Books in the British Archaeological Reports International Series series

During the Middle Sicán period (C.E. 950-1050) on the North Coast of Peru, artisans developed a sophisticated tradition of ceramic and metalworking production amidst dry coastal forests of the region. Organic fuel resources, specifically wood, clearly played a vital role in the manufacture of these objects; however, this component of production has been largely overlooked. Thus, a major gap in our understanding of the relationship between Sicán period production and the local landscape has developed. The Sicán Archaeological Project (SAP) suggests that the production of metal and ceramics during this period likely placed the local fuel resources under considerable stress. Yet, an evaluation of the archaeological data is essential to assess the degree of overexploitation, identifying the fuels used, their contexts for use, and their role in local ecology. This study interprets how Middle Sicán artisans met their fuel-wood requirements for production in light of easily endangered forest resources. An examination of the archaeological charcoal from Middle Sicán period kilns, hearths, and metal furnaces permits the reconstruction of fuel use and the ecological setting of production. This unique site demonstrates the concurrent production of metal and ceramics, as well as the presence of domestic activity. Using wood anatomy of fuels recovered from archaeological features, the author identified the fuel materials of different use contexts.

A collection of papers focusing on questions of Copper Age metallurgical contexts, outlining the importance of an integrated analysis of artefacts, considering pottery, metal, stone and osseous productions as inseparable aspects of economic and social choices.

This book includes papers from a session on 'Mother Earth' sites presented at the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in Valetta, Malta, in September 2008. The papers discussed the various forms of evidence not only from definite 'Mother Earth' sites but from others for which an expression of a divine feminine principle, personified as belief in an Earth Mother or other female deity, may be inferred as possible or sometimes likely-especially where the work is based on new discoveries.

This book includes papers from N-TAG TEN, the Proceedings of the 10th Nordic TAG conference at Stiklestad, Norway 2009.

This work considers the female body in ancient and medieval societies as seen through the eyes of doctors. In their writings on gynaecology, the medieval authors that are studied here have made clear their thoughts on women, which are grounded in the texts of their predecessors (Greek and Latin doctors) but conditioned by their own religious beliefs - Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Their works were written not only to educate or inform other doctors and midwives, but also to aid medical students and to provide guidance for women who might seek it. These texts also reflect popular opinion when it comes to such issues, as in many instances they are closer to popular belief than to science. Our selected authors wrote in order to gain recognition and prestige. They based their advice on texts written by earlier, widely recognized specialists and, in turn, their work became references for future doctors who, in their own writings, would cite them or recreate their work. From this point of view, it may be said that none of these doctors pursued an objective relative to our own current medical practices, but this does not necessarily mean that their texts are any less important. The texts studied in this work span almost twenty centuries, from the fifth century BC to the fifteenth century AD.

South American Archaeology Series No 18A collection of 14 recent studies on archaeological GIS applications from contributors in Argentina, Brazil and Chile in South America. The subjects covered include predictive modeling and analysis of site location and distribution, settlement patterns, lithic raw material availability, regional archaeological visibility, intrasite material distributions and zooarchaeological collections as well as heritage management and risk assessment. The time periods analyzed include cases from the Holocene up until present day and the papers are written in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

A detailed catalogue of 417 seals belonging to the Tablets & Cylinder Seals Collection in the Near Eastern Department of the National Museum of Aleppo. The collection dates from the 7th millennium BC to the Sasanian period. All pieces are illustrated.

A collection of papers from the Romanian conference (with two from the CAA meeting held in Glasgow). The 19 papers consider different approaches to site evaluation and site analysis, the study of artefacts, dating and the role of GIS and the web in archaeology.

Acts of the XIVth UISPP Congress, University of Liège, 2-8 September 2001SECTION 3 : PALEOECOLOGIE / PALEOECOLOGYColloque / Symposium C3.1The 17 papers in this volume represent the XIVth UISPP Liège Congress session on the dietary behaviours of prehistoric hunter-gatherers from as far afield as Poland and Israel, Spain and Croatia. The subsistence strategies of prehistoric hunters were dependent on the dietary resources available in the environment and within this range the prehistoric populations were obliged to make certain choices. The contributors to this volume explore the theme, and among the many questions addressed are the issue of linkage between changes of palaeoecological contexts and variations in subsistence behaviour, and the relationship between the results from palaeoethnographical and biogeochemical studies; the palaeoecological reconstructions they propose provide valuable insights into the answers.

The principal focus of this study is an analysis of "independent animal burials", as they are most often indiscriminately interpreted as early evidence for a religiously symbolic significance of the species that occur. Such a cultic interpretation only rarely is offered for the other category of burial, that of animals interred in or, in its later developed form, directly associated with human graves. These animals have generally been considered merely another form of grave goods. However, this type of animal burial, in the form of subsidiary burials, can be tracked into the early First Dynasty and beyond. Thus the diachronic development of this particular category of burial exhibits an uninterrupted continuity between the predynastic and early historic periods. The geographical scope extends from Upper Egypt (Badarian and Naqada Cultures), to Lower Egypt (Neolithic and Maadi-Buto Culture), and Lower Nubia (A-Group), and detailed appendices cover a Gazetteer of independent animal burials, animals in human graves; elite cemeteries; food offerings; and cemetery maps.

This study analyses the military architecture of Middle Bronze Age (MBA) Jordan. Although military architecture is one of the defining features of urban development in the MBA Levant, the military architecture of Jordan has never been adequately assessed. The study aims to redress this imbalance and to consider the military architecture of MBA Jordan within the trends of urban and regional developments. The result will be a greater understanding of the relationship between Jordan and the Greater Levant during the MBA. The core data for the study was excavated at Pella and Rukeis under the supervision of the author and is complemented by data from other sites in Jordan. Chapter 1 maps out the background to the military architecture of MBA Jordan; the geography, chronological framework and historical background; the textual, iconographic and archaeological evidence. Chapters 2 and 3 explore Pella and Rukeis respectively. Chapter 4 makes a comparative study of walls, towers, gates, ramparts, and related features. Chapter 5 presents the authors conclusions and the five Appendices detail the comparative pottery analyses.

Between 1993-2001, in his studies into medieval Russian principalities, the author undertook field researches around the river landscapes of the Saratov territories, covering an area of more than 450 square kilometers, including Uvek, and the settlementsat Boldyrevskoe, Konstantinovskoe, and Hmelevskoe. (In particular, the material from the Uvek site is of considerable importance and is separately and systematically described in this volume). These studies, and the analysis of a great deal of material never before fully discussed, provide an opportunity to make some important general conclusions that have relevance over the wider region. One of the author's conclusions is that, within the Ukek lands, the complex sets of monuments found there point to a dominant Golden Horde city. This is important because no special research has previously been devoted to the problem of the interaction of Golden Horde cities with their agrarian periphery. The work is therefore invaluable in the further preparation of general archaeological, historical, and regional ethnographical studies into the Saratov region. The monograph is divided into three sections. The first presents the available written and numismatic data, while the two others consider the archaeological material in depth. The chronologies are presented in the conclusion, and the Appendices provide detailed descriptions of the monetary finds.

The Palaeolithic and the Neolithic on the Euphrates and in the Northern LevantStudies in honour of Lorraine CopelandAs a mark of their gratitude to Lorraine Copeland, who since the 1970s has placed most of her research activities and her publications under their auspices, the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux have gathered together in one work contributions by colleagues and students who know her well, with whom she has worked and who have had the luck to benefit from her publications, her counsel and her help.

This book includes papers from the session 'Social Inequality in Iberian Late Prehistory' presented at the Congress of Peninsular Archaeology, Faro, 2004.

In 2001 a project entitled "Trade, migration and cultural change in the Indian Ocean" was launched at the Department of History, University of Bergen, with funding from the Norwegian Research Council. The project was planned to be the first joint project in a program called "The Indian Ocean History Program". From the beginning, the project invited interested researchers in other disciplines at the university (mainly in archaeology, anthropology and classics) to take part in our research seminar series in 2001-2002 in which work in progress and completed papers were presented. In addition, the project sought to establish more permanent research links with foreign researchers and research institutions concerned with the Indian Ocean. In order to promote international cooperation in the field of Indian Ocean research, three workshops were organised in Bergen, 2001, 2002, 2004, in which papers on a broad range of topics were presented and discussed. What binds the individual projects together is the focus on the movement of commodities, people, cultural features and ideas, and the durable networks and links that these created and the local impact around the Indian Ocean. The areas most focused on have been East Africa centred on Zanzibar, the Red Sea Region, the Persian Gulf and Southern Arabia, and finally on western and southern India. This volume shows parts of the research that has been undertaken by project members and associates. Most of the articles in this anthology were presented at the 2004 workshop. They focus on the Indian Ocean in the ancient period.

This is a compilation of papers devoted to diverse archaeozoological issues. Most of the contributions are based on lectures given at the Seminario Relaciones Hombre-Fauna (Human - Fauna Relationships Seminar) organized by the Laboratorio de Arqueozoología and sponsored by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, the Mexican federal agency at charge of preserving the palaeontological, anthropological and historical heritages of the country.

This work explores the cultural developments in Mayan lands in the 16 th and 17 th centuries, based on written sources and archaeological evidence. The first part is a detailed study of the written sources and the second presents an analysis of the Tecoh settlement (Yucatan, Mexico), based on the author's topographical research.

This volume presents recent findings from Walou cave, excavated by the SOWAP (Société Wallonne de Palethnologie, 1985-90), in the municipality of Trooz, about 15 km south of Liege, in Belgium.With contributions by I. Crevecoeur, A. Francis, L. Klaric, C. Koziel, O. Le Gall, R. Peuchot, E. Teheux, M. Udrescu and D. Vandercappel.

Analyses of site formation processes in the Argentine Puna are uncommon and they are mainly devoted to answering taphonomic questions; understanding site formation processes is a prerequisite before inferring past human activity from the spatial distribution of the material remains recovered at any site. The main objective for this research (focusing on a high altitude marsh called "Vega de San Francisco" in the Puna region, located 21 km from the Argentina-Chile border) was to reconstruct the formation processes of the excavated units through the analysis of their sediments, providing the necessary information to discuss human occupation intensity as well as to examine site usage throughout the passage of time. The sediment analysis provided three research avenues: physical/chemical properties, microvertebrates and microfossils. A fourth avenue was explored by using information obtained through experimental control sites.

This monograph is the first within the European scholarship that presents data based on an archaeological site of the southeast Baltic. The flat cemetery of Dollkeim-Kovrovo is located in the Kaliningrad Oblast' (Region) of Russia.

Human adaptation in relation to northeast India is relatively unknown; various general aspects have been studied and usually interpreted within the conventional framework of prehistory. But in this volume, concentrating on Meghalaya, a hilly region stretching from east to west in the south-westernmost corner of northeast India, an endeavour has been made to go beyond the conventional limits to explore some new dimensions of the material under study. To have a better comprehension of the life and cultures during the archaeological past of this area, an anthropological evaluation proves more effective. The data incorporated in this study are obtained through archaeological explorations and excavations. This led the authors to identify three adaptive mechanisms. The variations in adaptive patterns in a particular time period operating within an area analogous to its eco-cultural setting are the results of subsistence variables among the bands. The contributing variables specific to the emergence of distinct and individual adaptive patterns could better be analyzed by the aforesaid approach. The present study leads us to elicit this picture that variations in 'Broad Spectrum Tradition' (discussed in the context of Hoabinhian traditions of this area) is not an outcome or result of a particular or specific factors, such as climate and ecological adjustment, population expansion or sudden exposure to a new technology. It is, rather, the outcome of an interaction of behavioral traits relating to technology, economy and other factors: this is the key to the understanding of the formations of cultures within a Culture. Three prehistoric sites of the region form the basis of the present study: Saw Mer in the east Khasi Hills, Makbil Bisik and Bibra Gre in the western Garo Hills.

A collection of papers in honour of Sergio Pernigotti.

South American Archaeology Series No 16

A collection of recent papers on the prehistoric Jequetepeque Valley, Peru.

In this study, published intensive field surveys, from different regions on the Italian peninsula, are revisited from a range of different methodological and theoretical perspectives. With its emphasis on the Late Republican to Early Imperial period, the outcome of this research should lead to a better understanding of comparative regional differences, in terms of settlement patterns and hierarchy, demography, urbanisation processes, and how society could have functioned. This study intends to build on existing notions of regional variations and bring them into better focus. For the theoretical and methodological framework, models and interpretive schemes are assessed originating from archaeology, social geography and ethnography using archaeological evidence. The field surveys or regions covered include the Potenza Val, the 'extended' suburbium of Rome, the Pontine region and the Biferno Valley.

The main objective of this work is the study of Pre Bell Beaker pottery belonging to the group known in the past as "Imported Pottery". Items belonging to this group include those with channeled and burnished decoration such as cups, hemispherical bowls,and certain dishes that are common in the region of Estremadura (the central coastline of Portugal). This new research broadens our knowledge of these ceramics, using methods such as archaeometry and experimental archaeology, allowing not only enhanced characterization but also a redefinition of how they relate to other types of ceramics within the context of the Estremaduran Chalcolithic.

Cities have tended throughout history to be the preferred location for the minting and circulation of coins and coinage has in turn generally reflected the importance of many of these cities. This work, a collection of eleven contributions, explores the relationship between cities and coinage during the extended period beginning in the third century BC and continuing up to the tenth century AD.

The late Palaeolithic Ahrensburgian site at Zonhoven-Molenheide was situated in a sandy podzol. It comprised several concentrations with more than 11,500 flint artefacts, of which more than 1,800 were refitted. Both horizontal and vertical distribution of the remains is discussed in detail. 76 figures illustrate profile sections, artefacts and refits. The occupation fits into the Younger Dryas (Late Glacial) period with an AMS date of 10,760 BP. Regionally, the Ahrensburgian is defined typologically as an assemblage with numerous Zonhoven points, a variable number of Ahrensburgian points and numerous endscrapers and burins. Connections with other European sites are discussed.

This work presents a new study of Alpine prehistory between two critical moments of its cultural development - the advent of peasant economies and the rising of the first metallurgy - through a series of texts written by researchers concerned with issues relating to human settlement in the Alps.

Paris Monographs in American Archaeology 30Olmeca-Xicallanca, 'People from the Land of Rubber, People from the Land of Canoes' - the Nahuatl name of these ethnic groups invokes the hot, alluvial coastal plains of Veracruz, Tabasco, and Campeche (Mexico). For almost a century studying the ethnohistoric records on the Olmeca-Xicallanca, scholars have sought answers to the questions of 'who?', 'what?', 'why?', 'when?', and 'where?' These questions have been by no means easy to answer - this present volume of contributions puts forward a series of answers and possible solutions.With a Spanish contribution by Angel García Cook - 'El Epiclásico en la región poblano-tlaxcalteca'