This book completes the two-part series that serves as the final report for the excavation of the Cave of the Cyclops on the island of Youra in the Northern Sporades of Greece, a site that was occasionally occupied from the Mesolithic through Roman period. The second volume contains the results of detailed studies on the archaeological material, organic remains, and archeometric analyses that complete the image of this significant archaeological site. These studies help to further distinguish the main characteristics of the Mesolithic culture in the Aegean basin, including: the intense exploitation of sea resources, limited hunting activities, the collection of native fruits and land snails to supplement the diet, and attempts at domestication by isolated island communities.

"Prehistoric Europe: Theory and Practice" provides a comprehensive introduction to the range of critical contemporary thinking in the study of European prehistory.
Presents essays by some of the most dynamic researchers and leading European scholars in the field today
Ranges from the Neolithic period to the early stages of the Iron Age, and from Ireland and Scandinavia to the Urals and the Iberian Peninsula

The 'bog bodies' of north-western Europe have captured the imaginations of poets and archaeologists alike, allowing us to come face-to-face with individuals from the past. Their exceptional preservation permits us to examine minute details of their lives and deaths, making us reflect poignantly on our own mortality. But, as this book argues, the bodies must be resituated within a turbulent world of endemic violence and change. Reinterpreting the latest continental research and new discoveries, and featuring a ground-breaking 'cold case' forensic study of Worsley Man, Manchester Museum's 'bog head', it brings the bogs to life through both natural history and folklore, revealing them as places that were rich and fertile yet dangerous. The book also argues that these remains do not just pose practical conservation problems but also philosophical dilemmas, compounded by the critical debate on if - and how - they should be displayed. -- .

This excavation of a Late Bronze Age town on the island of Mochlos in northeastern Crete includes the House of the Metal Merchant (with two large bronze hoards) and 13 other structures. Each building is described with its stratigraphy, architecture, small finds, ecofactual materials, function, and room use. This is a two volume set. Volume 1 contains the text and Volume 2 contains the Concordance, Tables, Figures, and Plates.

The human race is on a 10,000 year urban adventure. Our ancestors wandered the planet or lived scattered in villages, yet by the end of this century almost all of us will live in cities. But that journey has not been a smooth one and urban civilizations have risen and fallen many times in history. The ruins of many of them still enchant us. This book tells the story of the rise and fall of ancient cities from the end of the Bronze Age to the beginning of the Middle Ages. It is a tale of war and politics, pestilence and famine, triumph and tragedy, by turns both fabulous and squalid. Its focus is on the ancient Mediterranean: Greeks and Romans at the centre, but Phoenicians and Etruscans, Persians, Gauls, and Egyptians all play a part. The story begins with the Greek discovery of much more ancient urban civilizations in Egypt and the Near East, and charts the gradual spread of urbanism to the Atlantic and then the North Sea in the centuries that followed. The ancient Mediterranean, where our story begins, was a harsh environment for urbanism. So how were cities first created, and then sustained for so long, in these apparently unpromising surroundings? How did they feed themselves, where did they find water and building materials, and what did they do with their waste and their dead? Why, in the end, did their rulers give up on them? And what it was like to inhabit urban worlds so unlike our own - cities plunged into darkness every night, cities dominated by the temples of the gods, cities of farmers, cities of slaves, cities of soldiers. Ultimately, the chief characters in the story are the cities themselves. Athens and Sparta, Persepolis and Carthage, Rome and Alexandria: cities that formed great families. Their story encompasses the history of the generations of people who built and inhabited them, whose short lives left behind monuments that have inspired city builders ever since - and whose ruins stand as stark reminders to the 21st century of the perils as well as the potential rewards of an urban existence.

The Orcadian archipelago is a museum of archaeological wonders. Its largest island, Mainland, is home to some of the oldest and best-preserved Neolithic sites in Europe, the most famous of which are the passage grave of Maeshowe, the megaliths of Stenness, the Ring of Brodgar and the village of Skara Brae - evidence of a dynamic society with connections binding Orkney to Ireland, to southern Britain and to the western margins of continental Europe. Despite 150 years of archaeological investigation, however, there is much that we do not know about the societies that created these sites. What historical background did they emerge from? What social and political interests did their monuments serve? And what was the nature of the links between Neolithic societies in Orkney and elsehwere? Following a broadly chronological narrative, and highlighting different lines of evidence as they unfold, Mark Edmonds traces the development of the Orcadian Neolithic from its beginnings in the early fourth millennium BC through to the end of the period nearly two thousand years later. Juxtaposing an engaging and accessible narrative with beautifully evocative photographs of Orkney and its monuments, he uses artefacts, architecture and the wider landscape to recreate the lives of Neolithic communities across the region.

Based on a major research programme, and originally published in 1985, this book looked to provide an economic foundation for reinterpreting the Neolithic-Bronze Age sequence of South-east Spain in terms of emergent social complexity. The cultural evolution of the area had already been considered in terms of influence from the eastern Mediterranean but this book uses site catchment analysis to give an economic baseline for all thirty-five of the better-known prehistoric settlements of the region.

Site catchment analysis assumes that people minimised transport costs in production and that ancient and modern resource spaces correspond systematically. This research therefore studied modern land use and combined it with evidence from historical, archaeological and geomorphological investigation. The book shows the increasing social complexity evident in the archaeological record emerging as a result of progressive intensification of agricultural technique. Offering a complete coherent evolutionary model for the archaeological sequence of the region s prehistory, this book is a worthy in-depth study for prehistorians, geographers and anyone interested in the history of the western Mediterranean."

It has long been known that all forms of art rock paintings, carvings and scribings, and also portable sculpture are present at various locations throughout Africa. This book was the first inclusive survey and brings together in one volume accounts of African rock art which were previously scattered in scholarly monographs, journals and travellers tales. The range of the coverage is geophysically comprehensive, from the Atlas Mountains to the Cape of Good Hope. The art styles are set into a firm chronological framework, and are displayed against a background of human, physical and cultural evolution. Considerable discussion is also devoted to the varied purposes which the paintings and carvings served in the communities which produced them, looking at the differing interpretations fully and fairly. A fascinating collection of illustrations, some in colour, truly reflects the variety of forms in which African rock art is manifested. Originally published 1984."

Perishable Material Culture in Prehistory provides new approaches and integrates a broad range of data to address a neglected topic, organic material in the prehistoric record. Providing news ideas and connections and suggesting revisionist ways of thinking about broad themes in the past, this book demonstrates the efficacy of an holistic approach by using examples and cases studies. No other book covers such a broad range of organic materials from a social and object biography perspective, or concentrates so fully on approaches to the missing components of prehistoric material culture. This book will be an essential addition for those people wishing to understand better the nature and importance of organic materials as the 'missing majority' of prehistoric material culture.

During the last few decades, there has been great interest in the problems of defining the extent and nature of kingship in the Mycenaean world. Questions concerning the degree of economic and religious power held by the king have been given special emphasis. This book surveys the conclusions drawn by individual scholars studying the Linear B tablets, contrasts their theories with our knowledge of the Mycenaean kingdoms as derived from the archaeological record, and finally compares this evidence with possible reflections in the oral tradition, specifically in the Iliad and Odyssey. This approach leads to the suggestion that the king in the Mycenaean period had only limited power over the society and its economy. Although the king appears to have controlled a large segment of the economy, it is argued here that other individuals and family groups within the kingdom also had a certain degree of economic independence.

This textbook explores the mystery of human origins in the Arabian Peninsula, the lost Southern Crescent where humanity took its first steps toward civilization. Under Arabia's surface of sand and stone lies a primordial realm of rolling grasslands, freshwater lakes, and river floodplains. This book aims to restore a critical missing chapter in the prehistory of our species that played out in this forgotten place of plenty. The author has carried out more than twenty years of fieldwork in Yemen and Oman, weaving his research together into an unorthodox tapestry of archaeology, environmental science, genetics, and Middle Eastern mythology. This volume peers beneath Arabia's abandoned deserts, revealing a land that once served as a bridge between prehistoric worlds. This textbook is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students as well as all readers who are interested in learning about Arabian prehistory.

In Stone Tools in Human Evolution, John J. Shea argues that over the last three million years hominins' technological strategies shifted from occasional tool use, much like that seen among living non-human primates, to a uniquely human pattern of obligatory tool use. Examining how the lithic archaeological record changed over the course of human evolution, he compares tool use by living humans and non-human primates and predicts how the archaeological stone tool evidence should have changed as distinctively human behaviors evolved. Those behaviors include using cutting tools, logistical mobility (carrying things), language and symbolic artifacts, geographic dispersal and diaspora, and residential sedentism (living in the same place for prolonged periods). Shea then tests those predictions by analyzing the archaeological lithic record from 6,500 years ago to 3.5 million years ago.

In Everyday Life in the Aztec World, Frances Berdan and Michael E. Smith offer a view into the lives of real people, doing very human things, in the unique cultural world of Aztec central Mexico. The first section focuses on people from an array of social classes - the emperor, a priest, a feather worker, a merchant, a farmer, and a slave - who interacted in the economic, social and religious realms of the Aztec world. In the second section, the authors examine four important life events where the lives of these and others intersected: the birth and naming of a child, market day, a day at court, and a battle. Through the microscopic views of individual types of lives, and interweaving of those lives into the broader Aztec world, Berdan and Smith recreate everyday life in the final years of the Aztec Empire.

The change from a hunting-gathering lifestyle to one dependent upon farming constitutes a truly 'revolutionary' event in the human career. Most archaeologists agree that how ancient people organized their work and family groups was crucial to the success of early attempts at farming. Yet little serious attention has been paid to the social organization of labor in the prehistoric past. This book addresses that lacuna by investigating sexual divisions of labor. As a case study, Peterson chose the southern Levant of West Asia, where the world's first farming societies emerged some 10,000 years ago. Shattering long held assumptions about women's work that lead to generalizations about gender roles, Peterson shows that gender studies can be both scientific and thoroughly grounded in feminist theory.

Named after an archaeological site discovered in 1951 in Zhengzhou, China, the Erligang civilization arose in the Yellow River valley around the middle of the second millennium BCE. Shortly thereafter, its distinctive elite material culture spread to a large part of China's Central Plain, in the south reaching as far as the banks of the Yangzi River. The Erligang culture is best known for the remains of an immense walled city at Zhengzhou, a smaller site at Panlongcheng in Hubei, and a large-scale bronze industry of remarkable artistic and technological sophistication.

This richly illustrated book is the first in a western language devoted to the Erligang culture. It brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines, including art history and archaeology, to explore what is known about the culture and its spectacular bronze industry. The opening chapters introduce the history of the discovery of the culture and its most important archaeological sites. Subsequent essays address a variety of important methodological issues related to the study of Erligang, including how to define the culture, the usefulness of cross-cultural comparative study, and the difficulty of reconciling traditional Chinese historiography with archaeological discoveries. The book closes by examining the role the Erligang civilization played in the emergence of the first bronze-using societies in south China and the importance of bronze studies in the training of Chinese art historians.

The contributors are Robert Bagley, John Baines, Maggie Bickford, Rod Campbell, Li Yung-ti, Robin McNeal, Kyle Steinke, Wang Haicheng, and Zhang Changping.

This book offers an analysis of archaeological imagery based on new materialist approaches. Reassessing the representational paradigm of archaeological image analysis, it argues for the importance of ontology, redefining images as material processes or events that draw together differing aspects of the world. The book is divided into three sections: 'Emergent images', which focuses on practices of making; 'Images as process', which examines the making and role of images in prehistoric societies; and 'Unfolding images', which focuses on how images change as they are made and circulated. Featuring contributions from archaeologists, Egyptologists, anthropologists and artists, it highlights the multiple role of images in prehistoric and historic societies, while demonstrating that scholars need to recognise their dynamic and changeable character. -- .

This book brings together the results of recent research on the Neolithic long cairns lying in the shadow of the Black Mountains in south-east Wales, focusing upon Penywyrlod and Gwernvale, the two best known tombs within the group, previously excavated in the 1970s. Important results lie in both new site detail and reassessment of the wider context. Small-scale excavation, geophysical survey and geological assessment at Penywyrlod size=2>- the largest of the Welsh long cairns - gave further information about the distinctive external and internal architecture of the monument. In turn, this opened the opportunity to reassess the pre-monument sequence at Gwernvale, with re-examination of both Mesolithic and Neolithic occupations, including timber structures and middens, lithic and pottery assemblages, and cereal remains. The frame for wider reassessment is given by fresh chronological modelling both of the monuments themselves, suggesting a sequence from Penywyrlod and Pipton to Ty Isaf and Gwernvale, probably spanning the 38th to 36th centuries cal BC, and of early Neolithic activity in south Wales and the Marches across the same sort of period. A detailed study of the major assemblages of human remains from the Black Mountains tombs includes evidence for diet, trauma and lifestyles of the populations represented. Recent isotope analysis of human remains from the tombs is also reviewed, implying social mobility and migration within local populations during the early Neolithic. This book makes a significant contribution to the study of tomb building, treatment of the dead, place making, and Neolithisation in western Britain. Viewed in the context of tombs within the Cotswold-Severn tradition as a whole, it leads to an appreciation of the local and regional distinctiveness of architecture and mortuary practice exhibited by the tombs in this area of south-east Wales, emerging as part of the intake of a significant inland area in the early centuries of the Neolithic.

"A wonderful guide to the many megaliths of Britain's Neolithic and Bronze Age."Mike Parker Pearson, Professor of British Later Prehistory at UCLThis is the most comprehensive and thought-provoking field guide ever published to the iconic standing stones and prehistoric places of Britain and Ireland. The ultimate insiders' guide, it gives unparalleled insight into where to find prehistoric sites and how to understand them, by drawing on the knowledge, expertise and passion of the archaeologists, theorists, photographers and stones aficionados who contribute to the world's biggest megalithic website - the Megalithic Portal. Including over 30 maps and site plans and hundreds of colour photographs, it also contains scores of articles by a wide range of contributors, from archaeologists and archaeoastronomers to dowsers and geomancers, that will change the way you see these amazing survivals from our distant past.Locate over 1,000 of Britain and Ireland's most atmospheric prehistoric places, from recently discovered moorland circles to standing stones hidden in housing estates. Discover which sites could align with celestial bodies or horizon landmarks. Explore acoustic, colour and shadow theory to get inside the minds of the Neolithic and Bronze Age people who created these extraordinary places. Find out which sites have the most spectacular views, which are the best for getting away from it all and which have been immortalized in music. And don't forget to visit the Megalithic Portal website and get involved by posting your discoveries online.

This textbook offers an up-to-date academic synthesis of the Aegean islands from the earliest Palaeolithic period through to the demise of the Mycenaean civilization in the Late Bronze III period. The book integrates new findings and theoretical approaches whilst, at the same time, allowing readers to contextualize their understanding through engagement with bigger overarching issues and themes, often drawing explicitly on key theoretical concepts and debates. Structured according to chronological periods and with two dedicated chapters on Akrotiri and the debate around the volcanic eruption of Thera, this book is an essential companion for all those interested in the prehistory of the Cyclades and other Aegean islands.

This is an Element about some of the largest sites known in prehistoric Europe - sites so vast that they often remain undiscussed for lack of the theoretical or methodological tools required for their understanding. Here, the authors use a relational, comparative approach to identify not only what made megasites but also what made megasites so special and so large. They have selected a sample of megasites in each major period of prehistory - Neolithic, Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages - with a detailed examination of a single representative megasite for each period. The relational approach makes explicit comparisons between smaller, more 'normal' sites and the megasites using six criteria - scale, temporality, deposition / monumentality, formal open spaces, performance and congregational catchment. The authors argue that many of the largest European prehistoric megasites were congregational places.

The Living Goddesses crowns a lifetime of innovative, influential work by one of the twentieth-century's most remarkable scholars. Marija Gimbutas wrote and taught with rare clarity in her original--and originally shocking--interpretation of prehistoric European civilization. Gimbutas flew in the face of contemporary archaeology when she reconstructed goddess-centered cultures that predated historic patriarchal cultures by many thousands of years. This volume, which was close to completion at the time of her death, contains the distillation of her studies, combined with new discoveries, insights, and analysis. Editor Miriam Robbins Dexter has added introductory and concluding remarks, summaries, and annotations. The first part of the book is an accessible, beautifully illustrated summation of all Gimbutas's earlier work on "Old European" religion, together with her ideas on the roles of males and females in ancient matrilineal cultures. The second part of the book brings her knowledge to bear on what we know of the goddesses today--those who, in many places and in many forms, live on.

This book provides a concise overview of human prehistory. It shows how an understanding of the distant past offers new perspectives on present-day challenges facing our species - and how we can build a sustainable future for all life on planet Earth. Deborah Barsky tells a fascinating story of the long-term evolution of human culture and provides up-to-date examples from the archaeological record to illustrate the different phases of human history. Barsky also presents a refreshing and original analysis about issues plaguing modern globalized society, such as racism, institutionalized religion, the digital revolution, human migrations, terrorism, and war. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Human Prehistory is aimed at an introductory-level audience. Students will acquire a comprehensive understanding of the interdisciplinary, scientific study of human prehistory, as well as the theoretical interpretations of human evolutionary processes that are used in contemporary archaeological practice. Definitions, tables, and illustrations accompany the text.

The Levant - modern Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine - is one of the most intensively excavated regions of the world. This richly documented and illustrated survey offers a state-of-the-art description of the formative phase of Levantine societies, as they perfected the Mediterranean village economy and began to interact with neighboring civilizations in Egypt and Syria, on the way to establishing their first towns and city-state polities. Citing numerous finds and interpretive approaches, Greenberg offers a new narrative of social and cultural development, emulation, resistance and change, illustrating how Levantine communities translated broader movements of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean Bronze Age - the emergence of states, international trade, elite networks and imperial ambitions - into a uniquely Levantine idiom.

According to archeological and historical records, the Bahrain Islands of the Arabian Gulf were the home of a flourishing civilization four thousant years ago. Then, as now, these islands served as an important locus of maritime trade, but they were also characterized as a land of copious artesian springs and fertile fields. Modern Bahrain, in contrast, is beset by environmental and demographic problems: the depletion of the artesian water supply, abandonment of rural agricultural lands, and rapid population growth. In this exemplary interdisciplinary study, Curtis E. Larsen combines archeological, geological, historical, and anthropological methods to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental and socioeconomic context that links Bahrain's present to its past.

The contribution of Neandertals to the biological and cultural emergence of early modern humans remains highly debated in anthropology. Particularly controversial is the long-held view that Neandertals in Western Europe were replaced 30,000 to 40,000 years ago by early modern humans expanding out of Africa. This book contributes to this debate by exploring the diets and foraging patterns of both Neandertals and early modern humans. Eugene Morin examines the faunal remains from Saint-Cesaire in France, which contains an exceptionally long and detailed chronological sequence, as well as genetic, anatomical and other archaeological evidence to shed new light on the problem of modern human origins.