For more than a century, the study of hunting and gathering societies has been central to the development of both archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines, and has also generated widespread public interest and debate. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies to date, including critical engagements with older debates, new theoretical perspectives, and renewed obligations for greater engagement between researchers and indigenous communities. Chapters provide in-depth archaeological, historical, and anthropological case-studies, and examine far-reaching questions about human social relations, attitudes to technology, ecology, and management of resources and the environment, as well as issues of diet, health, and gender relations-all central topics in hunter-gatherer research, but also themes that have great relevance for modern global society and its future challenges. The Handbook also provides a strategic vision for how the integration of new methods, approaches, and study regions can ensure that future research into the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers will continue to deliver penetrating insights into the factors that underlie all human diversity.

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.

The Cumans, a people that inhabited the steppe zone in the medieval period and actively shaped the fate of the region from the Black Sea to the Carpathian Basin, have been primarily known to history as nomadic, mounted warriors. Some of them arrived in the Hungarian Kingdom in the midthirteenth century as a group of refugees fleeing the invading Mongol army and asked for asylum. In the course of three centuries they settled down in the kingdom, converted to Christianity, and were integrated into medieval Hungarian society. This study collects all available information, historical, ethnographic and archaeological alike, on the animal husbandry aspect of the complex development of the Cuman population in medieval Hungary. Although this medieval minority has been in the focus of scholarly interest in the past decades, no attempt has been made so far to study their herds using interdisciplinary methods. The research of faunal assemblages through archaeozoological methods has the potential to reveal direct, and by other means, unavailable information on animal keeping practices, although this source of evidence often escapes scholarly attention in Central and Eastern Europe. This book combines a primary scientific dataset with historical information and interprets them within the framework of settlement history in order to investigate the manifold integration process of a medieval community.

This volume is a product of the International Conference of Archaeological Prospection 2017 which was hosted by the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford. This event marked a return to the location of the inaugural conference of archaeological prospection which was held in Bradford in 1995. The conference is held every two years under the banner of the International Society for Archaeological Prospection. The Proceedings of 12th International Conference of Archaeological Prospection draws together over 100 papers addressing archaeological prospection techniques, methodologies and case studies from around the world. Including studies from over 30 countries distributed across Africa, North America, South America, Asia and Europe; the collection of articles covers a diverse range of research backgrounds and situations. At this particular ICAP meeting, specific consideration has been given to emerging techniques and technologies in the fields of inter-tidal and marine archaeological prospection, and low altitude archaeological prospection. The papers within this volume represent the conference themes of: Techniques and new technological developments; Applications and reconstructing landscapes and urban environments; Integration of techniques and inter-disciplinary studies, with focus on visualisation and interpretation; Marine, inter-tidal and wetland prospection techniques and applications; Low altitude prospection techniques and applications; Commercial archaeological prospection in the contemporary world.

This volume brings together new lines of research across a range of disciplines from participants in a workshop held at Wolfson College, Oxford, on 23rd May 2017. In light of rapid technological developments in digital imaging, the aim in gathering these contributions together is to inform specialist and general readers about some of the ways in which imaging technologies are transforming the study and presentation of archaeological and cultural artefacts. The periods, materials, geography, and research questions under discussion therefore are varied, but the contributions are united in shared interests surrounding the aims of these techniques for imaging objects: what advantages do they offer, whether in research or museum contexts, what limitations are still faced, and how can technological development encourage new types of research and public engagement?

This volume brings together the latest approaches in bioarchaeology in the study of sex and gender. Archaeologists have long used skeletal remains to identify gender. Contemporary bioarchaeologists, however, have begun to challenge the theoretical and methodological basis for sex assignment from the skeleton. Simultaneously, they have started to consider the cultural construction of the gendered body and gender roles, recognizing the body as uniquely fashioned from the interaction of biological, social, and environmental factors. As the contributors to this volume reveal, combining skeletal data with contextual information can provide a richer understanding of life in the past.

The fiery transformation of the dead is replete in our popular culture and Western modernity's death ways, and yet it is increasingly evident how little this disposal method is understood by archaeologists and students of cognate disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. In this regard, the archaeological study of cremation has much to offer. Cremation is a fascinating and widespread theme and entry-point in the exploration of the variability of mortuary practices among past societies. Seeking to challenge simplistic narratives of cremation in the past and present, the studies in this volume seek to confront and explore the challenges of interpreting the variability of cremation by contending with complex networks of modern allusions and imaginings of cremations past and present and ongoing debates regarding how we identify and interpret cremation in the archaeological record. Using a series of original case studies, the book investigates the archaeological traces of cremation in a varied selection of prehistoric and historic contexts from the Mesolithic to the present in order to explore cremation from a practice-oriented and historically situated perspective.

Fitful Histories and Unruly Publics re-examines the relationship between Eurasia's past and its present by interrogating the social construction of time and the archaeological production of culture. Traditionally, archaeological research in Eurasia has focused on assembling normative descriptions of monolithic cultures that endure for millennia, largely immune to the forces of historical change. The papers in this volume seek to document forces of difference and contestation in the past that were produced in the perceptible engagements of peoples, things, and places. The research gathered here convincingly demonstrates that these forces made social life in ancient Eurasia rather more fitful and its publics considerably more unruly than archaeological research has traditionally allowed. Contributors are Mikheil Abramishvili, Paula N. Doumani Dupuy, Magnus Fiskesjoe, Hilary Gopnik, Emma Hite, Jean-Luc Houle, Erik G. Johannesson, James A. Johnson, Lori Khatchadourian, Ian Lindsay, Maureen E. Marshall, Mitchell S. Rothman, Irina Shingiray, Adam T. Smith, Kathryn O. Weber and Xin Wu.

This volume is a product of the 13th International Conference on Archaeological Prospection 2019, which was hosted by the Department of Environmental Science in the Faculty of Science at the Institute of Technology Sligo. The conference is held every two years under the banner of the International Society for Archaeological Prospection and this was the first time that the conference was held in Ireland. New Global Perspectives on Archaeological Prospection draws together over 90 papers addressing archaeological prospection techniques, methodologies and case studies from 33 countries across Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America, reflecting current and global trends in archaeological prospection. At this particular ICAP meeting, specific consideration was given to the development and use of archaeological prospection in Ireland, archaeological feedback for the prospector, applications of prospection technology in the urban environment and the use of legacy data. Papers include novel research areas such as magnetometry near the equator, drone-mounted radar, microgravity assessment of tombs, marine electrical resistivity tomography, convolutional neural networks, data processing, automated interpretive workflows and modelling as well as recent improvements in remote sensing, multispectral imaging and visualisation.

How much was archaeology founded on prejudice? "The Archaeology of Race" explores the application of racial theory to interpret the past in Britain during the late Victorian and Edwardian period. It investigates how material culture from ancient Egypt and Greece was used to validate the construction of racial hierarchies. Specifically focusing on Francis Galton's ideas around inheritance and race, it explores how the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie applied these in his work in Egypt and in his political beliefs. It examines the professional networks formed by societies, such as the Anthropological Institute, and their widespread use of eugenic ideas in analysing society."Archaeology of Race" draws on archives and objects from the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and the Galton collection at UCL. These collections are used to explore anti-Semitism, skull collecting, New Race theory and physiognomy. These collections give insight into the relationship between Galton and Petrie and place their ideas in historical context.

After neo-evolutionism, how does one talk about the pre-modern state? Over the past two decades archaeological research has shifted decisively from check-list identifications of the state as an evolutionary type to studies of how power and authority were constituted in specific polities. Developing Gramsci's concept of hegemony, this book provides an accessible discussion of general principles that serve to help us understand and organise these new directions in archaeological research. Throughout this book, conceptual issues are illustrated by means of case studies drawn from Madagascar, Mesopotamia, the Inca, the Maya and Greece.

Zooarchaeology, the study of ancient animals, is a frequently side-lined subject in archaeology. This 'important and provocative' volume, now available in paperback, provides a crucial reversal of this bizarre situation - 'bizarre' because the archaeological record is composed largely of debris from human-animal relationships (be they in the form of animal bones, individual artifacts or entire landscapes) and many disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and geography, recognise human-animal interactions as a key source of information for understanding cultural ideology. By integrating knowledge from archaeological remains with evidence from texts, iconography, social anthropology and cultural geography, Beastly Questions: Animal Answers to Archaeological Issues seeks to encourage 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 interpretations of 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.

The book derives from the experiences of the authors as lecturers and tutors at different international summer schools on reality-based surveying and 3D modelling in the field of archaeology and cultural heritage. The book is organized in three main sections. The first part aims to introduce and discuss the contribution of geomatic techniques in archaeology and more generally in cultural heritage with particular attentions to the 3D domain. The second part is focused on the main areas involved in the implementation of 3D surveys (aerial and terrestrial LiDAR, photogrammetry, remote sensing), 3D documentations, GIS and 3D interpretations (virtual and cyber archaeology). The last section collects some relevant case studies showing the extraordinary contribution that geomatic techniques can give to archaeological research and cultural heritage at different scales of detail: object, site, landscape.

Archaeologists working on late antique sites have not spent enough time thinking about methodology. Their focus has been on recovering and cataloguing evidence, or on the study of specific historical problems. Digging has often been more important than publishing, which has rarely extended beyond the basic summaries found in preliminary reports. The re-emergence of clearance excavation, fuelled by the demands of tourism, has further reduced the value of urban excavations in the East Mediterranean. Here, late antique levels have suffered, in the hunt for photogenic early imperial architecture. This volume attempts to address this situation by offering a critique of present practice and a series of exemplars, alongside discussion articles on field technique and post-excavation analysis. The articles ranges from urban survey to the study of finds. The book also considers if we need to develop specific field methods appropriate to the study of late antiquity. Contributors are John Bintliff, Jeremy Evans, Axel Gering, Stefan Groh, Yoshiki Hori, Nikolaos D. Karydis, Veli Koese, Luke Lavan, Zsolt Magyar, Philip Mills, John Pearce, Steve Roskams, Helga Sedlmayer, Ellen Swift, Itamar Taxel, Douglas Underwood, Lutgarde Vandeput and Joe Williams.

This volume presents papers exploring the archaeological applications of remote sensing techniques, including the study of images made from the air and from space, but also the results of geophysical techniques like magnetometry, Ground Penetrating Radar and Electrical Resistivity Tomography.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 38th Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA) Conference, held April 6th-9th 2010, in Granada, Spain. The theme of the conference was 'Fusion of Cultures', aiming to reflect both the scope of the conference and the spirit of the host city - a celebrated venue for such disciplinary interplay between archaeologists, computer scientists, and mathematicians.

"Nature and Antiquities" examines the relation between the natural sciences, anthropology, and archaeology in the Americas in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taking the reader across the Americas from the Southern Cone to Canada, across the Andes, the Brazilian Amazon, Mesoamerica, and the United States, the book explores the early history of archaeology from a Pan-American perspective.
The volume breaks new ground by entreating archaeologists to acknowledge the importance of ways of knowing that resulted from the study of nature in the history of archaeology. Some of the contributions to this volume trace the part conventions, practices, and concepts from natural history and the natural sciences played in the history and in the making of the discipline. Others set out to uncover, reassemble, or adjust our vision of collections that research historians of archaeology have disregarded or misrepresented - because their nineteenth-century makers would refuse to comply with today's disciplinary borders and study natural specimens and antiquities in conjunction, under the rubric of the territorial, the curious or the universal. Other contributions trace the socio-political implications of studying nature in conjunction with "indigenous peoples" in the Americas - inquiring into what it meant and entailed to comprehend the inhabitants of the American continent in and through a state of nature.

This dictionary translates over 2,000 words and terms associated with archaeological excavations into eight languages - English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Turkish and Arabic - making it an essential tool for anyone digging abroad. It contains all necessary terms for the archaeological excavation and survey of sites of any period.

This book is essential reading for archaeologists working in the field, as well as conservation scientists, museum curators and students of archaeology. The relationship between archaeology and conservation has long been complex and, at times, challenging. Archaeologists are often seen as interested principally in excavation and research, while conservators are concerned mainly with stabilization and the prevention of deterioration. Yet it is often initial conservation in the field that determines the long-term survival and intelligibility of both moveable artefacts and fixed architectural features. This user-friendly guide to conservation practices on archaeological excavations covers both structures and artefacts, starting from the moment when they are uncovered. Individual chapters discuss excavation and conservation, environmental and soil issues, deterioration, identification and condition assessment, detachment and removal, initial cleaning, coverings and shelters, packing, and documentation. There are also eight appendixes. Geared primarily for professionals engaged in the physical practice of excavation, this book will also interest archaeologists, archaeological conservators, site managers, conservation scientists, museum curators, and students of archaeology and conservation.