Search results for ""University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology Anthropology""

This is the fourth volume in a series of final publications on the joint American-Greek archaeological excavations at Pseira in northeast Crete. The site is a seaport dating from the end of the Final Neolithic until the Late Minoan period. Pseira IV publishes the architecture and associated finds from 39 locations in Areas B, C, D, and F in the Minoan town of Pseira. The Bronze Age settlement is located on Pseira Island, off the coast of Crete in the Gulf of Mirabello.

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Pseira, in northeast Crete, was a port dating from the end of the Neolithic until the Late Minoan. This, the second volume on the recent joint American-Greek archaeological excavations, reports on the new researches on building AC, the Late Minoan I shrine, first excavated in 1907, but badly recorded and then studied only for its beautiful reliefs, not its architecture. The recent excavations have paid particular attention to the architecture including the reconstruction of the wall paintings, and the textile patterns from stucco reliefs, which are reported in full in this volume.

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The Minoan town at Gournia flourished from the Early Bronze Age until its destruction at the end of the Late Minoan IB period. It was later resettled before being abandoned again in LM IIIB. The town was substantial, with houses arranged in irregular blocks. This book presents the pottery found during Gournia's excavation in 1901, 1903 and 1904. This collection, now in The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, is the largest and most important group of Minoan objects from a single site outside of Europe.

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This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

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Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund, 19

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This third volume in the series is devoted to presenting and interpreting the metallurgical evidence from Ban Chiang, northeast Thailand, in the broader regional context. Because the production of metal artifacts must engage numerous communities in order to acquire and process the raw materials and then create and distribute products, understanding metals in past societies requires a regional perspective. This is the first book to compile, summarize, and synthesize the English-language copper production and exchange evidence available so far from Thailand and Laos in a thorough and systematic manner. Chapters by Vincent C. Pigott and Thomas O. Pryce examine in detail the mining and smelting of copper in several sites, and the lead-isotope evidence for the sourcing of artifacts found in two of the consumption sites included in the study. Another chapter compiles the metal consumption evidence, including results of technical studies on prehistoric metals recovered from more than 35 sites excavated in central and northeast Thailand. This compilation demonstrates important regional variation in chaînes opératoires, allowing explication and synthesis of the technological traditions found in this region during prehistory. The review and compilation sheds new light on the social and economic context for the adoption and development of metallurgy in this part of the world. One key insight is that Thailand presents a case for a "community-driven bronze age," where the choices of peaceful local communities, not elites or centralized political entities, shaped how metal technological systems were implemented in this region. This fresh perspective on the role of metallurgy in ancient societies contributes to an expanded global understanding of how humans have engaged metal technologies, contributing to debunking the conventional paradigm that emphasized a top-down view and a standardized metallurgical sequence, a paradigm that has dominated archeometallurgical studies for the last century or more. Thai Archaeology Monograph Series, 2C University Museum Monograph, 153

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Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund, 18

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Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund, 17

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Pseira, a tiny islet near the coast of eastern Crete, has been called a priceless jewel in Crete's archaeological crown. In 1906 and 1907, the American archaeologist Richard Seager unearthed the extensive remains of a Bronze Age village on Pseira. Little was known about this site until a joint Greek-American project directed by Philip P. Betancourt and Costis Davaras returned to the island in 1985. This is the first volume in a series of final publications on the joint American-Greek archaeological excavations at Pseira in northeast Crete. The site is a seaport dating from the end of the Final Neolithic until the Late Minoan period. This volume presents a series of houses whose main period of occupation is Late Minoan IB. The architecture is constructed of stone and remarkably well preserved. The text includes detailed catalog entries, profile drawings, and stone-by-stone architectural plans.

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The emergence and adoption of metallurgy is one of the seminal topics of investigation in the history of archaeology, particularly in the history of archaeological research in Southeast Asia. The site of Ban Chiang, Thailand, is a central site in debates surrounding the chronology and significance of early metallurgy in the region. This book is the first in a series of four volumes that review the contributions of Ban Chiang and three related sites in northeast Thailand excavated by the Penn Museum to an understanding early metallurgy in Thailand. As the study of archaeometallurgy is a complex topic that draws on numerous technical and social science disciplines, this introductory volume presents in several chapters the background needed to assess the metal and related evidence presented in the subsequent volumes in this series. A history of perspectives on the role of metals in ancient societies generally and Southeast Asia, specifically, is provided. Other chapters debunk the conventional paradigm for understanding metals and society and provide current theoretical perspectives and new paradigms for the study of ancient metals. The geological basis for the presence and location of metal ore resources in the region is reviewed. The final chapter presents a technical overview of ways material properties of ancient metals may be studied. While providing a background to the study of metals at Ban Chiang, the volume also reviews, synthesizes, and repositions the method and theory for the study of archaeometallurgy generally. Thai Archaeology Monograph Series, 2A; University Museum Monograph, 149

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This third volume in the series of publications on the Minoan site of Pseira focuses on the Plateia building discovered in 1986. This report on the findings includes an introduction to the project, followed by a detailed discussion of the architecture and small finds: pottery, stone tools, terracotta objects, sealstones, shell artefacts, faunal remains, charcoal, lithics, plaster and so on. This database of evidence allows an interpretation of the function of the buildings, the residential, cult and industrial activities, and its relationship to the Plateia itself.

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The foundation of archaeometallurgy is the study of excavated assemblages of metals and related remains. This volume presents in detail how the metals and such remains as crucibles excavated from four sites in northeast Thailand have been studied to understand the place of metal objects and technology in the ancient past of this region. In addition to typological examination, hundreds of technical analyses reveal the technological capabilities, preferences, and styles of metal artifact manufacturers in this part of Thailand. Detailed examination of contexts of recovery of metal remains employing a "life history" approach indicates that metal objects in those societies were used primarily in daily life and, only occasionally, as grave goods. The most surprising find is that casting of copper-base artifacts to final form took place at all these village sites during the metal age period, indicating a decentralized final production stage that may prove to be unusual for metal age societies. These insights are made possible by applying the methods and theories introduced in the first volume of the suite of volumes that study the metal remains from Ban Chiang in regional contest. Thai Archaeology Monograph Series, 2B University Museum Monograph, 150

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