Over twenty-five years ago, David Stuart began writing award-winning newspaper articles on regional archaeology that appealed to general readers. These columns shared interesting, and usually little-known, facts and stories about the ancient people and places of the Southwest.
By 1985, Stuart had penned enough columns to fill a book, "Glimpses of the Ancient Southwest," which has been unavailable for years. Now he has rewritten most of his original articles to include recently discovered information about Chaco Canyon, Bandelier, and Mesa Verde.
Stuart's unusual perspective focuses on both the past and the present: "Want to know why gasoline now costs $4.00 a gallon, and is headed higher, yet we have no instant solution? Chacoan, Roman, even Egyptian archaeology all provide elemental answers." "The Ancient Southwest shares those with us."

The varied character of Britain's countryside and towns provides communities with a strong sense of local identity. One of the most significant features of the southern British landscape is the way that its character differs from region to region, with compact villages in the Midlands contrasting with the sprawling hamlets of East Anglia and isolated farmsteads of Devon. Even more remarkable is the very "English" feel of the landscape in southern Pembrokeshire, in the far south west of Wales.
Hoskins described the English landscape as "the richest historical record we possess," and in this book Stephen Rippon explores the origins of regional variations in landscape character, arguing that while some landscapes date back to the centuries either side of the Norman Conquest, other areas across southern Britain underwent a profound change around the 8th century AD.

The last three decades have witnessed a period of growing archaeological activity in Greece that have enhanced our awareness of the diversity and variability of ancient communities. New sites offer rich datasets from many aspects of material culture that challenge traditional perceptions and suggest complex interpretations of the past. This volume provides a synthetic overview of recent developments in the study of Neolithic Greece and reconsiders the dynamics of human-environment interactions while recording the growing diversity in layers of social organization. It fills an essential lacuna in contemporary literature and enhances our understanding of the Neolithic communities in the Greek Peninsula.

From binding spells and incantations to curse-writing rituals, magic pervaded the ancient Greek world. In Blood and Ashes provides the first historical study of the development and dissemination of ritualized curse practice from 750-250 BCE, documenting the cultural pressures that drove the use of curse tablets, charms, spells, and other private rites. This book expands our understanding of daily life in ancient communities, showing how individuals were making sense of the world and coping with conflict, vulnerability, competition, anxiety, desire, and loss, all while conjuring the gods and powers of the Underworld. Bringing together epigraphic, literary, archaeological, and material evidence, Jessica L. Lamont reads between traditional histories of Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic Greece, drawing out new voices and new narratives to consider: here are the cooks, tavern keepers, garland weavers, helmsmen, barbers, and other persons who often slip through the cracks of ancient history. The texts and objects presented here offer glimpses of public and private lives across many centuries, illuminating the interplay of ritual and conflict-management strategies among citizens and slaves, men and women, pagans and Christians. Filled with new material and insights, Lamont's volume offers a groundbreaking perspective on ancient Greek social history and religion, highlighting the role of ritual in negotiating life's uncertainties.

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.

Medieval bridges are startling achievements of design and engineering comparable with the great cathedrals of the period, and are also proof of the great importance of road transport in the middle ages and of the size and sophistication of the medieval economy. David Harrison rewrites their history from early Anglo-Saxon England right up to the Industrial Revolution, providing new insights into many aspects of the subject. Looking at the role of bridges in the creation of a new road system, which was significantly different from its Roman predecessor and which largely survived until the twentieth century, he examines their design. Often built in the most difficult circumstances: broad flood plains, deep tidal waters, and steep upland valleys, they withstood all but the most catastrophic floods. He also investigates the immense efforts put into their construction and upkeep, ranging from the mobilization of large work forces by the old English state to the role of resident hermits and the charitable donations which produced bridge trusts with huge incomes. The evidence presented in The Bridges of Medieval England shows that the network of bridges, which had been in place since the thirteenth century, was capable of serving the needs of the economy on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. This has profound implications for our understanding of pre-industrial society, challenging accepted accounts of the development of medieval trade and communications, and bringing to the fore the continuities from the late Anglo-Saxon period to the eighteenth century. This book is essential reading for those interested in architecture, engineering, transport, and economics, and any historian sceptical about the achievements of medieval England.

This book is a long-term history of how the human body has been understood in Europe from the Palaeolithic to the present day, focusing on specific moments of change. Developing a multi-scalar approach to the past, and drawing on the work of an interdisciplinary team of experts, the authors examine how the body has been treated in life, art and death for the last 40,000 years. Key case-study chapters examine Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Classical, Medieval, Early Modern and Modern bodies. What emerges is not merely a history of different understandings of the body, but a history of the different human bodies that have existed. Furthermore, the book argues, these bodies are not merely the product of historical circumstance, but are themselves key elements in shaping the changes that have swept across Europe since the arrival of modern humans.

The Archaeology of the Spanish Civil War offers the first comprehensive account of the Spanish Civil War from an archaeological perspective, providing an alternative narrative on one of the most important conflicts of the twentieth century, widely seen as a prelude to the Second World War. Between 1936 and 1939, totalitarianism and democracy, fascism and revolution clashed in Spain, while the latest military technologies were being tested, including strategic bombing and combined arms warfare, and violence against civilians became widespread. Archaeology, however, complicates the picture as it brings forgotten actors into play: obsolete weapons, vernacular architecture, ancient structures (from Iron Age hillforts to sheepfolds), peasant traditions, and makeshift arms. By looking at these things, another story of the war unfolds, one that pays more attention to intimate experiences and anonymous individuals. Archaeology also helps to clarify battles, which were often chaotic and only partially documented, and to understand better the patterns of political violence, whose effects were literally buried for over 70 years. The narrative starts with the coup against the Second Spanish Republic on 18 July 1936, follows the massacres and battles that marked the path of the war, and ends in the early 1950s, when the last forced labor camps were closed and the anti-Francoist guerrillas suppressed. The book draws on 20 years of research to bring together perspectives from battlefield archaeology, archaeologies of internment, and forensics. It will be of interest to anybody interested in historical and contemporary archaeology, human rights violations, modern military history, and negative heritage.

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.

Ancient sport made a huge if indirect contribution to the literature of ancient Greece, since some sixty poems by Pindar and Bacchylides ("epinikian odes"), written to commemorate victories, survive from the Classical period. This book is a collection of essays about that literature, and about the social and physical context for which it was written. The editors assembled an internationally distinguished team of speakers for the original 2002 seminar series held in London, and these papers form the backbone of the book. But to ensure coherence and comprehensive coverage, they have commissioned three further papers, and have themselves written a long thematic Introduction. The result is a stellar team of authors, and a book which looks at an important literary phenomenon in light of the latest archaeological and sociological insights, as well as evaluating the poetry both as poetry and as a performance genre with distinctive characteristics.

This volume centres on the history and legacy of the Mongol World Empire founded by Chinggis Khan and his sons, including its impact upon the modern world. An international team of scholars examines the political and cultural history of the Mongol empire, its Chinggisid successor states, and the non-Chinggisid dynasties that came to dominate Inner Asia in its wake. Geographically, it focuses on the continental region from East Asia to Eastern Europe. Beginning in the twelfth century, the volume moves through to the establishment of Chinese and Russian political hegemony in Inner Asia from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Contributors use recent research and new approaches that have revitalized Inner Asian studies to highlight the world-historical importance of the regimes and states formed during and after the Mongol conquest. Their conclusions testify to the importance of a region whose modern fate has been overshadowed by Russia and China.

L'ouvrage decrit avec precision les resultats de cette initiative du Musee canadien de l'histoire, menee en collaboration avec la Premiere Nation d'Acadia, attribuables a cinq saisons (de 2008 a 2012) d'etudes et de fouilles menees a Port Joli ainsi qu'a 10 annees d'analyses en laboratoire. Il comprend aussi des donnees provenant de travaux archeologiques anterieurs menes a Port Joli par Erskine, Raddall, Millard et d'autres, offrant ainsi une synthese complete de l'un des plus importants inventaires archeologiques autochtones de la Nouvelle-Ecosse. Conjuguant l'approche monographique plus traditionnelle pour traiter d'un site archeologique, cet ouvrage fournit un portrait detaille de toutes les informations archeologiques recuperees, notamment des artefacts tels que des assiettes colorees, des dessins techniques, des profils et des cartes, en plus d'une description complete des donnees recueillies. Le dernier chapitre offre une histoire culturelle de Port Joli, resumant comment ce " joli port " est devenu un endroit central pour les Mi'kmaq avant l'arrivee des Europeens. Une coedition avec le Musee canadien de l'histoire. Ce livre est publie en anglais. - The book describes in detail the findings of five seasons (2008-2012) of survey and excavation in Port Joli, and ten years of laboratory analysis, undertaken by the Canadian Museum of History, in collaboration with Acadia First Nation. It also incorporates data recovered from previous archaeological work conducted in Port Joli by Erskine, Raddall, Millard, and others, providing a complete synthesis of one of Nova Scotia's richest Indigenous archaeological records. Reviving the art of a traditional archaeology "site monograph", the work provides a complete presentation of all the archaeological information recovered, including full-colour artifact plates, technical drawings, profiles, and maps, in addition to a complete data description and synthesis. The final chapter presents a culture history of the Port Joli, summarizing how the "pretty harbour" became a central place for Mi'kmaq prior to the arrival of Europeans. A copublication with the Canadian Museum of History. This book is published in English.

This volume brings together two groups engaged with understanding the relationships between religion and violence. The first group consists of scholars of the mimetic theory of René Girard, for whom human violence is rooted in the rivalry that stems from imitation. To manage this violence of all against all, humans often turn to violence against one, the scapegoat, thereafter incorporated into ritual. The second group consists of archaeologists working at the Neolithic sites of Çatalhöyük and Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. At both sites there is evidence of religious practices that center on wild animals, often large and dangerous in form. Is it possible that these wild animals were ritually killed in the ways suggested by Girardian theorists? Were violence and the sacred intimately entwined and were these the processes that made possible and even stimulated the origins of farming in the ancient Near East? In this volume, Ian Hodder and a team of contributors seek to answer these questions by linking theory and data in exciting new ways.

The current paradigm-changing ancient DNA revolution is offering unparalleled insights into central problems within archaeology relating to the movement of populations and individuals, patterns of descent, relationships and aspects of identity – at many scales and of many different kinds. The impact of recent ancient DNA results can be seen particularly clearly in studies of the European Neolithic, the subject of contributions presented in this volume. We now have new evidence for the movement and mixture of people at the start of the Neolithic, as farming spread from the east, and at its end, when the first metals as well as novel styles of pottery and burial practices arrived in the Chalcolithic. In addition, there has been a wealth of new data to inform complex questions of identities and relationships. The terms of archaeological debate for this period have been permanently altered, leaving us with many issues. This volume stems from the online day conference of the Neolithic Studies Group held in November 2021, which aimed to bring geneticists and archaeologists together in the same forum, and to enable critical but constructive inter-disciplinary debate about key themes arising from the application of advanced ancient DNA analysis to the study of the European Neolithic. The resulting papers gathered here are by both geneticists and archaeologists. Individually, they form a series of significant, up-to-date, period and regional syntheses of various manifestations of the Neolithic across the Near East and Europe, including particularly Britain and Ireland. Together, they offer wide-ranging reflections on the progress of ancient DNA studies, and on their future reach and character.

The history and lasting influence of the Celts, from their origins in eastern Europe through the upheaval of the early middle ages to "twilight" and decline in the west. The Celts were one of the most important population groups to spread across the ancient European continent. From 800BC to 1050AD their story is one of expanding power and influence followed by contraction and near extinction. Drawing on all possible sources of evidence, from archaeological remains of ancient Greece and Rome to surviving cultural influences, Daithi O hOgain outlines the history of the people known as Celts. He follows the evolution oftheir culture as it gained strength on its two-thousand-year passage through Europe. The influence of the Celts is far more widespread than its fragmented survival in the outer fringes of western Europe indicates; this onceimportant culture is still a vital component of European civilisation and heritage, from east to west. In tracing the course of the history of the Celts, O hOgain shows how far-reaching their influence has been. Daithi OhOgain is Associate Professor of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin. A recognised authority on Celtic folklore and history, he has lectured widely and contributed to many radio and TV programmes on Irish literature and cultural history. He is the author of The Sacred Isle: Pre-Christian Religion in Ireland.

The role of the Phoenicians in the economy, culture and politics of the ancient Mediterranean was as large as that of the Greeks and Romans, and deeply interconnected with that 'Classical' world, but their lack of literature and their Oriental associations mean that they are much less well-known. This book brings the state of the art in international scholarship on Phoenician and Punic studies to an English-speaking audience, collecting new papers from fifteen leading voices in the field from Europe and North Africa, with a bias towards the younger generation. Focusing on a series of case-studies from the colonial world of the western Mediterranean, it is the first volume in any language to address the questions of what 'Phoenician' and 'Punic' actually mean, how 'Punic' or western Phoenician identity has been constructed by ancients and moderns, the coherency of Punic culture, and whether there was in fact a 'Punic world'.

Stephanie Dalley explores the spread of culture through literacy from Mesopotamia into Egypt, Palestine and Greece after a system of writing was developed. By gathering evidence from a vast range of material and literary sources from 3000 BC onwards, threads of influence and continuity are traced into the Middle Ages. The effect of rediscovery in recent times is evident in European art.

Celtic hanging-bowls were produced from the fifth to the eleventh century and range from simple functional vessels to great masterpieces of the period. The first part of the publication sets the bowls in their historical and cultural background and discusses all key aspects of hanging-bowl research, including the much-disputed topics of origin, use, and chronology. The second part is a comprehensive and highly detailed catalogue, dealing with the whole series from Britain and Europe. The publication is lavishly illustrated with over a thousand black and white illustrations and eight colour plates. This long-awaited book by the leading authority on the subject will become the definitive work on this distinctive class of Celtic artefact.

The culmination of a project aimed at showcasing, in a systematic way, the potential of applying anthropological perspectives to classical studies, this volume highlights the fundamental contribution this approach has to make to our understanding of ancient Roman culture. Through the close study of themes such as myth, polytheism, sacrifice, magic, space, kinship, the gift, friendship, economics, animals, plants, riddles, metaphors, and images in Roman society (often in comparison with Greece) - where the texts of ancient culture are allowed to speak in their own terms and where the experience of the natives (rather than the horizon of the observer) is privileged - a rich panorama emerges of the worldview, beliefs, and deep structures that shaped and guided this culture.

This book introduces readers to the remarkable linguistic diversity of East and Southeast Asia. It contains wide-ranging and accessible discussions of every important aspect of the languages of the region, including word origins, cultural key words, tones and sounds, language families and typology, key syntactic structures, writing systems, and communicative styles. Students of linguistics will welcome the book's treatments of celebrated East Asian features such as classifiers, serial verb constructions, tones, topic-prominence, and honorifics. It shows students of particular Asian languages how their language fits structurally and culturally into the regional language mosaic. With its exercises, solutions, glossary, and many fascinating cases and insights, the book is an ideal introduction to descriptive and field linguistics. Cliff Goddard writes with great clarity and an eye for interesting examples.

This book, illustrated in colour throughout, offers a concise presentation of the archaeological site of Ancient Messene, in the Greek Peloponnese, written by its excavator and head of the restoration program, and incorporating the latest results of archaeological research. Guided by the book's informative texts, pictures and drawings, the visitor to the site can take in the history of the city, walk around its monumental fortifications and explore the Theatre, the Agora and its sanctuaries, the impressive Stadium with its Palaestra, as well as investigate the area of the funerary monuments. Ancient Messene, in its capacity as a functioning archaeological and ecological park, has acquired its own unique dynamic and independent character. This is because the potential offered by the majestic remains of an entire ancient city, in combination with the controlled building activity in the surrounding modern settlements, has been substantially realized. In addition, the long-term investments in time and effort by all those who worked at the site since 1986 have paid dividends. English language edition

Medieval bridges are startling achievements of design and engineering comparable with the great cathedrals of the period, and are also proof of the great importance of road transport in the middle ages and of the size and sophistication of the medieval economy. Dr Harrison has undertaken the first thorough study of bridges and in this book he rewrites their history from early Anglo-Saxon England right up to the Industrial Revolution, providing new insights into many aspects of the subject. Dr Harrison looks at the role of bridges in the creation of a new road system, which was significantly different from its Roman predecessor and which largely survived until the twentieth century. He examines the design of bridges, which were built in the most difficult circumstances - broad flood plains, deep tidal waters, and steep upland valleys - and withstood all but the most catastrophic floods. He also investigates the immense efforts put into their construction and upkeep, ranging from the mobilization of large work forces by the old English state to the role of resident hermits and the charitable donations which produced bridge trusts with huge incomes. The evidence presented in The Bridges of Medieval England shows that the network of bridges, which had been in place since the thirteenth century, was capable of serving the needs of the economy on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. This has profound implications for our understanding of pre-industrial society, challenging accepted accounts of the development of medieval trade and communications, and bringing to the fore the continuities from the late Anglo-Saxon period to the eighteenth century. This book is essential reading for those interested in architecture, engineering, transport, and economics, and any historian sceptical about the achievements of medieval England.

An Archaeology of the British Atlantic World, 1600-1700 is the first book to apply the methods of modern-world archaeology to the study of the seventeenth-century English colonial world. Charles E. Orser, Jr explores a range of material evidence of daily life collected from archaeological excavations throughout the Atlantic region, including England, Ireland, western Africa, Native North America, and the eastern United States. He considers the archaeological record together with primary texts by contemporary writers. Giving particular attention to housing, fortifications, delftware, and stoneware, Orser offers new interpretations for each type of artefact. His study demonstrates how the archaeological record expands our understanding of the Atlantic world at a critical moment of its expansion, as well as to the development of the modern, Western world.

This book provides an up-to-date synthesis of Aztec culture, applying interdisciplinary approaches (archaeology, ethnohistory and ethnography) to reconstructing the complex and enigmatic civilization. Frances F. Berdan offers a balanced assessment of complementary and sometimes contradictory sources in unravelling the ancient way of life. The book provides a cohesive view of the Aztecs and their empire, emphasizing the diversity and complexity of social, economic, political and religious roles played by the many kinds of people we call 'Aztecs'. Concluding with three integrative case studies, the book examines the stresses, dynamics and anchors of Aztec culture and society.