Search results for ""Archaeopress""

Recycling is a basic anthropological process of humankind. The reutilization of materials or of ideas from the Past is a process determined by various natural or cultural causes. Recycling can be motivated by a crisis or by a complex symbolic cause like the incorporation of the Past into the Present. What archaeology has not insisted upon is the dimensional scale of the process, which operates from the micro-scale of the recycling of the ancestors’ material, up to the macro-scale of the landscape. It is well known that there are direct relations between artefacts and landscapes in what concerns the materiality and mobility of objects. An additional relation between artefact and landscape may be the process of recycling. In many ways artefact and landscape can be considered as one aspect of material culture, perceived at a different scale, since both have the same materiality and suffer the same process of reutilisation. This book invites archaeologists to approach the significant process of recycling within the archaeological record at two different levels: of artefacts and of landscape.

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Athenian governance and culture are reconstructed from the Bronze Age into the historical era based on traditions, archaeological contexts and remains, foremost the formal commensal and libation krater. Following Mycenaean immigration from the Peloponnesos during the transitional years, changes in governance are observable. Groups under aristocratic leadership, local and immigrant, aspired to coexist under a surprisingly formal set of stipulations that should be recognized as Athens’ first constitution. Synoikismos did not refer to a political union of Attica, sometimes attributed to Theseus, but to a union of aristocratic houses (oikoi). The union replaced absolute monarchy with a new oligarchical-monarchy system, each king selected from one of the favoured aristocratic houses and ruling for life without inheritance. The system prevailed through the late eleventh to the mid-eighth c. and is corroborated by Athenian traditions cross-referenced with archaeological data from the burial grounds, and a formerly discredited list of Athenian Iron Age kings. Some burial grounds have been tentatively identified as those of the Melanthids, Alcmeonids, Philaids and Medontids, who settled the outskirts of Athens along with other migrant groups following the decline of the elite in the Peloponnesos. While the Melanthids left during the 11th c. Ionian Migration other aristocratic houses remained and contributed to the evolution of the historical era polis of Athens. One noble family, the Alcmeonids preserved their cemetery into the Archaic period in a burial record of 600 years’ duration. Incorporated into this work is a monograph on the Athenian formal krater used by these primarily Neleid aristocratic houses in assembly and ritual. Some Homeric practices parallel those found in Athens, so the Ionic poets may have documented customs that had existed on the Mainland and were transferred to Ionia during the Ionian Migration. The demise of both the constitution and the standard, ancestral krater in Athens following a mid-eighth c. watershed is testimony to an interval of political change, as noted by Ian Morris, before the systematized establishment of annual archonship in the following century. The support this research has given to the validity of the King List has resulted in a proposed new chronology, with an earlier onset for the Geometric period at 922 BC, rather than the currently accepted 900 BC. The relative chronology of Coldstream based on style is generally accepted here, but some intermediate stages are revised based on perceptible break data, such as the onset of a new kingship, a reported war, or the demise of a governance system.

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Magallania defines the region between the Santa Cruz river basin to the north and the Fuegian expression of the Andes to the south. It is one of the southernmost spaces in the world and the last to be occupied by humans, a process that occurred at least at the end of the Pleistocene (11,000 to 9,000 AP) and before the complete formation of the Strait of Magellan (ca. 8000 AP). Thereafter, the Strait functioned as a biogeographic barrier, creating conditions for divergent cultural evolution between the populations of the mainland and Tierra del Fuego. For this reason, the archeology of Magallania offers a unique possibility to inquire about the relationship between the environmental dynamics and the spatial organization of populations of hunter-gatherers settled on both sides of the Strait of Magellan. Spanish Description: En su versión original, Magallania es el nombre acuñado por Martinic para definir la región comprendida entre la cuenca del río Santa Cruz al norte hasta la expresión fueguina de la cordillera de los Andes al sur. Es uno de los espacios más australes del mundo y de los últimos en ser ocupados por humanos, proceso que ocurrió al menos a fines del Pleistoceno (11.000 a 9.000 AP) y antes de la completa formación del estrecho de Magallanes (ca. 8000 AP). A partir de entonces el Estrecho funcionó como una barrera biogeográfica, creando condiciones para que ocurra la evolución cultural divergente entre las poblaciones del continente y la Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. Por este motivo, la arqueología de Magallania ofrece una posibilidad única para indagar acerca de la relación entre la dinámica ambiental y la organización espacial de las poblaciones de cazadores recolectores asentadas a un lado y otro del estrecho de Magallanes.

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Archaic humans were present for over a million years in western Mediterranean Europe where they left very many traces of their early stone-age activities and behaviour, and sometimes even human skeletal remains. This book evaluates archaeological findings about their life-ways at many important sites in Italy, southern France, and Spain, from the earliest ones 1,300,000 years ago, to those of Neanderthals fifty-thousand years ago, just before they were superseded by skeletally-“modern” humans. The cognitive and manual skills of archaic humans in western Mediterranean Europe are considered in the Pleistocene contexts of major climatic fluctuations and changing environmental circumstances. The book focusses on their remarkable capacity to adapt, frequently reinvent themselves, and persist for long periods of time, even though finally they did not endure. Their achievements and abilities withstand comparison to those of ancient humans in Africa or Asia during Early, Middle, and early Late Pleistocene times.

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The Nordic Bronze Age Symposium began modestly in 1977 with 13 participants, and has now expanded to over 120 participants: a tenfold increase that reflects the expanding role of Bronze Age research in Scandinavia, not least amongst younger researchers. From having taken a back seat in the 1970s, it is now in the driver’s seat in terms of expanding research themes, publications and international impact. This collection of articles helps to explain why the Bronze Age has come to hold such a fascination within modern archaeological research. By providing new theoretical and analytical perspectives on the evidence new interpretative avenues have opened, it situates the history of the Bronze Age in both a local and a global setting.

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This volume illustrates lamps from the Byzantine period excavated in the Holy Land and demonstrates the extent of their development since the first enclosing/capturing of light (fire) within a portable man-made vessel. Lamps, which held important material and religious functions during daily life and the afterlife, played a large role in conveying art and cultural and political messages through the patterns chosen to decorate them. These cultural, or even more their religious affinities, were chosen to be delivered on lamps (not on other vessels) more than ever during the Byzantine period; these small portable objects were used to ‘promote’ beliefs like the ‘press’ of today. Each cultural group marked the artifacts / lamps with its symbols, proverbs from the Old and New Testaments, and this process throws light on the deep rivalry between them in this corner of the ancient world. The great variety of lamps dealt with in this volume, arranged according to their various regions of origin, emphasizes their diversity, and probably local workshop manufacture, and stands in contrast to such a small country without any physical geographic barriers to cross, only mental ones (and where one basket of lamps could satisfy the full needs of the local population). The lamps of the Byzantine period reflect the era and the struggle in the cradle of the formation of the four leading faiths and cultures: Judaism (the oldest), Samaritanism (derived from the Jewish faith), newly-born Christianity – all three successors to the existing former pagan culture – and the last, Islam, standing on a new threshold. Unlike during the former Greek and Roman periods of rule, the land of Israel during the Byzantine period did not really have a central government or authority. The variety of the oil lamps, their order and place of appearance during the Byzantine period can be described as a ‘symphony played by a self-conducted orchestra, where new soloists rise and add a different motet, creating stormy music that expresses the rhythm of the era’. This volume, like the author’s earlier books on this subject, is intended to create a basis for further study and evaluation of the endless aspects that lamps bring to light and which are beyond the capacity of any single scholar.

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The Hellenistic society of the Rhodian metropolis, a naval aristocracy (Gabrielsen), dedicated bronze statues of their members in the sanctuaries and public buildings and used marble and -occasionally-lartios lithos to carve portrait-statues originally for funerary use and in a later period also for honorific purposes, figures of deities and decorative sculpture for the houses and the parks. The artists, local and itinerant, from Athens, the islands and the Asia Minor, established artistic workshops on Rhodes, some of them active for three centuries and for more than one generation. The impact of Rhodian art is evident on the islands of the Aegean and the cities of Asia Minor, due to the expansion of the Rhodian Peraia. Together with Pergamon, Rhodes emerges as a productive artistic centre of the Hellenistic era, creating statuary types and combining them with landscape elements. The radiance of its art is evident in the late Hellenistic period in Rome, the new capital of the world, where the Rhodian artists create mythological statuary groups set in grottoes. This volume presents the large-scale Rhodian sculpture of the Hellenistic and Roman period through the publication of sixty unpublished sculptures of life size or larger than life size, together with forty-five sculptures already published. The sculptures are grouped according to their statuary type (gods, mortals and portraits), while those unable to be firmly identified due to their fragmentary condition are grouped under the category ‘uncertain identification’. The presentation of the sculptures is further supplemented by a technical description and an analysis of stylistic characteristics according to chronological development. Excavation data, wherever available, are also provided.

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Studies of Iron Age artefacts from Britain tend to be dominated either by the study of metalwork, or pottery. This book presents a study not only of a different material, but also a different type of object: glass beads. These are found in a range of different sizes, shapes, colours, and employ a variety of different decorative motifs. Through an analysis of glass beads from four key study regions in Britain, the book aims not only to address regional differences in appearance and chronology, but also to explore the role that this object played within the networks and relationships that constructed Iron Age society. It seeks to understand how they were used during their lives and how they came to be deposited within the archaeological record, in order to establish the social processes that glass beads were bound within. The results indicate that glass beads were a strongly regionalised artefact, potentially reflecting differing local preferences for colour and motif. In addition, glass beads, in combination with several other types of object, were integral to Middle Iron Age dress. Given that the first century BC is often seen as a turning point in terms of settlements and material culture, this supports the possibility of strong continental exchange during an earlier period for either glass beads or raw materials. However, by the Late Iron Age in the first century BC and early first century AD, their use had severely diminished.

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Scholars who will study the historiography of the European Neolithic, more particularly with regards to the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, will observe a progressive change in the core understanding of this period. For several decades the concept of ‘culture’ has been privileged and the adopted approach aimed to highlight the most significant markers likely to emphasise the character of a given culture and to stress its specificities, the foundations of its identity. In short, earlier research aimed primarily to highlight the differences between cultures by stressing the most distinctive features of each of them. The tendency was to differentiate, single out, and identify cultural boundaries. However, over the last few years this perspective has been universally challenged. Although regional originality and particularisms are still a focus of study, the research community is now interested in widely diffused markers, in medium-scale or large-scale circulation, and in interactions that make it possible to go beyond the traditional notion of ‘archaeological culture’. The networks related to raw materials or finished products are currently leading us to re-think the history of Neolithic populations on a more general and more global scale. The aim is no longer to stress differences, but on the contrary to identify what links cultures together, what reaches beyond regionalism in order to try to uncover the underlying transcultural phenomena. From culturalism, we have moved on to its deconstruction. This is indeed a complete change in perspective. This new approach certainly owes a great deal to all kinds of methods, petrographic, metal, chemical and other analyses, combined with effective tools such as the GIS systems that provide a more accurate picture of the sources, exchanges or relays used by these groups. It is also true that behind the facts observed there are social organisations involving prospectors, extractors, craftsmen, distributors, sponsors, users, and recyclers. We therefore found it appropriate to organise a session on the theme ‘Materials, productions, exchange networks and their impact on the societies of Neolithic Europe’. How is it possible to identify the circulation of materials or of finished objects in Neolithic Europe, as well as the social networks involved? Several approaches exist for the researcher, and the present volume provides some examples.

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Amphorae in the Eastern Mediterranean has been designed to share the subject of amphorae which were found on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey with the wider scholarly community. Amphorae from the shipwrecks discovered during underwater research, as well as the amphora specimens held in the region’s largest museum, Antalya Museum, are examined. To widen the scope of the book, the Aydın Aytuğ collection, which consists of amphorae collected in the region, is also included. Mediterranean amphorae which have not been found during excavations and underwater research undertaken by the author’s team up to now, are also presented. The amphorae and amphora-laden shipwrecks that are examined derive from the research carried out between 2011 and 2015, conducted in Antalya province in Lycia, Pamphylia and Rough West Cilicia regions, and off the coast of Silifke, which is a part of Rough East Cilicia. This research has obtained a wealth of new information, leading to a fresh look at the archaeology in this area.

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Collections management practice is an often ignored aspect of archaeological research and salvage activities in many Middle Eastern countries, yet literally thousands of artefacts are recovered every year with no real strategies for managing them sustainably into the future. In this guide, archaeologist Dianne Fitzpatrick sees archaeological collections management not in terms of a last-ditch effort to solve on-site storage crises and preservation problems at the end of a project, but as a means of integrating achievable good-practice strategies into research designs and site management plans from the start, or for that matter, at any time that assist project directors and local Antiquities Directorates. Strategies designed to protect and preserve ensure the cultural significance and research potential of artefacts is maintained throughout the archaeological process and encourages those creating, managing and preserving archaeological collections to work toward the same goals. Merging together conservation-led principles with current on-site practice in a practical manner, Managing Archaeological Collections in Middle Eastern Countries aims to be a good practice standard or checklist.

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The transfer, in 1981, of the town Museum collections in Sens (Yonne) to the old Archbishop’s palace required great discretion and an underground passage was planned between the two buildings. Preventive archaeological excavations unearthed 22 Gallo-Roman bone combs, as well as a further 17 pieces when the excavation area was expanded. This exceptional concentration of bone artefacts incited the author to start on an experimental search at a time when bone artefacts were not finding much interest among specialists. However, it was extremely adventurous to piece together a bone-worker production line and create a never before archaeologically discovered appliance used in Roman times. Obviously, the first reproductions have been directed towards combs. Those replicas pointed towards the material constraints, but also defined the constructions of necessary tools to take slabs off and conceive objects. Moreover, matrix origin – small sized compact bone – explained why bone workers used to juxtapose elements to get suitable surfaces. Various complications during free hand denture sawing led them to perfect another operating system, plausible and more reliable. Logical follow up would have been to extend experimental investigations, perhaps not to all the bone artefacts, but to a typical class of them, in order to complete the reconstructions of the equipment and suggest a general bone worker’s workshop arrangement. (French Description: French description: Le transfert, en 1981, des collections du Musée municipal de Sens (Yonne) dans l’ancien palais des Archevêques a nécessité le terrassement d’une jonction souterraine entre deux des bâtiments. Des fouilles archéologiques préventives ont notamment permis de découvrir 22 peignes en os d’époque gallo-romaine, puis 17 autres lors de l’extension du secteur. Cette exceptionnelle concentration a incité l’auteur à entreprendre une démarche expérimentale à une époque où l’on n’accordait que peu d’intérêt au mobilier osseux. On comprendra qu’il était alors aventureux de vouloir reconstituer la chaîne opératoire d’un tabletier et matérialiser l’appareillage dont on n’a aucun témoignage archéologique. C’est évidemment sur la mise en œuvre de peignes qu’ont porté les premières reproductions. Ces répliques montraient déjà certaines contraintes liées à la matière elle-même, mais permettaient également de cerner les outils nécessaires au prélèvement des plaquettes et à la conception de l’objet. Par ailleurs, l’origine des matrices - os compact dimensionnellement limité - expliquait pourquoi les tabletiers juxtaposaient les éléments pour obtenir la surface adéquate. Diverses complications, lors du sciage à main levée de la denture, ont amené à mettre au point un autre mode opératoire plausible et plus assuré. La suite logique voulait que les recherches expérimentales s’étendent sinon à l’ensemble du mobilier osseux, du moins à des catégories d’objets d’une même typologie permettant de compléter l’outillage et suggérer l’agencement de l’atelier d’un tabletier généraliste.)

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The papers collected in this book correspond to the lectures held during session B34 of UISPP conference in Burgos (June 2014) where the presentation of multidisciplinary works were encouraged. The main goal of bringing together specialists from various disciplines (humanities and natural sciences) was to debate, from different perspectives, the networks in raw materials and technological innovation in Prehistory and Protohistory, involving investigation topics typical of archaeometry: archeometallurgy, petrography, and mineralogy.

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What is considered masculine is not something given and innate to males but determined by cultural ideas and ideals constructed through performative practices – today and in the past. This book questions whether androcentric archaeology has taught us anything about prehistoric men and their masculinities. Starting from broad discussions of feminist theory and critical men’s studies, this study examines how notions of masculinity are expressed in cremation burials from the Late Bronze Age to the end of the Roman Period (1100 BC - 400 AD) in Eastern Norway and Funen in Denmark. It is argued that notions of masculinity were deeply intertwined with society, and when central aspects like war systems, task differentiation, or technology changed, so did gender and ideas of masculinity and vice versa. In the Late Bronze Age, an idealisation and sexualisation of the male body related to warrior esthetic was probably essential to the performance of masculinity. In the Early Roman Period, masculinity became bounded by what it was not – the unmanly. Warrior capabilities were the most prominent ideals of masculinity and concepts of unmanliness structured society, highlighting divergences between men and women. In the Late Roman Period, society grew more complex and multiple contemporary, possibly complementary masculinities associated with the rising class of free peasants, specific roles and regional differences developed and the warrior lost the dominant position as masculine ideal.

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This work seeks to understand the process of monetization within the economy of the Galicians and Asturians and the cultural ways in which the phenomenon occurred. Numismatic remains are studied in depth, found in four of the roads crossing the northwestern territory of the Iberian peninsula in Roman times; the tracks studied, as referenced in the Itinerary of Antonino, were XVII, XVIII, XIX and XX. All the coins discovered were imported, and so it was possible to mark precisely where the greatest influx of individuals and materials came from, as well as areas and zones of different speeds of monetization and, thus, Romanization. -Spanish Description: A través de este trabajo hemos pretendido comprender el proceso de monetización de la economía de galaicos y astures y las vías culturales por las que el fenómeno se produjo. Para ello hemos estudiado en profundidad los restos numismáticos aparecidos en cuatro de las calzadas que atravesaban el territorio noroccidental de la península ibérica en época romana, las vías XVII, XVIII, XIX y XX del Itinerario de Antonino. Debido a que toda la moneda que encontramos en este territorio es importada, hemos podido marcar con precisión cuáles fueron los horizontes de mayor entrada de individuos y materias, así como áreas y zonas de diferentes velocidades de monetización y con ello de romanización. Seguramente las zonas cercanas a campamentos, dónde se alojaron miles de soldados cuya única economía posible era la monetaria, conocieron y dependieron pronto del valor de la moneda. Igualmente los nuevos núcleos romanos administrativos hubieron de ser centros focales de monetización, aunque desconocemos el por qué no se abrieron cecas de moneda en estas ricas ciudades con importante tráfico de mineral y de gentes, como pueda ser el caso de Astorga o Braga.

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This volume presents the long history of Syria through a jouney of the most important and recently-excavated archaeological sites. The sites cover over 1.8 million years and all regions in Syria; 110 academics have contributed information on 103 excavations for this volume. Based on these contributions the volume offers a detailed summary of the history of Syria, a history as important as any in terms of the development of human society. It is hoped that this knowledge will offer not only an increased understanding of the country but also act as a deterrent to the destruction of Syrian cultural heritage and facilitate the protection of Syrian sites. The following paper(s) are available to download in Open Access: Dja’de el-Mughara (Aleppo) - Eric Coqueugniot: Download

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This book is an essay on architectural drawings of the Greek and Roman world. The first chapter is focused on the possibility that ancient treatises of architectures were endowed with drawings in order to make clear expositions which sometimes were not easily explainable only with words. Then the drawings which once clarified the treatise of Vitruvius are considered. The problem concerning the possible presence of drawings in post-Vitruvian architectural treatises is also discussed. The issue as to whether descriptive literary compositions sometimes contained illustrations as well is also examined. Then representations of architecture in Roman treatises on divisions of land (the so called gromatic treatises) are considered. The references to architectural drawings in literary and epigraphical testimonia are collected and a catalogue of the surviving Greek and Roman drawings of buildings or of parts of them is given. Thus this research offers all the basic data for the study of an important tool in the context of architecture in antiquity.

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From March 2009 Statistical Research Inc. (USA), Nexus Heritage (UK) and the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (Dakar, Senegal) jointly undertook an integrated programme of cultural heritage research and investigation in the Sabodala area of Senegal. This was part of an environmental and social impact assessment in compliance with Senegalese law and international best practice. The principal investigators were Jeff Altschul (SRI) Gerry Wait (Nexus) and Ibrahima Thiaw (IFAN). This report is the outcome of those investigations and makes a significant contribution to the archaeology and ethnography of eastern Senegal. Combining ethnographic and archaeological data yields a picture of a period of intense social change that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century and extended well into the mid-twentieth century. This involved the overturning of previous norms by social groups of mixed ethnicity, who proceeded to create new social work-arounds for previous ethnic prohibitions. It also probably involved the final end to slavery, but possibly only within living memory. It seems likely that some sites—archaeological as well as traditional sacred properties—provide tangible links between the current villages and a highly contested and emotionally charged past. To paraphrase the American novelist, William Faulkner, the past in Sabodala is never dead; in fact, it’s not even past.

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This book presents a collection of papers from the Symposium on Cultural Dynamics and Production Activities in Ancient Western Mexico, held at the Center for Archaeological Research of the Colegio de Michoacán on September 18-19, 2014. While these thought-provoking essays on key topics in Western Mexican archaeology will spark debate among scholars interested in this cultural area, they will also be of interest to students of ancient Mesoamerica as a whole. The time is ripe for insightful discussions and new syntheses of archaeological research in Western Mesoamerica, and this volume represents, undoubtedly, a valuable contribution to this urgent task. These papers are grouped into three thematic areas. The first, Cultural dynamics in Western Mexico, includes essays on: The challenges of archaeology in flood-prone areas; Exploitation of local resources and imported products; Settlement systems of the Tarascan state; and Stone tools as indicators of task specialization. The second section, Production of strategic resources, analyzes the following topics: The obsidian jewelry of the Teuchitlán Tradition; Differing obsidian economies in Teuchitlán culture; Source areas and obsidian exploitation in Michoacán; The history of pottery production in Capula, Michoacán; Ethnoarchaeology of Tarascan pottery: domestic production and decoration styles; Ceramics, social status, and the Tarascan state economy; and Copper as a strategic resource in pre-Hispanic Western Mexico; while part three focuses on Trade and exchange: Circulation of goods and communication routes between Western and Central Mexico; Contrasting models of ceramic production in the Tarascan state; and Ceramic evidence of contact between Teotihuacan, the Bajío, and southern Hidalgo.

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This volume brings together all the successful peer-reviewed papers submitted for the proceedings of the 43rd conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology that took place in Siena (Italy) from March 31st to April 2nd 2015. Altogether, within the four days of the conference 280 papers were presented in 48 sections divided into ten macro topics, 113 posters, 7 roundtables and 12 workshops. That number, in itself, has prompted a thought or two. Above all it says that CAA is very much alive and kicking, that it is in robust good health, and that it remains a wholly relevant force in the scientific community, fully engaged with the questions of the day, and a continuing focal point for the profession. All of that speaks well for the motto of CAA 2015: KEEP THE REVOLUTION GOING. Although the significance of the motto is obvious, it is worth some thoughts. Few would deny that in the past 30 years or so, digital technologies have profoundly revolutionised archaeology – in the office and laboratory, in the field and in the classroom. The progressive introduction of digital techniques in the archaeological process has of course led to a general increase in efficiency. But perhaps more importantly it has provided a spur to the discussion of methodology and through that has strongly influenced not only the way we go about things but also the outcomes that we have been able to achieve. The pioneering phase in the application of digital techniques in archaeological research has clearly been fruitful and today computer applications such as GIS, databases, remote sensing and spatial analysis as well as virtual and cyber archaeology are deeply embedded within our universities. This is all good, of course, but we must not assume that the task has been completed. An intrinsic revolutionary instinct towards technological development has been awakened. But it will only survive by virtue of the results that it brings about. Or using the words of our Chairman Prof Gary Lock: ‘Computers not only change the way we do things, but more importantly they change the way we think about what we do and why we do it’. The general thrust of this statement can be summed up and reinforced by recalling a quote from the philosopher Don Ihde, who has argued we should never forget that all technologies should be regarded as ‘cultural instruments’, which as well as strategies and methodologies implemented in our researches are also ‘non-neutral’. So KEEP THE REVOLUTION GOING! is a motto that lays stress on the need to maintain innovation in archaeology through technological advances. But innovation must have at its root the fostering of critical thought and the framing of new archaeological questions. So there is much work still to be done, and fresh challenges to be faced in the months, years and decades ahead. -from the introduction by Stefano Campana and Roberto Scopigno

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This volume contains the papers presented during the Meeting ‘Off the Beaten Track – Epigraphy at the Borders’, the sixth in a series of international events planned by the EAGLE, Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy international consortium.The Meeting was held on 24–25 September 2015, with the support of the Department of Classics and Late Antiquity Studies at the University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy). During the event, the EAGLE Portal (http://www.eagle-network.eu) was officially launched and presented to the public for the first time. The event was intended to address the issues which arise in digitizing inscriptions characterised by ‘unusual’ features in comparison with the epigraphic norm. Here are collected contributions from several ongoing digital projects raising questions and proposing solutions regarding encoding inscriptions – from the Archaic period to the Middle Ages and beyond, even in languages other than Greek and Latin – which do not fall within those labelled as standard. The projects involved are the following: ILA – Iscrizioni Latine Arcaiche; The Ancient Graffiti Project; DASI – Digital Archive for the Study of pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions; EDB – Epigraphic Database Bari; EDV – Epigraphic Database Vernacular Inscriptions; AshLi – Ashmolean Latin Inscriptions Project.

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The earliest finds of wheeled vehicles in northern and central Europe date to 3900-3600 BC. However finds (3400–3300 BC) from the Boleráz sites of Arbon/Bleiche 3 and Bad Buchau/Torwiesen II, linked to pile-dwelling settlements, indicate methods of transport typical for higher altitudes (slides, sleds, etc.). The Boleráz and Baden cultures overlap in the Carpathian Basin between 3300–3000 BC and this period seems to have produced transport models that parallel finds in today’s Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and other regions. These suggest that generally the Boleráz settlers inside the Carpathian Basin did not know, or use, the wheel in the fullest sense. Cart and wheel forms are indicated only from Grave 177 at Budakalász (2800–2600 BC). The Hungarian Baden finds follow the Danube and to the East there are no certain vehicle remains. It is difficult to tell whether the Boleráz finds are linked to the wider Alpine zone, and the Baden finds are perhaps associated with the mixed-culture sites along the eastern slopes of the Carpathians. The four-wheeled wagon was a development linked to the plains and the Steppes (Cucuteni–Tripolje, Pre-Yamnaja, Yamnaja). The nature of the finds relating to vehicles associated with lake and riverine settlements reveal technical and material features: there is evidence of a high degree of carving, if not decoration, and these communities pointed the way for future skills and developments in wheel and cart/wagon manufacture.

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Twenty sites were excavated on the route of a National Grid pipeline across Holderness, East Yorkshire. These included an early Mesolithic flint-working area, near Sproatley. In situ deposits of this age are rare, and the site is a significant addition to understanding of the post-glacial development of the wider region. Later phases of this site included possible Bronze Age round barrows and an Iron Age square barrow. Elsewhere on the pipeline route, diagnostic Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age flints, as well as Bronze Age pottery, provide evidence of activity in these periods. Iron Age remains were found at all of the excavation sites, fourteen of which had ring gullies, interpreted as evidence for roundhouse structures. The frequency with which these settlements occurred is an indication of the density of population in the later Iron Age and the large assemblage of hand-made pottery provides a rich resource for future study. Activity at several of these sites persisted at least into the second or early third centuries AD, while the largest excavation site, at Burton Constable, was re-occupied in the later third century. However, the pottery from the ring gullies was all hand-made, suggesting that roundhouses had ceased to be used by the later first century AD, when the earliest wheel-thrown wares appear. This has implications for understanding of the Iron Age to Roman transition in the region. Late first- or early second-century artefacts from a site at Scorborough Hill, near Weeton, are of particular interest, their nature strongly suggesting an association with the Roman military. With contributions by: Hugo Anderson-Whymark (flint), Kevin Leahy (metal, glass, worked bone), Terry Manby (earlier prehistoric pottery), Chris Cumberpatch (hand-made pottery), Rob Ixer (petrography), Derek Pitman and Roger Doonan (suface residues: ceramics and slag), Ruth Leary (Roman pottery), Felicity Wild (samian ware), Kay Hartley (mortaria), Jane Young with Peter Didsbury (post-Roman pottery), Ruth Shaffrey (worked stone), Lisa Wastling (fired clay), Jennifer Jones (surface residues: fired clay), Katie Keefe and Malin Holst (human bone), Jennifer Wood (animal bone), Don O’Meara (plant macrofossils), Tudur Burke Davies (pollen) and Matt Law (molluscs). Illustrations by: Jacqueline Churchill, Dave Watt and Susan Freebrey

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A significant number of Holocene societies throughout the world have resorted at one time or another to the making of paints or carvings on different places (tombs, rock-shelters or caves, openair outcrops). The aim of the session A11e. Public images, private readings: multi-perspective approaches to the post-Palaeolithic rock art, which was held within the XVII World UISPP Congress (Burgos, September 1-7 2014), was to put together the experiences of specialists from different areas of the Iberian Peninsula and the World. The approaches ranged from the archaeological definition of the artistic phenomena and their socioeconomic background to those concerning themselves with the symbolic and ritual nature of those practices, including the definition of the audience to which the graphic manifestations were addressed and the potential role of the latter in the making up of social identities and the enforcement of territorial claims. More empirical issues, such as new recording methodologies and data management or even dating were also considered during this session.

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This volume brings together presentations from two sessions organized for the XVII World UISPP Conference that was held from 1-7 September 2014 in Burgos (Spain). The sessions are: The scientific value of 3D archaeology, organised by Hans Kamermans, Chiara Piccoli and Roberto Scopigno, and Detecting the Landscape(s) – Remote Sensing Techniques from Research to Heritage Management, organised by Axel Posluschny and Wieke de Neef. The common thread amongst the papers presented here is the application of digital recording techniques to enhance the documentation and analysis of the spatial component intrinsically present in archaeological data. For a long time the capturing of the third dimension, the depth, the height or z-coordinate, was problematic. Traditionally, excavation plans and sections were documented in two dimensions. Objects were also recorded in two dimensions, often from different angles. Remote sensing images like aerial photographs were represented as flat surfaces. Although depth could be visualized with techniques such as stereoscopes, analysis of relief was troublesome. All this changed at the end of the last century with the introduction of computer based digitization technologies, 3D software, and digital near-surface sampling devices. The spatial properties of the multi-scale archaeological dataset can now be accurately recorded, analysed and presented. Relationships between artefacts can be clarified by visualizing the records in a three dimensional space, computer-based simulations can be made to test hypotheses on the past use of space, remote sensing techniques help in detecting previously hidden features of landscapes, thus shedding light on bygone land uses.

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This volume focuses on the study of the geometric designs documented in the mosaics of the Conventus Astigitanus, one of the four conventi iuridici of Roman Baetica. This study is part of a much broader undertaking, the primary objective of which is the analysis of the geometric mosaic designs of the province as a whole. The number of mosaics in the Conventus Astigitanus, and the larger number still documented in other areas of Baetica, place this province among those with the highest count of mosaics in the Roman world providing evidence of the level of cultural and economic power enjoyed by the province over the centuries. As a whole, this study makes an absolutely necessary contribution to the understanding of Roman mosaics in general and Hispanic mosaics in particular, based on an innovative and unprecedented approach in Spain. It includes a very significant number of designs and provides the basis for a completely open catalogue, to which new models may be added as they become available through the continual study of new mosaics. This catalogue ultimately aims to become a reference for the study of geometric mosaics and compositions in the Roman world. Moreover, the value of the present volume also lies in the contribution that is offered to a topic, the analysis of geometric composition, which is of great interest beyond the author’s specific field of study.

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This volume represents a selection of contributions on Mediterranean themes from a wider international interdisciplinary conference on Magical Texts in Ancient Civilizations, organised by the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilizations at Jagiellonian University in Kraków in Poland between 27-28 June 2013. The meeting welcomed researchers from Hungary, Italy, Poland and Ukraine, covering various disciplines including comparative civilizations, comparative religions, linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, history and philosophy. In the past ‘magic’ was often misunderstood as irrational behaviour, in contrast to the tradition of philosophical or rational thought mostly based on Greek models. Evidence collected from ancient high cultures, like that of Pharaonic Egypt, includes massive amounts of documents and treatises of all kinds related to what has been labelled ‘magic’. Today it cannot be written off as merely a primitive or ‘lesser human’ phenomenon: the awareness of magic remains to the present day in many societies, at all social levels, and has not been generally replaced by what might be considered as more advanced thinking. The researches in this volume focus heavily on Egypt (in particular Predynastic, Pharaonic, Hellenistic, Roman and Christian evidence), but Near Eastern material was also presented from Pagan (Ugaritic) and Christian (Syriac) times.

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This study examines Middle–Late Bronze Age (c. 1750–600 BC) domestic settlement patterns in Ireland. Recent archaeological investigations have extended the knowledge of habitation, but no detailed, systematic attempts have been made to understand the domestic evidence, or to substantially revise the existing models for the development of complex Bronze Age societies. All available data relating to settlements dating to Middle–Late Bronze Age have been collated. An evidence-based chronology for settlement is established for the first time. The data are examined at multiple scales to investigate any spatial or chronological trends in settlement character or distribution. The relationships between settlements and the surrounding environmental and social landscapes are analysed through a GIS. The new data are investigated to see how domestic settlements operated, and if traditional concepts regarding the structure of Bronze Age society can still be upheld. Agent-based modelling and social network analysis provide another dimension to the discussion regarding power, regionalism, and hierarchy within the settlement network. The results reveal a distinct rise in the visibility, and a rapid adaption, of domestic architecture, which seems to have occurred earlier in Ireland than elsewhere in western and northern Europe.

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Rock paintings and petroglyphs are a record of human memories. No doubt, this function defines in essence all archaeological objects. Yet some objects such as tools, beyond their symbolic value, are clearly fashioned for their utility. How does rock art as an object fashioned by human hands then differ from tools? What utility does it have beyond its symbolic value? The Vindhyan corpus of rock paintings has provided us with a very valuable opportunity to be answering such questions.

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The principal aim of this study is to put forward a technological and typological analysis of the industries of the Early Neolithic concerned in the process of neolithisation in several regions of Southern Italy. The rooting concepts are centred on the principles of the lithic technology outlined by J. Tixier, H. Roche, and M.-L. Inizan, D. Binder, C. Perlès, N. Pigeot et J. Pelegrin. The lithic series examined belong to the different horizons concerned in the process of Neolithitisation of Southern Italy in several areas of the envisaged region. In a view to reconstruct the economy of débitage and the economy of raw materials and the possible formation of technical traditions, this research is based on the following points: the economic and petrographic analysis of the raw materials; the analysis of the technological aspects and of the technical facts; the typometrical analysis of the different products of the chaînes opératoires; the typological analysis through the creation of an inventory allowing to integrate the study of the technological criteria with that of specific characters of the lithic tools. The main targets of this research are to highlight the methods and the techniques of débitage and to identify the chaînes opératoires set up by the early groups of farmers in the South of Italy and in Sicily. Is it possible to recognize a techno-economic variability in the débitage systems of the Early Neolithic of Southern Italy? Is it possible to give a cultural value to the variability of technical facts? What is the rate of continuity and discontinuity among groups of hunters-gatherers and the first farming societies? These questions shed light on the whole of technical and cultural transformations between the seventh and sixth millennium B.C. in the South of Italy, a region that played a key role in the process of diffusion of Neolithic towards the West Mediterranean.

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This book collects together data concerning copper alloy vessels from Roman Britain and relates this evidence to prevailing theories of consumption, identity and culture change in Britain during this time. The aims of this study are to collect a catalogue of copper alloy vessels from England and Wales, categorise them by form, typology, context, chronology and geographic distribution, offer interpretations concerning their cultural associations, manners of consumption, functionality and development over time before commenting upon their value as small finds material reflective of culture change more broadly within Britain during the Roman period. Copper alloy vessels from the Roman period in Britain have not been the subject of focused scholarly study for over 50 years and have never had a focused examination in English. This report not only rectifies this gap in the literature, but proceeds to directly apply this data analysis to the greater theoretical discourse of the development of material culture in Britain during the Roman period, thereby demonstrating the validity and importance of small finds studies to the larger historiographic and theoretical discourse.

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The aim of this study is to show how the Imperial Cult was introduced and organised in provincial Hispania, and examines the collaboration with the Romanised native elites who came from Lusitania, Baetica and Hispania Citerior. This book draws upon literary, numismatic, archaeological and epigraphic sources. The epigraphy found in Lusitania is especially important because it is the only one of the Hispanic provinces where there is evidence of flamines provinciae officiating before the Flavian period, even as early as under Tiberius.

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This book is the first to be published from a wider research project, still in progress, about the sanctuaries of Poseidon and Athena on the promontory of Sounion (southeast Attica). The aim of this volume is to present, for the first time, a comprehensive examination and interpretation of a wide selection of unpublished small finds. These last, of different categories and materials, were discovered in the bothroi (pitdeposits) and the landfills; they are set into their contexts. The illustrations of the finds are integrated within the relevant text for easier reference and a detailed catalogue complements the discussion. The limited archaeological records concerning the work in the sanctuaries, conducted by Valerios Stais between 1897–1915, and which still remain the only extensive excavations undertaken, are re-evaluated. The author revisits the two sanctuaries, reviewing the structures within them to cast light on the early phases of their establishment and development, as well as their significance for the socio-economic growth of south east Attica. This is realized by drawing upon the evidence of archaeological data and the ancient literary sources alike. The research thus provides a fresh insight into the early cults, with emphasis on the identity of the deities worshipped at Sounion from the Late Geometric to the dawn of the Classical period.

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This volume is dedicated to a small number of unique bronze ‘bathtub’ coffins found in 8th–6th century BC Babylonian, Assyrian and Elamite burial contexts. Usually treated as an incidental aspect of the burial process, these fascinating burial receptacles have until now garnered little in the way of academic interest. Here the author takes the opportunity to further explore the coffins, drawing together the widely dispersed information on their archaeological contexts, investigating the method and place of their manufacture, and establishing a possible date range for their production and use. To progress towards an understanding of the bronze ‘bathtub’ coffin burials within the broader context of regional funerary practices, they are then incorporated into an analysis of Neo-Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Elamite funerary ritual and belief. Finally the coffins are placed within the historical framework of these regions’ socio-political interaction in an attempt to establish whether they represent a shared funerary tradition. Underpinning this study is the principle that mortuary evidence is the product of intentional behaviour; that the bronze ‘bathtub’ coffins represent a deliberate choice by the burying group and each would have featured in an emotionally and symbolically charged burial act.

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This volume brings together a group of peer reviewed papers, most of them presented at a workshop held at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. The event took place on 15–17 October 2011 and was part of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project Cultural Evolution of Neolithic Europe (EUROEVOL 2010-2015). The aim of the EUROEVOL project is to contribute to the new interdisciplinary field of cultural evolution that has developed over the last 30 years, and at the same time use these ideas and methods to address specific questions concerning the links between demographic, economic, social and cultural patterns and processes in the first farming societies of temperate Europe. The aim of the EUROEVOL project is to do that for the first time, and in doing so to provide the basis for a new account of the role of farming in transforming early European societies, c.6000-2000 cal BCE.

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Transformationpresents a diachronic investigation providing a rich case study as well as an approach tracing the contours of a category of Roman material culture defined by the Roman period technique of openwork carving. As the first comprehensive assemblage of openwork vessels from Classical to late Antiquity, this work offers primary evidence documenting a key example of the fundamental shift from naturalism to abstraction in which inscriptions are transformed and word becomes image. A glass blower herself, Hallie Meredith poses questions about process, tactility and reception providing a clear picture of the original contexts of production and reception demonstrated by the Roman technique of openwork carving. In an in-depth analysis of the corpus as a whole, typologies (old and new), imagery, geometric patterning and inscriptions as the major divisions among openwork decorative elements, basic design principles are identified, non openwork carving and its relation to openwork decoration are discussed, as are the function, handling, display, movement and provenance of openwork vessels throughout the Roman Empire. Art historians and archaeologists working on the transition from Classical to late Antiquity, as well as scholars focusing on these and later periods of study, can fruitfully apply this approach to visual culture. This work shows how openwork vessels are a reflection of a wide-reaching Roman cultural aesthetic.

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Soil and water management is a major stake for the current Mediterranean countries. It was also an important challenge for past societies, especially since the Neolithic and the early well-established farming communities. the mastery of these vital resources accompanied the complexification of social organization. It also widely contributed, if not to impulse it, at least to structure it. This volume presents the results of the CEDRE multidisciplinary project NAHR IBRAHIM that was led on the Lebanese mountain centered around the Nahr Ibrahim valley (the famous Adonis valley in Antiquity), in the hinterland of the ancient city of Byblos. the mountain has been under-researched by archaeology and history due to the attractiveness of the prestigious coastal phoenician cities. The history of settlement patterns and the construction of agricultural mountainous landscapes since the Early Bronze Age is examined with comparisons from other regions surrounding the Mediterranean Basin.

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This study challenges current modelling of Bronze Age tell communities in the Carpathian Basin in terms of the evolution of functionally-differentiated, hierarchical or ‘proto-urban’ society under the influence of Mediterranean palatial centres. It is argued that the narrative strategies employed in mainstream theorising of the ‘Bronze Age’ in terms of inevitable social ‘progress’ sets up an artificial dichotomy with earlier Neolithic groups. The result is a reductionist vision of the Bronze Age past which denies continuity evident in many aspects of life and reduces our understanding of European Bronze Age communities to some weak reflection of foreign-derived social types – be they notorious Hawaiian chiefdoms or Mycenaean palatial rule. In order to justify this view, this study looks broadly in two directions: temporal and spatial. First, it is asked how Late Neolithic tell sites of the Carpathian Basin compare to Bronze Age ones, and if we are entitled to assume structural difference or rather ‘progress’ between both epochs. Second, it is examined if a Mediterranean ‘centre’ in any way can contribute to our understanding of Bronze Age tell communities on the ‘periphery’. It is argued that current Neo-Diffusionism has us essentialise from much richer and diverse evidence of past social and cultural realities. Instead, archaeology is called on to contribute to an understanding of the historically specific expressions of the human condition and human agency, not to reduce past lives to abstract stages on the teleological ladder of social evolution.

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The aim of this book is to approach Ptolemaic and Imperial royal sculpture in Egypt dating between 300 BC and AD 220 (the reigns of Ptolemy I and Caracalla) from a contextual point of view. To collect together the statuary items (recognised as statues, statue heads and fragments, and inscribed bases and plinths) that are identifiably royal and have a secure archaeological context, that is a secure find spot or a recoverable provenance, within Egypt. This material was used, alongside other types of evidence such as textual sources and numismatic material, to consider the distribution, style, placement, and functions of the royal statues, and to answer the primary questions: where were these statues located? What was the relationship between statue, especially statue style, and placement? And what changes can be identified between Ptolemaic and Imperial royal sculpture? From analysis of the sculptural evidence, this book was able to create a catalogue of 103 entries composed of 157 statuary items, and use this to identify the different styles of royal statues that existed in Ptolemaic and Imperial Egypt and the primary spaces for the placement of such imagery, namely religious and urban space. The results, based on the available evidence, was the identification of a division between sculptural style and context regarding the royal statues, with Egyptian-style material being placed in Egyptian contexts, Greek-style material in Greek, and Imperial-style statues associated with classical contexts. The functions of the statues appear to have also typically been closely related to statue style and placement. Many of the statues were often directly associated with their location, meaning they were an intrinsic part of the function and appearance of the context they occupied, as well as acting as representations of the monarchs. Primarily, the royal statues acted as a way to establish and maintain communication between different groups in Egypt.

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Based on documentary evidence, the Priory Church of St Marys in Abergavenny has been a place of worship since the late 11th century; archaeological evidence though suggests that the site has a much earlier period of use. Over the past 1000 years the church has been radically altered to reflect its wealth, status and sometimes, its decline. During the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries a number of drastic alterations were made that included the complete demolition and rebuild of the nave. This wholesale change, coupled with the Reformation of 1536 and the vandalism of the mid- to late 17th century by Cromwell's troops did not deter the people of Abergavenny from using this most beautiful of spaces. In the recent past, the late Jeremy Winston did much to add his signature onto the priory's fabric making St Mary a most splendid place of worship. An Anatomy of a Priory Church, comprising twelve thought-provoking chapters, traces the archaeology, history and conservation of this most impressive building, delving deep into its anatomy.

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The bearded and mature figure of Christ stands majestically raising his right hand, open palm facing the viewer. In his left he holds an unfurled scroll. Saints Peter and Paul appear on either side, Peter approaching to catch or protect the dangling bookroll. This image, the so-called traditio legis, first appeared in late fourthcentury Rome in a variety of media, from the monumental to the miniature, including mosaic, catacomb painting, gold-glass and, the most numerous group, marble relief carving on sarcophagi. This monograph engages in a close reading of the traditio legis, highlighting its novelty and complexity to early Christian viewers. The image is analyzed as a conflation of two distinct forms of representation, each constructed of unusual and potentially multivalent elements. Iconographical details like the hirsute Christ, his gesture, Peter’s covered hands and the unorthodox positioning of the two saints are examined in isolation and as elements of the whole. The synthetic composition invited alternative and over-determined meanings.

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Large numbers of Greco-Italic and Dressel 1 amphorae were exported to many parts of Gaul during the late Iron Age and they provide a major source of information on the development and growth of the Roman economy during the late Republican period. This volume examines in detail this trade to the Auvergne region of central France and provides a typological and chronological study of the main assemblages of Republican amphorae found on the farms, agglomerations, oppida, and funerary sites, dating from the second century BC until the early first century AD. Other topics examined include the provenance of the amphorae, the stamps, painted inscriptions and graffiti, the distribution of Republican amphorae in the Auvergne, and the evidence for their modification and reuse. Finally, a gazetteer of Republican amphora findspots from France is also provided.

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Climate variability and human management strategies on crop stands were major factors that frequently affected agricultural yields among indigenous populations from central Mexico. This work seeks to model food production in ancient Tepeaca, a Late Postclassic (AD 1325-1521) and Early Colonial (16th century) state level-polity settled on the central highlands of Puebla, by applying a model that recognizes the presence of two independent and interconnected forms of food production: subsistence agriculture and institutional agriculture. Crop stands within this region depended heavily on rainfed conditions, a form of agriculture that often generates unstable interannual fluctuations in yields. Archaeology acknowledges the effects of such variations on the economy of households and institutions, but attention has been largely put on estimating average productivity values over long periods rather than focusing on interannual divergences. Such instability of agricultural production was recorded among modern Tepeaca’s agriculturalists through an ethnographic survey. This crucial information, along with archaeological data and local 16th century historical sources, is used for modeling the effects of climate variability among prehispanic populations and serves to better comprehend the organization of past agrarian structures, tribute systems and land tenure organization at the household and regional levels.

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During the international conference ‘Settlement, Communication and Exchange around the Western Carpathians’ held in Kraków in October 2012, attention was focused on the complex issues of long-term cultural change in the populations surrounding the Western Carpathians, with the aim of striking a balance between local cultural dynamics, subsistence economy and the alleged importance of far-reaching contacts, and communication and exchange involved in this process. Specialists from Germany, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the United States met and discussed for two days their archaeological findings relating to questions of (Trans)Carpathian communication, settlement patterns, and agricultural and technological changes that occurred (mainly) during the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Additionally, case studies from Northern Poland and Eastern Germany were included to provide a perspective on the variability of traditions and economic strategies in different natural environments and topographical settings. Drawing on a broad spectrum of methods (including anthropological, archaeobotanical, geochemical, and geophysical), and adhering to different theoretical approaches, the objective was to contribute to a more holistic understanding of prehistoric settlement strategies, adaptation to marginal (and not so marginal) environments, and the role of communication for prehistoric populations to the north and south of the Western Carpathians.

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This book brings together the scientific contributions of a wide panel of Sicilian and mainland Italian specialists in prehistory. Taking inspiration from a conference organised by the Soprintendenza ai Beni Culturali e Ambientali of Agrigento and by the municipal council of Sciacca in November 2011, the decision was taken to broaden and deepen some of the main themes discussed on that occasion. Therefore this book focuses on the Sciacca region and its landscape which is extraordinarily rich in natural geological phenomena and associated archaeological activity, for example the Grotta del Kronio and the numerous dolmens present nearby. This volume seeks to explore the various aspects – habitational or ritual – of the prehistoric use of the numerous caves present in the region and to analyse the many features of the island’s megalithic architecture. The text includes an historical review of the processes of discovery of the archaeological evidence, also an account of the current research projects and research activities.

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The study of human remains from ancient Egypt and Nubia has captured the imagination of many people for generations, giving rise to the discipline of palaeopathology and fostering bioarchaeological research. This book contains 16 papers that cover material presented at a workshop entitled ‘Palaeopathology in Egypt and Nubia: A Century in Review,’ held at the Natural History Museum, London (August 29–30, 2012), which formed part of a three-year research project, ‘Sir Grafton Elliot Smith: Palaeopathology and the Archaeological Survey of Nubia.’ The papers explore the subject of palaeopathology from its beginnings in the early 1900s through to current research themes and the impact of technological development in the field. Revealing the diverse range of methods used to study human remains in these regions, the book gives readers an insight into the fascinating work carried out over the last century, and suggests some possible future directions for the field.

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This book is for students and practitioners of not only knapping, lithic technology and archaeology, but also of fractography and fracture mechanics. At conferences on fractography of glasses and ceramics, the author has often been asked to demonstrate knapping as well as provide overviews of fractography learned from it. The first part of the book is intended to stimulate such interests further, in order to solicit contributions from a largely untapped pool of experts. Such contributions can advance significantly our understandings of knapping as well as fractography. In Part II of the book, fracture markings as the tools of fractography are introduced, with their formation, meaning and utility explained. Observations on the presence or absence of the markings in knapping are considered in Part III, along with a number of interpretations of fracture features. The basic principles and concepts of fracture mechanics and fractography apply to fractures produced in any cultural context. This volume therefore addresses most questions on fracture in a generic sense, independent of cultural contexts. In general, understanding of fractures provides a sounder basis for lithic analysis, and use of more recent scientific tools opens new avenues for lithic studies.

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This volume contains detailed information about 63 sites and shows, amongst other things, that the viticulture of the western delta was significant in Ptolemaic and Roman periods, as well as a network of interlocking sites, which connected with the rest of Egypt, Alexandria, North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean. Far from being a border area — as perhaps it had been in the Pharaonic period — the west Delta network exerted an important economic production influence over a very wide area. In addition, with access to medieval and later Arabic sources, Kenawi’s discussion of the sites has an added dimension not found in the work of western scholars. Mohamed Kenawi’s meticulous and determined work has resulted in an improved set of data for the Delta and shown how its potential can be tapped.

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