The Fens is Britain's most distinctive, complex, man-made and least understood landscape. Francis Pryor has lived in, excavated, farmed, walked and loved the Fen Country for more than forty years: its levels and drains, its soaring churches and magnificent medieval buildings.

In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fenland landscape and its transformation the great drainage projects that created the Old and New Bedford Rivers, the Ouse Washes and Bedford Levels, the rise of prosperous towns and cities, such as King's Lynn, Cambridge, Peterborough, Boston and Lincoln with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist.

'Whenever I travel somewhere else, in upland Britain, I find the hills and the horizon are leaning towards me, as if trying to cover me over; to blinker my gaze and stifle my imagination. It's always a huge relief to get back to the its infinite vistas of the Fens.'

Well-illustrated, closely argued and fascinating. GUARDIAN This is the first book-length study in English to investigate what women did in the Viking age, both at home in Scandinavia and in the Viking colonies from Greenland to Russia. Evidence for their lives is fragmentary, but Judith Jesch assembles the clues provided by archaeology, runic inscriptions, place names and personal names, foreign historical records and Old Norse literature and mythology. These sources illuminate different aspects of women's lives in the Viking age, on the farms and in the trading centres of Scandinavia, abroad on Viking expeditions, and as settlers in places such as Iceland and the British Isles. Women in the Viking Age explores anunfamiliar aspect of medieval history and offers a new perspective on Viking society, very different from the traditional picture of a violent and male-dominated world. JUDITH JESCH is Reader in Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham.

This book examines Greek vase-paintings that depict humorous, burlesque, and irreverent images of Greek mythology and the gods. Many of the images present the gods and heroes as ridiculous and ugly. While the narrative content of some images may appear to be trivial, others address issues that are deeply serious. When placed against the background of the religious beliefs and social frameworks from which they spring, these images allow us to explore questions relating to their meaning in particular communities. Throughout, we see indications that Greek vase-painters developed their own comedic narratives and visual jokes. The images enhance our understanding of Greek society in just the same way as their more sober siblings in serious art. David Walsh is a Visiting Research Scholar in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at The University of Manchester."

The medieval marketplace is a familiar setting in popular and academic accounts of the Middle Ages, but we actually know very little about the people involved in the transactions that took place there, how their lives were influenced by those transactions, or about the complex networks of individuals whose actions allowed raw materials to be extracted, hewn into objects, stored and ultimately shipped for market. Twenty diverse case studies combine leading edge techniques and novel theoretical approaches to illuminate the identities and lives of these much overlooked ordinary people, painting of a number of detailed portraits to explore the worlds of actors involved in the lives of everyday products - objects of bone, leather, stone, ceramics, and base metal - and their production and use in medieval northern Europe. In so doing, this book seeks to draw attention away from the emergent trend to return to systems and global models, and restore to centre stage what should be the archaeologist's most important concern: the people of the past.

This book provides an introduction to one of the greatest civilizations of all time - ancient Egypt. Beginning with a geographical overview that explains the development of Egyptian belief systems as well as its subsequent political development, it examines methodology, the history of the discipline of Egyptology, religion, social organization, urban and rural life, and death. It also includes a section on how people of all ranks lived. Lavishly illustrated, with many unusual photographs of rarely seen sites that are seldom illustrated, this volume is suitable for use in introductory-level courses on ancient Egypt. It offers a variety of student-friendly features, including a glossary, a bibliography, and a list of sources for those who wish to further their interest in ancient Egypt.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Great War stands at the furthest edge of living memory. There are a handful of men alive who fought in the trenches of the Somme and Flanders. Within their own lifetimes, their memories have become epic history. Hardly a month passes without some dramatic and sometimes tragic discovery being made along the killing fields of the Western Front. Poignant remains of British soldiers buried during battle and then forgotten - lying in rows arm in arm, or found crouching at the entrance to a dugout. Whole 'underground cities' of trenches, dugouts, and shelters, preserved in the mud of Flanders - with newspapers and blankets scattered where they were left. There are field hospitals carved out of the chalk country of the Somme, tunnels marked with graffiti by long dead hands, and tons of volatile bombs and gas canisters waiting to explode. Yet, while there are innumerable books on the history of the war, there is not a single book on its archaeology. Nicholas J. Saunders' new book is therefore unique. In an authoritative and accessible way, it would bring together widely scattered discoveries, and offer fresh insights into the human dimension of the war.

Over a thousand years ago, between AD 900 and 1300, the Shashe-Limpopo basin witnessed the development of one of the earliest African civilizations. Like civilizations everywhere, it represented complex social organizations, supported by intensive agriculture and long-distance trade. Some of the earliest finished gold objects found in the interior of Southern Africa were excavated here, most notably the now world-famous golden rhino. Mapungubwe was the forerunner of the famous town of Great Zimbabwe. Because of this cultural connection to Great Zimbabwe and then the Venda, it is possible to use historical and traditional evidence to understand the evolution of Mapungubwe. This generously illustrated book, written especially for visitors to the site, tells the thousand-year-old story of the people, wildlife, and topography of the area.

King of Dust is a stonemason's personal journey through the landscapes of south-west England and the sculpture which first inspired him to pick up tools: the Romanesque. In the early years of the 21st century, mentally exhausted, the archaeologist Alex Woodcock carved a stone for the first time and realised how much more there was to learn about the subject from which he had made his life's work. Determined to understand the work by making and carving, as well as theoretically, he retrained as a stonemason and spent several years working at Exeter Cathedral. Ten years after that first carving a move to Cornwall prompted an urge to re-explore the little known Romanesque (12th century) carvings of the south-west. King of Dust follows a year of these wanderings, being both an archaeology of the images and a meditation on learning the craft. Ultimately it is about the power of medieval art to transform a life.

This is the fifth volume of Current Studies on the Indus Civilization. This is a special volume consisting only of Vivek Dangis work titled Archaeology of the Ghaggar Basin: Settlement Archaeology of Meham Block, Rohtak, Haryana, India. This monograph contains seven chapters, i.e. Nomenclature and Geographical Features; Explorations; Settlement Pattern; Study of Pottery; Study of Miscellaneous Objects; Study of Coins and Inscriptions; and History of the Region.

The cities of Troy and Knossos are the stuff of legend. One, the city of Homer's "Iliad", of Paris, Hector and Helen; the other home to a king who built a labyrinth in which to hide his monstrous son. This is the story of two of the most heroic, and controversial, figures in archaeology: Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the remains of Troy, and Arthur Evans who unearthed the great city of King Minos. Ranking alongside Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, the discoveries at Troy and Knossos enabled a new understanding of Prehistoric Greece, the very dawn of civilisation.They also proved that what until then had only been myths and daydreams were actually real. The Cretans did indeed worship the cult of the bull. Achilles and Agamemnon really did live. Replete with drama and adventure, "The Bull of Minos" tells of the 3,000-year old civilisations that were brought back to life, of the extraordinary men who toiled in their dusty ruins and of the magic and mystery of life in a world of gods and warriors.

Berlin Then and Now captures the stark contrast between what came before and after the great conflicts of the twentieth century, using archival photographs of the city's grand buildings, monuments, and boulevards alongside modern views of the same scenes today. Few cities in Europe have undergone as many transformations as Berlin in the past hundred years, or have risen from the rubble to stand as proud and vibrant as the city does today. Nick Gay's book shows the effects of Hitler's building plans of the 1930s, Allied bombing in World War II and the post-war division of the city into East and West and the subsequent reunification after 1989. Sites include: Brandenburg Gate, Pariser Platz, Hotel Adlon, the Reich Chancellery, Ministry of Aviation, Unter den Linden, Royal Opera House, Neue Wache, Berlin University, Palace Bridge, Lustgarten, Berliner Dom, Rotes Rathaus, Nikolaiviertel, Alexanderplatz, Muhlendamm, Gendarmenmarkt, Checkpoint Charlie, Wertheim Department Store, Potsdamer Platz, Death Strip, SS Headquarters, Anhalter Station, Siegessaule, Soviet War Memorial,Tempelhof Airport, Charlottenburg Palace, Olympic Stadium, Spandau Prison and Wannsee Conference Villa.

This is a book about ideal landscapes and Feng-Shui. Using evolutionary and anthropological approaches, Peking University professor Kongjian Yu - who holds a doctorate degree in Design from Harvard - explores the origin, structure, and meanings of Feng-Shui in juxtaposition to the ideal landscape models in Chinese culture. Using illustrative site observations and literature, Yu argues that Feng-Shui landscapes share similar structures with other Chinese ideal landscapes - the implications of which are deconstructed into terms of geography, anthropology, ecology, and philosophy. As a landscape architect and urbanist, Professor Yu respects the role of Feng-Shui in the making of places, yet still is in opposition to its superstitious nature. Well illustrated and poetically written, this book is a must-read for those who are interested in Feng-Shui, as well as those who care about their daily living environment - especially those who practice architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism.

Patronized by royalty between the sixth and eighth centuries, the monuments of Guatemala's ancient Maya city of Piedras Negras were carved by sculptors with remarkable skills and virtuosity. Together patrons and sculptors created monumental imagery in a manner unique within the larger history of ancient Maya art by engaging public viewers through illustrations of ceremonies focusing on family and the feminine in royal agendas.
Flora Clancy's introduction contextualizes her work with other studies and lays out her methodological framework. She then discusses the known monuments of the city sequentially by reigns. Individual rulers are characterized by a biography drawn from the hieroglyphic texts and the icons or imagery of their monuments are analyzed and discussed.
Although the monuments of Piedras Negras are acknowledged as social, political, and cultural productions, Clancy also treats them as works of art that at their best operate on transcendent levels dissolving and overruling the contingencies of history and cultural differences.

As scholars have by now long contended, global neoliberalism and the violence associated with state restructuring provide key frameworks for understanding flows of people across national boundaries and, eventually, into the treacherous terrains of the United States borderlands. The proposed volume builds on this tradition of situating migration and migrant death within broad, systems-level frameworks of analysis, but contends that there is another, perhaps somewhat less tidy, but no less important sociopolitical story to be told here. Through examination of how forensic scientists define, navigate, and enact their work at the frontiers of US policy and economics, this book joins a robust body of literature dedicated to bridging social theory with bioarchaeological applications to modern day problems. This volume is based on deeply and critically reflective analyses, submitted by individual scholars, wherein they navigate and position themselves as social actors embedded within and, perhaps partially constituted by, relations of power, cultural ideologies, and the social structures characterizing this moment in history. Each contribution addresses a different variation on themes of power relations, production of knowledge, and reflexivity in practice. In sum, however, the chapters of this book trace relationships between institutions, entities, and individuals comprising the landscapes of migrant death and repatriation and considers their articulation with sociopolitical dynamics of the neoliberal state.

Suserup Skov in Denmark is a well-preserved beech-dominated forest reserve with continuity in tree cover at least back to 4200 BC, indicating it to be a direct descendent of the primeval forests. Despite of documented historical impact from humans, Suserup Skov is now increasingly characterized by natural disturbance dynamics and is one of the best reference areas for naturalness in the nemoral part of northern Europe. This has attracted several research projects focussing on forest dynamics, ecology and biodiversity which are summarized in this issue of Ecological Bulletins.

This volume focuses on three main areas:

1) stand structures and dynamics

2) water and nutrient cycling processes, and

3) vegetation patterns and processes.

With a compilation of scientific reviews, detailed case-studies and experimental works, the volume provides a unique and in-depth overview of structures and processes in a single forest reserve. The aim is to establish a basic reference of science and practice within forestry and nature conservation.

In 1991, archaeologists in lower Manhattan unearthed a stunning discovery. Buried for more than 200 years was a communal cemetery containing the remains of up to 20,000 people. At roughly 6.6 acres, the African Burial Ground is the largest and earliest known burial space of African descendants in North America. In the years that followed its discovery, citizens and activists fought tirelessly to demand respectful treatment of eighteenth-century funerary remains and sacred ancestors. After more than a decade of political battle-on local and national levels-and scientific research at Howard University, the remains were eventually reburied on the site in 2003. Capturing the varied perspectives and the emotional tenor of the time, Frohne narrates the story of the African Burial Ground and the controversies surrounding urban commemoration. She analyzes both its colonial and contemporary representations, drawing on colonial-era maps, prints, and land surveys to illuminate the forgotten and hidden visual histories of a mostly enslaved population buried in the African Burial Ground. Today, personal offerings and commemorative artworks, many of which incorporate traditional African and diasporic arts and religions, pay tribute to the ancestors and the sacred space. Tracing the history and identity of the area from a forgotten site to a contested and negotiated space, Frohne situates the burial ground within the context of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century race relations in New York City to reveal its enduring presence as a spiritual place. Finally, she illustrates visually, spiritually, and spatially the historic and contemporary formation of a New York City African diaspora in relation to the African Burial Ground.

New Perspectives in Cultural Resource Management describes the historic developments, current challenges, and future opportunities presented by contemporary Cultural Resource Management (CRM). CRM is a substantial aspect of archaeology, history, historical architecture, historical preservation, and public policy in the US and other countries. Chapter authors are innovators and leaders in the development and contemporary practice of CRM. Collectively they have conducted thousands of investigations and managed programs at local, state, tribal, and national levels. The chapters provide perspectives on the methods, policies, and procedures of historical and contemporary CRM. Recommendations are provided on current practices likely to be effective in the coming decades.

In the age of the African Renaissance, southern Africa has needed to reinterpret the past in fresh and more appropriate ways. The last 500 years represent a strikingly unexplored and misrepresented period which remains disfigured by colonial/apartheid assumptions, most notably in the way that African societies are depicted as fixed, passive, isolated, un-enterprising and unenlightened. This period is one the most formative in relation to southern Africa's past while remaining, in many ways, the least known. Key cultural contours of the sub-continent took shape, while in a jagged and uneven fashion some of the features of modern identities emerged. Enormous internal economic innovation and political experimentation was taking place at the same time as expanding European mercantile forces started to press upon southern African shores and its hinterlands. This suggests that interaction, flux and mixing were a strong feature of the period, rather than the homogeneity and fixity proposed in standard historical and archaeological writings. Five Hundred Years Rediscovered represents the first step, taken by a group of archaeologists and historians, to collectively reframe, revitalise and re-examine the last 500 years. By integrating research and developing trans-frontier research networks, the group hopes to challenge thinking about the region's expanding internal and colonial frontiers, and to broaden current perceptions about southern Africa's colonial past.

In the spring of 1900, British archaeologist Arthur Evans began to excavate the palace of Knossos on Crete, bringing ancient Greek legends to life just as a new century dawned amid far-reaching questions about human history, art, and culture. With "Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism," Cathy Gere relates the fascinating story of Evans's excavation and its long-term effects on Western culture. After the World War I left the Enlightenment dream in tatters, the lost paradise that Evans offered in the concrete labyrinth--pacifist and matriarchal, pagan and cosmic--seemed to offer a new way forward for writers, artists, and thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Giorgio de Chirico, Robert Graves, and Hilda Doolittle.

Assembling a brilliant, talented, and eccentric cast at a moment of tremendous intellectual vitality and wrenching change, Cathy Gere paints an unforgettable portrait of the age of concrete and the birth of modernism.

In this book, Robert L. Kelly challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity, and downplays attempts to model the original foraging lifeway or to use foragers to depict human nature stripped to its core. Kelly reviews the anthropological literature for variation among living foragers in terms of diet, mobility, sharing, land tenure, technology, exchange, male-female relations, division of labor, marriage, descent and political organization. Using the paradigm of human behavioral ecology, he analyzes the diversity in these areas and seeks to explain rather than explain away variability, and argues for an approach to prehistory that uses archaeological data to test theory rather than one that uses ethnographic analogy to reconstruct the past.

The island of Sicily was a highly contested area throughout much of its history. Among the first to exert strong influence on its political, cultural, infrastructural, and demographic developments were the two major decentralized civilizations of the first millennium BCE: the Phoenicians and the Greeks. While trade and cultural exchange preceded their permanent presence, it was the colonizing movement that brought territorial competition and political power struggles on the island to a new level. The history of six centuries of colonization is replete with accounts of conflict and warfare that include cross-cultural confrontations, as well as interstate hostilities, domestic conflicts, and government violence. This book is not concerned with realities from the battlefield or questions of military strategy and tactics, but rather offers a broad collection of archaeological case studies and historical essays that analyze how political competition, strategic considerations, and violent encounters substantially affected rural and urban environments, the island's heterogeneous communities, and their social practices. These contributions, originating from a workshop in 2018, combine expertise from the fields of archaeology, ancient history, and philology. The focus on a specific time period and the limited geographic area of Greek Sicily allows for the thorough investigation and discussion of various forms of organized societal violence and their consequences on the developments in society and landscape.

Herodotus in the Long Nineteenth Century traces the impact of Herodotus' Histories during a momentous period in world history - an era of heightened social mobility, religious controversy, scientific discovery and colonial expansion. Contributions by an international team of specialists in Greek historiography, classical archaeology, receptions, and nineteenth-century intellectual history shed new light on how the Histories were read, remembered, and re-imagined in historical writing and in an exciting array of real-world contexts: from the classrooms of English public schools and universities to the music hall, museum, or gallery; from the news-stand to the nursery; and from the banks of the Nile to the mountains of the Hindu Kush. They reveal not only how engagement with Herodotus' work permeated nationalist discourses of the period, but also the extent to which these national and disciplinary contexts helped shape the way both Herodotus and the ancient past have been understood and interpreted.

A new thought-provoking exposition of the political and religious developments in the kingdom of Judah during the reign of King Hezekiah, based on a close reading of biblical and extra-biblical sources, and the insights of associated archaeological finds. Among the major discussions: Hezekiah's reform of the Israelite cult - the elimination of rural altars and the centralisation of all worship in the Temple of Jerusalem; the introduction of literary prophecy and its social message into Judah; Jerusalem's deliverance during the Assyrian campaign against Judah in 701 bce. Indeed, the Age of Hezekiah proves to have been a key stage in the growth and transformation of Jerusalem into the Holy City. Full quotation of ancient texts, illuminated by numerous maps and illustrations.

Every year around 5,000 archaeological objects from Wiltshire are recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme. These finds are made by members of the public and each object on the database has a story to tell. Each is a link between us and the past. Every article was once designed for a purpose, and thought has gone into its construction. 50 Finds from Wiltshire focuses on the stories that these objects can reveal, informing us about civil unrest, wars, religion, trade, the economy, or a unique insight into daily life. The landscape of Wiltshire has been shaped by of thousands of years of human activity, and we can see this history through the archaeology. The lives of those who have shaped the landscape can be told through what they have left behind. When viewing every object in its context, its history is revealed. The objects recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme add a new dimension to our understanding of the past.

This volume focuses on a formative period in the history and archaeology of northern Greece. The decade following 1912, when Thessaloniki became part of Greece, was a period marked by an extraordinary internationalism as a result of the population movements caused by the shifting of national borders and the troop movements which accompanied the First World War. The papers collected here look primarily at the impact of the discoveries of the Army of the Orient on the archaeological study of the region of Macedonia. Resulting collections of antiquities are now held in Thessaloniki, London, Paris, Edinburgh and Oxford. Various specialists examine each of these collections, bringing the archaeological legacy of the Macedonian Campaign together in one volume for the first time. A key theme of the volume is the emerging dialogue between the archaeological remains of Macedonia and the politics of Hellenism. A number of authors consider how archaeological interpretation was shaped by the incorporation of Macedonia into Greece. Other authors describe how the politics of the Campaign, in which Greece was initially a neutral partner, had implications both for the administration of archaeological finds and their subsequent dispersal. A particular focus is the historical personalities who were involved and the sites they discovered. The role of the Greek Archaeological Service, particularly in the protection of antiquities, as well as promoting excavation in the aftermath of the 1917 Great Fire of Thessaloniki, is also considered.