This volume presents the final report on the excavation of two Prepalatial tholos tombs and their associated remains at Chatzinas Liophyto near the Moni Odigitria (monastery) in south-central Crete. The grave goods and burial remains include pottery, metal objects, chipped stones, stone vases, gold and stone jewelry, sealstones, and human skeletal material. The results of the associated survey of the upper catchment of the Hagiopharango region are also reported. The book finishes with a reappraisal of our understanding of the early settlement of the Hagiopharango and a Greek summary.

Over the last decades, considerable effort has been directed towards the study of early complex societies of northern Peru, and in recent years archaeologists have expressed a strong interest in the art and archaeology of the Moche, Lambayeque and Chimu societies. Yet, comparatively little attention has been paid to the earlier cultural foundations of north coast civilization: the Gallinazo. In the recent years, however, the work of a number of north coast specialists brought about a large quantity of data on the Gallinazo occupation of the coast, but a coherent framework for studying this culture had yet to be defined. The present volume is the result of a round table, which gathered some thirty scholars from Europe and North and South America to discuss the Gallinazo phenomenon. In fourteen chapters, authors with different perspectives and backgrounds reconsider the nature of the Gallinazo culture and its position within north coast cultural history, while addressing wider issues about the development of complex societies in this area and within the Andean region in general. The contributions reveal a diversity of perspectives on north coast archaeology, something that is likely to stimulate methodological and theoretical debates among Andeanists, pre-Columbian specialists and New World archaeologists in general.

The prehistoric native peoples of the Mississippi River Valley and other areas of the Eastern Woodlands of the United States shared a complex set of symbols and motifs that constituted one of the greatest artistic traditions of the pre-Columbian Americas. Traditionally known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, these artifacts of copper, shell, stone, clay, and wood were the subject of the groundbreaking 2007 book Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography, which presented a major reconstruction of the rituals, cosmology, ideology, and political structures of the Mississippian peoples. Visualizing the Sacred advances the study of Mississippian iconography by delving into the regional variations within what is now known as the Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere (MIIS). Bringing archaeological, ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and iconographic perspectives to the analysis of Mississippian art, contributors from several disciplines discuss variations in symbols and motifs among major sites and regions across a wide span of time and also consider what visual symbols reveal about elite status in diverse political environments. These findings represent the first formal identification of style regions within the Mississippian Iconographic Interaction Sphere and call for a new understanding of the MIIS as a network of localized, yet interrelated religious systems that experienced both continuity and change over time.

Includes 102 figures, 136 plates and 17 tables (b/w). The excavations at Sotira Kaminoudhia in southern Cyprus revealed the remains of tombs and an Early Bronze Age settlement. This is the first Early Bronze Age settlement to be excavated in Cyprus, an era previously known only from mortuary deposits. This volume provides a final report on the excavations and includes specialist studies on various artifact groups, including: ceramics, chipped and ground stone, metals and terracottas. Other chapters focus on the skeletal remains, local flora and fauna, the geology, the environment, and a regional archaeological survey. This important report provides a wealth of new material from the southern part of the island, material that may now be compared with finds from the contemporaneous site of Marki Alonia in the centre of the island.

This book summarizes the systematic research on the Neolithic cultures of Taiwan, based on the latest archaeological discoveries, and focusing on the maritime interactions between mainland southeast China, Taiwan, and southeast Asia during (5600-1800 BP). The study demonstrates and sheds light on the distinctiveness of Taiwan's Neolithic cultures, their interactions with the external cultures of its surrounding regions, the maritime cultural diffusion and early seafaring across sea regions like the Taiwan Strait, Bashi channel and South China Sea. Drawing on the author's deep understanding of Taiwan and its surrounding regions, the book also incorporates recent archeological findings by Taiwanese researchers. Further, based on a new reconstruction of the spatiotemporal framework of Taiwanese prehistoric cultures, the chronologically arranged chapters discuss Neolithic cultures of the early, middle, late and final stage of this island region, revealing the prehistoric cultural development, regional typology and their maritime interactions with surrounding regions. The typological study of the native traits and external cultural influences of each stage of Neolithic culture shows the prehistoric and early history of this key stepping stone in the Asia-Pacific region.

Africa has the longest record - some 2.5 million years - of human occupation of any continent. For nearly all of this time, its inhabitants have made tools from stone and have acquired their food from its rich wild plant and animal resources. Archaeological research in Africa is crucial for understanding the origins of humans and the diversity of hunter-gatherer ways of life. This book is a synthesis of the record left by Africa's earliest hominin inhabitants and hunter-gatherers, combining the insights of archaeology with those of other disciplines, such as genetics and palaeo-environmental science. African evidence is critical to important debates, such as the origins of stone tool making, the emergence of recognisably modern forms of cognition and behaviour, and the expansion of successive hominins from Africa to other parts of the world.

Modern archaeology has amassed considerable evidence for the disposal of the dead through burials, cemeteries and other monuments. Drawing on this body of evidence, this book offers fresh insight into how early human societies conceived of death and the afterlife. The twenty-seven essays in this volume consider the rituals and responses to death in prehistoric societies across the world, from eastern Asia through Europe to the Americas, and from the very earliest times before developed religious beliefs offered scriptural answers to these questions. Compiled and written by leading prehistorians and archaeologists, this volume traces the emergence of death as a concept in early times, as well as a contributing factor to the formation of communities and social hierarchies, and sometimes the creation of divinities.

The first English-language monograph that describes seasonal and permanent Late Bronze Age settlements in the Russian steppes, this is the final report of the Samara Valley Project, a US-Russian archaeological investigation conducted between 1995 and 2002.

In this volume, Douglas B. Bamforth offers an archaeological overview of the Great Plains, the vast, open grassland bordered by forests and mountain ranges situated in the heart of North America. Synthesizing a century of scholarship and new archaeological evidence, he focuses on changes in resource use, continental trade connections, social formations, and warfare over a period of 15,000 years. Bamforth investigates how foragers harvested the grasslands more intensively over time, ultimately turning to maize farming, and examines the persistence of industrial mobile bison hunters in much of the region as farmers lived in communities ranging from hamlets to towns with thousands of occupants. He also explores how social groups formed and changed, migrations of peoples in and out of the Plains, and the conflicts that occurred over time and space. Significantly, Bamforth's volume demonstrates how archaeology can be used as the basis for telling long-term, problem-oriented human history.

Contributions by 37 scholars are brought together here to create a volume in honor of the long and fruitful career of Costis Davaras, former Ephor of Crete and Professor Emeritus of Minoan Archaeology at the University of Athens. Articles pertain to Bronze Age Crete and include mortuary studies, experimental archaeology, numerous artifactual studies, and discussions on the greater Minoan civilization.

The origins of religion and ritual in humans have been the focus of centuries of thought in archaeology, anthropology, theology, evolutionary psychology and more. Play and ritual have many aspects in common, and ritual is a key component of the early cult practices that underlie the religious systems of the first complex societies in all parts of the world. This book examines the formative cults and the roots of religious practice from the earliest times until the development of early religion in the Near East, in China, in Peru, in Mesoamerica and beyond. Here, leading prehistorians and other specialists bring a fresh approach to the early practices that underlie the faiths and religions of the world. They demonstrate the profound role of play ritual and belief systems and offer powerful new insights into the emergence of early civilization.

This volume is the first of two that represent the final publication of Sector I of the Prepalatial-Postpalatial Minoan urban settlement and palace of Petras, Siteia, located in eastern Crete, and it presents the results of the excavations conducted there from 1985 to 2000. Individual chapters focus on the architecture (Tsipopoulou), cooking wares (Alberti), Early Minoan (EM) and Middle Minoan (MM) I pottery (Relaki), a unique example of an EM-MM amphora stamped with a seal prior to firing (Krzyszkowska), numerous miniature vessels and figurines (Simandiraki-Grimshaw), and a study of vessels (primarily Neopalatial) with potter's marks (Tsipopoulou). A subsequent volume will discuss in more detail the Neopalatial and Postpalatial pottery from Houses I.1 and I.2 and focus on the main Neopalatial period of the Petras settlement and its Postpalatial re-occupation.

Much archaeological work is concerned with identifying gaps in our knowledge and developing strategies for addressing them; we perhaps spend less time thinking about how research should proceed when we already know, relatively speaking, quite a lot. ­The programme of dating causewayed enclosures in southern Britain that was published in 2011 as Gathering Time (Oxbow Books) gave us a new, more precise chronology for many individual sites as well as for enclosures as a whole, and as a consequence a far better sense of their significance and place in the story of the British Early Neolithic. Arguably, causewayed enclosures are now the best understood type of Neolithic monument. Yet work continues, and in the last few years new discoveries have been made, older excavations published and further work undertaken on well-known sites. Viewing this research within the new framework for these monuments allows us to assess where our understanding of enclosures has got to and where the focus of future research should lie. This volume originates from a Neolithic Studies Group meeting held in November 2019, which aimed firstly to showcase and explore the wide range of current work on causewayed enclosures and related sites, and secondly to assess what we still want to know about these sites in light of the monumental achievement of Gathering Time. ­The papers collected here comprise reports on recent development-led fieldwork, academic research and community projects, and the volume concludes with a reflection by the authors of Gathering Time.

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 Element summarises the state of knowledge about four styles of prehistoric rock art in Europe current between the late Mesolithic period and the Iron Age. They are the Levantine, Macroschematic and Schematic traditions in the Iberian Peninsula; the Atlantic style that extended between Portugal, Spain, Britain and Ireland; Alpine rock art; and the pecked and painted images found in Fennoscandia. They are interpreted in relation to the landscapes in which they were made. Their production is related to monument building, the decoration of portable objects, trade and long distance travel, burial rites, and warfare. A final discussion considers possible connections between these separate traditions and the changing subject matter of rock art in relation to wider developments in European prehistoric societies.

Petroglyphic rock art in three valleys of Mongolia's Altai Mountains reveals the anatomy of deep time at the boundary between Central and North Asia. Inscribed over a period of twelve millennia, its subject matter, styles, and manner of execution reflect the constraints of changing geology, climate, and vegetation. These valleys were created and shaped by ancient glaciers. Analysis of their physical environment, projected from the deep past to the present, begins to explain the rhythm of cultural manifestations: where rock art appears, when it disappears, and why. The material and this remote arena offer an ideal laboratory to study the intersection of prehistoric culture and paleoenvironment.

In this comprehensive book Michael Witzel persuasively demonstrates the prehistoric origins of most of the mythologies of Eurasia and the Americas ('Laurasia'). By comparing these myths with others indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa, Melanesia, and Australia ('Gondwana Land') Witzel is able to access some of the earliest myths told by humans. The Laurasian mythologies share a common story line that dates the world's creation to a mythic time and recounts the fortunes of generations of deities across four or five ages and human beings' creation and fall, culminating in the end of the universe and, occasionally, hope for a new world. These stories are contrasted with the 'southern' mythologies, which lack most of these features. Witzel's investigations are buttressed by archaeological data, as well as by comparative linguistics, and human population genetics. All suggest the African origins of anatomically modern humans and their subsequent journey along Indian Ocean shores, up to Australia and southern China, around 60,000 BCE. These itinerants' early mythology survives partly in sub-Saharan Africa and points along the path - the Andaman Islands, Melansia, and Australia. Laurasian mythology, Witzel shows, developed along this vast trail, probably in southwest Asia, around 40,000 BCE. Identifying features shared by virtually all mythologies of the globe, Witzel suggests that these features probably informed myths recounted by the communities of the 'African Eve.' As such, they are the earliest substantiation of our ultimate ancestors' spirituality. Moreover the Laurasian myths' key features, Witzel shows, survive today in all major religions and their multiple ideological offshoots.

To write this history of the imagination, Le Goff has recreated the mental structures of medieval men and women by analyzing the images of man as microcosm and the Church as mystical body; the symbols of power such as flags and oriflammes; and the contradictory world of dreams, marvels, devils, and wild forests.
"Le Goff is one of the most distinguished of the French medieval historians of his generation . . . he has exercised immense influence."--Maurice Keen, "New York Review of Books"
"The whole book turns on a fascinating blend of the brutally materialistic and the generously imaginative."--Tom Shippey, "London Review of Books"
"The richness, imaginativeness and sheer learning of Le Goff's work . . . demand to be experienced."--M. T. Clanchy, "Times Literary Supplement"

Celebrating the rich heritage of archaeology and of archaeological research in Hertfordshire, the 15 papers collected in this work focus on various aspects of the region, including the Neolithic to the post-Medieval periods, and include a report on the important excavations at the formative henge at Norton. Several chapters focus new attention on the Iron Age and Roman periods, both from a landscape perspective and through detailed studies of artefacts, while a discussion of the rare early Saxon material recently excavated at Watton at Stone makes a vital contribution to the existing corpus of knowledge about this little-understood period. All of the papers in the volume focus on the local scene with an understanding of wider issues in each period and as a result, the papers are of importance beyond the boundaries of the county and will be of interest to scholars with wide-ranging interests.

Over the last thirty years, new scientific techniques have revolutionised our understanding of prehistoric economies. They enable a sound comprehension of human diet and subsistence in different environments, which is an essential framework for appreciating the rich tapestry of past human cultural variation. This volume first considers the origins of economic approaches in archaeology and the theoretical debates surrounding issues such as 'environmental determinism'. Using globally diverse examples, Alan K. Outram and Amy Bogaard critically investigate the best way to integrate newer lines of evidence such as ancient genetics, stable isotope analysis, organic residue chemistry and starch and phytolith studies with long-established forms of archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data. Two case study chapters, on early Neolithic farming in Europe, and the origins of domestic horses and pastoralism in Central Asia, illustrate the benefit of a multi-proxy approach and how economic considerations feed into broader social and cultural questions.

Since the inception of the New Archaeology in the 1960s anthropological archaeologists have been attempting to develop models that will let them better understand the evolution of human social organization. The vast majority of this research has focused specifically upon the development of so-called 'complex' societies, which frequently are characterized by institutionalized social inequality, craft specialization, and developed social hierarchy. Conversely, a good deal of research also has focused upon the variability exhibited by highly mobile hunting and gathering societies. Somewhere in our search for understanding how chiefdoms and states evolve, and how different those societies are from egalitarian 'bands', we have neglected to develop models that will help us understand the wide range of variability that exists between them. This volume attempts to fill this gap by exploring social organization in tribal - or 'autonomous village' - societies from several different ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological contexts - from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period in the Near East to the contemporary Jivaro of Amazonia. TBritish School at Rome

Since the inception of the New Archaeology in the 1960s anthropological archaeologists have been attempting to develop models that will let them better understand the evolution of human social organization. The vast majority of this research has focused specifically upon the development of so-called 'complex' societies, which frequently are characterized by institutionalized social inequality, craft specialization, and developed social hierarchy. Conversely, a good deal of research also has focused upon the variability exhibited by highly mobile hunting and gathering societies. Somewhere in our search for understanding how chiefdoms and states evolve, and how different those societies are from egalitarian 'bands', we have neglected to develop models that will help us understand the wide range of variability that exists between them. This volume attempts to fill this gap by exploring social organization in tribal - or 'autonomous village' - societies from several different ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological contexts - from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period in the Near East to the contemporary Jivaro of Amazonia. TBritish School at Rome

Eric Peet (1882-1934) is better known as an Egyptologist, but this, his 1909 first published work, remained the standard reference on its subject for many years. Gaining a Craven Scholarship from Oxford, he spent three years exploring Italian and Maltese sites, but later found work on Egyptian excavations (his co-authored publication on The Cemeteries of Abydos is also reissued in this series). This book is organised chronologically from the palaeolithic period to the Bronze Age, and, as Peet points out in his preface, pulls together not only his own research but the earlier work of Italian archaeologists, mostly published in scattered form in journals. From the finds in early cave shelters to the sophisticated metal and ceramic wares found in Bronze Age settlements and burials, this highly illustrated work demonstrates the development of prehistoric society in a region generally much better known for the later achievements of the Romans.

The last decade has witnessed a sophistication and proliferation in the number of studies focused on the evolution of human cognition, reflecting a renewed interest in the evolution of the human mind in anthropology and in many other disciplines such as cognitive ethnology and evolutionary psychology. The complexity and enormity of this topic is such that it requires the coordinated efforts of many researchers. This volume brings together the disciplines of palaeontology, psychology, anatomy, and primatology. Together they address a number of issues, including the evolution of sex differences in spatial cognition, the role of archaeology in the cognitive sciences, the relationships between brain size, cranial reorganization and hominid cognition, and the role of language and information processing in human evolution. Contributors include: A Martin Byers, Philip Chase, Iain Davidson, Francesco d'Errico, Deborah Forster, Gordon G Gallup Jr, Sean C Hoga, Trenton W Holliday, Harry Jerison, Philip Lieberman, William Noble, April Nowell, Richard Potts, Christopher B Ruff, Katerina Semendeferi, Shirley C Strum, Phillip Tobias, Erik Trinkaus, Anne H Weaver, and Thomas Wynn.