Civilisation is a debated concept and is often associated with the prerogatives of the 'West', colonial histories, and even emerging global politics. In this book, Stephen Feuchtwang and Michael Rowlands use the examples of Africa and China to provide a new conceptualisation that challenges traditional notions of 'civilisation'. They explain how to understand duration and continuity as long-term processes of transformation. Civilisations are best seen as practices of feeding and hospitality, of rituals and manners of living and dying, of entering the portals into the invisible world that surrounds and encompasses us, of healing and the knowledge of the encompassing universe and its powers, including its ghosts and demons. Civilisations furnish the moral ideals for people to live by and aspire to and they are changed more by the actions of disappointed grassroots and their little traditions than by their ruling authorities. Just as they revitalise and change their civilisations, this book revitalises and changes the way to think about civilisations in the humanities, the historical and the social sciences.

Since its first edition, Renfrew and Bahn's Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice has been the leading educational source on what archaeologists do and how they do it. The text is organized around the key questions that archaeologists ask about the past and details the practical and theoretical ways in which answers to those questions are sought. The seventh edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, with sixteen additional pages and new material on the latest developments in the subject and coverage of many recent discoveries. The book is newly designed with additional box features and extensive drawings, charts and photographs, all in full colour. This is a truly global introduction to archaeology, and includes examples from every part of the world. New boxes include coverage of the discovery of Richard III's burial; excavations at the Neolithic Ness of Brodgar in the Orkney Islands; snow patch archaeology on mountain tops and in the far north; Roman glassware traded to ancient Japan; the Museum of London's excavation of a Roman and later medieval site in the heart of the city; fresh analysis of Grauballe Man, a Danish Iron Age bog body; and work on the origins of farming at Jerf el Ahmar, Syria.

Clothing was crucial in human evolution, and having to cope with climate change was as true in prehistory as it is today. In Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory, Ian Gilligan offers the first complete account of the development of clothing as a response to cold exposure during the ice ages. He explores how and when clothes were invented, noting that the thermal motive alone is tenable in view of the naked condition of humans. His account shows that there is considerably more archaeological evidence for palaeolithic clothes than is generally appreciated. Moreover, Gilligan posits, clothing played a leading role in major technological innovations. He demonstrates that fibre production and the advent of woven fabrics, developed in response to global warming, were pivotal to the origins of agriculture. Drawing together evidence from many disciplines, Climate Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory is written in a clear and engaging style, and is illustrated with nearly 100 images.

The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies provides a novel perspective on long-term trajectories of evolutionary change in Paleolithic tools and tool-makers. Members of the human lineage have been producing stone tools for more than 3 million years. These artefacts provide key evidence for important evolutionary developments in hominin behaviour and cognition. Avoiding conventional approaches based on progressive stages of development, this book instead examines global trends in six separate dimensions of technological behaviour between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago. Combining these independent trends results in both a broader and a more finely punctuated perspective on key intervals of change in hominin behaviour. To draw this picture together, the concluding section explores behavioural, cognitive, and demographic implications of developments in material culture and technological procedures at seven key intervals during the Pleistocene. Researchers interested in Paleolithic archaeology will find this book invaluable. It will also be of interest to archaeologists researching stone tool technology and to students of human evolution and behavioural change in prehistory.

Malta and Gozo s geographical location in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea has, since ancient times, led to numerous ships passing through the islands waters. Several records of this maritime activity exist in different archives and other evidence can be deduced from the seabed. Despite this, the maritime archaeology of our islands has remained largely unexplored. This book has been produced to address just a small part of this lacuna. By looking at the history of underwater archaeology in Malta and providing an overview of some of the most important finds from the seabed around the archipelago readers will be able to familiarize themselves with the fascinating world of our submerged cultural heritage. In order to portray the full story it was necessary to start at the beginning of underwater exploration in Malta. The authors had the opportunity to meet and interview a number of pioneers who took up scuba diving in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We are indebted to them for the invaluable information that they passed on as well as for the archival material they shares. Other sources used fo this research came from the stores and archives of the Superintendence of Cultural heritage and Heritage Malta. Both these institutions have done a professional job keeping up to date with all material recovered from an underwater context. This book should be of interest to divers, students, researchers as well as the general public with the hope to increase awareness and passion towards the submerged cultural heritage of the Maltese islands.

Ancient states were rooted in agriculture, sedentism and population growth. They were fragile and prone to collapse, but there is no consensus on the causes or meaning of collapse, and there is an ongoing debate about the importance, nature and even existence of state-wide collapse. Explanations of collapse in terms of the competing mono-causal factors are found inferior to those incorporating dynamic, interactive systems. It is proposed that collapse should be explained as failure to fulfil the ancient state’s core functions: assurance of food supplies, defence against external attack, maintenance of internal peace, imposition of its will throughout its territory, enforcement of state-wide laws, and promotion of an ideology to legitimise the political and social status quo. To fulfil these functions certain necessary conditions must be met. The legitimacy of the political and social status quo, including the distribution of political power and wealth, needs to be accepted; the state should be able to extract sufficient resources to fulfil its functions such as defence; it must be able to enforce its decisions; the ruling elite should share a common purpose and actions; the society needs to reflect a shared spirit (asibaya) and purpose across elites and commoners who believe it is worthy of defence. Weaknesses and failure to meet any condition can interact to exacerbate the situation: maladministration, corruption and elite preoccupation with self-aggrandisement can induce fiscal weakness, reduced military budgets and further invasion; it can induce neglect of key infrastructures (especially water management). Inequality, a commonly neglected factor despite ancient texts, can erode asibaya and legitimacy and alienate commoners from the defence of the state. These themes are explored in relation to the Egyptian Old Kingdom, Mycenae, the Western Roman Empire (WRE), and the Maya. They all exhibit, to varying degrees, weaknesses in meeting the above conditions necessary for stability.

When one hears the words "archaeology" or "archaeologist," often what comes to mind is an image of a romantic figure: Indiana Jones exploring exotic places in search of treasure and adventure. Indeed, novels, movies, and many popular accounts of archaeological discoveries have made this concept widespread. Tales of abandoned cities, ruined temples, primeval monuments, or mysterious ancient tombs tend to kindle the urge for adventure, exploration, or treasure hunting that seems to lie beneath the surface of even the most timid and conventional individuals. Today, however, archaeologists seek knowledge rather than objects that are intrinsically valuable. Their ultimate goal is to sweep aside the mists in which time has enveloped the past, helping us to understand vanished peoples and cultures.
In Uncovering the Past, William H. Stiebing, Jr. offers an absorbing nontechnical history of archaeology, tracing the study of ancient material culture from its beginnings in the Renaissance through its development into the sophisticated modern discipline we know today. The first study to focus on archaeology as a discipline, Stiebing has organized this concise history into the four stages of archaeological development. The first two stages (1450-1860 and 1860-1925), known as the "heroic age," focus on the exploits of colorful, dynamic excavators who have made their mark on history and our imaginations. We read accounts of Giovanni Belzoni and the removal of the seven-ton colossus of Ramesses II, which was dragged by wooden platform and transported by boat from Egypt to London; we witness the clergyman John Peters's skirmish with Arab tribesmen, who surrounded his excavation site and finally pillaged and burned his camp; and Heinrich Schliemann's quest to prove the authenticity of Homer's Iliad by searching for ancient Troy along the Turkish coast. And we watch as archaeology comes of age as an academic discipline, employing stratigraphical excavation techniques, typographical sequence dating, and stratigraphically based pottery chronology--laying the foundation for universal archaeological activity. The third phase (1925-1960) marked the era of "Modern Archaeology," a time when, using the now generally accepted stratigraphical method of excavation, scholars were able to synthesize data to define individual cultures and trace their development through time. This period saw a greater use of scientific instruments and procedures to locate, date, and interpret remains, such as aerial photography, metal detectors, and most importantly, carbon-14 dating and tree-ring chronology. Lastly, Stiebing discusses the fourth phase of development (1960-present) which introduced a greater desire and need for a more complete understanding of ancient cultures, including their ecology, and attempts to explain why certain cultural phenomena occurred. He goes on to examine the greater emphasis on a cultural revolutionary approach, coupled with technological advances in robotics and computers over the last decade and a half and their commonplace role in modern archaeology.
With over eighty photographs, illustrations, and maps, this vivid history is an outstanding introduction to the intriguing field of archaeology, chronicling the development of this former pastime of dilettantes into a rigorous science.

Migrations constitute one of the most defining features of human history from the very beginning to the present. In recent years, the increasing application of ancient DNA and isotope studies has been revolutionising our understanding of past population movements, although the interpretation of the results is often still controversial. Rethinking Migrations in Late Prehistoric Eurasia provides an insight into cutting-edge research on late prehistoric migrations in Eurasia, integrating different strands of evidence and emphasising the need for combining bioarchaeological analyses with a solid theoretical and methodological background. The 15 chapters within the book range from the 3rd to the 1st millennia BC, with a geographical scope extending from Atlantic Europe to Central Asia. Case studies include a reassessment of large-scale migrations, but also high-resolution studies from micro-regions. Overall, the results offered in the volume reveal the extraordinary diversity of migrations in ancient Eurasia and the ways in which archaeology can contribute to wider discussions on past and present mobility.

Blanks, Print, Space, and Void in English Renaissance Literature is an inquiry into the empty spaces encountered not just on the pages of printed books in c.1500-1700, but in Renaissance culture more generally. The book argues that print culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries helped to foster the modern idea of the 'gap' (where words, texts, images, and ideas are constructed as missing, lost, withheld, fragmented, or perhaps never devised in the first place). It re-imagines how early modern people reacted not just to printed books and documents of many different kinds, but also how the very idea of emptiness or absence began to be fashioned in a way which still surrounds us. Jonathan Sawday leads the reader through the entire landscape of early modern print culture, discussing topics such as: space and silence; the exploration of the vacuum; the ways in which race and racial identity in early modern England were constructed by the language and technology of print; blackness and whiteness, together with lightness, darkness, and sightlessness; cartography and emptiness; the effect of typography on reading practices; the social spaces of the page; gendered surfaces; hierarchies of information; books of memory; pages constructed as waste or vacant; the genesis of blank forms and early modern bureaucracy; the political and devotional spaces of printed books; the impact of censorship; and the problem posed by texts which lack endings or conclusions. The book itself ends by dwelling on blank or empty pages as a sign of human mortality. Sawday pays close attention to the writings of many of the familiar figures in English Renaissance literary culture - Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, and Milton, for example - as well as introducing readers to a host of lesser-known figures. The book also discusses the work of numerous women writers from the period, including Aphra Behn, Ann Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish, Lady Jane Gray, Lucy Hutchinson, Æmelia Lanyer, Isabella Whitney, and Lady Mary Wroth.

Recent symbolic and social analyses have drawn much attention to the role of material culture in human society, emphasising the representational and ideological aspects of the material world. These studies have, nonetheless, often overlooked how the very physicality of material culture and our material surroundings make them unique and distinctive from text and discourse. In this book, Boivin explores how the physicality of the material world shapes our thoughts, emotions, cosmological frameworks, social relations and even our bodies. Focusing on the agency of material culture, she draws on the work of a diverse range of thinkers, from Marx and Merleau-Ponty to Darwin, while highlighting a wide selection of studies in archaeology, cultural anthropology, history, cognitive science and evolutionary biology. She asks what is distinctive about material culture compared to other aspects of human culture and presents a comprehensive overview of material agency that has much to offer to both scholars and students.

"Forbidden Archaeology's Impact" offers readers an inside look at how mainstream science reacts with ridicule, threats, and intimidation to any challenge to its deeply held beliefs. Since 1993 the controversial book "Forbidden Archaeology" has shocked the scientific world with its extensive evidence for extreme human antiquity. "Forbidden Archaeology's" Impact documents the explosive reactions to this underground classic. It includes proactive compilation of reviews, correspondence, and media interviews.

Far from being a discipline focusing on the past, archaeology has boundless potential for engaging with people in the present. Encounters between archaeologists and the public with different pasts have the potential to create diverse participative dynamics. From the involvement of citizens as excavators and re-enactors to the co-organisation of research campaigns and outreach activities, public participation in archaeology has become a well-represented practice, fully incorporated into European and national cultural policies. However, the impact of this practice remains underexplored. Unforgettable Encounters demonstrates how evaluating participation can critically influence daily practice on fieldwork, enrich the academic discussion in public archaeology, and inform the decision-making process in community-based planning. The book proposes an operational workflow, aiming to serve as a benchmark for archaeologists delivering collaborative programs in excavation-based projects. It offers a flexible set of tools, analyses, and visualisation boards which can provide a range of information about public participation and can inform the daily practice of fieldwork and the development of community projects. Three Italian case studies present the application of the operational workflow, testing its flexibility and effectiveness. By focusing on Italian community archaeology, this book aims to raise awareness of the importance of evaluating public participation in a country where this commitment has always been evident—especially in excavations—but where research on community archaeology itself has developed only in the last few years.

Literary artefacts-the stories people tell, the songs they sing, the scenes they enact-are neither a by-product nor a side-issue in human culture. They provide a model of everything that cognition does. They refuse to separate thought from emotion, bodily responses from ethical reflection, perception from imagination, logic from desire. Above all, they demonstrate the essential fluidity and mobility of human cognition, its adaptive inventiveness. If we are astonished by the art of Chauvet or Lascaux as an early model of human cognition, then we should be continually astonished by what literature is and does as it reaches beyond itself to reimagine the world. This book argues that literary artefacts are quasi-autonomous living entities, fashioned to animate captured environments, embodied people and other creatures, ways of being and living that remain virtual. They own a freely delegated agency that allows them to speak to listeners and readers present and distant, present and future, adapting themselves and their meanings to whatever cognitive environment they encounter. Such an approach offers a way of linking a close attention to the specific properties of literary artefacts with the insights of cognitive anthropology and archaeology, and thus of satisfying the conditions for a properly interdisciplinary understanding of literature. It aims both to defend literary study against utilitarian and reductive arguments of all kinds and to argue that literary artefacts may give us new insights into how the mind (and its indispensable substratum, the brain) functions in the human ecology.

Archaeology: What It Is, Where It Is, and How to Do It has been written as a practical introduction on the investigation of the material remains of the past which can be interpreted with contemporary historical and literary evidence. The book also explains where to find this evidence and what to do next. Many aspects of archaeological investigation are discussed, including aerial and ground survey, excavation and fieldwork, recording methods, soil sampling and small finds.

Interrogating Human Origins encourages new critical engagements with the study of human origins, broadening the range of approaches to bring in postcolonial theories, and begin to explore the decolonisation of this complex topic. The collection of chapters presented in this volume creates spaces for expansion of critical and unexpected conversations about human origins research. Authors from a variety of disciplines and research backgrounds, many of whom have strayed beyond their usual disciplinary boundaries to offer their unique perspectives, all circle around the big questions of what it means to be and become human. Embracing and encouraging diversity is a recognition of the deep complexities of human existence in the past and the present, and it is vital to critical scholarship on this topic. This book constitutes a starting point for increased interrogation of the important and wide-ranging field of research into human origins. It will be of interest to scholars across multiple disciplines, and particularly to those seeking to understand our ancient past through a more diverse lens.

Hillforts are among the most dramatic and visually striking of prehistoric monuments in the British Isles. Dorset, in southern England, is particularly rich in these Iron Age earthwork enclosures, with over 30 examples being so far recorded, including the internationally famous sites of Maiden Castle, Hod Hill, Badbury Rings and Hambledon Hill. Many have been the subject of archaeological investigation, such as the excavations conducted at Maiden Castle in the 1930s by Tessa and Mortimer Wheeler, but few have, to date, been intensively examined. This volume sets out the results of a detailed programme of non-intrusive geophysical survey conducted across the Dorset hillforts, generating detailed subsurface maps of archaeological features, in the hope of better resolving the phasing, form and internal structure of these iconic sites. The dataset presented here not only helps to change our perception of what hillforts were, how they functioned and what went on within them, but also provides a way of assessing their longevity, reconsidering how they were perceived and reused in subsequent periods. Given the oft-cited association between the Dorset enclosures and the Durotriges tribe, who are thought to have occupied the area in the Later Iron Age, serious consideration is also for the first time given to the belief that hillforts formed the focus of conflict between the native tribes and the armies of imperial Rome in the first century AD.

How should communities be engaged with archaeological research and how are new projects targeting distinctive groups and deploying innovative methods and media? In particular, how are art/archaeological interactions key to public archaeology today? This collection provides original perspectives on public archaeology's current practices and future potentials focusing on art/archaeological media, strategies and subjects. It stems from the 2nd University of Chester Archaeology Student Conference, held on 5 April 2017 at the Grosvenor Museum, Chester: Archaeo-Engage: Engaging Communities in Archaeology.

‘TephroArchaeology’ is a translation of the Japanese word kazanbai kōkogaku (lit. volcanic ash archaeology), referring to a sub-discipline of archaeology that has developed in Japan in the last few decades. The first book compilation using the term, edited by the doyen of tephroarchaeology, geologist ARAI Fusao, appeared in 1993; chapters were written by 5 geologists, 3 archaeologists, 3 geographers, an engineer, and a historian. From its beginning, this subdiscipline has been interdisciplinary in approach and applied to all time periods throughout the Japanese Islands. Honouring this tradition, a panel on TephroArchaeology was organized by Barnes & Soda at the World Archaeology Congress 8 meetings in Kyoto (August–September 2016). The scope of concern was broadened to include other parts of the world and further disciplines. Several of the papers presented at WAC8 are included here together with other invited papers that complete the North Pacific focus. Most of the chapters are case-studies written by their excavators in Japan, Canada, and the United States, but a historian and a behavioural psychologist contribute important perspectives and add world-wide content. The volume is rounded out by an extensive Preface, Introduction and Appendices by co-editor Barnes, and a historic contextualization of TephroArchaeology by co-editor Soda. A final appendix consists of a translation of the techniques of tephra identification by MACHIDA Hiroshi & ARAI Fusao, to whom the volume is dedicated. The strengths of this book are many. It was primarily designed to bring into the English-speaking world the work being done by local archaeologists in Japan whose results are usually only accessible in Japanese. In addition to the meticulous excavation methodologies, innovative analytical techniques and interpretive analyses represented herein by all the authors are the variety of problems in human history that can be addressed through tephroarchaeological investigation. This subdiscipline may spawn a more general Volcanic Archaeology or Archaeological Volcanology as adherents grow and as volcanologists themselves take heed of the archaeological record to inform on eruption processes and products.

The importance of the Law of Treasure is largely the result of the spectacular growth in the activity of metal detecting which, starting in the 1960's, has grown so much in popularity that it now brings to our knowledge each year more than a thousand objects of historical, cultural or archaeological interest. The nature and volume of these finds has in turn led to a greater public concern to ensure that measures exist which will be conducive to the retention and effective preservation of the more important of those objects. It is, of course, essential that facilities exist for the physical examination and conservation of finds and that those facilities should be accessible and adequate. But the law has an important part to play in this process by ensuring that finds of substantial value or importance should be preserved for the nation and made available to the public in museums. For many hundreds of years, the Law of Treasure was the common law of treasure trove. Today it is essentially based on the Treasure Act 1996. Although the Act is a great improvement on the common law it is nevertheless not always rational and the meaning of some of its provisions is sometimes obscure. This book aims to provide a reliable guide to the Law of Treasure in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and also to explain the role played by legal institutions, such as the Coroner, in that process. This book will be of interest to archaeologists, museums, coroner's offices, finds liaison officers, farmers and landlords' associations. It will also be of interest and utility to metal detectorists since, in addition to explaining what objects are considered to be treasure by the law, it explains the legal restrictions on searching for artefacts, the duty to report finds of treasure and the structure of the valuation process and rewards.

This concise dictionary is intended to be helpful in the reading of archaeological books and publications, and in the writing of papers and articles in both English and German. The aim of this work is to help, in particular, students and on-site archaeologists to find quickly a word relating to a specific period, a specific area or a research field, in a book easy to carry everywhere; but this dictionary is also intended for those with a general interest in archaeology wishing to broaden their vocabulary

ArcheoFOSS XIV 2020: Open software, hardware, processes, data and formats in archaeological research collects the proceedings of the fourteenth ArcheoFOSS international conference, held online due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book gathers seventeen papers on three principal topics, the main sessions of the conference: use and application of free/libre and open-source (FLOS) tools in archaeology; creation, use and promotion of open data and open formats in archaeology; and development and customization of FLOS software and hardware solutions for cultural heritage. Forty-one scholars of very diverse age, academic affiliation and geographic location, but all actively involved in the promotion of FLOS culture, open data and open science in digital archaeology and humanities, contribute. The volume is completed by a critical analysis of the contribution of these important annual meetings to the scientific and cultural activity of the ArcheoFOSS community. The opportunity offered by the pandemic-related difficulties to widen the geographical scope of the conference has been further boosted by the decision to adopt the English language for most of the papers, with the hope that this will extend the work of the ArcheoFOSS community far beyond the Italian national borders.

THE PERFECT READ FOR TROUBLED TIMES From the bestselling author of The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places comes this inspiring and beautifully written meditation on the wisdom inherited from our ancestors. For all we have gained in the modern world, simple peace of mind is hard to find. In a time that is increasingly fraught with complexity and conflict, we are told that our wellbeing relies on remaining as present as possible. But what if the key to being present lies in the past? In Wisdom of the Ancients, Neil Oliver takes us back in time, to grab hold of the ideas buried in forgotten cultures and early civilizations. From Laetoli footprints in Tanzania to Keralan rituals, stone circles and cave paintings, Oliver takes us on a global journey through antiquity. A master storyteller, drawing on immense knowledge of our ancient past, he distils this wisdom into twelve messages that have endured the test of time, and invites us to consider how these might apply to our lives today. The result is powerful and inspirational, moving and profound.

How can we find alternative, sensorially rich and affective ways of engaging with the material past in the present? How can photography play a central role in archaeological narratives, beyond representation and documentation? This photo-book engages with these questions, not through conventional academic discourse but through evocative creative practice. The book is, at the same time, a site guide of sorts: a photographic guide to the archaeological site of the Sanctuary of Poseidon in Kalaureia, on the island of Poros, in Greece. Ancient and not-so-ancient stones, pine trees that were “wounded” for their resin, people who lived amongst the classical ruins, and the tensions and the clashes with the archaeological apparatus and its regulations, all become palpable, affectively close and immediate. Furthermore, the book constitutes an indirect but concrete proposal for the adoption of archaeological photo-ethnography as a research as well as public communication tool for critical heritage studies, today.

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.