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.

The World of the 'Fullo' takes a detailed look at the fullers, craftsmen who dealt with high-quality garments, of Roman Italy. Analyzing the social and economic worlds in which the fullers lived and worked, it tells the story of their economic circumstances, the way they organized their workshops, the places where they worked in the city, and their everyday lives on the shop floor and beyond. Through focusing on the lower segments of society, Flohr uses everyday work as the major organizing principle of the narrative: the volume discusses the decisions taken by those responsible for the organization of work, and how these decisions subsequently had an impact on the social lives of people carrying out the work. It emphasizes how socio-economic differences between cities resulted in fundamentally different working lives for many of their people, and that not only were economic activities shaped by Roman society, they in turn played a key role in shaping it. Using an in-depth and qualitative analysis of material remains related to economic activities, with a combined study of epigraphic and literary records, this volume portrays an insightful view of the socio-economic history of urban communities in the Roman world.

The Stone Age is now beginning to be recognised as vital in establishing who we are and where we have come from. This period has long been neglected.

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. -- .

In this volume, ten leading international historians and archaeologists provide a fresh and dynamic picture of Italy's history from the end of the Roman Western Empire in 476 to the end of the tenth century. Recent archaeological findings, which have so greatly changed our perceptions and understanding of the period, have been fully integrated into the eleven thematic chapters, which provide a fully rounded overview of the entire Italian peninsula in the early middle ages. The chapters consider such themes as regional diversities, rural and urban landscapes, the organisation of public and private power, the role and structure of ecclesiastical institutions, the production of manuscripts, inscriptions, and private charters

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.

As world powers realign their cultural, economic and political outlooks, there is no better time to consider how Afro-Eurasia's complex network of ancient trade routes - which spanned the vastness of the steppe, vertiginous mountain ranges, fertile river plains and forbidding deserts across the continents and on to the seas beyond - fostered economic activity and cultural, political and technological communication. From silk to slaves, fashion to music, religion to science the movement of interaction of goods, people and ideas was crucial to the flourishing of peoples and their cultures across this vast region. Edited by Susan Whitfield, an established authority on the subject, with contributions from over 80 leading scholars from across the globe, Silk Roads situates the ancient routes against the landscapes that defined them, to reveal the raw materials that they produced, the means of travel that were employed to traverse them and the communities that were shaped by them. Organized by terrain, from steppe to desert to ocean, each section includes detailed maps, a historical overview, thematic essays and features showcasing art, buildings and archaeological discoveries. A wealth of photographs reveals the breathtaking and often forbidding landscapes encountered by travellers and traders through the millennia. With one section inscribed as a World Heritage Corridor by UNESCO in 2014 and others to follow, and China claiming the Silk Roads as the precursor of its Belt Road Initiative, this network of ancient trade routes and the interaction along them has never been of greater interest or importance than today. This beautiful publication honours the astonishing diversity in the way cultures advance and flourish not in spite of their differences, but because of them.

In this book, Ellen Swift uses design theory, previously neglected in Roman archaeology, to investigate Roman artefacts in a new way, making a significant contribution to both Roman social history, and our understanding of the relationships that exist between artefacts and people. Based on extensive data collection and the close study of artefacts from museum collections and archives, the book examines the relationship between artefacts, everyday behaviour, and experience. The concept of 'affordances'-features of an artefact that make possible, and incline users towards, particular uses for functional artefacts-is an important one for the approach taken. This concept is carefully evaluated by considering affordances in relation to other sources of evidence, such as use-wear, archaeological context, the end-products resulting from artefact use, and experimental reconstruction. Artefact types explored in the case studies include locks and keys, pens, shears, glass vessels, dice, boxes, and finger-rings, using material mainly drawn from the north-western Roman provinces, with some material also from Roman Egypt. The book then considers how we can use artefacts to understand particular aspects of Roman behaviour and experience, including discrepant experiences according to factors such as age, social position, and left- or right-handedness, which are fostered through artefact design. The relationship between production and users of artefacts is also explored, investigating what particular production methods make possible in terms of user experience, and also examining production constraints that have unintended consequences for users. The book examines topics such as the perceived agency of objects, differences in social practice across the provinces, cultural change and development in daily practice, and the persistence of tradition and social convention. It shows that design intentions, everyday habits of use, and the constraints of production processes each contribute to the reproduction and transformation of material culture.

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.

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.

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 is an up-to-date survey of Aegean archaeology at the beginning of the Iron Age (late eleventh and tenth centuries BC). There are chapters on pottery, metal finds, burial customs, architectural remains (and how to use them to understand the social and political structure of the society), cult practices, and developments towards state formation. The book will be useful to field archaeologists, historians of ancient Greece, and students.

This volume catalogues more than 400 lamps and lamp fragments dating from the Late Archaic to the Byzantine periods found over several decades at the Isthmian Sanctuary of Poseidon. These come from excavations undertaken by UCLA from 1967 to 1987 under the direction of Paul Clement and since then by OSU under the direction of Timothy Gregory. As well as the detailed descriptions of the lamps in the catalogue, the volume presents a commentary on the types of lamps used at the Sanctuary that enriches our knowledge of their manufacture, use, and artistic evolution over time. The lamps also contribute to a better understanding of the site, as they reflect the various historical, political, and religious vicissitudes at Isthmia and the Corinthia in general over the centuries. The author is one of the leading authorities in the world on lamps from ancient Greece, and her work advances our knowledge of the subject in Isthmia, the Corinthia, and beyond.

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

Prehistoric Florida societies, particularly those of the peninsula, have been largely ignored or given only minor consideration in overviews of the Mississippian southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). This groundbreaking volume lifts the veil of uniformity frequently draped over these regions in the literature, providing the first comprehensive examination of Mississippi-period archaeology in the state.
Featuring contributions from some of the most prominent researchers in the field, this collection describes and synthesizes the latest data from excavations throughout Florida. In doing so, it reveals a diverse and vibrant collection of cleared-field maize farmers, part-time gardeners, hunter-gatherers, and coastal and riverine fisher/shellfish collectors who formed a distinctive part of the Mississippian southeast.

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 Charvát 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.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203164814

This book brings together sources translated from a wide variety of ancient languages to showcase the rich history of pre-Roman Italy, including its cultures, politics, trade, languages, writing systems, religious rituals, magical practices, and conflicts. This book allows readers to access diverse sources relating to the history and cultures of pre-Roman Italy. It gathers and translates sources from both Greek and Latin literature and ancient inscriptions in multiple languages and gives commentary to highlight areas of particular interest. The thematic organisation of this sourcebook helps readers to make connections across languages and communities, and showcases the interconnectedness of ancient Italy. This book includes maps, a timeline, and guides to further reading, making it accessible to students and other readers who are new to this subject. Italy Before Rome is aimed at undergraduate and graduate students, including those who have not studied the ancient world before. It is also intended to be useful to researchers approaching this material for the first time, and to university and schoolteachers looking for an overview of early Italian sources.

In Eating in the Side Room, Mark Warner uses the archaeological data of food remains recovered from excavations in Annapolis, Maryland, and the Chesapeake as a point of departure to examine how material culture shaped African American identity in one of the country's oldest cities. Warner skillfully demonstrates how African Americans employed food as a tool for expressing and defending their cultural heritage while living in a society that attempted to ignore and marginalize them. The ""side rooms"" where the families ate their meals not only satisfied their hunger but also their need to belong. As a result, Warner claims, the independence that African Americans practiced during this time helped prepare their children and grandchildren to overcome greater challenges of white oppression.