This exciting book brings the often-overlooked southern Maya region of Guatemala into the spotlight by closely examining the ""lost city"" of Chocola. Jonathan Kaplan and Federico Paredes Umana prove that Chocola was a major Maya polity and reveal exactly why it was so influential. In their fieldwork at the site, Kaplan and Paredes Umana discovered an extraordinarily sophisticated underground water-control system. They also discovered cacao residues in ceramic vessels. Based on these and other findings, the authors believe that cacao was consumed and grown intensively at Chocola and that the city was the center of a large cacao trade. They contend that the city's wealth and power were built on its abundant supply of water and its command of cacao, which was significant not just to cuisine and trade but also to Maya ideology and cosmology. Moreover, Kaplan and Paredes Umana detail the ancient city's ceramics and add over thirty stone sculptures to the site's inventory. Because the southern Maya region was likely the origin of Maya hieroglyphic writing and the Long Count calendar, scholars have long suspected the area to be important. This pioneering field research at Chocola helps explain how and why the region played a leading role in the rise of the Maya civilization.

This book represents a reflection on the policies of preservation that were established and interventions for restoration that occurred in Iran before and in the years after the Khomeinist Revolution, as well as being an analysis of the impact that Italian restoration culture has had in the country. Research concerning the state of conservation and the ongoing restoration of the Armenian churches in the Khoy and Salmas areas is included, along with precise documentation of the observation of the two cities, their architecture and the context of their landscape. The problems of architectural restoration in present-day Iran and the compatible use of buildings no longer intended for worship are addressed. The book is bolstered by first-hand documentation obtained through inspections and interviews with Iranian specialists during three missions carried out between 2016 and 2018 and a large anthology of period texts that have only recently been made available for the first time for study in electronic form, including travel reports written by Westerners describing Persia between the 15th and 19th centuries.

How did small-scale societies in the past experience and respond to sea-level rise? What happened when their dwellings, hunting grounds and ancestral lands were lost under an advancing tide? This book asks these questions in relation to the hunter-gatherer inhabitants of a lost prehistoric land; a land that became entirely inundated and now lies beneath the North Sea. It seeks to understand how these people viewed and responded to their changing environment, suggesting that people were not struggling against nature, but simply getting on with life - with all its trials and hardships, satisfactions and pleasures, and with a multitude of choices available. At the same time, this loss of land - the loss of places and familiar locales where myths were created and identities formed - would have profoundly affected people's sense of being. This book moves beyond the static approach normally applied to environmental change in the past to capture its nuances. Through this, a richer and more complex story of past sea-level rise develops; a story that may just have resonance for us today.

'Western-Pontic Culture Ambience and Pattern: In Memory of Eugen Comsa' is dedicated to the memory of Eugen Comsa, an archaeologist whose work created the foundation of the Northern Balkan prehistory and was essential for the contemporary view of the prehistory of the North-western Pontic region. This edited volume brings together researchers in the field of Circumpontic archaeology from the Neolithic to the Iron Age period. The content of the volume is offered to students and scholars who seek a deeper understanding of the prehistory of the Western Pontic region, in particular the Balkans in their Eurasian context and more broadly to enhance the scholarly collections of academic, educational, public and private libraries throughout the world.

How do archaeologists think? How do they use the scattered and often-fragmentary remains from the past-both historical and excavated-to create meaningful, sensible interpretations of human history? In Archaeological Thinking, Charles E. Orser Jr., provides a commonsense guide to applying critical thinking skills to archaeological questions and evidence. Rather than critiquing and debunking specific cases of pseudo-archaeology or concentrating on archaeological theory, Orser considers the basics of scientific thinking, the use of logic and analogy, the meaning and context of facts, and the evaluation of source materials. He explains, concisely and accessibly, how archaeologists use these principles to create pictures of the past and teaches students to develop the skills needed to make equally reasoned interpretations.