Sir Arthur John Evans (1851 1941) famously excavated the ruins of Knossos on Crete and uncovered the remains of its Bronze Age Minoan civilisation (as described in his multi-volume work The Palace of Minos at Knossos, also reissued in this series). But he had already visited the island prior to this: in 1894, during his first trip, he found examples of an ancient pictographic writing system that pre-dated the Phoenician alphabet later adapted by the Greeks. First published in 1895, this work, illustrated with examples throughout, documents and describes these discoveries, and demonstrates that the earliest finds date from a period before even the most ancient known Semitic scripts. Evans also records evidence of later scripts which were subsequently categorised as Linear A and Linear B (only the latter has been deciphered since his death). The final section of the book describes in detail the pottery and other finds from the Hagios Onuphrios deposit.

Born in Edinburgh, Daniel Wilson (1816 92) planned on becoming a painter and spent time working in Turner's studio. But in 1842 he became secretary of the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland and devoted the rest of his life to archaeology, anthropology and university administration. This two-volume work, first published in 1851, brought him to immediate academic attention. Carrying out pioneering work of scientific archaeology, Wilson brought the very word 'prehistoric' into use in English for the first time. And although a devout Christian, he accepted the theory of evolution, unlike many of his contemporaries. Split into four periods, the work is richly illustrated, with many of the illustrations created by the author himself. For this second edition, published in 1863, Wilson updated his work to reflect recent discoveries. Volume 1 looks at the earliest human settlers up to the Bronze Age.

Originally published in 1950, this book provides a general survey of what was known about prehistoric chamber tombs in England and Wales at the time of publication, reflecting on discoveries made through the excavation of numerous tombs in the previous fifty years. The text also contains a variety of illustrative figures and an inventory of recognisable burial chambers in the area, with notes on doubtful, disputed and certain vanished sites. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in megalithic tombs and the development of archaeology.

While the study of networks has grown exponentially in the past decade and is now having an impact on how archaeologists study ancient societies, its emergence in the field has been dislocated. This volume provides a coherent framework on network analysis in current archaeological practice by pulling together its main themes and approaches to show how it is changing the way archaeologists face the key questions of regional interaction. Working with the term 'network' as a collection of nodes and links, as used in network science and social network analysis, it juxtaposes a range of case studies and investigates the positives and negatives of network analysis. With contributions by leading experts in the field, the volume covers a broad range: from Japan to America, from the Palaeolithic to the Precolumbian.

The Scottish archaeologist and anthropologist Daniel Wilson (1816 92) spent the latter part of his life in Canada. Published in 1862, this is a seminal work in the study of early man in which Wilson utilises studies of native tribes 'still seen there in a condition which seems to reproduce some of the most familiar phases ascribed to the infancy of the unhistoric world'. He believed that civilisations initially developed in mild climates and judged the Mayans to have been the most advanced civilisation in the New World. Twentieth-century anthropologist Bruce Trigger argued that Wilson 'interpreted evidence about human behaviour in a way that is far more in accord with modern thinking than are the racist views of Darwin and Lubbock', and it is in this light that this two-volume work can be judged. Volume 1 covers such important areas as the development and use of metals and 'the architectural instinct'.

The Scottish archaeologist and anthropologist Daniel Wilson (1816 92) spent the latter part of his life in Canada. Published in 1862, this is a seminal work in the study of early man in which Wilson utilises studies of native tribes 'still seen there in a condition which seems to reproduce some of the most familiar phases ascribed to the infancy of the unhistoric world'. He believed that civilisations initially developed in mild climates and judged the Mayans to have been the most advanced civilisation in the New World. Twentieth-century anthropologist Bruce Trigger argued that Wilson 'interpreted evidence about human behaviour in a way that is far more in accord with modern thinking than are the racist views of Darwin and Lubbock', and it is in this light that this two-volume work can be judged. Volume 2 covers topics ranging from ceramic arts to the influence of interbreeding and migration upon civilisations.

The societies that developed in the eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age produced the most prolific and diverse range of stone vessel traditions known at any time or anywhere in the world. Stone vessels are therefore a key class of artefact in the early history of this region. As a form of archaeological evidence, they offer important analytical advantages over other artefact types - virtual indestructibility, a wide range of functions and values, huge variety in manufacturing traditions, as well as the subtractive character of stone and its rich potential for geological provenancing. In this 2007 book, Andrew Bevan considers individual stone vessel industries in great detail. He also offers a highly comparative and value-led perspective on production, consumption and exchange logics throughout the eastern Mediterranean over a period of two millennia during the Bronze Age (ca.3000-1200 BC).

The life history of stone tools is intimately linked to tool production, use and maintenance. These are important processes in the organization of lithic technology, or the manner in which lithic technology is embedded within human organizational strategies of land use and subsistence practices. This volume brings together essays that measure the life history of stone tools relative to retouch values, raw material constraints and evolutionary processes. Collectively, they explore the association of technological organization with facets of tool form such as reduction sequences, tool production effort, artifact curation processes and retouch measurement. Data sets cover a broad geographic and temporal span, including examples from France during the Paleolithic, the Near East during the Neolithic, and other regions such as Mongolia, Australia, and Italy. North American examples are derived from Paleoindian times to historic period aboriginal populations throughout the United States and Canada.

If the real Wessex, with its counties, towns, villages and topography, was no mere readily available template upon which Hardy could carve a fictional pattern, Dorchester provided a very different model, though at the level of local colour and detail, Casterbridge really is Dorchester 'by any other name.'' In this study, Martin Davies examines the role which Thomas Hardy's involvement with the past plays in his life and literary work. Hardy's life encompasses the transformation of archaeology out of mere antiquarianism into a fully scientific discipline. Hardy - once described as 'a born archaeologist' - observed this process at first hand, and its impact on his aesthetic and philosophical scheme was profound. Dr Davies' study offers a different route to a fuller understanding of Hardy's novels, poems, and short stories. How much was Hardy concerned with archaeology per se amongst his plethora of interests? How much did he actually know about it? Did his Classical education, architectural training, and visit to Italy impinge on his perception of the mysterious traces of British prehistory and the Roman occupation with which he had grown up? How does reference to archaeology fit in with his overall narrative, aesthetic, and philosophical scheme? These are the questions posed by Martin Davies in his study of the role played by archaeology and the past in the life and works of Thomas Hardy. The answers are far reaching and profound.

This book brings together for the first time scholars working on the Bronze Age settlement patterns and material culture of the southern Ierapetra Isthmus, a region that actively participated in the coastal and maritime trade networks of East Crete. During the past few decades, while various archaeological projects focused on the northern isthmus, the Ierapetra area remained largely neglected and unknown, a terra incognita. Yet, new excavations at Gaidourophas, Anatoli Stavromenos, Chryssi Island, Bramiana, and the ongoing research at the site of Myrtos Pyrgos are showing that the coastal area of Ierapetra was a vibrant and thriving settlement landscape during the Bronze Age. Far from being simply on the periphery of the major Minoan centers, the southern Ierapetra Isthmus played important roles in the cultural dynamics of Crete. Aiming to be the first building block in the development of an archaeological understanding of the region of the southern Ierapetra Isthmus, this book presents the status of the discipline and indicates future research trajectories.

Across Iron Age Europe the human head carried symbolic associations with power, fertility status, gender, and more. Evidence for the removal, curation and display of heads ranges from classical literary references to iconography and skeletal remains. Traditionally, this material has been associated with a Europe-wide 'head-cult', and used to support the idea of a unified Celtic culture in prehistory. This book demonstrates instead how headhunting and head-veneration were practised across a range of diverse and fragmented Iron Age societies. Using case studies from France, Britain and elsewhere, it explores the complex and subtle relationships between power, religion, warfare and violence in Iron Age Europe.

This is the first book to provide a systematic overview of social zooarchaeology, which takes a holistic view of human-animal relations in the past. Until recently, archaeological analysis of faunal evidence has primarily focused on the role of animals in the human diet and subsistence economy. This book, however, argues that animals have always played many more roles in human societies: as wealth, companions, spirit helpers, sacrificial victims, totems, centerpieces of feasts, objects of taboos, and more. These social factors are as significant as taphonomic processes in shaping animal bone assemblages. Nerissa Russell uses evidence derived from not only zooarchaeology, but also ethnography, history and classical studies, to suggest the range of human-animal relationships and to examine their importance in human society. Through exploring the significance of animals to ancient humans, this book provides a richer picture of past societies.

Originally published in 1930, this book provides a detailed account of the Bronze Age, which was intended to take up the story of pre-historic industrial development in North-western Europe from where M. C. Burkitt's Our Early Ancestors left it. Numerous illustrative figures and a comprehensive bibliography are also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the Bronze Age and the development of technology in general.

This is the first book to provide a systematic overview of social zooarchaeology, which takes a holistic view of human-animal relations in the past. Until recently, archaeological analysis of faunal evidence has primarily focused on the role of animals in the human diet and subsistence economy. This book, however, argues that animals have always played many more roles in human societies: as wealth, companions, spirit helpers, sacrificial victims, totems, centerpieces of feasts, objects of taboos, and more. These social factors are as significant as taphonomic processes in shaping animal bone assemblages. Nerissa Russell uses evidence derived from not only zooarchaeology, but also ethnography, history and classical studies, to suggest the range of human-animal relationships and to examine their importance in human society. Through exploring the significance of animals to ancient humans, this book provides a richer picture of past societies.

This book explores the relationship between prehistoric people and their food - what they ate, why they ate it and how researchers have pieced together the story of past foodways from material traces. Contemporary human food traditions encompass a seemingly infinite variety, but all are essentially strategies for meeting basic nutritional needs developed over millions of years. Humans are designed by evolution to adjust our feeding behaviour and food technology to meet the demands of a wide range of environments through a combination of social and experiential learning. In this book, Kristen J. Gremillion demonstrates how these evolutionary processes have shaped the diversification of human diet over several million years of prehistory. She draws on evidence extracted from the material remains that provide the only direct evidence of how people procured, prepared, presented and consumed food in prehistoric times.

Heinrich Schliemann (1822 1890) was a businessman and self-taught archaeologist who is best known for discovering the legendary city of Troy. Inspired by his belief in the veracity of the Homeric poems, Schliemann turned his attention to uncovering other cities mentioned in the Iliad. This volume provides an account in English of his excavations in 1884 1885 at Tiryns, a major Bronze Age city and centre of Mycenaean civilisation. These revealed a palace complex at the site, which was the most complete example of its kind until Evans' excavation of Knossos; examples of Minoan art found at Tiryns were the first demonstration of Mycenaean contact with the Minoan culture of Crete. The topography and history of the site and its artefacts are described, together with detailed discussion of the palace, and a description of Schliemann's controversial excavation methods. This volume remains an important source for the historiography of archaeology.

Prehistoric rock art is the markings paintings, engravings, or pecked images left on rocks or cave walls by ancient peoples. In this book, Paul G. Bahn provides a richly illustrated overview of prehistoric rock art and cave art from around the world. Summarizing the recent advances in our understanding of this extraordinary visual record, he discusses new discoveries, new approaches to recording and interpretation, and current problems in conservation. Bahn focuses in particular on current issues in the interpretation of rock art, notably the shamanic interpretation that has been influential in recent years and that he refutes. This book is based on the Rhind Lectures that the author delivered for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 2006."

The Bronze Age was a formative period in European history when the organisation of landscapes, settlements, and economy reached a new level of complexity. This book presents the first in-depth, comparative study of household economy and settlement in three micro-regions: the Mediterranean (Sicily), Central Europe (Hungary), and Northern Europe (South Scandinavia). The results are based on ten years of fieldwork in a similar method of documentation, and scientific analyses were used in each of the regional studies, making controlled comparisons possible. The new evidence demonstrates how differences in settlement organisation and household economies were counterbalanced by similarities in the organised use of the landscape in an economy dominated by the herding of large flocks of sheep and cattle. This book's innovative theoretical and methodological approaches will be of relevance to all researchers of landscape and settlement history.

This book presents an interdisciplinary study of the role of spirituality and religious ritual in the emergence of complex societies. Involving an eminent group of natural scientists, archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and theologians, this volume examines Catalhoeyuk as a case study. A nine-thousand-year old town in central Turkey, Catalhoeyuk was first excavated in the 1960s and has since become integral to understanding the symbolic and ritual worlds of the early farmers and village-dwellers in the Middle East. It is thus an ideal location for exploring theories about the role of religion in early settled life. This book provides a unique overview of current debates concerning religion and its historical variations. Through exploration of themes including the integration of the spiritual and the material, the role of belief in religion, the cognitive bases for religion, and religion's social roles, this book situates the results from Catalhoeyuk within a broader understanding of the Neolithic in the Middle East.

The Bronze Age was a formative period in European history when the organisation of landscapes, settlements, and economy reached a new level of complexity. This book presents the first in-depth, comparative study of household economy and settlement in three micro-regions: the Mediterranean (Sicily), Central Europe (Hungary), and Northern Europe (South Scandinavia). The results are based on ten years of fieldwork in a similar method of documentation, and scientific analyses were used in each of the regional studies, making controlled comparisons possible. The new evidence demonstrates how differences in settlement organisation and household economies were counterbalanced by similarities in the organised use of the landscape in an economy dominated by the herding of large flocks of sheep and cattle. This book's innovative theoretical and methodological approaches will be of relevance to all researchers of landscape and settlement history.

Sir John Lubbock (1834 1915) was an English banker who was fascinated with biology and archaeology. He was a close friend of Charles Darwin and a prolific writer who made influential contributions to both of these fields, being appointed the President of the Linnaean Society between 1881 1886. First published in 1865, it was written as a textbook of prehistoric archaeology. It became one of the most influential and popular archaeological books of the nineteenth century, being reissued in seven editions between 1865 and 1913. In this volume Lubbock develops an evolutionary interpretation of archaeology, using prehistoric material remains as evidence that human cultures become more sophisticated over time. He also introduces the division of prehistory, coining the terms Palaeolithic and Neolithic to subdivide the Stone Age. Lubbock's interpretation of cultural evolution was an extremely influential social theory which was widely adopted by contemporary archaeologists and anthropologists.

This book focuses on the archaeology of the hunter-gatherer societies that inhabited Europe in the millennia between the last Ice Age and the spread of agriculture, between ten thousand and five thousand years ago. Traditionally viewed as a period of cultural stagnation, new data now demonstrate that this was a period of radical change and innovation. This was the period that witnessed the colonisation of extensive new territory at high latitudes and high altitudes following postglacial climatic change, the development of seafaring, and the synthesis of the technological, economic, and social capabilities that underpinned the later development of agricultural and urban societies. Providing a pan-European overview, Mesolithic Europe includes regional syntheses written by experts in each region as well as a diversity of theoretical perspectives.

In this fully illustrated study, Niall Sharples examine the complex social relationships of the Wessex region of southern England in the first millennium BC. He considers the nature of the landscape and manner of its organization, the methods that bring people together into large communities, the role of the individual, and how the region relates to other regions of Britain and Europe. These thematic concerns cover a detailed analysis of the significance of hillforts, the development of coinage and other exchange processes, the character of houses, and the nature of burial practices. Sharples offers an exciting new picture of a period and a region which has considerable importance for British archaeology, and he also provides all archaeologists interested in prehistory with a model of how later prehistoric society can be interpreted.

For the last fifty years, most popular and scholarly works have agreed that prehistoric warfare was rare, harmless, and unimportant. According to this view, it was little more than a ritualized game, where casualties were limited and the effects of aggression relatively mild. Lawrence Keeley's groundbreaking War Before Civilization offers a devastating rebuttal to such comfortable myths and debunks the notion that warfare was introduced to primitive societies through contact with civilization.

Building on much fascinating archeological and historical research and offering an astute comparison of warfare in civilized and prehistoric societies, from modern European states to the Plains Indians of North America, Keeley convincingly demonstrates that prehistoric warfare was in fact more deadly, more frequent, and more ruthless than modern war. He cites evidence of ancient massacres in many areas of the world, and surveys the prevalence of looting, destruction, and trophy-taking in all kinds of warfare, again finding little moral distinction between ancient warriors and civilized armies. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, he examines the evidence of cannibalism among some preliterate peoples.

But Keeley goes beyond grisly facts to address the larger moral and philosophical issues raised by his work. What are the causes of war? Are human beings inherently violent? How can we ensure peace in our own time? Challenging some of our most dearly held beliefs, Keeley's conclusions are bound to stir controversy.