied character is Artemis are further analysed by looking at the archaeology relating to the cult and the rites of passage taking place at the sites. The rites of passage are reconstructed by using the literary accounts.

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This volume presents a series of studies of the wine from Hispania Citerior-Tarraconensis traded in amphorae, with the aim of demonstrating (as has recently been done for the amphora production) the existence of different trade dynamics, according to individual cases, territories and periods. While seeking to avoid descriptions of a generalised nature, the present volume aims to illustrate the complexity of the trading system, emphasizing intra- and inter-provincial commercial patterns and the way in which these evolved during the period considered. Although this work includes the results of a few highly specific case studies (which cannot replace the findings from other better or lesser known sites), they cover most of the areas of wine production and trade and all the dimensions of analysis in which archaeological, epigraphic and literary data related to the commercial distribution might be framed.

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Presents 18 of Beeston's papers from PSAS, with the addition of five works. This book also includes a personal reminiscence by W W Muller.

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