Bücher der Reihe British Archaeological Reports International Series

The book presents finds from twenty-four Late Iron Age graves excavated between 2001 and 2003 on the hillfort Dragiši¿ located in the middle Dalmatia, Croatia. The graves yielded a large number of finds including fibulae; pins; rings and other circlet-shaped jewellery; bracelets; pendants; elements of attire and toiletry accessories; buttons and appliqués; temple-rings, hair-pins, and earrings; glass beads; cowry shell; Roman glass vessels and pottery finds. The published grave assemblages cover the chronological period dated from the fifth century BC until the middle of the second century AD.

Expresiones artísticas en la arquitectura maya: Técnicas de análisis y documentaciónPrehispanic Maya architecture features a large variety of artistic expression, from reliefs and sculptures made of stone or stucco to mural paintings and graffiti found on the plastered surfaces of their walls and façades. All of this constitutes both an important artistic component which complements the architecture, and a new source of information about the people who built these buildings and those who lived within them. In order to preserve them it is vital that innovative techniques are used during archaeological excavations and explorations which allow detailed records to be made immediately after the discovery of such ancient vestiges. This book presents selected studies about the techniques for documentation and analysis of architectural decorative remnants in use by a variety of research teams currently working in the Maya area as well as interesting discussions about the symbolism of the artistic elements on the façades of Maya buildings.

This work deals with Neanderthal subsistence behaviours during the Middle Palaeolithic in Hungary, through the example of Érd site. Very discreet, hunting and mainly scavenging, activities are shown by zooarchaeological study for meat procurement. This is different for carnivores, except for cave bears. The latter, using the place for hibernation, meant a high number of their remains are associated with "Charentian" lithic industry and with those of cave hyena. This carnivore has a significant impact on bone accumulations, herbivores and bears, and shows signs of cannibalism on its congener's remains. Human activities are visible only on a few bones belonging to large ungulates and cave bear. However, no proof supports the proposition of a clear specialization in cave bear hunting on acquiring meat resources (as written by V. Gábori Csánk in the monography on Érd published in 1968); a contrario, on scavenging carcasses and/or visiting (actively?) dens for weakened wintering/hibernating bears. These results attest the contemporaneity of a part of the bear carcasses with human installation or presence on the site.

Papers from a session held at the European Association of Archaeologists Sixth Annual Meeting in Lisbon 2000

8 papers from Section 16 (Asian and Oceanic Prehistory) Acts of the XIVth UISPP Congress, University of Liège, Belgium, 2-8 September 2001.

"In the fall season of A.D. 536 Cassiodorus sat at his writing table....." So Joel D. Gunn begins this interesting and unusual topic of study. Fifteen further papers discuss the climatic events and ramifications of that year, when the absence of sunlight turned the grapes bitter and gaunt faces walked the streets of Rome and all of Europe. This book examines the first millennium A.D. worldwide context of Cassiodorus and the situation he and his contemporaries experienced. Can we draw any comparisons with today's global changes?

19 papers presented at the Proceedings of a Prehistoric Society conference at Sheffield University in February 2001.

Exekias inscribes his signature on several of his vases, and so he is one of the relatively few archaic painters whose real name is known to us. He is arguably one of the most accomplished and innovative of all black-figure vase-painters working in Athens in the sixth century BC, and also one of the most intriguing. Although his corpus of extant works is rather small, his impact on his contemporaries and immediate successors can be judged to have been disproportionately large. His painting style is not idiosyncratic, and so may be described as distinguished rather than distinctive; it is nevertheless readily identifiable as much for its technical quality as for the creative conceptualization of the scenes. His range of subjects, the exquisite precision of his execution, and above all his technical and conceptual innovation are the hallmarks of his personal style, and there is scarcely a book on Greek vase-painting that does not use one of his vases to illustrate the peak of achievement in the black-figure technique, yet there is a dearth of monograph studies of his work. This extensive work pays homage to this great artist, including the construction of a persuasive chronology of Exekias' extant paintings through a comprehensive process of comparative analysis.

Our picture of Iron Age and Archaic Crete is constantly changing due to the increasing number of field investigations that reveal new information on these centuries. Results from many recent excavations (at sites like Azoria in Eastern Crete and Thronos/Kephala (ancient Sybrita) in the Western region of the island) will eventually transform our view of the period. The focus of this particular study is centred on sites with a long-established history of research. Sites like, for example, Phaistos, Knossos, Praisos, Axos, Dreros, Gortyn, Vrokastro, Kavousi, Kato Syme and Aphrati have thus received a large amount of attention in the analyses. However, the author has also tried to introduce lesser well-known sites of a rural character in order to obtain a more varied rendering of Iron Age and Archaic Crete. As the title indicates, she is interested in site variations within the different site-categories and how these change during the 8th, 7th and 6th centuries.

Society for Arabian Studies Monographs No. 9In the centuries around the turn of our era, long distance trade based on the monsoon winds connected all coasts of the western Indian Ocean. Ships from India, Arabia, Egypt, East Africa and Mesopotamia conveyed luxuries such as silk, spices and slaves, but also subsistence goods including grain and inexpensive textiles between coasts separated by thousands of kilometres of water. In the same period the first complex societies emerged in parts of Africa and Southern India. In other regions existing states reorganised or were replaced or marginalised by new polities. This study aims at exploring the significance of maritime commerce to societies on the Indian Ocean rim, by examining how rulers adjusted their policy in order to control and profit from trade. The point of departure is the anonymous Greek first century AD Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. This is a guide to navigation and trade on the Indian Ocean, covering the coasts of the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, East Africa and India. The unknown author, who to a large extent relied on personal experience, included not only sailing directions, but also a wealth of information on local products, markets and political conditions. Chapter 1 introduces the subject and the setting. Chapter 2 discusses how to measure the impact of trade on complex societies. Chapter 3 deals with the content and reliability of the Periplus. Other chapters survey the situation along the coasts of Arabia, Africa and western / southern India in detail, and argue that rulers and states utilised a range of policies in order to profit from the monsoon trade.

A feast is a sensory, sacralised and social occasion. Its multiple resonances and experiences extend far beyond the nutritive consumption of food and drink by a group of people. To understand a feasting event more comprehensively, it is necessary to analyse the whole series of experiences that the original participant would have undergone during the course of a feast, and to trace the footsteps of the diner through each stage of what was presumably a major event in his/her calendar. While the author examines the totality of feasting occasions in this book, her principal focus lies on how feasts serve as an arena for social negotiations: the creation of obligations to a powerful host, the cohesion augmented between companions, the privileging of high-status individuals, the emphasised inferiority of those of lesser status, and the creation of new connections through shared emotive experiences. This work thus explores on a broad scale the multi-faceted use of feasting in mainland Greece by placing it in a diachronic perspective, commencing at the beginning of the Early Mycenaean period (MHIII/LHI) and continuing to the end of the Early Iron Age (EIA). This long-range study is given focus by viewing it specifically from the angle of social changes, developments and negotiations, in order to analyse how socio-political events in Greece throughout the nine centuries under consideration both affected commensal events and were directly or indirectly produced by them.

Ar Rasfa is a Middle Paleolithic open-air site located in the Rift Valley of Northwest Jordan excavated between 1997-1999. This book presents a detailed technological, typological, and paleoanthropological analysis of the stone tool assemblage from Ar Rasfa. Artifacts reflecting the initial preparation and exploitation of local flint sources dominate the Ar Rasfa assemblage. Typologically, the assemblage is most similar to Levantine Mousterian assemblages such as those from Naamé, Skhul and Qafzeh. Patterns of lithic variability and contextual evidence suggest Ar Rasfa was visited intermittently by human populations circulating between lake/river-edge resources in the Rift Valley bottom and woodland habitats along the ridge of the Transjordan Plateau.

In this paper the authors study a specific type of pottery from the northwest Iberian Peninsula, known as the Wide Horizontal Rim (WHR) vessel. One of its distinctive aspects is precisely the fact that it is exclusively found in this region, which now comprises the Spanish region of Galicia and northern Portugal, as far south as the River Duero. This type of pottery, of which there are only scarce references in literature, has a greater impact than its presence in the archaeological record. For this reason, the authors carried out the first systematic global study for the region, consisting on identifying the WHR pottery type from an extensive catalogue of 76 vessels, some of which are little-known or completely unknown, characterising the pottery as the first step. Four formal groups were identified, only two of which can be referred to as WHR vessels (WHR1 or the 'classic' shape, and WHR2), while the other two groups are referred to as vessels with WHR. They then contextualise the different groups classified in the different types of sites to which they are associated, in three main spheres where WHR vessels are found: the funerary sphere (the best known), domestic sphere and undetermined, in a total of 49 archaeological sites. In the north of Portugal, the archaeological record points towards a preferred distribution of these sites in the interior, on the contrary to the situation found in Galicia, where there seems to have been a preference for coastal areas. After examining the contexts the authors offer a summary and review of the available datings associated with WHR vessels to date in order to propose a chronological table, indicating the distribution of WHR vessels and vessels with WHR over time, based on an analysis of the absolute and relativechronology.

Archaeological investigations of the systems of agriculture and irrigation at two sites in Northwest Argentina: El Shincal and Los Colorados.

South American Archaeology Series No 23Reliable sex and age estimate on human bone remains is a fundamental aspect in bioarchaeological investigation since such estimates represent the basis on which supplementary studies aiming at contributing to the knowledge of biological and cultural aspects of prehistoric populations are structured. However, since many features, both metrical and morphological ones are specific for each population, and knowing that growth and development patterns as well as sexual dimorphism vary among groups, this work aims at understanding sex and age biological markers on archaeological osteological collections from the Northwest of Argentina. These collections are made up of different sets of skeletons belonging to native populations and fitting different time periods. The fundamental objective of this work has been to study the behavior of sex and age variability general pattern inside and among the collections observed, and, therefore, basic information concerning age and sex patterns of the whole population set they belong to can be provided.

This book investigates the archaeological evidence for crafts and production in early medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100, with a particular focus on the extensive excavated evidence from rural secular and ecclesiastical settlements. The volume firstly provides an overview of the social and ideological contexts of crafts and technologies in early Ireland. It then outlines the extant evidence specifically for iron-working, non-ferrous metalworking, glass, enamel and millefiori, bone, antler and horn, and stone working, and characterises each craft practice in terms of scale, outputs and implications for society. Tables provide additional information on wood craft and pottery. The book then provides a detailed review of the use of different materials in dress and ornament, touches on cloth and textile production, and explores how social identities were performed through objects and material practices. The book then provides a voluminous site gazetteer accounting for all evidence for craft and production on hundreds of early medieval settlements, with numerous tables of data, site plans, artefact drawings and photographs and an extensive bibliography. The book is based on the work of the Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP), which was funded through the Irish Heritage Council and Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht's INSTAR programme, a collaborative research project carried out by University College Dublin and Queens University Belfast which reviewed all archaeological excavations in Ireland between c.1930-2012. This particular book, building on EMAP's previous studies of dwellings and settlements, and agriculture and economy, provides the baseline for a generation of studies of early medieval crafts and production in Ireland in its northwest European contexts.

The Chalcolithic wedge tombs of Ireland represent a dramatic re-emergence of megalithism over a millennium after most Neolithic megaliths were built and many centuries after most had gone out of use. This resurgence of building monuments associated with the dead may well have been associated with a period of social instability caused by the expansion of exchange networks and associated with the introduction of metallurgy. Regional, group, and individual identities all seem to have undergone change at this time, probably in a dynamic demographic context. Variations in the distribution and scale of wedge tombs in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, provide an interesting study that may reveal a pattern of clan affiliations, status competition, and enduring links to an important and ancient locale.

Provincias de Buenos Aires y Mendoza Argentina

This study began with an intensive search to identify all prehistoric sites with soapstone artifacts in Maryland and the District of Columbia. A review of published and unpublished records and interviews with avocational archaeologists found that the number of (precisely and imprecisely mapped) is at least 340. Avocational archaeologists had collected most of the reported soapstone artifacts, and surface collecting was the most common form of artifact retrieval. These situations result in limited site contextual information and restricted opportunity to interpret site activities. The findings of this study include that soapstone use increased during the Late Archaic and remained high, at least for certain artifacts, through the Woodland periods. The few 14C dates associated with soapstone vessels in the study area and neighboring states point to the initial use of bowls around 3600-2900 BP. Consideration of the distribution of the soapstone sites and review of the anthropological literature on trade and exchange point to three major means by which Native Americans in the study area obtained soapstone artifacts: direct unfettered procurement; direct access with use of an intermediate site as staging area; and exchange with a social group which quarried and made the items. Future developments in provenance studies of soapstone may assist archaeologists in matching artifacts with their quarries. My own experiments on the manufacturing of a preform bowl demonstrate the relative effectiveness of stone and bone chisels, as well as how archaeologists might best detect soapstone debitage at sites during field testing. I suggest that two factors led to the inhabitants of the Middle Atlantic switching to ceramics: first that there was a search for more easily obtainable materials to make watertight, fire-resistant vessels; and second that the increased use of ceramics led to an increase in their mechanical properties, making them a more desirable product.

In Spain there are the remains of and references to 73 dams from the Roman era, constructed between the 1st. and 4th. centuries a.C. Fourty five of them have been located and detailed in this study.

This is a study on textile production in central Tyrrhenian Italy from the final Bronze Age to the Republican period. Textile production is studied here through its technological, social and economic aspects. Textiles and their making were important parts of all fields of life in ancient Italy. Textiles and textile implements are found from settlement sites, burials, votive deposits and sanctuaries. The differences between the finds from different contexts through time point out the changes in material culture related to textile-making. The changes in the materials also indicate the change from household production of textiles to a workshop mode of production and specialisation, and later the development of slave involvement. Through the scope of this study one learns that textile production went through the introduction of many new technologies. This book presents new insights on the importance of textile-making in the ancient society and economy. The question of the importance of textile-making is approached through different angles concerning age, gender, ethnicity, social status, profession and religion, and in so doing a new insight on the multifaceted identity of textile makers and their social status is built.

In the last century, researchers have uncovered approximately 50 Roman forts via excavations in Raetia. The rapid technological advancement of the last two decades allowed to use a variety of non-destructive methods, which enabled the discovery of more than 30 forts and Roman military installations, previously unknown. Furthermore, these new methods allowed observation of the mostly unknown inner layout of previously known forts, which led to many cases of chronologies being drastically redefined, as these had previously been dependent on find typologies. New inscriptions displaying the names of units have also been found, which enriches our knowledge on provincial military history. H. -J. Kellner's 1971 system for the dislocation of auxiliary troops in Raetia is still used by those who publish Roman military diplomas; an overall re-examination and reestablishment is yet to be done. This book aims to: collect, organize and examine different sources of Roman military history in Raetia; establish the dislocation system of the army during the Principate; and provide an up-to-date synthesis of the social, economic and religious aspects of the army in provincial life.

This monograph deals with the destruction and disappearance of the palaces and palace societies of Late Bronze Age or Mycenaean Greece c.1200 and aspects of continuity and change in the subsequent Postpalatial period of the twelfth and eleventh centuries (LHIIIC). It is primarily concerned with mainland Greece and the islands, excluding Crete. An emphasis in this work, where analysis of the Greek material itself or theories based upon it is attempted, is the potential for differences between palatial and non-palatial areas. In order to set in context the discussion of collapse and of Postpalatial society, Chapter 1 is a brief introduction to Mycenaean material culture and interpretations of Mycenaean society. A limited survey is also offered, in order to clarify the extent and chronology of the collapse. Chapter 2 reviews developments in general collapse theory as drawn from recent and major publications. It further examines recent discussion of specific examples of collapse to identify current trends in interpretation. Chapter 3 critically examines theories of the Mycenaean collapse, concentrating on major styles of interpretation and ending in a discussion of the present consensus. Chapter 4 uses recent discussions of the Hittite, Maya and Roman collapses and continuities to suggest possible analogies for processes at work in LBA Greece. Chapter 5 examines the evidence for migrations and population mobility in Postpalatial Greece, discussing settlements and sites, and noting the contribution of survey. Chapter 6 deals with changes in rulership and social structure in the Postpalatial period, emphasising distinctions between areas of Greece that had palaces and non-palatial regions. The conclusion draws together the preceding discussions.

This study highlights a range of theoretical problems concerning Levantine Iron Age archaeology. Following the introduction, Chapter 2 provides the background for the study as a whole, tracing the archaeological study of the Iron Age southern Levant from the early nineteenth century to the present day. This highlights how and why archaeologists have changed their ideas about the narrative in question through time whilst also retaining a number of key ideas. Chapter 3 traces the archaeological study of 'Edomite' archaeology in the southern Levant in particular. Chapter 4 begins the critique of the key ideas and assumptions that underpin 'Edomite' archaeology by demonstrating that the individual historical sources used as evidence when discussing the 'Edomites' are not simply sources of factual information about the Iron Age. Chapter 5 takes a similarly critical approach to the methods of archaeological excavation, interpretation, and analysis used in south Levantine Iron Age archaeology. Chapter 6 completes the critique of the central ideas that form the basis of 'Edomite' archaeology by discussing the central tenets of archaeological theory concerning the relationship between material culture and identity that are required to support this idea. Chapter 7 outlines the methodology used in this study, which was designed to test whether specific ceramic types do in fact support the present interpretation of the late Iron Age southern Levant. The results of the analysis using this methodology are presented in Chapter 8. In Chapter 9 the implications of the preceding chapters are discussed and an interpretation of the evidence which does not rely on traditional problematic assumptions will be presented. Final conclusions are drawn in Chapter 10.

Edited by Katina T. Lillios, Anna J. Waterman, Jennifer Mack, Joe Alan Artz and Liv Nilsson-StutzThis volume presents the results of archaeological research conducted at the Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age burial site of Bolores between 2007 and 2012, which built on work carried out in 1986. Bolores is a small site (5 x 3 m), yet the analysis of its structure and associated materials have yielded a rich and nuanced picture of a small population of people who lived, and died, in the third and second millennia BC in the Portuguese Estremadura. Although our research focused on the small-scale, it also attempted to bridge this perspective with the larger social and cultural dynamics at play during the time. It advocates, in its own way, for greater attention to the micro-scale: small sites, small objects, bone fragments, and details in ritual practice. In a time when Big Data, Big History, and global phenomena loom large in public and scholarly imagination, we think it is also important to understand the variegated texture of local, small-scale social practices, which, after all, are linked to broader sociocultural phenomena and hold the key to understanding resistance and social change.

Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 89This research is a departure from the traditional archaeological pottery analysis in Kenya, where emphasis has been on decorations and forms. It uses a technological approach to offer additional information on Bantu pottery. Pottery decorations and forms are still powerful instruments in defining the spatial and temporal distributions of prehistoric populations, but the ability of these attributes to mark social boundaries is limited by their obvious visibility on the finished product. Whilst this explicit visibility is an advantage for archaeologists who seek to explore temporal and spatial distributions of different wares, it is problematic, since it is possible for socially, ethnically, and linguistically distinct communities to copy from each other, making salient pottery features unreliable indicators of social boundaries. Therefore, this study emphasises the production stage, which is not as obvious on the finished product and must be learnt by apprenticeship only through kinship. This study sought to establish the social boundaries for makers of Tana ware; an Iron Age pottery attributed by some to Bantu speakers, whilst others attribute it to Cushitic speakers. Chaîne opératoire was used as an analytical tool for archaeological data collected from Manda and Ungwana site assemblages. Ethnographic reference data was collected from Cushitic and Bantu speakers from the Coastal and Highland regions of Kenya. Ethno-historical data was derived from library resources, while experimental data were obtained from the field.

Chichén Itzá is a UNESCO-designated World Heritage site, one of the largest and most accessible Maya archaeological areas in southern Mexico. The densely clustered architecture of the site core covers an area of at least 6.5 square kilometres, and smaller scale residential architecture extends for an unknown distance beyond the site core. Although the history of archaeological study of the site extends back over a century, the most significant and productive effort was that directed between 1924 and 1940 by Sylvanus G. Morley under the sponsorship of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Morley prepared a draft of a Guide Book to the Ruins of Chichén Itzá in 1946, which has since languished in the archaeological archives. Although dated and probably quaint by modern standards, Morley's guide to Chichén Itzá remains the only synthesis of the site based on almost 20 years of excavation, consolidation, and restoration of the ruins. Our interest in publishing Morley's manuscript was based on several factors: it was Morley's last written work; it was the only synthesis of Morley's work on Chichén Itzá; and, quite simply, it is a work important to the history of the study of Maya archaeology. Several modifications have been made to the manuscript. We have attempted to leave as much of the original text as written by Morley. Sections that have been corrected by more recent research are amended and included as notes. Repetitious text has been removed and obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been corrected. Notes have been added by the editors to explain or amplify statements in the manuscript. In addition, written commentary on the original manuscript by Karl Ruppert has been included as notes.

The present volume is based on research articles submitted as part of an international conference Exploring Human Origins: Exciting discoveries at the start of the 21st Century', 5-10 August 2013 in Manchester, UK, under the auspices of the International Union of the Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES). The main focus of these papers was to record the more recent fossil, archaeological and genomic discoveries in the field of human origins and evolution, besides a few very significant ones made in 1990s. This volume presents the findings of various researchers that highlight different perspectives contributing to the greater understanding of human origins and ongoing evolution.

Edited by F. Pimenta, N. Ribeiro, F. Silva, N. Campion, A Joaquinito and L. Tirapicos.Proceedings of the SEAC 2011 conference.Since Prehistory, the sky has always been integrated as part of the cosmovision of human societies. The sky played a fundamental role not only in the orientation of space, time organization, ritual practices or celestial divination, but also as an element of power. Migrations and voyages are intrinsic to humankind, they opened the routes for cultural diffusion and trade, but also for power dominance. Following these routes is also to follow cultural diversity and how human societies met or clashed. The sky and astronomical phenomena provided the tools for time reckoning, calendar organization and celestial navigation that supported those voyages. Astronomy today gives us the capacity to reproduce the sky, opening a window through which we can glimpse how those societies perceived, integrated and manipulated the sky into their world-views and their myths and, ultimately, into their social organization. The papers presented in this volume were submitted after the 19th meeting of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture, Évora, Portugal, 19th-23rd September, 2011.