Archaeologists, historians, chemists, and physicists have employed a variety of chemical and physical approaches to study artifacts and historical objects since at least the late 18th century. During the past 50 years, the chemistry of archaeological materials has increasingly been used to address a broad spectrum of anthropological topics, including preservation, dating, nativity, exchange, provenance, and manufacturing technology. This book brings together 28 papers that address how various analytical techniques can be used to address specific archaeological questions. Chemists, archaeologists, geologists, graduate students, and others in related disciplines who are investigating the use of archaeometric techniques will find this book of interest.

First hand anecdotal snap shots offer a taste of daily life during the author's fifteen-year period at the High Down and Woomera rocket test sites. The preparation of eight Black Knight and four Black Arrow rockets up to their liftoff are recounted in detail with relevant diagrams and a few photos. So-called "rocket-science" jargon is deliberately sidestepped throughout. Delays that dogged Black Arrow's birth are touched along with a full explanation for terminating RO's maiden flight. Peripheral issues met during the final two proving flights are also discussed. The launch team's bittersweet feelings as R3 was readied and lifted off to deliver Prospero into earth orbit are chronicled alongside their dismay at the projects unfitting end. Black Arrow was Britain's only home grown rocket to stage an orbital insertion and may also be the only rocket to achieve this using peroxide oxidiser.

This practical introductory guide explains what archaeoastronomy is and gives advice for the beginner in the subject about how to check the astronomy of a prehistoric site. * Contains evidence for archaeoastronomy from around the world * Explains the role of archaeologists * Gives a simple introduction to solar and lunar astronomy * Lists the key dates to visit ancient sites * Explains why alignments have slightly altered over the centuries * Emphasises the links with ancient sea-faring and navigation * Encourages readers to adopt their own site for further research

The present book takes up the long-debated subject of the presence of amber around the Adriatic during the Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC). It offers an exhaustive review of the current state of knowledge about the use of amber by prehistoric communities living on the opposite sides of the sea. The author focuses primarily on the spatial and chronological aspects of amber’s acquisition in Italy and the Balkans, form and function of the artefacts made of it, issues connected to their processing and ways of circulation of these products within the study area. Furthermore, attention is paid to material and symbolic statuses of amber among the local societies. Finally, the role of the circum-Adriatic zone in the long-range transfer of amber from Northern to Southern Europe is assessed.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of experimental approaches to the study of media histories and their cultures. Doing media archaeological experiments, such as historical re-enactments and hands-on simulations with media historical objects, helps us to explore and better understand the workings of past media technologies and their practices of use. By systematically refl ecting on the methodological underpinnings of experimental media archaeology as a relatively new approach in media historical research and teaching, this book aims to serve as a practical handbook for doing media archaeological experiments. Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Practice is the twin volume to Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Theory, authored by Andreas Fickers and Annie van den Oever.

This book offers a plea to take the materiality of media technologies and the sensorial and tacit dimensions of media use into account in the writing of the histories of media and technology. In short, it is a bold attempt to question media history from the perspective of an experimental media archaeology approach. It offers a systematic reflection on the value and function of hands-on experimentation in research and teaching. Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Theory is the twin volume to Doing Experimental Media Archaeology: Practice, authored by Tim van der Heijden and Aleksander Kolkowski.

This volume introduces the Cross-Cultural Interaction Model (CCIM), a visual tool for studying the exchanges that take place between different cultures in borderland areas or across long distances. The model helps researchers untangle complex webs of connections among people, landscapes, and artifacts, and can be used to support multiple theoretical viewpoints. Through case studies, contributors apply the CCIM to various regions and time periods, including Roman Europe, the Greek province of Thessaly in the Late Bronze Age, the ancient Egyptian-Nubian frontier, colonial Greenland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Mississippian realm of Cahokia, ancient Costa Rica and Panama, and the Moquegua Valley of Peru in the early Middle Horizon period. They adapt the model to best represent their data, successfully plotting connections in many different dimensions, including geography, material culture, religion and spirituality, and ideology. The model enables them to expose what motivates people to participate in cultural exchange, as well as the influences that people reject in these interactions. These results demonstrate the versatility and analytical power of the CCIM. Bridging the gap between theory and data, this tool can prompt users to rethink previous interpretations of their research, leading to new ideas, new theories, and new directions for future study.

How do archaeologists think? How do they use the scattered and often-fragmentary remains from the past-both historical and excavated-to create meaningful, sensible interpretations of human history? In Archaeological Thinking, Charles E. Orser Jr., provides a commonsense guide to applying critical thinking skills to archaeological questions and evidence. Rather than critiquing and debunking specific cases of pseudo-archaeology or concentrating on archaeological theory, Orser considers the basics of scientific thinking, the use of logic and analogy, the meaning and context of facts, and the evaluation of source materials. He explains, concisely and accessibly, how archaeologists use these principles to create pictures of the past and teaches students to develop the skills needed to make equally reasoned interpretations.

Colonized Bodies, Worlds Transformed represents a new generation of contact and colonialism studies, expanding upon a traditional focus on the health of conquered peoples toward how extraordinary biological and political transformations are incorporated into the human body, reflecting behavior, identity, and adaptation. These globally diverse case studies demonstrate that the effects of conquest reach farther than was ever thought before-to both the colonized and the colonizers. Cultural exchange occurred between both groups, transforming social identities, foodways, and social structures at points of contact and beyond. Contributors to this volume analyze skeletal remains and burial patterns from never-before-studied regions in the Americas to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, resulting in a new synthesis of historical archaeology and bioarchaeology.

The Neolithic of the Near East is a period of human development which saw fundamental changes in the nature of human society. It is traditionally studied for its development of domestication, agriculture, and growing social complexity. In this book Karina Croucher takes a new approach, focusing on the human body and investigating mortuary practices - the treatment and burial of the dead - to discover what these can reveal about the people of the Neolithic Near East. The remarkable evidence relating to mortuary practices and ritual behaviour from the Near Eastern Neolithic provides some of the most breath-taking archaeological evidence excavated from Neolithic contexts. The most enigmatic mortuary practices of the period produced the striking 'plastered skulls', faces modelled onto the crania of the deceased. Archaeological sites also contain evidence for many intriguing mortuary treatments, including decapitated burials and the fragmentation, circulation, curation, and reburial of human and animal remains and material culture. Drawing on recent excavations and earlier archive and published fieldwork, Croucher provides an overview and introduction to the period, presenting new interpretations of the archaeological evidence and in-depth analyses of case studies. The book explores themes such as ancestors, human-animal relationships, food, consumption and cannibalism, personhood, and gender. Offering a unique insight into changing attitudes towards the human body - both in life and during death - this book reveals the identities and experiences of the people of the Neolithic Near East through their interactions with their dead, with animals, and their new material worlds.

Zooarchaeology, or the study of ancient animal remains, is a vital but frequently side-lined subject in archaeology. Many disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and geography, recognise human-animal interactions as a key source of information for understanding cultural ideology. Archaeological records are also composed largely of debris from human-animal relationships, be they in the form of animal bones, individual artefacts or entire landscapes. By integrating knowledge from archaeological remains with evidence from texts, iconography, social anthropology and cultural geography, Beastly Questions: Animal Answers to Archaeological Issues provides an intellectual tool-kit to enable archaeological students, researchers and those working in the commercial sector to offer more engaging interpretations of the evidence at their disposal. Going beyond the simple confines of 'what people ate', this accessible but in-depth study covers a variety of high-profile topics in European archaeology and provides novel insights into mainstream archaeological questions.This includes cultural responses to wild animals, the domestication of animals and its implications on human daily practice, experience and ideology, the transportation of species and the value of incorporating animals into landscape research, the importance of the study of foodways for understanding past societies and how animal studies can help us to comprehend issues of human identity and ideology: past, present and future.

In The Archaeology of Lydia: From Gyges to Alexander, Christopher Roosevelt provides the first overview of the regional archaeology of Lydia in western Turkey, including much previously unpublished evidence as well as a fresh synthesis of the archaeology of Sardis, the ancient capital of the region. Combining data from regional surveys, stylistic analyses of artifacts in local museums, ancient texts, and environmental studies, he presents a new perspective on the archaeology of this area. To assess the importance of Lydian landscapes under Lydian and Achaemenid rule, roughly between the seventh and fourth centuries BCE, Roosevelt situates the archaeological evidence within frameworks established by evidence for ancient geography, environmental conditions, and resource availability and exploitation. Drawing on detailed and copiously illustrated evidence presented in a regionally organized catalogue, the book considers the significance of evidence of settlement and burial at Sardis and beyond for understanding Lydian society as a whole and the continuity of cultural traditions across the transition from Lydian to Achaemenid hegemony.

The application of statistical techniques to the study of manuscript books, based on the analysis of large data sets acquired through the archaeological observation of manuscripts, is one of the most original trends in codicological research, aiming not only to reconstruct on a sound basis the methods and processes used in book manufacture and their tendential evolution in space and time, but also to interpret them as the result of a dynamic interplay between various and often incompatible needs (of cultural, technical, social and economic nature) that book artisans had to reconcile in the best possible way. The present collection of essays in English translation was guided by the desire to offer a multifarious well-articulated picture of the application of statistical methodology to the various aspects of manuscript production, namely analysis of materials, characterization of book types, manufacturing techniques, planning and use of layout characterization of scripts and scribal habits. The volume aims to present to a wider readership a series of significant papers which have appeared over the last fifteen years, by means of which the statistical approach continues to demonstrate its vast potential.

Statistics in Practice A new series of practical books outlining the use of statistical techniques in a wide range of application areas:

• Human and Biological Sciences
• Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Industry, Commerce and Finance

The authors of this important text explore the processes through which archaeologists analyse their data and how these can be made more rigorous and effective by sound statistical modelling. They assume relatively little previous statistical or mathematical knowledge. Introducing the idea underlying the Bayesian approach to the statistical analysis of data and their subsequent interpretation, the authors demonstrate the major advantage of this approach, i.e. that it allows the incorporation of relevant prior knowledge or beliefs into the analysis. By doing so it provides a logical and coherent way of updating beliefs from those held before observing the data to those held after taking the data into account. To illustrate the power and effectiveness of mathematical and statistical modelling within the Bayesian framework, a variety of real case studies are presented covering areas of common interest to archaeologists. These case studies cover applications in areas such as radiocarbon dating, spatial analysis, provenance studies and other dating methods. Background to these case studies is provided for those readers not so familiar with the subject. Thus, the book provides an examination of the theoretical and practical consequences of Bayesian analysis for examining problems in archaeology. Students of archaeology and related disciplines and professional archaeologists will find the book an informative and practical introduction to the subject.

This book explores different aspects of LA-ICP-MS (laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry). It presents a large array of new analytical protocols for elemental or isotope analysis. LA-ICP-MS is a powerful tool that combines a sampling device able to remove very small quantities of material without leaving visible damage at the surface of an object. Furthermore, it functions as a sensitive analytical instrument that measures, within a few seconds, a wide range of isotopes in inorganic samples. Determining the elemental or the isotopic composition of ancient material is essential to address questions related to ancient technology or provenance and therefore aids archaeologists in reconstructing exchange networks for goods, people and ideas. Recent improvements of LA-ICP-MS have opened new avenues of research that are explored in this volume.

Ground-penetrating radar is a near-surface geophysical technique that can provide three-dimensional maps and other images of buried archaeological features and associated stratigraphy in a precise way. This book, by the expert in the field, provides the basics of the physics, chemistry, geology, and archaeology in a clear fashion, unburdened by complex equations or theory. The reader will be able to understand how the latest equipment and software and the results of data collection and processing can be used effectively in a number of different settings. Both potential pitfalls and successes and the reasons for them are discussed. The many well-illustrated examples, with important tables and graphs, are useful for reference in the field and for data processing.

Ground-penetrating radar is a near-surface geophysical technique that can provide three-dimensional maps and other images of buried archaeological features and associated stratigraphy in a precise way. This book, by the expert in the field, provides the basics of the physics, chemistry, geology, and archaeology in a clear fashion, unburdened by complex equations or theory. The reader will be able to understand how the latest equipment and software and the results of data collection and processing can be used effectively in a number of different settings. Both potential pitfalls and successes and the reasons for them are discussed. The many well-illustrated examples, with important tables and graphs, are useful for reference in the field and for data processing.

This volume investigates the construction of group identity in Late La Tene South-East Europe using an innovative statistical modelling method. Death and burial theory underlies the potential of mortuary practices for identity research. The sample used for this volumes's research consists of 370 graves, organized in a specially crated database that records funerary ritual; and grave-good information. In the case of grave-goods, this involved found hierarchically organized categorical variables, which serve to describe each item by combining functional and typological features. The volume also aims to show the compatibility of archaeological theory and statistical modelling. The discussions from archaeological theory rarely find methodological implementations through statistical methods. In this volume, theoretical issues form an integrative part of data preparation, method development and result interpretation.

Tools of data comparison and analysis are critical in the field of archaeology, and the integration of technological advancements such as geographic information systems, intelligent systems, and virtual reality reconstructions with the teaching of archaeology is crucial to the effective utilization of resources in the field. ""E-Learning Methodologies and Computer Applications in Archaeology"" presents innovative instructional approaches for archaeological e-learning based on networked technologies, providing researchers, scholars, and professionals a comprehensive global perspective on the resources, development, application, and implications of information communication technology in multimedia-based educational products and services in archaeology.

Every year, there are over 1.6 million violent deaths worldwide, making violence one of the leading public health issues of our time. And with the 20th century just behind us, it's hard to forget that 191 million people lost their lives directly or indirectly through conflict. This collection of engaging case studies on violence and violent deaths reveals how violence is reconstructed from skeletal and contextual information. By sharing the complex methodologies for gleaning scientific data from human remains and the context they are found in, and complementary perspectives for examining violence from both past and contemporary societies, bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology prove to be fundamentally inseparable. This book provides a model for training forensic anthropologists and bioarchaeologists, not just in the fundamentals of excavation and skeletal analysis, but in all subfields of anthropology, to broaden their theoretical and practical approach to dealing with everyday violence.

The 1992 publication of Pottery Function brought together the ethnographic study of the Kalinga and developed a method and theory for how pottery was actually used. Since then, there have been considerable advances in understanding how pottery was actually used, particularly in the area of residue analysis, abrasion, and sooting/carbonization. At the 20th anniversary of the book, it is time to assess what has been done and learned. One of the concerns of those working in pottery analysis is that they are unsure how to "do" use-alteration analysis on their collection. Another common concern is understanding intended pottery function-the connections between technical choices and function. This book is designed to answer these questions using case studies from the author and his colleagues for applying use-alteration analysis to infer actual pottery function. The focus of Understanding Pottery Function is on how practicing archaeologists can infer function from their ceramic collection.

This volume represents the most important deliverable of the European-funded project Radio-Past (www.radiopast.eu). It is intended to disseminate the key results achieved in the form of methodological guidelines for the application of non-destructive approaches in order to understand, visualize and manage complex archaeological sites, in particular large multi-period settlements whose remains are still mostly buried. The authors were selected from among the project research staff but also from among leading international specialists who served as speakers at the two international events organized in the frameworkof the project (the Valle Giulia Colloquium of Rome 2009 and the Colloquium of Ghent 2013) and at the three Specialization Fora, the high formation training activities organized in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

As such, the book offers contributions on diverse aspects of the research process (data capture, data management, data elaboration, data visualization and site management), presenting the state of the art and drafting guidelines for good practice in each field.

Cultural resource management (CRM) involves research, legislation, and education related to the conservation, protection, and interpretation of historic and prehistoric archaeological resources. Kerber's work is divided into four major categories of discussion: theoretical and interpretive frameworks, research methodology, legislation and compliance, and creative protection strategies. The only volume on CRM in Northeastern America since Spiess's Conservation Archaeology in 1978, its contributors are all major participants in archaeology in the Northeast, which includes the six New England states and New York. Because the volume presents successful models and practical advice concerning CRM, it is relevant to regions other than the Northeast and can be helpful in providing a comparative framework for evaluating programs elsewhere in the United States.