Ash is an important and yet understudied aspect of ritual deposition in the archaeological record of North America. Ash has been found in a wide variety of contexts across many regions and often it is associated with rare or unusual objects or in contexts that suggest its use in the transition or transformation of houses and ritual features. Drawn from across the U.S. and Mesoamerica, the chapters in this volume explore the use, meanings, and cross-cultural patterns present in the use of ash. and highlight the importance of ash in ritual closure, social memory, and cultural transformation.

This collection is published in the Crusades Subsidia series in honour of Professor Adrian J. Boas, an archaeologist, historian and scholar who has contributed widely and significantly to the study and teaching of the Middle Ages. Professor Boas' research encompasses the archaeology of the Latin east, military orders with particular emphasis on the Teutonic order, material culture, architecture and medieval art, historiography, and not least, the Crusades and the Latin East. Exploring Outremer Volume II is a collection of 15 original essays by the leading scholars in the field on the history and archaeology of the Latin East. It covers the aspects dealing with the history, archaeology, architecture and function of several castles and fortifications in the Latin Kingdom, and presents new studies on the material, including pottery, numismatics and many other finds. In addition, it includes a chapter dealing with landscape archaeology. This book will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Duchies of Edessa and Antioch, as well as the Crusades and Crusading Orders.

This book analyses the history of the crusader states, appealing to all those interested in Crusader Studies / By analysing the archeological evidence of this period, this book will appeal to all those interested in the material sources of the Crusader States / This book covers the crusader states from the Kingdom of Jerusalem to the Kingdom of Cyprus as well as the Crusading Orders.

In this book, Alexander Parmington combines an examination of space, access control and sculptural themes and placement, to propose how images and texts controlled movement in Classic Maya cities. Using Palenque as a case study, this book analyzes specific building groups and sculptures to provide insight into the hierarchical distribution and use of ritual and administrative space in temple and palace architecture. Identifying which spaces were the more accessible and therefore more public, and which spaces were more segregated and consequently more private, Dr. Parmington demonstrates how sculptural, iconographic, and hieroglyphic content varies considerably when found in public/common or private/elite space. Drawing on specific examples from the Classic Maya and other early civilizations, he demonstrates that by examining the intent in the distribution of architecture and art, the variation and function of the artistic themes represented in sculpture and other monumental works of art can be better understood.

Goto introduces the diverse and multilayered skylore and cultural astron- omy of the peoples of the Japanese Archipelago. Going as far back as the Jomon, Yayoi, and Kofun periods, this book examines the significance of constellations in the daily life of farmers, fishermen, sailors, priests, and the ruling classes throughout Japan's ancient and medieval history. As well as covering the systems of the dominant Japanese people, he also explores the astronomy of the Ainu people of Hokkaido, and of the people of the Ryukyu Islands. Along the way he discusses the importance of astronomy in official rituals, mythol- ogy, and Shinto and Buddhist ceremonies. This book provides a unique overview of cultural astronomy in Japan and is a valuable resource for researchers as well as anyone who is inter- ested in Japanese culture and history.

Social Ghosts and the Dead of World History looks at the global phenomena of the dead in world history, examining the phantasms and spirits of classical social science and philosophy. From Hegel’s ‘World-Spirit’ to Max Weber’s ‘Verstehen’ and Marx’s phantasms, there is a recurring obsession with the ‘spirits’ of modernity. This book explores the relationships and interactions between those spirits and materiality in five broad areas: the nature of the dead in modernity, shape-shifting and mobile souls, the spirit in accounts of prehistory and archaeology, the phenomenology of spirits and the relation to statues and stone, and the nature of spirit as it is manifested in wooden artefacts and folklore. It offers a counter-modernity to that of classical social science and philosophy and new ways of thinking about our crises and catastrophes in social theory and the world and the worlds beyond this world. Building on the author’s previous work on the sociology of haunted houses and landscapes, it examines the body and the individual as the locus of haunting. The book will appeal to academics in philosophy, history, social theory, anthropology and cultural studies in its omni-disciplinarity and in its import for rethinking the histories of social thought.

Originally published in 1975, this book traces the subsistence methods of Mediterranean country dwellers from the mid-seventh millennium B. C. (in radio-carbon year) to the beginning of the Bronze Age. It illustrates the change from Mesolithic to Neolithic cultures over a wide area: (South of France, Italy, Corsica, Sardinia and Spain). The book explores the human societies that lived through this important period of change and adaptation. From their density of settlement, site locations and material culture, hypotheses can be made as to population size and structure. There are sufficient clues in the archaeological record to make possible very cogent comparisons between the hunter-gatherers of the pre-pottery era in West Mediterranean Europe and their distant descendants on the eve of the Bronze Age. How these changes came about, and their effect on Neolithic people as individuals and members of human society form the central part of the book.

Elspeth R. M. Dusinberre proposes a new approach to understanding the Achaemenid empire based on her study of the regional capital, Sardis. This study uses archaeological, artistic and textual sources to demonstrate that the two-hundred year Persian presence in this city had a profound impact on local social structures, revealing the region's successful absorption, both ideological and physical, into the Persian Empire. During this period, Sardis was a centre of burgeoning creativity and vitality, where a polyethnic elite devised a new culture - inspired by Iranian, Greek and local Lydian traditions - that drew on and legitimated imperial ideology. The non-elite absorbed and adapted multiple aspects of this new culture to create a wholly new profile of what it meant to be Sardian. As well as successfully bringing together the current information on the Achaemenids, this book is also an excellent contribution to empire studies.

This volume investigates the construction of group identity in Late La Tene South-East Europe using an innovative statistical modelling method. Death and burial theory underlies the potential of mortuary practices for identity research. The sample used for this volumes's research consists of 370 graves, organized in a specially crated database that records funerary ritual; and grave-good information. In the case of grave-goods, this involved found hierarchically organized categorical variables, which serve to describe each item by combining functional and typological features. The volume also aims to show the compatibility of archaeological theory and statistical modelling. The discussions from archaeological theory rarely find methodological implementations through statistical methods. In this volume, theoretical issues form an integrative part of data preparation, method development and result interpretation.

This book explores how past peoples navigated and created power structures and social relationships, using a case study from the Titicaca Basin of Bolivia (800 BC - AD 400). Based on the analysis of human skeletal remains, it combines anthropological social theory, archaeological contexts, and biological indicators of identity, disease, and labor to present a microhistory. The analysis moves in scale from individual experiences of daily life to broad patterns of shared identity and kinship during a time of significant economic and ecological change in the lake basin. The volume is particularly valuable for scholars and students interested in what bioarchaeology can tell us about power and social relationships in the past and how this is relevant to modern constructions of community.

The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, the first of its kind, provides a current overview of recent research on the Aztec empire, the best documented prehispanic society in the Americas. Chapters span from the establishment of Aztec city-states to the encounter with the Spanish empire and the Colonial period that shaped the modern world. Articles in the Handbook take up new research trends and methodologies and current debates. The Handbook articles are divided into seven parts. Part I, Archaeology of the Aztecs, introduces the Aztecs, as well as Aztec studies today, including the recent practice of archaeology, ethnohistory, museum studies, and conservation. The articles in Part II, Historical Change, provide a long-term view of the Aztecs starting with important predecessors, the development of Aztec city-states and imperialism, and ending with a discussion of the encounter of the Aztec and Spanish empires. Articles also discuss Aztec notions of history, writing, and time. Part III, Landscapes and Places, describes the Aztec world in terms of its geography, ecology, and demography at varying scales from households to cities. Part IV, Economic and Social Relations in the Aztec Empire, discusses the ethnic complexity of the Aztec world and social and economic relations that have been a major focus of archaeology. Articles in Part V, Aztec Provinces, Friends, and Foes, focuses on the Aztec's dynamic relations with distant provinces, and empires and groups that resisted conquest, and even allied with the Spanish to overthrow the Aztec king. This is followed by Part VI, Ritual, Belief, and Religion, which examines the different beliefs and rituals that formed Aztec religion and their worldview, as well as the material culture of religious practice. The final section of the volume, Aztecs after the Conquest, carries the Aztecs through the post-conquest period, an increasingly important area of archaeological work, and considers the place of the Aztecs in the modern world.

This volume examines the power relationships between the rulers of the Late Bronze and Iron Age and their subjects in the Levant through the lens of "cultural hegemony". It explores the impact of these foreign powers on all social classes and reconstructs the public presence of cultural control. The book serves to determine the impact of foreign control on the daily lives of those living in the ancient Levant, and offers a means by which to attempt to discuss non-elites in the ancient Near East. It examines expressions of foreign ideology within public performance such as religious expressions and in public places, observable by all social classes, which assert control or dominance over local identity markers. In utilizing textual, epigraphic, and archaeological records, it paints a more complete picture of Levantine society during this time while also drawing upon evidence from neighbouring Anatolia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. This is a fascinating resource for students and scholars of the ancient Near East, particularly the Levant but also Anatolia, Egypt, and Mesopotamia in the Late Bronze and Iron Age periods. It is also useful for scholars working on power and imperialism across history.

Burton Dassett Southend, Warwickshire investigates Southend, one of the five medieval settlements in Burton Dassett parish, Warwickshire. The summary narrative and thematic discussions (focused upon material culture, spatial organisation, buildings and economy) in this volume are supplemented by detailed stratigraphic description and specialist reports available online through the Archaeology Data Service.

Since the first donations of Egyptian artefacts to the Fitzwilliam Museum, including the sarcophagus lid of Rameses III donated in 1823, its ancient Egyptian holdings have grown steadily. This collection, now one of the most important in Britain, was catalogued for the first time by Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (1857-1934) of the British Museum's department of antiquities. Budge was a leading authority on ancient Egypt and had himself acquired several pieces for the museum in Egypt in 1886-7. The collection as listed in this 1893 publication included 577 objects: sarcophagi, coffins, canopic jars, mummies, scarabs, sculptures, and other decorative objects. Budge provided transcriptions and translations of the hieroglyphs that appear on the objects with his descriptions of each item. Although the collection has been augmented by many further gifts and purchases, Budge's catalogue remains a valuable record of the collection in the late Victorian period.

This book clarifies the advent of Liangzhu Culture and analyses the morphology, structure and internal social organization of grass-root settlements, medium-size settlements and the ancient city of Liangzhu, as well as the religious beliefs, ideology and power mechanisms represented by jade. Further, the book explains how the low-lying location and humid environment in the water-net plain area prompted the creation of man-made platforms or pillars, forming small and densely settled residential areas, and ultimately the water villages of southern China. Developments between man and nature accelerated the process of civilization, leading to the polarization of social classes and pyramid-shaped residential structures containing cities, towns and villages. Offering unique insights into the social vitality and structure of Liangzhu society, the book is one of the most important academic works on interpreting the origins of Liangzhu Civilization and investigating Chinese Civilization.

This book is an inquiry into the relationships between archaeology, colonialism and ecotourism at the famous standing stones of Hintang, Laos. It investigates the conditions under which archaeological knowledge has been produced, appropriated, contested, commodified, and consumed by colonialism from the 1930s until today and what it shows about the power dynamics of heritage and ecotourism. The volume-explores how the discourses of colonialism and ecotourism affect tourists, archaeologists, heritage managers, and the local community;-is written as a set of overlapping creative essays, each giving an overlapping perspective on Hintang;-is a multidisciplinary research project based on ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, interviews with community members, biography, material culture studies, and text analysis.

The first major synthesis of African archaeobotany in decades, this book focuses on Paleolithic archaeobotany and the relationship between agriculture and social complexity. It explores the effects that plant life has had on humans as they evolved from primates through the complex societies of Africa, including Egypt, the Buganda Kingdom, southern African polities, and other regions. With over 30 contributing scholars from 12 countries and extensive illustrations, this volume is an essential addition to our knowledge of humanity's relationship with plants.

Islands are ideal case studies for exploring social connectivity, episodes of colonisation, abandonment, and alternating phases of cultural interaction and isolation. Their societies display different attitudes toward the land and the sea, which in turn cast light on group identities. This volume advances theoretical discussions of island archaeology by offering a comparative study of the archaeology of colonisation, abandonment, and resettlement of the Mediterranean islands in prehistory. This comparative and thematic study encourages anthropological reflections on the archaeology of the islands, ultimately focusing on people rather than geographical units, and specifically on the relations between islanders, mainlanders, and the creation of islander identities. This volume has significance for scholars interested in Mediterranean archaeology, as well as those interested more broadly in colonisation and abandonment.

Record-Making and Record-Keeping in Early Societies provides a concise and up-to-date survey of early record-making and record-keeping practices across the world. It investigates the ways in which human activities have been recorded in different settings using different methods and technologies. Based on an in-depth analysis of literature from a wide range of disciplines, including prehistory, archaeology, Assyriology, Egyptology, and Chinese and Mesoamerican studies, the book reflects the latest and most relevant historical scholarship. Drawing upon the author's experience as a practitioner and scholar of records and archives and his extensive knowledge of archival theory and practice, the book embeds its account of the beginnings of recording practices in a conceptual framework largely derived from archival science. Unique both in its breadth of coverage and in its distinctive perspective on early record-making and record-keeping, the book provides the only updated and synoptic overview of early recording practices available worldwide. Record-Making and Record-Keeping in Early Societies will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students engaged in the study of archival science, archival history, and the early history of human culture. The book will also appeal to practitioners of archives and records management interested in learning more about the origins of their profession.

Archaeologists from many different European countries here explore the very varied relationship between nationalistic ideas and archaeological activity through the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The resurgence of nationalism was one of the most prominent features of the European political scene in the 1990s, when this book was originally published. The past provides a large supply of ideas and images to support the claims of national identity deeply rooted in remote generations. The remote past revealed by archaeology also plays a part - heroes, heroines, golden ages long disappeared, objects to admire, and sites to provoke the memory, all called on to further the cause of nationalism. Drawing on the authoritative insights of the indigenous contributors, this book examines the issues throughout modern Europe. All of the chapters share a concern to see archaeology and the study of the past as intimately related to contemporary social and political questions. The present shapes the way we think about the past but the past also provides us with evidence for thinking about the present. These issues are timeless and this comprehensive examination of a host of issues remains important for historians and those pursuing nationalistic politics.

This book provides an overview of medieval monasticism in Iceland, from its dawn to its downfall during the Reformation. Blends the evidence from material remains and written documents to highlight the realities of everyday life in the monasteries and nunneries operated in Iceland. describes the incorporation of monasticism in to the Icelandic society, the land of the Vikings, and thus how the monasteries coexisted with the natural and social environments on the island while keeping their general aims and objectives. shows that large social systems, such as monasticism, can cross social and natural borders without necessitating fundamental changes apart from those triggered by the constant coexistence of nature and culture inside the environment they exist within. debunks the myth that Icelandic monasteries, male or female were isolated, silent places or simple cells functioning principally as retirement homes for aristocrats. To be a member of an ecclesiastical institution did not mean a quiet, secluded life without any outside interaction, but rather active participation in the surrounding community. Is of interest for researchers in archaeology, osteology, and medieval history, in addition to all those interested in monasticism and the medieval history of Northern Europe.

This book Explores Indo-European fire rituals and sacrifices throughout history and fire in its fundamental role in rites and religious practices. Analyzes fire rituals as the unifying structure in time and space in Indo-European cultures from the Bronze Age onwards. Asks the question how and why was fire the ultimate power in culture and cosmology? Has a broad interdisciplinary audience including archaeology, ethnography, folklore, religious and Indo-European studies.

Includes evidence from Soviet scholarship that is often not accessible to scholars working on this period.

Pathways to Complexity synthesizes a wealth of new archaeological data to illuminate the origins of Maya civilization and the rise of Classic Maya culture. In this volume, prominent Maya scholars argue that the development of social, religious, and economic complexity began during the Middle Preclassic period (1000-300 BC), hundreds of years earlier than previously thought. Contributors reveal that villages were present in parts of the lowlands by 1000 BC. Combining recent discoveries from the northern lowlands--an area often neglected in other volumes-and the southern lowlands, the collection then traces the emergence of sociopolitical inequality and complexity in all parts of the Yucatan Peninsula over the course of the Middle Preclassic period. They show that communities evolved in different ways due to influences such as geographical location, ceramic exchange, shell ornament production, agricultural strategy, religious ritual, ideology, and social rankings. These varied pathways to complexity developed over half a millennium and culminated in the institution of kingship by the Late Preclassic period. Presenting exciting work on a dynamic and misunderstood time period, Pathways to Complexity demonstrates the importance of a broad, comparative approach to understanding Preclassic Maya civilization and will serve as a foundation for future research and interpretation.

At the core of this book is a success story of an Eastern European woman who survived both Soviet and Nazi occupations of her homeland, lived as a displaced person in postwar Germany, and built her career and scholarly authority within the androcentric American academia. At the same time, it is also a story of a controversy, which followed Gimbutas' theory of Old Europe - a prehistoric civilization, characterized by peacefulness, egalitarianism, women's leadership, and the worship of the Great Goddess. First introduced in 1974, this theory inspired women's movements worldwide, but was harshly criticized by other archaeologists. This book examines the various intellectual contexts (feminist, nationalist, theoretical) in which Gimbutas' ideas were formed, received, and interpreted, as well as appropriated for different political goals. This timely study will appeal to scholars and students in the following fields: history of archaeology, prehistoric archaeology, gender studies, feminist studies, women's history, Baltic studies, and religion and spirituality.