A significant number of Holocene societies throughout the world have resorted at one time or another to the making of paints or carvings on different places (tombs, rock-shelters or caves, openair outcrops). The aim of the session A11e. Public images, private readings: multi-perspective approaches to the post-Palaeolithic rock art, which was held within the XVII World UISPP Congress (Burgos, September 1-7 2014), was to put together the experiences of specialists from different areas of the Iberian Peninsula and the World. The approaches ranged from the archaeological definition of the artistic phenomena and their socioeconomic background to those concerning themselves with the symbolic and ritual nature of those practices, including the definition of the audience to which the graphic manifestations were addressed and the potential role of the latter in the making up of social identities and the enforcement of territorial claims. More empirical issues, such as new recording methodologies and data management or even dating were also considered during this session.

This meticulous investigation, based around a famous rock image, the 'White Lady', makes it possible to take stock of the mythical presuppositions that infuse a great deal of scientific research, especially in the case of rock art studies. It also highlights the existence of some surprising bridges between scholarly works and literary or artistic productions (novels, films, comic strips, adventure tales). The examination of the abbe Breuil's archives and correspondence shows that the primary motivation of the work he carried out in southern Africa like that of his pupil Henri Lhote in the Tassili was the search for ancient, vanished 'white' colonies which were established, in prehistory, in the heart of the dark continent. Both Breuil and Lhote found paintings on African rocks that, in their view, depicted 'white women' who were immediately interpreted as goddesses or queens of the ancient kingdoms of which they believed they had found the vestiges. In doing this, they were reviving and nourishing two myths at the same time: that of a Saharan Atlantis for Henri Lhote and, for the abbe, that of the identification of the great ruins of Zimbabwe with the mythical city of Ophir from which, according to the Bible, King Solomon derived his fabulous wealth. With hindsight we can now see very clearly that their theories were merely a clumsy reflection of the ideas of their time, particularly in the colonial context of the Sahara and in the apartheid of South Africa. Without their knowledge, these two scholars' scientific production was used to justify the white presence in Africa, and it was widely manipulated to that end. And yet recent studies have demonstrated that the 'White Lady' who so fascinated the abbe Breuil was in reality neither white nor even a woman. One question remains: if such an interpenetration of science and myth in the service of politics was possible in the mid-20th century, could it happen today?

This book elaborates on the distinctive characteristics as well as the archaeological, historical and artistic value of Liangzhu pottery, welcoming readers to the wonderful world of Liangzhu by introducing them to its origin, type, design, decoration, evolution and processing technology. It also presents the types of pottery that people in Liangzhu used daily to eat, drink, and bury their dead. Thanks to a wealth of photos taken at the archaeological site, readers can admire the color, decorative patterns, types and shapes of unearthed pottery. The book vividly reveals the lifestyle, aesthetics and level of scientific-technical development in Liangzhu society 5000 years ago.

This extensively illustrated volume provides the first complete visual documentation and a pioneering iconographic analysis of Picture Cave, an eastern Missouri cavern filled with Native American pictographs that is one of the most important prehistoric sites in North America. A millennia ago, Native Americans entered the dark recesses of a cave in eastern Missouri and painted an astonishing array of human, animal, and supernatural creatures on its walls. Known as Picture Cave, it was a hallowed site for sacred rituals and rites of passage, for explaining the multi-layered cosmos, for vision quests, for communing with spirits in the "other world," and for burying the dead. The number, variety, and complexity of images make Picture Cave one of the most significant prehistoric sites in North America, similar in importance to Cahokia and Chaco Canyon. Indeed, scholars will be able to use it to reconstruct much of the Native American symbolism of the early Western Mississippian world. The Picture Cave Interdisciplinary Project brought together specialists in American Indian art and iconography, two artists, Osage Indian elders, a museum curator, a folklorist, and an internationally renowned cave archaeologist to produce the first complete documentation of the pictographs on the cave walls and the first interpretations of their meanings and significance. This extensively illustrated volume presents the Project's findings, including an introduction to Picture Cave and prehistoric cave art and technical analyses of pigments, radiocarbon dating, spatial order, and archaeological remains. Interpretations of the cave's imagery, from individual motifs to complex panels; the responses of contemporary artists; and interviews with Osage elders (descendants of the people who made the art), describing what Picture Cave means to them today, are also included. A visual glossary of all the images in Picture Cave as well as panoramic views complete this pathfinding volume.

The hunt is on for the most detailed histories of people in the remote past that we can achieve. We can now routinely, through Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates, construct much more precise chronologies than previously, down to the scales of lifetimes and generations, and even on occasion of decades. Better timing opens estimates of duration and the evaluation of the tempo of change. Rather than the conventional default perspective of generally slow change and much continuity, in blocks of time a couple of centuries long or more, we can now examine sequences that are often much more dynamic, quicker-changing, and from time to time more interrupted and punctuated than we had previously imagined. We can now write much more precise and ambitious narratives about the actions, decisions and choices of past people; the pre- can and should come out of prehistory. Despite the absence of written records, such narratives can be aligned much more closely with those of history and its concerns with the specific and the particular, and can serve to rid archaeology of its addictions to generalisation and fuzzy chronology. Coming out of a recent major project funded by the European Research Council, and with the experience of Gathering Time (Oxbow Books 2011) also behind it, The Times of their Lives sets out this case. It considers the varying timescales of archaeology, history and anthropology, and the construction of precise chronologies. It examines the reach of precision in a series of case studies across Neolithic Europe to do with big themes of settlement, monumentality and materiality through the sixth to third millennia cal BC. It goes on to consider the implications of much more precise chronologies for narratives of social differentiation and change through the Neolithic sequence, and reflects on how to combine the varying timescales presented by turning points in the long term, by the slow time of daily life, subsistence practices and population growth, and by lifetime and generational developments. It ends by looking ahead to a future archaeology, exploiting the best of archaeological science, which can write precise and detailed narratives for the people of early history. Though focused on the European Neolithic, The Times of their Lives sets a challenge for archaeology as a whole.

Scandinavia is home to prolific and varied rock art images among which the ship motif is prominent. Because of this, the rock art of Scandinavia has often been interpreted in terms of social ritual, cosmology, and religion associated with the maritime sphere. This comprehensive review is based on the creation of a Scandinavia-wide GIS database for prehistoric rock art and re-examines theoretical approaches and interpretations, in particular with regard to the significance of the ship and its relationship to a maritime landscape Discussion focuses on material agency as a means to understanding the role of rock art within society. Two main theories are developed. The first is that the sea was fundamental to the purpose and meaning of rock art, especially in the Bronze Age and, therefore, that sea-level/shoreline changes would have inspired a renegotiation of the relationship between the rock art sites and their intended purpose. The fundamental question posed is: would such changes to the landscape have affected the purpose and meaning of rock art for the communities that made and used these sites? Various theories from within and outside of archaeology are drawn on to examine environmental change and analyse the rock art, led to second theory: that the purpose of rock art might have been altered to have an effect on the disappearing sea. The general theory that rock art would have been affected by environmental change was discussed in tandem with existing interpretations of the meaning and purpose of rock art. Imbuing rock art with agency means that it could be intertwined in an active web of relations involving maritime landscapes, shoreline displacement and communities. Though created in stone and fixed in time and place, rock art images have propagated belief systems that would have changed over time as they were re-carved, abandoned and used by different groups of inhabitants. In the thousands of years rock art was created, it is likely that shoreline displacement would have inspired a renegotiation of the purpose and meaning of the imagery situated alongside the Scandinavian seas. This journey through a prehistoric Scandinavian landscape will lead us into a world of ancient beliefs and traditions revolving around this extraordinary art form.

The exotic and impressive grave goods from burials of the 'Wessex Culture' in Early Bronze Age Britain are well known and have inspired influential social and economic hypotheses, invoking the former existence of chiefs, warriors and merchants and high-ranking pastoralists. Alternative theories have sought to explain how display of such objects was related to religious and ritual activity rather than to economic status, and that groups of artefacts found in certain graves may have belonged to religious specialists. This volume is the result of a major research project that aimed to investigate Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age grave goods in relation to their possible use as special dress accessories or as equipment employed within ritual activities and ceremonies. Many items of adornment can be shown to have formed elements of elaborate costumes, probably worn by individuals, both male and female, who held important ritual roles within society. Furthermore, the analysis has shown that various categories of object long interpreted as mundane types of tool were in fact items of bodily adornment or implements used in ritual contexts, or in the special embellishment of the human body. Although never intended to form a complete catalogue of all the relevant artefacts from England the volume provides an extensive, and intensively illustrated, overview of a large proportion of the grave goods from English burial sites.

This is the first book to survey the 'hidden half' of prehistoric societies as revealed by archaeology - from Australopithecines to advanced Stone Age foragers, from farming villages to the beginnings of civilisation. Prehistoric children can be seen in footprints and finger daubs, in images painted on rocks and pots, in the signs of play and the evidence of first attempts to learn practical crafts. The burials of those who did not reach adulthood reveal clothing, personal adornment, possession and status in society, while the bodies themselves provide information on diet, health and sometimes violent death. This book demonstrates the extraordinary potential for the study of childhood within the prehistoric record, and will suggest to those interested in childhood what can be learnt from the study of the deep past. -- .

This is the first book to present a comprehensive, up to date overview of archaeological and environmental data from the eastern Mediterranean world around 6000 BC. It brings together the research of an international team of scholars who have excavated at key Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in Syria, Anatolia, Greece, and the Balkans. Collectively, their essays conceptualize and enable a deeper understanding of times of transition and changes in the archaeological record. Overcoming the terminological and chronological differences between the Near East and Europe, the volume expands from studies of individual societies into regional views and diachronic analyses. It enables researchers to compare archaeological data and analysis from across the region, and offers a new understanding of the importance of this archaeological story to broader, high-impact questions pertinent to climate and culture change.

Before Sir Arthur Evans, the principal object of Greek prehistoric archaeology was the reconstruction of history in relation to myth. European travellers to Greece viewed its picturesque ruins as the gateway to mythical times, while Heinrich Schliemann, at the end of the nineteenth century, allegedly uncovered at Troy and Mycenae the legendary cities of the Homeric epics. It was Evans who, in his controversial excavations at Knossos, steered Aegean archaeology away from Homer towards the broader Mediterranean world. Yet in so doing he is thought to have done his own inventing, recreating the Cretan Labyrinth via the Bronze Age myth of the Minotaur. Nanno Marinatos challenges the entrenched idea that Evans was nothing more than a flamboyant researcher who turned speculation into history. She argues that Evans was an excellent archaeologist, one who used scientific observation and classification. Evans's combination of anthropology, comparative religion and analysis of cultic artefacts enabled him to develop a bold new method which Sir James Frazer called 'mental anthropology'. It was this approach that led him to propose remarkable ideas about Minoan religion, theories that are now being vindicated as startling new evidence comes to light. Examining the frescoes from Akrotiri, on Santorini, that are gradually being restored, the author suggests that Evans's hypothesis of one unified goddess of nature is the best explanation of what they signify. Evans was in 1901 ahead of his time in viewing comparable Minoan scenes as a blend of ritual action and mythic imagination. Nanno Marinatos is a leading authority on Minoan religion. In this latest book she combines history, archaeology and myth to bold and original effect, offering a wholly new appraisal of Evans and the significance of his work. Sir Arthur Evans and Minoan Crete will be essential reading for all students of Minoan civilization, as well as an irresistible companion for travellers to Crete.

The Neolithic site of Catalhoeyuk in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. Catalhoeyuk Excavations presents the results of the excavations that took place at the site from 2000 to 2008 when the main aim was to understand the social geography of the settlement, its layout and social organization. Excavation, recording and sampling methodologies are discussed as well as dating, 'levels', and the grouping of buildings into social sectors. The excavations in three areas of the East Mound at Catalhoeyuk are described: the South Area, the 4040 Area in the northern part of the site, and the IST Area excavated by a team from Istanbul University. The description of excavated units, features and buildings incorporates results from the analyses of animal bone, chipped stone, groundstone, shell, ceramics, phytoliths, micromorphology. The integration of such data within their context allows detailed accounts of the lives of the inhabitants of Catalhoeyuk, their relationships and activities. The integration of different types of data in the excavation account mimics the process of collaborative interpretation that took place during the excavation and post-excavation process.

The Neolithic site of Catalhoeyuk in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume discusses general themes that have emerged in the analysis and interpretation of the results of excavations in 2000-2008. It synthesizes the results of research described in other volumes in the same series. The volume commences with accounts of the recent work on community collaboration at the site, and with discussions of the methods used at the site. It then synthesizes the work on landscape use and mobility, integrating the work of subsistence analysis and the analysis of human remains. The storage and sharing of food is a related topic. The ways in which houses were constructed, lived in and abandoned leads to a broad discussion of settlement and social organization at Catalhoeyuk and of their change through time. For example, shifts in the themes that occur in paintings in houses change through time as part of a wider set of social, economic and ritual changes in the upper levels. The social uses of materials and technologies are explored and the roles of materials in personal adornment. Finally, the discussion of variation through place and time is recognized as dependent on scales of analysis and social process.

The Settlement at Dhaskalio is the first volume in the series The Sanctuary on Keros: Excavations at Dhaskalio and Dhaskalio Kavos, 2006-2008, edited by Colin Renfrew, Olga Philaniotou, Neil Brodie, Giorgos Gavalas and Michael Boyd. Here the findings are presented from the well-stratified settlement of Dhaskalio, today an islet near the Cycladic island of Keros, Greece. A series of radiocarbon dates situates the duration of the settlement from around 2750 to 2300 BC. The volume begins with a discussion of the geological setting of Keros and of sea-level change, concluding that Dhaskalio was in the third millennium BC linked to Keros by a narrow causeway. The excavation and finds (excluding the pottery, discussed in later volumes) are fully documented, with consideration of stratigraphy, geomorphology, organic remains, and the evidence for metallurgy. It is concluded that there was a small permanent population of around 20, increased periodically by up to 400 visitors who would have participated in the rituals of deposition occurring at the Sanctuary at Kavos, situated opposite, on Keros itself, for which the detailed evidence (including abundant fragmented pottery, marble vessels and sculptures) will be presented in Volumes II and III.

The Neolithic site of Catalhoeyuk in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume reports on the results of excavations in 2000-2008 that have provided a wealth of new data on the ways in which humans became increasingly engaged in their material environment such that 'things' came to play an active force in their lives. A substantial and heavy involvement was with alluvial clays that surrounded the site. In the absence of large local stone, humans became increasingly involved in the extraction and manipulation of clay for a wide range of purposes - from bricks to ovens, pots and figurines. This heavy use of clays led to changes in the local environment that interacted with human activity, as indicated in the first section of the volume. In the second section, other examples of material technologies are considered all of which in various ways engage humans in specific dependencies and relationships. For example, large-scale studies of obsidian trade have drawn a complex picture of changing interactions between humans over time. The volume concludes with an integrated account of the uses of materials at Catalhoeyuk based on the analysis of heavy residue samples from all contexts at the site.

This volume presents the results of two excavations on the gravel terraces of the Lower Kennet Valley, at Green Park (Reading Business Park) Phase 3 and Moores Farm, Burghfield, Berkshire. The Green Park excavations uncovered a field system and occupation features dating to the middle to late Bronze Age. Five waterholes or wells were distributed across the field system, the waterlogged fills of which preserved wooden revetment structures and valuable environmental evidence. The pottery from the waterholes makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the middle to late Bronze Age transition in the region. Later activity included middle to late Iron Age boundaries, a late Iron Age cremation burial, a Romano-British field system and post-medieval trackways. The Moores Farm excavations revealed occupation from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, middle Bronze Age and early Iron Age. The middle Bronze Age settlement included pits, ovens and possible post structures, and was again situated within a contemporaneous field system dotted with waterholes. As well as discussing these two sites, the volume provides an overview of all of the work to date in the Green Park Farm/Reading Business Park area, exploring the development of this important prehistoric landscape.

The Neolithic site of Catalhoeyuk in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume reports on the results of excavations in 2000-2008 that have provided a wealth of new data on the ways in which the Catalhoeyuk settlement and environment were dwelled in. A first section explores how houses, open areas and middens in the settlement were enmeshed in the daily lives of the inhabitants, integrating a wide range of different types of data at different scales. A second section examines subsistence practices of the site's inhabitants and builds up a picture of how the overall landscape was exploited and lived within. A third section examines the evidence from the skeletons of those buried within the houses at Catalhoeyuk in order to examine health, diet, lifestyle and activity within the settlement and across the landscape. This final section also reports on the burial practices and associations in order to build hypotheses about the social organization of those inhabiting the settlement. A complex picture emerges of a relatively decentralized society, large in size but small-scale in terms of organization, dwelling within a mosaic patchwork of environments. Through time, however, substantial changes occur in the ways in which humans and landscapes interact.

Award-winning science writer Steven Mithen explores how an understanding of our ancestors and their development can illuminate our brains and behaviour today How do our minds work? When did language and religious beliefs first emerge? Why was there a cultural explosion of art and creativity with the arrival of modern humans? This ground-breaking book brings the insight of archaeology to our understanding of the development and history of the human mind, combining them with ideas from evolutionary psychology in a brilliant and provocative synthesis.

This volume presents the salvage excavation of a Minoan settlement at Bramiana in southeastern Crete that was destroyed during the creation of a new system of agriculture in the 1980s. Excavation of the site provides new evidence for a Bronze Age economy based on trade, agriculture, and craftwork. This publication is a test case for a highly successful new system of organizing all the pottery based on its petrography, sorting it by materials and workshop practices. The results show the existence of an unsuspected large trade network operating across hundreds of kilometers for the routine distribution of cooking pots and other clay vessels and their contents. The Minoan settlement used the lustrous and silky smooth fine ceramics invented presumably in the still undiscovered palace near modern Ierapetra; this technology would be used for the fine Mycenaean tableware of the Late Bronze Age.

Excavations at the adjacent sites of Gorham's Cave and Vanguard Cave have yielded a rich combination of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental finds covering a timespan of over 100,000 years. This volume deals with the primary results of the 1995-1998 excavations at both caves. The 24 chapters by leading specialists cover a range of topics from information concerning the nature and sequence of Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal occupations to the reconstruction of the environmental context of these activities, based on proxy indicators such as sediments, charcoal, amphibians, reptiles, avifaunal remains, and small and large mammals. The Gibraltar evidence provides a rare insight into the lives of Neanderthals in a western Mediterranean coastal setting. It also presents site information on some of the last Neanderthal populations and the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition.

This collection of essays and tributes to Glynn Isaac marks the 26th anniversary of Glynns premature death on October 5th, 1985. These contributions document the work of many of Glynn's colleagues students and collaborators, and reflect their continuing respect for a great scholar.

In this book, Jennifer French presents a new synthesis of the archaeological, palaeoanthropological, and palaeogenetic records of the European Palaeolithic, adopting a unique demographic perspective on these first two-million years of European prehistory. Unlike prevailing narratives of demographic stasis, she emphasises the dynamism of Palaeolithic populations of both our evolutionary ancestors and members of our own species across four demographic stages, within a context of substantial Pleistocene climatic changes. Integrating evolutionary theory with a socially oriented approach to the Palaeolithic, French bridges biological and cultural factors, with a focus on women and children as the drivers of population change. She shows how, within the physiological constraints on fertility and mortality, social relationships provide the key to enduring demographic success. Through its demographic focus, French combines a 'big picture' perspective on human evolution with careful analysis of the day-to-day realities of European Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer communities-their families, their children, and their lives.

It can be argued that elements of European heritage can be identified not only as a national strategy of the present but also as a process in prehistory - the cultural and political transformations of the third millennium BC in European prehistory sparking off this process. These transformations initiated the processes and mechanisms that led up to the complex political, social and cultural institutions of the first half of the second millennium BC. From this time on, an authentic historical continuum leading towards present-day society can be identified. The papers in this anthology provide an up-to-date survey of trends in Bell Beaker research, with a focus on western and northern Europe, as well as developments in the northern and eastern Scandinavian and Baltic regions. The geographical focus, along with the interpretative perspective, hopefully demonstrates some of the progress in understanding the histories of third millennium Europe.

This volume describes the discovery in 2003 and excavation between 2004 and 2009 of a Minoan ship that sunk near the island of Pseira around 1725/1700 BC. The recovered cargo constitutes the largest known corpus of complete and almost complete clay vessels from a single Middle Minoan IIB deposit in several categories. The 140 artifacts recovered from the area of the wreck include 46 oval-mouthed and other amphorae, 41 spouted jugs, and 11 hole-mouthed jars. The activity of each season is described, followed by a catalog with extensive discussion of the pottery, a petrographic analysis, and catalogs of weights and stone tools. The picture that emerges is of an ordinary transport boat, loaded with products from towns on the northern coast of East Crete, and it provides a rich set of information on a society that revolved around seafaring.

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 is the first-ever monograph on clustering patterns in prehistoric settlements. It not only theoretically explains the difference between natural settlement communities and organizational forms for the first time, but also demonstrates the importance of understanding this difference in practical research. Based on extensive archaeological data from China and focusing on the evolution of prehistoric settlements and changing social relations, the book completely breaks with the globally popular research mode which is based on the assumption that settlement archaeology has nothing to do with prehistoric social organization. In terms of research methods, the book also abandons the globally popular method of measuring the grade and importance of settlements according to their size and the value of the unearthed objects. Instead, it focuses on understanding settlements' attributes from the combined perspective of the group and individuals. On the one hand, the book proves that the clustering patterns in prehistoric settlement sites reflect the organizational forms of the time; on the other, it demonstrates that historical research focusing on the organizational forms of prehistoric societies is closer to the historical reality and of more scientific value. The intended readership includes graduates and researchers in the field of archaeology, or those who are interested in cultural relics and prehistoric settlements.