Understanding Catastrophe examines the immense and varied impact that catastrophic change can have on the development of life on earth. Opening with a remarkable account of supernovae and the nature of stellar catastrophe, it then examines the way evolution itself can proceed through genetic jumps of catastrophic proportions. The primal forces of the earth, manifested in such natural catastrophes as earthquakes and cyclones, and the devastating impact these can have even today on human populations across the world receive extended scrutiny as does the power of famine historically in determining the future of humankind. To conclude, a fascinating final chapter on changing medical and social attitudes to epidemic diseases such as tuberculosis offers--in the age of AIDS particularly--some unsettling insights into our fundamental incapacity when confronted by major threats to life and health. The book originates in the fifth annual series of Darwin College Lectures, delivered in Cambridge in 1990 under the title 'Catastrophes'. The contributors include Robert Kirshner on Stellar Catastrophe; Walter Alvarez on the Extinction of the Dinosaurs; Martin Rudwick on Darwin and Catastrophe; Christopher Zeeman on Catastrophe and Evolution; Claudio Vita Finzi on Earthquakes; Nicholas Cook on Storms and Cyclones; Peter Garnsey on Famine and History; and Roy Porter on Changing Attitudes to Disease.

This lavishly illustrated book brings together a selection of ancient Egyptian works of art of outstanding quality and interest, ranging from large sculptures to small decorative objects. The introduction and full descriptions explain their significance, style, material, and mode of manufacture within the framework of the life and religious beliefs of the royal and private owners for whom they were made. Readers will find much of interest among the numerous objects, all of which are shown in color and many published here for the first time.

This volume is the first of a series on the ceramics from the Egypt Exploration Society's excavations in the Anubieion at Saqqara. The desert edge overlooking the Nile Valley was intensively used for two and a half millenia before its selection as the site of the mainly Ptolemaic temple. Mastaba tombs, pyramids and their associated temples, densely packed shaft tombs and a Late Dynastic cemetery came and went, many leaving evidence of former magnificence, while invisible beneath shifting sands lies fragmentary testimony to the kings, queens, nobles and commoners buried here and the priestly communities who ministered to their needs in the afterlife. Two volumes have described the surviving structures and the large and small objects found and analysed in the area's complex stratigraphy; the present volume adds the evidence of that most prolific of ancient artefacts, the pottery, for the whole period from the first use of the area until the eighth century BC. Published and some unpublished parallels from Saqqara itself, from the city of Memphis, where most of those buried here lived and died, and from further afield, place each type in its geographical and chronological context to trace the evolution of the ceramic repertoire in the Saqqara/ Memphis area through the major periods of ancient Egyptian history.

This volume continues the ceramic history of the Saqqara Anubis temple, excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society from 1977 to 1979. Volume IV covers the Late Dynastic Period. From at least the mid- 6th century BC onwards, burials appear to have been made in the earlier shaft tombs as well as in a new cemetery in the sand. A temple to Anubis, god of the dead, was commenced at the same time, abandoned during the Persian Period but restarted around 400 BC. The ceramics include bowls used by the embalmers as well as offering vessels and the repertoire of the fourth century builders.

This volume is a study of ceramic change in a stratified settlement at Kom Rabia, Memphis, during the New Kingdom. Ceramic chronology of this period has traditionally relied on pottery associated with dated individuals, usually from burials. In contrast, this study presents quantified evidence from a random sample taken from all contexts. A corpus has been made up for each level or phase. Appendices show the distribution of pottery within single contexts and of types within the sequence. Dating, fabric, surface treatments and shape are described in detail and there is a critical appraisal of the methodology used.