Oxbow Books – förlag

Magic, sorcery and witchcraft are among the most common themes  of the great medieval Icelandic sagas and poems, the problematic  yet vital sources that provide our primary textual evidence for  the Viking Age that they claim to describe. Yet despite the  consistency of this picture, surprisingly little archaeological  or historical research has been done to explore what this may  really have meant to the men and women of the time. This book  examines the evidence for Old Norse sorcery, looking at its  meaning and function, practice and practitioners, and the  complicated constructions of gender and sexual identity with  which these were underpinned. Combining strong elements of  eroticism and aggression, sorcery appears as a fundamental domain  of women's power, linking them with the gods, the dead and the  future. Their battle spells and combat rituals complement the  men's physical acts of fighting, in a supernatural empowerment of  the Viking way of life. What emerges is a fundamentally new image  of the world in which the Vikings understood themselves to move,  in which magic and its implications permeated every aspect of a  society permanently geared for war. In this fully-revised and  expanded second edition, Neil Price takes us with him on a tour  through the sights and sounds of this undiscovered country,  meeting its human and otherworldly inhabitants, including the Sámi with whom the Norse partly shared this mental landscape. On the way we explore Viking notions of the mind and soul, the  fluidity of the boundaries that they drew between humans and  animals, and the immense variety of their spiritual beliefs. We find magic in the Vikings' bedrooms and on their battlefields,  and we meet the sorcerers themselves through their remarkable  burials and the tools of their trade. Combining archaeology,  history and literary scholarship with extensive studies of  Germanic and circumpolar religion, this multi-award-winning book  shows us the Vikings as we have never seen them before.

Covering the approximately 6,500 years from the beginning of the Late Mesolithic to the transition to the Bronze Age, Mats Larsson takes the reader on a journey through the development of Swedish prehistoric society and culture set against the backdrop of climatic and landscape change. Using examples selected from a wealth of archaeological sites, artefacts and palaeo-environmental studies he explores a series of chronological themes: such as how the relationship between land and water influenced people’s lives in many ways and the development of often long-distance cultural and exchange networks, as reflected in the occurrence of ‘foreign’ stone axes, flint, copper and pottery. He describes how innovations, such as the introduction of agriculture, spread rapidly during the Neolithic, incorporating characteristics of extensive northern European cultural groups, beginning with the Funnel Beaker Culture with its array of distinctive objects, settlements and burial monuments, while retaining some specific regional and local expressions in material culture. Later, certain characteristics of the Pitted Ware Culture, such as specific types of pottery decoration, were taken up in some areas while the emergence of some regional groups can be seen as a step in the ideological and social changes that led to what we today call the Battle Axe Culture. Towards the end of the Stone Age the battle axe was replaced by the dagger as a symbol of the male warrior as a more stable society emerged in many parts of the country, concentrated around large farms with longhouses. It was only at this late stage that agriculture and the raising of livestock gained a firm hold, and the landscape was opened up permanently.

This book provides a general self-reflexive review and critical analysis of Scandinavian rock art from the standpoint of Chris Tilley’s research in this area over the last thirty years. It offers a novel alternative theoretical perspective stressing the significance of visual narrative structure and rhythm, using musical analogies, putting particular emphasis on the embodied perception of images in a landscape context.  Part I reviews the major theories and interpretative perspectives put forward to understand the images, in historical perspective, and provides a critique discussing each of the main types of motifs occurring on the rocks. Part II outlines an innovative theoretical and methodological perspective for their study stressing sequence and relationality in bodily movement from rock to rock. Part III is a detailed case study and analysis of a series of rocks from northern Bohuslän in western Sweden. The conclusions reflect on the theoretical and methodological approach being taken in relation to the disciplinary practices involved in rock art research, and its future.

Recent developments in aDNA has reshaped our understanding of later European prehistory, and at the same time also opened up for more fruitful collaborations between archaeologists and historical linguists. Two revolutionary genetic studies, published independently in Nature, 2015, showed that prehistoric Europe underwent two successive waves of migration, one from Anatolia consistent with the introduction of agriculture, and a later influx from the Pontic-Caspian steppes which without any reasonable doubt pinpoints the archaeological Yamnaya complex as the cradle of (Core-)Indo-European languages. Now, for the first time, when the preliminaries are clear, it is possible for the fields of genetics, archaeology and historical linguistics to cooperate in a constructive fashion to refine our knowledge of the Indo-European homeland, migrations, society and language. For the historical-comparative linguists, this opens up a wealth of exciting perspectives and new working fields in the intersections between linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, for the archaeologists and geneticists, on the other hand, the linguistic contributions help to endow the material findings with a voice from the past. The present selection of papers illustrate the importance of an open interdisciplinary discussion which will gradually help us in our quest of Tracing the Indo-Europeans.

New research into the techniques of tablet weaving, sprang, braiding, knotting and lace is presented in this lavishly illustrated volume written by leading specialists from Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and USA. Drawing inspiration from the pioneering work of Peter Collingwood, this publication explores aspects of these craft skills in the prehistoric, Roman, and medieval world through scientific, object-based analysis and ''research through making''.Chapters include the growth of patterned tablet weaving for trimming garments in prehistoric Central Europe; recently identified styles of headdress worn in the Roman Rhineland and pre-Islamic Egypt; Viking-age Dublin as a production center for tablet-woven bands; a new interpretation of the weaving technique used to make luxurious gold bands in the twelfth to late thirteenth centuries; and the development out of plaiting of bobbin lace borders in gold and silver threads from the fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries. Practical experiments test methods of hand spinning and the production of figure-hugging hose in ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. A typology of braid and knotting structures in late medieval Europe is also set out for the first time. Diagrams, illustrations, and photographs enrich each chapter with a wealth of visual source material.The work is the outcome of recent discoveries of archaeological textile finds from excavations as well as fresh examination of material recovered in the past, or preserved in treasuries. Early textiles form an increasingly popular subject of interest and this publication, which is a landmark in the study of various specialized textile techniques, aims to provide the reader with a better understanding of these virtuoso craft skills in antiquity.

A Medieval Life: William de Felton and Edlingham Castle, 1260–1327 is a biography of a little-known man living in late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century Britain. William’s precise birth and death dates are unrecorded, his place of origin has for a long time been unclear, and his parentage is still uncertain. Although somewhat wealthy and privileged, William does not represent either the high aristocracy or the ‘great and the good’ of his time, and a central theme of this book is how to write a biography of someone relatively anonymous in the Middle Ages. There are plenty of books about kings, queens and battles; this book offers a different perspective.Its origin lies in archaeological excavations between 1978 and 1982 at Edlingham, Northumberland. The first house here, which grew to be called a castle, was built in the years around 1300. It was abandoned before the 1660s after less than four centuries of habitation, and nearly three centuries before it was uncovered by excavation. This book is not an excavation report, however, nor an architectural survey, but an attempt to ‘excavate’ the buried and concealed life of the castle’s founder, and to understand the unusual building he created. It is a biographical approach to history framed by archaeological and landscape perspectives: the biography of one man, which illuminates the lives of those around him and serves as a biography of a place and landscape.William de Felton’s story can be told because he was unexpectedly well documented. His career as a middle-ranking servant in the royal households of Edward I and Edward II, combined with the bureaucratic habits of the king’s clerks, has bequeathed to historians two hundred documents that mention him. These documents are often individually banal, but taken together, and with other documentary evidence for William’s family, neighbours, friends and colleagues, they enable a reconstruction of his life. They show us William as husband and father, as a landowner, and as a traveller moving with the king’s armies and household from his native Shropshire, widely around England, into Wales, France, Flanders and Scotland, perhaps slightly contrary to the idea that medieval people travelled little. William began his career as an usher in the king’s bedchamber, and for many years was a soldier during Edward I’s ‘forever wars’, the early attempt to create by force a single nation on the British islands. He was an administrator or governor of occupied territories in Wales and Scotland, and later a local official in his adopted Northumberland. He was also a builder, notably for the king in Gascony and other places, but also in his own right, at Edlingham Castle, the centre-piece of this book, now an English Heritage public property.

The majority of literature about the Viking period, based on artefacts or written sources, covers battles, kings, chiefs and mercenaries, long distance travel and colonisation, trade, and settlement. Less is said about the life of those that stayed at home, or those that immigrated into Scandinavia, whether voluntarily or by force. This book uses results from the examination of a substantial corpus of Swedish osteological material to discuss aspects of demography and health in the Viking period – those which would have been visible and recognisable in the faces or physical appearances of the individuals concerned. It explores the effects of migration, from the spread of new diseases such as leprosy to patterns of movement and integration of immigrants into society. The skeletal material also allows the study of levels of violence, attitudes towards disablement, and the care provided by Viking communities. An overview of the worldwide phenomenon of modified teeth also gives insight into the practice of deliberate physical embellishment and body modification. The interdisciplinary approach to questions regarding ordinary life presented here will broaden the knowledge about society during the Viking Age. The synthesis of the Swedish unburnt human skeletal remains dated to the Viking age will be a valuable resource for future research, and provides an in-depth view on Viking age society.

Magic, sorcery and witchcraft are among the most common themes of the great medieval Icelandic sagas and poems, the problematic yet vital sources that provide our primary textual evidence for the Viking Age that they claim to describe. Yet despite the consistency of this picture, surprisingly little archaeological or historical research has been done to explore what this may really have meant to the men and women of the time. This book examines the evidence for Old Norse sorcery, looking at its meaning and function, practice and practitioners, and the complicated constructions of gender and sexual identity with which these were underpinned. Combining strong elements of eroticism and aggression, sorcery appears as a fundamental domain of women''s power, linking them with the gods, the dead and the future. Their battle spells and combat rituals complement the men''s physical acts of fighting, in a supernatural empowerment of the Viking way of life. What emerges is a fundamentally new image of the world in which the Vikings understood themselves to move, in which magic and its implications permeated every aspect of a society permanently geared for war. In this fully revised and expanded second edition, Neil Price takes us with him on a tour through the sights and sounds of this undiscovered country, meeting its human and otherworldly inhabitants, including the Sámi with whom the Norse partly shared this mental landscape. On the way we explore Viking notions of the mind and soul, the fluidity of the boundaries that they drew between humans and animals, and the immense variety of their spiritual beliefs. We find magic in the Vikings'' bedrooms and on their battlefields, and we meet the sorcerers themselves through their remarkable burials and the tools of their trade. Combining archaeology, history and literary scholarship with extensive studies of Germanic and circumpolar religion, this multi-award-winning book shows us the Vikings as we have never seen them before.

Analyzes the lives, roles, and experiences of Viking women, highlighting their societal contributions through interdisciplinary perspectives.This edited volume brings together an international group of scholars to address the lives, roles, myths, mythology, and lived experiences of Viking women as well as the impacts of change on women during the turbulent period of the Viking Age. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, this is a book dedicated to the lesser-known aspects of women’s lives as active members of society. It provides an innovative way of bringing together work from archaeological, anthropological, historical, and literary perspectives to address questions about women in trade, in war, in magic, in the household and activities that provided women with power and respect in their communities.

This work puts a particular emphasis on the mixing and osmosis of the first Mediterranean civilizations, with particular reference to the Minoan, Cycladic, Mycenaean, and Trojan, and on the causes of their decline, which are to be identified in a jumble of natural and human causes, and in a long-lasting, slow, but irreversible crisis. It takes into account that the Mediterranean Dimension of the Bronze Age is a garden in which many legends flourished, clearly distinguishing between myth and history, and always bearing in mind that legends are not to be taken literally (nonetheless, they often have a grain of truth). It does not aim to provide an exhaustive report but to compose a broad and evolutionary picture, in which the facts and their connections, which are deducible from archaeological evidence or from the accounts of ancient historians, find their place, in their consequentiality. Its originality lies not in the choice of the subject, but in the way of treating it. The author introduces and explains, in order to be read, and perhaps to get excited. Another characterizing element of Knossos, Mycenae, Troy is the wide use of the ‘historical present’ that is made there to represent events and construct the text, to reduce the reader’s distance from the narrated events, and facilitates their approach to them. This book aims to provide the reader with an overall picture of the cultures that laid the foundations of Western civilization, which is not generic, but rather detailed and updated, and which has scientific solidity.

Karia and the Dodekanese, Vol. II, presents new research that highlights cultural interrelations and connectivity in the Southeast Aegean and western Asia Minor over a period of more than 700 years. Throughout antiquity, this region was a dynamic meeting place for eastern and western civilizations.Modern geographical limitations have been influential on both archaeological investigations and how we approach cultural relations in the region. Comprehensive and valuable research has been carried out on many individual sites in Karia and the Dodekanese, but the results have rarely been brought together in an attempt to paint a larger picture of the culture of this region. In antiquity, the sea did not constitute an obstacle to interaction between societies and cultures, but was an effective means of communication for the exchange of goods, sculptural styles, architectural form and embellishment, education, and ideas. It is clear that close relations existed between the Dodekanese and western Asia Minor during the Classical period (Vol. I), but these relations were evidently further strengthened under the shifting political influences of the Hellenistic kings, the Roman Empire, and the cosmopolitan late antique period. The contributions in this volume comprise investigations on urbanism, architectural form and embellishment, sculpture, pottery, and epigraphy.

According to archaeological evidence gleaned over more than 70 years, Mari appears to have been the most important city in northern Mesopotamia from its foundation at about 2950 BC to 1760 BC. Situated at the heart of a river system and progressively linked with an overland network, Mari was the city that controlled the relations of central and southern Mesopotamia with the regions bordering the Taurus and Zagros mountains to the north and east and the Mediterranean coastal zone to the west. Mari drew its power from this situation, and the role it played accounts for the particularity of its features, positioned as it was between the Syrian, Assyrian, Iranian, Babylonian and Sumerian worlds.The evidence shows that there was not one city of Mari, but three successive cities, each having specific features, although there is a striking permanence in the original forms. The first, City I, founded in about 2950 BC, was based on remarkable principles of city planning, including a broad regional development with the creation of canals for irrigation and transport, one more than 120 km long. In the 23rd century BC City II was founded using impressive technology in city planning. Probably destroyed by Naram-Sin of Akkad about 2200 BC, it was entirely reconstructed as City III by a new dynasty, the Shakkanakku. In the 19th century BC this was replaced by an Amorite dynasty, which ruled until Hammurabi of Babylon destroyed Mari in 1760 BC. The diversity of the information and material that has been recovered confirms Mari’s place as one of the best sources for understanding the brilliant Mesopotamian civilisation that developed between the beginning of the 3rd and the end of the 1st millennium BC.

Minoan ladies, Scythian warriors, Roman and Sarmatian merchants, prehistoric weavers, gold sheet figures, Vikings, Medieval saints and sinners, Renaissance noblemen, Danish peasants, dressmakers and Hollywood stars appear in the pages of this anthology. This is not necessarily how they dressed in the past, but how the authors of this book think they dressed in the past, and why they think so. No reader of this book will ever look at a reconstructed costume in a museum or at a historical festival, or watch a film with a historic theme again without a heightened awareness of how, why, and from what sources, the costumes were reconstructed. The seventeen contributors come from a variety of disciplines: archaeologists, historians, curators with ethnological and anthropological backgrounds, designers, a weaver, a conservator and a scholar of fashion in cinema, are all specialists interested in ancient or historical dress who wish to share their knowledge and expertise with students, hobby enthusiasts and the general reader. The anthology is also recommended for use in teaching students at design schools.

This first thematic volume of the new series TRAC Themes in Roman Archaeology brings renowned international experts to discuss different aspects of interactions between Romans and ‘barbarians’ in the northwestern regions of Europe. Northern Europe has become an interesting arena of academic debate around the topics of Roman imperialism and Roman:‘barbarian’ interactions, as these areas comprised Roman provincial territories, the northern frontier system of the Roman Empire (limes), the vorlimes (or buffer zone), and the distant barbaricum. This area is, today, host to several modern European nations with very different historical and academic discourses on their Roman past, a factor in the recent tendency towards the fragmentation of approaches and the application of postcolonial theories that have favored the advent of a varied range of theoretical alternatives. Case studies presented here span across disciplines and territories, from American anthropological studies on transcultural discourse and provincial organization in Gaul, to historical approaches to the propagandistic use of the limes in the early 20th century German empire; from Danish research on warrior identities and Roman-Scandinavian relations, to innovative ideas on culture contact in Roman Ireland; and from new views on Romano-Germanic relations in Central European Barbaricum, to a British comparative exercise on frontier cultures. The volume is framed by a brilliant theoretical introduction by Prof. Richard Hingley and a comprehensive concluding discussion by Prof. David Mattingly.

The study of monasteries has come a long way since late the late 19th century. The emphasis has shifted away from reconstructing the layouts of monastic buildings to a better understanding of the wider monastic environment. The papers in this volume, partly based on a conference held in Oxford in 1994, are written by some of today''s foremost scholars and reflect the diversity of research now being carried out.

Textile production is an economic necessity that has confronted all societies in the past. While most textiles were manufactured at a household level, valued textiles were traded over long distances and these trade networks were influenced by raw material supply, labour skills, costs, as well as by regional traditions. This was true in the Mediterranean regions and Making Textiles in pre-Roman and Roman times explores the abundant archaeological and written evidence to understand the typological and geographical diversity of textile commodities. Beginning in the Iron Age, the volume examines the foundations of the textile trade in Italy and the emergence of specialist textile production in Austria, the impact of new Roman markets on regional traditions and the role that gender played in the production of textiles. Trade networks from far beyond the frontiers of the Empire are traced, whilst the role of specialized merchants dealing in particular types of garment and the influence of Roman collegia on how textiles were produced and distributed are explored. Of these collegia, that of the fullers appears to have been particularly influential at a local level and how cloth was cleaned and treated is examined in detail, using archaeological evidence from Pompeii and provincial contexts to understand the processes behind this area of the textile trade.

Before the Military Revolution examines European Warfare in the Late Middle Ages from 1300 to 1490. It is not restricted only to well-covered conflicts, like the Anglo-Scottish Wars or the Hundred Years War, but gives due weight to all regions of Europe, including the Empire, the Baltic, the Balkans and the Mediterranean, and considers developments in naval warfare. The Hussite Wars and the wars of the Teutonic Order and the Hanseatic League are covered, as is the expansion of Moscow, the Ottomans and Venice, and battles like Aussig (1426), Copenhagen (1428), Chojnice (1454) are discussed alongside Bannockburn and Agincourt.This age witnesses fundamental change. The feudal system of the High Middle Ages crumbled everywhere in Europe due to climatic change, economic crisis and population decline. This triggered a fiscalization of the military organization, the establishment of taxes and representation of the estates. This book argues that these changes are the most fundamental ones in the military and political organization in Europe until the rise of the constitutional state around 1800 and so comes closer to the original concept of a Military Revolution. It also takes a critical look at other often discussed developments of this age, like the Infantry and Artillery Revolution or the decline of cavalry. Combining a chronological and regional narrative with deeper analysis of themes like chivalry, strategy, economic warfare or military publications makes this book an indispensable read for everyone interested in late medieval history.

At the heart of this anthology lies the world of fashion: a concept that pervades the realm of clothes and dress; appearances and fashionable manners; interior design; ideas and attitudes. Here sixteen papers focus on the Nordic world (Denmark, Norway, Sweden Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Isles and Greenland) within the time frame AD 1500–1850. This was a period of rapid and far-reaching social, political and economic change, from feudal Europe through political revolution, industrialisation, development of international trade, religious upheaval and technological innovation; changes impacting on every aspect of life and reflected in equally rapid and widespread changes in fashion at all levels of society. These papers present a broad image of the theme of fashion as a concept and as an empirical manifestation in the Nordic countries in early modernity, exploring a variety of ways in which that world encountered fashionable impressions in clothing and related aspects of material culture from Europe, the Russian Empire, and far beyond. The chapters range from object-based studies to theory-driven analysis. Elite and sophisticated fashions, the importation of luxuries and fashion garments, christening and bridal wear, silk knitted waistcoats, woollen sweaters and the influence of the whaling trade on women’s clothing are some of the diverse topics considered, as well as religious influences on perceptions of luxury and aspects of the garment trade and merchant inventories.

Fourteen papers explore a variety of inter-disciplinary approaches to understanding the Viking past, both in Scandinavia and in the Viking diaspora. Contributions employ both traditional inter- or multi-disciplinarian perspectives such as using historical sources, Icelandic sagas and Eddic poetry and also specialised methodologies and/or empirical studies, place-name research, the history of religion and technological advancements, such as isotope analysis. Together these generate new insights into the technology, social organisation and mentality of the worlds of the Vikings.Geographically, contributions range from Iceland through Scandinavia to the Continent. Scandinavian, British and Continental Viking scholars come together to challenge established truths, present new definitions and discuss old themes from new angles. Topics discussed include personal and communal identity; gender relations between people, artefacts, and places/spaces; rules and regulations within different social arenas; processes of production, trade and exchange, and transmission of knowledge within both past Viking-age societies and present-day research. Displaying thematic breadth as well as geographic and academic diversity, the articles may foreshadow up-and-coming themes for Viking Age research. Rooted in different traditions, using diverse methods and exploring eclectic material – Viking Worlds will provide the reader with a sense of current and forthcoming issues, debates and topics in Viking studies, and give insight into a new generation of ideas and approaches which will mark the years to come.

How may Bohuslän rock art and landscape be perceived and understood? Since the Bronze Age, the landscape has been transformed by shore displacement but, largely due to misunderstanding and certain ideas about the character of Bronze Age society, rock art research in Tanum has drawn much of its inspiration from the present agrarian landscape. This perception of the landscape has not been a major issue. This volume, republished from the GOTAC Serie B (Gothenburg Archaeological thesis 49) aims to shed light on the process of shore displacement and its social and cognitive implications for the interpretation of rock art in the prehistoric landscape. The findings clearly show that in the Bronze Age, the majority of rock art sites in Bohuslän had a very close spatial connection to the sea.Much rock art analysis focuses on the contemplative observer. The more direct activities related to rock art are seldom fully considered. Here, the basic conditions for the production of rock art, social theory and approaches to image, communication, symbolism and social action are discussed and related to palpable social forms of the “reading” of rock art. The general location and content of the Bronze Age remains indicate a tendency towards the maritime realm, which seems to have included both socio-ritual and socio-economic matters of production and consumption and that Bronze Age groups in Bohuslän were highly active and mobile. The numerous configurations of ship images on the rocks could indicate a general transition or drift towards the maritime realm. Marking or manifesting such transitions in some way may have been important and it is tempting to perceive the rock art as traces of such transitions or positions in the landscape. All this points to a maritime understanding of Bronze Age rock art in northern Bohuslän.

Pictures from the Bronze Age are numerous, vivid and complex. There is no other prehistoric period that has produced such a wide range of images spanning from rock art to figurines to decoration on bronzes and gold. Fourteen papers, with a geographical coverage from Scandinavia to the Iberian Peninsula, examine a wide range of topics reflecting the many forms and expressions of Bronze Age imagery encompassing important themes including religion, materiality, mobility, interaction, power and gender. Contributors explore specific elements of rock art in some detail such as the representation of the human form; images of manslaughter; and gender identities. The relationship between rock art imagery and its location on the one hand, and metalwork and networks of trade and exchange of both materials and ideas on the other, are considered. Modern and ancient perceptions of rock art are discussed, in particular the changing perceptions that have developed during almost 150 years of documented research. Picturing the Bronze Age is based on an international workshop with the same title held in Tanum, Sweden in October 2012.

Commons are an important part of the English landscape. Survivors from a once more extensive network otherwise eroded by the inexorable progress of enclosure, they provide a taste of wildness, crucial habitats for wildlife and valued spaces for recreation. To many people they seem to offer a tangible link with happier, more egalitarian times, when communities controlled the land;or with periods yet more remote, representing fragments of the wilderness of remote prehistory. But commons are shrouded in misunderstanding and myth. They were shaped by local societies that were highly hierarchical in character, and always embedded in inequalities of property and power. Their ecology, moulded by centuries of intensive exploitation – followed in most cases by a long period of dereliction – has only a tangential connection with the truly ‘natural’ habitats of the deep past. And a surprising number of our legally recognised commons are not, in reality, common land at all.This innovative study, which concentrates on the county of Norfolk but ranges widely, is firmly focused on the character of commons as physical environments and places, as landscapes. Using a wide range of documentary, archaeological and ecological evidence, it discusses the development and management of commons from earliest times;explains their morphology, location and distribution;and explores why some examples survived the process of enclosure – and the distinctive traces left by those that did not. Above all, it describes the characteristic physical features of different kinds of common and explains how their ecology has, in innumerable ways, been shaped by history.Highly readable and copiously illustrated, this book will appeal to all with an interest in the English rural landscape, and will be essential reading for those with a particular enthusiasm for common land.

Archaeologists and textile historians bring together 16 papers to investigate the production, trade and consumption of textiles in Scandinavia and across parts of northern and Mediterranean Europe throughout the medieval period. Archaeological evidence is used to demonstrate the existence or otherwise of international trade and to examine the physical characteristics of textiles and their distribution in order to understand who was producing, using and trading them and what they were being used for. Historical evidence, mainly textual, is employed to link textile names to places, numbers and prices and thus provide an appreciation of changing economics, patterns of distribution and the organisation of trade. Different types and qualities of cloths are discussed and the social implications of their production and import/export considered against a developing background of urbanism and increasing commercial wealth.

Experimental Archaeology is a volume which aims to bridge the gap in archaeology between empirical testing and humanistic approaches to understanding the material record. The contributors explore a wide variety of different fields including how a phenomenological methodology can be used to increase our understanding of how a Bronze Age temple was ‘experienced’ by people in the past; how experimentation in the production of materials such as rawhide, glass and wine-making can be used to test theories or written sources and the possibilities of studying the three-dimensional morphology of Acheulian handaxes to search for possible idiosyncratic indicators during the Lower Palaeolithic. The papers in the volume reflect the continued diversity of work that experimental archaeology is able to produce and show how experimentation can be integrated with theory to substantiate a variety of hypotheses, whether validating information from written sources or testing the inferences of more recent theoretical ideology. Experimental Archaeology will set a new precedent for the role of experimentation in future archaeological research.

The natural arc of resource-rich land which forms the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of South-West Asia is regarded as the earliest centre of village-based farming in the world and has been the focus of much of our understanding of the transition from Epipalaeolithic hunter-gathers to Neolithic farmers. Beyond the Fertile Crescent is the first volume of the Azraq Project, a large-scale archaeological and palaeoenvironmental survey and excavation project undertaken between 1982 and 1989 in the ecologically diverse sub-region of the Azraq Basin in north-central Jordan: an area rich in Palaeolithic and Neolithic archaeology. Beginning with an overview to the Project aims, a detailed analysis of past and present environments and land use and the history of excavation in the Basin, Beyond the Fertile Crescent explores the geology, stratigraphy and dating of the Late Palaeolithic sites and provides a detailed description of the technology and typology of the lithic assemblages from the sites. These are then compared with those from the wider Levant, in order to explore possible links between technological traditions and social groups in order to understand the evidence for settlement strategies across the region.

The natural arc of resource-rich land which forms the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of South-West Asia is regarded as the earliest centre of village-based farming in the world and has been the focus of much of our understanding of the transition from Epipalaeolithic hunter-gathers to Neolithic farmers. Beyond the Fertile Crescent is the first volume of the Azraq Project, a large-scale archaeological and palaeoenvironmental survey and excavation project undertaken between 1982 and 1989 in the ecologically diverse sub-region of the Azraq Basin in north-central Jordan: an area rich in Palaeolithic and Neolithic archaeology. Beginning with an overview to the Project aims, a detailed analysis of past and present environments and land use and the history of excavation in the Basin, Beyond the Fertile Crescent explores the geology, stratigraphy and dating of the Late Palaeolithic sites and provides a detailed description of the technology and typology of the lithic assemblages from the sites. These are then compared with those from the wider Levant, in order to explore possible links between technological traditions and social groups in order to understand the evidence for settlement strategies across the region.

The study of early medieval towns has frequently concentrated on urban beginnings, the search for broadly applicable definitions of urban characteristics and the chronological development of towns. Far less attention has been paid to the experience of living in towns.The thirteen chapters in this book bring together the current state of knowledge about Viking-Age towns (c. 800–1100) from both sides of the Irish Sea, focusing on everyday life in and around these emerging settlements. What was it really like to grow up, live, and die in these towns? What did people eat, what did they wear, and how did they make a living for themselves? Although historical sources are addressed, the emphasis of the volume is overwhelmingly archaeological, paying homage to the wealth of new material that has become available since the advent of urban archaeology in the 1960s.