A unique variety of approaches to all aspects of urban culture in the ancient world can be found in Urban Dreams and Realities in Antiquity, a collection of 19 essays addressing ancient cities from an interdisciplinary perspective. As the title indicates, the volume considers both how ancient people lived in their cities as physical structures and how they thought with them as ideas and symbols. Essays in this volume deal with texts and sites from Spain to South India, but there is a particular focus on the archaeology and epigraphy of Roman-era Italy, civic identity in the Roman provinces, the Hebrew Bible and Early Christian literature, Vergil and other imperial Latin authors.

The practiceof archaeology has many different facets: from academia, to government, tocultural resource management, to public media.

Considering the place of archaeology in society means understanding the rolesthat archaeology has in the present day and a sense of the contributions thatit can make in each of these areas, both now and in the future. Archaeologistscome to the field to pursue a variety of interests: teaching, examininghistory, preserving the environment, or studying a specialized time period orinterest. The outside world has a number of other expectations of archaeology: preservation, tourism, and education, to name but a few.

From a broad and varied background, the editors have compiled a rare group ofcontributors uniquely qualified to address questions about the current state ofarchaeology and its relevance in society. There is no single answer to thequestion of how the field of archaeology should develop, and what it can do forsociety. Instead, the authors in this volume lay out the many ways in which archaeology isrelevant to the present day - considering, for example, climate change, energyexploration, warfare, national identity, the importance of stories and how theyare told, and how and why opportunities to engage with the past throughmuseums, digs, television, classes, and the print media have the formsthey currently do - creating a state-of-the-art tool for archaeologists, policymakers and the public alike to understand thework of many in the fieldand address the challenges we all face."

Steadman fills an empty niche in the offerings on how archaeology interprets past religions with this useful textbook. The book includes case studies from around the world, from the study of Upper Paleolithic religions and of shamans in foraging societies to formal religious structures in advanced complex societies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and the Andes. Steadman also includes key contemporary religions--Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, among others--to provide an historical and comparative context. This is an ideal text for a archaeology of religion courses and classes that include a significant component on "past religions," as well as an excellent guide for general readers.

Although angels are typically associated with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Ancient Angels demonstrates that angels (angeloi) were also a prominent feature of non-Abrahamic religions in the Roman era. Following an interdisciplinary approach, the study uses literary, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence to examine Roman conceptions of angels, how residents of the empire venerated angels, and how Christian authorities responded to this potentially heterodox aspect of Roman religion. The book brings together the evidence for popular beliefs about angels in Roman religion, demonstrating the widespread nature of speculation about, and veneration of, angels in the Roman Empire

This volume provides an important new synthesis of archaeological work carried out in Australia on the post-contact period. It draws on dozens of case studies from a wide geographical and temporal span to explore the daily life of Australians in settings such as convict stations, goldfields, whalers' camps, farms, pastoral estates and urban neighbourhoods. The different conditions experienced by various groups of people are described in detail, including rich and poor, convicts and their superiors, Aboriginal people, women, children, and migrant groups. The social themes of gender, class, ethnicity, status and identity inform every chapter, demonstrating that these are vital parts of human experience, and cannot be separated from archaeologies of industry, urbanization and culture contact.

The book engages with a wide range of contemporary discussions and debates within Australian history and the international discipline of historical archaeology. The colonization of Australia was part of the international expansion of European hegemony in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The material discussed here is thus fundamentally part of the global processes of colonization and the creation of settler societies, the industrial revolution, the development of mass consumer culture, and the emergence of national identities. Drawing out these themes and integrating them with the analysis of archaeological materials highlights the vital relevance of archaeology in modern society. "

Archaeomineralogy provides a wealth of information for mineralogists, geologists and archaeologists involved in archaeometric studies. The first edition was very well-received and praised for its systematic description of the rocks and minerals used throughout the world by our ancestors and for its excellent list of over 900 references, providing easy access to the fields of archaeomineralogy and geoarchaeology.

This second edition of Archaeomineralogy takes an updated and expanded look at the human use of rocks and minerals from the Paleolithic through to the 18th century CE. It retains the structure and main themes of the original but has been revised and expanded with more than 200 new references within the text, a bibliography of additional references not included in the text, a dozen new figures (drawings and photos), coverage of many additional important mineral, rock, and gem materials, a broader geographic scope, particularly but not limited to Eastern Europe, and a more thorough review of early contributions to archaeomineralogy, especially those of Agricola.

From reviews of the first edition:

" crammed full of useful information, is well-balanced using both new and Old World examples of the archaeomaterials described. It also provides a broad, but of necessity, all too brief overview of the geological raw materials used in antiquity." -- Geoscientist

" provides much interesting discussion of how particular names came to be employed by archaeologists working in different regions of the world . much to offer for any geologist or archaeologist interested in minerals and rocks and how they have been used in the past." -- Mineralium Deposita

" a gem of a book, it's strength is that it is encyclopedic in content, if not in layout, draws on a wealth of field experience and almost every sentence contains a nugget of information" -- The Holocene"

This book is the first to bring together all that is known about the humanly-modified and cultivated landscapes of Middle America just prior to the European conquest. It assesses the agricultural and human-environment conditions existing at that time, and its implications for various contemporary themes ranging from global change to the presumed 'environment friendly' Native American.

Over the years, impairment has been discussed in bioarchaeology, with some scholars providing carefully contextualized explanations for their causes and consequences. Such investigations typically take a case study approach and focus on the functional aspects of impairments. However, these interpretations are disconnected from disability theory discourse. Other social sciences and the humanities have far surpassed most of anthropology (with the exception of medical anthropology) in their integration of social theories of disability. This volume has three goals: The first goal of this edited volume is to present theoretical and methodological discussions on impairment and disability. The second goal of this volume is to emphasize the necessity of interdisciplinarity in discussions of impairment and disability within bioarchaeology. The third goal of the volume is to present various methodological approaches to quantifying impairment in skeletonized and mummified remains. This volume serves to engage scholars from many disciplines in our exploration of disability in the past, with particular emphasis on the bioarchaeological context.

This book is the most comprehensive empirical study to date of the social and technical aspects of milling during the ancient and medieval periods. Drawing on the latest archaeological evidence and historical studies, the book examines the chronological development and technical details of handmills, beast mills, watermills and windmills from the first millennium BCE to c. 1500. It discusses the many and varied uses to which mills were turned in the civilisations of Rome, China, Islam and Europe, and the many types of mill that existed. The book also includes comparative regional studies of the social and economic signifance of milling, and tackles several important historiographical issues, such as whether technological stagnation was a characteristic of late Antiquity, whether there was an "industrial revolution" in the European Middle Ages based on waterpower, and how contemporary studies in the social shaping of technology can shed light on the study of pre-modern technology.

Throughout the past three decades, Nadav Na'aman has repeatedly proved that he is one of the most careful historians of ancient Canaan and Israel. With broad expertise, he has brought together archaeology, text, and the inscriptional material from all of the ancient Near East to bear on the history of ancient Israel and the land of Canaan during the second and first millenniums B.C.E. Many of his studies have been published as journal articles or notes and yet, together, they constitute one of the most important bodies of literature on the subject in recent years, particularly because of the careful attention to methodology that Na'aman always has brought to his work. Collected here are 23 essays on the Hurrians, the Egyptians and their presence in the Levant during the second millennium B.C.E., Canaanite city-states, the Amarna Letters, and the neighbors of Canaan in the north, such as Alalakh and Damascus. The essays range over such topics as scribes and language, archaeology, cultural influences, and the interrelations of the great powers during this period. The volume includes indexes of ancient personal names, place-names, and biblical references.

Since the 1960s, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), both wavelength and energy-dispersive have served as the workhorse for non-destructive and destructive analyses of archaeological materials. Recently eclipsed by other instrumentation such as LA-ICP-MS, XRF remains the mainstay of non-destructive chemical analyses in archaeology, particularly for volcanic rocks, and most particularly for obsidian. In a world where heritage and repatriation issues drive archaeological method and theory, XRF remains an important tool for understanding the human past, and will remain so for decades to come.

Currently, there is no comprehensive book in XRF applications in archaeology at a time when the applications of portable XRF and desktop XRF instrumentation are exploding particularly in anthropology and archaeology departments worldwide.

The contributors to this volumeare the experts in the field, and most are at the forefront of the newest applications of XRF to archaeological problems. Itcovers all relevant aspects of the field for thoseusing the newest XRF technologies to deal with very current issues in archaeology. "

At the heart of this book is the matter of how isotopic landscapes combined with data mining enriches insights on prehistoric migration and cultural transfer. Isotopic mapping is an indispensable tool for the assessment of mobility and trade in the past, but is limited by eco-geographic redundancies. An interdisciplinary research group focuses on the archaeological isotopic landscape of a reference region of outstanding importance, namely the transalpine migration route via the Brenner Pass which has been in use since the Mesolithic. Over the period of several cultural epochs, cremation was either the most common or exclusive burial custom practiced. For the first time, a systematic and large scale investigation of cremated remains was being conducted in the field of prehistoric migration research.87Sr/86Sr, 208Pb/204Pb, 207Pb/204Pb, 206Pb/204Pb, 208Pb/207Pb, 206Pb/207Pb and - if applicable - also 18O were measured in human and animal skeletal finds, an isotopic map was established, and innovative methods of data mining and similarity research have been applied to accomplish this novel approach to studying prehistoric migration and culture transfer. The book has interdisciplinary appeal and scholars working in bioarchaeology, physical anthropology and computer applications in life sciences will find it of particular interest.

The first study to bring together such a breadth of data, this book compares responses to colonization in the Iron-Age Mediterranean. From North Syria to Sicily and North Africa, Tamar Hodos explores the responses to these colonies in areas where Greeks and Phoenicians were in competition with one another via the same local communities. Highlighting the diversity of interest displayed by local populations in these foreign cultural offering, Hodos charts their selective adaptation, modification and reinterpretation of Greek and Phoenician goods and ideas as their own cultures evolve. For students of archaeology and history, this will provide an essential resource for their degree course studies.

The scattered research history of the Old Frisian runic inscriptions dating to the early Medieval period (ca. AD 400-1000) calls for a comprehensive and systematic reprocessing of these objects within their socio-cultural context and against the backdrop of the Old English Runic tradition. This book presents an annotated edition of 24 inscriptions found in the modern-day Netherlands, England and Germany. It provides the reader with an introduction to runological methodology, a linguistic commentary on the features attested in the inscriptions, and a detailed catalogue which outlines the find history of each object and summarizes previous and new interpretations supplemented by pictures and drawings. This book additionally explores the question of Frisian identity and an independent Frisian runic writing tradition and its relation to the contemporary Anglo-Saxon runic culture. In its entirety, this work provides a rich basis for future research in the field of runic writing around the North Sea and may therefore be of interest to scholars of historical linguistics and early Medieval history and archaeology.

"Our Mothers' War" is an eye-opening and moving portrait of women during World War II, a war that forever transformed the way women participate in American society. Never before has the vast range of women's experiences during this pivotal era been brought together in one book. Now, "Our Mothers' War" re-creates what American women from all walks of life were doing and thinking, on the home front and abroad. These heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking accounts of the women we have known as mothers, aunts, and grandmothers reveal facets of their lives that have usually remained unmentioned and unappreciated.

"Our Mothers' War" gives center stage to one of WWII's most essential fighting forces: the women of America, whose extraordinary bravery, strength, and humanity shine through on every page.

Cultural Traditions of Ancient Mesoamerica describes ancient cultural traditions of the Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, and Aztecs, among others, providing students with a survey of Precontact Mesoamerica. The text features a multidisciplinary approach, including perspectives from archaeology, cultural history, epigraphy, art history, and ethnography. The book is organized into ten chapters and proceeds in roughly chronological order to reflect developmental changes in Mesoamerican culture from around 16kya to A.D. 1492. The opening chapter summarizes the foundational concerns of Mesoamerican studies. Chapters Two and Three explore the cultural development of Mesoamerica from the first migrations into the Americas to the Preclassic period. Chapter Four discusses various theories pertaining to culture change. In Chapters Five and Six, students examine Mesoamerica's Classic period. Chapter Seven outlines the nature and importance of ancient and post-contact books and pictorial documents to the study of Mesoamerica. In Chapters Eight and Nine, students learn about the Classic Collapse, the Terminal Classic period, and the Post-Classic period. The final chapter describes the Spanish impact on Native Mesoamerican culture. Cultural Traditions of Ancient Mesoamerica is well suited for courses in anthropology, archaeology, ancient civilizations, ancient Mesoamerica, Latin American history, and Latin American studies.

A Companion to Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Cordoba cover the history and culture of Roman, late antique, Visigoth and al-Andalus Cordoba in nineteen contributions, from the foundation of the city in the 169/168 B.C. by the praetor Marcus Claudius Marcellus to the end of the Muslim period in 1236 B.C., when the city fell into the hands of Ferdinand III the Saint, King of Castile. Making use of archaeological data and historical sources, combined with the latest research on the various fields under study, its authors give a compelling account of Cordoba’s most important archaeological, urban, political, legal, social, cultural and religious facets throughout the most exciting fifteen centuries of the city.

Although many believe that archaeological knowledge consists simply of empirical findings, this notion is false; data are generated with the guidance of theory, or some sense-making system acting in its place whether researchers recognize this or not. Failure to understand the relationship between theory and the empirical world has led to the many debates and frustrations of contemporary archaeology.

Despite years of trying, the atheoretical, empiricist foundations of archaeology have left us little but a history of storytelling and unsatisfying generalizations about historical change and human diversity. The present work offers promising directions for building theoretically defensible results by providing well-designed case studies that can be used as guides or exemplars. Evolutionary theory, in at least some form, is the foundation for a scientific archaeology that will yield scientific explanations for historical change.

While European scholarship in the Classics has a long and established tradition, very little has been written on the history of classical scholarship in North America. By providing profiles of some 600 North American Classicists, this reference book presents a starting point for defining the history of Classical scholarship in Canada and the United States. Included are those Classicists who made significant contributions to the field and those who are representative figures. The people profiled were either born in the United States or Canada, or were born in other countries but had careers in North America. They were either founding fathers of the profession, scholars known more for their specialized contributions, or members of smaller or remote institutions who achieved at least regional distinction for their work. The first part of each entry provides basic biographical and professional information. A narrative summary of the person's career follows, and each profile closes with a short bibliography. The entries are arranged in alphabetical order and were written by expert contributors.

This book analyses British action in the Southern hemisphere in the late 18th century, examining two Royal Navy ships, one off the Argentinean coast and one off the Southeast Australian coast. The author goes beyond a descriptive analysis of wrecks by treating them and their cargoes as embodiments of 18th century social relations. The book challenges traditional approaches, providing a perspective that emphasises the richness, diversity and complexity of British action.