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The island of Melos in the Cyclades has a rich archaeology having played an important part in prehistory and throughout history. But owing to its unique geology it is also home to a wide array of rocks and minerals which have been exploited since the first human occupation of the island. This book is about the archaeology of the minerals industries of Melos in antiquity. The localities of their extraction and the type of processing they may have been subject to have been reconstructed on the basis of archaeological evidence. At the site of Aghia Kyriaki, SE Melos, there is evidence for large-scale exploitation of alum in the Late Roman period, its processing in large shallow vessels and packaging into amphorae; there is also evidence for the use of geothermal energy there and in neighbouring Palaeochori Bay; there are phreatic explosions near the sulphur mines at Fyrlingos; finally, there are the egkoila of Melos, the rock-cut cavities carved out of the island’s ubiquitous white altered volcanic rock which gave rise to its minerals. The ancient texts and epigraphic evidence also take centre stage, depicting the nature of Melian society from the momentous events of 416BC to the Late Roman period. This book will have wide appeal to archaeologists and historians, to geologists and mineralogists and to all those interested in the island or just visiting it.

East Macedonia in northern Greece has rich deposits of gold and silver as well as copper and iron ores. The gold and silver were important to Classical Athens and even more so to Alexander the Great’s Hellenistic world. Copper was extracted as early as the Late Neolithic, and iron was worked from the Iron Age to Ottoman times. Bringing to life the essential background to this wealth derived from metals, this book looks at the archaeological and archaeometallurgical evidence, some of it very new, for the mining and processing of the ores and the extraction of the metal. The book is written with the visitor to the region very much in mind, taking the reader closer to the landscapes where these practices took place to make sense of ‘silent landscapes’ where so much happened at one time but where nature has now taken over the remains of buildings, installations and heaps of waste rendering them ‘mute’ and meaningless for all but the expert historian of technology. Written by a native of the region who has himself been directly involved in field and laboratory work on ancient metallurgy, this book will raise the profile of this aspect of the region’s past as well as the region’s great natural beauty.

The history of cane sugar from its origins in the east to its status as a luxury foodstuff and even medicine in the medieval period to a commodity produced and consumed globally in today’s world is well known. Yet archaeologically, sugar is an invisible commodity, its presence usually being inferred from the humble sugar pots used in the last stages of its sophisticated production process. This book attempts to redress the imbalance between history and archaeology by reporting on the excavation of a medieval sugar refinery, Tawahin es-Sukkar near Safi, situated south of the Dead Sea in Jordan. There it was possible to explore many of the steps in the sugar-making process. The book’s title refers to the industrial waste whose study has shed light on those steps. To place this refinery in chronological and economic context, excavation was extended to the adjacent ‘support town’ of Khirbet Shaykh ‘Isa; the book presents its results. The available archaeological evidence for sugar production across the Mediterranean is reviewed. There is particular emphasis on the sugar vessels and the light they can shed on the poorly understood relationship between primary production centres, refining, storage and consumption centres. The book, which is fully illustrated, can be profitably read by archaeologists, archaeological scientists, historians and visitors to Jordan alike.

Healing springs have played a significant role in the folklore of many cultures in most geographical regions. In Scotland, these natural features are referred to as ‘holy wells’ and some have been venerated since pagan times. In introducing the ‘holy wells’ of Argyll and Bute in western Scotland, this book examines, with the aid of GIS techniques, the archaeological landscape surrounding these ‘monuments’ spanning from the Neolithic to the present day; it also provides information about their geological and hydrological setting. The book sets out to address a single question: what made those ‘holy wells’ holy; although the answer is complex, multi-tiered and often unsatisfactory, it is clear that once a ‘healing’ attribute, whether physical or spiritual, is attached to a particular natural spring, communal will, from the elite to the ordinary people, have been reluctant to remove it. The second part of the book is in the form of a guidebook. While the first part aims to bring the landscape to the reader, the second part aims to achieve the opposite. Via a number of clearly laid-out itineraries, each with a particular ‘holy well’ as its focus, the book highlights the wells’ positions with respect to known domestic, ritual or burial monuments. The visitor is thereby made aware of the geological, historical and archaeological landscape that surrounds each natural spring. The healing springs of Argyll have been recorded to an archaeological standard, and are presented in an accessible manner.