Despite political upheavals under Muslim domination in the Middle Ages, Palestine was a center of great artistic activity recognized for its incredible dynamism. Its unique contribution to the Islamic "macrocosm," however, never became the subject of extensive study. Numerous archeological excavations on this relatively small geographic area reveal the existence of extremely well preserved monuments of high architectural quality and exceptional religious value. This is what Myriam Rosen-Ayalon exposes in this thorough introduction to Palestinian Islamic art and archeology. In chronological order she presents here for the first time the multifaceted and long-lasting achievements of Islamic art in Palestine, filling the gap of years of neglect on the subject.

A definitive account of Sutton Hoo, its discovery, history and famed treasure. The Sutton Hoo ship-burial is one of the most significant finds ever made in Europe. It lies in a burial ground which contains all the elements of archaeological mystery: seventeen mounds, buried treasure, and sacrificed horses. In this very accessible book, Martin Carver explains what we know of this site, at which the leaders of the Dark Age kingdom of East Anglia signalled the pagan and maritime nature of their court. This is the story not only of this dramatic place, but also of its exploration over half a century, which amounts to a potted history of British archaeology.

Maize has been described as a primary catalyst to complex sociocultural development in the Americas. State of the art research on maize chronology, molecular biology, and stable carbon isotope research on ancient human diets have provided additional lines of evidence on the changing role of maize through time and space and its spread throughout the Americas. The multidisciplinary evidence from the social and biological sciences presented in this volume have generated a much more complex picture of the economic, political, and religious significance of maize. The volume also includes ethnographic research on the uses and roles of maize in indigenous cultures and a linguistic section that includes chapters on indigenous folk taxonomies and the role and meaning of maize to the development of civilization. Histories of Maize is the most comprehensive reference source on the botanical, genetic, archaeological, and anthropological aspects of ancient maize published to date. This book will appeal to a varied audience, and have no titles competiting with it because of its breadth and scope. The volume offers a single source of high quality summary information unavailable elsewhere.

Situated between the worlds of the Near East, Europe and Africa, the archaeology and culture of Cyprus are central to an understanding of the ancient Mediterranean world. This book treats the archaeology of Cyprus from the first-known human presence during the Late Epipalaeolithic (ca. 11,000 BC) through the end of the Bronze Age (ca. 1000 BC). A. Bernard Knapp examines the archaeological and documentary records of prehistoric Cyprus within their regional context, paying special attention to the Levant and the Aegean. The appendix (compiled by Sturt W. Manning) analyses all published radiocarbon dates from the island, providing for the first time a comprehensive chronological framework for all of Cypriot prehistory. Focusing on key themes such as identity, insularity and connectivity, and society, community and polity throughout, this book provides a remarkably up-to-date and integrated synthesis of human activity on the Mediterranean's third-largest island.

Memory and Agency in Ancient China offers a novel perspective on China's material culture. The volume explores the complex 'life histories' of selected objects, whose trajectories as ginle objects ('biographies') and object types ('lineages') cut across both temporal and physical space. The essays, written by a team of international scholars, analyse the objects in an effort to understand how they were shaped by the constraints of their social, political and aesthetic contexts, just as they were also guided by individual preference and capricious memory. They also demonstrate how objects were capable of effecting change. Ranging chronologically from the Neolithic to the present, and spatially from northern to southern mainland China and Taiwan, this book highlights the varied approaches that archaeologists and art historians use when attempting to reconstruct object trajectories. It also showcases the challenges they face, particularly with the unearthing of objects from archaeological contexts that, paradoxically, come to represent the earliest known point of their 'post-recovery lives'.

In this fourth edition of the CRM classic, Thomas F. King shares his expertise in dealing with laws regulating the use of cultural resources. With wry insight, he explains the various federal, state, and local laws governing the protection of resources, how they have been interpreted, how they operate in practice, and even how they are sometimes in contradiction with each other. He provides helpful advice on how to ensure regulatory compliance in dealing with archaeological sites, historic buildings, urban districts, sacred sites and objects, shipwrecks, and archives. King also offers careful guidance through the confusing array of federal, state, and tribal offices concerned with CRM. Featuring updated analysis and treatments of key topics, this new edition is a must-have for archaeologists and students, historic preservationists, tribal governments, and others working with cultural resources.

This volume expands archaeological understandings of the past by using a neglected database - ground stone artifacts - to stretch the boundaries of our comprehension of the ancient world. Ground stone artifacts, long recognized as part of the essential domestic tool kit for food production and other activities, have received little methodical attention in the archaeological community until relatively recently. A trend of increasing focus on ground stone artifacts in the archaeological literature over the past two decades, particularly in the New World, indicates the need to integrate such analyses with larger theoretical and methodological issues. The editors bring together for the first time a detailed, comprehensive view of the variety of approaches to the archaeological analyses of these artifacts melding together archaeological data and innovative analyses of the most recent research. In a thought provoking introduction, the editors provide context for the issues and note recent advances made in ground stone artifact analysis. Case studies based on original data, organized along broad thematic interests, form the bulk of the volume. The limitations and opportunities that natural resources of a given region impose on technological change, production, and exchange are key points that many contributors touch upon. In the concluding remarks, the case studies are critically summarized with an eye towards a synthetic, diachronic appraisal, and potential avenues for future related studies.

Urbanization is a phenomenon that brings into focus a range of topics of broad interest to scholars. It is one of the central, enduring interests of anthropological archaeology. Because urbanization is a transformational process, it changes the relationships between social and cultural variables such as demography, economy, politics, and ideology. As one of a handful of cases in the ancient world where cities developed independently, Mesoamerica should play a major role in the global, comparative analysis of first-generation cities and urbanism in general. Yet most research focuses on later manifestations of urbanism in Mesoamerica, thereby perpetuating the fallacy that Mesoamerican cities developed relatively late in comparison to urban centers in the rest of the world. This volume presents new data, case studies, and models for approaching the subject of early Mesoamerican cities. It demonstrates how the study of urbanism in Mesoamerica, and all ancient civilizations, is entering a new and dynamic phase of scholarship.

This book integrates a region-wide chronological narrative of the archaeology of Pacific Oceania. How and why did this vast sea of islands, covering nearly one-third of the world's surface, come to be inhabited over the last several millennia, transcending significant change in ecology, demography, and society? What can any or all of the thousands of islands offer as ideal model systems toward comprehending globally significant issues of human-environment relations and coping with changing circumstances of natural and cultural history? A new synthesis of Pacific Oceanic archaeology addresses these questions, based largely on the author's investigations throughout the diverse region.

This book is an archaeological study of the cultures of conflict through an examination of caves and tunnels used during the Pacific War. Referred to here as "karst defenses," WWII caves and tunnels can be found throughout the karst landscapes of the Pacific. Karst defenses have been hidden, literally by the jungle and figuratively by history, for over 70 years. Based on a study of karst defenses and their related artifacts and oral histories in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, this book uses karst defenses to investigate the varied human experiences before, during and after the Pacific War. Historically, the book reveals new knowledge about the overall defense strategies used in the Pacific. Karst defenses were a central component of Pacific War defense and were constructed and used by civilians, the Japanese military and U.S. troops as early as 1942. Karst defenses also functioned as command posts, hospitals, shelters, storage units and combat positions. The book sheds light on the social aspects that influenced the construction and use of karst defenses, including the fragmented relationship between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Imperial Japanese Army, the social status of civilians under Japanese rule and the clandestine plans of the U.S. in Micronesia. The book also discusses the complex contemporary meanings of this dark, shared heritage.

This comprehensive and absorbing book traces the cultural history of Southeast Asia from prehistoric (especially Neolithic, Bronze-Iron age) times through to the major Hindu and Buddhist civilisations, to around AD 1300. Southeast Asia has recently attracted archaeological attention as the locus for the first recorded sea crossings; as the region of origin for the Austronesian population dispersal across the Pacific from Neolithic times; as an arena for the development of archaeologically rich Neolithic, and metal using communities, especially in Thailand and Vietnam, and as the backdrop for several unique and strikingly monumental Indic civilisations, such as the Khmer civilisation centred around Angkor. Invaluable to anyone interested in the full history of the region.

Inca Apocalypse develops a new perspective on the European invasions of the Inca realm, and the way that the Spanish transformation of the Andes relates to broader changes occurring in the transition from medieval to early modern Europe. The book is structured to foreground some of the parallels in the imperial origins of the Incas and Spain, as well as some of the global processes affecting both societies during the first century of their interaction. The Spanish conquest of the Inca empire was more than a decisive victory at Cajamarca in 1532-it was an uneven process that failed to bring to pass the millenarian vision that set it in motion, yet it succeeded profoundly in some respects. The Incas and their Andean subjects were not passive victims of colonization, and indigenous complicity and resistance actively shaped Spanish colonial rule. As it describes the transformation of the Inca world, Inca Apocalypse attempts to build a more global context than previous accounts of the Spanish Conquest, and it seeks not to lose sight of the parallel changes occurring in Europe as Spain pursued state projects that complemented the colonial endeavors in the Americas. New archaeological and archival research makes it possible to frame a familiar story from a larger historical and geographical scale than has typically been considered. The new text will have solid scholarly foundations but a narrative intended to be accessible to non-academic readers.

This open access book discusses socio-environmental interactions in the middle to late Holocene, covering specific areas along the ancient Silk Road regions. Over twenty chapters provide insight into this topic from various disciplinary angles and perspectives, ranging from archaeology, paleoclimatology, antiquity, historical geography, agriculture, carving art and literacy. The Silk Road is a modern concept for an ancient network of trade routes that for centuries facilitated and intensified processes of cultural interaction and goods exchange between West China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Coherent patterns and synchronous events in history suggest possible links between social upheaval, resource utilization and climate or environment forces along the Silk Road and in a broader area. Post-graduates in studying will benefit from this work, as well as it will stimulate young researchers to further explore the role played by the environment in long-term socio-cultural changes.

Prehistoric Florida societies, particularly those of the peninsula, have been largely ignored or given only minor consideration in overviews of the Mississippian southeast (A.D. 1000-1600). This groundbreaking volume lifts the veil of uniformity frequently draped over these regions in the literature, providing the first comprehensive examination of Mississippi-period archaeology in the state.
Featuring contributions from some of the most prominent researchers in the field, this collection describes and synthesizes the latest data from excavations throughout Florida. In doing so, it reveals a diverse and vibrant collection of cleared-field maize farmers, part-time gardeners, hunter-gatherers, and coastal and riverine fisher/shellfish collectors who formed a distinctive part of the Mississippian southeast.

This Element provides a concise account of the archaeology of salt production in ancient Europe. It describes what salt is, where it is found, what it is used for, and its importance for human and animal health. The different periods of the past in which it was produced are described, from earliest times down to the medieval period. Attention is paid to the abundant literary sources that inform us about salt in the Greek and Roman world, as well as the likely locations of production in the Mediterranean and beyond. The economic and social importance of salt in human societies means that salt has served as a crucial aspect of trade and exchange over the centuries, and potentially as a means of individuals and societies achieving wealth and status.

This open access book is a novel contribution in two ways: It is a multi-disciplinary examination of the indigenous South Saami people in Fennoscandia, a social and cultural group that often is overlooked as it is a minority within the Saami minority. Based on both historical material such as archaeological evidence, 20th century newspapers, and postcard motives as well as current sources such as ongoing land-right trials and recent works of historiography, the articles highlight the culture and living conditions of this indigenous group, mapping the negotiations of different identities through the interaction of Saami and non-Saami people through the ages. By illuminating this under-researched field, the volume also enriches the more general debate on global indigenous history, and sheds light on the construction of a Scandinavian identity and the limits of the welfare state and the myth of heterogeneity and equality.

Iconoclasm, the debate about the legitimacy of religious art that began in Byzantium around 730 and continued for nearly 120 years, has long held a firm grip on the historical imagination. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era is the first book in English to survey the original sources crucial for a modern understanding of this most elusive and fascinating period in medieval history. It is also the first book in any language to cover both the written and the visual evidence from this period, a combination of particular importance to the iconoclasm debate. The authors, an art historian and a historian who both specialise in the period, have worked together to provide a comprehensive overview of the visual and the written materials that together help clarify the complex issues of iconoclasm in Byzantium.

An examination of the frequently elaborate rituals of food and feasting in Anglo-Saxon funeral rites. Anglo-Saxons were frequently buried with material artefacts, ranging from pots to clothing to jewellery, and also with items of food, while the funeral ritual itself was frequently marked by feasting, sometimes at the graveside. The book examines the place of food and feasting in funerary rituals from the earliest period to the eleventh century, considering the changes and transformations that occurred during this time, drawing on a wide range of sources,from archaeological evidence to the existing texts. It looks in particular at representations of funerary feasting, how it functions as a tool for memory, and sheds light on the relationship between the living and the dead. CHRISTINA LEE is a lecturer in the School of English Studies at the University of Nottingham.

Series Information:
One World Archaeology

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.

A collection of papers presented to the 1992 international British Archaeological Association conference in Chester. Presented in chronological order, the fourteen essays comprise Martin Henig's analysis of carved stonework from Roman Deva; Alan Thacker's study of the formation of the town and its parishes during the early medieval period; Simon Ward, Virginia Jansen, John Maddison and Christa Grossinger examine the architecture, fittings and restoration of the Cathedral and churches; Elizabeth Danbury, J Patrick Greene and Nigel Ramsay assess the life and dissolution of religious foundations; Roland B Harris looks at the origins of the famous Chester Rows and Sharon Cather, David Park and Robyn Pender discuss the recently rediscovered Henry III wall paintings at Chester Castle. A broad and illustrated guide to many aspects of Chester's long history.

The Declaration of Arbroath, 6 April, 1320, is one of the most remarkable documents to have been produced anywhere in medieval Europe. Signed by 51 Scottish nobles, it confirms Scotland's status as an independent sovereign state with the right to use military action if unjustly attacked. Quoted by many, understood by few, its historical significance has now almost been overtaken by its mythic status. Since 1998, the US Senate has claimed that the American Declaration of Independence is modelled upon 'the inspirational document' of Arbroath. This is the first book-length study to examine the origins of the Declaration and the ideas upon which it drew, while tracing the rise of its mythic status in Scotland and exploring its impact upon revolutionary America.

Explains how Cairo came to have its important Genizah archive, how Cambridge developed its interests in Hebraica, and how a number of colourful figures brought about the connection between the two centres. Also shows the importance of the Genizah material for Jewish cultural history.

Offering the most comprehensive study of southern Jordan, this illuminating account presents detailed data from over a hundred archaeological sites stretching from the Lower Paleotlithic to the Chalcolithic periods. The author uses archaeological and paleoenvironmental evidence to reconstruct synchronic and evolutionary aspects of the cultural ecology of the prehistoric inhabitants of southern Jordan. This study exemplifies that cultural historic and processual approaches are integral to examining prehistoric cultural ecology. Numerous artifact illustrations as well as tables and appendixes containing primary data are included.