In this fascinating in-depth study, Arlene Rosen highlights the unique and varied ways that different societies respond to their changing environments, going against the commonly held notion of simple climatic determinism. Social responses to climate change are the result of human perceptions of nature and their environment. From the Terminal Pleistocene through to the Late Holocene, Rosen describes various communities' responses to climate change, further exploring the intriguing connections between climate and society. A must-read for archaeologists, geographers, students, and historians!

For Russian modernists in search of a past, there were many antiquities of different provenances and varying degrees of prestige from which to choose: Greece or Rome; Byzantium or Egypt. The modernists central to Our Native Antiquity located their antiquity in the Eurasian steppes, where they found objects and sites long denigrated as archaeological curiosities. The book follows the exemplary careers of two objects - the so-called "Stone Women" and the kurgan, or burial mound - and the attention paid to them by Russian and Soviet archaeologists, writers, artists, and filmmakers, for whom these artifacts served as resources for modernist art and letters and as arenas for a contest between vying conceptions of Russian art, culture, and history.

The Archaeology and Ethnography of Central Africa provides the first detailed description of the prehistory of the Loango coast of west-central Africa over the course of more than 3,000 years. The archaeological data presented in this volume comes from a pivotal area through which, as linguistic and historical reconstructions have long indicated, Bantu-speaking peoples expanded before reaching eastern and southern Africa. Despite its historical importance, the prehistory of the Atlantic coastal regions of west-central Africa has until now remained almost unknown. James Denbow offers an imaginative approach to this subject, integrating the scientific side of fieldwork with the interplay of history, ethnography, politics, economics, and personalities. The resulting 'anthropology of archaeology' highlights the connections between past and present, change and modernity, in one of the most inaccessible and poorly known regions of west-central and southern Africa.

Metamorphic Imagery in Ancient Chinese Art and Religion demonstrates that the concept of metamorphism was central to ancient Chinese religious belief and practices from at least the late Neolithic period through the Warring States Period of the Zhou dynasty. Central to the authors' argument is the ubiquitous motif in early Chinese figurative art, the metamorphic power mask. While the motif underwent stylistic variation over time, its formal properties remained stable, underscoring the image's ongoing religious centrality. It symbolized the metamorphosis, through the phenomenon of death, of royal personages from living humans to deceased ancestors who required worship and sacrificial offerings. Treated with deference and respect, the royal ancestors lent support to their living descendants, ratifying, and upholding their rule; neglected, they became dangerous, even malevolent. Employing a multidisciplinary approach that integrates archaeologically recovered objects with literary evidence from oracle bone and bronze inscriptions to canonical texts, all situated in the appropriate historical context, the study presents detailed analyses of form and style, and of change over time, observing the importance of relationality and the dynamic between imagery, materials and affects. This book is a significant publication in the field of early China studies, presenting an integrated conception of ancient art and religion that surpasses any other work now available.

This unique collection applies globalization concepts to the discipline of archaeology, using a wide range of global case studies from a group of international specialists. The volume spans from as early as 10,000 cal. bp to the modern era, analysing the relationship between material culture, cultural change, and the complex connectivities between communities and groups. In considering social practices shared between different historic groups, and also the expression of their respective identities, the papers in this volume illustrate the potential of globalization thinking to bridge the local and global in material culture analysis. The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Globalization is the first such volume to take a world archaeology approach, on a multi-period basis, in order to bring together the scope of evidence for the significance of material culture in the processes of globalization. This work thus also provides a means to understand how material culture studies can be utilised to assess the impact of global engagement in our contemporary world. As such, it will appeal to archaeologists and historians as well as social science researchers interested in the origins of globalization.

The production of bronze vessels in ancient China spans a period of eighteen centuries - from the Shang dynasty, c.17th century BC, to the Han dynasty, 3rd century AD. Cast in large numbers, they were used for ritual ceremonies and in burial. Illustrated throughout from bronzes in the Ashmolean's collection, this book does not attempt a comprehensive history of bronze casting in China, but is intended to serve as an introduction to what is a complex but fascinating subject.

Dominating the surrounding landscape from its volcanic outcrop, Stirling Castle is an enduring symbol of an epic past. The castle's history is inextricably bound with that of the Scottish nation. It has been touched by every drama and conflict, from the campaigns of the Wars of Independence, through the Jacobite threat, to conflicts of the twentieth century, when it served until the 1960s as home to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Almost every Scottish monarch has left a mark on the castle, which has over the centuries served as both castle and palace: a strategic stronghold and a secure residence for the Stewart monarchs and their children. Archaeological investigation began at Stirling Castle in 1921, when the Grand Battery was excavated to reveal the great kitchens, but it is only in the later twentieth century that concerted archaeological research, conservation and presentation has sought to provide a coherent picture of the development of the monument. This volume brings together the evidence from the archaeological excavations, surveys, historical research and investigations of the standing buildings which have taken place during the conservation of Stirling Castle.

This book traces the archaeological trajectory of the expansion of Buddhism and its regional variations in South Asia. Focusing on the multireligious context of the subcontinent in the first millennium BCE, the volume breaks from conventional studies that pose Buddhism as a counter to the Vedic tradition to understanding the religion more integrally in terms of dhamma (teachings of the Buddha), dana (practice of cultivating generosity) and the engagement with the written word. The work underlines that relic and image worship were important features in the spread of Buddhism in the region and were instrumental in bringing the monastics and the laity together. Further, the author examines the significance of the histories of monastic complexes (viharas, stupas, caityas) and also religious travel and pilgrimage that provided connections across the subcontinent and the seas. An interdisciplinary study, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars in South Asian studies, religion, especially Buddhist studies, history and archaeology.

The Archaeology of the 11th Century addresses many key questions surrounding this formative period of English history and considers conditions before 1066 and how these changed. The impact of the Conquest of England by the Normans is the central focus of the book, which not only assesses the destruction and upheaval caused by the invading forces, but also examines how the Normans contributed to local culture, religion, and society. The volume explores a range of topics including food culture, funerary practices, the development of castles and their impact, and how both urban and rural life evolved during the 11th century. Through its nuanced approach to the complex relationships and regional identities which characterised the period, this collection stimulates renewed debate and challenges some of the long-standing myths surrounding the Conquest. Presenting new discoveries and fresh ideas in a readable style with numerous illustrations, this interdisciplinary book is an invaluable resource for those interested in the archaeology, history, geography, art, and literature of the 11th century.

The Amerindian (American Indian or Native American - reference to both North and South America) practice of taking and displaying various body parts as trophies has long intrigued both the research community as well as the public. As a subject that is both controversial and politically charged, it has also come under attack as a European colonists' perspective intended to denigrate native people. What this collection demonstrates is that the practice of trophy-taking predates European contact in the Americas, but was also practiced in other parts of the world (Europe, Africa, Asia) and has been practiced prehistorically, historically and up to and including the twentieth century. The editors and contributors (which include native people from both continents) examine the evidence and causes of Amerindian trophy taking as reflected in osteological, archaeological, ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts. Additionally, they present objectively and discuss dispassionately the topic of human proclivity toward ritual violence.

Scholars of ancient metallurgy gain insights from individual artifacts as well as from synthetic overviews because debates can turn on details of particular objects from particular contexts. Therefore, it is important for archaeometallurgical studies to provide comprehensive catalogs that specify the attributes of individual objects as well as contexts and the technical studies undertaken on those objects. This fourth volume in the series is devoted to presenting the metallurgical evidence from Ban Chiang, Ban Tong, Ban Phak Top, and Don Klang in northeast Thailand in the form of detailed catalogs organized by sites, periods, and artifact types. All metal artifacts, metallic by-products, and crucibles from the four-site study are included. A catalog of analyzed prills is also included. The catalogs summarize all the contextual, metric, and analytical data from metallographic, elemental, and microhardness analyses. Illustrations and photomicrographs provide visual evidence for the study collection. These kinds of detailed catalogs form the raw material of technical and archaeological interpretation, enabling comparisons with other collections as well as allowing scholars to form their own conclusions independently of the interpretations of the authors.

Focusing on the era of "first encounters" in Polynesia, this book provides a fresh look at some of the early contacts between indigenous people and the captains and crew of European ships. The case studies chosen enable comparison of New Zealand Maori-European transactions with similar Pacific ones. The book examines the conflict situations that arose and the reasons for physical violence, highlighting the roles of honour, mana, and agency. Drawing on a range of archival materials, sailor and missionary journals, as well as indigenous narratives, Wilkes applies an analytical method typically used for examining much more recent conflict. She compares different ways of "seeing" and "knowing" the world and reflects on the reasons for poor decision-making amongst all the social actors involved. The evidence presented in the book strongly suggests that preventing violence - promoting and negotiating peace - happens most effectively when mana and honour are acknowledged between parties.

Techno-logic & Technology is an ambitious effort to develop a new framework for the study of the development of stone tool technology, with the goal of integrating humanity's earliest and longest lasting technology into a comprehensive questioning of the interaction between humanity and the material world. Michael Chazan provides a translation of Eric Boeda's authoritative work Techno-logique and Technologie, that draws on his career of research on stone tool assemblages from archaeological sites in Europe, the Middle East, and China together with a theoretical apparatus influenced by the work of Gilbert Simondon. This book presents a major challenge to all archaeologists who study ancient technology to reconsider how we think about artifacts and how to approach the question of progress through time in human technology. Lithic analysis is a highly empirical field of study that rarely has an impact on issues of broad theoretical interest and Boeda's book is a welcome exception. As well as providing contextualising information within the text, the translator Michael Chazan, himself a Paleolithic archaeologist specializing in stone tool technology, includes an interview with the author to help equip the reader to engage with this challenging text. Chiming with the growth of interest in the work of Gilbert Simondon in the English-speaking world, this book is an important resource for Palaeolithic archaeologists and lithic specialists. It will also be of interest to researchers in material culture studies, technology studies and human evolution.

This manual provides a unique user guide to practicing archaeology and working in the cultural heritage sector within the diverse settings of Great Britain, comprising of: England, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.

As part of their training, archaeologists often seek work in parts of Britain, either for experience before travelling elsewhere, or directly as part of their career progression. While this does involve reading published material on excavation techniques, archaeological theory, and specific heritage management practices, or research using the Internet, the ideal preparation to working in Britain for the first time requires practitioners to know a little about a lot. Currently, there is no single resource which provides that primary resource for budding archaeologists.

Archaeological Practice in Great Britain will provide just such a resource: presented in an accessible style, with a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography and lists of useful websites. Professionals with particular areas of expertise will contribute short sections on particular subjects, incorporated into the main text prepared by the authors. Throughout, the specific contexts and differences between the various component nations and regions of Great Britain will be made clear."

The subject of the emperor in the Byzantine world may seem likely to be a well-studied topic but there is no book devoted to the emperor in general covering the span of the Byzantine empire. Of course there are studies on individual emperors, dynasties and aspects of the imperial office/role, but there remains no equivalent to Fergus Millar's The Emperor in the Roman World (from which the proposed volume takes inspiration for its title and scope). The oddity of a lack of a general study of the Byzantine emperor is compounded by the fact that a series of books devoted to Byzantine empresses was published in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Thus it is appropriate to turn the spotlight on the emperor. Themes covered by the contributions include: questions of dynasty and imperial families; the imperial court and the emperor's men; imperial duties and the emperor as ruler; imperial literature (the emperor as subject and author); and the material emperor, including imperial images and spaces. The volume fills a need in the field and the market, and also brings new and cutting-edge approaches to the study of the Byzantine emperor. Although the volume cannot hope to be a comprehensive treatment of the emperor in the Byzantine world it aims to cover a broad chronological and thematic span and to play a vital part in setting the agenda for future work. The subject of the Byzantine emperor has also an obvious relevance for historians working on rulership in other cultures and periods.

For over 50 years, the white radomes of the Teufelsberg have been one of Berlin's most prominent landmarks. For half of this time the city lay over 100 miles behind an 'Iron Curtain' that divided East from West, and was surrounded by communist East Germany and the densest concentration of Warsaw Pact military forces in Europe. From the vantage point high on the Teufelsberg, British and American personnel constantly monitored the electronic emissions from the surrounding military forces, as well as high-level political intelligence. Today, the Teufelsberg stands as a contemporary and spectacular ruin, representing a significant relic of a lost cyber space of Cold War electronic emissions and espionage. Based on archaeological fieldwork and recently declassified documents, this book presents a new history of the Teufelsberg and other Western intelligence gathering sites in Berlin. At a time when intelligence gathering is once more under close scrutiny, when questions are being asked about the intelligence relationship between the United States and Russia, and amidst wider debate about the US's National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence programmes, sites like the Teufelsberg raise questions that appear both important and timely.

This book is an imaginative exploration of a place that has fascinated, intrigued and perplexed visitors for centuries. Instead of seeing Stonehenge as an isolated site, the author sets the stones within a wider landscape and explores how use and meaning have changed from prehistoric times right through to the present. Throughout the millennia, the Stonehenge landscape has been used and re-used, invested with new meanings, and has given rise to myths and stories. The author creatively explores how the landscape has been appropriated and contested, and invokes the debates and experiences of people who have very different and often conflicting experiences of the same place. Today, heritage managers, archaeologists, local people, free festivallers, and druids come to the place with entirely different understandings and agendas. The book demonstrates that the creation of spaces and places for people to express divergent viewpoints is powerfully constrained by social and political forces that allow some voices to be heard while others are marginalized. With dialogues and illustrations that range from the conventional to the cartoon strip, this multi-vocal book not only presents a wide range of views in an innovative way, but provides important new insights on how people shape and are shaped by landscape.

During Spanish colonization of the Greater Antilles, the islands' natives were forced into labor under the encomienda system. The indigenous people became ""Indios,"" their language, appearance, and identity transformed by the domination imposed by a foreign model that Christianized and ""civilized"" them. Yet El Chorro de Maita retained many of its indigenous characteristics. In this volume-one of the first in English to examine and document an archaeological site in Cuba-Roberto Valcarcel Rojas analyzes the construction of colonial authority and the various attitudes and responses of natives and other ethnic groups. His pioneering study reveals the process of transculturation in which new individuals emerged-Indians, mestizos, criollos-and helps construct the vital link between the pre-Columbian world and the development of an integrated and new history.

Ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), was the original site of many of the major developments in human history, such as farming, the rise of urban literate societies and the first great empires of Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria.
The work of archaeologists is central to our understanding of Mesopotamia's past; this innovative volume evaluates the theories, methods, approaches and history of Mesopotamian archaeology from its origins in the nineteenth century up to the present day.
Dr Matthews places the discipline within its historical and social context, and explains how archaeologists conduct their research through excavation, survey and other methods. In four fundamental chapters, he uses illustrated case-studies to show how archaeologists have approached central themes such as
* the shift from hunting to farming
* complex societies
* empires and imperialism
* everyday life
This is the only critical guide to the theory and method of Mesopotamian archaeology. It will be both an ideal introductory work and useful as background reading on a wide range of courses.

Exposing the Maya focuses on the works of 19th-century photographers Désiré Charnay, Alice and Augustus Le Plongeon, Teobert Maler, Alfred Maudslay and Adela Breton, all of whom were masters of their craft and travelled extensively to sites in Mexico and Central America. The over 100 selected images in this volume, together with nearly 40 additional contextual images featuring sketches from travel journals, hand-coloured drawings, prints, and maps, are combined with the photographers’ own words found in their published writings, journals and letters to provide insight into their methods, context for their images, and capture the realities of field work in Mesoamerica. Accessible and highly illustrated, Exposing the Maya features rare and important early photographs of the archaeological ruins and remains of the great Mayan and Aztec civilizations of Mesoamerica, from an age that witnessed the evolution of photographic techniques and brought to life the long-faded murals and decoration of these ruins. This is an absorbing story of incredible journeys, the challenging conditions under which these pioneering photographers produced their images, and how they perceived the remnants of these ancient indigenous cultures in modern-day Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras.

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.

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.

Despite the existence of many hermitages and eremitic communities recorded throughout the medieval period, they have, somewhat surprisingly, received little archaeological attention. Consequently, this book offers an archaeological history of hermitages and eremitic communities, with reference to key examples and case-studies. It has a particular emphasis on the British medieval period, but it also contextualises this within a wider comparative framework. Many hermitages and eremitic communities are recorded throughout the medieval period, yet to date there has been no comprehensive archaeological study. This richly illustrated book will consequently discuss a range of hermitages and introduce the reader to their architectural forms, spaces, location and environments as well as the religious practices associated with them. It will focus primarily on the British material but will nonetheless consider this within a wider comparative framework. Overall, it will offer an archaeological history of hermitages and presents a unique window into a lost world of medieval spirituality and religious life. Key related themes will include the earliest archaeological evidence for hermits (eremitic life) in India, China and East Asia, pre- and early Christian desert hermitages, cave hermitages, eremitic communities, saints and missionary hermits, life and diet, medieval mysticism and the contemplative tradition, secular and ornamental hermitages and hermits in post-medieval and contemporary society. This book offers an illustrated archaeological history of hermitages and eremitic communities, with reference to key examples and case-studies. It will therefore appeal to both academics, students and a more general readership interested in archaeology, history, comparative religion, architecture, religion and belief, spirituality, medieval Britain, modern contemplative practice and contemporary heritage issues.

Examines mid-twentieth century American biblical archaeologists' relationship to Zionism, an aspect of their work that has been understudied.

This book studies the formation of complex societies in prehistoric China during the Neolithic and early state periods, c. 7000-1500 BC. Archaeological materials are interpreted through anthropological perspectives, using systematic analytic methods in settlement and burial patterns. Both agency and process are considered in the development of chiefdoms and in the emergence of early states in the Yellow River region. Interrelationships between factors such as mortuary practice, craft specialization, ritual activities, warfare, exchange of elite goods, climatic fluctuations, and environmental changes are emphasized. This study offers a critical evaluation of current archaeological data from Chinese sources, and argues that, although some general tendencies are noted, social changes were affected by multiple factors in no pre-determined sequence. In this most comprehensive study to date, Li Liu attempts to reconstruct developmental trajectories toward early states in Chinese civilization and discusses theoretical implications of Chinese archaeology for the understanding of social evolution.