In this book Graeme Snooks has set himself the highly ambitious task of exploring the driving force of global change over the past 2 million years. The author also employs his dynamic strategy model to discuss future outcomes for human society, controversially arguing that far from leading to ecological destruction, growth-inducing technological change is both necessary and liberating. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that dynamism, not stasis, is the essential condition of human society, as it is of life.

Graeme Snooks has set himself the ambitious and original task of exploring the driving force of global change over the past 2 million years. The book outlines and explains the biological development of life, going on to develop a fully dynamic model, not just of genetic change, but of the broader process of life on earth. Snooks also provides a critical review of current interpretations about the course of history and the forces driving it. Finally, he develops an entirely new interpretation of the dynamics of human society, arguing that the rise and fall of societies is an outcome of the development and exhaustion of these strategies.
This dynamic strategy model is employed to discuss likely future outcomes for society. Controversially, Snooks argues that far from leading to ecological destruction, growth--including technological change--is both natural and necessary. "The Dynamic Society" demonstrates that dynamism, not stasis, is the essential condition of human society, as it is of life.

Situated on the shores of the Argolic Gulf, only a few miles away from the much later prehistoric sites of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Midea, Lerna is one of the key building blocks in our understanding of Greek archaeology. The first evidence from the site is Neolithic, and the latest settlement evidence is Mycenaean. However, the most important material from the site comes from the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. when a remarkable large, rectangular building known as The House of the Tiles was built. Possibly never finished, with unpainted walls and doors that lead nowhere, the purpose and meaning of this building has provoked vigorous debate. Was it the house of a chief and the precursor of the later Mycenaean palaces? Or was it a communal storage facility, designed to store the elaborately sealed chests and jars found inside? No less mysterious than its use is its destruction: After a violent fire, a huge mound was built on top of the charred foundations, the area avoided by later house builders. This guide is illustrated with many plans and black and white photos.

The Dictionary of Islamic Architecture provides the fullest range of artistic, technical, archaeological, cultural and biographical data for the entire geographical and chronological spread of Islamic architecture - from West Africa through the Middle East to Indonesia, from the seventh to the eighteenth centuries.
Over 500 entries are arranged alphabetically and fully cross-referenced and indexed to permit easy access to the text and to link items of related interest.
Five main catagories of subject matter are explored:
* dynastic and regional overviews characterise the architecture of the historical and geographical divisions of the Islamic world, concentrating on the materials and techniques employed and the styles and types of structures produced
* individual site descriptions give concise accounts of the full range of major and lesser buildings and remains - a number for the first time in modern literature
* biographical entries describe the work of architects and their patrons
* technical definitions provide concise explanations of the terminology used to describe architectural types and features.
Over 100 relevant plans, sketch maps, photographs and other illustrations complement and illuminate the entries, and the needs of the reader requiring further information are met by individual entry bibliographies.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203203879

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A stonemason's story of the building of Britain: part archaeological history, part deeply personal insight into an ancient craft. In his thirty-year career, stonemason Andrew Ziminski has worked on many of our greatest monuments. From Neolithic monoliths to Roman baths and temples, from the tower of Salisbury Cathedral to the engine houses, mills and aqueducts of the Industrial Revolution and beyond, The Stonemason is his very personal history of how Britain was built - from the inside out. Stone by different stone, culture by different culture, Andrew Ziminski (with his faithful whippet in tow) takes us on an unforgettable journey by river, road and sea through our countryside showing how the making of Britain's buildings offers an unexpected and new version of our island story. 'My school history lessons were focused around flat pages of facts, events and royal personalities, but for me it was the material aspects of the past, the tangible remnants left behind that were thrilling, and that it was these buildings and places, and learning how they worked, that really brought the past alive.'

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.

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.

Draws on a lifetime's study and a decade of new research to address the first question that every visitor asks: how was Stonehenge built? Icon of the New Stone Age, sculptural and engineering marvel, symbol of national pride: there is nothing quite like Stonehenge. These great sarsen and bluestone slabs, arranged with simple, graphic genius, attract visitors from across the world. The monument stands silent in the face of the questions its unlikely existence raises: who built it? Why? How? There has been endless speculation about why Stonehenge was built, inspiring theories ranging from the academically credible to the improbable, but far less investigation into how. In the millennia since its creation, pieces of Stonehenge have been knocked over by heavy machinery, found their way to Florida (and back again), and been exposed to radioactive sodium, but the seemingly impossible endeavour of raising the stones with Neolithic technology has remained inexplicable - until now. In the past decade ground-breaking discoveries, made possible by cutting-edge scientific techniques, have traced the precise provenance of the bluestones in Wales, but can we plot their journeys to the Salisbury Plain? And how might teams of labourers lacking machinery or even pack animals have dragged them 150 miles to the site? How did they carve joints into the sarsen boulders, among the hardest stones in the world, and then raise them into place? Mike Pitts draws on a lifetime's study to answer these questions, revealing how Stonehenge stood not in austere isolation, as we see it today, but as part of a wider world, the focus of a megalithic cosmology of belief, ritual and creativity. With 109 illustrations

Ashes, Images, and Memories argues that the institution of public burial for the war dead and images of the deceased in civic and sacred spaces fundamentally changed how people conceived of military casualties in fifth-century Athens. In a period characterized by war and the threat of civil strife, the nascent democracy claimed the fallen for the city and commemorated them with rituals and images that shaped a civic ideology of struggle and self-sacrifice on behalf of a unified community. While most studies of Athenian public burial have focused on discrete aspects of the institution, such as the funeral oration, this book broadens the scope. It examines the presence of the war dead in cemeteries, civic and sacred spaces, the home, and the mind, and underscores the role of material culture - from casualty lists to white-ground lekythoi-in mediating that presence. This approach reveals that public rites and monuments shaped memories of the war dead at the collective and individual levels, spurring private commemorations that both engaged with and critiqued the new ideals and the city's claims to the body of the warrior. Faced with a collective notion of "the fallen" families asserted the qualities, virtues, and family links of the individual deceased, and sought to recover opportunities for private commemoration and personal remembrance. Contestation over the presence and memory of the dead often followed class lines, with the elite claiming service and leadership to the community while at the same time reviving Archaic and aristocratic commemorative discourses. Although Classical Greek art tends to be viewed as a monolithic if evolving whole, this book depicts a fragmented and charged visual world.

Explores all equipment made or used to contain the embalmed internal organs of the kings of ancient Egypt. The book traces the mythological development of the various forms of container, and catalogues all known canopic items belonging to the kings of Egypt from the 4th to 26th Dynasties.

Roman architecture is incredibly rich, both in the techniques it employed and the variety of buildings it produced, many of which are still standing and visible. This book places emphasis on the technical aspects of that architecture, and studies the tools and materials used, partly by studying modern parallels in the Mediterranean area.

"Greek Sanctuaries: New Approaches" examines some of the major and less well known Greek sanctuaries from a new light. The traditional approach to Greek sanctuaries and especially temples has been descriptive. Much emphasis is commonly placed on architectural features but only rarely is there an attempt to look at the totality of functions that a Greek sanctuary might encompass. This collection of articles addresses the critical questions which related to the diverse purposes of the sanctuaries: what was their social function? Who were their clients? Regional links and variations are stressed, while some sanctuaries are shown to have had particular uses such as dining and initiation. Among the cults discussed are the Eleusinian mysteries for which a new reconstruction is proposed.

The chapters, written by an international group of scholars, cover the subject from many different angles. They encompass wide-ranging case studies that address architecture, manuscript illumination and stained glass, as well as questions of liturgy, religion and social life. Topics include the early medieval churches that preceded the current cathedral church of Notre-Dame and cultural production in the Paris area in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, as well as Paris’s chapels and bridges. There is new evidence for the source of the c. 1240 design for a celebrated window in the Sainte-Chapelle, an evaluation of the liturgical arrangements in the new shrine-choir of Saint-Denis, built 1140–44, and a valuable assessment of the properties held by the Cistercian order in Paris in the Middle Ages. Also investigated are relationships between manuscript illuminators in the fourteenth century and representations of Paris in manuscripts and other media up to the late 15th century. Paris: The Powers that shaped the Medieval City updates and enlarges our knowledge of this key city in the Middle Ages and is for Medieval Archaeologists and Historians.

This book examines a number of themes relating to social and political life in Late Antiquity. The first part of the book considers how the powers of the emperor, state and civic authorities were expressed in the phyiscal environment, and how coinage and material culture were caught up in the political life of the period. The second part investigates the "middle classes" and "the poor," who are often less visible in archaeological, textual and epigraphic records. Other articles consider such topics as long term social evolution and the definition of time in Late Antiquity. Two extensive bibliographic essays provide an overview of published literature relating to social and political life.

A fully updated and revised edition of a classic bestseller: the definitive guide to Tutankhamun and his tomb - what it contained, why, and what it means today. On 4 November 1922, Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter's long search in Egypt's Valley of the Kings drew to a triumphant close: Tutankhamun's tomb had been found. As news of the discovery spread, and as images of the breathtaking treasures began to circulate, this once-obscure pharaoh would capture the imagination of the entire world. A hundred years on, and both the fascination and the drama continue. Scientific research has pushed forward, and the results have been impressive: the tomb's ground-plan and setting are now fully remapped; CT-scanning and aDNA have begun to shed their unique light on Tutankhamun in life and in death; super-accurate recordings have been secured of the Burial Chamber's decorated walls; and we possess at last high-quality photography of Pharaoh's possessions. Our access to Carnarvon and Carter's extraordinary find is greater today than it has ever been, and from this fuller evidence comes one new realization among many - that both the tomb and its treasures had been intended for someone else. In this new edition of his landmark book Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves revisits Tutankhamun in the context of his time, the excavators in the context of theirs, and every aspect, old and new, of the tomb's discovery, archaeology, architecture and art. If what was discovered in 1922 had the ability to amaze, then what has been discovered since will simply astonish.

This volume explores 15,000 years of indigenous human history on the North American continent, drawing on the latest archaeological theories, time-honored methodologies, and rich datasets. From the Arctic south to the Mexican border and east to the Atlantic Ocean, all of the major cultural developments are covered in 53 chapters, with certain periods, places, and historical problems receiving special focus by the volume's authors. Questions like who first peopled the continent, what did it mean to have been a hunter-gatherer in the Great Basin versus the California coast, how significant were cultural exchanges between Native North Americans and Mesoamericans, and why do major historical changes seem to correspond to shifts in religion, politics, demography, and economy are brought into focus. The practice of archaeology itself is discussed as contributors wrestle with modern-day concerns with the implications of doing archaeology and its relevance for understanding ourselves today. In the end, the chapters in this book show us that the principal questions answered about human history through the archaeology of North America are central to any larger understanding of the relationships between people, cultural identities, landscapes, and the living of everyday life.

This book focuses on those features of the Roman economy that are less traceable in text and archaeology, and as a consequence remain largely underexplored in contemporary scholarship. By reincorporating, for the first time, these long-obscured practices in mainstream scholarly discourses, this book offers a more complete and balanced view of an economic system that for too long has mostly been studied through its macro-economic and large-scale - and thus archaeologically and textually omnipresent - aspects. The topic is approached in five thematic sections, covering unusual actors and perspectives, unusual places of production, exigent landscapes of exploitation, less-visible products and artefacts, and divergent views on emblematic economic spheres. To this purpose, the book brings together a select group of leading scholars and promising early career researchers in archaeology and ancient economic history, well positioned to steer this ill-developed but fundamental field of the Roman economy in promising new directions.

The British Isles have been continually settled since 12500 years ago when hunter-gatherer bands returned in the wake of the retreating ice sheets. For 7000 years, until the introduction of farming, people subsisted by hunting wild game and gathering the fruits of the forest and foreshore. In archaeolgical terms they belonged to the late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, and have hitherto, been studied mainly in terms of their stone tools. Today, in an age when there is growing concern over the relationship between human beings and a rapidly changing environment, an earlier period when this relationship was both intimate and immediate is of considerable interest. "Late Stone Age Hunters of the British Isles" places the archaeological evidence - mainly stone tools and animal bones - within a wider, ecological context. The book examines aspects of the hunter-gatherer way of life and how it can be studied from archaeological evidence. There follows a review of environmental change in the period covered and three chapters of case studies in which different examples of hunter-gatherer activity are examined within their ecological context. This book should be of interest to students a

Commissioned to mark the 75th anniversary of the start of work in the royal burial ground by the 5th Earl of Carnavon and Howard Carter, this book presents an up-to-date review of the developments in excavation, mapping and research in the Valley of the Kings.

The Romans commemorated many different events with inscriptions, and not just carved in stone: they are found also on such materials as bronze, wood, mosaic, glass and pottery. They range from the official and highly formulaic to the ordinary and personal. Lawrence Keppie introduces the non-specialist to the subject of inscriptions and provides clear guidance towards translating the Latin texts. Reading the text is only part of interpretation, however, and this book also gives an account of the other aspects needed for a full understanding of inscriptions. The author covers such subjects as local government; the armies and frontiers; religion; the titles of emperors; business and commerce; as well as the craft of stonecutting, developments in the alphabet and the discovery and publication of material.

What makes one crime more serious than another, and why? This book investigates the problem of seriousness of offence in English law from the comparative perspective of biblical law. Burnside takes a semiotic approach to show how biblical conceptions of seriousness are synthesised and communicated through various descriptive and performative registers. Seven case studies show that biblical law discriminates between the seriousness of different offences and between the relative seriousness of the same offence when committed by different people or when performed in different ways. Recurring elements include location and the offender's social statue. The closing chapter considers some of the implications for the current debate about crime and punishment.

First Published in 1991.This study is the product of the discovery, excavation, processing, data collection and analysis of nearly 500 human skeletons from the Crow Creek Massacre Project, South Dakota. In about 1325 AD nearly 500 American Indians were massacred, and their remains were discovered, excavated and cleaned in 1978. The general purpose of the Crow Creek osteological study were to describe the remains as fully as time permitted and compare these results with other samples. This volume presents information concerning the Crow Creek bone elements, paleodemography, cranial affiliations, mutilations and stature. It emphasizes the unique feature of the sample and compares the Crow Creek sample with other skeletal samples from the Plains.

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 widespread construction of castles in Britain began as soon as Duke William of Normandy set foot on the shores of southern England in 1066. The castles that were constructed in the ensuing centuries, and whose ruins still scatter the British countryside today, provide us with an enduring record of the needs and ambitions of the times. But the essence of the medieval castle—a structure that is equal parts military, residential, and symbolic—reveals itself not only through the grandeur of such architectural masterpieces as the Tower of London, and the imposing nature of such royal residences as Windsor, but also in the aging masonry carvings, enduring battlements, and more modest earthen ramparts that have survived alongside them. Through a feature-by-feature account of the architectural elements and techniques used in constructing the medieval castle, author Lise Hull allows the multiple functions of these multifarious forms to shine through, and in so doing, lends a new vitality to the thousand faces that the medieval world assumed to discourage its enemies, inspire its friends, and control its subjects. This compelling investigation takes a unique look at each of the medieval castle's main roles: as an offensive presentation and defensive fortification, as a residential and administrative building, and as a symbolic structure demonstrating the status of its owner. Each chapter focuses on one specific role and uses concrete architectural features to demonstrate that aspect of the medieval castle in Britain. A wealth of illustrations is also provided, as is a glossary explaining the distinct parts of the castle and their functions. This book should be of interest to students researching architecture, the Middle Ages, or military history, as well as general readers interested in castles or considering a trip to Britain to observe some of these magnificent sites themselves.