This volume provides analytical definitions and discussions of the key concepts in archaeology. For each of the more than seventy terms covered, the dictionary provides an examination of the development of the term and an analysis of the key thinkers and writing involved in its development. Each entry concludes with a bibliographical essay designed to cover the original sources of vital importance in the development of the concept---sources such as review articles that provide access to a sizable portion of the literature related to the concept, and a selection of recent publications representative of current directions in research. Additional access to the material covered is provided by an index of concepts and terms and an index of names. This is the first reference dictionary to deal with the concepts in archaeology and, as such, will be useful to scholars and students in the field, as well as libraries supporting research in archaeology.

Maya hieroglyphic writing may seem impossibly opaque to beginning students, but scholar Scott A. J. Johnson presents it as a regular and comprehensible system in this engaging, easy-to-follow textbook. The only comprehensive introduction designed specifically for those new to the study, "Translating Maya Hieroglyphs" uses a hands-on approach to teach learners the current state of Maya epigraphy.

Johnson shows readers step by step how to translate ancient Maya glyphs. He begins by describing how to break down a Mayan text into individual glyphs in the correct reading order, and then explains the different types of glyphs and how they function in the script. Finally, he shows how to systematically convert a Mayan inscription into modern English.

Not simply a reference volume, "Translating Maya Hieroglyphs" is pedagogically arranged so that it functions as an introductory foreign-language textbook. Chapters cover key topics, including spelling, dates and numbers, basic grammar, and verbs. Formal linguistic information is accessibly explained, while worksheets and exercises complement and reinforce the material covered in the text. Glyph blocks and phrases drawn from actual monuments illustrate the variety and scribal virtuosity of Maya writing.

The Maya writing system has not been fully deciphered. Throughout the text, Johnson outlines and explains the outstanding disputes among Mayanists. At the end of each chapter, he offers sources for further reading. Helpful appendices provide quick reference to vocabulary, glyph meanings, and calendrical data for students undertaking a translation.

The study of Maya glyphs has long been an arcane subject known only to a few specialists. This book will change that. Taking advantage of the great strides scholars have made in deciphering hieroglyphs in the past four decades, "Translating Maya Hieroglyphs" brings this knowledge to a broader audience, including archaeologists and budding epigraphers.

This study aims to elucidate concepts of castle in the Netherlands, England and Ireland in both past en present times. The first part of the book examines current, respectively, academic, national and personal appropriations of 'castle'; the second part moves into the past, juxtaposing elite culture and the spatial organisation of 16th and 17th century domestic architecture.

This volume contributes to the emerging topic of social paleoethnobotany with a series of papers exploring dynamic aspects of past social life, particularly the day-to-day practices and politics of procuring, preparing, and consuming plants. The contributors to this volume illustrate how one can bridge differences between the natural and social sciences through the more socially-focused interpretations of botanical datasets. The chapters in this volume draw on a diversity of plant-derived datasets, macrobotanical, microbotanical, and molecular, which contribute to general paleoethnobotanical practice today. They also carefully consider the contexts in which the plant remains were recovered. These studies illustrate that the richest interpretations come from projects that are able to consider the widest range of data types, particularly as they aim to move beyond simple descriptions of food items and environmental settings. The authors in this volume address several themes including: the collection of wild resources, the domestication of crops and spread of agriculture, the role of plant remains in questions regarding domestic life, ritual, and gender as well as the broader implications of a socially-engaged paleoethnobotany. These studies point a path forward for the constantly evolving field of paleoethnobotany, one that is methodologically rigorous and theoretically engaged. Together, these papers shed light on ways in which the specialized analysis of plant remains can contribute to theory building and advancing archaeological understanding of past lifeways.

Archaeological chemistry is a subject of great importance to the study and methodology of archaeology. This comprehensive text covers the subject with a full range of case studies, materials, and research methods. With twenty years of experience teaching the subject, the authors offer straightforward coverage of archaeological chemistry, a subject that can be intimidating for many archaeologists who do not already have a background in the hard sciences. With clear explanations and informative illustrations, the authors have created a highly approachable text, which will help readers overcome that intimidation. Topics covered included: Materials (rock, pottery, bone, charcoal, soils, metals, and others), Instruments (microscopes, NAA, spectrometers, mass spectrometers, GC/MS, XRF & XRD, Case Studies (Provinience, Sediments, Diet Reconstruction, Past Human Movement, Organic Residues). The detailed coverage and clear language will make this useful as an introduction to the study of archaeological chemistry, as well as a useful resource for years after that introduction.

Theatre and Dictatorship in the Luso-Hispanic World explores the discourses that have linked theatrical performance and prevailing dictatorial regimes across Spain, Portugal and their former colonies. These are divided into three different approaches to theatre itself - as cultural practice, as performance, and as textual artifact - addressing topics including obedience, resistance, authoritarian policies, theatre business, exile, violence, memory, trauma, nationalism, and postcolonialism. This book draws together a diverse range of methodological approaches to foreground the effects and constraints of dictatorship on theatrical expression and how theatre responds to these impositions.

This book presents 18 essays by leading scholars covering mortuary analysis, the archaeology of foraging and agricultural societies, cultural evolution, and archaeological method and theory, which transcend the processual/postprocessual debate in archaeology and provide examples of how archaeologists think about, and go about, studying the past. As archaeology encounters the 21st century, debate over the nature of the discipline dominates professional discourse. Archaeologists are embattled over isms: processualism, postprocessualism, scientism, and humanism are ubiquitous buzzwords in the literature. Yet archaeology is a craft practiced by individuals, learned from and influenced by other individuals. Sometimes a peson, through sheer force of intellectual spirit, rises above the debate to make a mark on the field in ways that cross out schools, paradigms, and factions. It is fitting to look back at the influence one such individual has had on archaeological methods, theory, data collection, and syntheses over the last half century. This volume draws on the experience of students and colleagues who worked with and were strongly influenced by James A. Brown's approach to the past. The volume is divided into five categories, each reflecting one distinctive facet of Brown's affect on archaeology: mortuary analysis, foraging and horticultural societies, complex agriculturalists, proto-historic and historic societies, and method and theory. These diverse categories, with articles by archaeologists of many backgrounds, are drawn together by the threads of Brown's intellectual legacy. Not all authors here are in agreement with Brown's views on their subjects, but all acknolwedge that his work in the area sets a standard that needs to be met if one is to succeed.

As people move through life, they continually shift affiliation from one position to another, dependent on the wider contexts of their interactions. Different forms of material culture may be employed as affiliations shift, and the connotations of any given set of artifacts may change. In this volume the authors explore these overlapping spheres of social affiliation. Social actors belong to multiple identity groups at any moment in their life. It is possible to deploy one or many potential labels in describing the identities of such an actor. Two main axes exist upon which we can plot experiences of social belonging - the synchronic and the diachronic. Identities can be understood as multiple during one moment (or the extended moment of brief interaction), over the span of a lifetime, or over a specific historical trajectory.

From the Introduction

The international contributions each illuminate how the various identifiers of race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, class, gender, personhood, health, and/or religion are part of both material expressions of social affiliations, and transient experiences of identity. The Archaeology of Plural and Changing Identities: Beyond Identification will be of great interest to archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, curators and other social scientists interested in the mutability of identification through material remains.

In many facets of Western culture, including archaeology, there remains a legacy of perceiving gender divisions as natural, innate, and biological in origin. This belief follows that men are naturally pre-disposed to public, intellectual pursuits, while women are innately designed to care for the home and take care of children. In the interpretation of material culture, accepted notions of gender roles are often applied to new findings: the dichotomy between the domestic sphere of women and the public sphere of men can color interpretations of new materials. In this innovative volume, the contributors focus explicitly on analyzing the materiality of historic changes in the domestic sphere around the world. Combining a global scope with great temporal depth, chapters in the volume explore how gender ideologies, identities, relationships, power dynamics, and practices were materially changed in the past, thus showing how they could be changed in the future.

Traditionally, Historical Archaeology has had a North American or European stance, focusing on the interplay between historical documents and the archaeological record. For Africa, with its non-traditional historical sources, this interplay is not as applicable. These sources also inform the period of contact with Europeans, during which the shape of the modern continent was inexorably defined. By focusing on such sources, it becomes possible to present historical understandings which access African experiences with outsiders and other African populations.

This volume explores the range of interactions between the historical sources and archaeology that are available on the African continent. The contributions, written by a range of experts on different aspects of African archaeology, present the underlying issues such as:
- The conflict and collaboration in the foundation of modern Africa;
- African trading communities maintaining their independence from Europe;
- The impacts of the Atlantic slave trade.

This represents the first consideration of historical archaeology over the African continent as a whole and therefore provides an important review for African archaeologists and historians. This seminal volume also explores Africa's place in global systems of thought and economic development for historical archaeologists and historians alike.

The Caucasian Archaeology of the Holy Land investigates the complete corpus of available literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence of the Armenian, Georgian and Caucasian Albanian Christian communities' activity in the Holy Land during the Byzantine and the Early Islamic periods. This book presents the first integrated approach to a wide variety of literary sources and archaeological evidence, previously unpublished or revised. The study explores the place of each of these Caucasian communities in ancient Palestine through a synthesis of literary and material evidence and seeks to understand the interrelations between them and the influence they had on the national churches of the Caucasus.

Frankfurt/M., Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien. This volume relates to a comparative research of historical developments and structures in North Central Europe, which is directed to the exploration of an early medieval design of this historical region beyond the Roman Empire's culture frontier. One point of the editorial concern thus was building bridges to overcome long existing dividing lines built up by divergent perspectives of previous scientific traditions. In addition, the recent come back of national histories and historiographies call for a scrutiny on the suitability of postulated ethnicities for the postsocialist nation building process. As a result, the collected papers - presented partly in English, partly in German - have a critical look into various influences, responsible for the realization of images of the past as of scientific strategies. Contents: Jerzy Gassowski: Is Ethnicity Tangible? - Sebastian Brather: Die Projektion des Nationalstaats in die Fruhgeschichte. Ethnische Interpretationen in der Archaologie - Przemyslaw Urbanczyk: Do We Need Archaeology of Ethnicity? - Klavs Randsborg: The Making of Early Scandinavian History. Material Impressions - George Indruszewski: Early Medieval Ships as Ethnic Symbols and the Construction of a Historical Paradigm in Northern and Central Europe - Volker Schmidt: Die Prillwitzer Idole. Rethra und die Anfange der Forschung im Land Stargard - Babette Ludowici: Magdeburg als Hauptort des ottonischen Imperiums. Bemerkungen zum Beitrag von Archaologie und Kunstgeschichte zur Konstruktion eines Geschichtsbildes - Arne Schmid-Hecklau: Deutsche Forschungen zur 'Reichsburg' Meien. Ein Uberblick - Stine Wiell: Derdanisch-deutsche Streit um die groen Moorwaffenfunde aus der Eisenzeit. Ansichten zur Vor und Fruhgeschichte aus dem 19. und 20. Jahrhundert - Christian Lubke: Barbaren, Leibeigene, Kolonisten: Zum Bild der mittelalterlichen Slaven in der deutschen Geschichtswissenschaft - Matthias Hardt: 'Schmutz und trages Hinbruten bei allen'? Beispiele fur den Blick der alteren deutschen Forschung auf slawische landlich-agrarische Siedlungen des Mittelalters - Elaine Smollin: The Aesthetics and Ethics of Archaeology: Lithuania 1900-1918: The Intersection of Baltic, German and Slavic Cultures - Derek Fewster: Visionen nationaler Groe. Mittelalterperzeption, Ethnizitat und Nationalismus in Finnland, 1905-1945 - Leszek Pawel Slupecki: Why Polish Historiography has Neglected the Role of Pagan Slavic Mythology - Dittmar Schorkowitz: Rekonstruktionen des Nationalen im postsowjetischen Raum. Beobachtungen zur Permanenz des Historischen.