An updated edition of this acclaimed book, now with a new preface and published to tie in with the bicentenary of Champollion's breakthrough in 1822. Cracking the Egyptian Code is the first biography in English of Jean-Francois Champollion, the impoverished, arrogant and brilliant child of the French Revolution who made the vital breakthrough in deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphs. This account charts Champollion's dramatic life and achievements: by turns a teenage professor, a supporter of Napoleon, an exile, a fanatical decipherer and a curator at the Louvre, he lived life to the full but drove himself into an early grave. Andrew Robinson's full-blooded account brings the man, his setbacks and his ultimate triumphs vividly to life.

This book looks at the ways in which archaeological methods have been used in debates concerning the early medieval and medieval periods in South Asia. Despite the incorporation and use of archaeological data to corroborate historical narratives, the theories and methods of archaeology are largely ignored in and excluded from the dominating, institutionalized, and hegemonic disciplinary discourses. The volume offers contesting insights, polemical narratives, and new data from archaeological contexts to initiate a debate on many foundational premises of archaeological and historical narratives. It focuses on the much-neglected region of the Eastern Ganga-Brahmaputra Basin as a spatial frame to do this and studies themes such as spatial and temporal scales of concepts and methods, multi-scaler factors and processes of continuity and changes, the settlement archaeology of the alluvial landscape, changing patterns of agrarian transformation, and material cultures, including coins, inscriptions, pottery, and sculptures, in their contexts in sub-regional, regional, and supra-regional intersections. Dedicated to historian Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, this volume presents a crucial and unprecedented intervention in the study of the early medieval and the medieval periods. It will be useful for scholars and researchers of archaeology, ancient history, medieval history, water history, earth sciences, palaeoecology, historical ecology, epigraphy, art history, material culture studies, Indian history, and South Asian studies in general.

Iron Age Myth and Materiality: an Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400-1000 considers the relationship between myth and materiality in Scandinavia from the beginning of the post-Roman era and the European Migrations up until the coming of Christianity. It pursues an interdisciplinary interpretation of text and material culture and examines how the documentation of an oral past relates to its material embodiment.

While the material evidence is from the Iron Age, most Old Norse texts were written down in the thirteenth century or even later. With a time lag of 300 to 900 years from the archaeological evidence, the textual material has until recently been ruled out as a usable source for any study of the pagan past. However, Hedeager argues that this is true regarding any study of a society 's short-term history, but it should not be the crucial requirement for defining the sources relevant for studying long-term structures of the longue dur e, or their potential contributions to a theoretical understanding of cultural changes and transformation. In Iron Age Scandinavia we are dealing with persistent and slow-changing structures of worldviews and ideologies over a wavelength of nearly a millennium. Furthermore, iconography can often date the arrival of new mythical themes anchoring written narratives in a much older archaeological context.

Old Norse myths are explored with particular attention to one of the central mythical narratives of the Old Norse canon, the mythic cycle of Odin, king of the Norse pantheon. In addition, contemporaneous historical sources from late Antiquity and the early European Middle Age - the narratives of Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, and Paul the Deacon in particular - will be explored. No other study provides such a broad ranging and authoritative study of the relationship of myth to the archaeology of Scandinavia.

Humans are unique in that they expend considerable effort and ingenuity in disposing of the dead. Some of the recognisable ways we do this are visible in the Palaeolithic archaeology of the Ice Age. The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial takes a novel approach to the long-term development of human mortuary activity ? the various ways we deal with the dead and with dead bodies. It is the first comprehensive survey of Palaeolithic mortuary activity in the English language.

Observations in the modern world as to how chimpanzees behave towards their dead allow us to identify ?core? areas of behaviour towards the dead that probably have very deep evolutionary antiquity. From that point, the palaeontological and archaeological records of the Pliocene and Pleistocene are surveyed. The core chapters of the book survey the mortuary activities of early hominins, archaic members of the genus Homo, early Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals, the Early and Mid Upper Palaeolithic, and the Late Upper Palaeolithic world.

Burial is a striking component of Palaeolithic mortuary activity, although existing examples are odd and this probably does not reflect what modern societies believe burial to be, and modern ways of thinking of the dead probably arose only at the very end of the Pleistocene. When did symbolic aspects of mortuary ritual evolve? When did the dead themselves become symbols? In discussing such questions, The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial offers an engaging contribution to the debate on modern human origins. It is illustrated throughout, includes up-to-date examples from the Lower to Late Upper Palaeolithic, including information hitherto unpublished.

Nasca pots, Quimbaya figurines, Moche porn figures, stone shamans. Fakes and forgeries run rampant in the Andean art collections of international museums and private individuals. Authors Karen Bruhns and Nancy Kelker examine the phenomenon in this eye-opening volume. They discuss the most commonly forged classes and styles of artifacts, many of which were being duplicated as early as the 19th century. More important, they describe the system whereby these objects get made, purchased, authenticated, and placed in major museums as well as the complicity of forgers, dealers, curators, and collectors in this system. Unique to this volume are biographies of several of the forgers, who describe their craft and how they are able to effectively fool connoisseurs and specialists. This is an important accessible introduction to pre-Columbian art fraud for archaeologists, art historians, and museum professionals alike. A parallel volume by the same authors discusses fakes in Mesoamerican archaeology.

This book explores the diachronic development of the ideological content of Pompey and Caesar's monuments in Rome, emphasising the importance of the late Republican period as a precursor to imperial propaganda through architecture. In the final years of the Roman Republic, individuals such as Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar exploited the communicative power of architecture. The former promoted the first and largest stone theatre in Rome; the latter started comprehensive town-planning projects that arguably verged on the utopian. Yet the study of the politics expressed by these monuments and how complex late Republican politics shaped the monuments themselves has attracted less attention than that of subsequent imperial architecture. Zampieri addresses this imbalance, exploring the ideological meaning of late Republican monuments and highlighting that monuments were fluid, adaptable entities, even in the lifespan of a single individual. Accompanied by detailed maps and images, this volume shows how late Republican architecture should be considered an important source for understanding politics of this period. Politics in the Monuments of Pompey the Great and Julius Caesar will be of use to anyone working on the politics and social world of the late Roman Republic, and on Roman architecture and patronage.

Archaeologists date the Bronze Age in Europe from about the 5th to the last millennium BC. That span of time saw dramatic changes in civilizations from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea, and from Scandinavia to the Aegean. The discovery of Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was a remarkable technological development, permitting the casting of much stronger tools and weapons. Across Europe, the people of the Bronze Age forged metal and traded its products, raised monolithic standing stones, practised similar funerary and religious rites, and decorated their products with the same motifs and symbols. From Cretan palaces to Swiss lakeside dwellings, a common culture arose. In this text the authors explore the story of the Bronze Age, tracing it back beyond the borders of history.

Nearly 13,000 years ago millions of people and animals were wiped out, and the world plunged abruptly into a new ice-age. It was more than a thousand years before the climate, and mankind, recovered. The people of Gobekli Tepe in present-day southern Turkey, whose ancestors witnessed this catastrophe, built a megalithic monument formed of many hammer-shaped pillars decorated with symbols as a memorial to this terrible event. Before long, they also invented agriculture, and their new farming culture spread rapidly across the continent, signalling the arrival of civilisation. Before abandoning Gobekli Tepe thousands of years later, they covered it completely with rubble to preserve the greatest and most important story ever told for future generations. Archaeological excavations began at the site in 1994, and we are now able to read their story, more amazing than any Hollywood plot, again for the first time in over 10,000 years. It is a story of survival and resurgence that allows one of the world's greatest scientific puzzles - the meaning of ancient artworks, from the 40,000 year-old Lion-man figurine of Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in Germany to the Great Sphinx of Giza - to be solved. We now know what happened to these people. It probably had happened many times before and since, and it could happen again, to us. The conventional view of prehistory is a sham; we have been duped by centuries of misguided scholarship. The world is actually a much more dangerous place than we have been led to believe. The old myths and legends, of cataclysm and conflagration, are surprisingly accurate. We know this because, at last, we can read an extremely ancient code assumed by scholars to be nothing more than depictions of wild animals. A code hiding in plain sight that reveals we have hardly changed in 40,000 years. A code that changes everything.

Since 1994, when the first Time Team programme was broadcast, archaeology has been brought to life for millions of people. This book combines the talents of two of the programme's key players in an exciting series of reconstructions. Victor Ambrus has produced hundreds of sketches and drawings of archaeological sites and the lives of those who would have inhabited them. For the first time his drawings of individual excavations have been brought together to provide a dramatic chronological survey of British History. Add to this Mick Aston's lively explanations and photographs and you have an archaeological collaboration which is guaranteed to delight. Mick Aston has contributed a passion and enthusiasm for archaeology which is infectious, so let Victor and Mick take you on a visual journey through history...

The study of the prehistory of East Asia is developing very rapidly. In uncovering the story of the flows of human migration that constituted the peopling of East Asia there exists widespread debate about the nature of evidence and the tools for correlating results from different disciplines.

Drawing upon the latest evidence in genetics, linguistics and archaeology, this exciting new book examines the history of the peopling of East Asia, and investigates the ways in which we can detect migration, and its different markers in these fields of inquiry. Results from different academic disciplines are compared and reinterpreted in the light of evidence from others to attempt to try and generate consensus on methodology. Taking a broad geographical focus, the book also draws attention to the roles of minority peoples - hitherto underplayed in accounts of the region's prehistory - such as the Austronesian, Tai-Kadai and Altaic speakers, whose contribution to the regional culture is now becoming accepted.

Past Human Migrations in East Asia presents a full picture of the latest research on the peopling of East Asia, and will be of interest to scholars of all disciplines working on the reconstruction of the peopling of East and North East Asia.

This technical and well-illustrated guide for archaeologists and conservators aims to 'provide a methodology for the identification of the woody taxa used to manufacture artefacts recovered from archaeological excavations', to provide the anatomical descriptions of the taxa and to present a list of characters of the taxa. The guide is heavily illustrated with photographs, maps, and tables to allow easy identification.

Roman Britain: A Sourcebook has established itself as the only comprehensive collection of source material on the subject. It incorporates literary, numismatic and epigraphic evidence for the history of Britain under Roman rule, as well as translations of major literary sources.

This new edition includes not only recently discovered material, but also the texts of Caesar's commentaries on his expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BC, as well as relevant sections of Tacitus? biography of his father-in-law, former governor of Britain. The inclusion of these pivotal texts, which provide the most detailed account of the Romans campaigns in Britain, significantly underlies the volume's usefulness to all students of Roman Britain.

Though most of the material is arranged chronologically, there are also thematic sections on geography, religion and social and economic activity. Each section is prefaced by an introductory note, and the inclusion of illustrations and maps enhances the attractiveness of this updated collection as a teaching tool and a work of reference.

Mesopotamia was one of the earliest regions to produce writing, literature and the fine arts, as well as being one of the first areas to construct states. This comprehensive and detailed survey of the region's prehistory and protohistory shows how these fascinating developments were possible. Petr Charvat explores the economic, social and spiritual spheres in Mesopotamia from the Palaeolithic to the time of the early states, c. 100,000 BC to 2334 BC. The narrative is supplemented by numerous descriptions of the principal archaeological sites for each phase, and by conclusions outlining the most important developments and changes.

Offers an up to date exploration of Egyptian society. The case study format allows students to grasp the material, while also teaching them how to analyse evidence and make judgements about challenging social issues.

The Babylonian World presents an extensive, up-to-date and lavishly illustrated history of the ancient state Babylonia and its 'holy city', Babylon.

Historicized by the New Testament as a centre of decadence and corruption, Babylon and its surrounding region was in fact a rich and complex civilization, responsible for the invention of the dictionary and laying the foundations of modern science. This book explores all key aspects of the development of this ancient culture, including the ecology of the region and its famously productive agriculture, its political and economic standing, its religious practices, and the achievements of its intelligentsia.

Comprehensive and accessible, this book will be an indispensable resource for anyone studying the period.

They are essential to every major archaeological excavation but rarely acknowledged by the visiting researchers once the artifacts have been shipped. As part of the innovative, multivocal output from the famous Turkish Neolithic site of Catalhoeyuk, we hear from one of the site guards, Sadrettin Dural, who tells the story of the excavation from the point of view of the "Other." He offers tales of the strange habits of archaeologists, describes the local in-fighting that scholars never see, and explains how scientists can be protected from the Yatirs, spirits of the dead who guard the mound. Ian Hodder, director of the Catalhoeyuk project, provides explanatory notes for the reader and an interview with the author, exploring indigenous interpretations of ancient sites and the archaeologists who excavate them. For the archaeologist, this offers a revolutionary new viewpoint on their work. For the cultural anthropologist, Dural's role as site guard is only a small part of his life as a Turkish villager. The author recounts the daily lived experience of one man in a contemporary Turkish village, including changing economic strategies for supporting his family, brushes with the law, trips to the beach and the city, and Turkish phone sex.

"Never Had the Like Occurred" examines Ancient Egypt's own multifaceted encounters with its past. As Egyptian culture constantly changed and evolved, this book follows a chronological arrangement, from early Egypt to the attitudes of the Coptic population in the Byzantine Period. Within this framework, it asks what access the Egyptians had to information about the past, whether deliberately or accidentally acquired; what use was made of the past; what were the Egyptians attitudes to the past; what sense of past time did the Egyptians have; and what kinds of reverence for the past did they entertain? This is the first book dedicated to the whole range of these themes. It provides an explanatory context for the numerous previous studies that have dealt with particular sets of evidence, particular periods, or particular issues. It provides a case study of how civilizations may view and utilize their past.

Winner of ASOR's 2022 G. Ernest Wright Award for the most substantial volume dealing with archaeological material, excavation reports and material culture from the ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean. This is a complete history of Antioch, one of the most significant major cities of the eastern Mediterranean and a crossroads for the Silk Road, from its foundation by the Seleucids, through Roman rule, the rise of Christianity, Islamic and Byzantine conquests, to the Crusades and beyond. Antioch has typically been treated as a city whose classical glory faded permanently amid a series of natural disasters and foreign invasions in the sixth and seventh centuries CE. Such studies have obstructed the view of Antioch's fascinating urban transformations from classical to medieval to modern city and the processes behind these transformations. Through its comprehensive blend of textual sources and new archaeological data reanalyzed from Princeton's 1930s excavations and recent discoveries, this book offers unprecedented insights into the complete history of Antioch, recreating the lives of the people who lived in it and focusing on the factors that affected them during the evolution of its remarkable cityscape. While Antioch's built environment is central, the book also utilizes landscape archaeological work to consider the city in relation to its hinterland, and numismatic evidence to explore its economics. The outmoded portrait of Antioch as a sadly perished classical city par excellence gives way to one in which it shines as brightly in its medieval Islamic, Byzantine, and Crusader incarnations. Antioch: A History offers a new portal to researching this long-lasting city and is also suitable for a wide variety of teaching needs, both undergraduate and graduate, in the fields of classics, history, urban studies, archaeology, Silk Road studies, and Near Eastern/Middle Eastern studies. Just as importantly, its clarity makes it attractive for, and accessible to, a general readership outside the framework of formal instruction.

"Axe Age" is dedicated to the Acheulian, a unique cultural phenomenon with the longest duration and the widest distribution in the history of humanity. The Acheulian lasted over 1 million years and is well known over three continents (Africa, Europe and Asia). This stone tool tradition is characterized by its hallmark bifacial tools, which include handaxes and cleavers. Though this prehistoric culture has been investigated extensively for over a century, countless questions have remained unanswered. Many of them are addressed in this volume. The volume, of interest to both scholars and students, presents original contributions that expand the scope of our understanding of this intriguing cultural entity. The contributions cover a vast geographic terrain and a large array of issues expressing hominin cognitive abilities and behavioral modes, such as landscape exploitation, production of bifacial tools and their classification, regional diversity, transmission of knowledge, transportation and discard patterns. Of the many authors, some are eminent scholars of worldwide reputation in Acheulian research, while others are young scholars reporting on their original research data. All of them contribute to gaining an improved understanding of the Acheulians and their culture.

St Kilda is one of the more distant groups of small islands that are scattered around the west and north of Scotland. With stunning scenery, huge seabird colonies and the visible, abandoned remains of past lives, it is a place that draws many island travellers. The histories and myths associated with the archipelago have added intrigue to this remote part of the Western Isles. Many have concentrated on differences rather than similarities in the lifestyles of St Kildans compared to other island communities, whether in recent, historic or prehistoric times. This volume, which interprets archaeological research undertaken on the main island Hirta over the past twenty years, provides another view. Much still survives to be read in the landscape of pre-improvement, medieval and prehistoric settlement, and this encourages a fresh, integrated focus for island studies.

This comprehensive and absorbing book traces the cultural history of Southeast Asia from prehistoric (especially Neolithic, Bronze-Iron age) times through to the major Hindu and Buddhist civilizations, to around AD 1300. Southeast Asia has recently attracted archaeological attention as the locus for the first recorded sea crossings; as the region of origin for the Austronesian population dispersal across the Pacific from Neolithic times; as an arena for the development of archaeologically-rich Neolithic, and metal using communities, especially in Thailand and Vietnam, and as the backdrop for several unique and strikingly monumental Indic civilizations, such as the Khmer civilization centred around Angkor. Southeast Asia is invaluable to anyone interested in the full history of the region.

The Etruscans are one of history's great mysteries -- a sophisticated society that flourished at the heart of the Classical world and then vanished, leaving relatively few archaeological remains and few records of their culture. The Etruscans were adept at magic, and Etruscan books of spells were common among the Romans but they have not survived. While greatly influenced by the Greeks, the Etruscans retained elements of an ancient non-Western culture, and these archaic traits contributed greatly to the civilization once thought of as purely Roman (gladiators, for example, and many kinds of divination). Leland retrieves elements of Etruscan culture from the living popular traditions of remote areas of the Italian countryside where belief in "the old religion" survives to an astonishing degree. Recorded when many of these secret beliefs and practices were fading away, this remarkable volume deals with ancient gods, spirits, witches, incantations, prophecy, medicine, spells, and amulets, giving full descriptions, illustrations, and instructions for practice.

The fifth and fourth millennia BCE saw major cultural changes in the southern Levant and Northeast Africa: the spread of agriculture; developments in animal husbandry; increased contact between cultures; and the use of alloy bronze. 'Metal, Nomads and Culture Contact' integrates archaeological data from across the Chalcolithic period to contextualise these changes. The book examines the introduction of metal to the southern Levant, Egypt and Lower Nubia and the role of pastoral nomadism in cultural interaction and exchange. 'Metal, Nomads and Culture Contact' will be valuable to scholars of archaeology and anthropology.

WINNER OF THE FRANK WATSON BOOK PRIZE 2021. SHORTLISTED IN SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2021 The first full-scale, interdisciplinary treatment of the wide-ranging connections between the Gaelic world and the Northumbrian kingdom. Northumbria was the most northerly Anglo-Saxon kingdom; its impressive landscape featured two sweeping coastlines, which opened the area to a variety of cultural connections. This book explores influences that emanated from the Gaelic-speaking world, including Ireland, the Isle of Man, Argyll and the kingdom of Alba (the nascent Scottish kingdom). It encompasses Northumbria's "Golden Age", the kingdom's political and scholarly high-point of the seventh and early eighth centuries, and culminates with the kingdom's decline and fragmentation in the Viking Age, which opened up new links with Gaelic-Scandinavian communities. Political and ecclesiastical connections are discussed in detail; the study also covers linguistic contact, material culture and the practicalities of travel, bringing out the realities of contemporary life. This interdisciplinary approach sheds new light on the west and north of the Northumbrian kingdom, the areas linked most closely with the Gaelic world. Overall, the book reveals the extent to which Gaelic influence was multi-faceted, complex and enduring. Dr FIONA EDMONDS is Reader in History and Director of the Regional Heritage Centre at Lancaster University.