Recent archaeological scholarship along with technical and technological advances in near-surface geophysics has brought exciting new possibilities to a growing body of archaeological thought. Yet, few explicitly theoretical attempts have been made to provide archaeological geophysics with anthropological premises. Anthropological Research Framing for Archaeological Geophysics: Material Signatures of Past Human Behavior initiates a dialogue with other archaeological and geophysical professionals to do so. Most archaeological applications of geophysics remain methodological and technical, devoted to gaining awareness of buried anthropogenic materials but not human behavior. By proposing the amelioration of communication gaps between traditional and geophysical archaeologists, Jason Randall Thompson foments dialogue and participates in bringing about new ways of thinking anthropologically about archaeological geophysics.

This book covers the methodological, epistemological and practical issues of integrating qualitative and socio-anthropological factors into archaeological modeling. This text fills the gap between conceptual modeling (which usually relies on narratives describing the life of a past community) and formalized/computer-based modeling which are usually environmentally-determined. Methods combining both environmental and social issues through niche and agent-based modeling are presented. These methods help to translate data from paleo-environmental and archaeological society life cycles (such as climate and landscape changes) into the local spatial scale. The epistemological discussions will appeal to readers as well as the resilience socio-anthropological factors provide facing climatic fluctuations. Integrating Qualitative and Social Science Factors in Archaeological Modelling will appeal to students and researchers in the field.

This volume adopts a practice-based approach to examine the different ways in which classification is communicated and negotiated in different environments within archaeology. The book looks specifically at the archaeological classification of ceramics as a lens through which to examine the discursive and social practices inherent in the classification and categorization process, with perspectives from such areas as corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology forming the foundation of the book's theoretical framework. The volume then looks at the process of classification in practice in a variety of settings, including a university course on ceramics classification, an archaeological field school, an intensive petrography course, and archaeometry laboratory at a nuclear research reactor, and highlights participant observation and audiovisual data taken from fieldwork practice completed in these environments. This volume offers a valuable contribution to the growing literature on language and material culture, making this a key resource for students and scholars in sociolinguistic, anthropological linguistics, archaeology, discourse analysis, and anthropology.

The second of three volumes of John Neal's collected works. "Ancient metrology - once the playground of Newton, but now largely ignored even by archaeologists - ought to cease to be a pariah subject and regain its place at the centre of the study of antiquity. In the past, the widely attested variations in ancient linear measurements have been put down to sloppiness on the part of our ancestors. But Neal is able to show that such variations belong to a logical, elegant and cohesive system partially based on divisions of the Earth's surface at different points on the longitudinal meridian." Professor Michael Vickers, University of Oxford, review of Neal's work in Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science. 2001.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial reviews the current state of mortuary archaeology and its practice, highlighting its often contentious place in the modern socio-politics of archaeology. It contains forty-four chapters which focus on the history of the discipline and its current scientific techniques and methods. Written by leading, international scholars in the field, it derives its examples and case studies from a wide range of time periods, such as the middle palaeolithic to the twentieth century, and geographical areas which include Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. Combining up-to-date knowledge of relevant archaeological research with critical assessments of the theme and an evaluation of future research trajectories, it draws attention to the social, symbolic, and theoretical aspects of interpreting mortuary archaeology. The volume is well-illustrated with maps, plans, photographs, and illustrations and is ideally suited for students and researchers.

Heritage is everywhere, and an understanding of our past is increasingly critical to the understanding of our contemporary cultural context and place in global society. Visual Heritage in the Digital Age presents the state-of-the-art in the application of digital technologies to heritage studies, with the chapters collectively demonstrating the ways in which current developments are liberating the study, conservation and management of the past. Digital approaches to heritage have developed significantly over recent decades in terms of both the quantity and range of applications. However, rather than merely improving and enriching the ways in which we understand and engage with the past, this technology is enabling us to do this in entirely new ways. The chapters contained within this volume present a broad range of technologies for capturing data (such as high-definition laser scanning survey and geophysical survey), modelling (including GIS, data fusion, agent-based modelling), and engaging with heritage through novel digital interfaces (mobile technologies and the use of multi-touch interfaces in public spaces). The case studies presented include sites, landscapes and buildings from across Europe, North and Central America, and collections relating to the ancient civilisations of the Middle East and North Africa. The chronological span is immense, extending from the end of the last ice age through to the twentieth century. These case studies reveal new ways of approaching heritage using digital tools, whether from the perspective of interrogating historical textual data, or through the applications of complexity theory and the modelling of agents and behaviours. Beyond the data itself, Visual Heritage in the Digital Age also presents fresh ways of thinking about digital heritage. It explores more theoretical perspectives concerning the role of digital data and the challenges that are presented in terms of its management and preservation.

This work provides a new, comprehensive update to the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS). Drawing upon her extensive experience in informatics, curating data, and dental morphological data acquisition, Edgar has developed accessible and user-friendly standardized images and descriptions of dental morphological variants. The manual provides nearly 400 illustrations that indicate ideal expressions of each dental trait. These drawings are coupled with over 650 photographs of real teeth, indicating real-world examples of each expression. Additionally, trait descriptions have been written to be clear, comparative, and easy to apply. Together, the images and descriptions are presented in a standardized form for quick and clear reference. All of these modifications to ASUDAS make it more usable for students and professionals alike. In addition to these features of the manual, the text makes a brief but strong argument for why dental morphology will continue to be a useful tool in biological anthropology through the 21st century.

Excavations at the Tutu site represent a dramatic chapter in the annals of Caribbean archaeological excavation. The site was discovered in 1990 during the initial site clearing for a shopping mall in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. The site was excavated with the assistance of a team of professional archaeologists and volunteers. Utilizing resources and funds donated by the local scientific communities, the project employed a multidisciplinary sampling strategy designed to recover material for analysis by experts in fields such as anthropology, archaeology, palaeobotany, zooarchaeology, bioarchaeology, palaeopathology and photo imaging. This volume reports the results of these various applied analytical techniques laying a solid foundation for future comparative studies of prehistoric Caribbean human populations and cultures.

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.

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.

In Search of Cornoary-Prone Behavior: Beyond Type A provides a methodology of enormous potential for examining the relationship between behavioral variables and basic pathophysiological mechanisms. They discuss the history of Type-A behavior pattern (TABP) as it relates to coronary heart disease (CHD). Students and researchers with an interest in the correlation between personality and coronary behavior, as well as behavioral medicine, social and health psychology, and the neurosciences.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.