![]() |
![]() |
Your cart is empty |
||
Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeology by period / region > European archaeology
More than fifteen sites of either confirmed or conjectured urban status existed between the 6th and 19th centuries in the particular region of northeastern Mesopotamia, bounded by the rivers Great Zab, Little Zab and Tigris. This present study concentrates on the investigation of this urban network. The archaeological substance of the deserted sites is mostly very well preserved in the relief of the arid steppe environment and can be excellently identified in satellite images of several types. The archaeological investigation of these settlements, augmented by a revised historical topography, offers a unique opportunity for the holistic study of the diversity, temporal dynamics and mutual relationships within the urban network that developed in the hinterland of Baghdad and Samarra, the two largest super-centres of the Old World. This collective monograph puts together archaeological and historical data available for the individual sites, including analyses of pottery obtained by surface survey. The materially rich final report of the three-year project is supplemented by an interpretative chapter that focuses on detailed topographical comparisons of the sites, their landscape contexts, and the dynamics of the urban system within the framework of studies on Near-Eastern Islamic-period cities.
Domesticating Empire is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian imagery in Roman households. Caitlin Barrett draws on case studies from Flavian Pompeii to investigate the close association between representations of Egypt and a particular type of Roman household space: the domestic garden. Through paintings and mosaics portraying the Nile, canals that turned the garden itself into a miniature "Nilescape," and statuary depicting Egyptian themes, many gardens in Pompeii offered ancient visitors evocations of a Roman vision of Egypt. Simultaneously faraway and familiar, these imagined landscapes made the unfathomable breadth of empire compatible with the familiarity of home. In contrast to older interpretations that connect Roman "Aegyptiaca" to the worship of Egyptian gods or the problematic concept of "Egyptomania," a contextual analysis of these garden assemblages suggests new possibilities for meaning. In Pompeian houses, Egyptian and Egyptian-looking objects and images interacted with their settings to construct complex entanglements of "foreign" and "familiar," "self" and "other." Representations of Egyptian landscapes in domestic gardens enabled individuals to present themselves as sophisticated citizens of empire. Yet at the same time, household material culture also exerted an agency of its own: domesticizing, familiarizing, and "Romanizing" once-foreign images and objects. That which was once imagined as alien and potentially dangerous was now part of the domus itself, increasingly incorporated into cultural constructions of what it meant to be "Roman." Featuring brilliant illustrations in both color and black and white, Domesticating Empire reveals the importance of material culture in transforming household space into a microcosm of empire.
The excavation of the Leckie Iron Age broch in Stirlingshire, Scotland, took place during the 1970's after the author had been asked to organise the work by a local archaeological society. At that stage the author did not consider - despite its location - that the site might vividly reflect the expansion of the Roman Empire into southern Scotland in the late first century AD. For various reasons the final report was not written until about thirty years after the fieldwork finished and by then the quality and significance of the Roman finds was much better understood, thanks to the analysis of them by experts. Many of them seemed like gifts to the broch chief, despite the clear evidence of the violent destruction of the broch at a later date. The Roman author Tacitus gave a detailed account of Governor Agricola's campaigns in southern Scotland and pointed out that he sometimes tried to make friends with local chiefs before invading their territories, to avoid un-necessary casualties. This also applied to the first Roman naval excursion up the west coast and explains the evidence from Dun Ardtreck, Skye, excavated in the 1960's. This site was also destroyed later and this could reflect the later hostile voyage of the navy after the battle of Mons Graupius which occurred after a few years of campaigning. Thus Rome's accounts can allow one to understand the history of some native sites much more vividly.
Mail armour (commonly mislabelled 'chainmail') was used for more than two millennia on the battlefield. After its invention in the Iron Age, mail rapidly spread all over Europe and beyond. The Roman army, keen on new military technology, soon adopted mail armour and used it successfully for centuries. Its history did not stop there and mail played a vital role in warfare during the Middle Ages up to the Early Modern Period. Given its long history, one would think mail is a well-documented material, but that is not the case. For the first time, this books lays a solid foundation for the understanding of mail armour and its context through time. It applies a long-term multi-dimensional approach to extract a wealth of as yet untapped information from archaeological, iconographic and written sources. This is complemented with technical insights on the mail maker's chaine operatoire.
JHP is an independent learned journal dedicated to the research of ceramics and objects of daily use of the Hellenistic period in the Mediterranean region and beyond. It aims at bringing together archaeologists, historians, philologists, numismatists and scholars of related disciplines engaged in the research of the Hellenistic heritage.
Blood of the Provinces is the first fully comprehensive study of the largest part of the Roman army, the auxilia. This non-citizen force constituted more than half of Rome's celebrated armies and was often the military presence in some of its territories. Diverse in origins, character, and culture, they played an essential role in building the empire, sustaining the unequal peace celebrated as the pax Romana, and enacting the emperor's writ. Drawing upon the latest historical and archaeological research to examine recruitment, belief, daily routine, language, tactics, and dress, this volume offers an examination of the Empire and its soldiers in a radical new way. Blood of the Provinces demonstrates how the Roman state addressed a crucial and enduring challenge both on and off the battlefield - retaining control of the miscellaneous auxiliaries upon whom its very existence depended. Crucially, this was not simply achieved by pay and punishment, but also by a very particular set of cultural attributes that characterized provincial society under the Roman Empire. Focusing on the soldiers themselves, and encompassing the disparate military communities of which they were a part, it offers a vital source of information on how individuals and communities were incorporated into provincial society under the Empire, and how the character of that society evolved as a result.
Lyde Green Roman Villa, Emersons Green, South Gloucestershire was excavated between mid-2012 and mid-2013 along with its surroundings and antecedent settlement. The excavations took place as part of the Emersons Green East Development Area, funded through the mechanism of commercial archaeology by Gardiner & Theobald LLP. The results of the stratigraphic analysis are given here along with specialist reports on the human remains, pottery (including thin sections), ceramic building material, small finds, coinage and iron-working waste. Six open-area excavations allowed the archaeologists the rare opportunity to trace a substantial part of the site's layout. Three ancillary buildings within the villa compound, including a bathhouse, were excavated. Evidence of advanced water management was uncovered in the form of lead piping, ceramic drain tiles and an enigmatic stone structure built into a canalised spring line. The villa's economy included stock raising, crop processing and iron and textile production. The settlement appears to have originated in the mid-1st century AD, or slightly earlier.
Drying kilns, corn-dryers and malting ovens are increasingly familiar features in post-Roman, Anglo-Saxon and medieval archaeology. Their forms, functions and distributions offer critical insights into agricultural, technological, economic and dietary history across the British Isles. Despite the significance and growing corpus of these structures, exceptionally few works of synthesis have been published. Yet such a foundational study was produced by Robert Rickett as early as 1975: an undergraduate dissertation which, for the first time, assembled a gazetteer of drying kilns from across the British Isles, critically examined this archaeological evidence in the light of documentary research, and established a typology and uniform terminology for drying kiln studies. This pioneering and oft-cited dissertation is here published for the first time, providing a foundation for the future study of drying kilns in Britain, Ireland and beyond. A new introduction and notes by Mark McKerracher set the original work within the context of drying kiln research since 1975.
The son of a watercolour artist, William Gershom Collingwood (1854-1932) studied at University College, Oxford where he met John Ruskin, whose secretary he later became and with whom he shared a wide range of interests. Collingwood travelled extensively, sketching as he went, and after studying at the Slade School of Art, moved to the Lake District where he wrote extensively about the Lakes, Icelandic sagas and Norse mythology, as well as publishing a biography on Ruskin in 1893. He was an accomplished artist, founding the Lake Artists Society in 1904 and serving as Professor of Fine Art at the University of Reading from 1905-11. His interest in art and Scandinavia prompted his research into the Pre-Norman Crosses of Cumbria and the North of England. In 1927 he published 'Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age', illustrated with his own drawings. He was also an accomplished musician, climber, swimmer and walker. His son was the noted archaeologist (a leading authority on Roman Britain), philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood. This well researched biography provides a comprehensive account of the life and works of a nineteenth century polymath whose story should be better known.
The ancient Greeks attributed great importance to the sacred during war and campaigning, as demonstrated from their earliest texts. Among the first four lines of the Iliad, for example, is a declaration that Apollo began the feud between Achilles and Agamemnon and sent a plague upon the Greek army because its leader, Agamemnon, had mistreated Apollo's priest. In this first in-depth study of the attitude of military commanders towards holy ground, Sonya Nevin addresses the customs and conduct of these leaders in relation to sanctuaries, precincts, shrines, temples and sacral objects. Focusing on a variety of Greek kings and captains, the author shows how military leaders were expected to react to the sacred sites of their foes. She further explores how they were likely to respond, and how their responses shaped the way such generals were viewed by their communities, by their troops, by their enemies and also by those like Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon who were writing their lives. This is a groundbreaking study of the significance of the sacred in warfare and the wider culture of antiquity.
This book presents the results of the excavations conducted by the Archaeological Service of the Ministry of Culture and carried out by archaeologists working just ahead of the construction teams building the new Metro. They uncovered a wealth of artefacts, and the foundations of homes and temples from ancient Athens, which had been hidden under the modern city. The excavations followed Vouliagmenis Avenue and the underground Line 2 of the Metro whose seven stations serve the southern areas of Athens. Both the Metro line and Vouliagmenis Avenue follow the course of the ancient city road which connected the city of Athens with the demes (suburbs) west of Hymettus and continued to the Sanctuary at Sounion and the mines at Laurion. Full of interesting detail and extensively illustrated, the book explores the history of one of the main arterial routes of Attica- the historical region that encompasses the city of Athens-which was used from antiquity until the present day. The archaeological artefacts illustrated, both in drawings and with photographs, were recovered from excavations in both public and private sites. Translated by British archaeologist Nicola Wardle. Foreword by Michalis A. Tiverios, Emeritus Professor of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki.
Rome, Ostia, Pompeii captures how studies of the Roman city are
currently shifting away from architecture towards a dynamic
understanding of activities within the urban space. This is
becoming a defining feature of new and innovative research on the
nature of ancient urbanism and is underpinned by an understanding
of the relationship between space and society - the two sides of
the core dialectic of the 'Spatial Turn' in cultural studies. In
this volume a new generation of scholars provide detailed case
studies of the three best known cities from antiquity, Pompeii,
Ostia, and Rome, and focus on the movement or flow of a Roman
city's inhabitants and visitors, demonstrating how this movement
contributes to our understanding of the way different elements of
society interacted in space. Through a uniquely broad range of
historical issues, such as the commoditization of movement in
patronage relationships, the appropriation of 'architectural space'
by 'movement space', the importance of movement and traffic in
influencing representations of ancient urbanism and the Roman
citizen, this volume studies movement as it is found both at the
city gate, in the forum, in the portico, and on the street, and as
it is represented in the text and on the page.
The Material Culture of the Built Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World, second volume of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, continues to introduce students of Anglo-Saxon culture to aspects of the realities of the built environment that surrounded Anglo-Saxon peoples through reference to archaeological and textual sources. It considers what structures intruded on the natural landscape the Anglo-Saxons inhabited - roads and tracks, ancient barrows and Roman buildings, the villages and towns, churches, beacons, boundary ditches and walls, grave-markers and standing sculptures - and explores the interrelationships between them and their part in Anglo-Saxon life.
War lay at the heart of life in the classical world, from conflicts between tribes or states to internal or civil wars. Battles were resolved by violent face-to-face encounters: war was a very personal experience. At the same time, warfare and its conduct often had significant and wide-reaching economic, social, or political consequences. The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World offers a critical examination of war and organized violence. The volume's introduction begins with the ancient sources for the writing of war, preceded by broad surveys of warfare in ancient Greece and Rome. Also included herein are chapters analyzing new finds in battlefield archaeology and how the environment affected the ancient practice of war. A second section is comprised of broad narratives of classical societies at war, covering the expanse from classical Greece through to the later Roman Empire. Part III contains thematic discussions that examine closely the nature of battle: what soldiers experienced as they fought; the challenges of conducting war at sea; how the wounded were treated. A final section offers six exemplary case studies, including analyses of the Peloponnesian War, the Second Punic War, and Rome's war with Sasanid Persia. The handbook closes with an epilogue that explores the legacy of classical warfare. Authored by experts in classics, ancient history, and archaeology, this handbook presents a vibrant map of the field of classical warfare studies.
The vast networks of roads throughout the Roman Empire were vital to the expansion of Roman culture, power and influence across the world and one of their principal uses was the transportation of the Legions to strategic bases in the most direct way possible. This book details the planning, construction and maintenance of these road networks, and discusses the different types of Roman road found in areas of Britain, and their many uses. With photographs of surviving roads in Britain and a list of where they are still in use, "Roman Roads" is a perfect introduction to a Roman legacy that exists to this day.
Cityscapes consist of houses, streets, civic buildings, sanctuaries, tombs, monuments and inscriptions created by multiple generations of citizens and foreigners with an interest in the city; they are interpreted and reinterpreted as expressions of past lives, changing relations of power, memories and various identities. The present volume publishes 25 contributions written by scholars specializing in the history and archaeology of western Asia Minor. New and well-known material - literary, epigraphical, numismatic, and archaeological - is presented and analyzed through the twin lenses of memory and identity. The contributions cover more than 1000 years of cultural diversity during changing political systems, from the Lydian and Persian hegemony in the Archaic period through Athenian supremacy and Persian satrapal rule in the Classical period, then autocratic kingship in Hellenistic times until, finally, more than half a millennium of Roman rule. Identities are voiced through several media and visible at many levels of the ancient societies. So are the places of memory - the Lieux de Memoire - and the studies presented here provide new insights into how human beings chose, deliberately or subconsciously, to commemorate their past and their ancestors, and how identity was displayed and expressed under shifting political rule.
Rural Cult Centres in the Hauran: Part of the broader network of the Near East (100 BC-AD 300) challenges earlier scholars' emphasis on the role played by local identities and Romanisation in religion and religious architecture in the Roman Empire through the first comprehensive multidisciplinary analysis of rural cult centres in the Hauran (southern Syria) from the pre-Roman to the Roman period. The Hauran is an interesting and revealing area of study because it has been a geographical cross-point between different cultures over time. Inspired by recent theories on interconnectivity and globalisation, the monograph argues that cult centres, and the Hauran itself, are part of a human network at a macro level on the basis of analysis of archaeological, architectural, sculptural and epigraphic evidence and landscape. As a result of this multi-disciplinary approach, the text also re-assesses the social meaning of these sanctuaries, discusses the identity of the elite group that contributed financially to the building of sanctuaries, and attempts to reconstruct ritual and economic activities in cult centres. This book re-evaluates the significance of contacts between the elite of the Hauran and other cultures of the Near East in shaping cult sites; it includes a first catalogue of rural cult centres of the Hauran in the appendix.
Winifred Lamb was a pioneering archaeologist in the Aegean and Anatolia. She studied classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and subsequently served in naval intelligence alongside J. D. Beazley during the final stages of the First World War. As war drew to a close, Sydney Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, invited Lamb to be the honorary keeper of Greek antiquities. Over the next 40 years she created a prehistoric gallery, marking the university's contribution to excavations in the Aegean, and developed the museum's holdings of classical bronzes and Athenian figure-decorated pottery. Lamb formed a parallel career excavating in the Aegean. She was admitted as a student of the British School at Athens and served as assistant director on the Mycenae excavations under Alan Wace and Carl Blegen. After further work at Sparta and on prehistoric mounds in Macedonia, Lamb identified and excavated a major Bronze Age site at Thermi on Lesbos. She conducted a brief excavation on Chios before directing a major project at Kusura in Turkey. She was recruited for the Turkish language section of the BBC during the Second World War, and after the cessation of hostilities took an active part in the creation of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara.
In recent years, major new archaeological discoveries have redefined the development of towns and cities in the Japanese archipelago. The uncovering of the plans of major port towns such as Sakai, Kusado Sengen and Ichijodani, and the revealing of early phases in the development of cities such as Kamakura and Hakata provide an important new resource in understanding the cultural and economic processes which shaped medieval Japan. This fully illustrated book provides a sampler of these findings for a western audience. The new discoveries from Japan are set in context of medieval archaeology beyond Japan by accompanying essays from leading European specialists. The global significance of Japanese medieval archaeology is assessed through comparing the development of towns in Japan and northern Europe. The medieval period in Japan and northwest Europe saw urban growth with towns not only providing centres of administration but also fostering economic development. The pressures which led to such growth, however, be they political or social, were universal in character. following basic requirements of food, shelter, security and spiritual nourishment, towns provided commercial infrastructures, transport and storage facilities, and the setting for trade, craft specialists and art. Chapters include 'The archaeology of medieval towns in Japan and europe: an introduction' (Brian Ayers and Simon Kaner); 'Permanent urban frameworks ('armature') and economic networks in northern France c.700 - c.1000' (Henri Galinie); 'Medieval urbanism and culture in the cities of the Baltic: with a comparison between Lubeck, Germany, and Sakai, Japan' (Manfred Glaser); 'The development of Hakata as a medieval port town' (Oba Koji); 'The establishment and transformation of Japan's medieval capital, Kamakura' (Oka Yoichiro); 'Ichijodani: the archaeology of a Japanese medieval castle town' (Ono Masatoshi); 'Japanese medieval trading towns: Sakai and Tosaminato' (Richard Pearson); and 'Medieval ceramic production in the aegean, 1100 - 1600 AD: some considerations in an east-west perspective' (Joanita Vroom).
At the Crossroads of Greco-Roman History, Culture, and Religion' brings together recent research from a range of upcoming and well-established scholars to demonstrate the richness of the cross-cultural exchange of ideas around the ancient Mediterranean along with the reception of and continuing dialogues with these ideas in the medieval and modern worlds. The crossroads theme both honours the memory of our late colleague and friend Carin M. C. Green, who published an important book on the cult of Diana-one of whose aspects was Trivia, the goddess of crossroads-and emphasizes how each encounter of new topic or genre forces the reader to pause and think before proceeding down the new path. The contents are arranged accordingly under three headings: (1) Greek philosophy, history, and historiography; (2) Latin literature, history, and historiography; and (3) Greco-Roman material culture, religion, and literature. These papers also coincide in myriad ways across the three headings, tracing themes such as friendship, leadership, and the reception of ideas in the arenas of philosophy, historiography, manuscript studies, poetry, medicine, art, and war. Within this delimited framework, the volume's diversity of topics and approaches to a range of genres in the Greco- Roman world is intended both to appeal to the general scholar with varied interests and to offer students a wide scope through which to consider those genres.
Whereas animals are a frequent depiction on gemstones within the Greek and Roman periods, and play a key role in symbolic representations on these engraved gems, they have generally been overlooked with little in the way of focussed academic study. In the present research, a large group of Greek and Roman gems (intaglios) bearing depictions of animals was selected. The gems are presented through a detailed study of the themes described in an attempt to form a comprehensive approach to the depictions of animals and their significance on Greek and Roman gems. The work examines the associations between animal depictions and the type of gemstone and its believed qualities. The study also discusses the changes in representation of animals on gems compared to other, larger media, and questions the significance of these changes. It is concluded here that as far as animal motifs are concerned, the gems could be accorded with a deeper symbolism, such as good luck, abundance and fertility, health, success, and victory. All these motifs are perceived as capable of weakening hostile forces. The animals engraved can also symbolise nature's abundance and fertility, especially when represented along with their offspring, pasturing and grazing, or accompanied by such fertility symbols as cornucopia, ears of corn, and wine goblets. Other animals are related to certain gods, and even comprise their attributes, and thus it was believed that the owner of an engraved gem was accorded divine protection.
This volume contains eighteen articles dealing with the "reception" of Classical art and architecture in the Scandinavian countries, mainly Denmark, from the Renaissance onwards. This volume is the publication of an interdisciplinary seminar held at the University of Copenhagen 1988 with the participation of archaeologists and art historians.
English text. 361 illustrations, most in colour. The most important phases of Greek civilization are connected with the sea, through voyages of discovery, naval campaigns and ocean trading. Over the years, and because of its key role as a means of communication, the ship also became a subject for artistic creations. Th e history and the evolution of the Greek ship from prehistoric times to the present day are presented through the work of known artists and anonymous craftsmen, executed in a variety of different materials. Ships were carved in stone and marble, incised on bronze, painted on clay or wood, depicted in paintings and murals, embroidered on cloth, printed on paper, offered as votives or worn as amulets. The material included in this book has been selected from museums and collections both in Greece and abroad.
This study is concerned with how the Greek peoples, of primarily the classical period, collectively commemorated the Persian Wars. The data presented here are public monuments, which include both physical and behavioural commemorations. The aim of this work is to reveal and present the methods by which Greeks of the fifth century BC commemorated the Persian Wars. Several trends have drawn attention away from studies presenting commemorative practices in their entirety: the focus on singular monument types, individual commemorative places, a particular commemorating group or specific battle, and an overemphasis on Athenian commemorations. This project works towards rectifying this issue by highlighting the variations in commemorative traditions. This holistic approach to the data, which is inclusive in its remit of commemorative objects, places, and groups, allows for a more complete representation of the commemorative tradition. What emerges from this study is the compilation of all known ancient Greek monuments to commemorate the battles of Marathon, Salamis, Artemisium, Thermopylae and Plataea.
This book is the first to be published from a wider research project, still in progress, about the sanctuaries of Poseidon and Athena on the promontory of Sounion (southeast Attica). The aim of this volume is to present, for the first time, a comprehensive examination and interpretation of a wide selection of unpublished small finds. These last, of different categories and materials, were discovered in the bothroi (pitdeposits) and the landfills; they are set into their contexts. The illustrations of the finds are integrated within the relevant text for easier reference and a detailed catalogue complements the discussion. The limited archaeological records concerning the work in the sanctuaries, conducted by Valerios Stais between 1897-1915, and which still remain the only extensive excavations undertaken, are re-evaluated. The author revisits the two sanctuaries, reviewing the structures within them to cast light on the early phases of their establishment and development, as well as their significance for the socio-economic growth of south east Attica. This is realized by drawing upon the evidence of archaeological data and the ancient literary sources alike. The research thus provides a fresh insight into the early cults, with emphasis on the identity of the deities worshipped at Sounion from the Late Geometric to the dawn of the Classical period. |
![]() ![]() You may like...
End-of-Life Decisions - A Psychosocial…
Maurice D. Steinberg, Stuart J. Youngner
Hardcover
|