Kavousi I is the initial volume of the Kavousi Excavation Series, which presents the final report of the Kavousi Project, a program of archaeological investigation near the modern village of Kavousi in eastern Crete. Subsequent volumes will publish the results of the 1987-1992 excavations at the Vronda and Kastro sites in the Siteia Mountains overlooking Kavousi and of the cleaning and new study of the excavations of Harriet Boyd in 1900 and 1901. This volume, Kavousi I: The Archaeological Survey of the Kavousi Region, provides a comprehensive look at the topography of the area, its natural resources, and the way in which the local people interacted with them over time, as shown in the changing pattern of settlement. It sets the stage for the report on the excavations and provides an introduction to the local soils and to the pottery classification used by the excavators.

Bir Umm Fawakhir 3 is the last of the final reports on the archaeological surveys and excavations at the Byzantine site of Bir Umm Fawakhir in the central Eastern Desert of Egypt; it remains the only intensively studied ancient Egyptian gold-mining operation, and one of very few completely mapped towns of the era. Along with other recent excavations and surveys, it demonstrates the Byzantine empire's continuing activities in the Eastern Desert, not abandonment, as had long been believed. Four survey seasons, in 1992, 1993, 1996, and 1997, succeeded in dating the site to the fifth- and sixth-century Coptic/Byzantine period, mapping in detail the main settlement and one of the fourteen outlying settlements, and determining that it was a gold-mining operation. The goals of the 1999 excavations and the 2001 study season reported in this volume were to answer questions about the site and its occupants that surveys alone could not address, primarily the history of occupation of the site and the status of its occupants. The 1999 excavations of a sample of the houses and middens were undertaken to provide more information about the occupants and their well-being or lack thereof. Two houses, two middens, and one single-room outbuilding were excavated. Like the earlier Roman-period stone quarries in the desert, the miners seem to have worked intermittently and abandoned, or nearly so, the sitebetween mining campaigns. The pottery study extends the corpora published with previous seasons, and the chapter on small finds discusses the wine jar dockets (dipinti), coins, jewelry, emeralds, metal, glass, and other objects. Analysis of the faunal material during the 2001 study season supports the picture of a town well provided with meat, not only sheep and goats but also an unusual amount of beef. The volume is rounded out by an archaeobotanical study and the conservators' reports, including the construction of a barricade at the entrance to the site to help preserve it. A final chapter summarizes what can now be said about life and work at ancient Bir Umm Fawakhir.

At a time early in the twenty-first century when the nature and future of British farming is very much a matter of public debate, this volume presents an up-to-date overview of the subject between one and two thousand years ago. Its importance lies in providing an authoritative and scholarly synthesis of a great deal of research--environmental, archaeological and historical --which cumulatively makes a significant shift in the understanding of Britain and its farming peoples, of the British landscape and of farming itself.

Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium provides an account of the changing world of archaeological theory and a challenge to more traditional narratives of archaeological thought. It charts the emergence of the new emphasis on relations as well as engaging with other current theoretical trends and the thinkers archaeologists regularly employ. Bringing together different strands of global archaeological theory and placing them in dialogue, the book explores the similarities and differences between different contemporary trends in theory while also highlighting potential strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. Written in a way to maximise its accessibility, in direct contrast to many of the sources on which it draws, Archaeological Theory in the New Millennium is an essential guide to cutting-edge theory for students and for professionals wishing to reacquaint themselves with this field.

This publication includes a detailed discussion of the pottery, the finds and their parallels, and a reconstruction of both the excavation and stratigraphy of Tholos Gamma in the Bronze Age cemetery of Phourni at Archanes. This evidence is used to give the historical outline of the tomb from its foundation in Early Minoan IIA until its excavation in 1972. Several problems concerning Prepalatial mortuary practices are discussed, with particular reference to Tholos Gamma and the new evidence resulting from the study of this funerary assemblage. The artefacts from the tomb include pottery, metal objects, marble figurines, other small finds, and skeletal remains.

Situated between myth and history, the Shang has been hailed both as China's first historical dynasty and as one of the world's primary civilizations. This book is an up-to-date synthesis of the archaeological, palaeographic and transmitted textual evidence for the Shang polity at Anyang (c.1250-1050 BCE). Roderick Campbell argues that violence was not the antithesis of civilization at Shang Anyang, but rather its foundation in war and sacrifice. He explores the social economy of practices and beliefs that produced the ancestral order of the Shang polity. From the authority of posthumously deified kings, to the animalization of human sacrificial victims, the ancestral ritual complex structured the Shang world through its key institutions of war, sacrifice, and burial. Mediated by hierarchical lineages, participation in these practices was basic to being Shang. This volume, which is based on the most up-to-date evidence, offers comprehensive and cutting-edge insight into the Chinese Bronze Age civilization.

A detailed archaeological study of life in Egypt's Eastern desert during the Roman period by a leading scholar Rome in Egypt's Eastern Desert is a two-volume set collecting Helene Cuvigny's most important articles on Egypt's Eastern desert during the Roman period. The excavations that she has directed have uncovered a wealth of material, including tens of thousands of texts written on pottery fragments (ostraca). Some of these are administrative texts, but many more are correspondence, both official and private, written by and to the people (mostly but not all men) who lived and worked in these remote and harsh environments, supported by an elaborate network of defense, administration and supply that tied the entire region together. The contents of Rome in Egypt's Eastern Desert have all been published earlier in peer-reviewed venues, but almost entirely in French. All of the contributions have been translated by the editor and brought up to date with respect to bibliography and in some cases significantly rewritten by the author, in order to take account of the enormous amount of new material discovered in the intervening time and subsequent publications. A full index makes this body of work far more accessible than it was before. This book brings together thirty years of detailed study of this material, conjuring in vivid detail the lived experience of those who inhabited these forts--often through their own expressive language--and the realia of desert geography, military life, sex, religion, quarry operations, and imperial administration in the Roman world.

This third volume in the series is devoted to presenting and interpreting the metallurgical evidence from Ban Chiang, northeast Thailand, in the broader regional context. Because the production of metal artifacts must engage numerous communities in order to acquire and process the raw materials and then create and distribute products, understanding metals in past societies requires a regional perspective. This is the first book to compile, summarize, and synthesize the English-language copper production and exchange evidence available so far from Thailand and Laos in a thorough and systematic manner. Chapters by Vincent C. Pigott and Thomas O. Pryce examine in detail the mining and smelting of copper in several sites, and the lead-isotope evidence for the sourcing of artifacts found in two of the consumption sites included in the study. Another chapter compiles the metal consumption evidence, including results of technical studies on prehistoric metals recovered from more than 35 sites excavated in central and northeast Thailand. This compilation demonstrates important regional variation in chaînes opératoires, allowing explication and synthesis of the technological traditions found in this region during prehistory. The review and compilation sheds new light on the social and economic context for the adoption and development of metallurgy in this part of the world. One key insight is that Thailand presents a case for a "community-driven bronze age," where the choices of peaceful local communities, not elites or centralized political entities, shaped how metal technological systems were implemented in this region. This fresh perspective on the role of metallurgy in ancient societies contributes to an expanded global understanding of how humans have engaged metal technologies, contributing to debunking the conventional paradigm that emphasized a top-down view and a standardized metallurgical sequence, a paradigm that has dominated archeometallurgical studies for the last century or more. Thai Archaeology Monograph Series, 2C University Museum Monograph, 153

This integrated collection of new and newly revised essays by archaeologist Timothy Earle represents both a personal journey and a growing synthesis of how political economies emerged in human societies. Drawing in detail on the cases of chiefdoms in Hawaii, the Andes, and Denmark, "Bronze Age Economics" documents how intensification of economies, surplus mobilization, and controlled distribution of both staple and prestige goods fundamentally drove the political evolutionary processes that prefigured states. Representing as it does the trajectory of Earle's lifework, this book fairly encapsulates the history of processual archaeology and social evolutionary theory over the past quarter century.

The Caribbean before Columbus is a new synthesis of the region's insular history. It combines the results of the authors' 55 years of archaeological research on almost every island in the three archipelagoes with that of their numerous colleagues and collaborators. The presentation operates on multiple scales: temporal, spatial, local, regional, environmental, social, and political. In addition, individual sites are used to highlight specific issues. For the first time, the complete histories of the major islands and island groups are elucidated, and new insights are gained through inter-island comparisons. The book takes a step back from current debates regarding nomenclature to offer a common foundation and the opportunity for a fresh beginning. In this regard the original concepts of series and ages provide structure, and the diversity of expressions subsumed by these concepts is embraced. Historical names, such as Taino and Lucayan, are avoided. The authors challenge the long-held conventional wisdom concerning island colonization, societal organization, interaction and transculturation, inter- and intra-regional transactions (exchange), and other basic elements of cultural development and change. The emphasis is on those elements that unite the Bahamas, Lesser Antilles, and Greater Antilles as a culture area, and also on their divergent pathways. Colonization is presented as a multifaceted wave-like process. Continuing ties to the surrounding mainland are highlighted. Interactions between residents and new colonists are recognized, with individual histories contingent on these historical interactions. New solutions are offered to the "Huecoid problem" the "Carib problem," the "Taino problem," and the evolution of social complexity, especially in Puerto Rico.These solutions required a rethinking of social organization and its expression on the landscape. There comes a time when the old foundation can no longer support the structure that was built upon it; this is that time.

Mesoamerica is one of several cradles of civilization in the world. In this book, Robert M. Rosenswig proposes that we understand Early Formative Mesoamerica as an archipelago of complex societies that interacted with one another over long distances and that were separated by less sedentary peoples. These early 'islands' of culture shared an Olmec artistic aesthetic, beginning approximately 1250 BCE (uncalibrated), that first defined Mesoamerica as a culture area. Rosenswig frames the Olmec world from the perspective of the Soconusco area on Pacifica Chiapas and Guatemala. The disagreements about Early Formative society that have raged over the past thirty years focus on the nature of inter-regional interaction between San Lorenzo and other Early Formative regions. He evaluates these debates from a fresh theoretical perspective and integrates new data into an assessment of Soconusco society before, during, and after the apogee of the San Lorenzo polity.

The Vandals is the first book available in the English Language dedicated to exploring the sudden rise and dramatic fall of this complex North African Kingdom. This complete history provides a full account of the Vandals and re-evaluates key aspects of the society including: * Political and economic structures such as the complex foreign policy which combined diplomatic alliances and marriages with brutal raiding * The extraordinary cultural development of secular learning, and the religious struggles that threatened to tear the state apart * The nature of Vandal identity from a social and gender perspective.

Pyla-Koutsopetria I presents the results of an intensive pedestrian survey documenting the diachronic history of a 100 ha microregion along the southern coast of Cyprus. Located around 10 km from the ancient city of Kition, the ancient coastal settlements of the Koutsopetria mircoregion featured an Iron Age sanctuary, a Classical settlement, a Hellenistic fortification, a Late Roman town, and a Venetian-Ottoman coastal battery situated adjacent to a now infilled, natural harbour on Larnaka Bay. This publication integrates a comprehensive treatment of methods with a discussion of artefact distribution, a thorough catalogue of finds, and a diachronic history to shed light on one of the few undeveloped stretches of the Cypriot coast. Illustrated in b&w with 137 illustrations and 56 tables.

From the time of its composition (c.1280) for Philip the Fair of France until the early sixteenth century, Giles of Rome's mirror of princes, the De regimine principum, was read by both lay and clerical readers in the original Latin and in several vernacular translations, and served as model or source for several works of princely advice. This study examines the relationship between this didactic political text and its audience by focusing on the textual and material aspects of the surviving manuscript copies, as well as on the evidence of ownership and use found in them and in documentary and literary sources. Briggs argues that lay readers used De regimine for several purposes, including as an educational treatise and military manual, whereas clerics, who often first came into contact with it at university, glossed, constructed apparatus for, and modified the text to suit their needs in their later professional lives.

A fascinating case study of the archaeological site at Murujuga, Australia Located in the Dampier Archipelago of Western Australia, Murujuga is the single largest archaeological site in the world. It contains an estimated one million petroglyphs, or rock art motifs, produced by the Indigenous Australians who have historically inhabited the archipelago. To date, there has been no comprehensive survey of the site's petroglyphs or those who created them. Since the 1960s, regional mining interests have caused significant damage to this site, destroying an estimated 5 to 25 percent of the petroglyphs in Murujuga. Today, Murujuga holds the unenviable status of being one of the most endangered archaeological sites in the world. Jose Antonio Gonzalez Zarandona provides a full postcolonial analysis of Murujuga as well as a geographic and archaeological overview of the site, its ethnohistory, and its considerable significance to Indigenous groups, before examining the colonial mistreatment of Murujuga from the seventeenth century to the present. Drawing on a range of postcolonial perspectives, Zarandona reads the assaults on the rock art of Murujuga as instances of what he terms "landscape iconoclasm": the destruction of art and landscapes central to group identity in pursuit of ideological, political, and economic dominance. Viewed through the lens of landscape iconoclasm, the destruction of Murujuga can be understood as not only the result of economic pressures but also as a means of reinforcing-through neglect, abandonment, fragmentation, and even certain practices of heritage preservation-the colonial legacy in Western Australia. Murujuga provides a case study through which to examine, and begin to reject, archaeology's global entanglement with colonial intervention and the politics of heritage preservation.

Before Alexander, the Near East was ruled by dynasts who could draw on the significant resources and power base of their homeland, but this was not the case for the Seleukids who never controlled their original homeland of Macedon. The Early Seleukids, their Gods and their Coins argues that rather than projecting an imperialistic Greek image of rule, the Seleukid kings deliberately produced images that represented their personal power, and that were comprehensible to the majority of their subjects within their own cultural traditions. These images relied heavily on the syncretism between Greek and local gods, in particular their ancestor Apollo. The Early Seleukids, their Gods and their Coins examines how the Seleukids, from Seleukos I to Antiochos IV, used coinage to propagandise their governing ideology. It offers a valuable resource to students of the Seleukids and of Hellenistic kingship more broadly, numismatics, and the interplay of ancient Greek religion and politics.

Archaeology Under Fire addresses archaeology's role in current political issues, whether it be the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, the division of Cyprus, or the continued destruction of Beirut.

Drawing together a century of widely scattered scientific and technical reports, as well as 25 years of first-hand experience in the field, Scott Anfinson provides the first comprehensive overview of the people who inhabited the Prairie Lake Region of the northwestern Plains before the arrival of European explorers. Focusing on southwestern Minnesota, north-central Iowa, and south-eastern South Dakota, the author describes the dramatic environmental changes that occurred during the precontact millennia, and the impact on the human, animal, and plant cultures of the region once treated as the insignificant edge of the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands. His synthesis reveals how the successions of peoples in this transition region selectively accepted -- and denied -- influences from the better-known cultures around them. Archaeologists and historians of Native Americans, as well as amateur and armchair archaeologists, will welcome this valuable addition to the region's geological, natural and cultural history.

After a decade-long hiatus in the years of World War II, archaeological fieldwork was resumed in Iran in 1948. In that year, the Oriental Institute returned to its long tradition of archaeological research by sending Donald McCown to the lowlands of southwestern Iran to conduct a series of surface surveys to find a multi-period site for excavation. For his survey, McCown chose the Ram Hormuz region, southeast of lowland Susiana and the region south and east of the provincial town of Ahvaz down to the Persian Gulf. McCown recorded 118 sites in the Ram Hormuz and Ahvaz areas and eventually chose for excavation the large prehistoric mound complex Tall-e Geser. Three months of excavation in 1948 and 1949 yielded materials that were kept in Chicago for many years. Apart from short articles, the site was never fully published. In Part 1 of this two-part volume, Abbas Alizadeh and colleagues have undertaken a final publication of the site. This task was undertaken because of a number of important considerations. First, the excavations at Geser have been cited as justifying the division of the Uruk period in southwestern Iran into Early, Middle, and Late phases. Second, Geser remains the only systematically excavated site in the Ram Hormuz region - a strategic location between the Susiana and Mesopotamian alluvium and the Zagros highlands of southwestern Iran. Third, Geser has produced a very extensive body of archaeological materials dating to the comparatively less understood proto-Elamite period, roughly the first few centuries of the third millennium bc. And finally, with the exception of a 700-800-year gap following the proto-Elamite phase, Geser remains one of the only sites in the Near East to have a very long and generally uninterrupted depositional sequence, in this case spanning from the fifth millennium BC to the Safavid period. The site's crucial location, its importance in the archaeological literature, and its long stratigraphic sequence made it imperative that the original excavation results from Geser be published in anticipation of a time when the site can be re-excavated. Part 2 of this volume presents the results of regional surveys conducted in the Ram Hormuz plain from 2005 to 2008, which were undertaken by Alizadeh and colleagues with the goal of understanding the semi-nomadic, mobile component of lowland Susiana and its hinterlands through time.

The roots of our modern world lie in the civilization of Mesopotamia, which saw the development of the first urban society and the invention of writing. The cuneiform texts reveal the technological and social innovations of Sumer and Babylonia as surprisingly modern, and the influence of this fascinating culture was felt throughout the Near East. Early Mesopotamia gives an entirely new account, integrating the archaeology with historical data which until now have been largely scattered in specialist literature.

Imagine the whole of British history laid out in one long line, giving a shape to the mysterious prehistoric past, detailing the major English, Scottish and Welsh rulers (including emperors, kings and queens), prime ministers, important events and battles. To be even more useful such a time scale should be in full colour and include the populations, climate, maps, architectural heritage and technological/scientific advances... and it could cover 500,000 years. Filling a gap left by other reference sources, The British Time Scale is a unique and invaluable production. In a conveniently portable folded book format, the timescale will also expand into a chart of 2 metres in length and includes 25 maps. An illustrated overview including climate, population and maps. Richly detailed and in full colour, this is the easiest way to appreciate the whole sweep of human history of this island/peninsula. It can be used fold by fold, book-fashion, whilst touring or as a wall or table chart. Either way, it makes a convenient and enjoyable work of reference.

The Texture of Industry is an overview of the industrialization of North America using material evidence - sites, structures, and artifacts - to fill out the story of America's `industrial archaeology', drawing upon techniques from archeometry, field archaeology, art history, and architectural recording. The book is organized around a discussion of the industrial experience. Several sites and artifacts - ones that can be visited by the public - are studied in depth.

First published in the 1950s, this is a classic account of the discovery in 1911 of the lost city of Machu Picchu. In 1911 Hiram Bingham, a pre-historian with a love of exotic destinations, set out to Peru in search of the legendary city of Vilcabamba, capital city of the last Inca ruler, Manco Inca. With a combination of doggedness and good fortune he stumbled on the perfectly preserved ruins of Machu Picchu perched on a cloud-capped ledge 2000 feet above the torrent of the Urubamba River. The buildings were of white granite, exquisitely carved blocks each higher than a man. Bingham had not, as it turned out, found Vilcabamba, but he had nevertheless made an astonishing and memorable discovery, which he describes in his bestselling book LOST CITY OF THE INCAS.