Books published by BAR Publishing

The Archaeology of Gatherings was a thematic international conference to bring together a range of speakers from different disciplines. It took place at the Institute of Technology, Sligo, Ireland, between 25 and 27 October 2013 during the year of 'The Gathering', an Irish government initiative to engage with the worldwide diaspora. The aim of the conference and of this volume was to take a multidisciplinary approach in order to explore the structures, material culture and psychology behind gatherings of people. This volume thus seeks to contribute to the study of varied types of temporary gatherings both from the contemporary world and from the past. Through time people have gathered together for many reasons, including religious and political assemblies, social interaction and to exchange commodities and ideas. While some of these gatherings occurred in particular buildings or arenas, many were outdoors and temporary, and may have left only limited material evidence of their occurrence. It is therefore hoped that this multidisciplinary approach will provide insight into these sometimes ephemeral events and their remains.

This book examines the Northern (Stone Age) rock art of central Norway, which is dominated by images of marine and terrestrial motifs. It focuses on how these images were drawn and are classified, on the topographical location of the sites, on their dating and cultural context, and on the relationship between rock art and material culture, and offers possible interpretations.

Khok Charoen (Hill of Prosperity) is a neolithic burial ground in Central Thailand, excavated in the 1960s and 70s by the Thai-British Archaeological Expedition, but because of the substantial Australian contribution these excavations can rightly be called the first Australian venture into Southeast Asian archaeology.The site, dated to the latter half of the second and the beginning of the first millennium BC, consists of three cemeteries with a total of 65 burials, straddling a discontinuity caused by floods, which greatly disturbed these burials and their finds, which include 513 pots, but no bronze. The study of this pottery is the key to the understanding of the cultural and social history of the site, explaining killings and grave robberies within a divided society.The aim of this book is to present, with the help of a great number of illustrations, an overall picture of this site at the junction of Stone and Bronze.

This study approaches the prehistory of Wessex (central southern England) from an inclusive, broad brush point of view. It incorporates the whole of the land, the soils that the geology supports, the climate and drainage pattern and, in particular, it focuses on the less studied part of the area, the coastal zone.

Gifford Archaeological Monographs Number TwoThis volume is the essential outcome of several years of post-excavational endeavour. In the course of it, the understanding of the historical contexts of the Roman establishment at Wilderspool developed, broadened and changed. Most influential in this respect were - at the time - the entirely unpremeditated, and fortuitous, developer-funded excavations elsewhere on the related Roman road network in the West Midlands and North West of England. Perhaps foremost among these was the excavation of part of the settlement at Holditch, in Staffordshire, which, so it is thought, was not only similar to Wilderspool in its underlying raisons d'être, but appears also to have had a history - or fate perhaps - that seems to have been closely linked to, and to reflect, the inexorable northward movement of Roman military logistical supply of material in the Claudio/Neronian to Flavio-Trajanic periods. Furthermore, these inter-settlement links and developments all appear to relate closely, in particular, to the great Roman northward arterial system to the west of the Pennines. With its side-roads and 'tributaries', this converged on the Mersey Crossing at Warrington, and in so doing provided a direct, physical, link between the establishments at Wilderspool and Holditch. In this volume, therefore, the authors decided to present the reports on excavations at both places in a single volume, in the hope that the reader will find this beneficial; and also that this will facilitate understanding of each place and the underlying historical contexts.With contributions by H. Cool, G. Dunn, G. Lucas, G. McDonnell, W. Manning, D. Shotter and M. Ward

Prehistoric connections and interactions across the Baltic Sea are discussed through pottery and ceramic materials in this volume. Included are nine articles by thirteen authors from the countries around and connected to the Baltic Sea. The articles cover a timescale ranging from the Neolithic to the late Iron Age and subjects including craft traditions, metallurgical production patterns, Neolithisation processes, grave traditions and cultural spheres. Methodological perspectives include studies of morphology, material, decorations and distribution patterns as well as experimental and laboratory analysis. The studied ceramic objects include miniature pots, pitchers, crucibles, tuyères, drinking vessels and tableware from the region around the Baltic Sea.

This book synthesises archaeological and historical research in order to investigate Maltese water management technology in the Medieval, Early Modern and Modern periods, more specifically between AD 900 and AD 1900. Maltese terrestrial geological formations and stratification are a determining factor in conditioning the formation of subterranean aquifers, water-harvesting and storage, landscape development and utilisation. Central to this publication are reservoirs, cisterns, wells and perched aquifer galleries, which have for centuries provided farmers tilling arable land with a supplementary water source other than the limited and erratic seasonal rainfall. The data and conclusions presented in this book are the result of extensive personal field and archival research and include an assessment of the available documentary sources of evidence, including place names and cartographic sources. Comparative research suggests that a number of perched aquifer subterranean galleries share common characteristics with the qanat technology of the Islamic and Roman worlds and, in a Maltese context, were possibly part of a new agricultural and technological package introduced during the Muslim or post-Muslim period between the eleventh and the fourteenth centuries AD.

The distribution of ceramic juglets in the eastern Mediterranean of the Middle to Late Bronze Age has become linked to the provision of precious commodities, such as perfumed oil to lower elite segments of society. This research represents the first systematic investigation of the circulation of juglets, as functionally distinct forms which offer a fine-grained dataset for examining wider issues related to commodity production, distribution and consumption. The chronological depth and spatial breadth of this study offer an opportunity to trace developments in the social and economic significance in the intra- and inter-regional distribution of this form, contributing also to an understanding of changing inter-regional contacts throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The analysis presented here addresses patterns of production (including evidence for regionalism and specialist manufacture), consumption strategies within and between societies and over time, as well as producer-consumer dynamics such as bilateral trade links, selective marketing and branding.

In 1994-1997, the Yale University Khabur Basin Project excavated Tell Ziyadeh on the Middle Khabur River of Northeastern Syria. This monograph describes two pioneering settlements: fifth millennium BC Ubaid and early third millennium. It discusses the research programme and strategies; reviews the modern and palaeoenvironments; and provides separate chapters describing the various excavation areas, as well as the ceramic, lithic, faunal and botanical remains found in them. Two chapters describe small-scale excavations at Mashnaqa and Kuran, sites with occupation histories paralleling Ziyadeh. The monograph concludes with a discussion of the immigration by fifth-millennium Ubaid settlers into a virgin landscape in the Khabur, and the gradual transition into a widespread Late Chalcolithic tradition. It provides a reconstruction of the realities of life in these small homesteads, which comprised a society of closely interacting settlements and remained viable for hundreds of years before moving elsewhere, as simultaneously as they had initially arrived.With contributions by Jennifer Arzt, Benjamin Diebold, Miroslava Gregerová, Gregory Johnson, Nicholas Kouchoukos, Joy McCorriston, Scott Rufolo and Dalibor Všianský

The Egyptian Museum of Florence has one of the most important ushabti collections in Italy and Europe. The collection contains around eight hundred ushabtis, which originally belonged to different collections: Granducale, Nizzoli, Rosellini, Ricci, Schiaparelli. Other smaller groups contain objects belonging to different sources collected within the 19th and 20th centuries. The ushabti corpus of Florence belongs to the end of the Second Intermediate and Roman Period. In 2008, the "Ushabti Project" was started by the Egyptology and the Coptic Civilization Study Centre "J.F. Champollion" of Genoa, in cooperation with the Egyptian Museum of Florence, which were interested in a complete study and scientific publication of a new catalogue concerning the ushabti collection. The catalogue is divided into several volumes, providing a complete documentation of the Florence ushabti collection. This volume contains a general introduction about the history of the collection, the abbreviations and textual codes, the records, a photographic section, a useful index and a bibliography.

Research on rock art conducted during the last several decades has shown the skill and knowledge demonstrated by the painters, engravers and sculptors who executed the motifs on rock surfaces and supports. Some motif sets required their creators to acquire a strong graphic command while workmanship techniques have very often proved to be more complex than previously assumed, including for remote periods. It also appears that the motifs have been placed according to specific criteria in connection with spatial orientation or support shape, for instance. The aim of this volume is to question these aesthetic productions with the conceptual tools of art history. How were the techniques used put to the service of the aesthetic project? How can the iconographic study and the stylistic analysis contribute to the understanding of the decorated site? Can we approach the "short time" of the realisation of cave or rock art sets? Is it possible to target regional particularisms? These are some ofthe questions to which current investigation techniques may give some fresh insight.

Mirrors are amongst the most well known British Iron Age objects. They are of a type which is peculiar to Britain and are significantly different in form from contemporary Greek, Etruscan and Roman forms. 58 mirrors are known. They are made of bronze andiron, or sometimes a combination of bronze and iron components. Mirrors comprise a handle and a reflective plate, which is often decorated with intricate and free-flowing designs. Some plates are also rimmed. Mirrors are found throughout Britain; two have been discovered in Ireland and two others are known from the continent. They are most commonly found in graves; but were also deposited in bogs and rarely at settlements. They date to the mid-late Iron Age. This book tests the applicability of the biographical approach to prehistoric objects and the application of the biographical approach to prehistoric material culture is evaluated by constructing biographies for Iron Age mirrors. This study is divided into three main sections. In the first section mirrors are introduced as is the theoretical methodology (Chapter 2). Chapter 1 explains what mirrors look like, the contexts they are found in and how they have been studied in the past to pinpoint what we do not yet understand about them and what needs further clarification. In Chapter 2 the biographical approach to artefacts is outlined; how it has been used in archaeology and how the approach will be utilised to expand our knowledge of mirrors and the broader Iron Age context by reconstructing the relationships that constitute mirrors and their biographies. Chapter 3 examines evidence for the production of Iron Age metal artefacts as well as investigating the context of the production of metalwork in ethnographic contexts. The aim is to develop an understanding of the technology of mirror production, the relationships established through their production and the potential future trajectories of the life of a mirror set out at the time of manufacture. In Chapter 4 mirror decoration is examined. Chapter 5 summarises the results of a programme of visual examination of the physical condition of surviving mirrors. Over 30 mirrors were examined for signs of wear, polishing and repair; clues which can indicate how mirrors were used and inform us about their social lives. Chapter 6 examines the form of mirrors. In the third section deposition context is examined. Chapter 8 is the first comprehensive dating audit of all Iron Age mirrors. In Chapter 9 all of the deposition data is collected. Chapter 10 is an analysis of the results of Chapter 9. In Chapter 11 the implications of these findings for wider research and the future of the application of the biographical approach to archaeological research, is assessed.

This study proposes to examine the case of Homo erectus whose phylogenetic position and taxonomic status remain unclear despite considerable research aimed at identifying this taxon from archaic forms.

Abstract is in English

This is an archaeological study of social organization and change in a late prehispanic population of northern Chile. The research involves contextual examination of the occurrence of highland ceramic styles and materials and drawing inferences concerning local socio-political structures. Excavation at four sites dating to the Late Intermediate and Late Periods (AD 1100-1500) revealed no evidence of highland colonists or colonial enclaves. Household artefact assemblages showed: (a) that despite the presence of highland trade goods, the cultural pattern resembles local coastal traditions; (b) no indications of pronounced social or wealth differences; (b) great continuity through time in domestic activities; and (c) significant shifts in ceramic style preferences, highland import assemblages, textile production and access to metal ornaments. An important suprahousehold change of the Late Period was the nucleation of population at Molle Pampa Este, a site containing architecture (an ushnu and plaza) associated with imperial Inka administration and public ceremony.

Between 1801 and the First World War the population of the Borough of Reading increased almost tenfold, simultaneously with the growth of new industries. The authorities responded by delineating new streets and encouraging development in districts springing up mainly to the east, south and west beyond the original market town. The Borough's Highways Committee, helped by legislation, played a major role in managing and guiding these activities, especially in the later part of the nineteenth century. Largenumber of bricks burnt from local clays were used to build houses, shops, schools, chapels and churches required in these new suburbs, but the making of the streets called for the procurement of stone from far and wide. This volume discusses the geological features, spatial distribution and geographic sources (such as south Oxfordshire, Wales, Leicestershire and as far away as Norway) of the types of stone used for road construction in Reading in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The results of the excavation of two Paleolithic sites on the Nile in the Republic of the Sudan, undertaken from the autumn of 1965 into the spring of 1966, are presented in this report. Artifacts from Khor Abu Anga and Magendohli, currently housed in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, are described and quantified. The artifact assemblages are identified as discrete units, placed in chronological order, compared in terms of cultural content, and assigned to known industrial complexes. The Khor Abu Anga and Magendohli assemblages are comparable to and part of recognized prehistoric industrial Acheulian, the Sangoan, the Lupemban, and Aterian complexes well documented in Africa and in parts of Europe and western Asia. The archaeological deposits at Khor Abu Anga are part of a record of evolving lithic technology from late Acheulian through Sangoan into Lupemban in the upper Nile valley over a long period of time.

Collet Est was a Roman pottery workshop located on the Catalonian coast near Calonge. In active use from the 1st century BC to the middle of the 1st century AD, the workshop was used to produce dolia, local amphora, domestic pottery and building materials. In a later phase the site was reused as a necropolis by the inhabitants of the nearby Roman villa of Collet. This necropolis survived until the 5th century, when the Roman villa was abandoned. The excavation of the site in 2002-2003 revealed 19 Roman furnaces, several rooms and open air spaces where the inhabitants lived and worked, and a kitchen full of a fascinating range of well-preserved artifacts. The excavation also uncovered 30 inhumations with associated grave goods.This book presents an in-depth report of the important rescue excavations carried out by the University of Girona's Institute of Cultural Heritage at Collet Est in 2002.

The extraordinary side-spouted gold jug hereby presented and discussed was found in the Royal Tomb III discovered under room 57 in the North-West Palace at Nimrud. The gold jug was, with other astonishing grave goods probably belonging to Hamâ (an Assyrian queen unknown up to recent times), in bronze Coffin 2, one of the three coffins placed in the antechamber. The aim of this study is not only to shed light on this unique vessel, investigating the method of manufacture, decoration, and functional aspect, but also to identify the possible workshop and date range of production. The comparison with coeval archaeological findings places it within a historical framework of artistic, economic and socio-political interactions. The combined results of these analyses suggest that the golden jug, instead of a gift or tribute, may have been produced for the royal court in the Neo-Assyrian international cultural milieu, into which manifold traditions coexisted. La straordinaria brocca in oro protagonista di questo studio venne rinvenuta all'interno della Tomba reale III al di sotto dell'ambiente 57 del Palazzo Nord-Ovest di Nimrud. La brocca faceva parte, insieme ad altri oggetti preziosi del ricchissimo corredo funerario di Hamâ, una regina assira sconosciuta fino al momento della scoperta della tomba, deposti nel Sarcofago 2, rinvenuto con altri due sarcofagi bronzei nell'anticamera dell'ipogeo. Obbiettivo di questo studio è stato non soltanto mettere in luce la tecnica di manifattura e le peculiari caratteristiche della decorazione figurata di questa piccola brocca ma anche la formulazione di ipotesi interpretativi riguardanti la sua cronologia, l'area di produzione e la funzione. L'individuazione di confronti sia formali che iconografici e tematici ha permesso di inserire la brocca in un variegato lessico artistico internazionale in cui convivono tradizioni culturali differenti, e di riconoscerla come una vivida testimonianza delle diverse dinamiche di produzione e diffusione degli oggetti di lusso nei primi secoli del I millennio a.C., oltre che degli usi funerari e della complessa struttura sociale della corte assira.

El presente libro es la continuación de Estudios Arqueológicos del Área Vesubiana I. Ambos son recopilaciones de investigaciones - en su mayoría, españolas - sobre los yacimientos de Pompeya, Herculano, Estabia y Oplontis. Los estudios presentados abarcan temas de todos los estadios humanísticos e históricos sobre las ciudades antiguas: investigaciones puramente arqueológicas: tipologías de domus, de atrios, de foros, de materiales constructivos, de necrópolis; estudios iconográficos de casas, como la Villa delle colonne a mosaico, de personajes concretos, como el dios Dioniso, de ornitología y de pintura neoclásica; estudios filológicos de inscripciones y de poemas de los grandes autores griegos y latinos; estudios legislativos y jurídicos, como las leyes de las vías públicas y las aceras; investigaciones sobre aspectos cotidianos, como la seguridad; estudios historiográficos; estudios de interpretación; estudios paleontológicos y arqueozoológicos; estudios informáticos: la arqueología virtual y el laboratorio que supone Pompeya; y estudios cinematográficos.This book aims to be the continuation of Archaeological Studies of the Vesuvian Area I. Both are collections of research papers - most of them by Spanish authors - on the sites of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Stabia and Oplontis. The presented works cover subjects from every humanistic and historical dimension about the ancient cities: strictly archaeological research: typologies of domus, atria, fora, building materials, necropolis; iconographical studies of houses, such as the Villa delle colonne a mosaico, of individual characters, such as the god Dionysus, of ornithology and of neoclassical painting; philological studies of inscriptions and poems of great Greek and Latin authors; legislative and juridical studies, such as the laws about the public roads and pavements; research of daily aspects, such as security; historiographical studies; interpretative studies; paleontological and zooarchaeological studies; computer studies: virtual archaeology and the lab that Pompeii represents; and cinematographic studies.

Proceedings of the International Colloquium, 1-5 October 2008 Al. I. Cuza University (Iäi, Romania)This book presents the proceedings of the International Colloquium (1-5 October 2008) held at Al. I. Cuza University (Iäi, Romania) on the Archaeology and Anthropology of Salt. This title was awarded the Grand Prize at the National Salon of Technical and Scientifical Books at the European Exhibition of Creativity and Innovation, May 10-13, 2012, Iasi, Romania.

This volume represents the first major bioarchaeological investigation of human health and behaviour in ancient northern Vietnam. Using dental and skeletal samples excavated by Vietnamese archaeologists from the 1960s through to 1990s, this study compares and contrasts the human condition in two key temporal periods in Vietnamese prehistory: mid-Holocene sedentary hunter-gathers and the emerging Bronze and Iron Ages. Specifically, osteoarthritis, oral health, markers of physiological stress in childhood (enamel hypoplasia and cribra orbitalia), general disease and traumatic injury are explored and discussed in detail. The wealth of data provided by the author will furnish the interested reader with a solid comparative basis from which to explore other aspects of health and behaviour in ancient Southeast Asia specifically, and the broader region in general.

Portable shrine models with architectural features are unique objects within the assemblages of material culture, even though they appear in a variety of cultures throughout the ancient world. This book concentrates on models from the Land of Israel, with comparisons to models from the geographic-historical units of the Levant. The basic assumption of this study is that these models do not attempt an exact representation of specific buildings, although they do enable analogies to architecture of early periods. Above all, the shrine model was a symbol of the house of God. Religious, ethnical, political and social aspects of the models are examined in reference to written evidence, and the archaeological assemblages in which they are found. Although these models were not as common as other cult objects such as altars and figurines, their wide distribution provides further evidence of the close relationship between the diverse peoples of the region.

Five basic Solutrean point types from the Iberian Peninsula are analysed at local, regional and Pan-Iberian scales in this book. The author reports new results concerning production process and object biography in relation to raw material procurement, technological strategies during production and use-life, site type and regional features. Significant regional differences between Northern and Southern Iberia are demonstrated, which go far beyond typological observations. Evidence indicates that different settlement and mobility patterns are responsible for these regional adaptations of technological innovations. The author successfully links point techno-morphology to human land use. The book is a major resource for the study of Solutrean points, as well as for studies on projectile points in general. In addition, it serves as a guideline for how to approach the study of land use of palaeolithic hunter-gatherers on the base of lithic technology.

This book examines the development of the mosque from the hijra (A.H.1/A.D.622) to the fall of the Umayyad dynasty (A.H.133/A.D.750). The aims of the book are two-fold. Firstly, to consider how those mosques for which we only have literary evidence may be approached for study; and secondly, to trace the development of the mosque in the archaeological record. The archaeological evidence for the mosques at W¢asiçt, Isk¢af Ban³ Junayd, K¢ufa and the Aqâ¢a mosque at Jerusalem are examined in detail; there follows an examination of the form and layout of the various types of mosque encountered in the physical record, and a discussion of some architectural influences which may have affected the development of form. The book also considers thosemosques for which no secure archaeological evidence may be cited and attempts to pick apart previous attempted reconstructions of these buildings which were often based on an uncritical approach to the literary sources.

A complete analysis of matt-painted pottery from Segesta, Sicily is presented in this volume. The analysis is based on direct examination of thousands of pottery fragments excavated from different contexts, both public and domestic, and from which the author derives a detailed typological and chronological order. The core of this study is the analysis of the functional aspects of the pottery. The complementary relationships between the Greek imports and the possible derivation of certain forms from the local allogenic pottery are highlighted. The research also focuses on other sites in western Sicily employing both published and unpublished material. The archaeological findings of Segesta can be contextualised in a network of relationshipswith other nearby centers within which Segesta is considered a political and cultural reference point. In analysing matt-painted pottery this work improves on previous research and contributes new insights into the lives and networks of indigenous inhabitants of Sicily in the late Iron Age and Archaic Era.