Books in the British Archaeological Reports International Series series

Central Asia is a wide subject of research in the archaeological and historical studies of the Ancient World. Scholars have usually focused on the complex and diverse questions that resulted from the analysis of the historical realities of this key region during Antiquity. The purpose of this book is to undertake an approach to the polymorphic and multiple aspects of Central Asia in Antiquity from several points of view. The starting point is the confidence in an interdisciplinary perspective as the mainway to understand the different aspects of the region in a very wide chronology: from the emergence of the cities and their relation with the nomadic populations, to the expansion of models and practices from Central Asia to the West during the campaigns and conquests led by Islam. Through subjects like warfare, gender studies and historiography, mainly from an archaeological point of view, the chapters analyze concrete sites like Mes Aynak, Uch Kulakh or Vardanzeh, but also models of interaction among the historical peoples living in Asia Central, like the Bactrians and the Persians, the Persians and Macedonians, the Greeks and the Indians, the Sassanid and the Romans, or even the Sassanid and the Steppe peoples. The result is a very clear example of the richness of starting an interdisciplinary dialogue with the intention of improving our perspectives and understandings of the complex relationships that, through Antiquity, the people living in Central Asia had developed and how scholars can, through archaeology and other related disciplines, approach the historical questions that arise in a close study of the subjects.

Many people have said none, but Larry Shenfield's title answers that question. He undertakes a re-evaluation of the archaeological, architectural and artistic evidence for building, and concludes that there is - as seems intrinsically likely - a Rome core to its structure.

This book is intended as an introduction to the archaeology of the easternmost regions of Greek settlement in the Hellenistic period, from the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BC, through to the last Greek-named kings of north-western India somewhere around the late first century BC, or even early first century AD. The 'Far East' of the Hellenistic world - a region comprising areas of what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the former-Soviet Central Asian Republics - is best known from the archaeological remains of sites such as Ai Khanoum, which attest the endurance of Greek cultural and political presence in the region in the three centuries following the conquests of Alexander the Great. The 'Hellenistic Far East' has become the standard catch-all term for a network of autonomous and semiautonomous Greek-ruled states in the region east of the Iranian Plateau, which remained in only intermittent political contact with the rest of the Hellenistic world to the west - although cultural and commercial contacts could at times be very direct. These states, their rulers and populations, feature only occasionally in Greek and Latin historical sources. The two great challenges of HFE studies lie in integrating scholarship on this region into work on the Hellenistic world as a whole in a more than superficial way; and in understanding the complex cultural and ethnic relationships between the dominant Greek elites of the region and their neighbours, both within the Greek kingdom of Bactria and in its Central Asian hinterland.

This carefully illustrated book tells the fascinating story of how thousands of tons of the much-desired Karystian cipollino marble were transported across the Empire as part of the great Roman marble trade. It is the culmination of years of research by Jeanne Sutherland who describes how great columns and blocks of the green-veined marble were carved from the mountainside quarries, between Karystos and Stira in southern Euboea, and shipped throughout the Empire - from Rome to Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon and beyond. There it was used to adorn the magnificent temples, theatres, libraries and baths of the great Roman cities, where much can still be seen today. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the reopening of the ancient quarries to supply cipollino for famous buildings in the United Kingdom and Europe. Trade in cipollino still flourishes in the modern quarries.

The Middle Kingdom (c. 2000 - 1500 BC) is in many respects the classical period of ancient Egyptian history and culture. During the two main periods of this era there were profound changes in administration and material culture. The office of the treasurer was established in the Early Middle Kingdom as one of the highest offices at the royal palace. As a result of recent finds of stelae and other material, this volume presents an in-depth study of two important treasurers, as well as many of the minor officials in their administrations.

Groupe thématique II : Interprétation des donnéesActes de la Xème Session de L'EAA, Lyon Septembre 2004 / Acts of the Xth Session of the EAA Congress, Lyon September 2004Seven papers from the session on Lithics and the Early and Middle Neolithic Chronology in France given at the EAA conference in Lyon in 2004. Work on lithic materials in the widest sense has developed considerably over the last two decades, leading to an almost complete renewal of methods and objectives. From the 1980s onwards there emerged methods which have become classic: investigation of raw materials, creation of reference collections (lithothèques), characterization of procurement modes, studies oftechnology and analyses of use-wear. Relative chronology, mainly established through study of decorated ceramics, is still an essential aspect of our discipline and new data have stimulated debate on the relations between various cultural groups defined on stylistic grounds. This volume aims to review the contribution of lithic studies in both France and neighbouring regions for establishing the cultural sequences of the early and middle Neolithic.

First discovered in the 19th century, the remains of a Roman settlement at the site of Kueçuek Burnaz in the eastern area of ancient Cilicia, were investigated more fully in 1991 by the Özgen/Gates survey.

Aspasia Papanastasiou's thesis presents an illustrated catalogue, arranged by type, of 4th-century Athenian red-figured and black-glazed vessels in museum collections across Europe. The author focuses on a sample of vessels which were of the same shape but executed with both types of decoration.

J.D. Beazley's The Lewes House Collection of Ancient Gems (1920) was the first publication of engraved gems in what might be called the modern manner; indeed in many respects it remains a model few have even approached since and it is of an academic quality which is hard to match today. It is re-published here, with Beazley's descriptions and commentary, with updated references, and with enlarged photographs of impressions to demonstrate their quality. The two main categories of gems are (very broadly) cameos and intaglios of Greek, Cretan, Phoenician, Roman and Etruscan provenance. The additional material includes Mary B. Comstock's compilation of lists of additional references, and Cornelius C. Vermeule has added an appreciation of the collector.

In the Levant and Western Arabia some 270 prehistoric cemeteries have been registered, representing approximately 25000 burials with lithic superstructures. These stone monuments are little known and their remains are at risk in the modern territories that contain them. A first look at the documentation available indicates that these burials appeared in the fourth millennium and vanished at the end of the third millennium BC. The burials are localized mainly in interior steppe areas, mostly on rocky headlands. The author discusses the similarities evident between the funerary structures discovered in the Levant and in Arabia - in terms of construction techniques, design, distribution and topographical situation - and suggests that these burials with lithic superstructures, although distributed on a vast geographical area, belong to populations of semi-nomad or nomads pastors with a shared cultural background.

In October 2006, the 3rd International Conference on Prehistoric Ceramics, entitled 'Breaking the Mould: Challenging the Past through Pottery', was hosted by the Department of Archaeology on behalf of the Prehistoric Ceramics Research Group and The Prehistoric Society at the University of Manchester.

This study of Palaeolithic Africa, an interim report, describes a large number of sites in the region of the Zebra River, Western Namibia. After the Introductory Sections, a complete list of all sites is given in Section 4, presenting the raw information gathered in the fieldwork. The interpretation of these data is then discussed on a site-by-site basis in Section 5. Here, specific topics which relate to more than one site are considered when they first arise, while other more general topics are discussed subsequently under separate headings. Cross-references are liberally provided in the text. Finally Section 6 draws the threads together and offers a wider comment on the way forward for surface studies for earlier Palaeolithic archaeology. Artefacts deemed worthy of further study, which were usually photographed, measured and given GPS locations, were given sequential numbers and are fully listed in Appendix 1. A summary table of artefacts for each major site collected or recorded during fieldwork is given in Section 4, including a table of the 'numbered' artefacts, by type, to which other recorded artefacts are sometimes added, as noted in the individual tables. In the Foreward, Derek Roe concludes his contribution by adding that this new study... 'contains a mass of useful new information and some good guidance for others to use...I very much hope that students of the Palaeolithic will indeed read this work.'

Updated papers presented at the infancy and childhood conference at the University of Kent in 2005. From this conference the new Society - the Study of Childhood in the Past (SSCIP) emerged.

Proceedings of a colloquium held in the British School at Rome 4th - 7th November 2009University of Southampton Series in Archaeology No. 3This book presents the proceedings of the 'Bread for the people: The Archaeology of Mills and Milling' colloquium.

Proceedings of the Second ICAZ Animal Palaeopathology Working Group ConferenceThis book includes papers from the Second ICAZ Animal Palaeopathology Working Group Conference held at Nitra, Slovakia in September 2005.

The goal of this study is to examine the potential for the understanding and recognition of the processes and occurrence of prehistoric warfare through the development of a series of correlates, resulting in testable models that can be applied to the archaeological record. Such models need to be flexible and applicable across different periods and in a variety of geographical areas. To this purpose, examples of evidence are included from a wide spectrum of sources. After offering definitions of warfare and considering the nature of its archaeological evidence, the correlates and models will, for comparative purposes, be applied to a number of case studies which are located in later prehistoric societies. This study, therefore, provides models (from the UK, France and the US), for investigation, suggests some areas for research and data-gathering, and highlight potentials and problems for the interpretation of evidence, providing some frameworks for future appreciations of the concept of prehistoric war. If evidence can be sought and recognised for warfare on more extended scales, it may be possible to approach the questions of the prevalence, scale and influence of conflict on the development of societies with a little more certainty. The aim is to encourage further debate on the range of potential evidence and its value in this sphere of archaeological research.

Despite the great fascination that the collapse of past civilizations holds for the public, the process of decreasing social complexity has received surprisingly little attention from archaeologists, especially when compared to the voluminous research on increasing complexity. And most studies of the process have been oriented toward understanding complexity by seeing how it fails, not toward understanding how a different, "simpler" society emerged from a more complex society. But if there are specific motivations and particular processes for decreasing complexity - if "collapse" is a solution rather than a problem - then clearly there is much to be learned from examining the societies that develop during periods of seeming decline. This research study examines how one complex society reorganized to a relatively simple society, recognizing the simultaneously constructive and destructive aspects of the process. The study focuses on the developments during the late Roman Empire through late Antiquity, a time of decreasing social complexity in the ancient Mediterranean world beginning in the late 2nd and continuing to the mid 6th centuries AD, on the basis of a detailed archaeological study of one city and its territory, Volterra, in Tuscany, Italy.

This volume forms the proceedings of the conference, Egypt in its African Context, which took place at The Manchester Museum, University of Manchester, UK, on the 3-4 October 2009. The conference at Manchester had a number of aims: to address perceptions of Ancient Egypt in the West, in scholarly writing and public understanding; to present a scholarly approach to the subject of Egypt in Africa in order to counterbalance the extreme Afrocentric views within which such a debate is often contextualised; to investigate how community groups and professional Egyptologists can transfer their knowledge and points of view; and to present the work of scholars working on African-centred Egyptology to a wider audience - including the traditional academic Egyptological community.

This monograph examines the deposition of precious metal artefacts in the late Roman and early Byzantine periods (from c. AD 200 to AD 700) within and beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire and its successor states. The primary foci of the study are the size, date range and spatial distribution of these finds, with less emphasis on specific aspects of artefacts themselves and the specific contexts in which individual deposits were found. The immense chronological and regional scope allows broad changes in deposition patterns to be presented and examined. And a variety of possible interpretations of these patterns are offered in the final chapter.

The aim of this research is to record the presence of human skeletal remains found in spatial and functional contexts which were not usually used as common burial locations. This study focuses on Northern Italy in the 1st millennium BC and, in order to offer a complete picture of the evidence, addresses this topic from both an archaeological and anthropological perspective.

A detailed study of ceramics from the Iberian sites commonly known as 'Las Motillas' - arguably the most singular form of prehistoric settlement on the Iberian Peninsula. Located in the central area of Spain called 'La Mancha' they date to the Bronze Age (2200-1500 cal. BC), with the sites characterised by artificial tells produced by the destruction of complex fortifications with concentric stone walls. These sites were believed to be funerary barrows until the 1970s, when the systematic excavation of La Motilla del Azuer (near Daimiel (Ciudad Real), on the left bank of the Azuer River) was undertaken. From the beginning of the fieldwork, the nature of the fortified settlement quickly appeared, clearly defined thanks to the documentation of a central fortification surrounded by a small settlement and its necropolis. This study assesses the Bronze Age pottery assemblages from the site, presenting a typological and technological classification.

Byzantium cannot be reconstructed, but its art provides an intensely vivid picture of its official and everyday life. The author of this volume has chosen two great works to illustrate this. The illuminated manuscript of the Skylitzes Chronicle in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid is unique. It is the most important preserved document illustrating particular historical events in a secular framework, and a study of this manuscript transports us to a mid-Byzantine historical context, with all its drama, triumphs, and ceremonial life, as well as its darker side, disasters and persecutions. The other great work chosen by the author to illustrate the artistic legacy of Byzantium is the famous church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the principal monument of Christian architecture of Justinian times and fundamental to the history of architecture.

Aegean-type pottery has been found in the West Mediterranean for more than a century and several publications have tried to explain the phenomenon from an Aegeancentric point of view. The search for metals, the arrival of Mycenaean people after the LH III B destructions in Mainland Greece and the hypothesis that Mycenaeans had to sail westwards because of the dominance of the Minoan thalassocracy on the eastern routes are only some of the proposals. Yet, what do we know about the Italics, the people who consumed, and eventually produced, Aegean-type pottery? This question is at the centre of this study. The state of research on this topic, in spite of almost a century and a half of studies is disappointing. The phenomenon is still seen in terms of economic exchange, where the Aegeans are the primary players. There has been no attempt to research methodically the reasons why the Italics accepted and used Aegean-type pottery. In the last few decades, many anthropologists have concentrated their efforts on ethnographic studies of patterns of consumption and several theoretical models have been published as a result. In particular, globalisation has provided the stimulus for research focussed on cross-cultural consumption of standardised products. Using these studies, this research has tried to provide the Italic perspective, one of consumption as well as production. The results of this research demonstrate the independence of the Italics in their choices as consumers and provide insights on the social and cultural processes of these Bronze Age populations. As a result, while the role of the Aegeans in the phenomenon appears less important, the complexity of the regional Italic processes associated with the presence of Aegean-type pottery in the West Mediterranean becomes more apparent.

This book includes eight papers from a workshop held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2001.

The Tihamah plain extends some 500km down the western coast of modern Yemen and about 100km along its southern coast. This publication presents the first long-term culture-history of the Tihamah, through the exploration of socio-economic, cultural and political developments and of the region's relation to the rest of South West Arabia to its east, and to the Horn of Africa lying to its west, across the Red Sea. This research assimilates and analyses all of the available data for an archaeological understanding of the pre-Islamic Tihamah. This comprehensive study, taken in a long-term perspective, enables the identification of patterns, discontinuities, changes and current interpretive problems related to the development of the Tihamah in its relation to neighbouring regions. The analysis is based on published and unpublished archaeological research - including field research undertaken by the author - and on a range of historical sources, which include South West Arabian pre-Islamic inscriptions and Graeco-Roman sources. It also draws on a disparate range of relevant data from the rest of South West Arabia and the Horn of Africa over an equivalent period. This publication demonstrates the importance of the Tihamah to wider cultural, economic and political developments within the rest of South West Arabia and the Horn of Africa. It adds to the emerging pre-Islamic history of other regions of South West Arabia that have been studied more fully elsewhere.

The positioning of the legions of the Imperial Roman army provides a window into both the thinking and the course of events during the period from 30 B.C. to 300 A.D. When one can identify the locations and date the redeployments of the legions, it is possible to recreate the planning that caused the army to be so placed. Redeployments, of necessity, shows a major shift of events or a significant refocussing of the strategic thinking of the then ruling emperor at that particular moment. This book starts from the assumption that a legion's headquarters remained at a base until that legion was permanently posted to another base. A legion might temporarily serve in another province, even for more than a year, perhaps with its eagle present, but know that it would return to its permanent base. At any moment in time, a legion might have detachments serving in a variety of locations. Some of these detachments, or vexillations, might be separated from the parent legion for long periods of time at great distances from its permanent headquarters. A great number of scholars have addressed the subject of legion locations, usually one legion or one province at a time. This book attempts to formulate a seamless web of legion locations, deducing from the evidence where the legions must have been during the period. It is a synthesis of what has been written before, and is written with the expectation that in the future new archeological evidence will further refine the information it contains.

This volume derives from a symposium held at the University of Wales, Lampeter, in April 1998. The 24 papers cover a wide range of archaeological and ethnographical interests.

The Aurignacian is one of the Upper Palaeolithic techno-complexes that has generated much literature in recent years. One of the least known aspects of this period is the question of the exploitation of bones materials. The research presented in this volume shows a techno-economic approach to the bone, antler, ivory, tooth, and shell evidence from the Iberian Peninsula. The author presents a characterization of the principles guiding bone raw material exploitation in the specified chronological and geographical area. From the results, the management strategies of these different raw materials are assessed in terms of how they were integrated into the different systems (technical, economic, social, cultural) on which hunter-gatherers societies were structured during the Early Upper Palaeolithic.

The object of this research is to register, analyse, understand and interpret the presence of Portuguese faience in the British Isles. The search for such purpose went through an archaeological, historical and anthropological interdisciplinarity. The production, consumption and the exportation of faience involved several processes, for which all of them the archaeological record fails in providing all the answers, although it is essential in a work where trade and economic relation patterns translated in material culture are sought. The purpose was to understand how occasional those exportations were, or if they could well be part of all the regular and immense trade between Portugal, England and Ireland. A full catalogue of the locations and the materials are presented so that future investigators can indirectly access those materials, thus complementing or forwarding new theories regarding the presence of Portuguese tin glazed ware in the British Isles.