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.

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.

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.

Offers an analysis of the many stories of the life and deeds of Cyrus the Great, placing them within the rich storytelling cultures of the ancient Mediterranean and Near East.

Assessing key questions such as who the foreigners and outsiders in ancient Maya societies were and how was the foreign a generative component of identity, Foreigners Among Us reassess the arrival of foreigners as part of archaeological understandings of Pre-Columbian Maya and questions not only who these foreigners might have been but who were making such designations of difference in the first place. Drawing from identity studies, standpoint theory, and ideas on alterity, Foreigners Among Us highlights the diverse ways being foreign was constituted, imitated, and marked – from quotidian practices of making corn tortillas to ceremonial acts between king and captive and their memorialization in scenes on sculpted stone monuments. Rather than treat the foreign as axiomatically determined by geographical distance or fixed at birth, the book considers the foreign as much performed as inherited. It examines practices of captivity, cuisine, body ornamentation and dress, diasporic objects, relationships with deities, migration, and pilgrimage. The book focuses, in particular, on diverse peoples in the Maya area during the Classic and Postclassic periods, but also necessarily peers into contacts, engagements and relations throughout Mesoamerica, the Americas more broadly, and with Europeans during the Colonial period – all the while insisting that outsider status must be approached as multi-scalar, relational, and intersectional rather than as neutral, intrinsic, and static. Contributing broadly to intellectual investigations on foreign identities from an anthropological perspective, this book enriches the understanding of Maya society for students and researchers of Mesoamerican archaeology and art history.

Between 2007 and 2014, a Greek-American team investigated an impressive array of Early Roman to Early Byzantine buildings and burials on the Koutsongila Ridge at Kenchreai, the eastern port of ancient Corinth. This volume presents the project's final results, revealing abundant evidence not only for the history of activity in a transitional urban/suburban landscape, but also for the society, economy, and religion of local residents. Important structural and mortuary discoveries abound, including a district of lavish houses with exquisite mosaic pavement and an Early Christian Octagon. The large artefactual assemblage encompasses a variety of objects from pottery and lamps to glass, coins, and jewellery. Bones and teeth from over 200 individuals illustrate differences in health over time, while thousands of bones and shells from a variety of animals attest to diet and subsistence. This study paints a picture of a Corinthian community, small but prosperous and well connected, actively participating in an urban elite culture expressed through decorative art and monumental architecture.

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.

"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.

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.

Newfoundland lies at the intersection of arctic and more temperate regions and, commensurate with this geography, populations of two Amerindian and two Paleoeskimocultural traditions occupied Port au Choix, in northern Newfoundland, Canada, for centuries and millennia. Over the past two decades The Port au Choix Archaeology Project has sought a comparative understanding of how these different cultures, each with their particular origin and historical trajectory, adapted to the changing physical and social environments, impacted their physical surroundings, and created cultural landscapes. This volume brings together the research of Renouf, her colleagues and her students who together employ multiple perspectives and methods to provide a detailed reconstruction and understanding of the long-term history of Port au Choix. Although geographically focussed on a northern coastal area, this volume has wider implications for understanding archaeological landscapes, human-environment interactions and hunter-gatherer societies. "

"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.

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.

How did human thought evolve into the highly complex process it is today? In the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology, cognitive science and archaeology intersect to provide a more complete and grounded picture of the mind. With the combination of cognitive theories and archaeological evidence, this burgeoning field is only beginning to tap into the potential for a better understanding of the development of specific cognitive abilities. Cognitive Models in Palaeolithic Archaeology explores hominin cognitive development by applying formal cognitive models to analyze prehistoric remains from the entire range of the Palaeolithic, from the earliest stone tools 3.3 million years ago to artistic developments that emerged 50,000 years ago. Several different cognitive models are presented, including expert cognition, information processing, material engagement theory, embodied/extended cognition, neuroaesthetics, visual resonance theory, theory of mind, and neuronal recycling. By examining archaeological remains, and thereby past activities and behavior, through the grounded lenses of these models, a mosaic pattern of human cognitive evolution emerges. This volume, authored by many leading authorities in the field of cognitive archaeology, will attract scholars and students of cognitive evolution and paleoanthropology, who will find a new understanding of hominin cognitive evolution and substantive conclusions about our hominin evolution as opportunities for further research.

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.

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.

This book is available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY licence. Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are known for their grave goods, but this abundance obscures their interest as the creations of pluralistic, multi-generational communities. This book explores over one hundred early Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian cemeteries, using a multi-dimensional methodology to move beyond artefacts. It offers an alternative way to explore the horizontal organisation of cemeteries from a holistically focused perspective. The physical communication of digging a grave and laying out a body was used to negotiate the arrangement of a cemetery and to construct family and community stories. This approach foregrounds community, because people used and reused cemetery spaces to emphasise different characteristics of the deceased, based on their own attitudes, lifeways and live experiences. This book will appeal to scholars of Anglo-Saxon studies and will be of value to archaeologists interested in mortuary spaces, communities and social archaeology. -- .

This creative study of second millennium Palestinian houses identifies the domestic activities represented by ancient artifacts and locates those activities in the domestic space. In Part I, the author designs typical artifacts drawn from observation of the iconography of New Kingdom Egypt. In Part II, application of these paradigms to the pottery and other artifacts from 22 Palestinian sites reveals five main types of domestic activity: food preparation and consumption, storage, pottery production, textile manufacture and weaving.

This unique text discusses the mathematical principles behind Megalithic stone circles, and how these were used for observing lunar cycles in prehistoric times. The author, A. Thom, shows that stone circles were precisely planned and laid out in accordance with certain geometric figures in the classic Pythagorean tradition. Containing some mathematical and astronomical details, along with notes on site survey and location, this book is ideal for amateur enthusiasts and academicians of archaeology, astronomy, and mathematics.

Using archaeology and social anthropology, and more than 100 original line drawings and photographs, An Archaeology of Images takes a fresh look at how ancient images of both people and animals were used in the Iron Age and Roman societies of Europe, 600 BC to AD 400 and investigates the various meanings with which images may have been imbued. The book challenges the usual interpretation of statues, reliefs and figurines as passive things to be looked at or worshipped, and reveals them instead as active artefacts designed to be used, handled and broken. It is made clear that the placing of images in temples or graves may not have been the only episode in their biographies, and a single image may have gone through several existences before its working life was over. Miranda Aldhouse Green examines a wide range of other issues, from gender and identity to foreignness, enmity and captivity, as well as the significance of the materials used to make the images. The result is a comprehensive survey of the multifarious functions and experiences of images in the communities that produced and consumed them. Challenging many previously held assumptions about the meaning and significance of Celtic and Roman art, An Archaeology of Images will be controversial yet essential reading for anyone interested in this area.

Using fresh evidence and nontraditional ideas, the contributing authors of Mississippian Beginnings reconsider the origins of the Mississippian culture of the North American Midwest and Southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). Challenging the decades-old opinion that this culture evolved similarly across isolated Woodland populations, they discuss signs of migrations, pilgrimages, violent conflicts, and other far-flung entanglements that now appear to have shaped the early Mississippian past. Presenting recent fieldwork, archival studies, and new investigations of legacy collections, the essays in this volume interpret results through contemporary perspectives that emphasize agency and historical contingency. They track the various ways disparate cultures across a sizeable swath of the continent came to share similar architecture, pottery, subsistence strategies, sociopolitical organization, iconography, and religion. Together, they provide the most comprehensive examination of early Mississippian culture in nearly thirty years.

The Hellenistic city of New Halos, situated on the coastal route between North and Central Greece, existed for only a short period (ca 302-265 BC) before being destroyed by an earthquake and finally abandoned. The city's original ninety-thousand inhabitants lived in modest houses in the lower town, six of which have been excavated. This book presents the plans of these six houses, detailing the arrangement of living quarters, storage rooms and courtyards, as well as analyzing numerous artifacts, most of which were found in-situ.
This volume contributes greatly to our knowledge of cities in Hellenistic Greece. The house plans and artifacts from the excavations (including agricultural equipment, animal remains, storage jars, kitchen ware, figurines, jewellery and coins) give a unique view of housing around 265 BC.

This book documents and assesses over ten years of research in the field, bringing together expertise and knowledge from the disciplines of archaeology and geomorphology, and highlighting important recent advances, discoveries and new directions. Reflecting the wide scope of current research in this area, the book contains over twenty papers focusing on various aspects of alluvial archaeology from the methodology of dating, prospecting, excavating etc, to previously under-analysed geographical areas such as intertidal wetlands.

Contents:
Contents List of figures Preface Acknowledgements Part 1 The Discovery of Ignorance 1. Inventing the Middle Ages: Antiquarian Views (to c. 1800) 2. Lights and Shadows: Medievalism, the Gothic Revival and the Nineteenth Century (to 1882) 3. An Emerging Discipline: Monuments, Methods and Ideas (1882-1945) Part 2 Into the Light 4. Out of the Shell: Medieval Archaeology Comes of Age (1945-1970) 5. Breaking Ranks: New Ideas, New Techniques, the Rescue Years and After (1970-89) Part 3 Winds of Change 6. Retrospect and Prospect: Medieval Archaeology Today (1990 to the present) Bibliography Index