The Assyriologist and archaeologist Reginald Campbell Thompson (1876-1941) studied Hebrew at Cambridge and upon graduation moved into the department of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities at the British Museum, where he developed remarkable skill in matching fragments of cuneiform tablets and transcribing their texts. He excavated at Nineveh and later produced a definitive edition of the trilingual inscription of Darius at Behistan in Iran. This 1915 work describes Thompson's life 'in the field' at various sites in Egypt, the Sudan and western Asia. The difficulties and dangers of travel, the encounters with local people, and the management of an excavation are all described with enthusiasm and in melodramatic terms. Thompson lovingly records the daily life and traditions of the pre-1914 Middle East, perhaps feeling that he was witnessing a world that would soon be radically changed by the war. His Semitic Magic (1908) is also reissued in this series.

Often characterized as a 'lost' civilization that was 'discovered' by adventurers and archaeologists, ancient Egypt has fascin ated and inspired many other cultures. Classical Greek and Roman writers admired ancient Egyptian philosophy; in the eighteenth century, secret societies like the Freemasons still upheld the wisdom of ancient Egypt. But why? Christina Riggs introduces the history, art and religion of Egypt from its earliest dynasties to its final fall to Rome - and explores the influence ancient Egypt has had through the centuries. Today, ancient Egypt is ubiquitous in museums, television documentaries and tattoo parlours - wherever people look for a past as ancient and impressive as they come. Looking for a vanished past, Riggs argues, always serves some purpose in the present.

For the ancient Maya, food was both sustenance and a tool for building a complex society. This collection, the first to focus exclusively on the social uses of food in Classic Maya culture, deploys a variety of theoretical approaches to examine the meaning of food beyond diet-ritual offerings and restrictions, medicinal preparations, and the role of nostalgia around food, among other topics. For instance, how did Maya feasts build community while also reinforcing social hierarchy? What psychoactive substances were the elite Maya drinking in their caves, and why? Which dogs were good for eating, and which breeds became companions? Why did even some non-elite Maya enjoy cacao, but rarely meat? Why was meat more available for urban Maya than for those closer to hunting grounds on the fringes of cities? How did the molcajete become a vital tool and symbol in Maya gastronomy? These chapters, written by some of the leading scholars in the field, showcase a variety of approaches and present new evidence from faunal remains, hieroglyphic texts, chemical analyses, and art. Thoughtful and revealing, Her Cup for Sweet Cacao unlocks a more comprehensive understanding of how food was instrumental to the development of ancient Maya culture.

For a period of about week in February 1865, as the Civil War was winding down and Plains Indian communities were reeling in the wake of the Sand Creek massacre, combat swept across the Nebraska panhandle, especially along the Platte River. The fighting that marked this event barely compares to the massive campaigns and terrible carnage that marked the conflict that was taking place in the eastern states but it was a significant event at the opening on the ensuing Indian Wars. Operating on terrain they knew well, Cheyenne warriors and other Native forces encountered the US Cavalry who operated within a modern network of long distance migration and pony express trails and military stations. The North Platte Campaign offers a good basis for the application of landscape approaches to conflict archaeology if only because of its scale. This fighting is both easily approached and fascinatingly encompassed. There were probably far fewer than 1000 fighters involved in those skirmishes, but before, after, and between them, they involved substantial movements of people and of equipment that was similar to the arms and gear in service to other Civil War era combatants. They also seem to have used approaches that were typical of America's western warfare. Like many of the conflicts of interest to modern observers, the North Platte fights were between cultural different opponents. Archaeological consideration of battlefields such as Rush Creek and Mud Springs, bases, and landscapes associated with this fighting expose how the combat developed and how the opposing forces dealt with the challenges they encountered. This study draws on techniques of battlefield archaeology, focusing on the concept of 'battlespace' and the recovery, distribution and analysis of artifacts and weaponry, as well as historical accounts of the participants, LiDAR-informed terrain assessment, and theoretical consideration of the strategic thinking of the combatants. It applies a landscape approach to the archaeological study of war and reveals an overlooked phase of the American Civil War and the opening of the Indian Wars.

A study of the four eastern bands of Southern Pauite: Kaibab, Kaiparowits, San Juan, and Panguitch. The text was written by Isabel Kelly on the basis of field data she gathered in 1932.

This is an archaeological and historical study of Mexico City and Xaltocan, focusing on the early years after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire in 1521. The study of households excavated in Mexico City and the probate inventories of 39 colonizers provide a vivid view of the material and social lives of the Spanish in what was once the capital of the Aztec empire. Decades of archaeological and ethnohistorical research in Xaltocan, a town north of Mexico City, offers a long-term perspective of daily life, technology, the economy, and the adoption of Spanish material culture among indigenous people. Through these case studies, this book examines interpretive strategies used when working with historical documents and archaeological data. Focusing on the use of metaphors to guide interpretation, this volume explores the possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration between historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists working on this pivotal period in Latin American history.

This study explores the organization, scale, complexity, and integration of Aztec commerce across Mesoamerica at Spanish contact. The aims of the book are threefold. The first is to construct an in-depth understanding of the economic organization of precolumbian Aztec society and how it developed in the way that it did. The second is to explore the livelihoods of the individuals who bought, sold, and moved goods across a cultural landscape that lacked both navigable rivers and animal transport. Finally, this study models Aztec economy in a way that facilitates its comparison to other ancient and premodern societies around the world. What makes the Aztec economy unique is that it developed one of the most sophisticated market economies in the ancient world in a society with one of the worse transportation systems. This is the first book to provide an updated and comprehensive view of the Aztec economy in thirty years.

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.

The Bronze Age, so named because of the technological advances in metalworking and countless innovations in the manufacture and design of tools and weapons, is among the most fascinating periods in human history. Archaeology has taught us much about the way of life, habits and homes of Bronze Age people, but as yet little has been written about warfare. What was Bronze Age warfare like? How did people fight and against whom? What weapons were used? Did they fortify their settlements, and, if so, were these intended as defensive or offensive structures? This detailed and fully illustrated study of warfare in Bronze Age Europe, aims to answer these and many other questions.

In Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa, Lander examines the rhetorical and physical battles for sacred space between practitioners of traditional Roman religion, Christians, and Jews of late Roman North Africa. By analyzing literary along with archaeological evidence, Lander provides a new understanding of ancient notions of ritual space. This regard for ritual sites above other locations rendered the act or mere suggestion of seizing and destroying them powerful weapons in inter-group religious conflicts. Lander demonstrates that the quantity and harshness of discursive and physical attacks on ritual spaces directly correlates to their symbolic value. This heightened valuation reached such a level that rivals were willing to violate conventional Roman norms of property rights to display spatial control. Moreover, Roman Imperial policy eventually appropriated spatial triumphalism as a strategy for negotiating religious conflicts, giving rise to a new form of spatial colonialism that was explicitly religious.

This book seeks to communicate to both a global and local audience, the key attributes of pre-industrial African metallurgy such as technological variation across space and time, methods of mining and extractive metallurgy and the fabrication of metal objects. These processes were transformative in a physical and metaphoric sense, which made them total social facts. Because the production and use of metals was an accretion of various categories of practice, a chaine operatoire conceptual and theoretical framework that simultaneously considers the embedded technological and anthropological factors was used. The book focuses on Africa's different regions as roughly defined by cultural geography. On the one hand there is North Africa, Egypt, the Egyptian Sudan, and the Horn of Africa which share cultural inheritances with the Middle East and on the other is Africa south of the Sahara and the Sudan which despite interacting with the former is remarkably different in terms of technological practice. For example, not only is the timing of metallurgy different but so is the infrastructure for working metals and the associated symbolic and sociological factors. The cultural valuation of metals and the social positions of metal workers were different too although there is evidence of some values transfer and multi-directional technological cross borrowing. The multitude of permutations associated with metals production and use amply demonstrates that metals participated in the production and reproduction of society. Despite huge temporal and spatial differences there are so many common factors between African metallurgy and that of other regions of the world. For example, the role of magic and ritual in metal working is almost universal be it in Bolivia, Nepal, Malawi, Timna, Togo or Zimbabwe. Similarly, techniques of mining were constrained by the underlying geology but this should not in any way suggest that Africa's metallurgy was derivative or that the continent had no initiative. Rather it demonstrates that when confronted with similar challenges, humanity in different regions of the world responded to identical challenges in predictable ways mediated as mediated by the prevailing cultural context. The success of the use of historical and ethnographic data in understanding variation and improvisation in African metallurgical practices flags the potential utility of these sources in Asia, Latin America and Europe. Some nuance is however needed because it is simply naive to assume that everything depicted in the history or ethnography has a parallel in the past and vice versa. Rather, the confluence of archaeology, history and ethnography becomes a pedestal for dialogue between different sources, subjects and ideas that is important for broadening our knowledge of global categories of metallurgical practice.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ... (with rare exceptions) at full length. Each volume is placed in the charge of an editor especially competent--in many cases from personal acquaintance with the countries described--to give the reader such assistance as he needs for the elucidation of the text. Whenever possible, the interest of the volumes is increased by the addition of reproductions of contemporary portraits, maps, and other illustrations, and bibliographies, with the British Museum press-marks. As these editorial services are rendered gratuitously, the whole of the amount received from subscribers is expended in the preparation of the Societyi publications. The subscription should be paid to the Society's Bankers, Messrs. Barclay & Co., Ltd., i, Pall Mall East, London, S.W., on the first of January in each year. A form of Banker's Order is enclosed in this Prospectus. This payment entitles the subscriber to receive, free of charge, the current publications of the Society. Two to three volumes are issued each year. Members have the sole privilege of purchasing sets of the previous publications; and the Second Series of the Society's volumes is also reserved exclusively for its subscribers. In addition, they are allowed a special discount of not less than 15 per cent, on the volumes permitted to be sold to the public. It may be mentioned that the publications of the Society tend to rise in value, and those which are out of print are now only to be obtained at high prices. The present scale of charges for back volumes is as follows: --To-members.--Sets f the F1rst Ser1es, omitting Nos. 1 to 1, 12, 13, 14, 19, 22, 25/361 37, and 42, to be sold for..... net 35. Also single copies of the F1rst Ser1es, Vols. 2, 21, 23. 26-31, 33, 34, 35, 38-41, 43. 45'5'. 53-iO. at a discount of not less...

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Christian Inscriptions In The Irish Language, Volume 1; Christian Inscriptions In The Irish Language; Margaret Stokes George Petrie Margaret Stokes Printed at the University press, for the Royal historical and archaeological association of Ireland, 1872 Art; Christian antiquities; Christian art and symbolism; Gaulish language; Inscriptions, Irish; Irish language; Welsh language

How people engaged with materials such as clay or stone, why people dug features such as pits, why they decorated their bodies, or treated their dead in certain ways, were all meaningful in the African past. However, these are subjects that have been generally neglected by archaeologists working in Africa until recently. Material Explorations in African Archaeology examines materiality in African archaeology by exploring concepts of material agency and material engagement and entanglement in relation to their manifest presence in persons, animals, objects, substances, and contexts of the African past.

This edited volume focuses on the funerary archaeology of the Pan-Andean area in the pre-Hispanic period. The contributors examine the treatment of the dead and provide an understanding of how these ancient groups coped with mortality, as well as the ways in which they strove to overcome the effects of death. The contributors also present previously unpublished discoveries and employ a range of academic and analytical approaches that have rarely - if ever - been utilised in South America before. The book covers the Formative Period to the end of the Inca Empire, and the chapters together comprise a state-of-the-art summary of all the best research on Andean funerary archaeology currently being carried out around the globe.

This book offers a critical synthesis of the archaeology of South Asia from the Neolithic period (c.6500 BCE), when domestication began, to the spread of Buddhism accompanying the Mauryan Emperor Asoka's reign (third century BCE). The authors examine the growth and character of the Indus civilisation, with its town planning, sophisticated drainage systems, vast cities and international trade. They also consider the strong cultural links between the Indus civilisation and the second, later period of South Asian urbanism which began in the first millennium BCE and developed through the early first millennium CE. In addition to examining the evidence for emerging urban complexity, this book gives equal weight to interactions between rural and urban communities across South Asia and considers the critical roles played by rural areas in social and economic development. The authors explore how narratives of continuity and transformation have been formulated in analyses of South Asia's Prehistoric and Early Historic archaeological record.

The land of Bambuk was an important source of gold for trans-Saharan trade and the imperial polities of Ghana and Mali, yet the non-centralized societies of this region remain largely peripheral in the historiography of West Africa. Drawing on recent archaeological research at the site of Diouboye in eastern Senegal, this book explores social life in medieval Bambuk from the standpoint of a village occupied over several centuries (1000-1400 CE). Material and spatial data from excavations, together with those from survey of the middle Falemme River basin, enable a critical look at how interactions across multiple scales-among neighboring houses, between cultural and craft traditions, and within a much broader political economy-created both possibilities for and challenges to the ongoing production of a local community at Diouboye. By moving back and forth across these scales centered on a single village, Assembling the Village in Medieval Bambuk outlines a relational archaeology of community applicable to the study of seemingly peripheral societies and processes of pre-modern globalization across Africa and beyond.

Born in Scotland, James Fergusson (1808-86) spent ten years as an indigo planter in India before embarking upon a second career as an architectural historian. Despite his lack of formal training, he became an expert in the field of Indian architecture. The topography and temples of ancient Jerusalem also fascinated him. This 1865 collection of two lectures summarises his controversial topographical and architectural argument that the location where Constantine erected the original Holy Sepulchre was the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. Fergusson then describes the Temple in its successive forms, arguing against the view that the rock known as the foundation stone was the site of the Jewish altar. The work is illustrated throughout with plans and drawings. Fergusson's Cave Temples of India (1880) and the two-volume revised edition of his History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (1910) are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.

First comprehensive English-language book on the largest city in the Americas before the 1400s. Teotihuacan is a UNESCO world heritage site, located in highland central Mexico, about twenty-five miles from Mexico City, visited by millions of tourists every year. The book begins with Cuicuilco, a predecessor that arose around 400 BCE, then traces Teotihuacan from its founding in approximately 150 BCE to its collapse around 600 CE. It describes the city's immense pyramids and other elite structures. It also discusses the dwellings and daily lives of commoners, including men, women, and children, and the craft activities of artisans. George L. Cowgill discusses politics, economics, technology, art, religion, and possible reasons for Teotihuacan's rise and fall. Long before the Aztecs and 800 miles from Classic Maya centers, Teotihuacan was part of a broad Mesoamerican tradition but had a distinctive personality that invites comparison with other states and empires of the ancient world.

First comprehensive English-language book on the largest city in the Americas before the 1400s. Teotihuacan is a UNESCO world heritage site, located in highland central Mexico, about twenty-five miles from Mexico City, visited by millions of tourists every year. The book begins with Cuicuilco, a predecessor that arose around 400 BCE, then traces Teotihuacan from its founding in approximately 150 BCE to its collapse around 600 CE. It describes the city's immense pyramids and other elite structures. It also discusses the dwellings and daily lives of commoners, including men, women, and children, and the craft activities of artisans. George L. Cowgill discusses politics, economics, technology, art, religion, and possible reasons for Teotihuacan's rise and fall. Long before the Aztecs and 800 miles from Classic Maya centers, Teotihuacan was part of a broad Mesoamerican tradition but had a distinctive personality that invites comparison with other states and empires of the ancient world.

Napoleon's military expedition to Egypt in 1798 famously included various scientists and savants, among whom was the author of this three-volume work, published in French in 1802 and in English in 1803. Vivant Denon (1747-1825) was a diplomat under the Ancien Regime, but survived the Revolution thanks to the patronage of the painter David, and met Napoleon through the salon of Josephine de Beauharnais. He accompanied the army, excavating and sketching, sometimes even during battles. The publication of this lively, illustrated account is regarded as the chief stimulus for the so-called 'Egyptian Revival' style of architecture, interior design and even costume. Volume 2 finds Denon travelling down the Nile into Upper Egypt, and fretting because General Desaix, his mind focused on an approaching battle, would not give him an escort to visit Abydos. This disappointment was compensated for when the army arrived at the marvellous ruins of Thebes.

The Egyptologist Samuel Birch (1813-85) began to study Chinese at school, and obtained his first post at the British Museum cataloguing Chinese coins. He maintained his interest in Chinese civilisation throughout his life, but also collaborated with C. T. Newton on a catalogue of Greek and Etruscan vases, and with Sir Henry Rawlinson on cuneiform inscriptions, while also specialising in the examination and cataloguing of the Museum's growing collection of Egyptian papyri and other artefacts. Birch describes this two-volume, highly illustrated work on ancient pottery, published in 1858, as filling a perceived need: 'A work has long been required which should embody the general history of the fictile art of the ancients.' Volume 1 covers the composition and techniques of the pottery of ancient Egypt and Assyria, with notes on Jewish Phoenician wares, and begins an examination of the techniques and art of the Greek ceramicists.

The Egyptologist Samuel Birch (1813-85) began to study Chinese at school, and obtained his first post at the British Museum cataloguing Chinese coins. He maintained his interest in Chinese civilisation throughout his life, but also collaborated with C. T. Newton on a catalogue of Greek and Etruscan vases, and with Sir Henry Rawlinson on cuneiform inscriptions, while also specialising in the examination and cataloguing of the Museum's growing collection of Egyptian papyri and other artefacts. Birch describes this two-volume, highly illustrated work on ancient pottery, published in 1858, as filling a perceived need: 'A work has long been required which should embody the general history of the fictile art of the ancients.' Volume 2 continues to examine Greek pottery, including the work of named or identified individual craftsmen, and then moves on to Etruscan and Roman wares, with a short final section on 'Celtic, Teutonic, and Scandinavian pottery'.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853 edition. Excerpt: ...his head, and heard his long, regular, and continued swallows; and when he had finished the jar he drew a long breath, went to the window, came to my bedside, looked at me for a moment, probably thinking wl_.at a deal of useless trouble I took in pulling oil' my clothes; and, throwing himself upon the divan, in a few moments he was again asleep. ln the morning immediately after breakfast one of the monks came to conduct me through the convent. The building covered a great extent of ground; and for strength and solidity, as well as size, resembled a fortress. It was built by the Empress Helena, over the spot consecrated as the birthplace of our Saviour, and was intended, so far as human handiwork could do so, to honour and reverence the holy spot. The insuflicient means of the pious empress, however, or some other cause, prevented its being finished according to the plan she had designed; and the charity of subsequent Christians has barely sufliced to keep it from falling to. ruin. The great church would have been a magnificent building if finished according to her plan; but now, in its incomplete state, it is a melancholy monument of defeated ambition. On each side is a range of noble columns, supporting a frieze of wood, which the monk told me. was cedar from Lebanon, and still remaining almost as sound as the solid stone. The whole building is divided among the Catholics, Greeks, and Armenians, the three great bodies who represent, or rather misrepresent, Christianity in the East. Each has its limits, beyond which the others must not pass; and again there are certain parts which are common to all. The Turkish government exercises a control over it; and, taking advantage of the dissensions between these different professors, sells...