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Books > Humanities > Archaeology > Archaeology by period / region > General
These studies examine the physical remains of Frankish settlement in Palestine in the 12th and 13th centuries. In recent years the view that Frankish settlement was largely confined to the fortified urban centres and castles, with few westerners venturing into the open countryside, has come to be challenged in the light of new archaeological evidence and re-examination of the sources. The present studies contribute to an understanding of the nature of Frankish settlement by illustrating aspects of the relationship between fortification and settlement: in particular, the role of castles and towers in promoting settlement and providing both security and domestic accommodation; the relationship between castles, towers and other semi-fortified rural structures; the physical planning of the new towns established by the canons of the Holy Sepulchre; the measures undertaken to defend urban settlements; and the contribution that town walls and castles made to the security of the kingdom.
This book offers an overview of the archaeological and structural evidence for one of the most vital periods of Italian history, spanning the late Roman and early medieval periods. The chronological scope covers the adoption of Christianity and the emergence of Rome as the seat of Western Christendom, the break-up of the Roman west in the face of internal decay and the settlement of non-Romans and Germanic groups, the impact of Germanic and Byzantine rule on Italy until the rise of Charlemagne and of a Papal State in the later eighth century. Presenting a detailed review and analysis of recent discoveries by archaeologists, historians, art historians, numismatists and architectural historians, Neil Christie identifies the changes brought about by the Church in town and country, the level of change within Italy under Rome before and after occupation by Ostrogoths, Byzantines and Lombards, and reviews wider changes in urbanism, rural exploitation and defence. The emphasis is on human settlement on its varied levels - town, country, fort, refuge - and the assessment of how these evolved and the changes that impacted on them. Too long neglected as a 'Dark Age', this book helps to further illuminate this fascinating and dynamic period of European history.
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.
This synthesis of landscape change and human occupation in the Trent Valley is based on more than twenty years of research and includes much previously unpublished material. Each chapter focuses on a different period from the Pleistocene landscape, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, to the Roman and medieval periods. Subjects such as changes in the local vegetation and fauna, geomorphology, agriculture, burials, domestic settlements and industries are discussed with examples taken from archaeological investigations in the valley.
First published in 1928, this volume constituted the results of expeditions by the famous archaeologist and explorer of Central Asia, Albert von Le Coq. Funded by the last German emperor, Wilhelm II, and von Le Coq's own brewing and winery empire, the second and third German expeditions ventured to Turfan in the Xinjiang region of China. Travelling East expecting to find Greek influences, the expedition in fact uncovered extensive networks of Buddhist and Manichaean cave temples in the Northwest China. This volume includes extensive images in addition to a record of the expedition's journeys and discoveries.
People of the Earth is a narrative account of the prehistory of humankind from our origins over 3 million years ago to the first pre-industrial states, beginning about 5,000 years ago. This is a global prehistory, which covers prehistoric times in every corner of the world, in a jargon-free style for newcomers to archaeology. Many world histories begin with the first pre-industrial states. This book starts at the beginning of human history and summarizes the latest research into such major topics as human origins, the emergence and spread of modern humans, the first farming, and the origins of civilization. People of the Earth is unique in its even balance of the human past, in its readily accessible style, and its flowing narrative that carries the reader through the long sweep of our past. The book is highly illustrated, and features boxes and sidebars describing key dating methods and important archaeological sites. This classic world prehistory sets the standard for books on the subject and is the most widely used such textbook in the world. It is aimed at introductory students in archaeology and anthropology taking survey courses on the prehistoric past, as well as more advanced readers. It will also appeal to students of human responses to climatic and environmental change.
Crystal skulls, imaginative codices, dubious Olmec heads and cute Colima dogs. Fakes and forgeries run rampant in the Mesoamerican art collections of international museums and private individuals. Authors Nancy Kelker and Karen Bruhns examine the phenomenon in this eye-opening volume. They discuss the most commonly forged classes and styles of artifacts, many of which were being duplicated as early as the 19th century. More important, they describe the system whereby these objects get made, purchased, authenticated, and placed in major museums as well as the complicity of forgers, dealers, curators, and collectors in this system. Unique to this volume are biographies of several of the forgers, who describe their craft and how they are able to effectively fool connoisseurs and specialists. An important, accessible introduction to pre-Columbian art fraud for archaeologists, art historians, and museum professionals alike. A parallel volume by the same authors discusses fakes in Andean archaeology.
This book provides an in-depth study of the role of religion in the evolution of societies. It melds anthropological theory and archaeological data to present one of the most comprehensive archaeological studies of the role of ritual as a vital force for promoting and consolidating social change. It is based on seven seasons of archaeological excavation at the Chalcolithic site of Gilat, a low mound, located in the fields of the Moshav Gilat, a semi-communal farming settlement in Israel's northern Negev desert. The Chalcolithic period represents the first time that well-documented chiefdom organizations can be recognized in the archaeological record of the Holy Land when institutionalized social hierarchies, craft specialization, horticulture, temple life and other fundamental social changes occurred in this part of the ancient Near East. As one of the few Chalcolithic (ca. 4500 - 3600 BC) sanctuary sites in the southern Levant, the Gilat provides a wonderful opportunity to explore the role of religion and ideology as a social force for influencing social relations and social evolution through one of the formative periods in the prehistory of the eastern Mediterranean. material evidence for the ideological sub-system of Chalcolithic culture by through careful analyses of relatively large sets of archaeological data.
This fascinating study explores how our prehistoric ancestors
developed rituals from everyday life and domestic activities.
Richard Bradley contends that for much of the prehistoric period,
ritual was not a distinct sphere of activity. Rather it was the way
in which different features of the domestic world were played out
until they took on qualities of theatrical performance.
This fascinating study explores how our prehistoric ancestors
developed rituals from everyday life and domestic activities.
Richard Bradley contends that for much of the prehistoric period,
ritual was not a distinct sphere of activity. Rather it was the way
in which different features of the domestic world were played out
until they took on qualities of theatrical performance.
In 1884 a community of Brazilians was "discovered" by the Western world. The Ecology of Power examines these indigenous people from the Upper Xingu region, a group who even today are one of the strongest examples of long-term cultural continuity. Drawing upon written and oral history, ethnography, and archaeology, Heckenberger addresses the difficult issues facing anthropologists today as they "uncover" the muted voices of indigenous peoples and provides a fascinating portrait of a unique community of people who have in a way become living cultural artifacts.
In 1884 a community of Brazilians was "discovered" by the Western world. The Ecology of Power examines these indigenous people from the Upper Xingu region, a group who even today are one of the strongest examples of long-term cultural continuity. Drawing upon written and oral history, ethnography, and archaeology, Heckenberger addresses the difficult issues facing anthropologists today as they "uncover" the muted voices of indigenous peoples and provides a fascinating portrait of a unique community of people who have in a way become living cultural artifacts.
From the Cities of the Biblical World series - a series describing the recent archaeological developments at major Biblical sites for the general reader, the student and the tourist. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, and the subsequent excavation of Khirbet Qumran, the existence of a Jewish settlement near the Dead Sea remained unsuspected by biblical scholars. Apart from one possible allusion in the Old Testament, the site is unrecorded in the Bible, and no hint emerges of the fascinating community which inhabited it in Jesus' own day. In Biblical terms it could be described as the discovery of the century, all the more remarkable because from its last occupation in AD 135 until the arrival of the archaeologists in the wake of the Scrolls' discovery, Qumran remained a well-known but little considered ruin. Philip Davies explains how the archaeological evidence helps us to interpret the writings in the scrolls, and how the writings in turn help archaeologists to understand their discoveries. The author puts the site in perspective, explaining its history and development from an early settlement, possibly in the time of King Uzziah (781-40BC), to the community which produced the famous scrolls. The only substantial corpus of Jewish literature from this time, the scrolls offer the reader an insight into the organisation of the community and its daily activities, the religious and philosophical beliefs, rituals and hopes, which characterised Judaism in the first century AD. The Scrolls have provided the only substantial corpus of Jewish literature from this age.
In his classic account of the antiquities of Jordan, Gerald Harding writes with an erudition based upon a lifetimeis knowledge of the region, describing all the major sites of interest in the country. Some of the most remarkable and famous sites in the world, from Petra, the unique Nabataean city hewn from sandstone, to Mafjar, the most elaborately planned and lavishly decorated Umayyad palace in the Middle East, with the largest single area of ancient mosaic in the world, lie within Jordan or the West Bank. Archaeological evidence of human occupation exists from Palaeolithic times until the Bronze Age when much of Jordan's history may be adduced from the stories of the Old Testament. The area was subjugated by the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Arabs whose houses, palaces, theatres and castles often provide the principal surviving evidence of these peoples: Jericho, the oldest city in the world, where remarkable statues of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period were found; Jerash, a large and comprehensive Roman city on the fringe of the desert, only rediscovered in 1806; huge Crusader castles like Qalat al Rabadh and Shobak; and Khirbat Qumran, site of the Essene settlement and of the Dead Sea Scrolls with whose discovery the author was intimately involved. The Antiquities of Jordan remains an invaluable and absorbing guide for students of Middle Eastern archaeology, as well as for those who know Jordan or who wish to visit the country.
Motherhood is a subject that has largely been ignored by archaeologists who focus on gender and history-until now. Using archaeological materials recovered from a housesite in Mobile, Alabama, Laurie Wilkie explores how one extended African-American family engaged with competing and conflicting mothering ideologies in the post-Emancipation South. The female head of this household, Lucrecia Perryman, turned to midwifery to support her family and as a midwife, became a vehicle for transmitting cultural, social and political knowledge regarding mothering performance and practice to the broader African-American community.
Motherhood is a subject that has largely been ignored by archaeologists who focus on gender and history-until now. Using archaeological materials recovered from a housesite in Mobile, Alabama, Laurie Wilkie explores how one extended African-American family engaged with competing and conflicting mothering ideologies in the post-Emancipation South. The female head of this household, Lucrecia Perryman, turned to midwifery to support her family and as a midwife, became a vehicle for transmitting cultural, social and political knowledge regarding mothering performance and practice to the broader African-American community.
In this book, Guy D. Middleton explores the fascinating lives of thirty real women of the ancient Mediterranean from the Palaeolithic to the Byzantine era. They include queens and aristocrats, such as the Pharoah Hatshepsut and the Etruscan noblewoman Seianti;Â Eritha and Karpathia, Bronze Age priestesses from the Aegean;Â a Pompeiian prostitute called Eutychis; the pagan philosopher Hypatia and the Christian saint Perpetua, from North Africa, as well as women from smaller communities. Middleton uses a wide range of archaeological and historical evidence, including burials and funerary practices, graffiti, inscriptions and painted pottery, handprints, human remains and a variety of historical texts, as well as the latest modern research. His volume weaves together the stories of real women, placing them firmly in the spotlight of history. Engagingly written and up-to-date in its scholarship, Middleton's book offers new insights for students and researchers in Ancient History, Archaeology and Mediterranean Studies, as well as in Women's History.
East Greek Pottery provides the only dedicated study of the pottery
created by the Greek settlers along the western coast of Turkey
between 1100 and 500 BC. The authors examine in detail significant
developments in shape, material and decoration from the emergence
of the protogeometric style in the eleventh century to the fifth
century BC, when competition from Athenian imports forced craftsmen
to use only very simple ornamentation. The twenty-three chapters
offer a comprehensive style-by-style analysis of both familiar and
lesser-known pottery types, including Grey ware, relief ware and
archaic trade amphorae.
Following his account of Irish origins as evidenced by archaeology, genetics and linguistics, J. P. Mallory returns to the subject to interrogate what he calls the `Irish Dreamtime': the native Irish retelling of their own origins, as related by medieval manuscripts. He attempts to explore the reality of this version of the earliest history of Ireland, which places apparently `mythological' events on a concrete timeline of invasions, colonizations and royal reigns that extends even further back in time than the history of Classical Greece. Can the accounts of this `Dreamtime' really inform us of the way of life in Iron Age Ireland? By comparing the world depicted in the earliest Irish literary tradition with the archaeological evidence available on the ground, Mallory explores Ireland's rich mythological tradition and tests its claims to represent reality.
Multi-disciplinary with a wide geographical range.
This volume focuses on a formative period in the history and archaeology of northern Greece. The decade following 1912, when Thessaloniki became part of Greece, was a period marked by an extraordinary internationalism as a result of the population movements caused by the shifting of national borders and the troop movements which accompanied the First World War. The papers collected here look primarily at the impact of the discoveries of the Army of the Orient on the archaeological study of the region of Macedonia. Resulting collections of antiquities are now held in Thessaloniki, London, Paris, Edinburgh and Oxford. Various specialists examine each of these collections, bringing the archaeological legacy of the Macedonian Campaign together in one volume for the first time. A key theme of the volume is the emerging dialogue between the archaeological remains of Macedonia and the politics of Hellenism. A number of authors consider how archaeological interpretation was shaped by the incorporation of Macedonia into Greece. Other authors describe how the politics of the Campaign, in which Greece was initially a neutral partner, had implications both for the administration of archaeological finds and their subsequent dispersal. A particular focus is the historical personalities who were involved and the sites they discovered. The role of the Greek Archaeological Service, particularly in the protection of antiquities, as well as promoting excavation in the aftermath of the 1917 Great Fire of Thessaloniki, is also considered.
Did Trajan really deserve his reputation as the embodiment of all imperial virtues? Why did Dante, writing in the Middle Ages, place him in the sixth sphere of Heaven among the Just and Temperate rulers? In this, the only biography of Trajan available in English, Julian Bennett rigorously tests the substance of this glorious reputation. Surprisingly, for a Roman emperor, Trajan comes through the test with his reputation relatively intact. |
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