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.

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.

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.

More than quarter of a century ago Richard Bradley published The Passage of Arms. It was conceived as An Archaeological Analysis of Prehistoric Hoards and Votive Deposits, but, as the author concedes, these terms were too narrowly focused for the complex subject of deliberate deposition and the period covered too short. A Geography of Offerings has been written to provoke a reaction from archaeologists and has two main aims. The first is to move this kind of archaeology away from the minute study of ancient objects to a more ambitious analysis of ancient places and landscapes. The second is to recognise that problems of interpretation are not restricted to the pre-Roman period. Mesolithic finds have a place in this discussion, and so do those of the 1st millennium AD. Archaeologists studying individual periods confront with similar problems and the same debates are repeated within separate groups of scholars - but they arrive at different conclusions. Here, the author presents a review that brings these discussions together and extends across the entire sequence. Rather than offer a comprehensive survey, this is an extended essay about the strengths and weaknesses of current thinking regarding specialised deposits, which encompass both sacrificial deposits characterised by large quantities of animal and human bones and other collections which are dominated by finds of stone or metal artefacts. It considers current approaches and theory, the histories of individual artefacts and the landscape and physical context of the of places where they were deposited, the character of materials, the importance of animism and the character of ancient cosmologies.

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.

On 5 July 2009 a metal-detectorist started to unearth gold objects in a Staffordshire field. Thus began the discovery of the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure ever found. Consisting of over 1600 items - including fittings from the hilts of swords, fragments from helmets, Christian crosses and magnificent pieces of garnet work - the Staffordshire Hoard has begun to rewrite history. This new and extended edition of the successful title by Kevin Leahy and Roger Bland delves deeper into the story behind the hoard, using the latest research to fill previous gaps in knowledge and turn some of the original ideas about the discovery on their head. Complete with new photography of the cleaned and conserved objects, showing off the stunning and intricate decoration, this book provides a fascinating account of the history and the discovery of this remarkable hoard.

Inspired by the Quaker ideals of simplicity, equality, and peace, a group of white planters formed a community in the British Virgin Islands during the eighteenth century. Yet they lived in a slave society, and nearly all their members held enslaved people. In this book, John Chenoweth examines how the community navigated the contradictions of Quakerism and plantation ownership. Using archaeological and archival information, Chenoweth reveals how a web of connections led to the community's establishment, how Quaker religious practices intersected with other aspects of daily life in the Caribbean, how these practices were altered to fit a slavery-based economy and society, and how the eventual development of dissent and schism brought about the end of the community after just one generation. He uses this story as a fascinating example of the ways religious ideals can be interpreted in everyday practice to adapt to different local contexts.

Fools. Rebels. Ignorant peasants. That's how the Roman world saw the first Christians. Led by fishermen, tax collectors and renegade Pharisees, the first Christians shunned power and welcomed the poor and uneducated. Roman commentators mocked their upside-down values, but the apostle Paul - himself a Roman citizen, and a Pharisee to boot, affirmed that 'God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.' Its followers were persecuted and its leaders killed, yet this ragged collection of lowly tradesmen, women, slaves - and a smattering of turncoat high-born Jews - created a movement that changed the world. How did this happen? How did the kingdom of fools conquer the mighty empire that was Rome? In this fascinating new biography of the early church, Nick Page sets the biblical accounts alongside the latest historical and archaeological research, exploring how the early Christians lived and worshipped - and just why the Romans found this new branch of the Jewish faith so difficult to comprehend. KINGDOM OF FOOLS is a fresh, challenging, accessible portrait of a movement so radical, so dangerous, so thrillingly different that it outlasted the empire that tried to destroy it and went on to become the driving force of our cultural development - and claims more followers today than ever before in history.

The Sword is closely associated with all that was most significant in a man's life in the Anglo-Saxon world: family ties, loyalty to a lord, the duties of a king, the excitement of battle, the attainment of manhood, and the last funeral rites. Hilda Ellis Davidson explores the revelations of archaeology, methods of sword-making, and references in Anglo-Saxon poetry and Old Norse sagas to reveal a past where the sword was of supreme importance, as a weapon and as a symbol. She restores a vital dimension to Old English literature, and endows those few surviving swords in museums with a real glamour and magic. She shows that for a fuller understanding of Anglo-Saxon poetry it is important to have due regard to the warrior culture from which it sprang, and of the potent part played by the sword within that culture. Much can be learnt from surviving swords and from the context in which they are discovered. Careful study of the disposition of swords found in peat bogs in Denmark, and in graves, lakes and rivers in the British Isles, yields information on religious and social practices. The swords themselves, and their decoration, reveal the technical skill and cultural achievements of the people who wielded them. To read Beowolf is to be immediately aware of the aura of magical power the poet vested in the sword, and Hilda Ellis Davidson's other concern in this book is to look at literary sources for what they reveal of the quality of a good sword and its significance in Anglo-Saxon and Viking societies - for Viking raiders played as important a part as Anglo-Saxon colonists in the history of early medieval Britain. A survey of the sword in Anglo-Saxon historical records and poetry isfollowed by an exploration of descriptions of the sword, and of the parts of the sword, in Old Norse literature. The real world of the Anglo-Saxons is brought into dramatic close-focus through this thorough study of the physical remains and literary memorials of a highly-charged symbol.

Phoenician and Punic archaeology have long been overlooked by Mediterranean archaeologists, who focused their attention on Greek and Roman cultures. Although the Punic cities and their rural landscapes are to be found along the southern shores and on the islands of the western Mediterranean basin, comprehensive studies of these archaeological remains are virtually non-existent. It is the aim of this book to investigate Punic rural settlement in the western Mediterranean by bringing together and comparing the currently dispersed existing evidence for rural Punic settlement. The core of the volume is accordingly made up by a detailed discussion of the archaeological evidence for Punic rural settlement from Sardinia, Sicily, Ibiza, mainland Spain and North Africa.Because agriculture and agrarian produce have always been assumed to have played a critical role in the Carthaginian colonial expansion, the connections between the various colonial contexts and the local characteristics of rural organisation explored in detail in order to enhance our understanding of these colonial contexts. This in turn provides better insight in Carthaginian colonialism and local Punic rural settlement and their role in the wider Mediterranean context. By publishing this evidence and these interpretations in English, we hope to draw attention to Punic archaeology in general and to these rural studies in particular and to situate them in the wider Mediterranean context of both classical Antiquity and Mediterranean archaeology.

Most historians rely principally on written sources. Yet there are other traces of the past available to historians: the material things that people have chosen, made, and used. This book examines how material culture can enhance historians' understanding of the past, both worldwide and across time. The successful use of material culture in history depends on treating material things of many kinds not as illustrations, but as primary evidence. Each kind of material thing-and there are many-requires the application of interpretive skills appropriate to it. These skills overlap with those acquired by scholars in disciplines that may abut history but are often relatively unfamiliar to historians, including anthropology, archaeology, and art history. Creative historians can adapt and apply the same skills they honed while studying more traditional text-based documents even as they borrow methods from these fields. They can think through familiar historical problems in new ways. They can also deploy material culture to discover the pasts of constituencies who have left few or no traces in written records. The authors of this volume contribute case studies arranged thematically in six sections that respectively address the relationship of history and material culture to cognition, technology, the symbolic, social distinction, and memory. They range across time and space, from Paleolithic to Punk.

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.

How to Make a New Spain presents an unprecedented view of the material worlds of Mexico City in the sixteenth century, drawing from a combination of sources and methodologies. It presents the author's original analysis of over 11,000 items in the probate inventories of thirty-nine Spanish colonizers. It also synthesizes information from archaeological excavations of Spanish houses at the center of Mexico City. The book begins with a critique of theories of materiality, in which scholars emphasize the agency of things at the expense of an investigation of social relationships. Rodriguez-Alegria argues that now that scholars have shown that the descendants of the Mexica (often known as the Aztecs) maintained social and political power in the colonial period, we should reexamine how Indigenous people, colonizers, and Black people together created the material and social worlds of colonial Mexico. The book assimilates information on architecture, money, clothing, furniture, pottery, slaves, livestock, and tools to provide a new vision of daily life in colonial Mexico City. It shows that colonialism was based on the recognition of people of similar classes across ethnic boundaries, and on the forging of relationships with powerful Indigenous people. Even colonizers who sought to display distinction from Indigenous people with their material culture depended on Indigenous products and technology to achieve that distinction. The complex history of materiality and power that emerges from this book compels us to reimagine colonial Mexico and the people who created it.

Life and Death in Asia Minor combines contributions in both archaeology and bioarchaeology in Asia Minor in the period ca. 200 BC - AD 1300 for the first time. The archaeology topics are wide-ranging including death and territory, death and landscape perception, death and urban transformations from pagan to Christian topography, changing tomb typologies, funerary costs, family organization, funerary rights, rituals and practices among pagans, Jews, and Christians, inhumation and Early Byzantine cremations and use and reuse of tombs. The bioarchaeology chapters use DNA, isotope and osteological analyses to discuss, both among children and adults, questions such as demography and death rates, pathology and nutrition, body actions, genetics, osteobiography, and mobility patterns and diet. The areas covered in Asia Minor include the sites of Hierapolis, Laodikeia, Aphrodisias, Tlos, Ephesos, Priene, Kyme, Pergamon, Amorion, Gordion, Bogazkale, and Arslantepe. The theoretical and methodological approaches used make it highly relevant for people working in other geographical areas and time periods. Many of the articles could be used as case studies in teaching at schools and universities. An important objective of the publication has been to see how the different types of results emerging from archaeological and natural science studies respectively could be integrated with each other and pose new questions on ancient societies, which were far more complex than historical and social studies of the past often manage to transmit.

Until very recently Viking and Norse assembly sites were essentially unknown, apart from a few select sites, such as Thingvellir in Iceland. The Vikings are well-known for their violence and pillage, but they also had a well-organised system for political decision-making, legal cases and conflict resolution. Using archaeological evidence, written sources and place-names, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of their legal system and assembly sites, showing that this formed an integral part of Norse culture and identity, to the extent that the assembly institution was brought to all Norse settlements. Sites are analysed through surveys and case studies across Scandinavia, Scotland and the North Atlantic region. The author moves the view of assembly sites away from a functional one to an understanding of the symbolic meaning of these highly ritualised sites, and shows how they were constructed to signify power through monuments and natural features. This original and stimulating study is set not only in the context of the Viking and Norse periods, but also in the wider continental histories of place, assembly and the rhetoric of power.

This is the sequel to the first volume of Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance, published in 1991. It contains some 750 inscriptions from the Old Testament period which were mainly published for the first time between 1990 and 2000. Some were discovered in regular archaeological excavations, others come from private collections. The new material includes ostraca from different sites, which are of religious, literary and historical importance, and extensive information about the personal names which were in use in the biblical period. The number of coin-legends and other texts from the Persian and early Hellenistic periods has also been enlarged. Each text is supplied with a brief description, an approximate date and publication information. The concordance provides an easy way to discover which Hebrew words and proper names occur in non-biblical sources and helps greatly to widen the basis for Hebrew language study.

Designated a World Heritage Site, the landscape around Avebury in north Wiltshire contains a remarkable wealth of archaeological remains, including some of the most spectacular prehistoric monuments in Europe. Incorporating extensive research and fieldwork from the last ten years, this is the only book to explore the landscape context of Avebury over six millennia. There is of course a full description and interpretation of the impressive Neolithic monuments within the immediate area (including the Avebury henge itself), but the authors range far wider in both space and time. Extending from early prehistory, through the Roman occupation, to the Anglo-Saxon and later medieval periods, their comprehensive study works through a series of interrelated themes such as histories of occupation, the modification of the landscape and the changing perceptions of past populations. Both authors have worked for ten years on large-scale field projects in the Avebury region.

Magic, dreams, and prophecy played important roles in ancient Egypt, as recent scholarship has increasingly made clear. In this volume, eminent international Egyptologists come together to explore such divination across a wide period.

Social and human sciences are currently in a special position. On the one hand, they are subject to frequent doubts and mistrust while on the other hand, there is a view that the 21st century will be a century of social and human sciences, addressing their importance in solving key cultural and social issues of humanity. In general, however, we can observe a decreasing interest in human and social sciences. The authors of the book believe that the rejection of the importance of human sciences is based on a fundamental misconception of facts. Society's education and culture is a prerequisite for the economic level of each country. Innovation is not only a matter of technical importance; it is equally important to understand human cultural behaviour in the broadest possible context. This book presents studies in selected topics from social, human and historical sciences that demonstrate the relevance of the research in the area under consideration. The contributors to this book are researchers in the departments of Archaeology, Ethnology and Folklore, History, Culture and Tourism Management of Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra.

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.

Histories you can trust. The Oxford History of the Holy Land covers the 3,000 years which saw the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - and relates the familiar stories of the sacred texts with the fruits of modern scholarship. Beginning with the origins of the people who became the Israel of the Bible, it follows the course of the ensuing millennia down to the time when the Ottoman Empire succumbed to British and French rule at the end of the First World War. Parts of the story, especially as known from the Bible, will be widely familiar. Less familiar are the ways in which modern research, both from archaeology and from other ancient sources, sometimes modify this story historically. Better understanding, however, enables us to appreciate crucial chapters in the story of the Holy Land, such as how and why Judaism developed in the way that it did from the earlier sovereign states of Israel and Judah and the historical circumstances in which Christianity emerged from its Jewish cradle. Later parts of the story are vital not only for the history of Islam and its relationships with the two older religions, but also for the development of pilgrimage and religious tourism, as well as the notions of sacred space and of holy books with which we are still familiar today. From the time of Napoleon on, European powers came increasingly to develop both cultural and political interest in the region, culminating in the British and French conquests which carved out the modern states of the Middle East. Sensitive to the concerns of those for whom the sacred books of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are of paramount religious authority, the authors all try sympathetically to show how historical information from other sources, as well as scholarly study of the texts themselves, enriches our understanding of the history of the region and its prominent position in the world's cultural and intellectual history.

An Archaeology of Ancash is a well-illustrated synthesis of the archaeology of North Central Peru, and specifically the stone structures of the Ancash region. All the major cultures of highland Ancash built impressive monuments, with no other region of South America showing such an early and continuous commitment to stone carving. Drawing on Lau's extensive experience as an archaeologist in highland Peru, this book reveals how ancient groups of the Central Andes have used stone as both a physical and symbolic resource, uncovering the variety of experiences and meanings which marked the region's special engagement with this material. An abundant raw resource in the Andes, stone was used for monuments, sculptures and other valuables such as carved monoliths, which were crucial to the emergence of civilization in the region, and religious objects from magical charms to ancestor effigies. Detailing the ways stone has played both an everyday and an extraordinary part in ancient social life, Lau also examines how cultural dispositions towards this fundamental material have changed over time and considers how contemporary engagements with these stone remains have the potential to create and regenerate communities. With an ample selection of color photos which bring these sites and artifacts to life, An Archaeology of Ancash is an essential guide to the key monuments, places and objects that distinguish this region and its rich archaeological heritage.

The Liangzhu Culture (3,300-2,300 BC) represented the peak of prehistoric cultural and social development in the Yangtze Delta. With a wide sphere of influence centred near present-day Hangzhou City, Liangzhu City is considered one of the earliest urban centres in prehistoric China. Although it remains a mystery for many in the West, Liangzhu is well known in China for its fine jade-crafting industry; its enormous, well-structured earthen palatial compound and recently discovered hydraulic system; and its far-flung impact on contemporary and succeeding cultures. The archaeological ruins of Liangzhu City were added to the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in July 2019. Liangzhu Culture contextualises Liangzhu in broad socio-economic and cultural backgrounds and provides new, first-hand data to help explain the development and structure of this early urban centre. Among its many insights, the volume reveals how elites used jade as a means of acquiring social power, and how Liangzhu and its centre stand in comparison to other prehistoric urban centres in the world. This book, the first of its kind published in the English language, will be a useful guide to students at all levels interested in the material culture and social structures of prehistoric China and beyond.

An illustrated history of the English branch of the Order of St Lazarus, founded to care for lepers and send leper knights to the Crusades. One of the most unusual contributions to the crusading era was the idea of the leper knight - a response to the scourge of leprosy and the shortage of fighting men which beset the Latin kingdom in the twelfth century. The Order ofSt Lazarus, which saw the idea become a reality, founded establishments across Western Europe to provide essential support for its hospitaller and military vocations. This book explores the important contribution of the English branch of the order, which by 1300 managed a considerable estate from its chief preceptory at Burton Lazars in Leicestershire. Time proved the English Lazarites to be both tough and tenacious, if not always preoccupied with the care of lepers: following the fall of Acre in 1291 they endured a period of bitter internal conflict, only to emerge reformed and reinvigorated in the fifteenth century. Though these late medieval knights were very different from their twelfth-century predecessors, some ideologies lingered on, though subtly readapted to the requirements of a new age, until the order was finally suppressed by Henry VIII in 1544. The modern refoundation of the order, a charitable institution, dates from 1962. The book uses both documentary and archaeological evidence to provide the first ever account of this little-understood crusading order. DAVID MARCOMBE is Director of the Centre for LocalHistory, University of Nottingham.