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12,000 years ago the area that now forms the southern North Sea was dry land: a vast plain populated by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. By 5,500 BC the entire area had disappeared beneath the sea as a consequence of rising sea levels. Until now, this unique landscape remained hidden from view and almost entirely unknown. The North Sea Palaeolandscape Project, funded by the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, have mapped 23,000 km2 of this “lost world” using seismic data collected for mineral exploration. "Mapping Doggerland" demonstrates that the North Sea covers one of the largest and best preserved prehistoric landscapes in Europe. In mapping this exceptional landscape the project has begun to provide an insight into the historic impact of the last great phase of global warming experienced by modern man and to assess the significance of the massive loss of European land that occurred as a consequence of climate change. Contents: 1) Mapping Doggerland Vincent Gaffney and Kenneth Thomson; 2) Coordinating Marine Survey Data Sources (Mark Bunch, Vincent Gaffney and Kenneth Thomson); 3) 3D Seismic Reflection Data, Associated Technologies and the Development of the Project Methodology (Kenneth Thomson and Vincent Gaffney); 4. Merging Technologies: The integration and visualisation of spatial data sets used in the project (Simon Fitch, Vincent Gaffney and Kenneth Thomson); 5) A Geomorphological Investigation of Submerged Depositional Features within the Outer Silver Pit, Southern North Sea (Simon Fitch, Vincent Gaffney and Kenneth Thomson; 6) Salt Tectonics in the Southern North Sea: Controls on Late Pleistocene-Holocene Geomorphology (Simon Holford, Kenneth Thomson and Vincent Gaffney); 7) An Atlas of the Palaeolandscapes of the Southern North Sea (Simon Fitch, Vincent Gaffney, Kenneth Thomson with Kate Briggs, Mark Bunch and Simon Holford); 8) The Potential of the Organic Archive for Environmental Reconstruction: An Assessment of Selected Borehole Sediments from the Southern North Sea (David Smith, Simon Fitch, Ben Gearey, Tom Hill, Simon Holford, Andy Howard and Christina Jolliffe); 9) Heritage Management and the North Sea Palaeolandscapes Project (Simon Fitch, Vincent Gaffney and Kenneth Thomson).See further information at Mapping Doggerland

The Archaeology and Epigraphy of Indus Writing is a detailed examination of the Indus script. It presents new analysis based on an expansive text corpus using revolutionary analytical techniques developed specifically for the purpose of deciphering the Indus script. This exploration of Indus writing examines the structure of Indus text at a level of detail that has never been possible before. This advance in analytic techniques is combined with detailed linguistic information to suggest a root language for the Indus script. Further the syntax of the Indus script is demonstrated to match a Dravidian language. In the process of analysis the place name for the ancient Indus site of Dholavira is identified. This leads to the eventual identification of 17 signs with various levels of certainty. These readings lead to the partial definition of the Indus system of affixing. Using innovative analytical techniques Indus signs can be defined functionally as logographic or syllabic. Further, specific sign sequences are identified as verbs or nouns. The volumetric system used at Harappa during the Indus period is demonstrated. This discovery gives us a good idea of the scale and process of Indus exchange. The Indus inscriptions are analyzed with an emphasis on their archaeological contexts. The analysis presented in this book represents a significant advancement in our understanding of Indus writing.Bryan K. Wells is an archaeologist, epigrapher and geographer. He has excavated on the east and west coasts of North America and in Pakistan. Wells has studied ancient writing systems, including the Indus script, since 1990, and holds a PhD. in anthropology from Harvard University.

The Roman Cemetery at Nemesbőd belonged to a settlement or a villa which was located on the territory of the Roman colony of Savaria (present day Szombathey, Hungary) in Pannonia. The book deals with thirty-seven graves, which consisted of mainly cremation but also of some inhumation burials. Detailed analysis of grave goods (bronze vessels, pottery, glass, personal accessories, lamps etc.) provides a study of burial customs and their evolution. In addition, specialist reports on human remains and animal bone as well as on epigraphic material are presented.

The transition process of the Roman city between the Early Roman period and Late Antiquity is difficult to understand due to the absence of urban models and the decline in epigraphy. The transformations that accompany this period are detectable in the western provinces of the Empire from a very early time. Their interpretation –crisis, mutation, etc.– varies with each study case. Ancient Cartagena (Hispania Citerior) is a paradigm of these changes. Starting under Marcus Aurelius, the city began to show symptoms of exhaustion, at the same time as literary and epigraphic evidence began to decline, until it disappeared altogether. In these pages we aim to contribute –and at the same time vindicate– an approach to discovering more about the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD based on the archaeological record and taking into account the stratigraphic sequences and especially the pottery material culture. The compiled documentation begins with a triple vocation: to serve as an instrument for dating; to provide quantified data about Carthago Nova’s patterns of consumption, way of life and trading links; and to understand the evolution of the city in a period from which the urban model of the Late Period emerged.Spanish text with English summary.

In a world without plastics, ceramics, alongside organic containers, were used for almost every substance which required protection or containment: from perfume to porridge. The experience of an Etruscan person, living day to day, would have been filled with interactions with ceramics, making them objects which can recall intimate transactions in the past to the archaeologist in the present. Characterising that experience of Etruscan pottery is the concern of this book. What was it like to use and live with Etruscan pottery? How was the interaction between an Etruscan pot structured and constituted? How can that experience be related back to bigger questions about the organisation of Etruscan society, its increasingly urban nature and relationship with other Mediterranean cultures? More specifically, this volume aims to unpick both the physical encounter between vessel and hand, and the emotional interaction between the user of a pot and the images inscribed upon its surface.

The invention of the wheel is often highlighted as one of humankinds’ most significant inventions. Wheels do not exist in nature, and so can be viewed entirely as a human-inspired invention. Machinery too, was relatively rare in the ancient world. The potter’s wheel is arguably the most significant machine introduced into Egypt, second only perhaps to the drill, the loom and the bellows for smelting metal. In Predynastic Egypt (c3500 B.C.), the traditional methods of hand-building pottery vessels were already successful in producing pottery vessels of high quality on a large scale for the domestic market, so it would seem that the potter’s wheel was a rather superfluous invention. However, the impact of this innovation would not just have affected the Egyptian potters themselves learning a new skill, but also signalled the beginnings of a more complex and technologically advanced society.Despite many years work on the technology of pottery production it is perhaps surprising that the origins of the potter’s wheel in Egypt have yet to be determined. This present project seeks to rectify this situation by determining when the potter’s wheel was introduced into Egypt, establishing in what contexts wheel thrown pottery occurs, and considering the reasons why the Egyptians introduced the wheel when a well-established hand making pottery industry already existed.

This volume presents a series of studies of the wine from Hispania Citerior-Tarraconensis traded in amphorae, with the aim of demonstrating (as has recently been done for the amphora production) the existence of different trade dynamics, according to individual cases, territories and periods. While seeking to avoid descriptions of a generalised nature, the present volume aims to illustrate the complexity of the trading system, emphasizing intra- and inter-provincial commercial patterns and the way in which these evolved during the period considered. Although this work includes the results of a few highly specific case studies (which cannot replace the findings from other better or lesser known sites), they cover most of the areas of wine production and trade and all the dimensions of analysis in which archaeological, epigraphic and literary data related to the commercial distribution might be framed.

Egyptian Cultural Identity in the Architecture of Roman Egypt (30 BC–AD 325) considers the relationship between architectural form and different layers of identity assertion in Roman Egypt. The Roman province of Aegyptus was a peculiar province such that many scholars have generally assumed that it was given a special status in the Roman Empire. The text covers the period from the Roman conquest of Egypt under Octavian in 30 BC to the official recognition of Christianity in AD 325. It stresses the sophistication of the concept of identity, and the complex yet close association between architecture and identity. This monograph is the outcome of four years of research at the Department of Classics and Ancient History, the University of Durham. The book will be of interest and value for both Classicists and Egyptologists working on the archaeology of Egypt under Roman rule and the concept of identity.

This study (the second volume in the Archaeopress series devoted to the publication of ceramics in the Roman Mediterranean and outlying territories from the late Republic to late Antiquity) addresses the level of interregional trade of ceramic building material (CBM), traditionally seen as a high bulk low value commodity, within the ancient Mediterranean between the third century BC and the seventh century AD. It examines the impact of different modes of production, distribution and consumption of CBM and how archaeological assemblages differ from what is predicted by current models of the ancient economy. It also explores how CBM can be used to investigate cultural identity and urban form. CBM has great potential in investigating these topics. It survives in large quantities in the archaeological record; it is transported as a commodity in its own right, not as a container for other products like amphorae. The amount of CBM used in a building can be estimated, and this can be extrapolated to urban centres to model consumption in ways that are not possible for other goods. This allows the potential derivation of economic information to a higher level of precision than is the case for other materials. The material used in this study derives from stratified assemblages from two major ports of the ancient Mediterranean: Carthage and Beirut. CBM as a material is comparable to pottery, only it does not exhibit the same range of forms. This leaves fabric as a major means of analysing CBM samples. For this reason a programme of petrological thin sectioning has been carried out on these assemblages. These data have been combined with the taphonomic and dating evidence from the excavations. The results showed that the levels of imports of CBM into these two cities were much higher than would normally be expected from the orthodox model of the consumer city. They also suggest that CBM can be used as a tool to investigate cultural identity.This study is the second volume in the Archaeopress series devoted to the publication of ceramics in the Roman Mediterranean and outlying territories from the late Republic to late Antiquity. See below for LRFW 1. Late Roman Fine Wares. Solving problems of typology and chronology. A review of the evidence, debate and new contexts (2012) edited by Miguel Ángel Cau, Paul Reynolds and Michel Bonifay. ISBN 9781905739462.

This work investigates a large assemblage of potentially late-dated Roman ceramics excavated in the early 1990s during rescue interventions in Vigo (N/E Spain) and its surroundings. It is well established that much of this material originated from the Mediterranean, especially the eastern provinces of the Empire. Based on the analyses of these investigations, this study goes on to assess the extent of the Atlantic distribution route and link the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula well within the trading dynamics of the Mediterranean world.

These two barrows in the parish of Tixall, north of Stafford, were excavated by the Stoke‐on‐Trent Museum Archaeological Society between the years 1986 and 1994. They are approximately one kilometre apart with King’s Low still extant but Queen’s Low badly damaged by ploughing. The results are important because little excavation of round barrows has been carried out in this area of North Staffordshire and these add considerably to the local corpus of knowledge concerning Early Bronze Age burial practices and various categories of material culture including Collared Urns and a single faience bead at each site.

This book examines systematically both the theoretical and practical issues that have characterized the discipline over the past two centuries. Some of the historically most consequential mistakes in archaeology are dissected and explained, together with the effects of the related controversies. The theoretical basis of the discipline is deliberated in some detail, leading to the diagnosis that there are in fact numerous archaeologies, all with different notions of commensurability, ideologies, and purposes. Their various perspectives of what archaeology is and does are considered and the range of views of the human past is illuminated in this book. How humans became what they are today is of profound importance to understanding ourselves, both as a species and individually. Our psychology, cognition, diseases, intellect, communication forms, physiology, predispositions, ideologies, culture, genetics, behavior, and, perhaps most importantly, our reality constructs are all the result of our evolutionary history. Therefore the models archaeology—especially Pleistocene archaeology—creates of our past are not just narratives of what happened in human history; they are fundamental to every aspect of our existence.

This book seeks to address the journeying context of pilgrimage within the landscapes of Medieval Britain. Using four case studies, an interdisciplinary methodology developed by the author is applied to four different geographical and cultural areas of Britain (Norfolk, Wiltshire/Hampshire, Flintshire/Denbighshire and Cornwall), to investigate the practicalities of travel along the Medieval road network including the routes themselves, accommodation, the built environments and natural topographies encountered. An introduction, assessment of current theory and scholarship is provided, followed by an explanation of the methodology used. The four case studies are then presented (Ely to Walsingham, Salisbury to Winchester, St Asaph to Holywell, and Camelford to Bodmin). Within each case study, both the selected starting point for the pilgrimage (typically either a locale confirmed in the historical record as linked to the pilgrim destination, or a settlement of some significance within the local area and thus well connected to the route network), and the site of the saint cult itself are analysed for their growth, reaction and accommodation to the pilgrim phenomenon. Also addressed are the route networks of the county as a whole, relationships to economic centres and their impact on travel possibilities, the topography, the distribution patterns for saint dedications in parish churches within the area, material culture and the ecclesiastical built environment (for example pilgrim badges, monasteries), and the physical landscapes through which the pilgrim travels. Here, the interaction between the pilgrim and the environments through which they move is addressed. Considerations include fatigue, exertion, panoramas and way-finding, route visibility, sight lines to monuments, folklore within the landscape, and the potential echoing of Christian scriptural motifs within certain landscape types/features (e.g. wilderness and sanctuary).

The author’s original aim in writing this book was to chronicle the story of a very specific debate in human evolutionary studies that took place between the late 1880s and the 1930s – the ‘eolith’ debate that had to do with small, natural stones whose shape and edges suggested to our earliest ancestors their use as tools, either as they were, or with a small amount of chipping to the stone’s edge, a process called ‘retouch’. These were the most primitive of tools, thought to date to the very beginning of human cultural evolution, and therefore suited to our very earliest ancestors. The more the author researched this topic the more he realised that its explanation was rooted in a number of research questions which today are considered separate subjects, and, gradually, a book that was to be about a forgotten Palaeolithic debate became a book that was just as much about ‘Morlocks’, stone tools, racial difference, and the Anthropological Society of London. The major themes of this study include: Apart from interconnectivity itself, the development of Palaeolithic archaeology, its relationship with the study of human physical anthropology in Britain and, to a much lesser extent, on the Continent; The links between these and the study of race and racial origins; The question of human origins itself; The link with geological developments in climate and glacial studies; The public perception of the whole ‘origins’ question and its relationship with ‘race’; How the public got its information on origins-related questions, and in what form this was presented to them; a review of the opening phase of the eolith debate (1889-1895/6) as a logical extension of developments in a number of these areas (e.g. Victorian science fiction). This fascinating book incorporates original research with synthesis and overview, and at the same time presents original perspectives derived from the author’s overall arrangement of the material. While the targeted readership includes postgraduates and third-year undergraduates, the work is very much intended as accessible to the non-academic reader wanting to know more about a subject that (re)touches on everyone.

The bearded and mature figure of Christ stands majestically raising his right hand, open palm facing the viewer. In his left he holds an unfurled scroll. Saints Peter and Paul appear on either side, Peter approaching to catch or protect the dangling bookroll. This image, the so-called traditio legis, first appeared in late fourthcentury Rome in a variety of media, from the monumental to the miniature, including mosaic, catacomb painting, gold-glass and, the most numerous group, marble relief carving on sarcophagi.This monograph engages in a close reading of the traditio legis, highlighting its novelty and complexity to early Christian viewers. The image is analyzed as a conflation of two distinct forms of representation, each constructed of unusual and potentially multivalent elements. Iconographical details like the hirsute Christ, his gesture, Peter’s covered hands and the unorthodox positioning of the two saints are examined in isolation and as elements of the whole. The synthetic composition invited alternative and over-determined meanings.

Two hundred years ago, on September 8, 1814, in the northern French city of Bourbourg, a boy was born into a family of local entrepreneurs connected to the local political or judicial elite. The young Charles-Etienne Brasseur was lucky to spend days and days in the impressive library of Alexandre Nicolas Muchembled, the son of his godmother. The reading of exciting travel books there mapped out the course of his truly adventurous life to come. Although a rebellious schoolboy, he acquired a huge knowledge in many fields by his omnivorous reading of books and journals. He was also a very curious young man, delving into the private libraries of the local grand families, resulting in him contributing many historical articles to newspapers and learned societies. At the age of 24, while still in high school, he published his first novel.This biography is the first to reveal insights into the many facets of the life of Brasseur; the extent of his secret activities for the Vatican; his advanced ideas regarding the dual phonetic and ideographic nature of Mayan writing, as early as 1843-44, and explicitly confirmed by him in May 1852, which he later dramatically rejected in 1870, thus failing to become the Champollion of Mesoamerica; his continuous attempts to preserve documents while crossing territories ravaged by civil wars; the immense value of the manuscripts he saved, like the Tzeltal vocabulary of Copanabastla or the Motul dictionary; his unique dedication in copying old manuscripts, with the help of his nephews, to be sent to other pioneers of Mayan studies in Europe and America; his short-lived pioneering work on the Huave (Wabis); details of his six expeditions to Mesoamerica, often in terrible conditions, as shown by his later severe ill health; his defence of the Indians against the academic community; details of the internal conflicts in the Quebec Catholic Church; and his ideas on certain geophysical events, such as the elevation of ocean beds and islands, which he wrongly dated to the time of the ancient Mayans, or the shifting of the Earth’s rotation axis.

The theme of this study is the large-scale exploitation of different stone products that took place in Norway during the Viking Age and the Middle Ages (c. AD 800–1500). The research is based on analyses of two different quarry landscapes in Western Norway: the quernstone quarries in Hyllestad, Sogn og Fjordane, and the bakestone quarries in Ølve and Hatlestrand, Hordaland. The centre of attention is the production of utility artefacts: quernstones, millstones and bakestones, and more symbolic products such as stone crosses. The production landscapes are also assessed within wider socio-economic perspectives related to organisation, control and landownership. Following the different products, from production in the quarries to their distribution and use in both urban and rural contexts in Northern Europe, questions regarding trade and networks are addressed. The material is also discussed and assessed in wider methodological and theoretical contexts, and an aim is to illuminate the control and right of use related to the quarrying, also to examine the groups of actors behind production as well as distribution and trade.

The number and density of megalithic chambered cairns in the Isles of Scilly, a tiny archipelago that forms the most south-westerly part of the British Isles, has been remarked upon since the 18th century. Isles of the Dead? examines these sites, generally known as entrance graves, and the associated cist graves. Their physical structure and contents, as well as their landscape setting, orientation and inter-visibility, are discussed. The origins and functions of the monuments and their significance to the communities that built and used them are also considered. The findings indicate that the entrance graves were indeed used for burial and that a wide range of grave goods, including prestige items, were placed in them. The pottery, in particular, shows the development of a specific island identity. The first radiocarbon determinations from the graves suggest a period of use between c2000 and 1250 cal BC. This coincides with the inundation of large areas of low-lying land in the islands and suggests that the construction of entrance graves may have been regarded as a way of ‘holding the line’ against the depredations of the sea.

Although world-renowned, Pompeii, the first Roman site to be excavated and one of the most visited and best-studied archaeological sites in the world, still has unanswered questions to yield, especially in terms of its long-term development from pre-Roman times. The extensive excavations (1995–2006) by the Anglo-American Project in Pompeii (AAPP) has provided a rare insight into chronological change within the city of Pompeii. This research was significant as an insula block within the city of Pompeii had never previously been excavated in its entirety. The analysis of all the recovered seeds, fruits and cereal remains has provided a unique research opportunity to undertake a diachronic study of urban Roman plant food consumption and discards. Over the past two centuries of excavations at Pompeii only a handful of published works dealing with botanical evidence have been published. The results from this study demonstrate a standard Mediterranean archaeobotanical assemblage recovered from Insula VI.1 which included wheat, barley, legumes, olives, grapes and figs. A wider diversity of fruits, pulses, and additional cereals, especially broomcorn millet were also found. These results support the established view that Pompeii was a fully urbanised city in the 1st century B.C.

This volume presents the results of the Italian excavations and surveys carried out in Transjordan between 1927 and 1938. After a first excavation campaign conducted in 1927 on the Amman Citadel by Giacomo Guidi, the excavations were resumed in 1929 by Renato Bartoccini (Rome 1893–Rome 1963), who carried out four campaigns on the Citadel in 1929, 1930, 1933 and 1938. He also travelled across modern Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, taking photos and writing reports on several archaeological sites. Bartoccini published a few notes and reports, but almost all the original documentation of his work was still unpublished at the time this study was conducted. The main source of data is the Fondo Renato Bartoccini, i.e. the private archive of Bartoccini, today held by the University of Perugia, while other useful documents are kept in other archives in Macerata and in Rome. Furthermore, some decorated Islamic pottery from the excavations on the Citadel is held at the Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche in Faenza. The retrieved photos, excavation journals, letters, and administrative documents make it possible to understand, after almost a century, how the Citadel of Amman appeared at the time of its first excavation.

In this book Philip Bes summarises the results of his PhD thesis (Catholic University of Leuven) on the analysis of production trends and complex, quantified distribution patterns of the principal traded sigillatas and slipped table wares in the Roman East, from the early Empire to Late Antiquity (e.g. Italian Sigillata, Eastern Sigillata A, B and C, Çandarli ware, Phocean Red Slip Ware/LRC, Cypriot Red Slip Ware/LRD and African Red Slip Wares). He draws on his own work in Sagalassos and Boeotia, as well as an exhaustive review of archaeological publications of ceramic data. The analysis compares major regional blocks, documenting coastal as well as inland sites, and offers an interpretation of these complex data in terms of the economy and possible distribution mechanisms.

This book explores the experiences of rural communities who lived between the seventh and ninth centuries in central and eastern England. Combining archaeology with documentary, place-name and topographic evidences, it shows the way in which the settlements in which people lived provide a unique insight into social, economic and political conditions in ‘Middle Saxon’ England. The material derived from excavations within currently-occupied rural settlements represents a particularly informative dataset, and when combined with other evidence illustrates that the seventh to ninth centuries was a period of fundamental social change that impacted rural communities in significant and lasting ways. The transformation of settlement character was part of a more widespread process of landscape investment during the ‘Middle Saxon’ period, as rapidly stratifying social institutions began to manifest power and influence through new means. Such an analysis represents a significant departure from the prevailing scholarly outlook of the early medieval landscape, which continues to posit that the countryside of England remained largely unchanged until the development of historic villages from the ninth century onward. In this regard, the evidence presented by this book from currently-occupied rural settlements provides substantial backing to the idea that many historic villages emerged as part of a two-stage process which began during the ‘Middle Saxon’ period. Whilst it was only following subsequent change that recognisable later village plans began to take shape, key developments between the seventh and ninth centuries helped articulate the form and identity of rural centres, features that in many instances persisted throughout the medieval period and into the present day.

Borġ in-Nadur, on the south-east coast of the island of Malta, is a major multi-period site, with archaeological remains that span several thousand years. In the course of the Late Neolithic, the steep-sided ridge was occupied by a large megalithic temple complex that was re-occupied in the succeeding Bronze Age. In the course of the second millennium BC, the ridge was heavily fortified by a massive wall to protect a settlement of huts. Excavations were carried out here in 1881 and again in 1959. This volume brings together a number of contributions that report on those excavations, providing an exhaustive account of the stratigraphy, the pottery, the lithic assemblages, the bones, and the molluscs. Additional studies look at other sites in Malta and in neighbouring Sicily in an effort to throw light on the late prehistory of the south-central Mediterranean at a period when connections with regions near and far were increasing. The volume forms a companion to another monograph which concentrated on the temple remains at Borġ in-Nadur (D. Tanasi and N. C. Vella (eds), Site, artefacts and landscape: prehistoric Borġ in-Nadur, Malta. Praehistorica Mediterranea 3. Monza: Polimetrica, 2011).About the Editors:Davide Tanasi (Ph.D.) is Professor of Archaeology at Arcadia University, The College of Global Studies - Arcadia Sicily Center. His research interests include Mediterranean prehistory, island archaeology, archaeometry of ancient ceramics, computer graphics in archaeology, and digital communication of cultural heritage. He has authored a hundred scientific papers in these fields and produced 3D documentaries about Sicilian archaeology and cultural heritage. His publications include La Sicilia e l’arcipelago maltese nell’eta del Bronzo Medio (Palermo, 2008) and Site, Artefacts and Landscape: Prehistoric Borġ in-Nadur, Malta with Nicholas C. Vella (Monza, 2011). He is editor of the international scientific journal Open Archaeology (De Gruyter) and since 2012, he has been directing the Field School in Archaeology of Arcadia University in Sicily.Nicholas C. Vella is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta, and works on Mediterranean history and archaeology. He has co-edited another volume of essays on Malta’s late prehistory called Site, Artefacts and Landscape: Prehistoric Borġ in- Nadur, Malta with Davide Tanasi (Monza, 2011) and contributed, with him, to the Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean edited by P. van Dommelen and B. Knapp (Cambridge, 2014). He edits the Malta Archaeological Review, and co-directs excavations at the Żejtun Roman Villa (Malta). He is also co-investigator of the FRAGSUS project, funded by the European Research Council, that is examining the environmental and cultural background of prehistoric Malta.

Transformationpresents a diachronic investigation providing a rich case study as well as an approach tracing the contours of a category of Roman material culture defined by the Roman period technique of openwork carving. As the first comprehensive assemblage of openwork vessels from Classical to late Antiquity, this work offers primary evidence documenting a key example of the fundamental shift from naturalism to abstraction in which inscriptions are transformed and word becomes image. A glass blower herself, Hallie Meredith poses questions about process, tactility and reception providing a clear picture of the original contexts of production and reception demonstrated by the Roman technique of openwork carving. In an in-depth analysis of the corpus as a whole, typologies (old and new), imagery, geometric patterning and inscriptions as the major divisions among openwork decorative elements, basic design principles are identified, non openwork carving and its relation to openwork decoration are discussed, as are the function, handling, display, movement and provenance of openwork vessels throughout the Roman Empire. Art historians and archaeologists working on the transition from Classical to late Antiquity, as well as scholars focusing on these and later periods of study, can fruitfully apply this approach to visual culture. This work shows how openwork vessels are a reflection of a wide-reaching Roman cultural aesthetic.

This publication honours Birgitta Hårdh on her 70th birthday. Birgitta Hårdh is one of the leading experts on European Viking Age, engaged in diverse research projects, and also a vital collaborator in various networks specializing in the period. Through time, Birgitta has extended her research to comprise other periods of the Iron Age. A feature common to all Birgitta Hårdh’s research is that she has been able, through analysis of a body of finds, to broaden the perspective, not least geographically through her profound knowledge of phenomena in Northern Europe and indeed all of Europe. Therefore, this book has been given the title Small Things – Wide Horizons. A total of fourty titles have been submitted to the volume. The presentations include a number of perspectives mainly of Iron Age. Themes as silver economy, coins, trinkets, burials, crafts, farms and fields, centrality and transformations give a view of the variation of contributions nationally and internationally.

Manetho’s obscure reference to a race of invaders has been a constant source of debate and controversy. But who are these invaders? They are named the ‘Hyksos’ – a Greek modification of the Egyptian expression HqA xAs.wt ‘ruler of foreign lands’. The Hyksos are correlated with the Fifteenth Dynasty of the Second Intermediate Period, a time characterised by the destabilisation and regionalisation of the Egyptian state. Several scholars have pondered over their victory and rule in Egypt, from the manner in which they entered Egypt and the means with which they claimed the throne to their final expulsion from the land. This book assesses their rise to power, exploring the preliminary stages that enabled the Hyksos to gain control over a portion of Egyptian territory and thus to merit a small mention in Manetho’s history.

Soil and water management is a major stake for the current Mediterranean countries. It was also an important challenge for past societies, especially since the Neolithic and the early well-established farming communities. the mastery of these vital resources accompanied the complexification of social organization. It also widely contributed, if not to impulse it, at least to structure it. This volume presents the results of the CEDRE multidisciplinary project NAHR IBRAHIM that was led on the Lebanese mountain centered around the Nahr Ibrahim valley (the famous Adonis valley in Antiquity), in the hinterland of the ancient city of Byblos. the mountain has been under-researched by archaeology and history due to the attractiveness of the prestigious coastal phoenician cities. The history of settlement patterns and the construction of agricultural mountainous landscapes since the Early Bronze Age is examined with comparisons from other regions surrounding the Mediterranean Basin.

What could be more evident than the concepts of oblique, horizontal or vertical? In the modern world, these concepts form the basis of our thought system, both from a mathematical and artistic point of view. Everything would suggest that these principles were known to the Greek civilization. However, the study of the surviving texts casts a different light on the matter. Homer did not know the concept of oblique - no word could translate it into the language of his time. Even later, the Greeks had five adjectives approximately meaning oblique: λοξός, πλάγιος, λέχριος, σκολιός and δόχμιος. Each discipline (cosmology, optic, geography, art, etc.) had its own way of looking at these five words. Paradoxically, what the written language had not yet synthesized was abundant in imagery. Even more surprising, the oblique in images, which we consider as a sign of movement in our own iconographic language, is found to signify both movement and rest. Two monuments of Greek art draw attention to this new paradox: the frieze of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus and the Mourning Athena. In each of them, the oblique line is present, and carries two distinct meanings.These two forms of language, written and figurative, bring a different and complementary perspective on the ancient Greeks'' apprehension (or lack thereof) of the concept of oblique.

This book is based on several years of author’s fieldwork in the valleys of the Black Mountains in South East Wales. Hodges had personal knowledge of the area having worked there in his professional capacity as a drystone waller.The aim of the fieldwork was to locate all the sites of derelict stone buildings within the designated upland study area of approximately 140 square kilometres. Initial research indicated that the area had not been previously surveyed to any great extent and the presence of derelict stone buildings that existed in the valleys was not a characteristic of the surrounding lower terrain.Using a combination of documentary evidence and fieldwork, a total of 549 potential sites were identified comprising houses, barns, other ancillary buildings and sheepfolds; 499 separate structures were located on the ground. Following a specially devised protocol at each site, information regarding masonry, modes of construction and extant features was recorded in both tabular and photographic forms.