Homeless Heritage describes the process of using archaeological methodologies to collaboratively document how contemporary homeless people use and experience the city. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken in Bristol and York, the book first describes the way in which archaeological methods and theory have come to be usefully applied to the contemporary world, before exploring the historical development of the concept of homelessness. Working with homeless people, the author undertook surveys and two excavations of contemporary homeless sites, and the team co-curated two public heritage exhibitions - with surprising results. Complementing a growing body of literature that details how collaborative and participatory heritage projects can give voice to marginalised groups, Homeless Heritage details what it means to be homeless in the twenty first century.

Preservation of Archaeological Remains In-Situ: A Reader reveals to the heritage practitioner (archaeologist, conservator, inspector of ancient monuments, conservation officer) and archaeology and heritage studies student, the issues surrounding the preservation of archaeological remains in-situ. Offering contemporary and classic readings, it provides professionals and students alike with a strong understanding of contemporary preservation practice. The book illustrates the wide variety of threats to in-situ archaeological remains, develops the concept of a holistic appreciation of the threats, and appreciates the need to prioritise the appropriate forms of response and to developing appropriation mitigation strategies. Using a careful balance of sources, some technical, some theoretical, some practical as well as case studies to explore the threats and their mitigation, it provides a holistic statement on preserving archaeological remains in-situ.

Although several manuals on fieldwork techniques exist, and although most definitions of archaeology would specify excavation and fieldwork as the core of archaeological enquiry, this book is the first to undertake a comparative assessment of how such techniques are taught to university students in many different parts of the world. This book is the result of a three-day international conference held by the International Centre for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology (ICCHA) in Beijing in 2006. The contributors, who come from many parts of the world - Africa, Australia, India, Southeast Asia, South and North America and Europe - present strong arguments on the core theme, concepts of the past, and describe fieldwork practices and teaching in their own countries.This is a ground-breaking work both in its theoretical breadth and range of practical information. It will be invaluable to students and teachers of archaeology and heritage management, educationalists and historians. Contributors include J O Aleru, Brigitte Cech, Sarah Colley, Rafael Cruz Antillon, Caleb Adebayo Folorunso, Dorian Q Fuller, Luan Fengshi, Marta Luciani, Arkadiusz Marciniak, Timothy D Maxwell, Gustav Milne, Surapol Natapintu, Mike Parker Pearson, Dominic Perring, Innocent Pikirayi, Qin Ling, Stephen Shennan, B J Tubosun, Peter Ucko, Wang Tao, Gamini Wijesuriya, Seonbok Yi, Zhang Chi, Zhao Hui, and Zhao Zhijun.

Archaeologists and archaeology students have long since needed an authoritative account of the techniques now available to them, designed to be understood by non-scientists. This book fills the gap and it offers a two-tier approach to the subject. The main text is a coherent introduction to the whole field of science-based dating, written in plain langauge for non-scientists. Additional end-notes, however, offer a a more technical understanding, and cater for those who have a scientific and mathematical background.

The dramatic development of European oak chronologies over the last ten years parallels and supplements the bristlecone-pine chronology in the United States. Dendrochronologists can now provide a wood sample - a time capsule of biological material - for any calender date over the last seven millennia from two continents. For archaeologists, resigned to the imprecision of radiocarbon dating, the implications are profound. For the first time it is possible to establish precise dates for prehistoric events. Similarly, we have an independent and scientifically objective way of testing historical accounts, such as the traditional Egyptian chronology. Equally fundamental are the insights provided by the related disciplines of dendroecology and dendroclimatology. The Bronze Age eruption of Santorini and the AD 540 `event' are explored as fascinating case studies. Drawing on a further decade of research by himself and others, Mike Baille not only brings the pre-1980 story up to date, but demonstrates the wide and exciting applications of this comparatively new science.

At the end of the 19th century W.M.F. Petrie excavated a series of assemblages at the New Kingdom Fayum site of Gurob. These deposits, known in the Egyptological literature as 'Burnt Groups', were composed by several and varied materials (mainly Egyptian and imported pottery, faience, stone and wood vessels, jewellery), all deliberately burnt and buried in the harem palace area of the settlement. Since their discovery these deposits have been considered peculiar and unparalleled. Many scholars were challenged by them and different theories were formulated to explain these enigmatic 'Burnt Groups'. The materials excavated from these assemblages are now curated at several Museum collections across England: Ashmolean Museum, British Museum, Manchester Museum, and Petrie Museum. For the first time since their discovery, this book presents these materials all together. Gasperini has studied and visually analysed all the items. This research sheds new light on the chronology of deposition of these assemblages, additionally a new interpretation of their nature, primary deposition, and function is presented in the conclusive chapter. The current study also gives new information on the abandonment of the Gurob settlement and adds new social perspective on a crucial phase of the ancient Egyptian history: the transition between the late New Kingdom and the early Third Intermediate Period. Beside the traditional archaeological sources, literary evidence ('The Great Tomb Robberies Papyri') is taken into account to formulate a new theory on the deposition of these assemblages.

This book explores the development of territorial identity in the late prehistoric, Roman, and early medieval periods. Over the course of the Iron Age, a series of marked regional variations in material culture and landscape character emerged across eastern England that reflect the development of discrete zones of social and economic interaction. The boundaries between these zones appear to have run through sparsely settled areas of the landscape on high ground, and corresponded to a series of kingdoms that emerged during the Late Iron Age. In eastern England at least, these pre-Roman socio-economic territories appear to have survived throughout the Roman period despite a trend towards cultural homogenization brought about by Romanization. Although there is no direct evidence for the relationship between these socio-economic zones and the Roman administrative territories known as civitates, they probably corresponded very closely. The fifth century saw some Anglo-Saxon immigration but whereas in East Anglia these communities spread out across much of the landscape, in the Northern Thames Basin they appear to have been restricted to certain coastal and estuarine districts. The remaining areas continued to be occupied by a substantial native British population, including much of the East Saxon kingdom (very little of which appears to have been 'Saxon'). By the sixth century a series of regionally distinct identities - that can be regarded as separate ethnic groups - had developed which corresponded very closely to those that had emerged during the late prehistoric and Roman periods. These ancient regional identities survived through to the Viking incursions, whereafter they were swept away following the English re-conquest and replaced with the counties with which we are familiar today.

Immediately hailed as the standard work and one of the most widely used archaeological field manuals, this survey of current excavation techniques, now in its third edition, remains an in-dispensible guide for archaeologists. his text has been written by an experienced excavator about the inadequacies of excavation techniques and the possible ways of refining them and should serve as a valuable introduction to the subtleties and spirit of modern archaeology.

This new edition of the definitive work on doing paleoethnobotany brings the book up to date by incorporating new methods and examples of research, while preserving the overall organization and approach of the book to facilitate its use as a textbook. In addition to updates on the comprehensive discussions of macroremains, pollen, and phytoliths, this edition includes a chapter on starch analysis, the newest tool in the paleoethnobotanist's research kit. Other highlights include updated case studies; expanded discussions of deposition and preservation of archaeobotanical remains; updated historical overviews; new and updated techniques and approaches, including insights from experimental and ethnoarchaeological studies; and a current listing of electronic resources. Extensively illustrated, this will be the standard work on paleoethnobotany for a generation.

Although many archaeologists have a good understanding of the basics in computer science, statistics, geostatistics, modeling, and data mining, more literature is needed about the advanced analysis in these areas. This book aids archaeologists in learning more advanced tools and methods while also helping mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists with no previous knowledge of the field realize the potential of the methods in archaeological experiments.

Archaeologists are synonymous with artifacts. With artifacts we construct stories concerning past lives and livelihoods, yet we rarely write of deeply personal encounters or of the way the lives of objects and our lives become enmeshed. In this volume, 23 archaeologists each tell an intimate story of their experience and entanglement with an evocative artifact. Artifacts range from a New Britain obsidian tool to an abandoned Viking toy boat, the marble finger of a classical Greek statue and ordinary pottery fragments from Roman England and Polynesia. Other tales cover contemporary objects, including a toothpick, bell, door, and the blueprint for a 1970s motorcar. These creative stories are self-consciously personal; they derive from real world encounter viewed through the peculiarities and material intimacy of archaeological practice. This text can be used in undergraduate and graduate courses focused on archaeological interpretation and theory, as well as on material culture and story-telling.

How do archaeologists make effective use of physical traces and material culture as repositories of evidence? Material Evidence takes a resolutely case-based approach to this question, exploring instances of exemplary practice, key challenges, instructive failures, and innovative developments in the use of archaeological data as evidence. The goal is to bring to the surface the wisdom of practice, teasing out norms of archaeological reasoning from evidence. Archaeologists make compelling use of an enormously diverse range of material evidence, from garbage dumps to monuments, from finely crafted artifacts rich with cultural significance to the detritus of everyday life and the inadvertent transformation of landscapes over the long term. Each contributor to Material Evidence identifies a particular type of evidence with which they grapple and considers, with reference to concrete examples, how archaeologists construct evidential claims, critically assess them, and bring them to bear on pivotal questions about the cultural past. Historians, cultural anthropologists, philosophers, and science studies scholars are increasingly interested in working with material things as objects of inquiry and as evidence - and they acknowledge on all sides just how challenging this is. One of the central messages of the book is that close analysis of archaeological best practice can yield constructive guidelines for practice that have much to offer archaeologists and those in related fields.

How do archaeologists make effective use of physical traces and material culture as repositories of evidence? Material Evidence takes a resolutely case-based approach to this question, exploring instances of exemplary practice, key challenges, instructive failures, and innovative developments in the use of archaeological data as evidence. The goal is to bring to the surface the wisdom of practice, teasing out norms of archaeological reasoning from evidence. Archaeologists make compelling use of an enormously diverse range of material evidence, from garbage dumps to monuments, from finely crafted artifacts rich with cultural significance to the detritus of everyday life and the inadvertent transformation of landscapes over the long term. Each contributor to Material Evidence identifies a particular type of evidence with which they grapple and considers, with reference to concrete examples, how archaeologists construct evidential claims, critically assess them, and bring them to bear on pivotal questions about the cultural past. Historians, cultural anthropologists, philosophers, and science studies scholars are increasingly interested in working with material things as objects of inquiry and as evidence - and they acknowledge on all sides just how challenging this is. One of the central messages of the book is that close analysis of archaeological best practice can yield constructive guidelines for practice that have much to offer archaeologists and those in related fields.

Originally published in 1956, this concise book brought together wisdom from V. Gordon Childe based upon 10 years of his lectures on the principles of archaeological classification, terminology and interpretive concepts. It examines meanings of technical terms and methodologies used in prehistoric archaeology, for those new to the area.

The analysis of tree-ring patterns, or dendrochronology, is a very exact science and an important dating technique. The basis of the method is misleadingly simple: that overlap of successive older ring patterns can generate a master chronology and samples of unknown age can then be checked against this.

This book, published originally in 1982, traces the development of a specific project from its inception to the successful completion of some of the longest chronologies in Europe. In doing so it looks at some of the problems associated with the subject and at the levels of precision possible. After outlining the techniques associated with the measurement and processing of tree-ring patterns, the author traces an attempt to construct such an independent chronology in a new area.

The book breaks naturally into sections conditioned by the availability of timbers and these can be listed as modern, late medieval, medieval, early medieval and prehistoric. As far as possible the results are presented in the order in which things happened, thus preserving the sense of a developing subject.

Archaeologists from many different European countries here explore the very varied relationship between nationalistic ideas and archaeological activity through the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The resurgence of nationalism was one of the most prominent features of the European political scene in the 1990s, when this book was originally published. The past provides a large supply of ideas and images to support the claims of national identity deeply rooted in remote generations. The remote past revealed by archaeology also plays a part heroes, heroines, golden ages long disappeared, objects to admire, and sites to provoke the memory, all called on to further the cause of nationalism.

Drawing on the authoritative insights of the indigenous contributors, this book examines the issues throughout modern Europe. All of the chapters share a concern to see archaeology and the study of the past as intimately related to contemporary social and political questions. The present shapes the way we think about the past but the past also provides us with evidence for thinking about the present. These issues are timeless and this comprehensive examination of a host of issues remains important for historians and those pursuing nationalistic politics."

Although the preparation of plans is an essential part of the work of a field archaeologist or excavator, many University Departments of Archaeology give very little attention to surveying, regarding it as a subject which should either be left to technicians or picked up during work in the field. As a result, some archaeologists do not even realise that their survey techniques are unsatisfactory. Others, driven by the requirements of their work, devise idiosyncratic methods which are inherently liable to inaccuracy and unnecessarily laborious. The object of this book is to enable archaeologists, even without relevant training, to deal with any problem in surveying. The book is arranged by technique for ease of reference. Thus one part is devoted to Chain Surveying, which has evolved over centuries into the simplest and quickest way of making accurate plans for most types of site; but methods of reconnaissance and of rough survey are also described. Since instrumental work is sometimes necessary, details are given of the construction and use of the Level and of the Theodolite and Tacheometer. Simple but accurate methods - those not requiring a computer - are described for plotting from oblique aerial photographs, and although numerical calculations are seldom needed in archaeological surveys, there are occasions when they can save considerable time and labour, so fully worked examples are given of all relevant calculations, with alternatives according to whether logarithms or an electronic calculator are available.

This volume is a major revision and expansion of Taylor's seminal book Radiocarbon Dating: An Archaeological Perspective. It covers the major advances and accomplishments of the 14C method in archaeology and analyzes factors that affect the accuracy and precision of 14C-based age estimates. In addition to reviewing the basic principles of the method, it examines 14C dating anomalies and means to resolve them, and considers the critical application of 14C data as a dating isotope with special emphasis on issues in Old and New World archaeology and late Quaternary paleoanthropology. This volume, again a benchmark for 14C dating, critically reflects on the method and data that underpins, in so many cases, the validity of the chronologies used to understand the prehistoric archaeological record.

The concept of time is salient to all human affairs and can be understood in a variety of different ways. This pioneering collection is the first comprehensive survey of time and archaeology. It includes chapters from a broad, international range of contributors, which combine theoretical and empirical material. They illustrate and explore the diversity of archaeological approaches to time.

Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement is an indispensable resource for archaeologists and the communities in which they work. The authors are intensely committed to developing effective models for participating in the civic renewal movement - through active engagement in community life, in development offor interpretive and educational programming, and for in participation in debates and decisions about preservation and community planning. Using case studies from different regions within the United States, Guatemala, Vietnam, Canada, and Eastern Europe, Little and Shackel challenge archaeologists to create an ethical public archaeology that is concerned not just with the management of cultural resources, but with social justice and civic responsibility. Their new book will be a valuable guide for archaeologists, community planners, historians, and museum professionals.

* Two new chapters on the analysis of glass and metal, and the curation of archaeological collections expand the coverage * Thoroughly updated throughout to reflect the current state of the field * Concise yet with comprehensive breadth makes it an excellent choice for introductory archaeology courses

Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement is an indispensable resource for archaeologists and the communities in which they work. The authors are intensely committed to developing effective models for participating in the civic renewal movement - through active engagement in community life, in development offor interpretive and educational programming, and for in participation in debates and decisions about preservation and community planning. Using case studies from different regions within the United States, Guatemala, Vietnam, Canada, and Eastern Europe, Little and Shackel challenge archaeologists to create an ethical public archaeology that is concerned not just with the management of cultural resources, but with social justice and civic responsibility. Their new book will be a valuable guide for archaeologists, community planners, historians, and museum professionals.

Archaeology and Language I represents groundbreaking work in synthesizing two disciplines that are now seen as interlinked: linguistics and archaeology. This volume is the first of a three-part survey of innovative results emerging from their combination. Archaeology and historical linguistics have largely pursued separate tracks until recently, although their goals can be very similar. While there is a new awareness that these disciplines can be used to complement one another, both rigorous methodological awareness and detailed case-studies are still lacking in literature. Archaeology and Language I aims to fill this lacuna. Exploring a wide range of techniques developed by specialists in each discipline, this first volume deals with broad theoretical and methodological issues and provides an indispensable background to the detail of the studies presented in volumes II and III. This collection deals with the controversial question of the origin of language, the validity of deep-level reconstruction, the sociolinguistic modelling of prehistory and the use and value of oral tradition.

Archaeology and Language III interprets results from archaeological data in terms of language distribution and change, providing the tools for a radical rewriting of the conventional discourse of prehistory. Individual chapters present case studies of artefacts and fragmentary textual materials, concerned with the reconstruction of houses, maritime technology, pottery and grave goods.

Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories to urbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history, ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, it includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors, many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.