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Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeology by period / region
This wide-ranging yet detailed study describes and assesses the many-faceted cultural achievement of an area remote from Athens, the Dorian islands. Elizabeth Craik's scholarship sets this lively outlying region of the ancient Greek world - which included Rhodes, Kos, Karpathos, Melos, and Thera - in the perspective of Greek civilization as a whole, demonstrating that excessive emphasis on the Athenian advancements of the fifth century BC tends to obscure the contribution of other regions. Beginning with a discussion of the geographical setting, natural resources and historical development of the area, The Dorian Aegean goes on to survey linguistic usage and local scripts, and to examine the regional contribution to literature, medicine and science. In the final three chapters, the religious traditions and practices of the islands are discussed, in terms of myths, cults and administration. This work will appeal to students of the classical world, archaeology, and cultural history.
Daniel Albero Santacreu presents a wide overview of certain aspects of the pottery analysis and summarizes most of the methodological and theoretical information currently applied in archaeology in order to develop wide and deep analysis of ceramic pastes. The book provides an adequate framework for understanding the way pottery production is organised and clarifies the meaning and role of the pottery in archaeological and traditional societies. The goal of this book is to encourage reflection, especially by those researchers who face the analysis of ceramics for the first time, by providing a background for the generation of their own research and to formulate their own questions depending on their concerns and interests. The three-part structure of the book allows readers to move easily from the analysis of the reality and ceramic material culture to the world of the ideas and theories and to develop a dialogue between data and their interpretation. Daniel Albero Santacreu is a Lecturer Assistant in the University of the Balearic Islands, member of the Research Group Arqueo UIB and the Ceramic Petrology Group. He has carried out the analysis of ceramics from several prehistoric societies placed in the Western Mediterranean, as well as the study of handmade pottery from contemporary ethnic groups in Northeast Ghana.
This is the second of three volumes exploring some of the most remarkable insights into Ancient Egypt to have come to light in modern times. The first two volumes deal with the Rosetta Stone, an outstanding archaeological discovery which has supplied the basis for Egyptian decipherment; the final volume explores the "Stele of Canopus", discovered in 1866. The significance of the Rosetta Stone lies in the three different languages inscribed on it: Koine Greek, Demotic Egyptian, and, crucially, Hieroglyphic. This has facilitated a vast increase in our understanding of the sacred language of Ancient Egypt, as well as enhancing our understanding of the nature of kingship at a time of immense cultural transformation. First published in 1904, this title provides an accessible general introduction to this fascinating subject, useful for the amateur enthusiast as well as undergraduate students.
This, the first volume of Sir E. A. Wallis Budge's The History of Ethiopia: Nubia and Abyssinia, first published in 1928, presents an account of Ethiopian history from the earliest legendary and mythic records up until the death of King Lebna Dengel in 1540. Using a vast range of sources - Greek and Roman reports, Biblical passages, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Ethiopian chronicles - an enthralling narrative history is presented with clarity. This reissue will be of particular interest to students of Ancient Egyptian culture, religion and history.
This is the second volume of Sir E. A. Wallis Budge's narrative account of Ethiopian history, and continues the chronicle of the Kings of Abyssinia where the first volume ended: the death of Lebna Dengel in 1540. The list of kings ends with the Regent Ras Tafari, who still reigned at the time of first publication in 1928. Thereafter, the author devotes considerable attention to an overview of the cultural, social and political idiosyncrasies of the Ethiopian people: literature, spells and magic, architecture, ethnography, the alphabet, and a wide range of other engrossing topics. This material complements the narrative history, helping to situate the deeds of the kings and the fortunes of their people in a broader context.
This is the first of three volumes exploring some of the most remarkable insights into Ancient Egypt to have come to light in modern times. The first two volumes deal with the Rosetta Stone, an outstanding archaeological discovery that has supplied the basis for Egyptian decipherment; the final volume explores the "Stele of Canopus", discovered in 1866. The significance of the Rosetta Stone lies in the three different languages that are inscribed onto it: Koine Greek, Demotic Egyptian, and, crucially, Hieroglyphic. This has facilitated a vast increase in our understanding of the sacred language of Ancient Egypt, as well as enhancing our understanding of the nature of kingship at a time of immense cultural transformation. First published in 1904, this reissue provides an accessible general introduction to this fascinating subject, useful for the amateur enthusiast as well as undergraduate students.
Containing a comprehensive dictionary of hieroglyphs to all the texts of the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead, and also to most of the supplementary Chapters of the Saite and Graeco-Roman period that are usually appended to it, this volume will prove to be a staple part of a rounded appreciation of Ancient Egyptian literature. First published in 1911, the index includes all English equivalents to the Egyptian words. Phonetic values for each symbol are provided, the arrangement of the words and their various forms is arranged alphabetically throughout, and each hieroglyph is printed clearly: a user-friendly and concise tool for all enthusiasts, students and researchers.
The recital of The Book of Opening the Mouth and the Liturgy of Funerary Offerings were in use among the Predynastic Egyptians of the later part of the Neolithic Period, before the art of writing had evolved, and continued to exercise a considerable influence on Egyptian religious literature up until the time of Roman Empire. The ceremonies were believed to enable the spiritual elements of the deceased to continue their existence. The object of the formulae was the reconstitution of the body and the restoration to it of the heart-soul ('Ba'). This is the second volume of The Book of Opening the Mouth, first published in 1909, which is edited from three copies written in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-sixth Dynasties respectively. It is believed they describe faithfully the forms of the rites which originated among the primitive indigenous inhabitants of the Nile Valley.
This is the third of three volumes exploring some of the most remarkable insights into Ancient Egypt to have come to light in modern times. The first two volumes deal with the Rosetta Stone, an outstanding archaeological discovery which has supplied the basis for Egyptian decipherment; the final volume explores the "Stele of Canopus", discovered in 1866. The Decree inscribed on the Stele of Canopus was passed at a general Council of Egyptian priests, setting forth the good deeds of Ptolemy III, and enumerating the benefits that he and his wife Berenice had conferred upon Egypt. Yet, the real significance of the Stele is that, like the Rosetta Stone, the text is inscribed in Hieroglyphic, Greek and Demotic Egyptian. First published in 1904, this reissue provides an accessible general introduction to this fascinating subject, particularly useful for the amateur enthusiast as well as undergraduate students.
Innovation and creativity are two of the key characteristics that distinguish cultural transmission from biological transmission. This book explores a number of questions concerning the nature and timing of the origins of human creativity. What were the driving factors in the development of new technologies? What caused the stasis in stone tool technological innovation in the Early Pleistocene? Were there specific regions and episodes of enhanced technological development, or did it occur at a steady pace where ancestral humans lived? The authors are archaeologists who address these questions, armed with data from ancient artefacts such as shell beads used as jewelry, primitive musical instruments, and sophisticated techniques required to fashion certain kinds of stone into tools. Providing state of art discussions that step back from the usual
archaeological publications that focus mainly on individual site
discoveries, this book presents the full picture on how and why
creativity in Middle to Late Pleistocene archeology/anthropology
evolved.
This is a scientific expoe that will shatter our knowledge of ancient human history. Scholars have told us that the first civilisation on Earth emerged in a land called Sumer some 6000 years ago. New archaeological and scientific discoveries made by Michael Tellinger, Johan Heine and a team of leading scientists, show that the Sumerians and even the Egyptians inherited all their knowledge from an earlier civilisation that lived at the southern tip of Africa more than 200,000 years ago...mining gold. These were also the people who carved the first Horus bird, the first Sphinx, built the first pyramids and built an accurate stone calendar right in the heart of it all. "Adam's Calendar" is the flagship among millions of circular stone ruins, ancient roads, agricultural terraces and thousands of ancient mines, left behind by a vanished civilisation which we now call the First People. They carved detailed images into the hardest rock, worshipped the sun, and are the first to carve an image of the Egyptian Ankh - key of life and universal knowledge, 200,000 years before the Egyptians came to light. This book graphically exposes these discoveries and will be the catalyst for rewriting our ancient human history. The book is a continuation of Tellinger's previous books Slave Species of God and Adam's Calendar which have become favourites with readers in over 20 countries.
Early Urbanizations in the Levant examines the first cycle of urbanization, collapse and reurbanization in the 4th-2nd millennium BCE Levant. The core of the study is a detailed analysis of settlement fluctuations and material culture development in the Hula Valley, at the crossroads between modern Israel, Syria and Lebanon. Focusing on field data and a close reading of the material text, the book emphasizes the variety exhibited in patterns of cultural and social change when small, densely settled regions are carefully scrutinized. Using the concepts of time-space edges and shifting loci of power, the study suggests new scenarios to explain changes in the regional archaeological record, and considers the implications these have for existing reconstructions of social evolution in the larger region. The Levant is shown to be composed of a fluid mosaic of polities that moved along multiple, if often parallel, paths towards and away from complexity. This book should be of interest to anyone studying the archaeology of early state formation in the Near East, particularly in areas of asecondaryAe urbanization - Palestine, Syria and Anatolia. With its detailed consideration of settlement patterns and ceramic production, it is also indispensable for the study of the early history of the two major sites in the area, Tel Dan and Tel Hazor, being the first attempt to integrate the results of excavations at these sites with the information obtained in archaeological surveys of the valley which sustained them.
This is the first of three volumes, first published in 1906, which explore the Egyptian theology of the afterlife. It contains the complete hieroglyphic text of the Book Am-Tuat, with translations and reproductions of all the illustrations. This text, at least in the form that we have it, was produced by the priests of Amen-Ra at Thebes, with the intention of demonstrating that their god was the overlord of all the gods, and the supreme power in the universe. The object of all the Books of the Other World was to provide the dead with a 'guide' or 'handbook, ' containing a description of the regions through which their souls would have to pass on their way to the Kingdom of Osiris, and which would supply them with the words of power and magical names necessary for an unimpeded journey from this world to the next
Written for the general visitor, the Athenian Agora Museum Guide is a companion to the 2010 edition of the Athenian Agora Site Guide and leads the reader through all of the display spaces within the Stoa of Attalos in the Athenian Agora - the terrace, the ground-floor colonnade, and the newly opened upper story. The guide also discusses each case in the museum gallery chronologically, beginning with the prehistoric and continuing with the Geometric, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods. Hundreds of artifacts, ranging from common pottery to elite jewelry held in 81 cases, are described and illustrated in color for the very first time. Through focus boxes, readers can learn about marble-working, early burial practices, pottery production, ostracism, home life, and the wells that dotted the ancient site. A timeline, maps, and plans accompany the text. For those who wish to learn more about what they see in the museum, a list of further reading follows each entry.
Sir E. A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934) was Keeper of the British Museum's department of oriental antiquities from 1894 until his retirement in 1924. Carrying out many missions to Egypt in search of ancient objects, Budge was hugely successful in collecting papyri, statues and other artefacts for the trustees of the British Museum: numbering into the thousands and of great cultural and historical significance. Budge published well over 100 monographs, which shaped the development of future scholarship and are still of great academic value today, dealing with subjects such as Egyptian religion, history and literature. First published in 1931, Egyptian Tales and Romances examines the historical and religious romances of the Egyptians from the early dynastic period to the twentieth century. Budge demonstrates Egypt's transition from Paganism to Christianity, and finally to Islam, through tales and stories carefully transcribed and translated. Part I contains historical romances written on papyrus and stone, whilst parts II and III are derived largely from Coptic and Muslim manuscript sources. Including detailed illustrations and photographs, this fascinating classic work will be of interest to academics and students of Egyptian folklore, archaeology and history, as well as the general inquisitive reader.
This is the second of three volumes, first published in 1906, which explore the Egyptian theology of the afterlife. It contains the complete hieroglyphic text of the short form of the Am-Tuat and of the Book of Gates, with translations and reproductions of all the illustrations. In the Book of Gates the doctrines of the sophisticated cult of Osiris are prominent: they affirm that the beatified live for ever in the kingdom of Osiris, and feed daily upon his eternal body. The object of all the Books of the Other World was to provide the dead with a 'guide' or 'handbook, ' containing a description of the regions through which their souls would have to pass on their way to the Kingdom of Osiris, and which would supply them with the words of power and magical names necessary for an unimpeded journey from this world to the next
This book explores social cohesion in rural settlements in western Europe from 700-1050, asking to what extent settlements, or districts, constituted units of social organisation. It focuses on the interactions, interconnections and networks of people who lived side by side - neighbours. Drawing evidence from most of the current western European countries, the book plots and interrogates the very different practices of this wide range of regions in a systematically comparative framework. Neighbours and strangers considers the variety of local responses to the supra-local agents of landlords and rulers and the impact, such as it was, of those agents on the small-scale residential group. It also assesses the impact on local societies of the values, instructions and demands of the wider literate world of Christianity, as delivered by local priests. -- .
The Sacred Identity of Ephesos offers a full-length interpretation of one of the largest known bequests in the Classical world, made to the city of Ephesos in AD 104 by a wealthy Roman equestrian, and challenges some of the basic assumptions made about the significance of the Greek cultural renaissance known as the 'Second Sophistic'. Professor Rogers shows how the civic rituals created by the foundation symbolised a contemporary social hierarchy, and how the ruling class used foundation myths - the birth of the goddess Artemis in a grove above the city - as a tangible source of power, to be wielded over new citizens and new gods. Utilising an innovative methodology for analysing large inscriptions, Professor Rogers argues that the Ephesians used their past to define their present during the Roman Empire, shedding new light on how second-century Greeks maintained their identities in relation to Romans, Christians, and Jews.
This book portrays the Himalayan-born River Saraswati, a legendary river that was the lifeline of a progressive and vibrant society for more than three thousand years. Written in simple language and richly illustrated, it highlights the events that resulted in the robbing of the Saraswati of its water and the end of a wonderful culture. The author weaves a geological narrative out of a mass of data generated by explorers, archaeologists, sedimentologists, geohydrologist, seismologists and remote-sensing specialists. The story explains how a great Himalayan river disappeared and how the Harappan Civilization vanished from the banks of the river Saraswati more than three and half thousand years ago in the wake of tectonic upheavals in the foothills of the Himalaya at a time when the rainfall had drastically declined. And it reveals that nowadays the Saraswati is an extraordinary wide water-less channel coursing through the vast but dry floodplain in western India.
The Roman province of Noricum occupied most of Austria as well as parts of Italy, Germany and the Balkans. Noricum, first published in 1974, presents a comprehensive history of Noricum, from 400 BC to the end of Roman rule in AD 600. Professor Alfoeldy's account is predicated on the methodical interpretation of literary, epigraphic and archaeological sources, and emphasises the problems of demography and socio-economic history. The chapters are arranged chronologically, ensuring a sense of the continuity of historical events and illuminating the history and archaeology of Noricum both before it came into contact with the Romans as well as under Roman rule. Noricum includes a review of much recent research on the province, detailed references to the source material, a comprehensive bibliography and valuable appendices. It is a substantial work of ancient history and archaeology and will interest both the specialist and the general reader.
This remarkable book is the most ambitious work on mythology since that of the renowned Mircea Eliade, who all but single-handedly invented the modern study of myth and religion. Focusing on the oldest available texts, buttressed by data from archeology, comparative linguistics and human population genetics, Michael Witzel reconstructs a single original African source for our collective myths, dating back some 100,000 years. Identifying features shared by this "Out of Africa" mythology and its northern Eurasian offshoots, Witzel suggests that these common myths--recounted by the communities of the "African Eve"--are the earliest evidence of ancient spirituality. Moreover these common features, Witzel shows, survive today in all major religions. Witzel's book is an intellectual hand grenade that will doubtless generate considerable excitement--and consternation--in the scholarly community. Indeed, everyone interested in mythology will want to grapple with Witzel's extraordinary hypothesis about the spirituality of our common ancestors, and to understand what it tells us about our modern cultures and the way they are linked at the deepest level.
The nineteen papers collected in this volume explore a notable phenomenon, that of retrospection in the art and architecture of Romanesque Europe. They arise from a conference organized by the British Archaeological Association in 2010, and reflect its interest in how and why the past manifested itself in the visual culture of the 11th and 12th centuries. This took many forms, from the casual re-use of ancient material to a specific desire to re-present or emulate earlier objects and buildings. Central to it is a concern for the revival of Roman and early medieval forms, spolia, selective quotation, archaism and the construction of histories. The individual essays presented here cover a wide range of topics and media: the significance of consecration ceremonies in the creation of architectural memory, the rise of pictorial concepts in 12th-century chronicles, the creation of history in the Paris of Hugh of St-Victor, and the appeal of the works of Bernward of Hildesheim and of Hrabanus Maurus in the centuries after their deaths. There are studies of buildings and the ideological purpose behind them at Tarragona, Ripoll, Cluny, Pannonhalma (Hungary), La Roccelletta (Calabria), and Old St Peter's, comparative studies of Trier, Villenauxe and Glastonbury, and of Bury St Edmunds, Rievaulx and Canterbury, and wide-ranging papers on the tantalizing evidence for an engagement with an overseas past in Ireland, an Anglo-Saxon past in England, and a Milanese past among the aisleless cruciform churches of Augustinian Europe. The volume concludes with an assessment of the very concept of Romanesque.
Our understanding of the human past is very limited. The mute evidence from excavation - the dusty pot shards, fragments of bone, slight variations in soil colour and texture - encourages abstraction and detachment. Reconstruction art offers a different way into the past, bringing archaeology to life and at times influencing and informing archaeologist's ideas. At its best it delivers something vivid, vital and memorable. Illustrating the Past explores the history of reconstruction art and archaeology. It looks at how attitudes have swung from the scientific and technical to a freer more imaginative way of seeing and back again. Through the exploration of seven artists' work, the reader is shown how the artist's way of seeing illustrates the past and sometimes how it has changed the way the past is seen. Illustrators working in archaeology are often anonymous and yet the picture that summarises an excavation can be the idea that endures. As well as drawing on her specialist knowledge, Judith Dobie uses conversation and correspondence to build a picture of how these artists' personalities, interests and backgrounds influences their art. Case studies featuring working sketches demonstrate how reconstruction artists deliver understanding and can change the interpretation of a site. This book celebrates and acknowledges reconstruction art within the field of archaeology.
The Early Anglo-Saxon Period is characterized archaeologically by the regular deposition of artefacts in human graves in England. The scope for dating these objects and graves has long been studied, but it has typically proved easier to identify and enumerate the chronological problems of the material than to solve them. Prior to the work of the project reported on here, therefore, there was no comprehensive chronological framework for Early Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, and the level of detail and precision in dates that could be suggested was low. The evidence has now been studied afresh using a co-ordinated suite of dating techniques, both traditional and new: a review and revision of artefact-typology; seriation of grave-assemblages using correspondence analysis; high-precision radiocarbon dating of selected bone samples; and Bayesian modelling using the results of all of these. These were focussed primarily on the later part of the Early Anglo-Saxon Period, starting in the 6th century. This research has produced a new chronological framework, consisting of sequences of phases that are separate for male and female burials but nevertheless mutually consistent and coordinated. These will allow archaeologists to assign grave-assemblages and a wide range of individual artefact-types to defined phases that are associated with calendrical date-ranges whose limits are expressed to a specific degree of probability. Important unresolved issues include a precise adjustment for dietary effects on radiocarbon dates from human skeletal material. Nonetheless the results of this project suggest the cessation of regular burial with grave goods in Anglo-Saxon England two decades or even more before the end of the seventh century. That creates a limited but important discrepancy with the current numismatic chronology of early English sceattas. The wider implications of the results for key topics in Anglo-Saxon archaeology and social, economic and religious history are discussed to conclude the report.
This book synthesizes in-depth bioarchaeological research into diet, subsistence regimes, and nutrition-and corresponding insights into adaptation, suffering, and resilience-among indigenous north-coastal Peruvian communities from early agricultural through European colonial periods. The Spanish invasion and colonization of Andean South America left millions dead, landscapes transformed, and traditional ways of life annihilated. However, the nature and magnitude of these changes were far from uniform. By the time the Spanish arrived, over four millennia of complex societies had emerged and fallen, and in the 16th century, the region was home to the largest and most expansive indigenous empire in the western hemisphere. Decades of Andean archaeological and ethnohistorical research have explored the incredible sophistication of regional agropastoral traditions, the importance of food and feasting as mechanisms of control, and the significance of maritime economies in the consolidation of complex polities. Bioarchaeology is particularly useful in studying these processes. Beyond identifying what resources were available and how they were prepared, bioarchaeological methods provide unique opportunities and humanized perspectives to reconstruct what individuals actually ate, and whether their diets changed within their own lifespans. |
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Digital Tools for Seamless Learning
Suleyman Nihat Ad, Martin Ebner
Hardcover
R5,780
Discovery Miles 57 800
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