Human footprints provide some of the most emotive and tangible evidence of our ancestors. They provide evidence of stature, presence, behaviour and in the case of early hominin footprints, evidence with respect to the evolution of human gait and foot anatomy. While human footprint sites are rare in the geological record the number of sites around the World has increased in recent years, along with the analytical tools available for their study. The aim of this book is to provide a definitive review of these recent developments with specific reference to the increased availability of three-dimensional digital elevation models of human tracks at many key sites. The book is divided into eight chapters. Following an introduction the second chapter reviews modern field methods in human ichnology focusing on the development of new analytical tools. The third chapter then reviews the major footprint sites around the World including details on several unpublished examples. Chapters then follow on the role of geology in the formation and preservation of tracks, on the inferences that can be made from human tracks and the final chapter explores the application of this work to forensic science. Audience: This volume will be of interest to researchers and students across a wide range of disciplines - sedimentology, archaeology, forensics and palaeoanthropology.

Several decades of research into the archaeology of contact in North America have laid the foundations for the global exploration of the archaeology of European colonization. It is significant, however, that archaeologists, unlike historians and geographers, have yet to develop a global account of contact and its consequences. This edited work presents case studies from nations developed from British settlement so as to allow historical archaeologists to examine differences and similarities between the histories of modern colonial societies world-wide. Written by an international team of experts, the work shows that historical archaeologies can assume marvellously different and suggestive forms when examined from the periphery. Furthermore, the imperatives of the periphery could result in different perspectives on North American and European archaeological contexts. The work also examines the role of a global vision of the historical archaeology of colonialism in providing a new basis for the evolution of the 'nation'.

Some years ago a revolution took place in Early Medieval history in Scotland. The Pictish heartland of Fortriu, previously thought to be centred on Perthshire and the Tay found itself relocated through the forensic work of Alex Woolf to the shores of the Moray Firth. The implications for our understanding of this period and for the formation of Scotland are unprecedented and still being worked through. This is the first account of this northern heartland of Pictavia for a more general audience to take in the full implications of this and of the substantial recent archaeological work that has been undertaken in recent years. Part of the The Northern Picts project at Aberdeen University, this book represents an exciting cross disciplinary approach to the study of this still too little understood yet formative period in Scotland's history.

There is no synthetic or comprehensive treatment of any late Roman frontier in the English language to date, despite the political and economic significance of the frontiers in the late antique period. Examining Hadrian's Wall and the Roman frontier of northern England from the fourth century into the Early Medieval period, this book investigates a late frontier in transition from an imperial border zone to incorporation into Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, using both archaeological and documentary evidence. With an emphasis on the late Roman occupation and Roman military, it places the frontier in the broader imperial context. In contrast to other works, Hadrian's Wall and the End of Empire challenges existing ideas of decline, collapse, and transformation in the Roman period, as well as its impact on local frontier communities. Author Rob Collins analyzes in detail the limitanei, the frontier soldiers of the late empire essential for the successful maintenance of the frontiers, and the relationship between imperial authorities and local frontier dynamics. Finally, the impact of the end of the Roman period in Britain is assessed, as well as the influence that the frontier had on the development of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria.

In Modeling Entradas, Clay Mathers brings together leading archaeologists working across the American South to offer a comprehensive, comparative analysis of Spanish entrada assemblages. These expeditions into the interior of the North American continent were among the first contacts between New- and Old-World communities, and the study of how they were organized and the routes they took-based on the artifacts they left behind-illuminates much about the sixteenth-century indigenous world and the colonizing efforts of Spain. Focusing on the entradas of conquistadors Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, Hernando de Soto, Tristan de Luna y Arellano, and Juan Pardo, contributors offer insights from recently discovered sites including encampments, battlefields, and shipwrecks. Using the latest interpretive perspectives, they turn the narrative of conquest from a simple story of domination to one of happenstance, circumstance, and interactions between competing social, political, and cultural worlds. These essays delve into the dynamic relationships between Native Americans and Europeans in a variety of contexts including exchange, disease, conflict, and material production.This volume offers valuable models for evaluating, synthesizing, and comparing early expeditions, showing how object-oriented and site-focused analyses connect to the anthropological dimensions of early contact, patterns of regional settlement, and broader historical trajectories such as globalization. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Fort St. Joseph Revealed is the first synthesis of archaeological and documentary data on one of the most important French colonial outposts in the western Great Lakes region. Located in what is now Michigan, Fort St. Joseph was home to a flourishing fur trade society from the 1680s to 1781. Material evidence of the site-lost for centuries-was discovered in 1998 by volume editor Michael Nassaney and his colleagues, who summarize their extensive excavations at the fort and surrounding areas in these essays. Contributors analyze material remains including animal bones, lead seals, smudge pits, and various other detritus from daily life to reconstruct the foodways, architectural traditions, crafts, trade, and hide-processing methods of the fur trade. They discuss the complex relationship between the French traders and local Native populations, who relied on each other for survival and forged links across their communities through intermarriage and exchange, even as they maintained their own cultural identities. Faunal remains excavated at the site indicate the French quickly adopted Native cuisine, as they were unable to transport perishable goods across long distances. Copper kettles and other imported objects from Europe were transformed by Native Americans into decorative ornaments such as tinkling cones, and French textiles served as a medium of stylistic expression in the multi-ethnic community that developed at Fort St. Joseph. Featuring a thought-provoking look at the award-winning public archaeology program at the site, this volume will inspire researchers with the potential of community-based service-learning initiatives to tap into the analytical power at the interface of history and archaeology. Contributors: Rory J. Becker, Kelley M. Berliner, Jose Antonio Brandao, Cathrine Davis, Erica A. D'Elia, Brock Giordano, RPA, Joseph Hearns, Allison Hoock, Mark W. Hoock, Erika Hartley, Terrance J. Martin, Eric Teixeira Mendes, Michael S. Nassaney, Susan K. Reichert.

In Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena, archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians present case studies that focus on the scope and impact of Scandinavian colonial expansion in the North, Africa, Asia and America as well as within Scandinavia itsself. They discuss early modern thinking and theories made valid and developed in early modern Scandinavia that justified and propagated participation in colonial expansion. The volume demonstrates a broad and comprehensive spectrum of archaeological, anthropological and historical research, which engages with a variation of themes relevant for the understanding of Danish and Swedish colonial history from the early 17th century until today. The aim is to add to the on-going global debates on the context of the rise of the modern society and to revitalize the field of early modern studies in Scandinavia, where methodological nationalism still determines many archaeological and historical studies. Through their theoretical commitment, critical outlook and application of postcolonial theories the contributors to this book shed a new light on the processes of establishing and maintaining colonial rule, hybridization and creolization in the sphere of material culture, politics of resistance, and responses to the colonial claims. This volume is a fantastic resource for graduate students and researchers in historical archaeology, Scandinavia, early modern history and anthropology of colonialism

The American lumber industry helped fuel westward expansion and industrial development during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, building logging camps and sawmills-and abandoning them once the trees ran out. In this book, John Franzen surveys archaeological studies of logging sites across the nation, explaining how material evidence found at these locations illustrates key aspects of the American experience during this era. Franzen delves into the technologies used in cutting and processing logs, the environmental impacts of harvesting timber, the daily life of workers and their families, and the social organization of logging communities. He highlights important trends, such as increasing mechanization and standardization, and changes in working and living conditions, especially the food and housing provided by employers. Throughout these studies, which range from Michigan to California, the book provides access to information from unpublished studies not readily available to most researchers. The Archaeology of the Logging Industry also shows that when archaeologists turn their attention to the recent past, the discipline can be relevant to today's ecological crises. By creating awareness of the environmental deterioration caused by industrial-scale logging during what some are calling the Anthropocene, archaeology supports the hope that with adequate time for recovery and better global-scale stewardship, the human use of forests might become sustainable. A volume in the series the American Experience in Archaeological Perspective, edited by Michael S. Nassaney

This volume explores the changes that occurred during the Viking Age, as Scandinavian societies fell in line with the larger forces that dominated the Insular world and Continental Europe, absorbing the powerful symbiosis of Christianity and monarchy, adapting to the idea of royal lineage and supremacy, and developing a buzzing urbanism coupled with large-scale trade networks. Presenting research on the grand context of the Viking Age alongside localised studies, it contributes to the furthering of collaborations between local and 'outsider' research on the Viking Age. Through a diversity of approaches on the Viking homelands and the wider world of the Vikings, it offers studies of a range of phenomena, including urban and rural settlements; continuity in the use of places as well as new types of places specific to the Viking Age; the social significance of change; the construction and maintenance of social identity both within the 'homelands' and across large territories; ethnicity; and ideas of identity and the creation and recreation of identity both at home and abroad. As such, it will appeal to historians and archaeologists with interests in Viking-Age studies, as well as scholars of Scandinavian studies.

This volume of original chapters written by experts in the field offers a snapshot of how historical built spaces, past cultural landscapes, and archaeological distributions are currently being explored through computational social science. It focuses on the continuing importance of spatial and spatio-temporal pattern recognition in the archaeological record, considers more wholly model-based approaches that fix ideas and build theory, and addresses those applications where situated human experience and perception are a core interest. Reflecting the changes in computational technology over the past decade, the authors bring in examples from historic and prehistoric sites in Europe, Asia, and the Americas to demonstrate the variety of applications available to the contemporary researcher.

Bioarchaeology is the analysis of human remains within an interpretative framework, including a wide range of contextual information. This comprehensive and much-needed manual provides both a starting point and a reference for archaeologists working in this integrative field. The authors cover a range of bioarchaeological methods and theory including: * Ethical issues involved in dealing with human remains, specifically related to NAGPRA * Field and taphonomic clues * Lab and Forensic techniques * Best practices methods for Excavation techniques * Special applications of Bioarchaeology * Theoretical frameworks of Bioarchaeology With case studies from over twenty years each of bioarchaeological research, the authors integrate theoretical and methodological discussion with a wide range of field studies, from different geographic areas, time periods, and data types, to demonstrate the full scope of this important field of study.

During the mid- to late seventeenth century, women in Irish houses from elite backgrounds started to collect recipes, which they recorded in domestic manuscripts. While these manuscripts were made elsewhere at an earlier date, they were an almost entirely new arrival to Ireland in this period, and their sudden proliferation said much about changes taking place in society at large. This book is a detailed study of such manuscripts from the perspective of historical archaeology, which will argue that they are artifacts which clearly demonstrate that a profound series of changes was taking place. The written word penetrated people's daily lives and homes to a degree that it had not in previous periods, and it had a profound influence on how they related to their world, objects, and each other. While this book will address how we can use them as sources for the study of food history and material culture, it is ultimately concerned with the meanings of manuscript recipe books, and specifically, what they say about the individuals and society that made them. The proliferation of these manuscripts signaled a profound change not just in cuisine, but also in the way people thought about and related to food as a form of material culture. Ultimately, this book will argue that these manuscripts are not simply excellent records which can tell us about "material culture" within the early modern house, but that they are a profoundly important type of artifact in their own right. Undertaking research that situates textual objects such as recipe books at the very core of historical archaeology is critical to understanding some of the most significant changes that took place in the early modern world.

The first book published detailing the contributions of a premier female pioneer in science and anthropology Details the many revolutionary scientific advances and techniques developed by Trotter Provides context and background regarding a major, and now well-known, error in one specific measurement in her renowned stature estimation research Examines key overlooked historical aspects in scientific history including scientific error, experiences of sexism, women in science, and other marginalized groups

The first book published detailing the contributions of a premier female pioneer in science and anthropology Details the many revolutionary scientific advances and techniques developed by Trotter Provides context and background regarding a major, and now well-known, error in one specific measurement in her renowned stature estimation research Examines key overlooked historical aspects in scientific history including scientific error, experiences of sexism, women in science, and other marginalized groups

This volume examines the processes and patterns of Araucanian cultural development and resistance to foreign influences and control through the combined study of historical and ethnographic records complemented by archaeological investigation in south-central Chile. This examination is done through the lens of Resilience Theory, which has the potential to offer an interpretive framework for analyzing Araucanian culture through time and space. Resilience Theory describes "the capacity of a system to absorb disturbances and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain the same function." The Araucanians incorporated certain Spanish material culture into their own, rejected others, and strategically restructured aspects of their political, economic, social, and ideological institutions in order to remain independent for over 350 years.

The studies in this volume share a focus on religion in the ancient Mediterranean world: how ritual, myth, spectatorship, and travel reflect the continual interaction of human beings with the richly fictive beings who defined the boundaries of groups, access to the past, and mobility across land and seascapes. They share as well the methodological exploration of the intersection between human sciences, the integration of numerous disciplines around the study of all aspects of human life from the biological to the cultural, and the study of the past. In so doing, they continue a long dialogue that engages with critical models derived from specializations within history, philology, archaeology, sociology, and anthropology, and addresses, increasingly, the potentialities and pitfalls of quantitative and digital analyses. Many of the threads in this long conversation inform these chapters: the comparative project, human social evolution, disciplinary reflexivity, religion as an embedded, functional, and structural system, and the role for agency, networks, and materiality.

Engaging a current controversy important to archaeologists and indigenous communities, Repatriation and Erasing the Past takes a critical look at laws that mandate the return of human remains from museums and laboratories to ancestral burial grounds. Anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss and attorney James Springer offer scientific and legal perspectives on the way repatriation laws impact research.Weiss discusses how anthropologists draw conclusions about past peoples through their study of skeletons and mummies and argues that continued curation of human remains is important. Springer reviews American Indian law and how it helped to shape laws such as NAGPRA (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act). He provides detailed analyses of cases including the Kennewick Man and the Havasupai genetics lawsuits. Together, Weiss and Springer offer a thoughtful critique of repatriation-both the ideology and the laws that support it. Repatriation and Erasing the Past is a helpful assessment for scholars and students who wish to understand both sides of the debate.

Combines both archaeological and textual data

The Hydraulic State explores the hydraulic engineering technology underlying water system constructions of many of the ancient World Heritage sites in South America, the Middle East and Asia as used in their urban and agricultural water supply systems. Using a range of methods and techniques, some new to archaeology, Ortloff analyzes various ancient water systems such as agricultural field system designs known in ancient Peruvian and Bolivian Andean societies, water management at Nabataean Petra, the Roman Pont du Garde water distribution castellum, the Minoan site of Knossos and the water systems of dynastic (and modern) China, particularly the Grand Canal and early water systems designed to control flood episodes. In doing so the book greatly increases our understanding of the hydraulic/hydrological engineering of ancient societies through the application of Complexity Theory, Similitude Theory and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis, as well as traditional archaeological analysis methods. Serving to highlight the engineering science behind water structures of the ancient World Heritage sites discussed, this book will be of interest to archaeologists working on landscape archaeology, urbanism, agriculture and water management.

This unique book brings a fresh interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of ancient Chinese history, creating a historical model for the emergence of cultural mainstays by applying recent dramatic findings in the fields of neuroscience and cultural evolution. The centrality in Chinese culture of a deep reverence for the lives of preceding generations, filial piety, is conventionally attributed to Confucius (551-479 B.C.), who viewed hierarchical family relations as foundational for social order. Here, Porter argues that Confucian conceptions of filiality themselves evolved from a systemized set of behaviors and thoughts, a mental structure, which descended from a specific Neolithic mindset, and that this psychological structure was contoured by particular emotional conditions experienced by China's earliest farmers. Using case study analysis from Neolithic sky observers to the dynastic cultures of the Shang and Western Zhou, the book shows how filial piety evolved as a structure of feeling, a legacy of a cultural predisposition toward particular moods and emotions that were inherited from the ancestral past. Porter also brings new urgency to the topic of ecological grief, linking the distress central to the evolution of the filial structure to its catalyst in an environmental crisis. With a blended multidisciplinary approach combining social neuroscience, cultural evolution, cognitive archaeology, and historical analysis, this book is ideal for students and researchers in neuropsychology, religion, and Chinese culture and history.

A fascinating look at the rich but under-appreciated Eastern sources behind the Narnia book C. S. Lewis was no great traveller but he was a prodigious bibliophile who absorbed the world's traditions of myth, religion, and cosmology. The Chronicles of Narnia are steeped in allusions to the Bible, Greek mythology, and medieval literature, all of which has been amply discussed by critics. But, until now, what has been overlooked are Lewis' significant borrowings from Eastern influences: Arabian Nights and the Persian poets, great travellers from Herodotus and Marco Polo to T. E. Lawrence and Robert Byron, and the famous fictional adventurers Baron Munchausen, Gulliver, and Sindbad. In East of the Wardrobe, Warwick Ball explores hitherto unrecognised and unexpected Eastern aspects in and influences on C. S. Lewis' Narnia books. These include storylines, themes, imagery, religious elements, and even the cities and landscapes of the East, as well as the 'Persian' style adopted by the illustrator of Narnia, Pauline Baynes. Themes borrowed from the great epics can also be found, from The Odyssey and Aeneid to the Kalevala and The Knight in the Panther's Skin. Delve deeper and Christianity is there along with paganism, but so too are Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and even Islamic and Sufi messages. Ultimately, these influences act as a reflection of the complex intellectual world that Lewis inhabited, of both his own unique philosophy and the wider social and intellectual climate of Oxford in the first half of the twentieth century. All readers of Lewis will find in East of the Wardrobe surprising new paths into the world of Narnia.