Artillery in the Era of the Crusades provides a detailed examination of the use of mechanical artillery in the Levant through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Rather than focus on a selection of sensational anecdotes, Michael S. Fulton explores the full scope of the available literary and archaeological evidence, reinterpreting the development of trebuchet technology and the ways in which it was used during this period. Among the arguments put forward, Fulton challenges the popular perception that the invention of the counterweight trebuchet was responsible for the dramatic transformation in the design of fortifications around the start of the thirteenth century. See inside the book.

Among the few surviving archaeological sites from the medieval Christian kingdom of Nubia-located in present day Sudan-Qasr Ibrim is unique in a number of ways. It is the only site in Lower Nubia that remained above water after the completion of the Aswan high dam. In addition, thanks to the aridity of the climate in the area the site is marked by extraordinary preservation of organic material, especially textual material written on papyrus, leather, and paper. Particularly rich is the textual material from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, written in Old Nubian, the region's indigenous language. As a result, Qasr Ibrim is probably the best documented ancient and medieval site in Africa outside of Egypt and North Africa. Medieval Nubia will be the first book to make available this remarkable material, much of which is still unpublished. The evidence discovered reveals a more complicated picture of this community than originally thought. Previously, scholars had thought medieval Nubia had existed in relative isolation from the rest of the world and had a primitive economy. Legal documents, accounts, and letters, however, reveal a complex, monetized economy with exchange rates connected to those of the wider world. Furthermore, they reveal public festive practices, in which lavish feasting and food gifts reinforced the social prestige of the participants. These documents show medieval Nubia to have been a society combining legal elements inherited from the Greco-Roman world with indigenous African social practices. In reconstructing the social and economic life of medieval Nubia based on the Old Nubian sources from the site, as well as other previously examined materials, Giovanni R. Ruffini will correct previous assumptions and produce a new picture of Nubia, one that connects it to the wider Mediterranean economy and society of its time.

This volume asks how the current Information Technology Revolution influences archaeological interpretations of techno-social change. Does cyber-archaeology provide a way to breathe new life into grand narratives of technological revolution and culture change, or does it further challenge these high-level theoretical explanations? Do digital recording methods have the potential to create large, regional-scale databases to ease investigation of high-level theoretical issues, or have they simply exposed deeper issues of archaeological practice that prevent this? In short, this volume cuts beyond platitudes about the revolutionary potential of the Information Technology Revolution and instead critically engages both its possibilities and limitations. The contributions to this volume are drawn from long-term regional studies employing a cyber-archaeology framework, primarily in the southern Levant, a region with rich archaeological data sets spanning the Paleolithic to the present day. As such, contributors are uniquely placed to comment on the interface between digital methods and grand narratives of long-term techno-social change. Cyber-Archaeology and Grand Narratives provides a much-needed challenge to current approaches, and a first step toward integrating innovative digital methods with archaeological theory.

Lacking the grand-scale, pre-Columbian alterations to landscapes brought about by the repeated rise and fall of states and empires, the focus of North American archaeologists has been on native foragers and villagers. Since the quincentennial of Columbus's voyage, North America has also become a hotbed for studies of culture contact, transculturation, and ethnogenesis. These recent developments have reshaped North American archaeology--bridging the divide between history and prehistory and between the practices of everyday life and global cultural change.

"North American Archaeology" offers readers a rich and informative text organized around central topics and debates within the discipline that are illustrated by case studies from different regions and time periods. Based on the lives of real people and the historical changes that they experienced in the past, these case studies emphasize human agency, cultural practice, the body, issues of inequality, and the politics of archaeological practice. By highlighting current understandings of cultural and historical processes in North America and situating these understandings within a global perspective, this volume will inspire not only students and scholars of North American archaeology but will undoubtedly spark the imaginations of the many individuals interested in the rich history and cultures of North American peoples.

The sequel to the acclaimed Made in Niugini, which explored in unparalleled depth the material world of the Wola comprising moveable artefacts, Built in Niugini continues Paul Sillitoe's project in exemplary fashion, documenting the built environment, architecture and construction techniques in a tour de force of ethnography. But this is more than a book about building houses. Sillitoe also shows how material constructions can serve to further our understandings of intellectual constructions. Allowing his ethnography to take the lead, and paying close attention to the role of tacit understandings and know-how in both skilled work and everyday dwelling, his close experiential analyses inform a phenomenologically inflected discussion of profound philosophical questions - such as what can we know of being-in-the-world - from startlingly different cultural directions. The book also forms part of a long-term project to understand a radically different 'economy', which is set in an acephalous order that extends individual freedom and equality in a manner difficult to imagine from the perspective of a nation-state - an intriguing way of being-in-the-world that is entwined with tacit aspects of knowing via personal and emotional experience. This brings us back to the explanatory power of a focus on technology, which Sillitoe argues for in the context of 'materiality' approaches that feature prominently in current debates about the sociology of knowledge. Archaeology has long been to the fore in considering technology and buildings, along with vernacular architecture, and Sillitoe contributes to a much-needed dialogue between anthropology and these disciplines, assessing the potential and obstacles for a fruitful rapprochement. Built in Niugini represents the culmination of Sillitoe's luminous scholarship as an anthropologist who dialogues fluidly with the literature and ideas of numerous disciplines. The arguments throughout engage with key concepts and theories from anthropology, archaeology, architecture, material culture studies, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy. The result is a significant work that contributes to not only our regional knowledge of the New Guinea Highlands but also to studies of tacit knowledge and the anthropology of architecture and building practices. Trevor Marchand, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies

The ruins of Ostia, main harbour of Imperial Rome, were uncovered in the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. In the present volume the remains of three buildings used for the milling of grain and baking of bread (pistrina) are studied according to modern archaeological standards. A detailed analysis of the architecture and masonry allows a description of the installation and vicissitudes of the pistrina. Subsequently the distribution of these buildings in the city and their place in the neighbourhood is studied. The technical achievement of the Ostian bakers is assessed. Although water-power was sometimes used in Roman grain-mills, this was not the case in Ostia. This in turn affects estimates of the output of the pistrina. Nevertheless the amount of bread that was produced must have been considerably higher than that in Pompeii, where many small bakeries have been preserved. No remains of bakeries have ever been found in Rome or Constantinople, but it may be assumed that the average bakery in these cities did not differ much from the Ostian workshops. Involvement of the fisc with the Ostian bakers has already been suggested by Bakker in Living and Working with the Gods. The role of the Emperor is dealt with in this volume once more. The Ostian corpus pistorum presumably fed Imperial slaves and the local fire-brigade. There are good reasons to assume that Ostia, like Rome, knew distributions of free grain.

Did an invasion of the Sea Peoples cause the collapse of the Late Bronze Age palace-based economies of the Levant, as well as of the Hittite Empire? Renewed excavations at Tell Tayinat in southeast Turkey are shedding new light on the critical transitional phase of the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age (ca. 1200-1000 B.C.), a period that in the Northern Levant has until recently been considered a "Dark Age," due in large part to the few extant textual sources relating to its history. However, recently discovered epigraphic data from both the site and the surrounding region suggest the formation of an Early Iron Age kingdom that fused Hieroglyphic Luwian monumental script with a strong component of Aegeanizing cultural elements. The capital of this putative/erstwhile kingdom appears to have been located at Tell Tayinat in the Amuq Valley. More specifically, this formal stylistic analysis examines a distinctive painted pottery known as Late Helladic IIIC found at the site of Tayinat during several seasons of excavation. The assemblage includes examples of Aegean-style bowls, kraters, and amphorae bearing an array of distinctive decorative features. A key objective of the study distinguishes Aegean stylistic characteristics both in form and in painted motifs from those inspired by the indigenous culture. Drawing on a wide range of parallels from Philistia through the Levant, Anatolia, the Aegean Sea, the Greek Mainland, and Cyprus, this research begins to fill a longstanding lacuna in the Amuq Valley and attempts to correlate with major historical and cultural trends in the Northern Levant and beyond. "In Sea Peoples of the Northern Levant, Janeway ably navigates the complex context within which these data must be historically and archaeologically situated and provides a first look at the Aegeanizing ceramics from the Tell Tayinat assemblage that is both comprehensive and invaluable.... For researchers and scholars working within the complex material and historical tapestry of the Late Bronze-Early Iron Age transition in the eastern Mediterranean, this volume is highly recommended." - Jeffrey P. Emanuel, Harvard University, in: American Journal of Archaeology 123.3 (2019)

The pre-Hispanic pueblo settlements of the Pajarito Plateau, whose ruins can be seen today at Bandelier National Monument, date to the late 1100s and were already dying out when the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. Until recently, little modern scientific data on these sites was available.

The essays in this volume summarize the results of new excavation and survey research in Bandelier, with special attention to determining why larger sites appear when and where they do, and how life in these later villages and towns differed from life in the earlier small hamlets that first dotted the Pajarito in the mid-1100s. Drawing on sources from archaeology, paleoethnobotany, geology, climate history, rock art, and oral history, the authors weave together the history of archaeology on the Plateau and the natural and cultural history of its Puebloan peoples for the four centuries of its pre-Hispanic occupation.

Contributors include Craig Allen (U. S. Geological Survey, Los Alamos, New Mexico), Sarah Herr (Desert Archaeology, Inc., Tucson, Arizona), F. Joan Mathien (National Park Service), Matthew J. Root (Rain Shadow Research and Department of Anthropology, Washington Sate University), Nancy H. Olsen (Anthropology Department and Intercultural Studies Division, De Anza College, Cupertino, California), Janet D. Orcutt (National Park Service), and Robert P. Powers (National Park Service).

Medieval Jewelry and Burial Assemblages in Croatia analyzes the Croatian archaeological heritage from the 8th to the 15th century, consisting mostly of jewelry (earrings) findings from cemeteries. Stratigraphy is used to establish horizons and phases of material culture, as well as the structure of the burial chambers. All in comparison with materials from neighboring regions of Europe.

The vast transformation of the Roman world at the end of antiquity has been a subject of broad scholarly interest for decades, but until now no book has focused specifically on the Iberian Peninsula in the period as seen through an archaeological lens. Given the sparse documentary evidence available, archaeology holds the key to a richer understanding of the developments of the period, and this book addresses a number of issues that arise from analysis of the available material culture, including questions of the process of Christianisation and Islamisation, continuity and abandonment of Roman urban patterns and forms, the end of villas and the growth of villages, and the adaptation of the population and the elites to the changing political circumstances.

This book provides information and tools necessary to bridge and integrate the knowledge gaps related to the acquisition and processing of archaeological data, specifically in the field of preventive diagnostics, urban centers, archaeological parks and historical monuments, through activities that involve the application of non-invasive diagnostic detection systems, in the field of applied geophysics. The principal aim of this book is to define a tool for experts that work in the frame of Cultural Heritage and to identify a procedure of intervention transferable and usable in different geographical contexts and areas of investigations: it could help to decide the better technique of investigation to apply in relation to the predictive characteristics of the archaeological site and the objectives of the survey. The book is divided in two parts. The first one explains the theory of ground high resolution penetrating radar (GPR), electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), controlled source electromagnetism system, differential magnetic method and the scenario of integrated methods of different geophysical techniques. Each section covers the basic theory (complete description of the physical parameters involved in the method), field instruments (description of all systems actually offered by commercial companies), field techniques (presentation of the main procedures and setting parameters used to explore the ground surface during data acquisition), techniques of data processing and representation (main processing routines and comparison between different techniques; presentation of different typologies of graphical representation), and the possibility and limitations of methods (explanation of best and worst conditions of implementation of the geophysical technique in relation to the contrasts between archaeological features and the natural background and the features of the instruments and arrays). The second part describes some applications of geophysical prospection to Cultural Heritage in detailed case histories, divided in sections relative to monuments, historical buildings, urban centres, archaeological parks and ancient viability. Moreover, examples of integration of three-dimensional reliefs and geophysical diagnostic of a monuments and studies of large scale reconnaissance implemented into a Geographical Information System are treated. In each case study the authors cover the description of the archaeological or historical contest; an explanation of the problem to solve; a choice of the geophysical methods; the setting of the procedure of data acquisition; techniques of data processing; a representation, interpretation, and discussion of the results.