Human remains and burial customs are often considered separately in studies of ancient Greek populations. In this seminal work, Carrie Sulosky Weaver synthesizes skeletal, material, and ritual data to reconstruct the cultural practices of Kamarina, a city-state in Sicily. Using evidence from 258 recovered graves from the Passo Marinaro necropolis (circa the fifth to the third century BCE), Sulosky Weaver suggests that Kamarineans were closely linked to their counterparts in neighboring Greek cities. Evidence of violence, like head trauma and a high young adult mortality rate, indicate exposure to a series of catastrophic events. Other evidence at burial sites allude to Kamarina's mixed ancestry, ethnicity, and social hierarchy. Despite the tumultuous nature of the times, the resulting portrait reveals that Kamarina was a place where individuals of diverse ethnicities and ancestries were united in life and death by shared culture and funerary practices.

This book presents a new analysis of the organization, structure and changes of the pharaonic state through three millennia of its history. Moreno Garcia sheds new light on this topic by bringing to bear recent developments in state theory and archaeology, especially comparative study of the structure of ancient states and empires. The role played by pharaonic Egypt in new studies often reiterates old views about the stability, conservatism and 'exceptionalism' of Egyptian kingship, which supposedly remained the same across the Bronze and Iron Ages. Ancient Egypt shared many parallels with other Bronze and Iron Age societies as can be shown by an analysis of the structure of the state, of the limits of royal power, of the authority of local but neglected micro-powers (such as provincial potentates and wealthy non-elite), and of the circulation and control of wealth. Furthermore, Egypt experienced deep changes in its social, economic, political and territorial organization during its history, thus making the land of the pharaohs an ideal arena in which to test applications of models of governments and to define the dynamics that rule societies on the longue duree. When seen through these new perspectives, the pharaonic monarchies appear less exceptional than previously thought, and more dependent on the balance of power, on their capacity to control the kingdom's resources and on the changing geopolitical conditions of their time.

A brilliant introduction to Egyptology, this book describes the mysterious story of the lost pharaohs. Lowered into a crevice thirty feet deep by the Priests of the Necropolis, the mummies of the lost pharaohs were undisturbed for three thousand years. Their discovery and its incredible impact on the field of Egyptology form just one episode of this fascinating book, which also covers the construction of the pyramids, the City of the Dead, and many other topics. Leonard Cottrell, author of numerous BBC radio documentaries on ancient Egypt, offers the general reader a story that is both entertaining and factual, ably conveying the romance and mystery which draw so many to the study of ancient Egypt.

From the time of its composition (c.1280) for Philip the Fair of France until the early sixteenth century, Giles of Rome's mirror of princes, the De regimine principum, was read by both lay and clerical readers in the original Latin and in several vernacular translations, and served as model or source for several works of princely advice. This study examines the relationship between this didactic political text and its audience by focusing on the textual and material aspects of the surviving manuscript copies, as well as on the evidence of ownership and use found in them and in documentary and literary sources. Briggs argues that lay readers used De regimine for several purposes, including as an educational treatise and military manual, whereas clerics, who often first came into contact with it at university, glossed, constructed apparatus for, and modified the text to suit their needs in their later professional lives.

Pyramids are now being found almost everywhere: in 1994 in China; then in Caral, in Peru, Southern America; then in Northern Italy and in 2005 in Bosnia. Despite their prevalence, massive pyramids remain as mysterious and controversial as ever. Though Egyptologists continue to argue that the Egyptian pyramids are tombs, no bodies have ever been discovered in them. None of the other pyramids are tombs either. Apart from the Mayan pyramids, which are much more recent, all pyramids are similar in shape, size and age. Does this mean that each culture developed this rather unique shape on its own, or does it mean that there was a truly global movement - somewhere around 3000 BC? This is the first book to explore the new landscape of pyramids found worldwide. It describes the changed nature of the pyramid debate and offers science a challenge, but equally tries to answer some of the key questions raised during the last decade of pyramid discovery. It is a series of discoveries that has changed the archaeological world and extended all our horizons.

Death, grief and funerary practices are central to any analysis of social, anthropological, artistic and religious worlds. However, cemeteries - the key conceptual and physical site for death - have rarely been the focus of archaeological research. 'Prioritizing Death and Society' examines the structure, organisation and significance of cemeteries in the Southern Levant, one of the key areas for both migration and settlement in both prehistory and antiquity. Spanning 6,000 years, from the Chalcolithic to the present day, 'Prioritizing Death and Society' presents new research to analyse the formation and regional variation in cemeteries. By examining both ancient and present-day - nationally Jewish - cemeteries, the study reveals the commonalities and differences in the ways in which death has been and continues to be ritualised, memorialised and understood.

This catalogue accompanies an international exhibition, "First Kings of Europe," and another volume also published by the Cotsen Institute, First Kings of Europe: From Farmers to Rulers in Prehistoric Southeastern Europe, that examine the artifacts and cultures of this area from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. Over several millennia, early agricultural villages gave rise to tribal kingdoms and monarchies, replacing smaller, more egalitarian social structures with complex state organizations led by royal individuals invested with power. Several hundred objects and artifacts in the exhibition are portrayed in the catalog, accompanied by introductory text and detailed entries for each item. The spectacular and highly detailed color photographs introduce us to the gold and silver ornaments, bronze and iron weaponry, rich metal hoards and magnificent ceremonial vessels that are masterpieces from this period of history. Many of them have never left their countries of origin, making the two volumes documenting them an opportunity not to miss.

This book revisits one of the great problems in Mayan archeology - the apparent collapse of Classic Maya civilisation from roughly AD830-950. During this period the Maya abandoned their power centres in the southern lowlands and rather abruptly ceased the distinctive cultural practices that marked their apogee in the Classic period. Archaeological fieldwork during the past three decades, however, has uncovered enormous regional variability in the ways the Maya experienced the shift from Classic to Post-classic society, revealing a period of cultural change more complex than acknowledged by traditional models. Featuring an impressive roster of scholars, the book presents the most recent data and interpretations pertaining to this perplexing period of cultural transformation in the Maya lowlands. Although the research reveals clear interregional patterns, the contributors resist a single overarching explanation. Rather, this volume's diverse and nuanced interpretations provide a new, more properly grounded beginning for continued debate on the nature of lowland Terminal Classic Maya civilisation.

Going West? uses the latest data to question how the Neolithic way of life was diffused from the Near East to Europe via Anatolia. The transformations of the 7th millennium BC in western Anatolia undoubtedly had a significant impact on the neighboring regions of southeast Europe. Yet the nature, pace and trajectory of this impact needs still to be clarified. Archaeologists searched previously for similarities in prehistoric, especially Early Neolithic, material cultures on both sides of the Sea of Marmara. Recent research shows that although the isthmi of the Dardanelles and the Bosporus connect Asia Minor and the eastern Balkans, they apparently did not serve as passageways for the dissemination of Neolithic innovations. Instead, the first permanent settlements are situated near the Aegean coast of Thrace and Macedonia, often occurring close to the mouths of big rivers in secluded bays. The courses and the valleys of rivers such as the Maritsa, Strymon and Axios, were perfect corridors for contact and exchange.Using previous studies as a basis for fresh research, this volume presents exciting new viewpoints by analyzing recently discovered materials and utilising interdisciplinary investigations with the application of modern research methods. The seventeen authors of this book have dedicated their research to a renewed evaluation of an old problem: namely, the question of how the complex transformations at the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic can be explained. They have focused their studies on the vast area of the eastern Balkans and the Pontic region between the Bosporus and the rivers Strymon, Danube and Dniestr. Going West? thus offers an overview of the current state of research concerning the Neolithisation of these areas, considering varied viewpoints and also providing useful starting points for future investigations.

The Mycenaean World belonged to the legendary heroes who conquered Troy and stand at the heart of Greek identity. This new book brings their culture and society to life with wit and elegance. Since the discovery of the remains of the civilization of Mycenae in the 1870s, knowledge of these Bronze Age Greeks has increased dramatically. This text is a major new contribution to our understanding of this crucial period.. Stepping into the place of the collapsed civilization of Minoan Crete and the Peloponnese (the subject of Castleden's earlier bestselling study, Minoans), the Mycenaeans dominated mainland Greece and the Greek islands from about 1600-1250 BC. Their exploits became the subject of the legends that were immortalized by Homer. In lively prose informed by the latest research, this vivid study delivers the fundamentals of Mycenaean civilization, its hierarchy, economy, religion and arts. Controversially, Castleden interprets the well-known palaces of Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos and elsewhere as temples. Their sea empire and their relations with other peoples of the Bronze Age world, including the Hittites, the Egyptians and the Trojans, receive full attention. book is an indispensable starting point for the study of the Greek Bronze Age. Full bibliography and copious illustrations support this comprehensive interpretation of a civilization whose legend still lives on.

The Mycenaean World belonged to the legendary heroes who conquered Troy and stand at the heart of Greek identity. This new book brings their culture and society to life with wit and elegance. Since the discovery of the remains of the civilization of Mycenae in the 1870s, knowledge of these Bronze Age Greeks has increased dramatically. This text is a major new contribution to our understanding of this crucial period.. Stepping into the place of the collapsed civilization of Minoan Crete and the Peloponnese (the subject of Castleden's earlier bestselling study, Minoans), the Mycenaeans dominated mainland Greece and the Greek islands from about 1600-1250 BC. Their exploits became the subject of the legends that were immortalized by Homer. In lively prose informed by the latest research, this vivid study delivers the fundamentals of Mycenaean civilization, its hierarchy, economy, religion and arts. Controversially, Castleden interprets the well-known palaces of Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos and elsewhere as temples. Their sea empire and their relations with other peoples of the Bronze Age world, including the Hittites, the Egyptians and the Trojans, receive full attention. book is an indispensable starting point for the study of the Greek Bronze Age. Full bibliography and copious illustrations support this comprehensive interpretation of a civilization whose legend still lives on.

The working and intellectual biography of the great archaeologist Flinders Petrie, who was one of the founding fathers of Egyptology, will inevitably be of interest to all those involved with ancient Egypt. Here we have accounts of the research, the observations and the writing of some of the most important work conducted in Egyptology.

This book is an impressive collection of some of the earliest literature still extant from the great Ancient Egyptian civilization. Much of the material contained in this work -- poems, narratives, songs and prayers -- was translated here and made accessible to lovers of antiquity for the first time. Covering a range of topics including schools, religion and love, the collected works here provide the reader with a deeper understanding of ancient life along the Nile.

This fascinating study explores how our prehistoric ancestors developed rituals from everyday life and domestic activities. Richard Bradley contends that for much of the prehistoric period, ritual was not a distinct sphere of activity. Rather it was the way in which different features of the domestic world were played out until they took on qualities of theatrical performance.
With extensive illustrated case-studies, this book examines farming, craft production and the occupation of houses, all of which were ritualized in prehistoric Europe. Successive chapters discuss the ways in which ritual has been studied, drawing on a series of examples that range from Greece to Norway and from Romania to Portugal. They consider practices that extend from the Mesolithic period to the Early Middle Ages and discuss the ways in which ritual and domestic life were intertwined.

This fascinating study explores how our prehistoric ancestors developed rituals from everyday life and domestic activities. Richard Bradley contends that for much of the prehistoric period, ritual was not a distinct sphere of activity. Rather it was the way in which different features of the domestic world were played out until they took on qualities of theatrical performance.
With extensive illustrated case-studies, this book examines farming, craft production and the occupation of houses, all of which were ritualized in prehistoric Europe. Successive chapters discuss the ways in which ritual has been studied, drawing on a series of examples that range from Greece to Norway and from Romania to Portugal. They consider practices that extend from the Mesolithic period to the Early Middle Ages and discuss the ways in which ritual and domestic life were intertwined.

The site of Dhaskalio Kavos, on the remote Cycladic island of Keros, was extensively looted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Investigations starting in1963 then revealed large quantities of fractured marble bowls, broken marble figures and smashed pottery of the Early Cycladic period from around 2500 BC. This report of the subsequent survey and rescue excavations of 1987-88 reveals the extraordinary richness of the site, now confirmed as one of the most prolific in lite goods of the entire Aegean early bronze age. Was it an unprecedentedly rich Early Cycladic cemetery, recently wrecked by looters? Or was the damage deliberately produced during early bronze age times in some procedure of ritual breakage and ceremonial deposition? Here the survey of the site and the rescue excavations undertaken within the looted area are documented in detail, with a full account of the finds. Alternative explanations for this extraordinary deposit are explored. What has been termed 'the Keros Enigma', in the light of the finds at the site, can now be reconsidered with the full documentation which this volume offers.

In 1884 a community of Brazilians was "discovered" by the Western world. The Ecology of Power examines these indigenous people from the Upper Xingu region, a group who even today are one of the strongest examples of long-term cultural continuity. Drawing upon written and oral history, ethnography, and archaeology, Heckenberger addresses the difficult issues facing anthropologists today as they "uncover" the muted voices of indigenous peoples and provides a fascinating portrait of a unique community of people who have in a way become living cultural artifacts.

In 1884 a community of Brazilians was "discovered" by the Western world. The Ecology of Power examines these indigenous people from the Upper Xingu region, a group who even today are one of the strongest examples of long-term cultural continuity. Drawing upon written and oral history, ethnography, and archaeology, Heckenberger addresses the difficult issues facing anthropologists today as they "uncover" the muted voices of indigenous peoples and provides a fascinating portrait of a unique community of people who have in a way become living cultural artifacts.

Textile production and the introduction of wool and woolen textiles represented a great revolution in Bronze Age Europe at the dawn of the second millennium BC. The available contemporary written sources from the Mediterranean and Near East suggest that textile production had a strong impact on the cultural, social, and economic life. In most parts of continental Europe, however, archaeological material alone can help us understand the details relating to textile production and its wider importance to early societies. This book provides new insights on patterns of production, specialization, and consumption of textiles in Europe throughout the Bronze Age. Assembling a diverse array of studies on various aspect of the textile production and economy, the essays, specially written for this volume, provide a wide range of scientific data as well as archaeological evidence. They also show the great potential of examining early textile production through the use of innovative methodologies and diverse perspectives.

From the Cities of the Biblical World series - a series describing the recent archaeological developments at major Biblical sites for the general reader, the student and the tourist. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, and the subsequent excavation of Khirbet Qumran, the existence of a Jewish settlement near the Dead Sea remained unsuspected by biblical scholars. Apart from one possible allusion in the Old Testament, the site is unrecorded in the Bible, and no hint emerges of the fascinating community which inhabited it in Jesus' own day. In Biblical terms it could be described as the discovery of the century, all the more remarkable because from its last occupation in AD 135 until the arrival of the archaeologists in the wake of the Scrolls' discovery, Qumran remained a well-known but little considered ruin. Philip Davies explains how the archaeological evidence helps us to interpret the writings in the scrolls, and how the writings in turn help archaeologists to understand their discoveries. The author puts the site in perspective, explaining its history and development from an early settlement, possibly in the time of King Uzziah (781-40BC), to the community which produced the famous scrolls. The only substantial corpus of Jewish literature from this time, the scrolls offer the reader an insight into the organisation of the community and its daily activities, the religious and philosophical beliefs, rituals and hopes, which characterised Judaism in the first century AD. The Scrolls have provided the only substantial corpus of Jewish literature from this age.

The three-thousand-year-old rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel and the story of their rescue from the rising waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960s are almost as familiar worldwide as the tale of the gold funerary mask and brief life of the boy king Tutankhamun. Yet although they are among the most celebrated, visited, and photographed archaeological sites in the world, the two temples are among the least understood by the visitor. In this lucidly written, beautifully illustrated guide, Nigel Fletcher-Jones explains the main features of both temples, discusses what they teach us about ancient Egypt during the reign of Rameses II (1265-1200 BC), and illustrates which gods and goddesses were worshipped here. With over 80 new photographs, drawings, and diagrams, and packed with fascinating insights, The Brief Guide to Abu Simbel is an indispensable companion and souvenir to one of the world's great archaeological sites.

Where do we find the world's very first art? When, and why, did people begin experimenting with different materials, forms and colours? Were our once-cousins, the Neanderthals, also capable of creating art? Prehistorians have been asking these questions of our ancestors for decades, but only very recently, with the development of cutting-edge scientific and archaeological techniques, have we been able to piece together the first chapter in the story of art. Overturning the traditional Eurocentric vision of our artistic origins, which has focused almost exclusively on the Franco-Spanish cave art, Paul Bahn and Michel Lorblanchet take the reader on a search for the earliest art across the whole world. They show that our earliest ancestors were far from being the creatively impoverished primitives of past accounts, and Europe was by no means the only 'cradle' of art; the artistic impulse developed in the human mind wherever it travelled. The long universal history of art mirrors the development of humanity.

The Continental Saxons developed from a subsistence economy, practiced up to the Carolingian conquest in the late eighth century, to become rulers of the Holy Roman Empire a little over a century and a half later. A historian introduces the topic, evaluating the reliability of the sources. Archaeologists then describe the living conditions, especially along the coast where villages have been excavated, and social customs revealed by grave-goods. Legal procedures are inferred from surviving evidence, and the regional economy, based on agriculture and animal husbandry, is reconstructed through the study of vegetable remains and pollen analysis. The birth of urban communities, stimulated by monastic settlements and trade, is followed through archaeological evidence; study of visual art-forms is based on analysis of grave-goods; and in the absence of surviving evidence for poetry, a Carolingian eulogical poem is discussed. Also discussed are Saxon political relations prior to and during the Carolingian conquest; the few signs of traditional religion that can be gleaned from the 'Lives' of missionaries; and Christianity and the activity of religious orders, which eventually brought about the conversion of the Saxons and the introduction of written culture.

Discovering Qatar evolved from a series of features on the archaeology, natural history and traditional life of Qatar that Frances Gillespie began publishing in a national newspaper in the late 1990s. There was little available on these subjects for the general reader, and many people, especially those involved in education, asked for them to be compiled into a book. The author had no idea at that time what the demand would be, and hoped that, perhaps, a few hundred copies might find a market. Two reprints and 12,000 copies later, the time has come for a thoroughly updated edition of the book, with new and improved illustrations, and including the latest information on such fascinating topics as the whale sharks which congregate in large numbers in an off-shore oil field, the presence of which had not been noted by scientists when Discovering Qatar was first published in 2006. Research into Qatar's past by teams of archaeologists has made huge progress in the last decade, culminating in the old pearling and trading settlement of Zubara being inscribed as a Word Heritage Site in 2013. During the 30 years Frances Gillespie lived in Qatar, the country made a gigantic leap forward in development, with a modern capital to rival any in the region. As a freelance journalist and writer she has the freedom to concentrate on subjects that interest her. Discovering Qatar reflects this, and the author and publisher hope that readers will share her enthusiasm and enjoy learning more about the 'real' Qatar - the Qatar that was there all the time.

Human settlement has often centered around coastal areas and waterways. Until recently, however, archaeologists believed that marine economies did not develop until the end of the Pleistocene, when the archaeological record begins to have evidence of marine life as part of the human diet. This has long been interpreted as a postglacial adaptation, due to the rise in sea level and subsequent decrease in terrestrial resources. Coastal resources, particularly mollusks, were viewed as fallback resources, which people resorted to only when terrestrial resources were scarce, included only as part of a more complex diet.

Recent research has significantly altered this understanding, known as the Broad Spectrum Revolution (BSR) model. The contributions to this volume revise the BSR model, with evidence that coastal resources were an important part of human economies and subsistence much earlier than previously thought, and even the main focus of diets for some Pleistocene and early Holocene hunter-gatherer societies.

With evidence from North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, this volume comprehensively lends a new understanding to coastal settlement from the Middle Paleolithic to the Middle Holocene.