Books published by BAR Publishing

To date there has been little systematic study of the appropriation of, or attitudes to, prehistoric monuments in settlements of the period. The objectives of the research presented here are twofold. Firstly, it assesses how widespread the reuse of prehistoric monuments was in early to middle Anglo-Saxon settlements. In so doing, it examines the types of settlements in which the activity occurred and the types of prehistoric features that were reused. This is achieved through a review of the Anglo-Saxon settlement evidence in a regional study area. The settlements discussed in this study date to the period c.AD 450-850, with a regional focus based on central England, defined here to the north by the Humber and to the south by the Thames. In addition to well-known and published sites, this review makes use of data that is less frequently discussed in archaeological discourse, such as partially excavated or unpublished settlements that have not previously attracted a great deal of attention from scholars. The second aim is to assess how, and particularly why, monuments were appropriated in settlements. In order to answer these questions an in-depth, site-by-site approach is taken, in which the layout and use of space in a number of case studies are analysed. These case studies allow greater understanding of the ways in which older monuments could be referenced in settlements, how reuse changed over time, and why monuments may have been significant. Four Gazetteers provide locational and reference data to the selected sites.

Proceedings of the XV World Congress UISPP Lisbon, 4-9 September 2006. Volume 38, Session C76This book includes papers from the session 'Antiquarians at the Megaliths' presented at the XV UISPP World Congress, Lisbon, 2006

Sculpted stones and carvings in caves and rock faces testify to an unexplored facet of early Christianity across a zone stretching from the Scottish coasts to Iceland. Though recent work paves the way for a more nuanced interpretation of this material, key uncertainties pose significant hurdles for scholarship. This book highlights the ambiguities surrounding Viking-Age Scandinavian and early Christian communities (called papar by later Norse literature), and focuses upon the Pap-place-names of the north Atlantic islands in order to shed new light on our understanding of the relationships between the peoples of this zone in the early medieval period.

First and Second Millennia B.P.This work presents a detailed study of the Puna de Atacama oasis (Antofalla, Argentina) across the first two millennia B.P.

Actas del Congreso Internacional (Cádiz, 7-9 de noviembre de 2005)

Reconstitution et analyse d'une source perdue fondamentale sur la civilisation Azte¿que, d'apre¿s l'Historia de las Indias de Nueva Espan¿a de D. Durän (1581) et la Cro¿nica Mexicana de F.A. Tezozomoc (ca. 1598)Written and illustrated in Nahuatl, the Crónica X is one of our major sources on Aztec history, from the mythical origins to the Spanish Conquest. However, it only reaches us through derived documents, including especially two adaptations in Spanish of the last quarter of the XVIth century, completed respectively by a Dominican friar of Spanish origin, Diego Durán, and by one of the grandsons of Motecuhzoma II, the native historian Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc. This present volume is a modern reconstruction of this important historical source.

This study explores several different techniques to isolate and determine the age of lithic microdebitage in relation to archaeological deposits and sedimentation. This research proposes the integration of techniques available in archaeology and geomorphology to ascertain the shape and features of quartz microdebitage, and the use of OSL for direct dating of the artefacts and sediments. In this research, sedimentary samples from two archaeological sites in northern Australia are analysed using experimental methodologies to isolate and date quartz microdebitage, derived from the process of manufacturing stone tools. The central aim of this research is to apply the OSL dating technique for direct dating of quartz artefactual material. In order to achieve this it is necessary to unequivocally distinguish between microdebitage and the surrounding sediments. This is done by applying grain surface features techniques and microdebitage analysis to separate archaeological quartz and naturally occurring sedimentary quartz grains. The aims of this research are, therefore, to identify quartz microdebitage from archaeologically relevant deposits, and to use quartz microdebitage for OSL age determination, along with refinements in microdebitage analysis techniques. The principal novel aspect of this research is the dating of quartz microartefacts by OSL, although the combination of approaches taken, and their integration, is also innovative.

The subject of this study is hunter-gatherer adaptations to high altitude, focussed around the little-known valley of the River Atuel in the province of Southern Mendoza, Argentina. The research is original, using latest methods and techniques within a context of current archaeological theories. The author also identifies new trends in the history of hunter-gatherer populations, which have implications and applications for groups on other continents than South America.

Ceramic building material, particularly roofing material, is one of the most common finds on Romano-British sites, yet despite its abundance, it has been relatively little studied. Whole books have been devoted to relatively minor pottery types, but it is extremely rare for a book to devote as much as a single chapter to ceramic roofing material. This book is devoted to the study of ceramic roofing material, primarily tegulae. It considers how they were made and develops and dates a typology. It looks at the role of stamps and signatures and how these can inform the study of when and by whom the tegulae were made. It analyses how the tiles were fitted onto pitched roofs, how these roofs were constructed and proposes four stages in their evolution. It suggests that tegulae might also have been used on some vaulted roofs. Finally the logistics, costs and economics of tile manufacture and distribution are addressed. The book follows a logical sequence considering first how tegulae were manufactured, next their typology and then their dating in order to prepare the ground for the subsequent chapters on stamps and roof construction. The final chapter brings all the evidence together to examine the economic and social data that can be derived from a study of tegulae, grouped together as a single site. In contrast, where a useful assemblage of tiles has come from an individual site within a town, this has been identified separately from other assemblages within the same town. If these separate assemblages within the same towns are aggregated together then the number of individual sites falls from 104 to 85.

Acts of the XIVth UISPP Congress, University of Liège, Belgium, 2-8 September 2001. Section 1214 papers, 5 in English and 9 in French.

Freiburg Dissertations in Aegean ArchaeologyThe subject of this study is middle-Minoan fine ware, also known as 'Kamares'-ware. Earlier scholars were adapting typological and stylistic results for psychological explanations and therefore the meanings of motifs on vases from the point of view of the perceptions of the original artists and the users of their vessels have been misunderstood. The author presents a catalogue of motifs that can be established as ancient units of thought by means of various criteria. This panorama of motifs is introduced according to the nature of their use on vessels. These include examples of vessel-specific (connecting the surface of the vessel and the image space), representative, contextualizing, informational, imitative, syntactic, 'accentualizing', and general indicative characteristics. This catalogue of motifs leads to a better understanding of the differentiated forms of expression in Middle Minoan ornament. On the basis of this compilation of motifs quintessential new themes can be discussed (among them play, symbolism and symmetry) and thus contributing to an 'ornamentic' value of motif and vessel. The appendix offers an overview of motifs designated by the author and shows a selection of vessels central to the present argument.

This report provides the integrated results of extensive archaeological investigations undertaken at the site of a former car park located between Much Park and St. John's Street, Coventry (central England) between 2007 and 2010. The results have demonstrated that the site represents one of the most important investigations into medieval Coventry, and is of national significance. The features, deposits and structures can be divided into seven main phases beginning in the 12th century, through to the present day.With contributions by Steve Allen, John Cherry, Cecily Cropper, Amanda Forster, Ben Gearey, David Higgins, Matilda Holmes, Roz McKenna, Phil Mills, Quita Mould, Rebecca Nicholson, Stephanie Rátkai, Ruth Shaffrey, David Smith, Tony Swiss, Penelope Walton Rogers, Angela Wardle; illustrations by Nigel Dodds, Jemma Elliot and Kevin Colls; finds photography by Graham Norrie and ceramic report (Appendix 1) by Stephanie Rátkai and Jemma Elliot.

This collection of papers on 'Dress and Identity' arose from a seminar series held by the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, University of Birmingham in 2005. The present volume covers a wide chronological and geographical span: from archaic Greece to medieval Scotland by way of the Roman Empire and Anglo-Saxon England. The contributors come from a number of different academic disciplines: history, archaeology and classics.

This research presents a study of scythes and sharp-edged, bladed, handled agricultural tools from Gaul, based on a survey of archaeological finds. This survey deals only with completely preserved objects and represents the only catalogue of Gallo-Roman scythes to date. This catalogue contains 27 entries of scythes, representing in all 40 entries. These implements have been assessed according to the way they were supposedly used: either frontal cutting tools or lateral cutting tools.

This research takes a new look, including metallurgical analyses, at the small metal finds from earlier digs at the Temple of Hera on the Greek island of Samos, which are housed in the Archaeological Museum in Vathy (Samos town). The finds include nails,rivets, pins, washers, a link of a chain, wall rings and hooks, which form the basis of a systematic classification of ancient fastening elements. They can be arranged into main groups, under which they can be sub-divided further by type. The broad spectrum of applications of ancient fastening elements hardly differs from today, but their usage in ancient constructions is, however, less easy to verify, due to the dismantling and re-using of joining and securing components. Nails in particular were highlyvalued as a temple offering and magical instrument. Fastening elements were produced using the casting process, by forging or through a combination of both these methods.

The important city of Halmyris lay where the Danube empties into the Black Sea (Romania). The sizable present collection of inscriptions published here contains the complete number of the epigraphs found before and during the excavations at the site of Murighiol (ancient Halmyris) in the span of time before ca. 1896 and 2010. The epigraphic material presented in this volume intends to be a contribution to the knowledge of the social, economic and military history of the local society in the remotest part of the province of Moesia inferior, the extrema Minoris Scythiae, and to provide additional documents to the already impressive collection of Greek and Latin inscriptions related to the territories between the Danube and the Black Sea.

In many ways, we are presented today with a situation much like that described for Indus Civilisation studies in the 1960s: a particular model has been favoured for some time, but it is yet to be rigorously investigated, especially in the light of recent advances in data, methodologies and theory. This study aims to do that, employing a comparative approach with the aim of testing many of the explicit and implicit comparisons with Mesopotamia that are at the heart of this interpretation. Three types of data are considered: domestic architecture, metalwork and settlement patterns. Each is dealt with by a single chapter, which begins by identifying the relevance of that dataset to the 'alternative paradigm' interpretation, and the individual statements made of that dataset which form a part of the wider interpretation. The three chapters proceed to test those statements using comparative data from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran and the Gulf, depending on the availability of suitable comparative material. The theoretical background to the approach and the methodologies adopted is discussed in the following chapter. A feature of this study is that, having described an interpretation of the Indus Civilisation currently enjoying common currency, it sets out to challenge and investigate this academic position. In doing so, especially due to the methodological decision to test specific statements, it indiscriminately scrutinizes a large number of statements and interpretations made by a number of scholars.

Ancient Maya ceramic economy during the Late to Terminal Classic Period (800-900 A.D.) is the focus of this book. The author employed ceramic thin section petrology, raw materials sourcing, and contextual archaeological analyses and samples from a variety of excavated sites in the Belize River Valley region were included: Pacbitun, Cahal Pech, Baking Pot, El Pilar, Xunantunich, Blackman Eddy, Floral Park, and Ontario Village. Standardized petrofabric descriptions enabled the definition of distribution spheres for the ceramics and the study uses intersite comparison of distributional patterning to explore issues such as the scale, integration and disposition of the ceramic economy. A number of economic models were used heuristically to examine the possible meaning of the distributional patterning observed.

The Upper Tisza Project. Studies in Hungarian Landscape Archaeology.Book 5 in the reports series on the Upper Tisza Project, north-eastern Hungary. This volume covers the summer 1995 excavations at the multi-period site of Regéc 95, located in an upland basin in the South Zemplén Mountains.Written by John Chapman, Magdolna Vicze, Robert Shiel, Steve Cousins, Bisserka Gaydarska and Chris Bond.Contributions by Eniko Magyari, David Passmore, Denise Telford, Ferenc Gyulai, Edina Rudner, Keri Brown and Alan Biggins.Illustrations by Sandra Rowntree and Chris Bond.

The Upper Tisza Project. Studies in Hungarian Land.Book 4 in the reports series on the Upper Tisza Project, north-eastern Hungary. This volume covers the summer 1995 excavations at the Neolithic site of Polgár-10.Written by John Chapman, Mark Gillings, Robert Shiel, Bisserka Gaydarska and Chris Bond.Contributions by Eniko Magyari, David Passmore, Eniko Félegyháza, Ian Lumley, Rhodri Jones, Jerome Edwards, Karen Hardy, Denise Telford, David Brighton, Keith Dobney, Ferenc Gyulai, Edina Rudner, Beth Rega, Keri Brown and Tom Higham.Illustrations by Sandra Rowntree, Chris Bond and Yvonne Beadnell.

This volume deals with the prehistoric human groups and their environments that occurred during the early and middle Holocene (roughly 10 - 6 thousand years before present) in a huge segment of the Eurasian continent forming the East European Plain, which predated the early manifestations of food-producing economies: agriculture and stock-rearing. In archaeological terms widely accepted in the West, this period corresponds to the Mesolithic, panoply of hunter-gathering communities that evolved in the aftermath of the Last Ice Age.

This book includes papers from a conference held at the Institute of Classical Studies, London, in June 2006.

This book includes papers from the session (Vol. 39, Session WS15) 'Technological Analysis on Quartzite Exploitation' presented at the XV UISPP World Congress (Lisbon, 4-9 September 2006).

In this book the author presents his findings connected with the archaeology of the Rajmahal Hills (Jharkhand State, north-eastern India), and discusses the wider relevance of his surface archaeology approach to the archaeology of the rest of the tribal areas of India. He also approaches the issue of a gendered study of rock-art and landscape archaeology both of which again fall within the domain of tribal archaeology proper. The author also has a keen interest in the theory of history and archaeology and writes about this subject in several of the chapters. Further sections engage in theoretical debates regarding the relationship between history and archaeology. The study concludes that it may be possible to delineate a separate domain for the archaeology of the tribal areas - called 'subaltern archaeology'. The present work breaks further new ground in historical and archaeological research in terms of the fieldwork undertaken in the Rajmahal Hills and elsewhere in India: the novel idea being that the tribal population of India does have a long-term past - an issue thus far relatively rarely investigated.

If Oceanic canoes, by their very strangeness were surprising to the earliest European observers, it was not long before their descriptions shifted from being impressed, enthusiastic or fascinated and gave way to detailed observations, measurements, comparisons and representations. Canoes are also the means by which the islanders apprehend space. In this perspective, this interesting volume on the study of canoes of the 'Grand Ocean' remains a vehicle for discovery.

Papers presented at EMAC '05, 8th European Meeting on Ancient Ceramics, Lyon 2005This volume presents a selection of papers delivered at the 8th European Meeting on Ancient Ceramics (EMAC) which took place in Lyon (France) in 2005. The EMAC series of conferences, initiated in Rome in 1991, meets every two years in a European city andbrings together specialists carrying out research on ancient ceramics using archaeological sciences. EMAC provides the opportunity to present and debate recent advances in this field of research, from methodological aspects to archaeological studies withfully integrated laboratory approaches.

A volume of 26 contributions related to: The ancient world and modern perceptions: the invention of antiquity in modern times; Ancient economy, politic and society: evidences and interpretive models; Ancient representations: subjectivities and identities in interpreting gender, ethnicity, religion, literature and arts. The result is an innovative collection of chapters, from different standpoints, revealing how classics in general, and classical archaeology in particular, has reacted to the challenges of the recent past in forging a socially relevant study of the ancient world.

The aim of this research is to reconstruct the landscape evolution in the lower Rio Grande drainage basin during the Late Holocene and to detect interrelations between landscape evolution, cultural development, climatic changes and extreme events. Central to this is to identify and, if possible, quantify factors of landscape change. In doing so, the author differentiates natural from anthropogenic factors, i.e. to determine both the natural and the human impacts on the landscape. An important question is whether climatic changes and extreme events have had an influence on past societies. To answer these questions, this work goes beyond physical geography approaches to paleoenvironmental reconstruction and includes the wealth of archaeological evidence and interpretations available for the research area. The volume consists of a main section and an extensive appendix containing sketches and detailed interpretations of the investigated sediment profiles as well as graphs showing the results of the laboratory analyses.

In addition to feminist studies, this work uses epigraphy, archaeology and classical sources, as well as recent developments in historiography, to understand Nabataean society and Nabataean women in particular. The author has highlighted to main study areas. The first is to investigate whether Nabataean women enjoyed a high status that was particular to their society and history. The second related enquiry is to investigate what made it possible for Nabataean women in the first century BCE-CE to become visible in inscriptions and numismatics (i.e. prominent in that period, place and time)? In other words what are the factors that allowed women such status? And were they factors particular to Nabataean women, their society or history? A further interesting objective of this book is to question the assumption of subordination of women in pre-Islamic Arabia.

The content of this report which examines the geological source of the earliest examples of fine freestone carving in the province, first-century tombstones and architectural fragments, is primarily aimed at students and researchers of Roman archaeology,with only a passing interest in geology. For this reason the author has included a glossary of geological terms and where possible made the geological terminology and techniques of analysis in the main text as clear as possible. For academics from more scientific disciplines (archaeological scientists and geologists), certain Chapters (two and six) and appendices examine the geological materials in much greater detail. The download also has an overview of British Jurassic Freestones, including amended geological maps of outcrops in southern England and northern France courtesy of the British Geological Survey. This section may therefore provide a useful tool for stone-masons, conservationists and cathedral archaeologists in identifying suitable limestone materials for restoration work.