Native Americans have occupied the mountains of northwestern North Carolina for around 14,000 years. This book tells the story of their lives, adaptations, responses to climate change, and ultimately, the devastation brought on by encounters with Europeans. After a brief introduction to archaeology, the book covers each time period, chapter by chapter, beginning with the Paleoindian period in the Ice Age and ending with the arrival of Daniel Boone in 1769, with descriptions and interpretations of archaeological evidence for each time period. Each chapter begins with a fictional vignette to kindle the reader's imaginings of ancient human life in the mountains, and includes descriptions and numerous images of sites and artifacts discovered in Boone, North Carolina and the surrounding region.

The riveting story of a true-life female Indiana Jones: an archaeologist who survived the Nazis and then saved Egypt's ancient temples. In the 1960s, the world's attention was focused on a nail-biting race against time: fifty countries had contributed nearly a billion dollars to save a dozen ancient Egyptian temples from drowning in the floodwaters of the gigantic new Aswan High Dam. It was a project of unimaginable size and complexity that required the fragile sandstone temples to be dismantled, stone by stone, and rebuilt on higher ground. But the massive press coverage of this unprecedented rescue effort completely overlooked the gutsy French archaeologist who made it all happen. Without the intervention of Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt, the temples would now be at the bottom of a gigantic reservoir. Desroches-Noblecourt refused to be cowed by anyone or anything. As a brave member of the French Resistance in World War II, she had survived imprisonment by the Nazis. Now, in her fight to save the temples, she had to face down two of the most daunting leaders of the postwar world: Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and French president Charles de Gaulle. After a century and a half of Western plunder of Egypt's ancient monuments, Desroches-Noblecourt helped preserve a crucial part of its cultural heritage, and, just as importantly, made sure it remained in its homeland.

Originally published in 1998, Ritual, Identity, and the Mayan Diaspora examines the lives and the continuing ritual traditions of the Mayas in the United States. The book focuses on a predominantly Maya town in rural Florida and shows how members of this ancient Central American civilization use their religious tradition to maintain their ethnic identity in an unfamiliar environment. Bringing together studies of Mesoamerican fiesta or cargo systems, religious ritual and migration studies, this interdisciplinary work describes the religious traditions of indigenous Guatemala, the crisis migration of the 1980s, and the Mayas' daily life in the United States, including Maya women's reflections on their new challenges. The book is unique in its focus on the transfer of the fiesta cycle to the diaspora and its analysis of the behind-the-scenes aspects of ritual. The rise of leadership contested interpretations of ethnic identity, choices about symbolic representation, and maintenance of ties to villages of origin all take place in the context of organizing public ritual events. This book will be of interest to academics of anthropology, history and sociology.

This is an authoritative guide to the complete range of medieval scholarship undertaken in twentieth-century Britain: history, archaeology, language, culture. Some of the twenty-nine essays focus on changes in research methods or on the achievements of individual scholars, while others are the personal account of a lifetime's work in a discipline. Many outline the ways in which subjects may develop in the twenty-first century.

Primary source documents and detailed entries reveal what ancient Egypt was like, using the objects and artifacts of daily life from the period covering the Predynastic era through the Græco-Roman period (5000 BCE to 300 CE). Historians have found that valuable knowledge about long-ago civilizations can be derived from examining the simple routines of daily life. This fascinating study presents a collection of everyday objects and artifacts from ancient Egypt, shedding light on the social life and culture of ancient Egyptians. The work starts with a popular notion of ancient Egyptian beauty and gradually moves on to address various aspects of life, including home, work, communication, and transition and afterlife. Organized by topics, the work contains the following sections: beauty, adornment, and clothing; household items, furniture, and games; food and drink; tools and weapons; literacy and writing; death and funerary equipment; and religion, ritual, and magic. Each object holds equal importance and dates from the Predynastic era to the Græco-Roman period of ancient Egypt (5000 BCE to 300 CE). A special section provides guidance on evaluating objects and artifacts by asking questions—Who created it? Who used it? What did it do/what was its purpose? When and where was it made? Why was it made?—to help assess the historical context of the object.

Mediterranean Connections focuses on the origin and development of maritime transport containers from the Early Bronze through early Iron Age periods (ca. 3200-700 BC). Analysis of this category of objects broadens our understanding of ancient Mediterranean interregional connections, including the role that shipwrecks, seafaring, and coastal communities played in interaction and exchange. These containers have often been the subject of specific and detailed pottery studies, but have seldom been examined in the context of connectivity and trade in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. This broad study: considers the likely origins of these types of vessels; traces their development and spread throughout the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean as archetypal organic bulk cargo containers; discusses the wider impact on Mediterranean connections, transport and trade over a period of 2,500 years covering the Bronze and early Iron Ages. Classical and Near Eastern archaeologists and historians, as well as maritime archaeologists, will find this extensively researched volume an important addition to their library.

First published in 1929, The Mystery of the Great Pyramid attempts to unravel the secrets of the Great Pyramid by drawing parallels with the rituals in the Book of the Dead. The conception of the Pyramid and the origin of the cult of Osiris and of the Book of the Dead are to be found in a common source, which maybe expressed in the one word, Messianism. The author argues that this is why the literature of early Christian gnosticism abounds in mystical pyramid figures and associated astronomical conceptions and constellations. This book will be of interest to students of history, philosophy, and theology.

Greek pottery was exported around the ancient world in vast quantities over a period of several centuries. This book focuses on the Greek pottery consumed by people in the western Mediterranean and trans-Alpine Europe from 800-300 BCE, attempting to understand the distribution of vases, and particularly the reasons why people who were not Greek decided to acquire them. This new approach includes discussion of the ways in which objects take on different meanings in new contexts, the linkages between the consumption of goods and identity construction, and the utility of objects for signaling positive information about their owners to their community. The study includes a database of almost 24,000 artifacts from more than 230 sites in Portugal, Spain, France, Switzerland, and Germany. This data was mapped and analyzed using geostatistical techniques to reveal different patterns of consumption in different places and at different times. The development of the new approaches explored in this book has resulted in a shift away from reliance on the preserved fragments of ancient Greek authors' descriptions of western Europe, remains of monumental buildings, and major artworks, and toward investigation of social life and more prosaic forms of material culture. ADDITIONAL E-RESOURCES FOR THIS BOOK ARE AVAILABLE: https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/art_data/1/

Histories of Egyptology are increasingly of interest: to Egyptologists, archaeologists, historians, and others. Yet, particularly as Egypt undergoes a contested process of political redefinition, how do we write these histories, and what (or who) are they for? This volume addresses a variety of important themes, the historical involvement of Egyptology with the political sphere, the manner in which the discipline stakes out its professional territory, the ways in which practitioners represent Egyptological knowledge, and the relationship of this knowledge to the public sphere. Histories of Egyptology provides the basis to understand how Egyptologists constructed their discipline. Yet the volume also demonstrates how they construct ancient Egypt, and how that construction interacts with much wider concerns: of society, and of the making of the modern world.

This edited volume investigates knowledge networks based on materials and associated technologies in Prehistoric Europe and the Classical Mediterranean. It emphasises the significance of material objects to the construction, maintenance, and collapse of networks of various forms - which are central to explanations of cultural contact and change. Focusing on the materiality of objects and on the way in which materials are used adds a multidimensional quality to networks. The properties, functions, and styles of different materials are intrinsically linked to the way in which knowledge flows and technologies are transmitted. Transmission of technologies from one craft to another is one of the main drivers of innovation, whilst sharing knowledge is enabled and limited by the extent of associated social networks in place. Archaeological research has often been limited to studying objects made of one particular material in depth, be it lithic materials, ceramics, textiles, glass, metal, wood or others. The knowledge flow and transfer between crafts that deal with different materials have often been overlooked. This book takes a fresh approach to the reconstruction of knowledge networks by integrating two or more craft traditions in each of its chapters. The authors, well-known experts and early career researchers, provide concise case studies that cover a wide range of materials. The scope of the book extends from networks of craft traditions to implications for society in a wider sense: materials, objects, and the technologies used to make and distribute them are interwoven with social meaning. People make objects, but objects make people - the materiality of objects shapes our understanding of the world and our place within it. In this book, objects are treated as clues to social networks of different sorts that can be contrasted and compared, both spatially and diachronically.

The study of food in the Hebrew Bible and Syro-Palestinian archaeology has tended to focus on kosher dietary laws, the sacrificial system, and feasting in elite contexts. More everyday ritual and practice - the preparation of food in the home - has been overlooked. Food in Ancient Judah explores both the archaeological remains and ancient Near Eastern sources to see what they reveal about the domestic gastronomical daily life of ancient Judahites within the narratives of the Hebrew Bible. Beyond the findings, the methodology of the study is in itself innovative. Biblical passages that deal with domestic food preparation are translated and analysed. Archaeological findings and relevant secondary resources are then applied to inform these passages. Food in Ancient Judah reflects both the shift towards the study of everyday life in biblical studies and archaeology and the huge expansion of interest in food history - it will be of interest to scholars in all these fields.

Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? Until now their identity has remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. "The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization.

Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of language, David Anthony identifies the prehistoric peoples of central Eurasia's steppe grasslands as the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European, and shows how their innovative use of the ox wagon, horseback riding, and the warrior's chariot turned the Eurasian steppes into a thriving transcontinental corridor of communication, commerce, and cultural exchange. He explains how they spread their traditions and gave rise to important advances in copper mining, warfare, and patron-client political institutions, thereby ushering in an era of vibrant social change. Anthony also describes his fascinating discovery of how the wear from bits on ancient horse teeth reveals the origins of horseback riding.

"The Horse, the Wheel, and Language" solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries--the source of the Indo-European languages and English--and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.

This volume presents Babylon as it has been passed down through Western culture: through the Bible, classical texts, in Medieval travel accounts, and through depictions of the Tower motif in art. It then details the discovery of the material culture remains of Babylon from the middle of the 19th century and through the great excavation of 1899-1917, and focuses on the encounter between the Babylon of tradition and the Babylon unearthed by the archaeologists. This book is unique in its multi-disciplinary approach, combining expertise in biblical studies and Assyriology with perspectives on history, art history, intellectual history, reception studies and contemporary issues.

This is the first comprehensive overview of gender in the ANE that deals equally with both men and women. The overviews of ANE history and contemporary gender theory make it accessible to students with no background in these areas, allowing ANE students to learn about gender, and gender studies students to access the ancient material.

This book offers a new anthropological understanding of the socio-cosmological and ontological characteristics of the Isthmo-Colombian Area, beyond established theories for Amazonia, the Andes and Mesoamerica. It focuses on a core region that has been largely neglected by comparative anthropology in recent decades. Centering on relations between Chibchan groups and their neighbors, the contributions consider prevailing socio-cosmological principles and their relationship to Amazonian animism and Mesoamerican and Andean analogism. Classical notions of area homogeneity are reconsidered and the book formulates an overarching proposal for how to make sense of the heterogeneity of the region's indigenous groups. Drawing on original fieldwork and comparative analysis, the volume provides a valuable anthropological addition to archaeological and linguistic knowledge of the Isthmo Colombian Area.

Stonehenge is one of the world’s most famous monuments. Who built it, how and why are questions that have endured for at least 900 years, but modern methods of investigation are now able to offer up a completely new understanding of this iconic stone circle. Stonehenge’s history straddles the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, though its story began long before it was built. Serving initially as a burial ground, it evolved over time into a sacred place for gathering, feasting and building, and was remodelled several times as different peoples arrived in the area along with new technologies and customs. In more recent centuries it has found itself the centre of excavations, political protests and even conspiracy theories, embedding itself in the consciousness of the modern world. In this book Mike Parker Pearson draws on two decades of research, the results of recent excavations and cutting-edge scientific analyses to uncover many of the secrets that this prehistoric stone circle has kept for 5,000 years. In doing so, he paints the most comprehensive picture yet of the history of Stonehenge, from its origins up to the 21st century, and reveals how in some ways trying to explain its power of attraction in the present is harder than explaining its purpose in the ancient past.

In this fascinating in-depth study, Arlene Rosen highlights the unique and varied ways that different societies respond to their changing environments, going against the commonly held notion of simple climatic determinism. Social responses to climate change are the result of human perceptions of nature and their environment. From the Terminal Pleistocene through to the Late Holocene, Rosen describes various communities' responses to climate change, further exploring the intriguing connections between climate and society. A must-read for archaeologists, geographers, students, and historians!

Gandhara is a name central to Buddhist heritage and iconography. It is the ancient name of a region in present-day Pakistan, bounded on the west by the Hindu Kush mountain range and to the north by the foothills of the Himalayas. 'Gandhara' is also the term given to this region's sculptural and architectural features between the first and sixth centuries CE. This book re-examines the archaeological material excavated in the region in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and traces the link between archaeological work, histories of museum collections and related interpretations by art historians. The essays in the volume underscore the diverse cultural traditions of Gandhara - from a variety of sources and perspectives on language, ethnicity and material culture (including classical accounts, Chinese writings, coins and Sanskrit epics) - as well as interrogate the grand narrative of Hellenism of which Gandhara has been a part. The book explores the making of collections of what came to be described as Gandhara art and reviews the Buddhist artistic tradition through notions of mobility and dynamic networks of transmission. Wide ranging and rigorous, this volume will appeal to scholars and researchers of early South Asian history, archaeology, religion (especially Buddhist studies), art history and museums.

This book argues that the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe essentially began shortly before 1600 BC, when lands rich in natural resources were taken over by military forces from the Eurasian steppe and from southern Caucasia. First were the copper and silver mines (along with good harbors) in Greece, and the copper and gold mines of the Carpathian basin. By ca. 1500 BC other military men had taken over the amber coasts of Scandinavia and the metalworking district of the southern Alps. These military takeovers offer the most likely explanations for the origins of the Greek, Keltic, Germanic and Italic subgroups of the Indo-European language family. Battlefield warfare and militarism, Robert Drews contends, were novelties ca. 1600 BC and were a consequence of the military employment of chariots. Current opinion is that militarism and battlefield warfare are as old as formal states, going back before 3000 BC. Another current opinion is that the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe happened long before 1600 BC. The "Kurgan theory" of Marija Gimbutas and David Anthony dates it from late in the fifth to early in the third millennium BC and explains it as the result of horse-riding conquerors or raiders coming to Europe from the steppe. Colin Renfrew's Archaeology and Language dates the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe to the seventh and sixth millennia BC, and explains it as a consequence of the spread of agriculture in a "wave of advance" from Anatolia through Europe. Pairing linguistic with archaeological evidence Drews concludes that in Greece and Italy, at least, no Indo-European language could have arrived before the second millennium BC.

This informed and richly illustrated guidebook brings the ancient city of Akhetaten alive with a keen archaeological eye, drawing on ongoing archaeological research and the knowledge and insight of Amarna's modern-day communities and caretakers to explain key monuments and events, while offering invaluable practical advice for visiting the site. With over 140 illustrations, maps, and plans, Amarna is both an ideal introduction for visitors to Amarna and a window onto the extraordinary reign of Akhenaten. Huge open-air temples served the cult of Aten, while palaces were decorated with painted pavements and inlaid wall reliefs. Akhenaten created a new royal burial ground deep in a desert valley, and his officials built elaborate tombs decorated with scenes of the king and his city. As thousands of people moved to Akhetaten, it became the most important city in Egypt. But it was not to last. Akhenaten's death brought the abandonment of his city and an end to one of the most startling episodes in Egyptian history. Today, Akhetaten is known as Amarna, a sprawling archaeological site in the province of Minya, halfway between Cairo and Luxor. With its beautifully decorated tombs and vast mud-brick ruins, it is the best-preserved pharaonic city in Egypt.

Science in the Study of Ancient Egypt takes an innovative and integrated approach to the use of scientific techniques and methodologies within the study of ancient Egypt. Accessibly demonstrating how to integrate scientific methodologies into Egyptology broadly, and in Egyptian archaeology in particular, this volume will help to maximise the amount of information that can be obtained within a study of ancient Egypt, be it in the field, museum, or laboratory. Using a range of case studies which exemplify best practice within Egyptian archaeological science, Science in the Study of Ancient Egypt presents both the scientific methods of analysis available and their potential applications to Egyptologists. Although Egyptology has mainly shown a marked lack of engagement with recent archaeological science, the authors illustrate the inclusive but varied nature of the scientific archaeology which is now being undertaken, demonstrating how new analytical techniques can develop greater understanding of Egyptian data.

In Corinth in Contrast, archaeologists, historians, art historians, classicists, and New Testament scholars examine the stratified nature of socio-economic, political, and religious interactions in the city from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity. The volume challenges standard social histories of Corinth by focusing on the unequal distribution of material, cultural, and spiritual resources. Specialists investigate specific aspects of cultural and material stratification such as commerce, slavery, religion, marriage and family, gender, and art, analyzing both the ruling elite of Corinth and the non-elite Corinthians who made up the majority of the population. This approach provides insight into the complex networks that characterized every ancient urban center and sets an agenda for future studies of Corinth and other cities rule by Rome.

Incorporating Nonbinary Gender into Inuit Archaeology: Oral Testimony and Material Inroads explores gender diversity in precontact Inuit history. By combining evidence from interviews with re-examinations of previously excavated archaeological collections, the book challenges binary narratives and creates an allowance for diverse narratives around gender to emerge. This work approaches a wide range of ethnographic and archaeological sources with a critical eye, opening up a dialogue between queer Indigenous studies; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Two Spirit, Plus (LGBTQ2S+) Inuit; and archaeology in order to question normative colonial narratives about Indigenous pasts while providing concrete examples of how researchers can begin to let go of rigid assumptions. In this way, the reader is encouraged to explore novel perspectives and think beyond boxes to understand gender complexity in precontact Inuit culture. This book has been written for a wide academic audience, particularly those interested in queer archaeologies, archaeologies of gender, decolonial archaeologies, and indigenous archaeologies and oral history.

When does a continuum become a divide? This book investigates the genetic relationship between Linear A and Linear B, two Bronze Age scripts attested on Crete and Mainland Greece and understood to have developed one out of the other. By using an interdisciplinary methodology, this research integrates linguistic, epigraphic, palaeographic and archaeological evidence, and places the writing practice in its sociohistorical setting. By challenging traditional views, this work calls into question widespread assumptions and interpretative schemes on the relationship between these two scripts, and opens up new perspectives on the ideology associated with the retention, adaptation and transmission of a script, and how identity was negotiated at a moment of closer societal interaction between Cretans and Greek-speaking Mainlanders in the Late Bronze Age. By delving deeper into the structure and inner workings of these two writing systems, this book will make us rethink the relationship between Linear A and B.