Burial Mounds in Europe and Japan brings together specialists of the European Bronze and Iron Age and the Japanese Yayoi and Kofun periods for the first time to discuss burial mounds in a comparative context. The book aims to strengthen knowledge of Japanese archaeology in Europe and vice versa. The papers demonstrate many methodological and interpretive commonalities in the archaeology of burial mounds in Japan and Europe and provide a series of state-of-the-art case studies highlighting many different aspects of burial mound research in both regions. Topics addressed by both European and Japanese specialists include research histories, excavation methods, origins and development of graves with burial mounds, the relationship of burial mounds to settlements and landscape, and above all administrative power and ritual.

This volume is the final report on the excavations of a Kerma Ancien cemetery discovered by the Sudan Archaeological Research Society during its Northern Dongola Reach Survey conducted between 1993 and 1997. It is one of the very few cemeteries of this date to have been fully excavated and provides interesting data on funerary culture as practised in a rural environment, to be compared with the extensive information available from investigations of the cemetery associated with the metropolis of Kerma 100km to the north. It includes a range of specialist reports on all categories of artefacts recovered as well as on the physical anthropology, archaeobotany and archaeozoology.

Atlas Of Ceramic Fabrics 1. Italy: North-East, Adriatic, Ionian. Bronze Age: Impasto presents and interprets the petrographic composition of Bronze Age Impasto pottery (23rd-10th centuries BCE) found in the eastern part of Italy. This is the first of a series of Atlases organised according to geographical areas, chronology and types of wares. In this book 935 samples from 63 sites are included, which comprise material obtained as a result of almost 30 years of interdisciplinary archaeological, technological and archaeometric research by the authors' team. 73 petrographic fabrics (the potters' 'recipes') are defined and presented, on their lithological character - a tool that can be used to compare the different components of the ceramic pastes and to check provenance of non-local pots. The volume is organised in chapters focused on methodology, fabric description and distribution, followed by the archaeological implications and the database, with contributions by Daniele Brunelli and Andrea Di Renzoni. Illustrations and descriptions of the fabrics and a complete list of the samples are included in order to provide a rigorous and transparent presentation of the data. The archaeological implications are discussed within the topics such as technology, variability, standardisation, chronology, function, social organisation, circulation, style, typology and cultural identity. It is hoped that this work will be considered as another stepping-stone in demostrating that, in archaeology, technological variability is as important as morphological and stylistic distinctions.

The 19th annual meeting of the Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology (SOMA) was held in Kemer/Antalya (Turkey) from the 12th to the 14th of November, 2015. As has been the case in the past, this symposium continues to provide an important opportunity for scholars and researchers to come together and discuss their academic studies in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. The proceedings of SOMA 2015 contain eighteen interdisciplinary articles on themes from underwater archaeology to history, archaeometry and art history, and chronologically, the subjects of these articles range from the Bronze Age to the 20th century.

The present volume originated in session A25b ('Current Approaches to Collective Burials in the Late European Prehistory') of the XVII World Congress of the International Union of the Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP), held in Burgos in September 2014. Collective burials are quite a common feature in Prehistoric Europe, with the gathering of multiple individuals in a shared burial place occurring in different types of burial structures (natural caves, megalithic structures, artificial caves, corbelled-roof tombs, pits, etc.). Such features are generally associated with communities along the agropastoralist transition and fully agricultural societies of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic. For a long time, human skeletal remains exhumed from collective burials were dismissed as valuable sources of information, their studies being limited mostly to morphological assessments and subsequent classification in predefined 'races'. They currently represent a starting point for diversified, often interdisciplinary, research projects, allowing for a more accurate reconstruction of funerary practices, as well as of palaeobiological and environmental aspects, which are fundamental for the understanding of populations in the Late Prehistory of Europe and of the processes leading to the emergence of agricultural societies in this part of the world. The articles in this volume provide examples of different approaches currently being developed on Prehistoric collective burials of southern Europe, mostly focusing on case studies, but also including contributions of a more methodological scope.

Brilliant horsemen and great fighters, the Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south - the Chinese, the Persians and the Greeks - and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe. Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different - both communities benefiting from trading with each other. This led to the development of a brilliant art style, often depicting scenes from Scythian mythology and everyday life. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, from the graves of kings on the Pontic steppe, with their elaborate gold work and vividly coloured fabrics, to the frozen tombs of the Altai mountains, where all the organic material - wooden carvings, carpets, saddles and even tattooed human bodies - is amazingly well preserved. Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence - both archaeological and textual - in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.

This book re-assesses archaeological research into holy well sites in Ireland and the evidence for votive deposition at watery sites throughout northwest European prehistory. Ray examines a much-ignored and diminishing archaeological resource; moving beyond debates about the possible Celticity of these sites in order to gain a deeper understanding of patterns among sacred watery sites. The work considers how and why sacred springs are archaeologically-resistant sites and what has actually been found at the few excavated in Ireland. Drawing on the early Irish literature (the myths, hagiographies, penitentials and annals), the author gives an account of pre-Christian supermundane wells in Ireland and what we know about their early Christian use for baptism, and concludes by considering the origins of "rounding" rituals at holy wells.

The Dutch bestseller Nominated for Le Prix Nicolas Bouvier 'A masterclass in storytelling, exploring who we are and where we came from' Danielle Clode 'Gripping and brilliantly told, We Hominids deftly blends personal experience with a journalist's eye for a remarkable story' Mark McKenna WHO ARE WE? WHY ARE WE DIFFERENT FROM ANIMALS? WHAT MAKES US HUMAN? In this charming, thought-provoking book, one of Holland's greatest non-fiction writers hunts down answers to humanity's most fundamental questions: Who are we? What makes us different from animals? With an ancient skull as his starting point, he travels the globe, tracing the search for the first human being: the missing link between humans and apes. Westerman introduces us to the world of skull hunters – leading experts in our fossil ancestry – whose lives are just as fascinating as those of their primeval discoveries. He astutely reconsiders the work of illustrious paleoanthropologists in the light of new DNA technology, postcolonialism, and the rise of women in this male-dominated field. Westerman discovers a plethora of origin hypotheses and shows how any theory of who we are and where we come from is coloured by the zeitgeist. We, Hominids is a compelling mixture of reportage, travelogue and essay – reminiscent of Bruce Chatwin or Ryszard Kapuscinski – written by a brilliant storyteller and thinker.

‘Atlas of Ceramic Fabrics 2. Italy: Southern Tyrrhenian. Neolithic – Bronze Age’ presents and interprets the petrographic composition of pre-protohistoric pottery (6th-1st millennia BCE) found in southwestern part of Italy. This is the second in a Atlas series organised according to geographical areas, chronology and types of wares. In this book 890 samples from 29 sites are discussed, encompassing results of more than 50 years of interdisciplinary archaeological, technological and archaeometric research by the authors’ team. Ninety petrographic fabrics (the potters’ ‘recipes’) are defined and presented based on their lithological character – a tool that can be used to compare different components of the ceramic pastes and to check possible provenance of non-local pots. The volume is organized in chapters focused on methodology, fabric description and distribution, followed by the archaeological implications and the database, with contribution by Andrea Di Renzoni (CNR-ISMA, Roma). Illustrations and descriptions of the fabrics and a list of samples provide a rigorous and transparent presentation of the data. The archaeological implications are discussed through cross-correlatios between origin and technology, variability, standardisation, chronology, function, social organization, circulation, style, typology and cultural identity. We hope that this work will be considered an another stepping-stone in demonstrating that technological variability is as important as stylistic distinctions.

Dosariyah: Reinvestigating a Neolithic coastal community in eastern Arabia' describes the work carried out at Dosariyah, located in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, which took place between 2010 and 2014. It was conducted by the joint German-Saudi Dosariyah Archaeological Research Project (DARP). A wealth of material remains was found during excavations within almost three metres of anthropogenic deposits. Radiocarbon dates and comparative studies of artefacts securely date the occupation of the site into the first centuries of the fifth millennium BC. The co-occurrence of locally produced artefacts that are technologically and typologically rooted in the local Arabian Middle Neolithic, and imports from southern Mesopotamia is characteristic of Dosariyah. However, the mechanisms behind this distribution of foreign materials along the Arabian Gulf coast, in particular, are still poorly understood. It is the central proposition of this book that the local societies living along the shores of the Arabian Gulf coast played an active role in the acquisition of Ubaid pottery and other objects originating in southern Mesopotamia. A predominance of imported objects, considered as 'exotic items', are understood as integral components of rituals that were part of temporary gatherings of larger groups of people at Dosariyah. Based on the material evidence from the site, such collective social events were embedded in everyday life during the fifth millennium BC.

This book details the archaeology of burnt mounds (fulachtai fia) in Ireland, one of the most frequent and under researched prehistoric site types in the country. It presents a re-evaluation of the pyrolithic phenomenon in light of some 1000 excavated burnt mounds. Charcoal-enriched soil, along with spreads and mounds of heat-affected stone, are one of the most common types of site found in Ireland, largely as a consequence of numerous discoveries made in the course of road building. They represent an accumulation of firing material associated with a prehistoric pyrolithic technology, which involved a process of heat transfer that centred on the use of hot stones immersed in water-filled troughs or placed in small, lined/unlined pits/ovens. During the Bronze Age, the use of this technology became widely adopted in Northern Europe, particularly Ireland, where the phenomenon is represented in the field as a low crescent-shaped mound. Even though burnt mounds are the most common prehistoric site type in Ireland, they have not received the same level of research as other prehistoric sites. This is primarily due to the paucity of artefact finds and the unspectacular nature of the archaeological remains, compounded by the absence of an appropriate research framework. This is the most comprehensive study undertaken on the use of pyrolithic technology in prehistoric Ireland, dealing with different aspects of site function, chronology, social role and cultural context.

Books tell stories about our lifeworld. In this book Jan Coetzee invites us to critically inquire into the aims, the content, and the context of the stories contained in a collection of old books from an old world. Without opening these old texts and without converting the original print on the pages to meaning and message, Coetzee brings the books into a dialogue with each other. Together with accompanying sculpted and/or found objects these books take on a new, broader function. By gathering them in one volume they attain a different character and tell us more than what the individual books ever could.

This work presents a comprehensive classification of the morphology of early metal age axe-heads, chisels and stakes from southern Britain. It is illustrated by a type series of 120 representative examples. Despite their relative simplicity, flat and early flanged axes from Britain and Ireland show considerable diversity in form. The main variation lies in outline shapes and the classification scheme arrived at therefore depends on careful evaluation of condition, followed by rigorous analysis of shape using metrical ratios. This ensures objectivity in both the formulation of the scheme and future object attributions, for which guidelines are given. Comparative material in northern Britain and Ireland is systematically referred to and a few crucial Continental parallels noted. Hoards and other associated finds, essential in underpinning the chronology, are cited throughout. The style sequence outlined spans nine centuries of evolution, a regional trajectory which was nevertheless inextricably tied to axe developments in northern Britain, Ireland and, to a lesser extent, the near Continent. While technological advance is apparent at the broad scale, this was not the sole driver of the style changes taking place. The study will be indispensable for those researching early metalwork, those concerned with European Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age cultures and those interested in patterns of style-cum-technological development.

This book addresses the rock engravings on the wonderstone hills just outside Ottosdal, North West province, South Africa. Wonderstone is remarkable rock that is smooth, shiny and very easy to mark. The wonderstone occurs only on two adjacent farms, Gestoptefontein and Driekuil, and thus the rock art on the wonderstone outcrops is referred to as the Gestoptefontein- Driekuil complex (GDC). This rock art is now the only remaining trace of what must once have been a much larger complex of engravings. Sadly, much of the rock art has been destroyed in the course of mining activities, with very few records. The largest remaining outcrop is still threatened by potential mining activities. The study attempts to bring this disastrous and unacceptable situation to the attention of the public and the heritage authorities, who have so far failed to respond to applications to grant the sites protection. It therefore has two main aims: to locate and record as much of the rock art as possible and to understand the significance of the outcrops in the lives of the people who made them. Based on the rock art itself, as well as what little historical evidence is available, it is argued that the rock art was made by Khoe-San people during the performance of important ceremonies and other activities. The rock art has two main components: engravings of referential motifs and a gestural, or performative, element. The referential motifs depict a range of things: anthropomorphs and zoomorphs, decorative designs, items of clothing, as well as ornaments and decorations. The gestural markings were made by rubbing, cutting and hammering the soft wonderstone, probably in the course of a range of activities that people carried out on the outcrops.

The Mycenaean chamber-tomb cemetery at Agios Vasileios, near Chalandritsa in Achaea, was first investigated by Nikolaos Kyparissis in the late 1920s, followed by small-scale research in 1961 by Efthimios Mastrokostas. In the years 1989-2001 more rescue excavations were conducted by the Greek Archaeological Service, revealing 30 chamber tombs, some looted. Based mostly on the latest research, this study is the first major presentation of the cemetery and its finds. The topographical data are presented in chapter A, including the most important ancient sites in the region. Chapters B to E deal with the 45 chamber tombs and with the assemblage of the 260 artefacts found in them. The chipped stone assemblage and the ground stone implements are presented in chapter F by Vivian Staikou. Chapter G, by Olivia A. Jones, deals with the human skeletal remains, focussing on burial customs and practices. Chapters H and I handle the discussion and the concluding remarks, respectively. A series of 3D representations and photorealistic illustrations are presented, based on the original plans and architectural drawings of the tombs, to produce a visual appreciation of the important cemetery, unfortunately no longer visible.

One of the finest collections of Etruscan artifacts outside of Italy was begun in the 19th century by Joseph Mayer, goldsmith, of Liverpool. His donation of the collection became the core of Liverpool Museum, now World Museum, and has been augmented over the years by additional gifts and other acquisitions, such as those from the Wellcome Collection and Norwich Castle Museum. Much of the original material came from the necropolis of Vulci (Canino) when it was excavated by Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino, while additional objects represent several other cities and sites. Already famous for its gold jewelry and bronze vessels of the 6th to the 4th centuries BCE, the Liverpool collection includes a fine selection of Etruscan vases, especially bucchero ware and Archaic painted vases, several scarab seals in semiprecious stones, a small number of carved ivories, and funerary urns, including that of Larui Helesa, in which were found gold earrings identical to those worn by her colorful effigy on its lid. A large group of bronze fibulae (safety-pins) furnish examples of most major types of these important ornaments of the Iron Age and Archaic periods. Engraved bronze mirrors and terracotta votives in the form of heads and body parts (such as uteri) of the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE illustrate myths and offerings that were essential to Etruscan religion. From a Villanovan sword to Hellenistic epitaphs, the Liverpool Etruscan and Italic collection offers a rare glimpse of early civilization in central Italy.

Throughout prehistory the Circumpolar World was inhabited by hunter-gatherers. Pottery-making would have been extremely difficult in these cold, northern environments, and the craft should never have been able to disperse into this region. However, archaeologists are now aware that pottery traditions were adopted widely across the Northern World and went on to play a key role in subsistence and social life. This book sheds light on the human motivations that lay behind the adoption of pottery, the challenges that had to be overcome in order to produce it, and the solutions that emerged. Including essays by an international team of scholars, the volume offers a compelling portrait of the role that pottery cooking technologies played in northern lifeways, both in the prehistoric past and in more recent ethnographic times.

The Nordic Bronze Age Symposium began modestly in 1977 with 13 participants, and has now expanded to over 120 participants: a tenfold increase that reflects the expanding role of Bronze Age research in Scandinavia, not least amongst younger researchers. From having taken a back seat in the 1970s, it is now in the driver's seat in terms of expanding research themes, publications and international impact. This collection of articles helps to explain why the Bronze Age has come to hold such a fascination within modern archaeological research. By providing new theoretical and analytical perspectives on the evidence new interpretative avenues have opened, it situates the history of the Bronze Age in both a local and a global setting.

In the context of current debates about global warming, archaeology contributes important insights for understanding environmental changes in prehistory, and the consequences and responses of past populations to them. In Indian archaeology, climate change and monsoon variability are often invoked to explain major demographic transitions, cultural changes, and migrations of prehistoric populations. During the late Holocene (1400-700 B.C.), agricultural communities flourished in a semiarid region of the Indian subcontinent, until they precipitously collapsed. Gwen Robbins Schug integrates the most recent paleoclimate reconstructions with an innovative analysis of skeletal remains from one of the last abandoned villages to provide a new interpretation of the archaeological record of this period. Robbins Schug's biocultural synthesis provides us with a new way of looking at the adaptive, social, and cultural transformations that took place in this region during the first and second millennia B.C. Her work clearly and compellingly usurps the climate change paradigm, demonstrating the complexity of human-environmental transformations. This original and significant contribution to bioarchaeological research and methodology enriches our understanding of both global climate change and South Asian prehistory.

Bringing down the Iron Curtain: Paradigmatic changes in research on the Bronze Age in Central and Eastern Europe? presents the researches of scholars of different generations from twelve countries (Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Germany, USA, Canada, Austria) who participated in a session of the same title at the 20th Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists in Istanbul, 2014. The papers addressed the question of change in the approaches to Bronze Age research in the Central and Eastern European countries from different points of view. It has been a quarter of a century since the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the opening up of these areas to the West. With this process, archaeology saw a large influx of new projects and ideas. Bilateral contacts, Europe-wide circulation of scholars and access to research literature has fuelled the transformation processes. This volume is the first study which relates these issues specifically to Bronze Age Archaeology. The contributions discuss not only theoretical issues, but also current developments in all aspects of archaeological practice.

The prehistory of the Burnley and Pendle districts of East Lancashire. This area of the South Pennines is particularly rich in early archaeology and this is seen to excellent effect here in PART ONE. A wealth of brand new evidence for the lives of people to the Early Bronze Age is provided along with over 200 B&W illustrations, photographs, maps and plans. THE book on the archaeology of this fascinating area of Northern England