Bücher der Reihe British Archaeological Reports International Series

This study is concerned with how the Postclassic Mexica people developed their unique perspective of history and environment in a dynamic cultural context. By focusing on the process of conceptualization of the Nahuatl word 'xihuitl', the author analyzes the way the Mexica expressed their cognition. Xihuitl covers a range of meanings: 'turquoise', 'grass', 'solar year', 'comet', 'preciousness', 'blue-green' and 'fire'. The correlations of the meanings of xihuitl can be explained from a structural point of view. However, structural analysis does not reveal the dynamic experiential processes that produced such correlations in the minds of the Mexica. In order to account for this dynamic aspect of the concept, the author employs a theory drawn from cognitive science. This theory argues that the meanings and representations of a concept are metaphoric extensions that derive from the central sense of the concept. Applying this theory, the author examines the metaphoric extension of each xihuitl representation from the central sense. The author also analyzes the four media of expression-linguistic, iconographic, material and ritual-in which representations of xihuitl occur. The representations of xihuitl in each medium embody a particular aspect of the concept. At the same time, the concept as a whole was affected by the Mexica conceptual system-the way the Mexica saw their world-rooted in the connections they believed existed between themselves and those who established earlier Central Mexican civilizations.

Edited by Pierre Allard, Françoise Bostyn, François Giligny and Jacek LechThis book includes papers from the Flint Mining in Prehistoric Europe session held at European Association of Archaeologists 12th Annual Meeting Cracow, Poland, 19th-24th September 2006.

This book explores the origins and development of museums and heritage sites in Bulgaria (1856-2006) in relation to societal change and major historic events. It seeks to determine the key factors that promoted museum building, and pinpoint the key individuals who were involved. Original and archival sources, interviews, observations and field visits have provided a rich dataset which has been analysed to reveal how systems of power, politics and social control affected how museums were created and subsequently managed. Furthermore the Bulgarian case is situated within a broader European context and comparisons are made with the museum institutions in different countries in order to determine any specifics and particularities of Bulgarian museum building and operation. The book demonstrates how different administrations have used museums to promote their own political views of the nation's cultural identity, and in particular how the strategies employed by the Communist regime continue to influence the museum sector today. The major contribution of this book lies in its use of archival documents. This has resulted in a different account of the formation of Bulgarian museums, on some occasions contradicting accepted histories. It also introduces the little known Bulgarian museology to a wider audience, which is seen to be important at a point in time when Bulgaria has become part of the European Union.

The present study focuses on the ancient architectural decoration of a particular form uncovered on the excavation site of modern Marina which lies on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, about 6 km east of el-Alamein. Also known as el-Bahrein, it is located 96 km west of Alexandria, 40 km west of ancient Taposiris Magna (Abu Sir), and 185 km east of Paraetonium (Marsa Matruh). For the past twenty years, Polish and Egyptian missions have been conducting archaeological research and preservation of the remains of the Hellenistic-Roman town and necropolis found on this spot and tentatively identified on the basis of descriptions of ancient destruction on the Mediterranean coast. The excavations occupy a section of the lagoon coast more than 1000 m long E-W andabout 550 m wide N-S. The layout of the ancient town has been reconstructed on the basis of results of investigations conducted to date. The harbour infrastructure, including warehouses of which ruins have survived, lay immediately on the coast. Directlyto the south of the port and commercial quarter, was the city centre which included baths, a civic basilica and other public buildings around a porticoed main square. Surrounding the centre were densely occupied habitation quarters. Remains of more than 50 different architectural structures have been discovered in the town and necropolis. On the basis of archaeological evidence, the town functioned from the 2nd century BC to the beginning of the 7th century AD. The earliest remains, some even from the mid 2nd century BC, were found in the necropolis. A very specific type of architectural decoration characterized by simplification and decorative geometrization appears in Marina where it also seems to have been prevalent. This kind of stylization has been associated mainly with Petra where a similar architectural decoration was commonly applied. Having been recognized first in Petra, it came to be known as Nabatean. The stylized architectural decoration discovered at Petra and Hegra is so specific and dissimilar from any of the Classical orders that it has even been described on occasion as a separate architectural order.

This work deals with the collapse of Teotihuacan and the period 650-900 AD. Teotihuacan was the most important urban centre in Central Mexico before the rise of Tula. The study develops a new view of the cultural changes adopted by the new society. This is the first work that attempts to reconcile the archaeological complexities of the transition.

This work looks at basic questions pertaining to sacred space and applies them to several well documented archaeological sites with strong material remains, interpreting the meanings and causes of the changes in spatial patterns that occurred within the late Antique polis in the East. The study is based on both physical and abstract spatial dimensions (the 'real' and metaphysical) of civic and sacred landscapes that defined the Classical and Early Christian city 'types'. The archaeological sites of Gerasa of Jordan and Dura Europos of Syria were selected as interpretive models due to their strong archaeological records and architectural representations. While the main aim of the work is to explain the end of the classical city in the East, Dura remains frozen in time for us depicting the pre-Christian, pagan city sitting on the historical razor edge just prior to the events initiating monumental civic change.

Proceedings of the International Round-Table Conference, June 2005, St-Petersburg, RussiaThis book presents the proceedings of the international round-table conference held from 23-25 June 2005 at the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. The topics related to the culture, history and archaeology of Archaic Greece. Attention was also devoted to questions of exhibiting ancient Greek monuments in museums.

The intention of this work is to explain how bone was used as a raw material on the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego (Argentina). Three main lines of research are followed by the author: 1) The determination of the mechanical properties of bones used for tools; 2) the proposal and evaluation of a model derived from a Darwinian Evolutionary Theory; 3) metric and morphological analysis of Fueguian bone tools. The temporal scale chosen for this work is from the earliest arrival of humans on the island - archaeologically recorded as some 10,000 years bp, up to the 19th century. As a way of approaching this work, and in order to be able to discuss the model which will be proposed in Chapter 6, a history of Bone tool research (with a special focus on Europe, where the main trend in such studies was developed) is presented in Chapter 2. The following chapters are devoted to specifying and analyzing the way in which these factors appear in Tierra del Fuego. Firstly (Chapter 3), the mechanical properties of bone material are referred to. In Chapter 4 the environmental and geological setting of Isla Grande is presented. In Chapter 5 a synthesis of all that is known about the Fuegian populations from an archaeological point of view is presented. Chapter 6 develops the theoretical framework used for the study. A bone raw material model is discussed and methods and materials employed are discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 gives results of the determination of mechanical properties of Tierra del Fuego bones. Chapter 9 gives the results of tool morphological analysis, and Chapter 10 discusses these results. Conclusions and further paths for research follow in Chapter 11.

In this work the author describes the animal husbandry practices and the use of wild resources in early modern Tornio (northern Finland) based on zooarchaeological evidence. The animal bone assemblages from Tornio have not previously been published or reported, and the urban animal husbandry practices and the use of wild resources have not been analysed archaeologically, apart from a preliminary analysis of the seventeenth-century faunal materials from two plots. The author uses these results to consider the connections between animals and urban social interaction, and the changing human-animal and human-environmental relationships in early modern Tornio. In this sense, the study also contributes to the understanding of the emerging modern worldview and social order in the northern European periphery during the early modern period.

This study focuses on Qasr al-Buleida ('the countryside castle [or] palace' in Arabic), a small hamlet located six kilometres to the northeast of the modern village of Ghor al-Mazra'a on the Dead Sea Plain. The hamlet comprises the archaeological remains of five free-standing, fortified architectural complexes, as well as a number of agricultural features that include two aqueducts, a dam or reservoir and terracing. Together, these structures form the 'Qasr al-Buleida settlement', an entity which has not been previously studied nor published in entirety. Through survey and excavation conducted over two field seasons (2002 and 2004), the aim of this investigation of Qasr al-Buleida has been to determine the chronology, cultural history and function of the settlement as a network of fortifications that served a defensive and economic purpose, augmenting the Roman-Byzantine limes Arabicus, as well as an agricultural one. Analysis of the radiocarbon, numismatic and ceramic material recovered from the stratified deposits of excavations carried out at the five QB sites has now revealed that they were occupied between the fourth and sixth centuries C.E., a period when all evidentiary classes overlap.

A study with catalogue of the 'ushabti' (funerary figurines) from the Egyptian Museum, Florence.

Conference Proceedings, ¿ód¿, Poland, 5th-7th September 2007This World Archaeological Congress Inter-Congress was held at the University of Lódz, Poland in September 2007. One of the conference aims was to explore the role of ethnoarchaeology in generating ideas and theories which focus on wider underlying trends linked to cultural relativism and/or universals, rather than direct analogy.

The research presented in this volume derives from the combination of two different projects. The first was undertaken on commission by the Department of Archaeology and the History of Art of the University of Siena whilst the second was run directly by the Faculty of Medieval Archaeology of the same university. In the summer of 2003, SPEA Autostrade a company operating in the motorway infrastructure development sector engaged a team of researchers from the University of Siena and the Archaeological cooperative ASTRA to evaluate the archaeological impact of a project to build the so-called 'braccio tirrenico' between Rosignano Marittimo (province of Livorno) and Civitavecchia (province of Viterbo), intended to complete the A12 motorway along Italy's Tyrrhenian coast. The team of archaeologists from Siena was given the task of studying the proposed routes between Pescia Romana and Rosignano, whilst those from the ASTRA cooperative undertook a similar study in Lazio. The long stretch between the Tuscany-Lazio border and Rosignano Marittimo was subdivided into different segments, each of which was then assigned to a single team. One of the areas at greatest archaeological risk from the construction of this new motorway was the stretch between Talamone and Grosseto where very little archaeological research had previously been undertaken.

There is evidence to suggest that the South Molle Island stone quarry in the Whitsunday Islands, central Queensland coast, has been used by the indigenous inhabitants of the region from at least 9,000 BP to the present. A comprehensive technological characterisation of the quarry has demonstrated that a range of manufacturing behaviours was conducted on-site, from the initial extraction of the raw material, through to the final stages of artefact retouch. This research has demonstrated that the antiquityof backed artefacts and the timing of high production rates of backed artefacts occurs earlier in the Whitsunday region than elsewhere in southern Australia. In the Whitsunday Islands backed artefact production has been shown to be present from the beginning of the Holocene and to have been an important technological element in the early Holocene. Another understanding of backing technologies in Australia can be developed in light of this recognition of regional variation.

Paris Monographs in American Archaeology 29As exemplified in this bibliographical essay, that includes about 2000 references, prehispanic ball courts and ballgames in Mesoamerica have been the focus of numerous studies, while the discovery of ball courts and related artifacts is continuous. In the last few weeks before completing this work, the author received information concerning two new discoveries - a newly recognized panel depicting a ballgame at the Maya site of Quirigua (Guatemala), and a third ball court within the Tenochtitlan sacred precinct under the National Palace in Mexico. These are just two of the most recent additions to a long list of bibliographical references, on a very controversial theme, that characterizes Mesoamerica and other related areas.

This publication is one of the volumes of the proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ), which was held in Paris (France) 23rd-28th August 2010.

A sample of 1227 Spanish wills, dating from fifteenth-, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Madrid and Seville, is the basis for an in-depth exploration of the connection between individual action, identity and grave location. Each will is a repository of information concerning the will (intent) and prospective actions of one individual. The field of action in which personal will operates in this study centres on the necessity of finding a gravesite - an endeavour that is highly relevant to archaeological interests. Real-world descriptions in the wills of where graves are and how they may be identified, or not, with the bodies of the deceased and with the remembrance of their souls, highlight the sharp distinction between archaeologists' and testators' concepts of space and grave location. The distinction is rooted in the testator's construct of personal identity, associated with the placement of his or her grave and the artefacts used to indicate the allegiances of body and soul in death, as in life. Such associations are lacking in the archaeological view of grave location and the identification of human remains, in part because there is not normally access to documentary sources, such as the wills, to indicate otherwise. In this study the author sets out to show that identity is the source of all human action and that it is translated into physical space and time by the exercise of individual will. Examples are taken from wills to illustrate some of the ways in which the personal connection between action and identity impinges on all the material evidence, both positive and negative, that may be unearthed in the archaeological excavation of grave sites.

Embarcaciones de la Península Ibérica, Marruecos y archipiélagos aledaños hasta el principado de AugustoThis book aims to collect, discuss and analyse all references to boats with connections to the Iberian Peninsula, Morocco, and the Balearic and Canary Islands. They range from the earliest prehistory to the Augustan Principate. The vessels studied were built in the western Mediterranean and nearby Oceanic coasts, or reached these areas before the technological standardization that the Roman Empire brought to the whole Mediterranean. The research presents an overview of the historical sources relating to pre-Roman navigation.

Excavaciones arqueológicas en la domus tancinus (2004-2008) (Condeixa-a-Velha, Portugal)Archaeological Excavations & Catalogues 2This volume collects the results of the archaeological excavations made in the so-called domus tancinus, in Conimbriga (Condeixa-a-Velha, Portugal). The work in part is based the 'Spanish Archaeological Mission' interdisciplinary research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, in Portugal between 2004 and 2008. Over 5 years a Spanish and Portuguese team worked in an intramural sector of the ancient city to understand the evolution and transformation of a Roman domus during Late Antiquity and beyond. The archaeological excavations show a very different picture of Conimbriga in post-Roman times and presents further information on the so-called 'Christian basilica' built in the domus tancinus.

In 1967 the gates of the Sinai desert region were thrown open to Israeli researchers; the region is as diverse, archaeologically, as it is extensive. This book documents a series of excavations and surveys undertaken by the author in all four corners of this fascinating landscape. Part two reports on three particular surveys, including one on the so-called "Desert Kites" of Sinai and the Southern Negev.

A detailed typological study, in Italian, of the Roman catacombs found on the Via Appia, Via Ardeatina, Via Ostiense, and their immediate environs. The author's extensive analysis concentrates on early Christian tomb layout and planning, architecture, monuments, and iconography.

A much-discussed topic in the studies of Alpine region lake-dwellings is their chronology and continuity. This study includes an analysis of the MBA occupational hiatus, its likely causes, and where the lake-dwellers might have moved. Environmental and cultural factors are considered, and the analysis centres on lake-level fluctuations around present-day Lakes Zurich and Constance between the 15th and 12th centuries BC.

The 18 papers in this volume are derived from papers presented at the Lisbon EAA conference in 2000. The work studies the links between trade and local production and between sea routes, shipbuilding and navigation techniques in a diachronic perspective from Antiquity to the Middle Ages and Modern times, in areas of the Ancient and of the New World, through historical sources including urban and settlement archaeology, landscape and underwater archaeology.

The fossil site of Untermassfeld, near the town of Meiningen in Southern Thuringia, was discovered in 1978 and has been the subject of 25 field seasons. The digs have produced a stunning array of fossil vertebrate remains in stratigraphic context, making this unquestionably one of the most important Quaternary localities in Europe. In this volume the author provides the first full synthesis of the work, bringing the results up to date, and placing them in a broad context. With some 14,000 determinable vertebrate fossils, the Untermassfeld assemblage represents the most complete assemblage of the time span 1.2-0.9 Ma BP in the Western Palaearctic.Translated from German by Hans van EssenEdited by Adrian Lister

This monograph provides a synthesis of information on Greek food plants recovered mainly through archaeobotanical studies. The principal goal is to present the first diachronic study of the use of vegetal species in the Eastern Aegean region in the period spanning the millennia between the Early Neolithic (ca. 7000 BC) and Classical times (4th century BC). The data compiled here can shed light on several aspects of ancient food and diet, including the geographical and chronological distribution of cereals and legumes, the beginnings of arboriculture in Greece, and the use and symbolic meaning of plants in ancient times.

This study focuses on a number of important prehistoric sites in the Mediterranean area. The primary objective is a proposition for a chronology of these sites based on the paleontological remains of the rhinoceros fossil record. The first section of the book presents the sites (mostly from southern France and including the major locations at Vallonnet, la Pineta à Isernia and la Caune de l'Arago) and the detailed paleontological study follows in the second section. The work concludes with a number of Appendices presenting the data records.

'Opus signinum' is an antique floor-covering technique, especially noted in the Mediterranean area. The technique is based on a waterproof mortar of a mixture of lime, water and tile powder which gives it a reddish colour. This current research focused mainly on the opus signinum process as recorded in the antique literature (especially Vitrivius and Pliny) and then scientific analysis, in order to define the composition of the mortar. Over 100 pavements from Mediterranean countries (5th c BC - 2nd c AD) have been compiled in the catalogue, making it possible to study the ornamental patterns and the various uses the rooms/spaces were put to.

This book argues that temples in Mesopotamia appear only in the 4th millennium BC, and that only three large oval compounds explored at Khafadje, Tell el Obeid and El Hiba may be interpreted as temples for the Early Dynastic Period. It shows that among the Uruk period buildings discovered at Warka , only the so-called Riemchen- and Steingebaude present the most ancient temples of their kind in Mesopotamia.

This book investigates the production technology and inter-site circulation of a large and diverse Late Neolithic ceramic assemblage from the flat-extended settlement of Makrygialos (Phase II), in northern Greece. Comparative samples from Dimini, in Thessaly, and Agrosykia A and Giannitsa B, in western Macedonia, are also incorporated. It draws conclusions from the use of macroscopic and petrographic analysis of a large number of samples in an integrated project.The new evidence offers a better understanding of the role of technological choice in ceramic production. Locally produced and imported ceramic categories are found to co-exist. They signify manufacture by different groups or individuals with varying degrees of technological knowledge and skill, probably producing in different places, and within distinct ceramic traditions. More importantly, petrographic analysis provides positive evidence of the long-distance exchange of pots, challenging previously established ideas on the circulation of pottery for this period and geographical area. The emerging picture strongly supports the idea of a dynamic Neolithic society characterised by mobilities, interaction and social competition between people, as revealed through their material culture.

The present work catalogues and analyses the so-called 'bronze belts' - thin metal plaques, decorated or not - that represent one of the main features of the material culture of the native peoples of the Caucasus area during the Iron Age. Given the amount of material examined, the research has been divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to the study of the belts themselves, their art and style. The second part offers a summary of the archaeological contexts of their recovery. Each site is described by its overall features, followed by a more detailed analysis of the context of provenance of each indivdual belt, represented in most cases by funerary evidence. For each of these burials the set of objects associated with the deceased is laid out in full detail. From the preface by John Curtis'In this pioneering study Manuel Castelluccia has collected together about 350 sheet bronze belts that were found mostly in graves in the South Caucasus region or Transcaucasia (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and South Ossetia)...This work is particularly valuable in that nearly all the belts are now in museums in the former Soviet Union or are known only through publications in Russian, Georgian and Armenian, so for the ¿rst time this large body of material is made available to western scholars...This exemplary catalogue will be compulsory reading and a standard work of reference for all scholars interested in the archaeology of Transcaucasia.'Preface by John Curtis