This handbook gathers original, authoritative articles from leading archaeologists to compile the latest thinking about archaeological theory. The authors provide a comprehensive picture of the theoretical foundations by which archaeologists contextualize and analyze their archaeological data. Student readers will also gain a sense of the immense power that theory has for building interpretations of the past, while recognizing the wonderful archaeological traditions that created it. An extensive bibliography is included. This volume is the single most important reference for current information on contemporary archaeological theories.

The Boeotia Survey in Greece is widely recognised as a milestone in Mediterranean landscape archaeology in the sophistication and rigour of its methodologies, and in the scale of the 25-year investigation. This first volume of the project's publication deals with the landscape that formed part of the territory of the ancient city of Thespiai. This landscape acted as the laboratory in which the project refined its methodology: the entire territory was traversed systematically by survey teams, and artefacts were collected not only from every archaeological site located but also as 'off-site' material indicative of land use practices such as manuring. The methodology made possible the construction of detailed period and density maps of rural activity, throwing unprecedented light on the interaction of the city with its hinterland particularly in its period of maximum size between the 5th century BC and the 6th century AD, as well as providing an exemplar for Mediterranean landscape archaeology more generally.

Over his long and illustrious career as Lecturer, Reader and Professor in Edinburgh University (1961-1976), Lawrence Professor of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge (1976-2001) and currently Fellow of the McDonald Institute of Archaeology at Cambridge, Anthony Snodgrass has influenced and been associated with a long series of eminent classical archaeologists, historians and linguists. In acknowledgement of his immense academic achievement, this collection of essays by a range of international scholars reflects his wide-ranging research interests: Greek prehistory, the Greek Iron Age and Archaic era, Greek texts and Archaeology, Classical Art History, societies on the fringes of the Greek and Roman world, and Regional Field Survey. Not only do they celebrate his achievements but they also represent new avenues of research which will have a broad appeal.

Few major Classical cities have disappeared so completely from view, over the centuries, as Thespiai in Central Greece. Only the technique of intensive field survey, carefully adapted to a large urban site and reinforced by historical investigation, has made it possible to recover from oblivion much of its life of seven millennia.

In this rich volume our articles range across all the main phases of Greek Archaeology from Prehistory to the Postmedieval era, and cover a wonderful range of topics. Studies of individual sites begin with an overview by Michael Boyd of Colin Renfrew's research project on the Cycladic island of Keros at the truly remarkable prehistoric sanctuary centre of Dhaskaleio, but we also have an update by Corien Wiersma on the exciting new survey and excavations at the Mycenaean palace of Agios Vassilios near Sparta. Welcome news appears from Northern Greece, till not so long ago rather neglected by scholarship, with Bronze to Iron Age house and household cooking research papers from the Toumba mound and sites around Mount Olympus, by Kalliopi Efkleidou and Anastasia Dimoula. Landscape studies begin at the grandest scale with Bernard Knapp's article on the interconnections of Bronze Age Cyprus and Kostas Sbonias' article on the coastal economy of Corfu, then scale down geographically to Nadia Coutsinas' analysis of long-term settlement dynamics in Eastern Crete and Natasha Dakouri-Hild's high-tech survey project at Aphidna in Attica. Michalis Karambinis follows up his earlier study of the Roman cities of the province of Achaia (JGA 3, 2018), with a survey of the cities of Roman Crete. In a related topic, Anastasia Yangaki offers us an authoritative study of the archaeology of beekeeping on Late Antique Crete. We try hard never to neglect Greek art and architecture in our Journal, and are delighted to have a redating of the architectural history of the famous Archaic to Classical Athena Aphaia temple on Aegina by Hansgeorg Bankel, partnered by a study of the significance of its terracotta votive figurines by Maria Spathi. Andrew Stewart exhibits his immense learning in the field of Greek and Roman sculpture with an in-depth investigation of the statues of the Homeric hero Protesilaos. Always enthusiastic to keep up our coverage of the Medieval and Post-Medieval archaeology of Greece, we welcome two articles on Byzantine and Frankish ceramics from Nauplia and Crete, by Anastasia Vassiliou and Matteo Randazzo. Finally Michael Fotiadis dissects debates concerning the origins and nature of 'Aegean prehistoric civilisation' during the 19th century's discovery and subsequent evaluation of Bronze Age Greece, a theme which has continued to be central to later and current approaches to ethnic and cultural continuity on the Greek homeland. - From the foreword by John Bintliff, General Editor

This volume publishes updated versions of papers originally given at a conference in Corfu in 1998. It contains 24 contributions on the archaeology of post-Roman Greece, with a particular focus on landscape. Many papers provide updates on ongoing regional survey projects or excavations at specific sites, notably at Mytiline, while others are more theoretical in nature. Further sections explore vernacular architecture, ceramics, heritage, and ethnoarchaeological approaches.

The theme of this book is the appropriate methodology for the study of the history of life on earth. In particular, it focuses on the interplay between form and structure: the things that we might predict and model and the things we cannot predict -- the arbitrary and the contingent -- which may be as important, or even more important, than the way in which life on earth has evolved.

The contributors are drawn from palaeontology, archaeology, anthropology and human evolution; the timescales covered are from the development of life on earth, through human evolution to later prehistory and historic archaeology. Underpinning the theme of the book is the work of Stephen Jay Gould, who has developed a distinctive philosophy of history concerning the nature of long-term and short-term evolutionary processes, particularly stressing the interplay between structure and contingency.

The eight papers in this volume examine recent archaeological and historical research in Western and Southern Europe. Contributors include: H Hamerow (Early medival communities in Northwest Europe); G Halsall (The Merovingian period in northeast Gaul: Transition or change?); C Haselgrove & C Scull (The changing structure of rural settlement in southern Picardy during the first Millennium AD); C Scull (Appraoches to material culture and social dynamics of the Migration period of eastern England); C Loveluck (The formation of Anglo-Saxon society in the English Peak District, 400-700 AD); N Christie (Italy and the Roman to medieval transition); J Bintliff (Current research on the origins of the traditional village in central Greece) .

A large collection of papers which originated in a conference on Boetia which was held in Bradford in 1989. Since then most of the papers have been updated where required and they testify to the quality and volume of new work being undertaken in this area of Greece. Twenty-five papers in all, including 4 on prehistory by John M. Fossey, Saul Levin, Jost Knauss and Harriet Allen; 3 on the post-Mycenean dark ages by Alina Veneri, Paola Angeli Bernadini and Angheliki K. Andreiomenou; 4 on the archaic period by H. van Effenterre, John M. Fossey, Ettore Cingano, Jan Stubbe Ostergaard; 6 on the classical-hellenisctic period by A. M. Snodgrass, Giuseppe Zecchini, Luisa Breglia Pulcia Doria, L. Prandi, Marta Sordi, John Bintliff and Gilbert Argoud; 3 on the late hellenistic and Roman period by Cinzia Bearzot, Albert Schachter and S. E. Alcock; 4 papers on the medieval and early modern period by Peter Lock, Machiel Kiel, Duane W. Roller and Apostolos Papadopoulos.