This ground-breaking volume explores a series of inter-related key themes in Saharan archaeology and history. Migration and identity formation can both be approached from the perspective of funerary archaeology, using the combined evidence of burial structures, specific rites and funerary material culture, and integrated methods of skeletal analysis including morphometrics, palaeopathology and isotopes. Burial traditions from various parts of the Sahara are compared and contrasted with those of the Nile Valley, the Maghreb and West Africa. Several chapters deal with the related evidence of human migration derived from linguistic study. The volume presents the state of the field of funerary archaeology in the Sahara and its neighbouring regions and sets the agenda for future research on mobility, migration and identity. It will be a seminal reference point for Mediterranean and African archaeologists, historians and anthropologists as well as archaeologists interested in burial and migration more broadly.

Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Using R is the first hands-on guide to using the R statistical computing system written specifically for archaeologists. It shows how to use the system to analyze many types of archaeological data. Part I includes tutorials on R, with applications to real archaeological data showing how to compute descriptive statistics, create tables, and produce a wide variety of charts and graphs. Part II addresses the major multivariate approaches used by archaeologists, including multiple regression (and the generalized linear model); multiple analysis of variance and discriminant analysis; principal components analysis; correspondence analysis; distances and scaling; and cluster analysis. Part III covers specialized topics in archaeology, including intra-site spatial analysis, seriation, and assemblage diversity.

In this book Dr Wallace makes a fundamental contribution to the study of urbanism in the Roman provinces. She attempts for the first time to present a detailed archaeological account of the first decade of one of the best-excavated cities in the Roman Empire. Delving into the artefact and structural reports from all excavations of pre-Boudican levels in London, she brings together vast quantities of data which are discussed and illustrated according to a novel methodology that address both the difficulties and complexity of 'grey literature' and urban excavation.

The nineteen papers collected in this volume explore a notable phenomenon, that of retrospection in the art and architecture of Romanesque Europe. They arise from a conference organized by the British Archaeological Association in 2010, and reflect its interest in how and why the past manifested itself in the visual culture of the 11th and 12th centuries. This took many forms, from the casual re-use of ancient material to a specific desire to re-present or emulate earlier objects and buildings. Central to it is a concern for the revival of Roman and early medieval forms, spolia, selective quotation, archaism and the construction of histories. The individual essays presented here cover a wide range of topics and media: the significance of consecration ceremonies in the creation of architectural memory, the rise of pictorial concepts in 12th-century chronicles, the creation of history in the Paris of Hugh of St-Victor, and the appeal of the works of Bernward of Hildesheim and of Hrabanus Maurus in the centuries after their deaths. There are studies of buildings and the ideological purpose behind them at Tarragona, Ripoll, Cluny, Pannonhalma (Hungary), La Roccelletta (Calabria), and Old St Peter's, comparative studies of Trier, Villenauxe and Glastonbury, and of Bury St Edmunds, Rievaulx and Canterbury, and wide-ranging papers on the tantalizing evidence for an engagement with an overseas past in Ireland, an Anglo-Saxon past in England, and a Milanese past among the aisleless cruciform churches of Augustinian Europe. The volume concludes with an assessment of the very concept of Romanesque.

Objects dropped by our ancestors can tell us a lot about the past and the landscape in which they were lost or deposited. Many finds, notably those made by metal-detector users, have been recorded throughout Surrey since 2003 by the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which is based at the British Museum. The present county of Surrey covers bands of different geological strata, such as clay and chalk, and sand and gravel. These have influenced the activities of past peoples, and where they lived and worked - and also where they mostly avoided. By looking at objects discovered in Surrey, and by recording where they were found, we can understand these activities better and begin to see ancient peoples as they moved through landscapes familiar to us today. Surrey has revealed its past to us through finds of flint implements; through axes, hoards and ingots from the Bronze Age; through Iron Age and Roman coins and figurines, and through items lost in other historical periods, such as buckles and brooches, seals and rings, weights and harness attachments. Using recent discoveries of archaeological objects, 50 Finds from Surrey allows us to glimpse into a hidden past that is all around us.

About 13,000 years ago a man died on the steep banks of Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island, one of California's Channel Islands. The early dates for Arlington Springs Man, as he came to be known, and archaeological sites in the Northern Channel Islands, overturn the once widely held belief that the first humans to enter the Americas came by foot over the Bering Land bridge-perhaps, instead, they found their way to the Americas by boat. During the thousands of years between the arrival of those first seafarers on the Channel Islands and the arrival of the British, Spanish, and Russians, diverse waves of indigenous groups swelled coastal California's population. This book chronicles how indigenous peoples of the past survived and thrived in the shifting environment of coastal California. One can't help but wonder what life would be like today for the California Indians if the Europeans and Russians had never stepped ashore. What we do know is that after hundreds of years of exploration, the Spanish and Russians colonized coastal California, establishing powerful institutions that changed the lives of the California Indians forever. During this stunning era of change, rebellion, resistance, cooperation, and persistence, the first coastal Californians wove a complex tangle of cultures.

From approximately AD 900 to 1600, ancient Mississippian culture dominated today's southeastern United States. These Native American societies, known more popularly as moundbuilders, had populations that numbered in the thousands, produced vast surpluses of food, engaged in longdistance trading, and were ruled by powerful leaders who raised large armies. Mississippian chiefdoms built fortified towns with massive earthen structures used as astrological monuments and burial grounds. The remnants of these cities--scattered throughout the Southeast from Florida north to Wisconsin and as far west as Texas--are still visible and awe-inspiring today.
This heavily illustrated guide brings these settlements to life with maps, artists' reconstructions, photos of artifacts, and historic and modern photos of sites, connecting our archaeological knowledge with what is visible when visiting the sites today. Anthropologist Eric E. Bowne discusses specific structures at each location and highlights noteworthy museums, artifacts, and cultural features. He also provides an introduction to Mississippian culture, offering background on subsistence and settlement practices, political and social organization, warfare, and belief systems that will help readers better understand these complex and remarkable places. Sites include Cahokia, Moundville, Etowah, and many more.
A Friends Fund Publication

Britain has long been obsessed 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. In the last decade, astounding archaeological discoveries have shed new light on those who have gone before us, radically altering the way we think about our history. This book presents ten of the most exciting - and surprising - of these discoveries. Mike Pitts leads us on a journey through time from the more recent and familiar to the most remote and bizarre, just as archaeologists delving into the earth find themselves moving backwards through the years until they reach the very oldest remnants of the past. At each of these sites we hear from the people who found and recovered these ancient remains, and follow their efforts to understand them. Some are major digs, carried out to record sites before they are covered over by new developments. Others are chance finds, leading to revelations out of proportion to the scale of the original projects. All are extraordinary tales of luck and cutting-edge archaeological science that have produced profound, and often unexpected, insights into people's lives on these islands between a thousand and a million years ago.

Many dryland regions contain archaeological remains which suggest that there must have been intensive phases of settlement in what now seem to be dry and degraded environments. This book discusses successes and failures of past land use and settlement in drylands, and contributes to wider debates about desertification and the sustainability of dryland settlement.

Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England represents an unparalleled exploration of the place of prehistoric monuments in the Anglo-Saxon psyche, and examines how Anglo-Saxon communities perceived and used these monuments during the period AD 400-1100. Sarah Semple employs archaeological, historical, art historical, and literary sources to study the variety of ways in which the early medieval population of England used the prehistoric legacy in the landscape, exploring it from temporal and geographic perspectives. Key to the arguments and ideas presented is the premise that populations used these remains, intentionally and knowingly, in the articulation and manipulation of their identities: local, regional, political, and religious. They recognized them as ancient features, as human creations from a distant past. They used them as landmarks, battle sites, and estate markers, giving them new Old English names. Before, and even during, the conversion to Christianity, communities buried their dead in and around these monuments. After the conversion, several churches were built in and on these monuments, great assemblies and meetings were held at them, and felons executed and buried within their surrounds. This volume covers the early to late Anglo-Saxon world, touching on funerary ritual, domestic and settlement evidence, ecclesiastical sites, place-names, written sources, and administrative and judicial geographies. Through a thematic and chronologically-structured examination of Anglo-Saxon uses and perceptions of the prehistoric, Semple demonstrates that populations were not only concerned with Romanitas (or Roman-ness), but that a similar curiosity and conscious reference to and use of the prehistoric existed within all strata of society.

Published in the year 2005, Everyday Life In Ancient Egypt is a valuable contribution to the field of Ancient Egyptian History.

No satisfactory explanation has been given for the burial of a large Saxon gold hoard found in Hammerwich, Staffordshire in 2009. Speculation on who buried the treasure has led to many ideas based on battles, warriors and plundering kings. An alternative vision is given with greater emphasis placed on the religious items, the early church at Lichfield and the amassing of artwork in religious houses from the seventh century onwards. The Christian pieces are explained in new ways and the gold is discussed from the point of view of a Churl, Monk, Bishop, Warrior and King. An argument is presented based on available evidence to suggest why the hoard was buried and who possibly might have buried the precious items in despair. Archaeology, local history, Saxon beliefs and historical events are brought together to give a new way of seeing the Staffordshire Hoard.

A new account of the famous site and story of the last stand of a group of Jewish rebels who held out against the Roman Empire Two thousand years ago, 967 Jewish men, women, and children-the last holdouts of the revolt against Rome following the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple-reportedly took their own lives rather than surrender to the Roman army. This dramatic event, which took place on top of Masada, a barren and windswept mountain overlooking the Dead Sea, spawned a powerful story of Jewish resistance that came to symbolize the embattled modern State of Israel. The first extensive archaeological excavations of Masada began in the 1960s, and today the site draws visitors from around the world. And yet, because the mass suicide was recorded by only one ancient author-the Jewish historian Josephus-some scholars question if the event ever took place. Jodi Magness, an archaeologist who has excavated at Masada, explains what happened there, how we know it, and how recent developments might change understandings of the story. Incorporating the latest findings, she integrates literary and historical sources to show what life was like for Jews under Roman rule during an era that witnessed the reign of Herod and Jesus's ministry and death. Featuring numerous illustrations, this is an engaging exploration of an ancient story that continues to grip the imagination today.

If you've ever wanted to learn how to read hieroglyphs, this book is the perfect guide.

This book will teach you all you need to know about deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the help of hundreds of the most commonly used hieroglyphs arranged in easy-to-use tables, with translations, plus examples from monuments, ancient documents and museum exhibits.

Fully illustrated throughout with line drawings, tables and maps, Understanding Hieroglyphs will enthral anyone who craves the satisfaction of actually understanding the writing which adords Egyptian monuments and artefacts - unlocking the secrets of an ancient civilization.

With extensive use of quotations from original source material, this book examines the political events in the Hellenistic world from Alexander's death until his incorporation in the Roman Empire. It also describes the different social systems of the peoples under Greek rule, important developments in literature, science and technology and the founding of new religious movements. The author has assimilated all pertinent recent scholarship in the field, and fashioned an obsorbing account of a vast and complex society whose ideas and achievements for the bedrock of present-day Western civilization.

The first and only monograph available on the subject, The Roman City and its Periphery offers a full and detailed treatment of the little-investigated aspect of Roman urbanism - the phenomenon of suburban development. Presenting archaeological and literary evidence alongside sixty-three plans of cities, building plans, and photographs, Penelope Goodman examines how and why Roman suburbs grew up outside Roman cities, what was distinctive about the nature of suburban development, and what contributions buildings and activities in the suburbs might make to the character and function of the city as a whole. With full bibliography and annotations throughout, this will not only provide a coherent treatment of an essential theme for students of Roman urbanism, but archaeologists, urban planners and geographers also, will have an excellent comparative tool in the study of modern urbanism.

In this iconoclastic and provocative work, leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman draw on recent archaeological research to present a dramatically revised portrait of ancient Israel and its neighbors. They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible -- the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua's conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon's vast empire -- reflect the world of the later authors rather than actual historical facts.

Challenging the fundamentalist readings of the scriptures and marshaling the latest archaeological evidence to support its new vision of ancient Israel, The Bible Unearthed offers a fascinating and controversial perspective on when and why the Bible was written and why it possesses such great spiritual and emotional power today.

The Material World of Ancient Egypt examines the objects and artifacts, the representations in art, and the examples of documentation that together reveal the day-to-day physical substance of life in ancient Egypt. This book investigates how people dressed, what they ate, the houses they built, the games they played, and the tools they used, among many other aspects of daily life, paying great attention to the change and development of each area within the conservative Egyptian society. More than any other ancient civilization, the ancient Egyptians have left us with a wealth of evidence about their daily lives in the form of perishable objects, from leather sandals to feather fans, detailed depictions of trades and crafts on the walls of tombs, and a wide range of documentary evidence from temple inventories to personal laundry lists. Drawing on these diverse sources and richly illustrating his account with nearly one hundred images, William H. Peck illuminates the culture of the ancient Egyptians from the standpoint of the basic materials they employed to make life possible and perhaps even enjoyable.

How did Southwestern peoples make a living in the vast arid reaches of the Great Basin? When and why did violence erupt in the Mesa Verde region? Who were the Fremont people? How do some Hopis view Chaco Canyon? These are a few of the topics addressed in Living the Ancient Southwest. In this highly-illustrated anthology, general readers will discover essays by eighteen anthropologist-writers. They speak about the beauty and originality of Mimbres pottery, the rock paintings in Canyon de Chelly, the history of the Wupatki Navajos, O'odham songs describing ancient trails to the Pacific Coast, and other topics relating to the deep indigenous history and culture of the American Southwest.

The aim of the book is to present original and though-provoking essays in human paleontology and prehistory, which are at the forefront of human evolutionary research, in honor of Professor Yoel Rak (a leading scholar in paleoanthropology). The volume presents a collection of original papers contributed by many of Yoel's friends and colleagues from all over the globe. Contributions from experts around the globe fall roughly into three broad categories: Reflections on some of the broad theoretical questions of evolution, and especially about human evolution; the early hominins, with special emphasis on Australopithecus afarensis and Paranthropus; and the Neanderthals, that contentious group of our closest extinct relatives. Within and across these categories, nearly every paper addresses combinations of methodological, analytical and theoretical questions that are pertinent to the whole human evolutionary time span. This book will appeal most to scholars and advanced students in paleoanthropology, human paleontology and prehistoric archaeology.

Archaeological data from Las Varas, Peru, that establish the importance of ritual in constructing ethnic boundaries. Recent popular discourse on nationalism and ethnicity assumes that humans by nature prefer 'tribalism,' as though people cannot help but divide themselves along lines of social and ethnic differences. Research from anthropology, history, and archaeology, however, shows that individuals actively construct cultural and social ideologies to fabricate the stereotypes, myths, and beliefs that separate 'us' from 'them.' Archaeologist Howard Tsai and his team uncovered a thousand-year-old village, Las Varas, in northern Peru where the inhabitants performed rituals to recognize and reinforce ethnic identities. Las Varas is located near the coast in a valley leading into the Andes. Excavations revealed a western entrance to the village for those arriving from the coast and an eastern entry point for those coming from the highlands. Rituals were performed at both of these entrances, indicating that the community was open to exchange and interaction, yet at the same time controlled the flow of people and goods through ceremonial protocols. Using these checkpoints and associated rituals, the villagers of Las Varas were able to maintain ethnic differences between themselves and visitors from foreign lands. Las Varas: Ritual and Ethnicity in the Ancient Andes reveals a rare case of finding ethnicity by relying solely on archaeological remains. Tsai analyzes data from the excavation of Las Varas within a theoretical framework based on current understandings of ethnicity. He demonstrates the potential for archaeologists to discover how ethnic identities were constructed in the past, which ultimately leads to questioning the supposed naturalness of tribal divisions in human antiquity.

In A Critique of Archaeological Reason, Giorgio Buccellati presents a theory of excavation that aims at clarifying the nature of archaeology and its impact on contemporary thought. Integrating epistemological issues with methods of data collection and the role and impact of digital technology on archaeological work, the book explores digital data in order to comprehend its role in shaping meaning and understanding in archaeological excavation. The ability of archaeologists to record in the field, rather than offsite, has fundamentally changed the methods of observation, conceptualization, and interpretation of deposits. Focusing on the role of stratigraphy as the center of archaeological field work, Giorgio Buccellati examines the challenges of interpreting a 'broken tradition'; a civilization for which there are no living carriers today. He uses the site of Urkesh in Syria, where he has worked for decades, as a case study to demonstrate his theory.