‘Beautifully written, sumptuously illustrated, constantly fascinating‘ The Times On 26 November 1922 Howard Carter first peered into the newly opened tomb of an ancient Egyptian boy-king. When asked if he could see anything, he replied: ‘Yes, yes, wonderful things.’ In Tutankhamun’s Trumpet, acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes a unique approach to that tomb and its contents. Instead of concentrating on the oft-told story of the discovery, or speculating on the brief life and politically fractious reign of the boy king, Wilkinson takes the objects buried with him as the source material for a wide-ranging, detailed portrait of ancient Egypt – its geography, history, culture and legacy. One hundred artefacts from the tomb, arranged in ten thematic groups, are allowed to speak again – not only for themselves, but as witnesses of the civilization that created them. Never before have the treasures of Tutankhamun been analysed and presented for what they can tell us about ancient Egyptian culture, its development, its remarkable flourishing, and its lasting impact. Filled with surprising insights, unusual details, vivid descriptions and, above all, remarkable objects, Tutankhamun’s Trumpet will appeal to all lovers of history, archaeology, art and culture, as well as all those fascinated by the Egypt of the pharaohs. ‘I’ve read many books on ancient Egypt, but I’ve never felt closer to its people‘ The Sunday Times

From bioarchaeologist and bestselling author of River Kings, a gripping new history of the making of England as a nation, told through six bone chests, stored for over a thousand years in Winchester Cathedral. In December 1642, during the Civil War, Parliamentarian troops stormed the magnificent Winchester Cathedral, intent on destruction. Reaching the choir, its beating heart, the soldiers searched out ten beautifully decorated wooden chests resting high up on the stone screens. Those chests contained some of England’s most venerated, ancient remains: The bones of eight kings, including William Rufus and Cnut the Great – the only Scandinavian king to rule England and a North Sea Empire; three bishops; and a formidable queen, Emma of Normandy. These were the very people who witnessed and orchestrated the creation of the kingdom of Wessex in the 7th century; who lived through the creation of England as a unified country in response to the Viking threat; and who were part and parcel of the Norman conquest. On that day, the soldiers smashed several chests to the ground, using the bones as missiles to shatter the cathedral’s stained glass windows. Afterwards, the clergy scrambled to collect the scattered remains. In 2014, the six remaining chests were reopened. A team of forensic archaeologists, using the latest scientific methods, attempted to identify the contents: They discovered an elaborate jumble of bones, including the remains of two forgotten princes. In The Bone Chests, Cat Jarman builds on this evidence to untangle the stories of the people within. It is an extraordinary and sometimes tragic tale, and a story of transformation. Why these bones? Why there? Can we ever really identify them? In a palimpsest narrative that runs through more than a millennium of British history, it tells the story of both the seekers and the sought, of those who protected the bones and those who spurned them; and of the methods used to investigate.

Numismatic Archaeology of North America is the first book to provide an archaeological overview of the coins and tokens found in a wide range of North American archaeological sites. It begins with a comprehensive and well-illustrated review of the various coins and tokens that circulated in North America with descriptions of the uses for, and human behavior associated with, each type. The book contains practical sections on standardized nomenclature, photographing, cleaning, and curating coins, and discusses the impacts of looting and of working with collectors. This is an important tool for archaeologists working with coins. For numismatists and collectors, it explains the importance of archaeological context for complete analysis.

In 2017 an intense fundraising campaign ensured that what came to be known as 'the Galloway Hoard' was saved for the nation. Since then work has been ongoing to preserve and understand it. Over 5kg of silver bullion, many unique and enigmatic gold objects, the rare preservation of textiles and an unusual range of other materials, make the Hoard the richest collection of Viking-age objects every found in Britain and Ireland. Dr Martin Goldberg and Dr Mary Davis provide the first full description of the Hoard and place the find in a wider historical and geographical context.

In 1527 Hector Boece, the first Principal of King's College Aberdeen, wrote in his extensive History of the Scottish People of an island of rocky crags and prehistoric sheep, which could only be reached through extreme danger to life. It was, he explained, 'the last and outmaist Ile' of Scotland. It was St Kilda. St Kilda breaks the waters of the Atlantic Ocean some 100 miles west of the mainland, and 40 miles west of the Outer Hebridean island of North Uist. On clear days it appears as a dark silhouette on a distant horizon. Approach it, and it resolves into seven shapes - the four islands of Hirta, Boreray, Soay and Dun, and three towering sea stacks. It is an enigmatic and awe-inspiring landscape, a starkly beautiful vision of 'life on the edge' which has fascinated everyone from travellers, antiquarians and conservationists to writers, film crews and tourists. And, perhaps as a result, it is one of the most mythologised and misunderstood places on earth. Archaeologists Angela Gannon and George Geddes have spent over nine months living and working on St Kilda, and have been part of a team which has been researching its complex and remarkable history for more than a decade. In this new book they turn the popular perception of the archipelago on its head. St Kilda, they argue, has never existed in total isolation, but has always been linked to a network of communities scattered across the north western seaboard and the Highlands of Scotland. The Last and Outmost Isle pulls St Kilda back from the 'end of the world' to tell a compelling story of triumph over geographical adversity. What makes these islands so special is not their distance from 'civilisation', but rather their enduring capacity to remain a living, connected part of Scotland over the course of some three thousand years.

This volume brings together archaeologists working in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia to construct a new prehistory of the upper Amazon, outlining cultural developments from the late third millennium B.C. to the Inca Empire of the sixteenth century A.D. Encompassing the forested tropical slopes of the eastern Andes as well as Andean drainage systems that connect to the Amazon River basin, this vast region has been unevenly studied due to the restrictions of national borders, remote site locations, and limited interpretive models.The Archaeology of the Upper Amazon unites and builds on recent field investigations that have found evidence of extensive interaction networks along the major rivers-Santiago, Maranon, Huallaga, and Ucayali. Chapters detail how these rivers facilitated the movement of people, resources, and ideas between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands. Contributors demonstrate that the upper Amazon was not a peripheral zone but a locus for complex societal developments. Reaching across geographical, cultural, and political boundaries, this volume shows that the trajectory of Andean civilization cannot be fully understood without a nuanced perspective on the region's diverse patterns of interaction with the upper Amazon.

Since the days of conquistador Hernan Cortes, rumours have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden deep in the Honduran interior. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and warn the legendary city is cursed: to enter it is a death sentence. They call it the Lost City of the Monkey God. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artefacts and an electrifying story of having found the City - but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a single-engine plane carrying a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but a lost civilization. To confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, plagues of insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. They emerged from the jungle with proof of the legend... and the curse. They had contracted a horrifying, incurable and sometimes lethal disease. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with history, adventure and dramatic twists of fortune, The Lost City of the Monkey God is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.

This volume summarizes the remarkably diverse archaeological discoveries made during the past half century of investigations at the site of St. Mary's City, the first capital of Maryland and one of the earliest European settlements in America. Founded in 1634, the city had disappeared by 1750, yet the archaeology documented in Unearthing St. Mary's City reveals its untold history.Contributors to this volume review new research approaches and methods developed recently at Historic St. Mary's City. They study the archaeology, architecture, and people of the lively seventeenth-century colonial hub. They also explore the landscapes of agriculture, enslavement, and remembrance that developed at the site in the centuries after the capital's relocation to Annapolis. In their chapters, contributors delve into subjects such as soil analysis, ceramics, diet, forts, burials, plantations, state houses, tenants, tobacco pipes, gaming, and the education of women. The lands along the Chesapeake Bay have witnessed a vast range of human experiences, and this book highlights the lives of peoples of European, Native American, and African origins who lived on this site over a span of four centuries. Their stories illuminate the multilayered nature of this important place and the broader Chesapeake region and serve as a testament to the potential and power of historical archaeology.

At its height between AD 1050 and 1275, the city of Cahokia was the largest settlement of the Mississippian culture, acting as an important trade center and pilgrimage site. While the influence of Cahokian culture on the development of monumental architecture, maize-based subsistence practices, and economic complexity throughout North America is undisputed, new research in this volume reveals a landscape of influence of the regions that had and may not have had a relationship with Cahokia. Contributors find evidence for Cahokia's hegemony its social, cultural, ideological, and economic influence in artifacts, burial practices, and religious iconography uncovered at far-flung sites across the Eastern Woodlands. Case studies include Kinkaid in the Ohio River Valley, Schild in the Illinois River Valley, Shiloh in Tennessee, and Aztalan in Wisconsin. These essays also show how, with Cahokia's abandonment, the diaspora occurred via the Mississippi River and extended the culture's impact southward. Cahokia in Context demonstrates that the city's cultural developments during its heyday and the impact of its demise produced profound and lasting effects on many regional cultures. This close look at Cahokia's influence offers new insights into the movement of people and ideas in prehistoric America, and it honors the final contributions of Charles McNutt, one of the most respected scholars in southeastern archaeology.

Southern Anthropological Society James Mooney Award. As Native American history is primarily studied through the lens of European contact, the story of Virginia's Powhatans has traditionally focused on the English arrival in the Chesapeake. This has left a deeper indigenous history largely unexplored--a longer narrative beginning with the Algonquians' construction of places, communities, and the connections in between. The Powhatan Landscape breaks new ground by tracing Native placemaking in the Chesapeake from the Algonquian arrival to the Powhatan's clashes with the English. Martin Gallivan details how Virginia Algonquians constructed riverine communities alongside fishing grounds and collective burials and later within horticultural towns. Ceremonial spaces, including earthwork enclosures within the center place of Werowocomoco, gathered people for centuries prior to 1607. Even after the violent ruptures of the colonial era, Native people returned to riverine towns for pilgrimages commemorating the enduring power of place. For today's American Indian communities in the Chesapeake, this reexamination of landscape and history represents a powerful basis from which to contest narratives and policies that have previously denied their existence. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson.

Chichen Itza, the legendary capital and trading hub of the late Maya civilization, continues to fascinate visitors and researchers with unanswered questions about its people, rulers, rituals, and politics. Addressing many of these current debates, Landscapes of the Itza asks when the city's construction was completed, what the purposes of its famous pyramid and other buildings were, how the city's influence was felt in smaller neighboring settlements, and whether the city maintained strict territorial borders. Special attention is given to the site's visual culture, including its architecture, ceramics, sculptures, and murals. This volume is a much-needed update on recent archaeological and art historical work being done at Chichen Itza, offering new ways of understanding the site and its role in the Yucatan landscape.

Beginning with Frank Hamilton Cushing's famous excavations at Key Marco in 1896, a large and diverse collection of animal carvings, dugout canoes, and other wooden objects has been uncovered from Florida's watery landscapes. Iconography and Wetsite Archaeology of Florida's Watery Realms explores new discoveries and reexamines existing artifacts to reveal the influential role of water in the daily lives of Florida's early inhabitants. Among other topics, contributors compare anthropomorphic wooden carvings such as the Key Marco cat statuette to figures found elsewhere in the Southeast. They use ethnographic data to argue that Newnans Lake was once an intersection between major watersheds and that the more than 100 canoes unearthed there likely facilitated travel throughout the peninsula. Other sites discussed include Fort Center, Chassahowitzka Springs, Weedon Island Preserve, Pineland, and Hontoon Island. Essays address the challenges of excavating and preserving perishable artifacts from waterlogged sites, especially those in saltwater environments, and highlight the value of revisiting museum collections to ask new questions and employ new analytical techniques. This volume demonstrates that, despite the difficulties faced by archaeologists working with saturated deposits, these sites are vital for understanding Florida's prehistory. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Pathways to Complexity synthesizes a wealth of new archaeological data to illuminate the origins of Maya civilization and the rise of Classic Maya culture. In this volume, prominent Maya scholars argue that the development of social, religious, and economic complexity began during the Middle Preclassic period (1000-300 BC), hundreds of years earlier than previously thought. Contributors reveal that villages were present in parts of the lowlands by 1000 BC. Combining recent discoveries from the northern lowlands--an area often neglected in other volumes-and the southern lowlands, the collection then traces the emergence of sociopolitical inequality and complexity in all parts of the Yucatan Peninsula over the course of the Middle Preclassic period. They show that communities evolved in different ways due to influences such as geographical location, ceramic exchange, shell ornament production, agricultural strategy, religious ritual, ideology, and social rankings. These varied pathways to complexity developed over half a millennium and culminated in the institution of kingship by the Late Preclassic period. Presenting exciting work on a dynamic and misunderstood time period, Pathways to Complexity demonstrates the importance of a broad, comparative approach to understanding Preclassic Maya civilization and will serve as a foundation for future research and interpretation.

The relationship of hunter-gatherer societies to the built environment is often overlooked or characterized as strictly utilitarian in archaeological research. Taking on deeper questions of cultural significance and social inheritance, this volume offers a more robust examination of houses as not only places of shelter but also of memory, history, and social cohesion within these communities. Bringing together case studies from Europe, Asia, and North and South America, More Than Shelter from the Storm utilizes a diverse array of methodologies including radiocarbon dating, geoarchaeology, refitting studies, and material culture studies to reframe the conversation around hunter-gatherer houses. Discussing examples of built structures from the Pleistocene through Late Holocene periods, contributors investigate how these societies created a sense of home through symbolic decoration, ritual, and transformative interaction with the landscape. Demonstrating that meaningful relationships with architecture are not limited to sedentary societies that construct permanent houses, the essays in this volume highlight the complexity of mobile cultures and demonstrate the role of place-making and the built environment in structuring their worldviews.

Imperial frontiers are a fascinating stage for studying the interactions of people, institutions, and their environments. In one of the first books to explore the Inka frontier through archaeology, Sonia Alconini examines part of present-day Bolivia that was once a territory at the edge of the Inka empire. Along this frontier, one of the New World's most powerful polities came into repeated conflict with tropical lowland groups that it could never subject to its rule. Using extensive field research, Alconini explores the multifaceted socioeconomic processes that transpired in the frontier region. Her unprecedented study shows how the Inka empire exercised control over vast expanses of land and peoples in a territory located hundreds of miles away from the capital city of Cusco, and how people on the frontier navigated the cultural and environmental divide that separated the Andes and the Amazon.

"A cornucopia of our weirdest and most wonderful archaeological sites and artefacts. They make you feel proud to be a citizen of these gloriously intriguing isles." Sir Tony Robinson An Ice Age cannibal’s skull cup, a hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold, a seventeenth century witch bottle… anthropologist Mary-Ann Ochota unearths more than 70 of Britain's most intriguing ancient places and artefacts and explores the mysteries behind them. Britain is full of ancient wonders: not grand like the Egyptian pyramids, but small, strange places and objects that hint at a deep and enduring relationship with the mystic. Secret Britain offers an expertly guided tour of Britain’s most fascinating mysteries: archaeological sites and artefacts that take us deep into the lives of the many different peoples who have inhabited the island over the millennia. Illustrated with beautiful photographs, the wonders include buried treasure, stone circles and geoglyphs, outdoor places of worship, caves filled with medieval carvings, and enigmatic tools to divine the future. Explore famous sites such as Stonehenge and Glastonbury, but also discover: The Lindow Man bog body, showing neatly trimmed hair and manicured fingernails despite having been killed 2,000 years ago The Uffington White Horse, a horse-shaped geoglyph maintained by an unbroken chain of people for 3,000 years A roman baby’s bronze cockerel, an underworld companion for a two-year-old who died sometime between AD 100–200 St Leonard’s Ossuary, home to 1,200 skulls and a vast stack of human bones made up of around 2,000 people who died from the 1200s to the 1500s The Wenhaston Doom painting, an extraordinary medieval depiction of the Last Judgement painted on a chancel arch Explore Britain’s secret history and discover why these places still resonate today.

In the volume The Southwest Pacific and Oceanian Regions, case studies from Alofi, Vanuatu, the Marianas, Hawai`i, Guam, and Taiwan compare the development of colonialism across different islands. Contributors discuss human settlement before the arrival of Dutch, French, British, and Spanish explorers, tracing major exchange routes that were active as early as the tenth century. They highlight rarely examined sixteenth- and seventeenth-century encounters between indigenous populations and Europeans and draw attention to how cross-cultural interaction impacted the local peoples of Oceania. The volume The Asia-Pacific Region looks at colonialism in the Philippines, China, Japan, and Vietnam, emphasizing the robust trans-regional networks that existed before European contact. Southeast Asia had long been influenced by Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim traders in ways that helped build the region's ethnic and political divisions. Essays show the complexity and significance of maritime trade during European colonization by investigating galleon wrecks in Manila, Japan's porcelain exports, and Spanish coins discovered off China's coast. Packed with archaeological and historical evidence from both land and underwater sites, impressive in geographical scope, and featuring perspectives of scholars from many different countries and traditions, these volumes illuminate the often misunderstood nature of early colonialism in Asia-Pacific.

The North American fur trade left an enduring material legacy of the complex interactions between natives and Europeans. From the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, the demand for pelts and skins transformed America, helping to fuel the Age of Discovery and, later, Manifest Destiny. By synthesizing its social, economic, and ideological effects, Nassaney reveals how this extractive economy contributed to the American experience. Including research from historical archaeologists and a case study of the Fort St. Joseph trading post in Michigan, this innovative work highlights the fur trade's role in the settlement of the continent and its impact, persisting even today, on social relations.

The Cold War remains one of the twentieth century's defining events, possessing broad political, social, and material implications that continue to have impact. In this book, Todd Hanson presents nine case studies of archaeological investigations conducted at famous-and some not so famous-historic American Cold War sites, including Bikini Atoll, the Nevada Test Site, and the Cuban sites of the Soviet Missile Crisis. By examining nuclear weapons test sites, missile silos, submarine bases, fallout shelters, and more, Hanson illustrates how archaeology can help strip away myths, secrets, and political rhetoric to better inform our understanding of the conflict's formative role in the making of the contemporary American landscape. Addressing modern ramifications of the Cold War, Hanson also looks at the preservation of atomic heritage sites, the atomic tourism phenomenon, and the struggles of atomic veterans.

"Interesting, strong, and timely. Everyday Life Matters is clearly and sharply written, and by targeting the archaeology of everyday life as an emerging field explicitly, it identifies and fills a real void in the field."--John Robb, author of The Early Mediterranean Village "An absolute must-read. Robin's thorough understanding of commoners and how they occasionally interacted with elites provides a solid foundation for social reconstruction."--Payson Sheets, coeditor of Surviving Sudden Environmental Change While the study of ancient civilizations most often focuses on temples and royal tombs, a substantial part of the archaeological record remains hidden in the understudied day-to-day lives of artisans, farmers, hunters, and other ordinary people of the ancient world. Various chores completed during the course of a person's daily life, though at first glance trivial, have a powerful impact on society as a whole. Everyday Life Matters develops general methods and theories for studying the applications of everyday life in archaeology, anthropology, and a wide range of related disciplines. Examining the two-thousand-year history (800 B.C.-A.D. 1200) of the ancient farming community of Chan in Belize, Cynthia Robin's ground-breaking work explains why the average person should matter to archaeologists studying larger societal patterns. Robin argues that the impact of the mundane can be substantial, so much so that the study of a polity without regard to its citizenry is incomplete. Refocusing attention away from the Maya elite and offering critical analysis of daily life elucidated by anthropological theory, Robin engages us to consider the larger implications of the commonplace and to rethink the constitution of human societies by ordinary people living routine lives.