Bücher der Reihe British Archaeological Reports International Series

Libagioni pure e misticismo tra la Grecia e il mondo iranico

A study of European decorative ironwork techniques as applied to arms and armour from Late Medieval to modern times.

This monograph is an epigraphic study of the Roman auxiliary units raised on the Iberian Peninsula based on a corpus of over 750 inscriptions. It presents the literary and epigraphic evidence for late Republican allied and auxiliary forces and for the structure of imperial auxiliary units. It then examines the recruiting practices of the auxilia, the settlement of veterans, and the evidence for the personal relationships of the soldiers enlisted in these units as they are recorded in the epigraphic record, including inscriptions on stone and military diplomas.

This monograph examines the aniconic cult stones, or baetyls, of the Aegean Bronze Age. Minoan baetyls are commonly understood by reference to the interpretive vocabularies of ancient Near Eastern traditions developed by comparative ethnographies popular in the early 20th century. This study presents and interrogates the Aegean evidence for baetyl cult, providing a catalogue of archaeological evidence attesting to this cultic practice. Contextual analysis provides the basis for interpreting and (re)constructing aspects of the cult. It is argued that the ambiguity inherent in these aniconic stones renders them uniquely flexible in serving multiple cultic, ritual and ideological functions across different contexts.

This volume presents the study of a number of variants of Romano-Hispanic burial rituals. The research was carried out focusing on structural typologies, the analyses of materials found in the necropolis, the development of the burial practices, and the specificity of a variety of solutions (local and regional) adopted by the inhabitants of Roman Spain. This study is not only based on a primarily archaeological approach, but also takes into account other disciplines such as ancient history, iconography, anthropology and the history of religions. The main purpose of the study is to update the current state of research in burial rites in classical cultures and, above all, Hispanic cultural practices. All this provides plenty of largely new information that will enlighten future research.

The aim of this volume is to explore a topic which occurs in all cultures from as early as the Upper Palaeolithic, but has so far been underexplored in archaeological literature - the archaeology of dance.

Previous studies of tombstones and inscriptions dedicated to divinities have focused on methods of assigning names in Roman society, the age at marriage and death of demographic populations across the Roman Empire, relations of kinship, marriage, amity and dependence among elite and sub-altern families and communities, and the performance of acts in accordance with traditional forms of belief and custom. The present volume wishes to ask what conclusions can be drawn from the corpus of private Latin inscriptions from Roman Italy about the identity, social condition and cultural activity of men and women participating in the process of epigraphic commemoration and dedication. In particular, this study hopes to demonstrate that women participated as significantly as men in the process in a variety of ways and contexts usually regarded as prominently or exclusively male, and in certain circumstances left behind the trace or residue of a uniquely female perspective on their world.

This volume presents the current state of archaeological knowledge of the urban world in Hispania in the historical period between the 4th and 7th centuries. It also addresses the open debate around scholars' perception of the status of the population centres that persisted until the Early Middle Ages - in episcopal cities or not - through archaeological documents. The urban landscape inherited from the classical world and its transformation were taken as a starting point to understand which elements changed and which persisted in Late Antique Hispanic cities. However, this study is triggered by the need to consider the origin and evolution of Christian topography in Hispanic cities. Its main objective is to understand both the consolidation of episcopaltopography and the new funerary reality of Late Antique cities.

This volume describes the results of the first ten years of the joint Anglo-Georgian excavations at Nokalakevi, West Georgia. The site, known to the Byzantines as Archaeopolis, was a major fortress in the fourth to sixth centuries A.D. often described as the capital of Lazika-Egrisi. Known to medieval Georgian chroniclers as Tsikhegoji, the site is also thought to be the capital of Colchis at the time of the first unification of Georgia in Hellenistic times. Extensively excavated since 1973, and by AGEN since 2001, this is the first significant publication of results to be produced in English.

Obsidian-bearing sites spanning the temporal framework of the Palaeolithic and located in Africa and Europe are analysed with the aim of elucidating the evolution of modern social behaviour. Obsidian is a rock that forms only under very special conditions; its geological sources are infrequent and distinguished from each other on the basis of unique chemical properties. As such it is possible to reconstruct the distances of its movement and use these data to infer the scale of social life during the Palaeolithic. A strong correlation between obsidian use and long distances is observed implying that the hominins involved in the circulation of the specific material were behaving in a socially modern way.

This study of subsistence activities (fishing, hunting, gathering, and manufacture) in the Cuitzeo and Pátzcuaro lake basins (Michoacán, Western Mexico) underscores the value of ethnoarchaeology as a tool for reconstructing the ancient aquatic lifeway in the territory of the Protohistoric Tarascan state (ca. AD 1450-1530), which flourished in an environment dominated by lakes, rivers, swamps and marshes. Mesoamerica was the only civilization in the ancient world that lacked major domesticated sources of animal protein; therefore, abundant wild aquatic species (fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and plants, etc.) all played strategic roles in the diet and economy of most Mesoamerican cultures, including the Tarascans.

The book is the result of three years of excavations (2005-2008) on the north-west side of Rome's Via dei Fori Imperiali, directly behind the Forum area. Contexts and landscapes extending from the Archaic period (6th century B.C.) to the time of Augustus have been discovered. Two wealthy houses from the Archaic period, destroyed most likely by the great fire of 390 B.C. and quickly rebuilt afterwards, were found in the area towards the south-eastern slope of the Capitoline Hill. They were subsequently dismantled during the construction of Caesar's Forum, which had occupied the entire area. This feature was originally 20 metres shorter than the one we know today and the many facets of its interesting story are fully discussed in these pages.

This study examines the excavation of a villa rustica located in the south-east suburbs of Naples. This villa has been attributed to C. Olius Ampliatus because during the excavation a signaculum with his name was discovered. The excavated building was built in the late second century BC and enlarged in the time of Augustus and destroyed during the famous eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. This intact Roman villa of the Imperial period contained machinery for the production of wine and olive oil, and the parsurbana of the house was decorated with mosaics in opus signinum. In the basement below the torcularium was found the body of the vilicus who sought refuge there during the catastrophe.

The study explores patterns of interconnections between the coastal zone of the Corinthian Gulf and its surrounding hinterlands, between c. 600 and 300 B.C. Archaeological remains point to a substantial expansion in site numbers during this period, and the growth of identifiable central place sites in connection with coast-hinterland routes. Movements through these routes are further traced through both the material record and written sources. Coastal areas acted as important gateways for exchange systems linked to diverse hinterland environments and economies, and interaction patterns emphasise the importance of microregional connectivity in regards to economic and political dynamics.

This book includes papers presented on Current Research in Sasanian Archaeology, Art and History from a Conference held at Durham University, November 3rd and 4th, 2001.

The study of the Monument of the Lucilii aims to piece together the historical events of an important tumulus from the Age of Augustus, built approximately 470m outside the ancient site of the gate of Porta Salaria of the Aurelian Walls of the city of Rome. It was commissioned by an eminent member of the ordo equester (equestrian order), M. Lucilius Paetus, perhaps following the death of his sister: Lucilia Polla. As yet, the only written source that provides information about this familial sepulchre and on the cursus honorum (sequence of offices) of its owner, is the inscription on the eastern side of the monument. This study provides a careful analysis of the archival documents, along with a series of new measurements/data and photographs of the sepulchre that had a brief existence, on account of the interment of the entire Sepolcreto Salario (Salario sepulchres area) - attributed to Trajan by Rodolfo Lanciani, the first archaeologist involved with the area - resulting from the levelling of the hill that originally connected Quirinale to Campidoglio. Prior to this research, the Age of Augustus monument in question, as well as the subsequent building phases (also examined here), have not been given the attention due to them in either the archaeological or epigraphical literature, nor in the various analysis of the drawings of the ancient monuments. Amongst the principal studies, the following merit attention: the research done by Carlo Pietrangeli with drawings by Rosa Falconi - until today the only cohesive treatise of the monument; Michael Eisner's work on sepulchral buildings in suburbs of Rome and Ségolène Démougin's study on the inscriptions of the Julio-Claudian equites.

Edited by: Ana Cruz, Enrique Cerrillo-Cuenca, Primitiva Bueno Ramírez, João Carlos Caninas and Carlos Batata.Proceedings of the conference held in Abrantes, Portugal, 11 May 2013.This book offers a perspective on death and memory in recent Prehistory on the western Iberian Peninsula (Portugal, Spanish Extremadura and Andalusia). Within this territory the contributors to this volume record the variability of architectonic forms indicative of lengthy period changes in funerary contexts and transformations in the ideological-symbolic substrate of pre-writing communities. The Portuguese karstic region explored in this study lacks megalithic monuments despite the abundant raw material. The contributors attempt to answer questions such as whether this signifies a break with our understanding of 'Megalithism' as a result of identity ideologies. Other regions exhibit an expansion of Megalithism, often with exuberant forms, reflecting territorial expansion, while in others we encounter cists, pits and tumuli - all indicators of a new funerary order. The examples investigated in this collection of papers include - for the Neolithic: Oleiros, Castelo Branco, Alto Alentejo and Mondego; for the Neo-Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age: Tomar, Abrantes, Santarém; for the Bronze Age: Pampilhosa da Serra, Alcoutim, Abrantes, Santarém, Viseu, Vila Nova de Paiva, Castro Daire. Included in this study are the necropolis caves of Spanish Extremadura, representing as they do a chronological continuum from the Early Neolithic to the Bronze Age, and other related sites such as the Canaleja Gorge karstic complex and a range of other megalithic phenomena (menhirs, stelae, cromlechs, dolmens) in the southern Iberian Peninsula (Alentejo and Andalusia).

The Neolithic and Copper age monuments in Europe, consisting of stone temples and circles, standing stones, henge monuments, long barrows, megalithic graves, buildings and pyramids, are the most impressive remains of past societies and present striking features of the prehistoric landscape. This volume is concerned with these monuments and offers a broad and up-to-date discussion on their emergence and function, their situation in the landscapes and the reconstruction of the prehistoric societies in diverse archaeological contexts and regions in Europe and in one area of the Near East. It brings together new data and methodological approaches, as well as current discussions and interpretations.

This work aimed to study the Roman lamps collected in Alcáçova de Santarém. The set is formed by a total of 393 unpublished fragments, although some references to some complete lamps in archaeological reports. Given the high fragmentation of the set, wasnot easy his classification and interpretation. Chronologically, the lamps was dated between the last quarter of the second century BC and the beginning of the fifth century AD. However, the largest volume of lychnological imports is from the High Empire. After the early second century AD, Scallabis seems to suffer a reduction of economic purchase which may be due to several factors, symptom that also is reflected by the Roman lamps.

In this wide-ranging study of the beginnings of Christian art, the author takes as her starting point the question of positive assimilation between Christian and non-Christian images in early Christian art. This study attempts to determine whether the theological term of syncretism can be appropriate to the study of early Christian art. During her study of the genesis of early Christian art, the author became aware that her attitude toward the notion of syncretism differs from most of the existing literature on early Christian art history and architecture. Some scholars have avoided using the notion of syncretism, and some have used it pejoratively to describe a mish-mash of religions, perhaps taking their cue from the doctrinal discussion of the term by the Church itself. In contrast, in the literature of the history of Japanese religions and art, religious synthesis has been referred to as 'syncretism,' and the term in that literature is defined as a blending of the ideas or practices of different religions that results in a unity of deities.

The general research question followed during the course of this study can be summarized as: Does the Neolithic in Arabia originate in the Levant? To approach this question, several facets of this topic have been investigated. The first aspect considered is the most fundamental one with respect to the general research question: What is the archaeological material evidence for the Neolithic dispersal over Arabia, and where did it originate? If one accepts the Levantine origin for the Arabian Neolithic, the next question which has to be answered is: How did it happen? Here, two opposing, general, explanatory concepts are provided in the archaeological, social and geographic sciences. The third focus of this study investigates the Neolithic dispersal over Arabia as a spatial process: What are the most advantageous routes the Levantine Neolithic herders could have taken during the dispersal? The structure of this book follows the research agenda as outlined: Chapter 1 describes the history of research in Arabia. Chapter 2 discusses the conceptual model which was developed to consider the Neolithic dispersal from the Levant as a spatial process. Chapter 3 provides details about the dispersal simulations performed with respect to the environmental situation on the Arabian Peninsula. Chapter 4 traces the dispersal routes suggested by the simulations by archaeological evidence. The concluding chapter 5 summarizes and compares the separate results of the study.

The cult of Cybele and Attis is a spiritual phenomenon of wide chronological and geographical range. There is abundant documentation of its existence, but even more numerous are the works of scholars engaged in the interpretation of the cult and the divine figures around it. It is a field of interest for linguists, classicists, archaeologists, historians and art historians, ethnologists, and even psychoanalysts. To try to display all the aspects of the cult, its rituality and manifestation in iconography and epigraphy is a hard assignment: countless studies have been made trying to portray the character and evolution of the cult of the Phrygian Great Goddess, the timeless Mother of Gods, and her lover Attis. The work presented here is another interpretative drop in a vast cultural legacy that these deities have left behind, focusing on one particular corner of the Roman Empire.

Proceedings of the XV World Congress UISPP Lisbon, 4-9 September 2006 Volume 14, Session C54Session C54 in the proceedings of the XV World Congress of the International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP / IUPPS), held in September 2006, in Lisbon, concerned with recent rockshelter research.

A fresh look at Minoan Kato Zakro and its region (eastern Crete), in which the author explores the possible socio-economic development of this ever-fascinating site.

In the autumn of 2007 a large-scale salvage excavation took place on the western margins of Beisamoun in the Hula Valley in northern Israel, as part of the development of the Rosh Pina-Qiryat Shmona highway. Excavation in the western part of the greater area of the Beisamoun site, formerly known for its Pre-Pottery Neolithic B finds, revealed a wealth of a archaeological objects attributed to an early phase of the Pottery Neolithic period. This volume presents the final reports of the 2007 salvage excavation, and it discusses relevent issues concerning the Prehistory of the Hula Valley during the earliest stages of the Pottery Neolithic period.Written by Danny Rosenberg with contributions by Nurit Shtober, Iris Gorman-Yeroslavski, Vered Eshed,Noa Raban-Gerstel, Guy Bar-Oz, Yotam Tepper and Ariel Berman.

Khirbet er-Rasm is a small site in the upper Shephelah, about 1 km south-southwest of Tel 'Azekah (Israel). The remains include mainly a concentration of ruins on top of the hill, where many walls were visible before the beginning of the excavations, including a row of still standing monoliths. The site is small and rural in nature, and is not identified with any known historical sites, and this was in part the reason for its exploration. The site was excavated and surveyed in the years 1997-2003. Khirbet er-Rasm was first settled during the Chalcolithic period. The site was then resettled during the late Iron Age I and / or early Iron Age II. More significant remains were dated to the late Iron Age II, and some finds are attributed to the Persian period, but the main period of occupation at the site dates from the early Hellenistic period up to the late second century BCE. The vast majority of the finds at Kh. er-Rasm are dated to the late second century BCE, as this is the time when the site was destroyed, and this is the period for which there is most data. Some reoccupation took place in the Early Roman period, and from then on the site was abandoned and was used by farmers and herders.With contributions by Oren Ackerman, Einat Armon-Ambar, Guy Bar-Oz, Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer, Rachel Barkay, Elisabetta Boaretto, Deborah Cassuto, Anat Cohen-Weinberger, Yael Gorin-Rosen, Nili Liphschitz, Ofer Marder, Ravit Nenner-Soriano, Rinat Peshin, Jessie A. Pincus, Noa Raban-Gerstel, Débora Sandhaus, Avi Sasson, Izhak Shai, Inbal Shoam, Ehud Weiss and Yair Zoran

Inspired in part by the famous blue monkeys of Thera, in this original work, the author provides a survey of the diverse cultural attitudes toward monkeys through an examination of the iconographical, physical and textual evidence from several Mediterranean cultures.

The dome shaped object commonly referred to as a 'cone on the head' originated in tomb scenes of the early New Kingdom. At first, it appeared in very few scenes and the type of scene in which it was included was limited. Its depiction increased in frequency and by category of scene, until by the Twentieth Dynasty the cone can be seen in a wide range of numerous mortuary images. From tomb scenes, it spread to the images on coffins and mortuary papyri, and it remained in use up to, and including, the Ptolemaic period. Its widespread and lasting depiction demonstrates that it held an important and extensive significance for the afterlife of the deceased. Yet in spite of the wide-ranging and frequent depiction of the cone on the head, it has received relatively little serious study and opinions on its meaning have not been based on the rigorous research that a symbol of this importance requires. The primary aim of this study is to discover whether the cone has a symbolic meaning that is relevant for the different categories of New Kingdom tomb scenes in which it appears on the tomb owner with significant frequency.

The Lateglacial and Postglacial pioneer colonisation of northern Europe is a recurrent and ever-popular topic in archaeology. This volume presents a modern review of the topic and provides a wealth of new information on sites, approaches, dates and models. The chapters range geographically from Poland and Germany in the south and west to Finland and western Russia in the north and east, thus framing virtually the entire North European Plain and its northern extension. The volume will serve as a major resource for the study of the human pioneer colonization of the North.

The Mesolithic is regarded as a period of transition and, in recent years, a series of notable sites have been discovered in France that have begun to elucidate the nature and timing of that transition.