Cultural heritage is a vital, multifaceted component of modern society. To better protect and promote the integrity of a culture, certain technologies have become essential tools.The Handbook of Research on Emerging Technologies for Architectural and Archaeological Heritage is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on the use of technological assistance for the preservation of architecture and archaeology in a global context. Focusing on various surveying technologies for the study, analysis, and protection of historical buildings, this book is ideally designed for professionals, researchers, upper-level students, and practitioners.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, growing numbers of tourists and scholars from Europe and America, fascinated by new discoveries, visited the Near East and Egypt - attracted by the riches and mysteries of the Land of the Bible. Almost all such visitors, no matter how esoteric or academic their pursuits, had to deal with the local authorities and the native workforce for their archaeological excavations. The vast majority of these visitors had to rely on interpreters, dragomans, translators and local guides. This study, based on published and unpublished travel memoirs, guidebooks, personal papers and archaeological reports of the British and American archaeologists, deals with the socio-political status and multi-faceted role of interpreters at the time. Those bi- or multi-lingual individuals frequently took on (or were forced to take on) much more than just interpreting. They often played the role of go-betweens, servants, bodyguards, pimps, diplomats, spies, messengers, managers and overseers, and had to mediate, scheme and often improvise, whether in an official or unofficial capacity. For the most part denied due credit and recognition, these interpreters are finally here given a new voice. An engrossing story emerges of how through their many and varied actions and roles, they had a crucial part to play in the introduction to Britain and America of these mysterious past cultures and civilizations.

Innovation and creativity are two of the key characteristics that distinguish cultural transmission from biological transmission. This book explores a number of questions concerning the nature and timing of the origins of human creativity. What were the driving factors in the development of new technologies? What caused the stasis in stone tool technological innovation in the Early Pleistocene? Were there specific regions and episodes of enhanced technological development, or did it occur at a steady pace where ancestral humans lived? The authors are archaeologists who address these questions, armed with data from ancient artefacts such as shell beads used as jewelry, primitive musical instruments, and sophisticated techniques required to fashion certain kinds of stone into tools.

Providing state of art discussions that step back from the usual archaeological publications that focus mainly on individual site discoveries, this book presents the full picture on how and why creativity in Middle to Late Pleistocene archeology/anthropology evolved.
Gives a full, original and multidisciplinary perspective on how and why creativity evolved in the Middle to Late PleistoceneEnhances our understanding of the big leaps forward in creativity at certain timesAssesses the intellectual creativity of "Homo erectus, H. neanderthalensis," and "H. sapiens" via their artefacts"

The Neolithic of the Near East is a period of human development which saw fundamental changes in the nature of human society. It is traditionally studied for its development of domestication, agriculture, and growing social complexity. In this book Karina Croucher takes a new approach, focusing on the human body and investigating mortuary practices - the treatment and burial of the dead - to discover what these can reveal about the people of the Neolithic Near East. The remarkable evidence relating to mortuary practices and ritual behaviour from the Near Eastern Neolithic provides some of the most breath-taking archaeological evidence excavated from Neolithic contexts. The most enigmatic mortuary practices of the period produced the striking 'plastered skulls', faces modelled onto the crania of the deceased. Archaeological sites also contain evidence for many intriguing mortuary treatments, including decapitated burials and the fragmentation, circulation, curation, and reburial of human and animal remains and material culture. Drawing on recent excavations and earlier archive and published fieldwork, Croucher provides an overview and introduction to the period, presenting new interpretations of the archaeological evidence and in-depth analyses of case studies. The book explores themes such as ancestors, human-animal relationships, food, consumption and cannibalism, personhood, and gender. Offering a unique insight into changing attitudes towards the human body - both in life and during death - this book reveals the identities and experiences of the people of the Neolithic Near East through their interactions with their dead, with animals, and their new material worlds.

Throughout time and in every culture, human beings have eaten together. Commensality - eating and drinking at the same table - is a fundamental social activity, which creates and cements relationships. It also sets boundaries, including or excluding people according to a set of criteria defined by the society. Particular scholarly attention has been paid to banquets and feasts, often hosted for religious, ritualistic or political purposes, but few studies have considered everyday commensality. Commensality: From Everyday Food to Feast offers an insight into this social practice in all its forms, from the most basic and mundane meals to the grandest occasions. Bringing together insights from anthropologists, archaeologists and historians, this volume offers a vast historical scope, ranging from the Late Neolithic period (6th millennium BC), through the Middle Ages, to the present day. The sixteen chapters include case studies from across the world, including the USA, Bolivia, China, Southeast Asia, Iran, Turkey, Portugal, Denmark and the UK. Connecting these diverse analyses is an understanding of commensality's role as a social and political tool, integral to the formation of personal and national identities. From first experiences of commensality in the sharing of food between a mother and child, to the inaugural dinner of the American president, this collection of essays celebrates the variety of human life and society.

Advocates of the established hypotheses on the origins of the Synoptic gospels and their interrelationships (the Synoptic Problem), and especially those defending or contesting the existence of the "source" (Q), are increasingly being called upon to justify their position with reference to ancient media practices. Still others go so far as to claim that ancient media realities force a radical rethinking of the whole project of Synoptic source criticism, and they question whether traditional documentary approaches remain valid at all. This debate has been hampered to date by the patchy reception of research on ancient media in Synoptic scholarship. Seeking to rectify this problem, Alan Kirk here mounts a defense, grounded in the practices of memory and manuscript transmission in the Roman world, of the Two Document Hypothesis. He shows how ancient media/memory approaches in fact offer new leverage on classic research problems in scholarship on the Synoptic Gospels, and that they have the potential to break the current impasse in the Synoptic Problem. The results of his analysis open up new insights to the early reception and scribal transmission of the Jesus tradition and cast new light on some long-conflicted questions in Christian origins.

Walking served as an occasion for the display of power and status in ancient Rome, where great men paraded with their entourages through city streets and elite villa owners strolled with friends in private colonnades and gardens. In this first book-length treatment of the culture of walking in ancient Rome, Timothy O'Sullivan explores the careful attention which Romans paid to the way they moved through their society. He employs a wide range of literary, artistic, and architectural evidence to reveal the crucial role that walking played in the performance of social status, the discourse of the body and the representation of space. By examining how Roman authors depict walking, this book sheds new light on the Romans themselves not only how they perceived themselves and their experience of the world, but also how they drew distinctions between work and play, mind and body, and republic and empire."

A captivating look at a bygone era through the lens of a single, surprisingly momentous American year one century ago. 1908 was the year Henry Ford launched the Model T, the Wright Brothers proved to the world that they had mastered the art of flight, Teddy Roosevelt decided to send American naval warships around the globe, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series (a feat they have never yet repeated), and six automobiles set out on an incredible 20,000 mile race from New York City to Paris via the frozen Bering Strait.

A charming and knowledgeable guide, Rasenberger takes readers back to a time of almost limitless optimism, even in the face of enormous inequality, an era when the majority of Americans believed that the future was bound to be better than the past, that the world's worst problems would eventually be solved, and that nothing at all was impossible. As Thomas Edison succinctly said that year, "Anything, everything is possible."

Writing Remains brings together a wide range of leading archaeologists and literary scholars to explore emerging intersections in archaeological and literary studies. Drawing upon a wide range of literary texts from the nineteenth century to the present, the book offers new approaches to understanding storytelling and narrative in archaeology, and the role of archaeological knowledge in literature and literary criticism. The book's eight chapters explore a wide array of archaeological approaches and methods, including scientific archaeology, identifying intersections with literature and literary studies which are textual, conceptual, spatial, temporal and material. Examining literary authors from Thomas Hardy and Bram Stoker to Sarah Moss and Paul Beatty, scholars from across disciplines are brought into dialogue to consider fictional narrative both as a site of new archaeological knowledge and as a source and object of archaeological investigation.

As modern-day muckraker Danny Schechter writes in his new introduction, exclusive to this Cosimo Classics edition: "In this era of financial crisis compounded, and even perhaps enabled, by a dearth of investigative reporting, it is valuable to go back in time to learn from the work of great journalists with the courage to have taken on avaricious corporations and irresponsible business practices."Perhaps no book demands our attention and respect as much as the one now in your hands. The unabridged edition, long out of print, of Ida Tarbell's study/expose of the history of the Standard Oil Company is an American classic, a model of careful research, detailed analysis, clear expository writing, and social mission. It has been hailed as one of the top ten of journalism's greatest hits."In this book, offering Volumes I&II, Tarbell explores: the birth of the oil industry the rise of the Standard Oil Company the "oil war" of 1872 the beginnings of the oil trust the first interstate commerce bill battles over oil pipelines the marketing of oil the political response to Standard's domination breaking up the oil trust competition in the oil industry and more.IDA MINERVA TARBELL (1857-1944) is remembered today as a muckraking journalist, thanks to this 1904 blockbuster expose. Originally published as a series of articles in McClure's magazine, this groundbreaking work highlighted the dangers of business monopolies and contributed to the eventual breakup of Standard Oil.Investigative journalist DANNY SCHECHTER is editor of Mediachannel.org and author of numerous books on the media, including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal (Cosimo). For more, see www.newsdissector.com/plunder.

World Prehistory and Archaeology provides an integrated discussion of world prehistory and archaeological methods, presenting an up-to-date perspective on what we know about our human prehistory and how we come to know it. A cornerstone of World Prehistory and Archaeology is the discussion of prehistory as an active process of discovery. Methodological issues are addressed throughout the text to engage readers. Archaeological methods are introduced, following which the question of how we know the past is discussed. This fifth edition involves readers in the current state of archaeological research, revealing how archaeologists work and interpret what they find. Through the coverage of various new research, author Michael Chazan shows that archaeology is truly a global discipline. In this edition there is a particular emphasis on the relevance of archaeology to contemporary society and to the major issues that face us today. This edition will provide students with a necessary grounding in the fundamentals of archaeology, before engaging them with the work that goes into understanding world prehistory. They will be given the tools to place this knowledge in the context of the modern world, acknowledging the relevance of archaeology to the concerns of today.