Caribbean plantations and the forces that shaped them-slavery, sugar, capitalism, and the tropical, sometimes deadly environment-have been studied extensively. This volume turns the focus to the places and times where the rules of the plantation system did not always apply, including the interstitial spaces that linked enslaved Africans with their neighbors at other plantations. The essays also explore the lives of "poor whites," Afro-descendant members of military garrisons, and free people of color, demonstrating that binary models of black slaves and white planters do not fully encompass the diversity of identities before and after Emancipation. Employing innovative research tools and integrating data from Dominica, St. Lucia, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Barbados, Nevis, Montserrat, and the British Virgin Islands, these essays offer a deeper understanding of the complex world within and beyond the sprawling sugar estates.

This book studies N�tha samprad�ya through archaeological evidence for the first time. Drawing on a pioneering approach to the study of ascetic traditions, it investigates not only the nature of the N�tha samprad�ya’s religious architecture but also examines the extent to which they shared space with other religious groups such as the devotees of Siva and Sakti, Buddhism, and Islam, especially with the Sufi tradition. Focusing on western India, the book sifts through a variety of archaeological evidence and documentation of their temples, caves, and maṭhas. It critically analyses iconographic representations of ascetics on temple walls and sculptural representations of yogic postures or �sanas. Further, these representations are discussed within a pan-South Asian framework to highlight both the commonalities of the tradition across the subcontinent and the regional specificities, along with their chronological spread. Breaking new ground, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of religion, especially Hinduism, history, archaeology, and South Asian studies.

This volume presents a completely new and very substantial body of information about the origin of agriculture and plant use in Africa. All the evidence is very recent and for the first time all this archaeobotanical evidence is brought together in one volume (at present the information is unpublished or published in many disparate journals, confer ence reports, monographs, site reports, etc. ). Early publications concerned with the origins of African plant domestication relied almost exclusively on inferences made from the modem distribution of the wild progenitors of African cultivars; there existed virtually no archaeobotanical data at that time. Even as recently as the early 1990s direct evidence for the transition to farming and the relative roles of indigenous versus Near Eastern crops was lacking for most of Africa. This volume changes that and presents a wide range of ex citing new evidence, including case studies from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt, and Sudan, which range in date from 8000 BP to the present day. The volume ad dresses topics such as the role of wild plant resources in hunter-gatherer and farming com munities, the origins of agriculture, the agricultural foundation of complex societies, long-distance trade, the exchange of foods and crops, and the human impact on local vege tation-all key issues of current research in archaeology, anthropology, agronomy, ecol ogy, and economic history."

The objects unearthed in 1939 from an Anglo-Saxon ship-burial at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, rank among the most splendid treasures in the collection of the British Museum. Bringing together fine craftsmanship from England, Germany, Scandinavia, Alexandria and far Byzantium, the spectacular finds included gold and garnet jewellery, silverware, drinking vessels with silver-gilt fittings, a lyre and a sceptre, as well as the iconic helmet, all deliberately buried in the early seventh century as grave-goods for an important, though unidentified, warrior. The Sutton Hoo ship-burial was one of the most exciting discoveries ever made in British archaeology. This beautifully designed introduction to the treasure details the most significant pieces contained within it and explores the circumstances of its burial, discovery and excavation, as well as its lasting legacy and fame.

This volume explores how scholars wrote, preserved, circulated, and read knowledge in ancient Mesopotamia. It offers an exercise in micro-history that provides a case study for attempting to understand the relationship between scholars and scholarship during this time of great innovation. The papers in this collection focus on tablets written in the city of Uruk in southern Babylonia. These archives come from two different scholarly contexts. One is a private residence inhabited during successive phases by two families of priests who were experts in ritual and medicine. The other is the most important temple in Uruk during the late Achemenid and Hellenistic periods. The contributors undertake detailed studies of this material to explore the scholarly practices of individuals, the connection between different scholarly genres, and the exchange of knowledge between scholars in the city and scholars in other parts of Babylonia and the Greek world. In addition, this collection examines the archives in which the texts were found and the scribes who owned or wrote them. It also considers the interconnections between different genres of knowledge and the range of activities of individual scribes. In doing so, it answers questions of interest not only for the study of Babylonian scholarship but also for the study of ancient Mesopotamian textual culture more generally, and for the study of traditions of written knowledge in the ancient world.

The evolution and proliferation of plain and predominantly wheel-made pottery presents a characteristic feature of the societies of the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean since the fourth millennium B.C. This plain pottery has received little detailed archaeological attention in comparison to aesthetically more pleasing and chronologically sensitive decorated traditions. Yet, their simplicity and standardization suggest they are products of craft specialists, the result of high-volume production, and therefore important in understanding the social systems in early complex societies. This volume-reevaluates the role and significance of plain pottery traditions from both historically specific perspectives and from a comparative point of view;-examines the uses and functions of this pottery in relation to social negotiation and group identity formation;-helps scholars understand cross-regional similarities in development and use.

As it is today, the property market was a key and dynamic economic sector in Ancient Rome. Its study demands a deep understanding of Roman society, of the normative frameworks and the notions of wealth, value, identity and status that shaped individual and collective mentalities. This book takes a multisided insight into real estate as the subject of short- and long-term economic investments, of speculative businesses ventures, of power abuses and inequalities, of social aspirations, but also of essential housing needs. The volume discusses thoroughly relevant and new literary, legal, epigraphic, papyrological and archaeological evidence, and incorporates comparative historical perspectives and methodologies, including economic theory and current, critical sociological debates about the functioning of modern real estate markets and issues linked to its commodification and regulation. In pursuing this line of enquiry, the contributions that make up the book investigate the impact of ideas such as profit, risk, security and trust in transfers, management and use of residential houses, commercial buildings and productive estates in urban and rural contexts. The work further evaluates the legal responses to and the public enforcement strategies concerning such activities, the high mobility of fortunes and unstable property-rights that resulted from one-off but also structural, political, financial, economic and institutional crises that marked the history of the Roman Republic and Principate. This book aims to demonstrate the relevance of the study of pre-modern real estate markets today, and will be of significant interest to readers of economic history as well as Roman law, Roman archaeology, the history of urbanism and social history.

An invigorating journey through Britain's prehistoric landscape, and an insight into the lives of its inhabitants. 'Highly compelling' Spectator, Books of the Year 'An evocative foray into the prehistoric past' BBC Countryfile Magazine 'Vividly relating what life was like in pre-Roman Britain' Choice Magazine 'Makes life in Britain BC often sound rather more appealing than the frenetic and anxious 21st century!' Daily Mail In Scenes from Prehistoric Life, the distinguished archaeologist Francis Pryor paints a vivid picture of British and Irish prehistory, from the Old Stone Age (about one million years ago) to the arrival of the Romans in AD 43, in a sequence of fifteen profiles of ancient landscapes. Whether writing about the early human family who trod the estuarine muds of Happisburgh in Norfolk c.900,000 BC, the craftsmen who built a wooden trackway in the Somerset Levels early in the fourth millennium BC, or the Iron Age denizens of Britain's first towns, Pryor uses excavations and surveys to uncover the daily routines of our ancient ancestors. By revealing how our prehistoric forebears coped with both simple practical problems and more existential challenges, Francis Pryor offers remarkable insights into the long and unrecorded centuries of our early history, and a convincing, well-attested and movingly human portrait of prehistoric life as it was really lived.

This book Offers diverse range of topics to build a broad view of the role of birds in Roman life. Begins by examining birds in omens, augury, and auspices, with particular emphasis on the so-called sacred chickens consulted by magistrates and generals before important decisions. Takes an interdisciplinary approach, draws on many evidence streams, includes literary evidence alongside art, material culture, zooarchaeology, and modern ornithological knowledge to reconstruct fully how Romans lived with, thought about, and exploited birds. Uses a blend of evidence to examine birds as divine messengers, heralds, hunted quarry, domestic flocks, companion animals and more. is an important reference for researchers interested in human-animal relations and animals in the ancient world.

This book summarizes the systematic research on the Neolithic cultures of Taiwan, based on the latest archaeological discoveries, and focusing on the maritime interactions between mainland southeast China, Taiwan, and southeast Asia during (5600-1800 BP). The study demonstrates and sheds light on the distinctiveness of Taiwan's Neolithic cultures, their interactions with the external cultures of its surrounding regions, the maritime cultural diffusion and early seafaring across sea regions like the Taiwan Strait, Bashi channel and South China Sea. Drawing on the author's deep understanding of Taiwan and its surrounding regions, the book also incorporates recent archeological findings by Taiwanese researchers. Further, based on a new reconstruction of the spatiotemporal framework of Taiwanese prehistoric cultures, the chronologically arranged chapters discuss Neolithic cultures of the early, middle, late and final stage of this island region, revealing the prehistoric cultural development, regional typology and their maritime interactions with surrounding regions. The typological study of the native traits and external cultural influences of each stage of Neolithic culture shows the prehistoric and early history of this key stepping stone in the Asia-Pacific region.

This volume fills a gap in the study of an important, yet neglected case of state formation, by taking a landscape perspective to Etruria. Simon Stoddart examines the infrastructure, hierarchy/heterarchy and spatial patterns of the Etruscans over time to investigate their political development from a new perspective. The analysis both crosses the divide from prehistory to history and applies a scaled analysis to the whole region between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Arno and Tiber rivers, with special focus on the neglected region between Populonia on the coast and Perugia and the north Umbrian region adjoining the Apennines. Stoddart uncovers the powerful places that were in dynamic tension not only between themselves, but also with the internal structure constituted by the descent groups that peopled them. He unravels the dynamically changing landscape of changing boundaries and buffer zones which contained robust urbanism, as well as less centralized, polyfocal nucleations.

This book is an inquiry into the relationships between archaeology, colonialism and ecotourism at the famous standing stones of Hintang, Laos. It investigates the conditions under which archaeological knowledge has been produced, appropriated, contested, commodified, and consumed by colonialism from the 1930s until today and what it shows about the power dynamics of heritage and ecotourism. The volume-explores how the discourses of colonialism and ecotourism affect tourists, archaeologists, heritage managers, and the local community;-is written as a set of overlapping creative essays, each giving an overlapping perspective on Hintang;-is a multidisciplinary research project based on ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, interviews with community members, biography, material culture studies, and text analysis.

This volume examines the power relationships between the rulers of the Late Bronze and Iron Age and their subjects in the Levant through the lens of "cultural hegemony". It explores the impact of these foreign powers on all social classes and reconstructs the public presence of cultural control. The book serves to determine the impact of foreign control on the daily lives of those living in the ancient Levant, and offers a means by which to attempt to discuss non-elites in the ancient Near East. It examines expressions of foreign ideology within public performance such as religious expressions and in public places, observable by all social classes, which assert control or dominance over local identity markers. In utilizing textual, epigraphic, and archaeological records, it paints a more complete picture of Levantine society during this time while also drawing upon evidence from neighbouring Anatolia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. This is a fascinating resource for students and scholars of the ancient Near East, particularly the Levant but also Anatolia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia in the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods. It is also useful for scholars working on power and imperialism across history.

The first major synthesis of African archaeobotany in decades, this book focuses on Paleolithic archaeobotany and the relationship between agriculture and social complexity. It explores the effects that plant life has had on humans as they evolved from primates through the complex societies of Africa, including Egypt, the Buganda Kingdom, southern African polities, and other regions. With over 30 contributing scholars from 12 countries and extensive illustrations, this volume is an essential addition to our knowledge of humanity's relationship with plants.

Britain has long been fascinated with its own history and identity, as an island nation besieged by invaders from beyond the seas: the Romans, Vikings and Normans. The long saga of prehistory is often forgotten – but our understanding of our past is changing.

Mike Pitts presents ten astounding archaeological discoveries that shed new light on those who came before us, and radically altered the way we think about our history. His compelling, sometimes teasing, archaeological odyssey illustrates the diversity, complexity and sheer strangeness of the lives that represent Britain’s past.

A detailed archaeological study of life in Egypt's Eastern desert during the Roman period by a leading scholar Rome in Egypt's Eastern Desert is a two-volume set collecting Helene Cuvigny's most important articles on Egypt's Eastern desert during the Roman period. The excavations that she has directed have uncovered a wealth of material, including tens of thousands of texts written on pottery fragments (ostraca). Some of these are administrative texts, but many more are correspondence, both official and private, written by and to the people (mostly but not all men) who lived and worked in these remote and harsh environments, supported by an elaborate network of defense, administration and supply that tied the entire region together. The contents of Rome in Egypt's Eastern Desert have all been published earlier in peer-reviewed venues, but almost entirely in French. All of the contributions have been translated by the editor and brought up to date with respect to bibliography and in some cases significantly rewritten by the author, in order to take account of the enormous amount of new material discovered in the intervening time and subsequent publications. A full index makes this body of work far more accessible than it was before. This book brings together thirty years of detailed study of this material, conjuring in vivid detail the lived experience of those who inhabited these forts--often through their own expressive language--and the realia of desert geography, military life, sex, religion, quarry operations, and imperial administration in the Roman world.

This book explores how past peoples navigated and created power structures and social relationships, using a case study from the Titicaca Basin of Bolivia (800 BC - AD 400). Based on the analysis of human skeletal remains, it combines anthropological social theory, archaeological contexts, and biological indicators of identity, disease, and labor to present a microhistory. The analysis moves in scale from individual experiences of daily life to broad patterns of shared identity and kinship during a time of significant economic and ecological change in the lake basin. The volume is particularly valuable for scholars and students interested in what bioarchaeology can tell us about power and social relationships in the past and how this is relevant to modern constructions of community.

Islands are ideal case studies for exploring social connectivity, episodes of colonisation, abandonment, and alternating phases of cultural interaction and isolation. Their societies display different attitudes toward the land and the sea, which in turn cast light on group identities. This volume advances theoretical discussions of island archaeology by offering a comparative study of the archaeology of colonisation, abandonment, and resettlement of the Mediterranean islands in prehistory. This comparative and thematic study encourages anthropological reflections on the archaeology of the islands, ultimately focusing on people rather than geographical units, and specifically on the relations between islanders, mainlanders, and the creation of islander identities. This volume has significance for scholars interested in Mediterranean archaeology, as well as those interested more broadly in colonisation and abandonment.

This volume provides an up-to-date selection of inscriptions which are important for the study of Greek history in the fourth century BC. It contains an introduction, Greek texts, English translations, and commentaries, which cater for the needs of today's students. The texts shed light not only on the mainstream of Greek political and military history, but also on institutional, social, economic, and religious life.

Record-Making and Record-Keeping in Early Societies provides a concise and up-to-date survey of early record-making and record-keeping practices across the world. It investigates the ways in which human activities have been recorded in different settings using different methods and technologies. Based on an in-depth analysis of literature from a wide range of disciplines, including prehistory, archaeology, Assyriology, Egyptology, and Chinese and Mesoamerican studies, the book reflects the latest and most relevant historical scholarship. Drawing upon the author's experience as a practitioner and scholar of records and archives and his extensive knowledge of archival theory and practice, the book embeds its account of the beginnings of recording practices in a conceptual framework largely derived from archival science. Unique both in its breadth of coverage and in its distinctive perspective on early record-making and record-keeping, the book provides the only updated and synoptic overview of early recording practices available worldwide. Record-Making and Record-Keeping in Early Societies will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students engaged in the study of archival science, archival history, and the early history of human culture. The book will also appeal to practitioners of archives and records management interested in learning more about the origins of their profession.

This book examines the influence of architectural design in the conservation of historic buildings by discussing in detail an important building complex in Rome: the Temple of Venus and Rome, the monastery of Santa Maria Nova and the church of Santa Francesca Romana. As the most complete site in the Roman Forum that has reached our times with a rich architectural stratification almost intact, it is a clear product of continuous preservation and transformation and it has not been studied in its complexity until now. The Temple of Venus and Rome and Santa Francesca Romana at the Roman Forum unravels the original designs and the subsequent interventions, including Giacomo Boni's pioneering conservation of the monastery, carried out while excavating the Roman Forum in the early twentieth century. The projects are discussed in context to show their significance and the relationships between architects and patrons. Through its interdisciplinary focus on architectural design, conservation, archaeology, history and construction, this study is an ideal example for scholars, students and architects of how to carry out research in architectural conservation.

This book provides an overview of medieval monasticism in Iceland, from its dawn to its downfall during the Reformation. Blends the evidence from material remains and written documents to highlight the realities of everyday life in the monasteries and nunneries operated in Iceland. describes the incorporation of monasticism in to the Icelandic society, the land of the Vikings, and thus how the monasteries coexisted with the natural and social environments on the island while keeping their general aims and objectives. shows that large social systems, such as monasticism, can cross social and natural borders without necessitating fundamental changes apart from those triggered by the constant coexistence of nature and culture inside the environment they exist within. debunks the myth that Icelandic monasteries, male or female were isolated, silent places or simple cells functioning principally as retirement homes for aristocrats. To be a member of an ecclesiastical institution did not mean a quiet, secluded life without any outside interaction, but rather active participation in the surrounding community. Is of interest for researchers in archaeology, osteology, and medieval history, in addition to all those interested in monasticism and the medieval history of Northern Europe.

This book provides an overview of medieval monasticism in Iceland, from its dawn to its downfall during the Reformation. Blends the evidence from material remains and written documents to highlight the realities of everyday life in the monasteries and nunneries operated in Iceland. describes the incorporation of monasticism in to the Icelandic society, the land of the Vikings, and thus how the monasteries coexisted with the natural and social environments on the island while keeping their general aims and objectives. shows that large social systems, such as monasticism, can cross social and natural borders without necessitating fundamental changes apart from those triggered by the constant coexistence of nature and culture inside the environment they exist within. debunks the myth that Icelandic monasteries, male or female were isolated, silent places or simple cells functioning principally as retirement homes for aristocrats. To be a member of an ecclesiastical institution did not mean a quiet, secluded life without any outside interaction, but rather active participation in the surrounding community. Is of interest for researchers in archaeology, osteology, and medieval history, in addition to all those interested in monasticism and the medieval history of Northern Europe.

Includes evidence from Soviet scholarship that is often not accessible to scholars working on this period.

At the core of this book is a success story of an Eastern European woman who survived both Soviet and Nazi occupations of her homeland, lived as a displaced person in postwar Germany, and built her career and scholarly authority within the androcentric American academia. At the same time, it is also a story of a controversy, which followed Gimbutas' theory of Old Europe - a prehistoric civilization, characterized by peacefulness, egalitarianism, women's leadership, and the worship of the Great Goddess. First introduced in 1974, this theory inspired women's movements worldwide, but was harshly criticized by other archaeologists. This book examines the various intellectual contexts (feminist, nationalist, theoretical) in which Gimbutas' ideas were formed, received, and interpreted, as well as appropriated for different political goals. This timely study will appeal to scholars and students in the following fields: history of archaeology, prehistoric archaeology, gender studies, feminist studies, women's history, Baltic studies, and religion and spirituality.