Ground-penetrating radar is a near-surface geophysical technique that can provide three-dimensional maps and other images of buried archaeological features and associated stratigraphy in a precise way. This book, by the expert in the field, provides the basics of the physics, chemistry, geology, and archaeology in a clear fashion, unburdened by complex equations or theory. The reader will be able to understand how the latest equipment and software and the results of data collection and processing can be used effectively in a number of different settings. Both potential pitfalls and successes and the reasons for them are discussed. The many well-illustrated examples, with important tables and graphs, are useful for reference in the field and for data processing.

Tools of data comparison and analysis are critical in the field of archaeology, and the integration of technological advancements such as geographic information systems, intelligent systems, and virtual reality reconstructions with the teaching of archaeology is crucial to the effective utilization of resources in the field. ""E-Learning Methodologies and Computer Applications in Archaeology"" presents innovative instructional approaches for archaeological e-learning based on networked technologies, providing researchers, scholars, and professionals a comprehensive global perspective on the resources, development, application, and implications of information communication technology in multimedia-based educational products and services in archaeology.

Britain's pagan past, with its mysterious monuments, atmospheric sites, enigmatic artifacts, bloodthirsty legends, and cryptic inscriptions, is both enthralling and perplexing to a resident of the twenty-first century. In this ambitious and thoroughly up-to-date book, Ronald Hutton reveals the long development, rapid suppression, and enduring cultural significance of paganism, from the Paleolithic Era to the coming of Christianity. He draws on an array of recently discovered evidence and shows how new findings have radically transformed understandings of belief and ritual in Britain before the arrival of organized religion. Setting forth a chronological narrative, Hutton along the way makes side visits to explore specific locations of ancient pagan activity. He includes the well-known sacred sites-Stonehenge, Avebury, Seahenge, Maiden Castle, Anglesey-as well as more obscure locations across the mainland and coastal islands. In tireless pursuit of the elusive "why" of pagan behavior, Hutton astonishes with the breadth of his understanding of Britain's deep past and inspires with the originality of his insights.

This book provides the first synthetic review of the literature on cultural roads and itineraries, providing a template for developing typologies and clarity on existing research. It additionally develops a unique conceptual framework for understanding the social, political, ethical, and spatial dynamics behind cultural roads and itineraries. The book takes the discussion on cultural roads in two different directions. Firstly, by taking a step back from tourism studies, leisure studies, and heritage studies in order to further the conversation on cultural roads with a broader set of disciplines, namely those in the humanities and social sciences. Secondly, through a series of broader theoretical reflections and considerations, the book draws its focus back to the development of the cultural road and cultural itineraries with a new conceptual apparatus that can inspire new questions for research and new ideas for practice. Throughout the text, concepts, theories, principles, and practices are explored and explained through detailed case study analyses.

For a full month in the autumn of 1812 the 2,000-strong garrison of the fortress the French had constructed to overawe the city of Burgos defied the Duke of Wellington. In this work a leading historian of the Peninsular teams up with a leading conflict archaeologist to examine the reasons for Wellington's failure.

Addressing the relationship between religion and ideology, and drawing on a range of literary, ritual, and visual sources, this book reconstructs the cultural discourse of Assyria from the third through the first millennium BCE. Ideology is delineated here as a subdiscourse of religion rather than as an independent category, anchoring it firmly within the religious world view. Tracing Assur's cultural interaction with the south on the one hand, and with the Syro-Anatolian horizon on the other, this volume articulates a "northern" cultural discourse that, even while interacting with southern Mesopotamian tradition, managed to maintain its own identity. It also follows the development of tropes and iconic images from the first city state of Uruk and their mouvance between myth, image, and royal inscription, historiography and myth, and myth and ritual, suggesting that, with the help of scholars, key royal figures were responsible for introducing new directions for the ideological discourse and for promoting new forms of historiography.

The distinguished Russian archeologist Aleksei P. Okladnikov's study reveals how a field archeologist goes about determining and writing prehistory. Over the course of his career, Okladnikov and his wife Vera Zaporozhskaya travelled across Siberia from the Lena River in the north to the Amur River in the south excavating archaeological sites. During that time Aleksei and Vera found and interpreted the rock art of the vast region from the Paleolithic Era to the present day. Relying on petroglyphs and pictographs left on cliffs and boulders, Okladnikov lays out in detail and straightforward language the prehistory of Siberia by "reading" these artifacts. This book permits the past to be told in its own words: the art portrayed on the cliffs of Siberia.

In the 1970s, in his capacity as government representative from the Afghan Institute of Archaeology, Ghulam Rahman Amiri accompanied a joint Afghan-US archaeological mission to the Sistan region of southwest Afghanistan. The results of his work were published in Farsi as a descriptive ethnographic monograph. The Helmand Baluch is the first English translation of Amiri's extraordinary encounters. This rich ethnography describes the cultural, political, and economic systems of the Baluch people living in the lower Helmand River Valley of Afghanistan. It is an area that has received little study since the early 20th Century, yet is a region with a remarkable history in one of the most volatile territories in the world.

Since 1899 more than 73,000 pieces of inscribed divination shell and bone have been found inside the moated enclosure of the Anyang-core at the former capital of the late Shang state. Nearly all of these divinations were done on behalf of the Shang kingsand has led to the apt characterization that oracle bone inscriptions describe their motivations, experiences, and priorities. There are, however, much smaller sets of divination accounts that were done on behalf of members of the Shang elite other than the king.First noticed in the early 1930's, grouped and periodized shortly thereafter, oracle bone inscriptions produced explicitly by or on behalf of "royal familygroups" reveal information about key aspects of daily life in Shang societythat are barely even mentioned in Western scholarship. The newly published Huayuanzhuang East Oracle Bone inscriptions are a spectacular addition to the corpus of texts from Anyang: hundreds of intact or largely intact turtle shells and bovine scapulae densely inscribed with records of the divinations in which they were used. They were produced on the behalf of a mature prince of the royal family whose parents, both alive and still very much active, almost certainly were the twenty-first Shang king Wu Ding (r. c. 1200 B.C.) and his consort Lady Hao (fu Hao). The Huayuanzhuang East corpus is an unusually homogeneous set of more than two thousand five hundred divination records, produced over a short period of time on behalf of a prince of the royal family. There are typically multiple records of divinations regarding the same or similar topics that can be synchronized together, which not only allows for remarkable access into the esoteric world of divination practice, but also produce micro-reconstructions of what is essentially East Asia's earliest and most complete "day and month planner." Because these texts are unusually linguistically transparent and well preserved, homogeneous in orthography and content, and published to an unprecedentedly high standard, they are also ideal material for learning to read and interpret early epigraphic texts. The Huayuanzhuang East oracle bone inscriptions are a tremendously important Shang archive of "material documents" that were produced by a previously unknown divination and scribal organization. They expose us to an entirely fresh set of perspectives and preoccupationscentering ona member of the royal family at the commencement of China's historical period. The completely annotated English translation of the inscriptions is the first of its kind, and is a vibrant new source of Shang history that can be accessedto rewrite and supplement what we know about early Chinese civilization and life in the ancient world. Before the discerning reader are the motives, preoccupations, and experiences of a late Shang prince working simultaneously in service both for his Majesty, his parents, and hisown family.

While books on archaeological and anthropological ethics have proliferated in recent years, few attempt to move beyond a conventional discourse on ethics to consider how a discussion of the social and political implications of archaeological practice might be conceptualized differently. The conceptual ideas about ethics posited in this volume make it of interest to readers outside of the discipline; in fact, to anyone interested in contemporary debates around the possibilities and limitations of a discourse on ethics. The authors in this volume set out to do three things. The first is to track the historical development of a discussion around ethics, in tandem with the development and "disciplining" of archaeology. The second is to examine the meanings, consequences and efficacies of a discourse on ethics in contemporary worlds of practice in archaeology. The third is to push beyond the language of ethics to consider other ways of framing a set of concerns around rights, accountabilities and meanings in relation to practitioners, descendent and affected communities, sites, material cultures, the ancestors and so on.

This pivot sets Muslim shrines within the wider context of Heritage Studies in the Muslim world and considers their role in the articulation of sacred landscapes, their function as sites of cultural memory and their links to different religious traditions. Reviewing the historiography of Muslim shrines paying attention to the different ways these places have been studied, through anthropology, archaeology, history, and religious studies, the text discusses the historical and archaeological evidence for the development of shrines in the region from pre-Islamic times up to the present day. It also assesses the significance of Muslim shrines in the modern Middle East, focusing on the diverse range of opinions and treatments from veneration to destruction, and argues that shrines have a unique social function as a means of direct contact with the past in a region where changing political configurations have often distorted conventional historical narratives.

From Plato's Timaeus onwards, the world or cosmos has been conceived of as a living, rational organism. Most notably in German Idealism, philosophers still talked of a 'Weltseele' (Schelling) or 'Weltgeist' (Hegel). This volume is the first collection of essays on the origin of the notion of the world soul (anima mundi) in Antiquity and beyond. It contains 14 original contributions by specialists in the field of ancient philosophy, the Platonic tradition and the history of theology. The topics range from the 'obscure' Presocratic Heraclitus, to Plato and his ancient readers in Middle and Neoplatonism (including the Stoics), to the reception of the idea of a world soul in the history of natural science. A general introduction highlights the fundamental steps in the development of the Platonic notion throughout late Antiquity and early Christian philosophy. Accessible to Classicists, historians of philosophy, theologians and invaluable to specialists in ancient philosophy, the book provides an overview of the fascinating discussions surrounding a conception that had a long-lasting effect on the history of Western thought.

Alexander Nefedkin's highly original new book, translated by the noted American scholar Richard L. Bland, is devoted to the understudied topic of the military and military-political history of Chukotka, the far northeastern region of the Russian Federation, separated from Alaska by Bering Strait. This study is based on primary sources, including archeological, folkloric, and documentary evidence, dating from ancient times to the cessation of conflict in the territory in the nineteenth century. Nefedkin's analysis surveys the military history of these eras, reassessing well known topics and bringing to light previously unknown events.

Every year, there are over 1.6 million violent deaths worldwide, making violence one of the leading public health issues of our time. And with the 20th century just behind us, it's hard to forget that 191 million people lost their lives directly or indirectly through conflict. This collection of engaging case studies on violence and violent deaths reveals how violence is reconstructed from skeletal and contextual information. By sharing the complex methodologies for gleaning scientific data from human remains and the context they are found in, and complementary perspectives for examining violence from both past and contemporary societies, bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology prove to be fundamentally inseparable. This book provides a model for training forensic anthropologists and bioarchaeologists, not just in the fundamentals of excavation and skeletal analysis, but in all subfields of anthropology, to broaden their theoretical and practical approach to dealing with everyday violence.

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.

There was probably only one past, but there are many different histories. As mental representations of narrow segments of the past, 'histories' reflect different cultural contexts and different historians, although 'history' is a scientific enterprise whenever it processes representative data using rational and controllable methods to work out hypotheses that can be falsified by empirical evidence. A History of Biblical Israel combines experience gained through decades of teaching biblical exegesis and courses on the history of ancient Israel, and of on-going involvement in biblical archaeology. 'Biblical Israel' is understood as a narrative produced primarily in the province of Yehud to forge the collective memory of the elite that operated the temple of Jerusalem under the auspices of the Achaemenid imperial apparatus. The notion of 'Biblical Israel' provides the necessary hindsight to narrate the fate of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as the pre-history of 'Biblical Israel', since the archives of these kingdoms were only mined in the Persian era to produce the grand biblical narrative.The volume covers the history of 'Biblical Israel' through its fragmentation in the Hellenistic and Roman periods until 136 CE, when four Roman legions crushed the revolt of Simeon Bar-Kosiba.