For many years, 260AD was seen as the dividing line between a Romanesque classical age and a Germanic early medieval period. Now, however, it is necessary to take more account of the manifold and mutual cross-influences between the various population groups and analyse forms of continuity and discontinuity, acculturation and persistence. An examination of archaeological sources in Alamannia shows the existence of Romanesque structures up to around the year 400. The "Reihengraberfelder" (burial gounds with the graves laid out in rows) dating from the mid-5th century can be seen as marking a new beginning. Various links to the Germanic Elbe region and the Danube area show the heterogenity of the population at the beginning of this era. As late as the 6th and 7th centuries, however, different forms of burial can be found in areas close to the Rhine and in the Danube region, which demonstrate the manifold cross-influences.

Ezzo presents a detailed study of the bone chemistry of individuals buried at the 14th century Grasshopper Pueblo site. A wide range of elements were measured from these skeletons as indicators of diet, stress, and nutrition. The different concentrations of these elements were then related to parameters of age, sex, social differences, space, time, environmental change, and possible resource depletion. The major relationships were found to be with sex, space, and time, with significant changes in male and female diets over time, but also with patterned spatial differences in burials suggesting household differences in access to food. This is a data-rich study which provides much information for social and economic reconstructions of prehistoric Pueblo adaptation to their environment.

In this book, Akkermans provides a systematic overview of the Halaf culture in the Syrian portion of the valley of the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates. Following a broad exposition of the geography of the region, excavation results, definition of chronological periods within the Halaf, and patterns of site distributions, interpretive questions are explored. These include site types and the problems of determining site hierarchies, the nature of Halaf subsistence, and the role of exchange in the Halaf culture.

In this book, Akkermans provides a systematic overview of the Halaf culture in the Syrian portion of the valley of the Balikh River, a tributary of the Euphrates. Following a broad exposition of the geography of the region, excavation results, definition of chronological periods within the Halaf, and patterns of site distributions, interpretive questions are explored. These include site types and the problems of determining site hierarchies, the nature of Halaf subsistence, and the role of exchange in the Halaf culture.

Throughout the pharaonic period, hieroglyphs served both practical and aesthetic purposes. Carved on stelae, statues, and temple walls, hieroglyphic inscriptions were one of the most prominent and distinctive features of ancient Egyptian visual culture. For both the literate minority of Egyptians and the vast illiterate majority of the population, hieroglyphs possessed a potent symbolic value that went beyond their capacity to render language visible. For nearly three thousand years, the hieroglyphic script remained closely bound to indigenous notions of religious and cultural identity. By the late antique period, literacy in hieroglyphs had been almost entirely lost. However, the monumental temples and tombs that marked the Egyptian landscape, together with the hieroglyphic inscriptions that adorned them, still stood as inescapable reminders that Christianity was a relatively new arrival to the ancient land of the pharaohs. In Egyptian Hieroglyphs in the Late Antique Imagination, Jennifer Westerfeld argues that depictions of hieroglyphic inscriptions in late antique Christian texts reflect the authors' attitudes toward Egypt's pharaonic past. Whether hieroglyphs were condemned as idolatrous images or valued as a source of mystical knowledge, control over the representation and interpretation of hieroglyphic texts constituted an important source of Christian authority. Westerfeld examines the ways in which hieroglyphs are deployed in the works of Eusebius and Augustine, to debate biblical chronology; in Greek, Roman, and patristic sources, to claim that hieroglyphs encoded the mysteries of the Egyptian priesthood; and in a polemical sermon by the fifth-century monastic leader Shenoute of Atripe, to argue that hieroglyphs should be destroyed lest they promote a return to idolatry. She argues that, in the absence of any genuine understanding of hieroglyphic writing, late antique Christian authors were able to take this powerful symbol of Egyptian identity and manipulate it to serve their particular theological and ideological ends.

Ezzo presents a detailed study of the bone chemistry of individuals buried at the 14th century Grasshopper Pueblo site. A wide range of elements were measured from these skeletons as indicators of diet, stress, and nutrition. The different concentrations of these elements were then related to parameters of age, sex, social differences, space, time, environmental change, and possible resource depletion. The major relationships were found to be with sex, space, and time, with significant changes in male and female diets over time, but also with patterned spatial differences in burials suggesting household differences in access to food. This is a data-rich study which provides much information for social and economic reconstructions of prehistoric Pueblo adaptation to their environment.

This book is published to mark the exhibition at Te Papa of the remarkable third century BC funerary statues excavated from the astounding archaeological site at X'ian, China. The sculptures depicted the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, and were made to protect him in his afterlife. The 200 especially selected pieces from the site have travelled to Wellington and then to Melbourne, for their first exhibition in Australasia for 30 years. This highly illustrated catalogue has images of all the objects in the exhibition as well as informative essays that explain more about the creation of the objects and their ongoing discovery.

The papers in this volume examine the sociocultural, socioeconomic and environmental factors that condition spatial patterning of human behavior in food-producing (both agricultural and pastoral) societies. The spatially patterned material manifestations of that behavior are considered in the light of archaeological and ethnographical examples. Most papers combine both sources of data, drawn primarily from Africa, while one paper focuses on the ancient Near East.

The papers in this volume examine the sociocultural, socioeconomic and environmental factors that condition spatial patterning of human behavior in food-producing (both agricultural and pastoral) societies. The spatially patterned material manifestations of that behavior are considered in the light of archaeological and ethnographical examples. Most papers combine both sources of data, drawn primarily from Africa, while one paper focuses on the ancient Near East.

A single coherent narrative of Aksumite civilisation revealing the roots of medieval Christian Ethiopia. This well-illustrated book provides an up-to-date survey of a key period in the history of northern Ethiopia and south-central Eritrea. It is accessible to the general reader, but its comprehensive references and guidance to controversies and research needs will render it invaluable to specialists and students. It considers how the region's literate communities arose and flourished during the last millennium BC, giving rise to the Aksumite civilisation whose achievements and intercontinental significance are increasingly recognised, and which formed an integral but often neglected component of the Christian world in Late Antiquity. Aksum is now seen as the ancestor of the region'smedieval Christian kingdom whose churches and associated art continue to attract many visitors to Ethiopia. David W. Phillipson is Emeritus Professor of African Archaeology and former Director of the University Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Cambridge. In 2014 he was made an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences. Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Ethiopia: Addis Ababa University Press

The study of early China has been radically transformed over the past fifty years by archaeological discoveries, including both textual and non-textual artifacts. Thanks to the huge fund of new data provided by archaeology, historians are now keenly aware that traditional accounts of the period are inadequte because they are partisan, prescriptive, and incomplete. Excavations of settlements and tombs have demonstrated that most people did not lead their lives in accordance with the rituals canons, while previously unknown documents have shown that most received histories were written retrospectively by victors, and present a correspondingly skewed and anachronistic perspective.

This handbook provides an authoritive survey of Chinese history from the Stone Age to A.D. 220. It is the first volume to include not only a comprehensive review of political history, but also detailed treatments of topics that transcend particular historical moments, such as warfare, cities, literature, and science. The contributions from doyens in the field and up and coming scholars reflect the cutting edge research that is redefining the study of Early Chinese history.

Amongst the civilizations to participate in the dynamic processes of contact and interchange that gave rise to complex societies in the ancient Near East, Elam has remained one of the most obscure, at times languishing in the background of scholarly inquiry. In recent years, however, an increasing body of academic publications have acknowledged its relevance and suggested that its legacy was more considerable and long-lasting than previously estimated. The Elamite World assembles a group of 40 international scholars to contribute their expertise to the production of a solid, lavishly illustrated, English language treatment of Elamite civilization. It covers topics such as its physical setting, historical development, languages and people, material culture, art, science, religion and society, as well as the legacy of Elam in the Persian empire and its presence in the modern world. This comprehensive and ambitious survey seeks for Elam, hardly a household name, a noteworthy place in our shared cultural heritage. It will be both a valuable introductory text for a general audience and a definitive reference source for students and academics.

The Viking Age (c. 750-1050 AD) is conventionally seen as a tumultuous time when hordes of fierce warriors from Scandinavia wreaked havoc across the European continent and when Norse merchants travelled to distant corners of the world in pursuit of slaves, silver, and exotic commodities. Until relatively recently, archaeologists and textual scholars had the tendency to weave a largely male-dominated image of this pivotal period in world history, dismissing or substantially downplaying women's roles in Norse society. Today, however, there is ample evidence to suggest that many of the most spectacular achievements of Viking Age Scandinavians - for instance in craftsmanship, exploration, cross-cultural trade, warfare and other spheres of life - would not have been possible without the active involvement of women. Extant textual sources as well as the perpetually expanding corpus of archaeological evidence thus demonstrate unequivocally that both within the walls of the household and in the wider public arena women's voices were heard, respected and followed. This pioneering and beautifully illustrated monograph provides an in-depth exploration of women's associations with the martial sphere of life in the Viking Age. The multifarious motivations and circumstances that led women to engage in armed conflict or other activities whereby weapons served as potent symbols of prestige and empowerment are illuminated and interpreted through an interdisciplinary approach to medieval literature and archaeological evidence from Scandinavia and the wider Viking world. Additional cross-cultural excursions into the lives and legends of female warriors in other past and present cultural milieus - from the Asiatic steppes to the savannas of Africa and European battlefields - lead to a nuanced understanding of the idea of the armed woman and its embodiments in Norse literature, myth and archaeological reality.

Brings together over thirty of the leading scholars in Post Medieval archaeology and examines how this relatively new discipline has developed and where it is going. The impetus for this volume lies in the expansion of interest in Post Medieval archaeology in university, commercial, and voluntary sectors. The study of Post Medieval archaeology is a relatively new discipline but, within archaeology as a whole, it represents one of the fastest growing areas of study. Archaeologists seek to avoid the fragmentation of a still small discipline into subfields such as pre-1750 post-medieval archaeology, post-1750 industrial archaeology, or the incorporation of theory as somehow outside of the purview of the work of the older organisations. This important and timely volume brings together articles that consider the commonalties between approaches as well as the unique contributions made by members of each organisation towards the study of the material heritage of the post-1550 period. The chapters in the volume derive from a well-attended three day conference held at the University of Leicester in April 2008 and sponsored by the Society for Post-medieval Archaeology, the Association for Industrial Archaeology, and the Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group. The aim of the discussion-focused conference was to foster enhanced understanding and cooperation between the organisations and their approaches; with in-depth consideration of the future of the broader field of historical archaeology. The volume will bring the debatefrom the conference to a wider academic, professional, and vocational audience and, it is anticipated, will act as a benchmark by which future development will be judged.

This is the first official guidebook to the site of ancient Corinth published by the ASCSA in over 50 years, and it comes fully updated with the most current information, colour photos, maps, and plans. It is an indispensable resource for the casual tourist or professional archaeologist new to the site. The guide begins with a history of Corinth and its excavations and then presents two tours. The first takes visitors through the archaeological site from the Temple of Apollo to the Forum, the Fountain of Peirene, and more. The second tour covers the ancient monuments outside the fenced area of the site, including the Odeion, the Theatre, and the Asklepieion, and then the various remains of ancient Corinth located within and outside the ancient Greek walls, including the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore and the Lechaion Basilica. Short bibliographic notes for many entries lead the reader to fuller descriptions of monuments, objects, and concepts; a glossary is also provided. Interspersed in the text are topographical notes and focus boxes on special topics such as geology, Pausanias, St. Paul, and prehistoric Corinth and the Corinthia.   Greek language edition

This volume represents a more Africanist approach to the framework of maritime landscapes and challenges of adapting international heritage policy such as the UNESCO convention. While the concept of a maritime landscape is very broad, a more focused thematic strategy draws together a number of case studies in South Africa, Namibia, Tanzania, and Nigeria with a common thread. Specifically, the contributors address the sub-theme of sea ports and sea power as part of understanding the African maritime landscape. Sea ports and surrounds are dynamic centers of maritime culture supporting a rich diversity of cultural groups and economic activities. Strategic locations along the African coastline have associations with indigenous maritime communities and trade centers, colonial power struggles and skirmishes, establishment of naval bases and operations, and World War I and II engagements.

The "Begram ivories" are widely considered to be miniature masterpieces of Indian art and are one of the largest archaeological collections of ancient ivories. They were excavated at the site of Begram, in northern Afghanistan, in 1937 and 1939 and belong to a period when Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India were united under rulers of the Kushan dynasty. Divided soon afterwards between the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul and the Musee national des arts asiatiques-Guimet in Paris, the collection in Kabul suffered a disaster during the civil war which ravaged the country during the early 1990s. Some of the pieces were successfully concealed by museum staff but most were stolen, hundreds have since been reported in different collections and very few have yet been recovered. In 2011 a group of twenty bone and ivory plaques was generously acquired for the National Museum of Afghanistan by a private individual. These were scientifically analysed, conserved and exhibited at the British Museum and returned to Kabul in 2012. This book describes their story from excavation to display and return, with individual object biographies and detailed scientific analyses and conservation treatments. It also discusses how these objects have attracted very different interpretations over the decades since their discovery, and how the new analyses shed a completely fresh light on the collection. It is lavishly illustrated in full colour, and includes many previously unpublished views of the objects when they were originally exhibited in Kabul. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the archaeology of Afghanistan, Indian art, polychromy, museum studies, object biographies or the history of conservation.

This book concerns textile production at the fringes of north-western Europe - areas in western Norway and the North Atlantic in the expanding, dynamic and transformative period from the early Viking Age into the Middle Ages. Textiles constitute one of the basic needs in human life - to protect and keep the body warm but also to show social status and affiliations. Textiles had a wide spectrum of use areas and qualities, fine and coarse in various contexts, and in the Viking Age not least related to the production of sails - all essential for the development and character of the period. So, what were the tools and textiles like, who made them, who used them and who exposed them? By tracing textile production from the remains of tools and textiles in varied landscapes and settings - Viking Age graves and in-situ workplaces from the whole period - and combining this with textual information, many layers of information are exposed about technology and qualities as well as gender, gender roles, social relations, power and networks. By combining tools, textiles and texts in various settings, this book aims to contextualise dispersed archaeological finds of tools and textiles to uncover patterns across larger areas and in a long-term perspective of half a millennium. Related to the overall societal changes from the early Viking Age raids, colonisation to centralisation to urbanisation in the Middle Ages, the tools and textiles reveal diversity, as well as stability and change.

Urbanism of Roman Siscia: Interpretation of historical and modern maps, drawings and plans presents a comprehensive picture of the structure of Roman Siscia. The information has been obtained from the processing of the data from every archaeological excavation, and the analysis and interpretation of all available historical and modern documents. The position of Siscia at the confluence of the rivers Sava, Kupa and Odra below the present-day town of Sisak, is documented in the antique literary sources and in cartography through the Middle Ages, to modern times, when the site became the subject of archaeological excavations beginning in the second part of the 19th century. In the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century, the basic outline of Roman Siscia was identified with town walls, public buildings, shrines, water supply system, cemeteries and the main roads that connected the city with other Roman towns. An older settlement, Segestica, dating from prehistory, was identified on the right bank of the Kupa River. The excavations carried out from the 1950s to 1990s were connected with the construction of the infrastructure and development of modern Sisak. These excavations confirmed the basic elements of the perimeter and urban elements of Roman Siscia: a Roman ditch and the town wall were discovered in several places, as well as an orthogonal street network, public buildings, houses, and other elements of the Roman city. This volume provides a comprehensive starting point for all future work on the Roman city.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The large Roman bath situated on the Lechaion Road must have been conspicuous in the architecture of ancient Corinth at the beginning of the third century A.D. and for several centuries afterward. The author relates the history of the site and its excavation, most recently in 1968, and discusses in detail the remains of the entrance court with its two-story marble facade, three major rooms of the interior, and adjacent service areas. The monumental facade, which employed a variety of colored marbles and carved ornament, is a notable addition to our knowledge of Roman architecture in Greece. The fragments are illustrated in photographs, and the reconstruction is presented in detailed drawings. Plan and elevation drawings of the interior spaces contribute information on design and structure of bath buildings of the period. This book is a valuable resource for archaeologists and ancient historians, especially those interested in the details of one of Rome's favorite pastimes: public bathing.

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.