A sweeping account of Medieval North America when Indigenous peoples confronted climate change. Few Americans today are aware of one of the most consequential periods in North American history-the Medieval Warm Period of seven to twelve centuries ago (AD 800-1300 CE)-which resulted in the warmest temperatures in the northern hemisphere since the "Roman Warm Period," a half millennium earlier. Reconstructing these climatic events and the cultural transformations they wrought, Timothy Pauketat guides readers down ancient American paths walked by Indigenous people a millennium ago, some trod by Spanish conquistadors just a few centuries later. The book follows the footsteps of priests, pilgrims, traders, and farmers who took great journeys, made remarkable pilgrimages, and migrated long distances to new lands. Along the way, readers will discover a new history of a continent that, like today, was being shaped by climate change-or controlled by ancient gods of wind and water. Through such elemental powers, the history of Medieval America was a physical narrative, a long-term natural and cultural experience in which Native people were entwined long before Christopher Columbus arrived or Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztecs. Spanning most of the North American continent, Gods of Thunder focuses on remarkable parallels between pre-contact American civilizations separated by a thousand miles or more. Key archaeological sites are featured in every chapter, leading us down an evidentiary trail toward the book's conclusion that a great religious movement swept Mesoamerica, the Southwest, and the Mississippi valley, sometimes because of worsening living conditions and sometimes by improved agricultural yields thanks to global warming a thousand years ago. The author also includes a guide to visiting the archaeological sites discussed in the book.

Essays dealing with the question of how the theory and practice of archaeology should engage with the recent past. Heritage, memory, community archaeology and the politics of the past form the main strands running through the papers in this volume.The authors tackle these subjects from a range of different philosophical perspectives, with manydrawing on the experience of recent community, commercial and other projects. Throughout, there is a strong emphasis on both the philosophy of engagement and with its enactment in specific contexts; the essays deal with an interest in the meaning, value and contested nature of the recent past and in the theory and practice of archaeological engagements with that past. Chris Dalglish is a lecturer in archaeology at the University of Glasgow. Contributors: Julia Beaumont, David Bowsher, Terry Brown, Jo Buckberry, Chris Dalglish, James Dixon, Audrey Horning, Robert Isherwood, Robert C Janaway, Melanie Johnson, Sian Jones, Catriona Mackie, Janet Montgomery, Harold Mytum, Michael Nevell, Natasha Powers, Biddy Simpson, Matt Town, Andrew Wilson

The White Horse at Uffington is an icon of the English landscape - a sleek, almost abstract figure 120 yards long which was carved into the green turf of the spectacular chalk scarp of the North Wessex Downs in the early first millennium bc. For centuries antiquarians, travellers and local people speculated about the age of the Horse, who created it and why. Was it a memorial to King Alfred the Great's victory over the heathen Danes, an emblem of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers or a prehistoric banner, announcing the territory of a British tribe? Or was the Horse an actor in an elaborate prehistoric ritual, drawing the sun across the sky? The rich history of this ancient figure and its surroundings can help us understand how people have created and lived in the Downland landscape, which has inspired artists, poets and writers including Eric Ravilious, John Betjeman and J.R.R. Tolkien. The White Horse itself is most remarkable because it is still here. People have cared for it and curated it for centuries, even millennia. In that time the meaning of the Horse has changed, yet it has remained a symbol of continuity and is a myth for modern times.

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.

The development of complex cultural behaviour in our own species is perhaps the most significant research issue in modern archaeology. Until recently, it was believed that our capacity for language and art only developed after some of our ancestors reached Europe around 40,000 years ago. Archaeological discoveries in Africa now show that modern humans were practicing symbolic behaviours prior to their dispersal from that continent, and more recent discoveries in Indonesia and Australia are once again challenging ideas about human cultural development. Despite these significant discoveries and exciting potentials, there is a curious absence of published information about Asia-Pacific region, and consequently, global narratives of our most celebrated cognitive accomplishment - art - has consistently underrepresented the contribution of Southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. This volume provides the first outline of what this region has to offer to the world of art in archaeology. Readers undertaking tertiary archaeology courses interested in the art of the Asia-Pacific region or human behavioural evolution, along with anyone who is fascinated by the development of our modern ability to decorate ourselves and our world, should find this book a good addition to their library.

Why did the Greeks excel in geometry, but lag begin the Mesopotamians in arithmetic? How were the great pyramids of Egypt and the Han tombs in China constructed? What did the complex system of canals and dykes in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley have to do with the deforestation of Lebanon's famed cedar forests? This work presents a cross-cultural comparison of the ways in which the ancients learned about and preserved their knowledge of the natural world, and the ways in which they developed technologies that enabled them to adapt to and shape their surroundings. Covering the major ancient civilizations - those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Greece, the Indus Valley, and Meso-America - Olson explores how language and numbering systems influenced the social structure, how seemingly beneficial construction projects affected a civilization's rise or decline, how religion and magic shaped both medicine and agriculture, and how trade and the resulting cultural interactions transformed the making of both everyday household items and items intended as art. Along the way, Olson delves into how scientific knowledge and its technological applications changed the daily lives of the ancients.

Since the arrival of literate European settlers in what is now KwaZulu-Natal in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, numerous stories about the Drakensberg region have made their way into print. But for every story which happens to have been written down, there are many others which have not, and which are therefore unavailable to us in our aim of wanting to establish a modern-day understanding of the history of the Drakensberg. This applies especially to the stories told by the unlettered San hunter-gatherers and their forebears during the several thousand years for which they inhabited these mountains, and by the isiNtu-speaking black farmers who have lived in the neighbouring uplands for the past thousand years or so. But it also applies to the unwritten stories told by European colonizers and their descendants over the last century and a half.;The declaration of the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park as a World Heritage Site - on the basis of its scenic beauty, high degree of biodiversity and the exceptional cultural value of its heritage of San rock art - provides an occasion for reflecting on the history and people of the region, from the earliest known times to the present. Constructed from archaeological and written sources, this book highlights the histories of the indigenous San hunter-gatherers and black farmers, as well as of the European colonisers. The accessible text is complemented by photographs of the landscape, rock art and archaeological finds.;The authors have not aimed to write a definitive history, but have tried to open up ways of looking at the region's past which go beyond the mainly 'colonial' views which have predominated in the literature up to the present.

This volume aims to satisfy a pressing need for an updated account of Chinese archaeology. It covers an extended time period from the earliest peopling of China to the unification of the Chinese Empire some two thousand years ago. The geographical coverage includes the traditional focus on the Yellow River basin but also covers China's many other regions. Among the topics covered are the emergence of agricultural communities; the establishment of a sedentary way of life; the development of sociopolitical complexity; advances in lithic technology, ceramics, and metallurgy; and the appearance of writing, large-scale public works, cities, and states. Particular emphasis is placed on the great cultural variations that existed among the different regions and the development of interregional contacts among those societies.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

The twenty-five papers in this volume arise from a conference jointly organised by the British Archaeological Association and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona. They explore the making of art and architecture in Latin Europe and the Mediterranean between c. 1000 and c. 1250, with a particular focus on questions of patronage, design and instrumentality. No previous studies of patterns of artistic production during the Romanesque period rival the breadth of coverage encompassed by this volume - both in terms of geographical origin and media, and in terms of historical approach. Topics range from case studies on Santiago de Compostela, the Armenian Cathedral in Jerusalem and the Winchester Bible to reflections on textuality and donor literacy, the culture of abbatial patronage at Saint-Michel de Cuxa and the re-invention of slab relief sculpture around 1100. The volume also includes papers that attempt to recover the procedures that coloured interaction between artists and patrons - a serious theme in a collection that opens with 'Function, condition and process in eleventh-century Anglo-Norman church architecture' and ends with a consideration of 'The death of the patron'.

Powerful, semi-divine and splendidly adorned, more than a hundred pharaohs ruled over Egypt during the 3000 years of ancient Egyptian civilisation. This book explores the notion of the pharaoh as protector of the land and divinely-descended warrior priest to reveal the myths and realities of kingship in ancient Egypt.

Rock art in South America is as diverse as the continent itself. In this vast territory, different peoples produced engravings, paintings, and massive earthworks, from the Atacama to the Amazon. These marks on the landscape were made by all different kinds of peoples, from some of the earliest hunter-gatherers in the continent, to the very complex societies within the Inca Empire. This book brings together the work of specialists from throughout the continent, addressing this diversity, as well as the variety of approaches that the Archaeology of rock art has taken in South America. Constructed of eleven thought-provoking chapters and arranged in three thematic sections, the book presents different theoretical approaches that are currently being used to understand the roles rock art played in prehistoric communities. The editors have skillfully crafted a book that presents the contribution the study of South American rock art can offer to the global research of this materiality, both theoretically and methodologically. This book will interest a broad range of scholars researching in archaeology, anthropology, history of art, heritage and conservation, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students who will find interesting case studies showcasing the diverse ways in which rock art can be approached. Despite its focus on South America, the book is intended as a contribution towards the global study of rock art.

This volume brings together renowned global scholars to provide insight on Rapa Nui's past and present, examining the islnad's ecology, environment, landscape, historical documents, cultural traditions, and material culture.

What do characters as diverse as Alfred the Great, the architect Sir Christopher Wren, diarist Samuel Pepys and the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins have in common? All had some involvement in shipwrecks: in causing, recording or salvaging them. This book examines a variety of wrecks from logboats, Roman galleys and medieval cogs to East Indiamen, grand ocean liners, fishing boats and warships - all are woven into the history of shipwrecks along the coastline of England and in her territorial waters. Wrecks are not just physically embedded in this marine landscape - they are also an intrinsic part of a domestic cultural landscape with links that go beyond the navy, mercantile marine and fishing trade. Evidence of shipwrecks is widespread: in literature, in domestic architecture and as a major component of industrial archaeology. Shipwrecks also transcend national boundaries, forming tangible monuments to the movement of goods and people between nations in war and peace. In peacetime they link the architecture and monuments of different countries, from shipyards to factories, warehouses to processing plants; in time of war wrecks have formed a landscape scattered across the oceans, linking friend and foe in common heritage. England's Shipwreck Heritage explores the type of evidence we have for shipwrecks and their causes, including the often devastating effects fo the natural environment and human-led disaster. Ships at war, global trade and the movement of people - such as passengers, convict transports and the slave trade - are also investigated. Along the way we meet the white elephant who perished in 1730, the medieval merchant who pursued a claim for compensation for nearly 20 years, the most famous privateer for the American revolutionary wars and the men who held their nerve in the minesweeper trawls of the First World War. Highly illustrated and based on extensive new research, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in England's maritime heritage.

This book is a study of the Lapita Cultural Complex, a region spanning both Melanesia and Western Polynesia. The Lapita culture has been interpreted as the archaeological manifestation of a diaspora of Austronesian-speaking people (specifically of Proto-Oceanic language) who rapidly expanded from the New Guinea region into Remote Oceania. The Lapita Cultural Complex--first uncovered in the mid-20th century as a widespread archaeological complex spanning both Melanesia and Western Polynesia--has subsequently become recognized as of fundamental importance to Oceanic prehistory. Notable for its highly distinctive, elaborate, dentate-stamped pottery, Lapita sites date to between 3500-2700 BP, spanning the geographic range from the Bismarck Archipelago to Tonga and Samoa. The Lapita culture has been interpreted as the archaeological manifestation of a diaspora of Austronesian-speaking people (specifically of Proto-Oceanic language) who rapidly expanded from Near Oceania (the New Guinea-Bismarcks region) into Remote Oceania, where no humans had previously ventured. Lapita is thus a foundational culture throughout much of the southwestern Pacific, ancestral to much of the later, ethnographically-attested cultural diversity of the region.

This is the first comprehensive linguistic study for 50 years of the stones from western Britain and Brittany, inscribed in the Roman and Irish Ogam alphabets.

The stones are a major source for the history of the Celtic-speakers of post-Roman Britain and for the development and divergence of their languages, yet the dating of the 370 inscriptions remains uncertain. Now, through a new study of the phonological development of the Brittonic and Irish branches of Celtic, Patrick Sims-Williams places the chronology of the inscriptions on a surer footing.

The book will be of interest to archaeologists, historians and art historians, as well as to philologists interested in the methods and problems of historical phonology and onomastics.

The purpose of this book is to take what we think we know about the Roman Conquest of Britain from historical sources, and compare it with the archaeological evidence, which is often contradictory. Archaeologists and historians all too often work in complete isolation from each other and this book hopes to show the dangers of neglecting either form of evidence. In the process it challenges much received wisdom about the history of Roman Britain. Birgitta Hoffmann tackles the subject by taking a number of major events or episodes (such as Caesar's incursions, Claudius' invasion, Boudicca's revolt), presenting the accepted narrative as derived from historical sources, and then presenting the archaeological evidence for the same. The result of this innovative approach is a book full of surprising and controversial conclusions that will appeal to the general reader as well as those studying or teaching courses on ancient history or archaeology.

Kennewick Man, known as the Ancient One to Native Americans, has been the lightning rod for conflict between archaeologists and indigenous peoples in the United States. A decade-long legal case pitted scientists against Native American communities and highlighted the shortcomings of the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), designed to protect Native remains. In this volume, we hear from the many sides of this issue--archaeologists, tribal leaders, and others--as well as views from the international community. The wider implications of the case and its resolution is explored. Comparisons are made to similar cases in other countries and how they have been handled. Appendixes provide the legal decisions, appeals, and chronology to allow full exploration of this landmark legal struggle. An ideal starting point for discussion of this case in anthropology, archaeology, Native American studies, and cultural property law courses. Sponsored by the World Archaeological Congress.

In this fourth edition of the CRM classic, Thomas F. King shares his expertise in dealing with laws regulating the use of cultural resources. With wry insight, he explains the various federal, state, and local laws governing the protection of resources, how they have been interpreted, how they operate in practice, and even how they are sometimes in contradiction with each other. He provides helpful advice on how to ensure regulatory compliance in dealing with archaeological sites, historic buildings, urban districts, sacred sites and objects, shipwrecks, and archives. King also offers careful guidance through the confusing array of federal, state, and tribal offices concerned with CRM. Featuring updated analysis and treatments of key topics, this new edition is a must-have for archaeologists and students, historic preservationists, tribal governments, and others working with cultural resources.

This lexical index will provide a useful aid for locating Middle Egyptian textual material.

An Archaeology of the Cosmos seeks answers to two fundamental questions of humanity and human history. The first question concerns that which some use as a defining element of humanity: religious beliefs. Why do so many people believe in supreme beings and holy spirits? The second question concerns changes in those beliefs. What causes beliefs to change? Using archaeological evidence gathered from ancient America, especially case material from the Great Plains and the pre-Columbian American Indian city of Cahokia, Timothy Pauketat explores the logical consequences of these two fundamental questions. Religious beliefs are not more resilient than other aspects of culture and society, and people are not the only causes of historical change. An Archaeology of the Cosmos examines the intimate association of agency and religion by studying how relationships between people, places, and things were bundled together and positioned in ways that constituted the fields of human experience. This rethinking theories of agency and religion provides readers with challenging and thought provoking conclusions that will lead them to reassess the way they approach the past.

In Guinea's capital city of Conakry, dance is everywhere. Most neighborhoods boast at least one dance troupe, and members of those troupes animate the city's major rites of passage and social events. In Infinite Repertoire, Adrienne Cohen shows how dance became such a prominent-even infrastructural-feature of city life in Guinea, and tells a surprising story of the rise of creative practice under a political regime known for its authoritarianism and violent excesses. Guinea's socialist state, which was in power from 1958 to 1984, used staged African dance or "ballet" strategically as a political tool, in part by tapping into indigenous conceptualizations of artisans as powerful figures capable of transforming the social fabric through their manipulation of vital energy. Far from dying with the socialist revolution, Guinean ballet continued to thrive in Conakry after economic liberalization in the 1980s, with its connection to transformative power retrofitted for a market economy and a rapidly expanding city. Infinite Repertoire follows young dancers and percussionists in Conakry as they invest in the present-using their bodies to build a creative urban environment and to perform and redefine social norms and political subjectivities passed down from the socialist generation before them. Cohen's inventive ethnography weaves the political with the aesthetic, placing dance at the center of a story about dramatic political change and youthful resourcefulness in one of the least-studied cities on the African continent.

A survey of the landed endowment of Glastonbury Abbey before 1066, with a history of its estates. The early history of the religious community at Glastonbury has been the subject of much speculation and imaginative writing, but there are few sources which genuinely further our knowledge of Glastonbury Abbey in the Anglo-Saxonperiod. This has resulted in a lack of serious historical research and hence the neglect of an important ecclesiastical establishment. This study brings together the evidence of royal and episcopal grants of land and combines it with material from Domesday Book, to produce a survey of the landed endowment of Glastonbury Abbey before 1066, and an analysis of the history of its Anglo-Saxon estates. Although there is too little data to formulate a complete account of the Abbey's early landholdings, the surviving evidence, collected together here, outlines a history for each place named in connection with the pre-Conquest religious house; in addition, each case helps to establish an overall framework for the life-cycle of the Anglo-Saxon estate, building on our understanding of actual conditions of tenure and of the various fortunes ecclesiastical land might experience. LESLEY ABRAMS is Lecturer in History, Brasenose College, and Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford University.

Winchester’s identity as a royal centre became well established between the ninth and twelfth centuries, closely tied to the significance of the religious communities who lived within and without the city walls. The reach of power of Winchester was felt throughout England and into the Continent through the relationships of the bishops, the power fluctuations of the Norman period, the pursuit of arts and history writing, the reach of the city’s saints, and more. The essays contained in this volume present early medieval Winchester not as a city alone, but a city emmeshed in wider political, social, and cultural movements and, in many cases, providing examples of authority and power that are representative of early medieval England as a whole.