Search results for ""Archaeopress""

The Bouros-Kastri peninsula at the south-eastern tip of the Greek island of Euboia has previously been overlooked in the archaeological literature. This survey by the Southern Euboea Exploration Project, conducted under the aegis of the Canadian Institute in Greece, now provides a wealth of intriguing information about fluctuations in long-term use and habitation in this part of the Karystia. While the peninsula is agriculturally poor, its coast is blessed with several small coastal inlets and one important ancient port, Geraistos. These provide access to vital maritime routes and connect the peninsula to Athens and other Aegean ports. The survey revealed modest use of the peninsula during the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age; it was then virtually abandoned for the following two and a half millennia. Occupation resumed in the Late Archaic–Early Classical period, followed by near desertion in the 3rd century BC of all but some coastal sites, a resurgence of activity in the Late Roman period, and modest use in Byzantine and Ottoman times. The authors analyse the ways in which the peninsula's use was connected to that of the main urban centre at Karystos, and how the peninsula and the greater Karystia were integrated into the political, economic, and cultural spheres of Athens and the broader region.

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The potential of tomb mosaics as an academic resource has often been underestimated and consequently they have only been partially analysed not only in Italy but also throughout the Western Mediterranean. This work is intended to shed a new light on these finds, which are often incomplete, lost, or little studied. The first part of the book presents the history of previous studies on the subject and briefly explains the structure of the corpus. The corpus, in turn, is organised according to current Italian administrative regions, specifically: Sardegna, Sicilia, Puglia, Campania, Lazio, Marche, and Friuli Venezia Giulia. Every region is then further divided following current provinces and municipalities. This work does not aim to present merely a compilation of data in a catalogue; thus the second part of the book focuses specifically on tomb mosaics found in the Italic peninsula and major islands, and provides information on their geographic distribution, dating, typology, place of discovery and iconography, and considers the potential identification of individual workshops. The purpose of the book is to bring tomb mosaics to greater consideration, since they have not survived in academic literature to the same extent as did their rich villa or domus counterparts. This work does not therefore aspire to be a complete analysis of the subject, but rather a starting point which can be both useful and a stimulus for future studies. ITALIAN DESCRIPTION: Il mosaico funerario è una particolare tipologia musiva spesso sottovalutata e poco studiata. Le origini sono da ricercarsi, probabilmente, nell’antica regione della Bizacena, attuale Tunisia, a partire dagli ultimi decenni del III secolo d.C. Nel IV secolo iniziò l’esportazione dei cartoni musivi funerari nel resto del Mediterraneo occidentale, raggiungendo l’Italia e la Spagna; in entrambi i casi però il mosaico funerario non riscosse particolare successo. La richiesta maggiore di questo nuovo monumento funerario avveniva da parte dei cristiani, e solo in minima parte dai pagani. In questo libro si cerca di fare ordine sui mosaici funerari presenti nell’odierno territorio italiano, catalogando tutte le evidenze musive, sia oggigiorno scomparse che ancora in situ, per cercare di delineare un’analisi sul fenomeno che ha, in maniera seppur ridotta, investito la Penisola italiana e le sue Isole maggiori. Infatti le testimonianze musive si concentrano in zone dove particolari condizioni hanno permesso la loro messa in posa. La prima parte è dedicata al repertorio dei sessanta mosaici funerari dell’attuale Italia, ognuno catalogato secondo una scheda pensata e studiata per rendere più agevole possibile la consultazione. La seconda parte è invece incentrata sullo studio d’insieme del fenomeno dei mosaici funerari in Italia, nella quale si cerca di fare chiarezza e dare dei punti fermi su questa categoria di mosaici. L’analisi conclusiva cerca di spiegare il perché in Italia, pur essendoci condizioni apparentemente favorevoli alla produzione delle coperture tombali musive, non si siano trovati che poche testimonianze musive funerarie se paragonate a quelle ritrovate nel Nord Africa e in special maniera in Bizacena.

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The Roman Bridge between Dolni Vadin (Bulgaria) and Grojdibodu (Romania) presents all the available data on the Roman bridge over the Danube which connected Dacia and Moesia at this point. The toponyms Vadin and Grojdibodu themselves mean ‘ford’, a crossing over water, in this case over the Danube. There have been no archaeological excavations at the feet of the bridge but the author has been able to propose positioning, scale and full reconstruction on the basis of a survey of existing remains, known road alignments, old maps and drawings as well as comparison with better-known parallels. The book also includes a catalogue of small finds deriving from the area of the bridge. This bridge has been ignored for centuries primarily due to the absence of any mention of it in ancient sources, literary or otherwise. It was probably eclipsed by the fame of the bridge from Drobeta, which was constructed by Emperor Trajan between the two Dacian wars, and by the bridge from Sucidava-Oescus which was built later, in the time of Emperor Constantine the Great. Additionally, the bridge is located in a rather obscure place, hardly accessible in the modern era. This work restores this river crossing to its proper significance.

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Augustus: From Republic to Empire is the product of a conference entitled AUGUSTUS. 23 September 63 BC – 19 August 14 AD – 2000 years of divinity organised on 12 December 2014 by the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University, the Centre for Comparative Studies of Civilisations at the Jagiellonian University and the National Museum in Krakow. The conference was hosted by the Emeryk Hutten- Czapski Museum – a branch of the National Museum in Krakow – and commemorated the anniversary of Augustus’s death. The volume offers readers articles that deal with a variety of topics ranging from architecture, urban issues and painting to fine art represented by glyptics and numismatics. It includes papers devoted to the publication of previously unknown objects, articles presenting iconographic research, deliberations on propaganda, and analyses of the political situation and source texts. Chronologically, some of the papers go beyond the age of August, yet are relevant to the understanding of the transformations that took place in art and architecture during the reign of the first princeps, the widely-understood middle and late periods of the Republic, and the early Empire. The geographic scope of the articles covers the entire territory of the Empire. This diverse topic allows a variety of research themes on the epoch of August to be presented from a broad perspective.

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Discussed here is the landscape of western Bavaria in the early-medieval period, between about 750 and 850. The title of the study derives from several indications that a noble genealogia, the Huosi, were particularly influential there during the period. Huosiland may be the best documented European landscape of this time. This is due to the extraordinary cartulary or register of deeds prepared for the diocese of Freising by the monk, Cozroh, in the second quarter of the ninth century. The first part of the study (Contexts) describes Cozroh’s codex and Huosiland and then analyzes the main political, ecclesiastical, social and economic structures and features there, based upon the available historical and archaeological evidence. The second part (Connections) explores a selection of particular issues raised by specific documents or related groups of documents from Huosiland. The third part provides all of the voluminous and highly-informative documentary evidence for Huosiland, both from Cozroh’s codex and other sources, complete in full English translation. As a result, the reader is able to construct his or her own Contexts and Connections. A full annotated Bibliography of the relevant secondary literature is included as is a complete Gazetteer of the translated documents. The publication will provide a valuable resource both for advanced teaching and for scholarly research.

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The East African coast and the Western Indian Ocean are regions of global historical significance. This volume contains papers first presented at the conference, Early Maritime Cultures of the East African Coast, held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on October 23-24, 2015. Rather than limiting publication to the proceedings of the conference, additional contributions were solicited to expand the scope of the research presented and to place East Africa in its broader geographic and cultural contexts. The resulting volume focuses broadly on East Africa and the Western Indian Ocean and unites the papers under the general themes of movement and connection. These papers represent a multi-disciplinary effort to examine East Africa and the Western Indian Ocean. Multiple lines of evidence drawn from linguistics, archaeology, history, art history, and ethnography come together in novel ways to highlight different aspects of the region’s past and offer innovative avenues for future research. The papers cover a diverse array of topics, including but not limited to: subsistence, watercraft traditions, trade and exchange (especially concerning the Silk Routes), migration, food ways, and familial relationships. This volume is unique in that it includes some speculative research as well, intended to present novel methods to deal with data-poor topics and to start important conversations about understudied topics. The goal of this volume is to showcase aspects of the complex cultures and histories of this vast region and to emphasize its importance to world history. Ideally, it will generate scholarly and popular interest in the histories and cultures of the region and bring to the fore Africa’s and the Western Indian Ocean’s important (yet often overlooked) role in world historical narratives. It may also serve as a more advanced introduction to East Africa’s and the Western Indian Ocean’s history of interaction with other regions of the Old World and as a survey of methods used to understand the region’s past.

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The present volume originated in session A25b (‘Current Approaches to Collective Burials in the Late European Prehistory’) of the XVII World Congress of the International Union of the Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP), held in Burgos in September 2014. Collective burials are quite a common feature in Prehistoric Europe, with the gathering of multiple individuals in a shared burial place occurring in different types of burial structures (natural caves, megalithic structures, artificial caves, corbelled-roof tombs, pits, etc.). Such features are generally associated with communities along the agropastoralist transition and fully agricultural societies of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic. For a long time, human skeletal remains exhumed from collective burials were dismissed as valuable sources of information, their studies being limited mostly to morphological assessments and subsequent classification in predefined ‘races’. They currently represent a starting point for diversified, often interdisciplinary, research projects, allowing for a more accurate reconstruction of funerary practices, as well as of palaeobiological and environmental aspects, which are fundamental for the understanding of populations in the Late Prehistory of Europe and of the processes leading to the emergence of agricultural societies in this part of the world. The articles in this volume provide examples of different approaches currently being developed on Prehistoric collective burials of southern Europe, mostly focusing on case studies, but also including contributions of a more methodological scope.

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Bridging Times and Spaces is composed of papers written by colleagues of Professor Gregory E. Areshian on the occasion his 65th birthday reflecting the breadth and diversity of his scholarly contributions. The range of presented papers covers topics in Near Eastern, Mediterranean and Armenian archaeology, theory of interpretation in archaeology and art history, interdisciplinary history, historical linguistics, art history, and comparative mythology. The volume opens with an extensive interview given by Gregory Areshian, in which Gregory outlines the pathways of his academic career, archaeological discoveries, different intellectual quests, and the organic connections between research questions that he explored across different social sciences and the humanities, stressing the importance of periodizations in interdisciplinary history as well as his views on holism and interdisciplinary studies.

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The reliefs of the column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome are used extensively for the illustration of Roman soldiers. However, despite the fact that in the last decades a number of sites at the Danube Limes have been analyzed, where numerous militaria from the Markomannic Wars have emerged, there is no comparison between this work of official Roman art and the archaeological finds. This book aims to address this lacuna. Each piece of equipment of the Roman soldier is analyzed in its sculptural representation and compared with the existing finds as well as supplementary comparisons with secondary sources. The result is a broad picture of the Roman army under Marcus Aurelius and of Rome's depiction of their forces in state propaganda. In addition, the present work comprehensively separates the antique parts of the frieze from the additions made during the late Renaissance for the first time and thus provides a solid basis for future archaeological and art historical evaluations.

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Stones can serve an infinite array of functions both when they are worked and when they are left in a ‘raw’ state. Depending on their function, stones can also be meaningful objects especially when they act as vehicles of ideas or instruments of representation. And it is, therefore, in their functional context, that the meaning of stones can be best grasped. The stones dealt with in this study are non-figural (or aniconic) or, sometimes, semi-figural. They come from ritual contexts and, as such, act as a material representation of divine presence in their role as betyls. But it is not mainly the representational aspect of these stones that this study seeks to highlight. As material representations of divine presence that are also worshipped, these particular stones form part of a phenomenon that seems to know no geographical or temporal boundaries. They are of a universal character. It is this universal character of theirs that seems to qualify these stones as elements forming part of the phenomenon of continuity: continuity across different cultures and in different places along several centuries. It is this phenomenon which this study seeks to highlight through a study of these stones. The Maltese islands are presented as a case study to demonstrate the phenomenon of continuity through a study of these stones. Worship of stones in representation of divine presence is found on the Maltese islands since prehistoric times. But the practice survived several centuries under different cultures represented by unknown communities during the islands’ prehistory and the Phoenicians / Carthaginians and the Romans in early historic times.

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Richard Hodges is one of Europe’s preeminent archaeologists. He has transformed the way we understand the early Middle Ages, and has put the past to work for the present, through a sequence of paradigmatic excavations in England, Italy and Albania. Encounters, Excavations and Argosies pays tribute to him with a series of reflections on some of the themes and issues which have been central to his work over the last forty years. The contributors are colleagues, many his students, above all friends of the man whose ideas, example, trust, and loyalty have touched and inspired us all.

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The Ritidian Site in Guam contains multiple layers and components that together reveal the full scope of traditional cultural heritage in the Mariana Islands in the northwest tropical Pacific since 1500 B.C., dating from the beginning of human settlement of the Remote Pacific Islands. The material records of changing artefacts, sites, and landscapes here have been incorporated into a cohesive narrative in chronological order, mirroring the experience of visiting a museum to learn about the profound heritage of this special site and its larger research contributions. The primary data findings are presented as a translation or visitor’s guide of encountering a complex, multi-layered, and multi-vocal past.

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Northamptonshire Archaeology, now MOLA Northampton, was commissioned by Opportunity Peterborough (Peterborough City Council) to undertake archaeological work ahead of an improvement scheme centred on Cathedral Square, the historic centre of Peterborough. The construction of two triangular arrays of fountains in the central part of Cathedral Square formed the core of the archaeological investigation, which was undertaken from November 2008 to August 2011. The archaeological work identified a succession of stone surfaces from the creation of the market square in the 12th century through to the 19th century. The cobbled surface of the original market square was overlaid by an accumulation of dark organic silts, containing finds dating through to the 16th century. At the start of the 15th century the parish church of St John the Baptist was constructed over the western half of the medieval market square with a cemetery immediately to the west of the church. Following the closure of this cemetery by the later 16th century, a small area of floor surfaces were the probable remains of a building, perhaps the Sexton’s house, at the north end of Butchers Row. On the south side of the market square there were the remains of a rectangular stone building, dated to the late 15th to 17th centuries, perhaps containing shops. Between this building and the church, a raised area of rubble was probably a remnant of the plinth for the recorded market cross. The late 17th century saw the construction of the still extant Guildhall to the east of the church. The raising of the ground level and resurfacing of the square was probably contemporary with the Guildhall. This would have involved the removal of all existing buildings on the south side of the square, as well as the removal of the market cross. In the late 18th or early 19th centuries the square was again raised and resurfaced, now with pitched limestone. Shallow gutters between the pavement and the road facilitated drainage. A surface of granite sets of the 19th-century survived in a few places below the late 20th-century slab pavement, which has now been replaced by the fountain development.

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In this book, Dr Vyron Antoniadis presents a contextual study of the Near Eastern imports which reached Crete during the Early Iron Age and were deposited in the Knossian tombs. Cyprus, Phoenicia, North Syria and Egypt are the places of origin of these imports. Knossian workshops produced close or freer imitations of these objects. The present study reveals the ways in which imported commodities were used to create or enhance social identity in the Knossian context. The author explores the reasons that made Knossians deposit imported objects in their graves as well as investigates whether specific groups could control not only the access to these objects but also the production of their imitations. Dr Antoniadis argues that the extensive use of locally produced imitations alongside authentic imports in burial rituals and contexts indicates that Knossians treated both imports and imitations as items of the same symbolic and economic value.

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This book reassesses the apparent collapse of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, through explicit reference to the archaeological record. The study of Anuradhapura’s terminal period has long been dominated by an over-reliance upon textual sources, resulting in the establishment of a monocausal and politically charged narrative that depicts a violent eleventh century invasion by the South Indian Chola Empire as the primary cause of Anuradhapura’s collapse, bringing to an end over a millennium of rule from Sri Lanka’s first capital. Such is the dominance of this narrative that few alternative explanations for the abandonment of Anuradhapura have ever been posited, with just two alternative models ever described; epidemic malaria, and an imperial economic model. Synthesising and analysing archaeological data from over a century of investigation, this book first tests whether or not Anuradhapura can truly be said to have “collapsed” at all, before moving on to then test the existing explanations for this apparent collapse through reference to the physical archaeological record of Anuradhapura, before finally proposing a new synthetic model for the polity’s collapse.

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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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