Books published by BAR Publishing

The Middle Euphrates Region, encompassing ancient Syria, enjoyed a period of rapid and complex socio-political development during the third millennium BC. These developments are archaeologically reflected in changes to burials and funerary rituals during this time. This important category of evidence lay largely unexcavated until large-scale dam construction prompted a series of rescue excavations across the region during the latter half of the twentieth century. This in-depth study of the mortuary remains from several sites on the Middle Euphrates presents the material from these and earlier excavations in a single, comprehensive volume for the first time. It uses this material to investigate the multifaceted world of third millennium funerary ritual and cult. The author provides original and informative conclusions about funerary rituals and their possible significance to society in ancient Syria, making this book an invaluable resource for researching the Early Bronze Age activity in the Middle Euphrates Region.

From 1956 to 1970 excavations at Tikal, one of the most famous classical Maya sites, was carried out by the University of Pennsylvania Museum Tikal Project. Until now, much of the field research from these excavations has remained unpublished. This volume draws on the original work and data collected by Dennis E. Puleston. Puleston's investigations at Tikal remain unparalleled and this edited and revised collection of his work presents the most extensive mapping work conducted outside of a Lowland Maya ceremonial centre. Work conducted at Tikal provides us with invaluable evidence for many aspects of Maya civilization including agriculture, water systems, earth-work systems and settlement hierarchies. This volume is the only full report of the Tikal survey and crucial for the understanding of Maya civilization. It also summarises related sub-projects, including excavations from satellite sites to Tikal and includes many photographs, maps and illustrations. By making this data accessible for the first time, the volume aims to answer old questions and stimulate new debates.

The history of European settlement of South Americas has been the subject of much historical, archaeological and anthropological research. Guianas in the Amazon region, however life and society in the pre-Columbian period remain comparatively neglected topics. Though the Guianas were inhabited by different local groups before and after European colonisation began in the late sixteenth century, little is known about Pre-Columbian life and society in this region. The eleven papers in this volume seek to fill this gap in research, each focussing on a range of different archaeological and historical methods, such as archaeobotanical analysis, cartography and ethnology. This volume provides a highly original, multifaceted and truly interdisciplinary account of the pre-Columbian Guianas. It also benefits from a greater focus on scientific analysis than the few other studies of the region in this period. The papers included here will be of interest to anyone seeking to learn more about in the pre-Columbian Amazon region, and South America more generally. An English language abstract is included for each of the papers in this volume.

Tell el-Ghaba project was born as part of an international project launched in the early 1990s by the Egyptian government and UNESCO to save the monuments of North Sinai threatened by the imminent construction of the El-Salam Canal and its distributaries. This is the third volume of the work undertaken by the Argentine Archaeological Mission (AAM) at Tell el-Ghaba in North Sinai. This volume of Tell el-Ghaba consolidates and extends the results of the excavations undertaken in the first stage between 1995 and 1999 and includes the results of the fieldwork conducted in the second stage in 2010. The overall objective of this project is to study the history, archaeology and environment of Tell el-Ghaba. Our research has been directed at developing a deep knowledge of the site: its environment, occupancy levels, architecture, economy, urban planning and social structure, and towards understanding the role of Tell el-Ghaba at a regional level, taking into account its particular location in the north-eastern boundary of the Delta and its proximity to the route that once connected Egypt with the south of Palestine. The volume is divided into an introduction and four main sections: The environmental and physical studies; the fieldwork; pottery; other finds.

This monograph examines Swahili plant subsistence and food production patterns through the analysis of macrobotanical remains from four archaeological sites on Pemba Island, Tanzania, dating to A.D. 700-1600. Specifically towns and villages are compared before and during the emergence of stonetowns, settlements characterized by stone/coral household and ritual architecture, which have been described as urban, based on their roles as economic, political, and religious centers along the eastern African coast. Swahili stonetowns are hypothesized to have exerted political control over the immediate hinterland for the purposes of obtaining trade items and staple goods, including plant products. Based on ethnohistoric reports, a wide variety of collected and cultivated plants have been previously proposed as being central to Swahili consumption and production economies including trees in mangrove habitats, coconut, sorghum, pearl millet, and Asian rice. Moreover, it has often been assumed that stonetowns obtained plant products, including staple grains, from the countryside and were not themselves primary food producers. These assumptions are tested directly against the archaeological record in this first comprehensive study of ancient Swahili plant foods.

Torres Strait lies at a crucial point both geographically and conceptually between Australia and the Pacific. This book examines methodologies used in both regions for examining bounded archaeological communities. It applies a model of social archaeologyand regionalisation to identify the settlement history of Mabuyag. By investigating sites of importance to the community this study provides an archaeology that is alive and important to the Goemulgaw people today. The author examines the archaeology of one Torres Strait Islander community, the Goemulgal of Mabuyag in central western Torres Strait. The book provides the first detailed archaeological study into the emergence and development of historically and ethnographically-known villages in the Torres Strait. The close examination of settlement and subsistence histories on Mabuyag furnishes chronological insights into the changing role of villages for a single island community. By examining chronologies previously established by archaeological researchers working in Torres Strait, this study adds to emerging broad chronological patterns across the region.

This book is the result of a large-scale research undertaking Trade Routes of the Near East", examining Egyptian-Levantine interaction in the 4th Millennium BC. Chapters explore many issues related to copper and trade in the long period covering the Chalcolithic and Bronze Ages, but also Roman period, with a special extension to present metallurgical practices in the African interior. A wide range of data discussed here was collected from across the eastern Mediterranean region including Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus and Greece.

En suma, este libro se propone presentar y desarrollar un estudio que fundamentado en las Admoniciones de Ipuwer, de cuenta de la literatura política y la sociedad del Reino Medio y de cómo las expresiones sobre lo político y lo ideológico contenidas en dicho texto y en otras fuentes literarias del período se conjugaban y articulaban con mecanismos de legitimación estatal y cohesión social de las propias elites del período.

Recent studies on the Anatolian archaeology in this volume shows the great importance of the cultural and archaeological heritage of the Turkey. This volume includes data from surveys and excavations, in addition to the analysis of unpublished materials preserved in local museums. The geographical region covered in by the papers included in this volume covers the whole of Asia Minor, from the west coast to the central and northern part, up to the east. The temporal coverage ranges from the Neolithic to the nineteenth century. Scholars from various parts of the world, but especially young and promising Turkish researchers, have contributed papers to this volume which discuss the important archaeological heritage of Anatolia and contribute a great deal to archaeological knowledge and practice in this part of the world.Edited by Ergün Lafl¿ and Sami Patac¿ with the assistance of Gonca Cankarde¿-¿enol, Ahmet Kaan ¿enol and Gülseren Kan ¿ahin.

Studies of social complexity increasingly recognize the role of maritime communities in the development of large sociopolitical systems. The Central Andes present an ideal region for understanding maritime aspects of ancient social complexity, due to one of the most productive sea biomasses in the world. In this study the author investigates Samanco, an ancient seaside town, and its contribution to urban transformations along the North-Central coast of Peru during the mid-1st millennium BCE. This book focusses on Samanco's primary occupation (circa 500-1 BC). The author consults a theoretical framework of performance and its influence on community organization as a framework for analyzing sociopolitical development. Two field seasons of intensive excavations at Samanco in 2012 and 2013 yielded a substantial dataset to analyze performance and maritime aspects of early urbanism in the Central Andes. This book provides an in-depth look at Samanco's archaeological record, supplanted with theoretical analysis of performance, common experiences, and community organization. The research reveals a thriving coastal town during a period of settlement nucleation, known as the Salinar phenomenon, which is not adequately understood in the ancient Andean world.

Around the tenth century AD, the Chimú culture emerged along the arid northern coast of Peru. In the fifteenth century AD, at its peak, the Chinú kingdom expanded over hundreds of kilometres, was controlled by a network of administrative centres from Chan Chan, the capital. In this volume the analysis of settlement patterns and the exploitation of the valley of Chicama sheds light on different mechanisms that have contributed to the growth of Chan Chan, the political capital and ceremonial centre of the Chimú. Among the 167 sites identified in this region, 88 were occupied during the Late Intermediate Period (1000 to 1470 A.D.). The investigation of these sites, composed of concentrations of archaeological material, buildings and infra-structures, offers a partial view of the human settlement pattern, supplemented by previously published archaeological data. This study shows that the heart of the coastal plain of Chicama was cultivated by the local communities, for whom historical records can be found in sixteenth century archives, while in the margins, the expanding irrigation and the agriculture were managed from administrative centres relaying the authority of Chan Chan. The installation of Chimú groups from the coast upstream to the middle valley allowed for effective control the water resources, essential for the crops in an arid environment.

A collection of archaeological materials and burial remains, recovered during large scale excavations or by accidental discovery by travellers and locals, are presented in this volume on sixth- to seventh century mortuary and funerary practices from the Achaemenid to the Sasanian period in Iran. Much of this material has been poorly published in the past, or not been published at all. The author has collected a wide range of data to shed light on mortuary and funerary practices of cultures within the ancient Persian Empire who lived near or inside the borders of modern-day Iran.

During recent years new excavations at a number of Neolithic locations in the Central Zagros by German, British and Iranian archaeologists have revealed a series of important results. Notable are the Early Neolithic sites of Choga Golan, Jani, Sheikh-e Abad, and East Chia Sabz, all discovered and excavated within the last ten years. In this volume Hojjat Darabi gives a survey of the discoveries on which our knowledge is based. The book is set in a chronological frame, in an environmental context, and in a regional and theoretical perspective. It is illustrated by a number of useful photos, drawings charts and diagrams. The book is a presentation of our knowledge about Neolithic Revolution as it appears right now; in addition, it provides an outline of further steps for future research.

This book represents the proceedings of the Portable Antiquities Scheme conference on the subject of hoarding and the deposition of metalwork.

Presented here are the results of research on the transition from Locarno Beach archaeological culture type (3500/3300 -2500/2400 BP) to Marpole culture type (2500/2400 4500/1100 BP) within the Gulf of Georgia region of the Northwest Coast of North America. Nearly 6000 artifacts from seven Southern Vancouver Island archaeological sites are typologically reclassified and combined with previously recorded data from twenty Gulf of Georgia site components. In this volume multidimensional scaling is used to examine variability within the Marpole culture type. Results show the continuation of the Old Musqueam, Beach Grove and Garrison subphases of the Marpole culture and the addition of a fourth subphase, Bowker Creek. Based on spatial and temporal distribution, the culture historical sequence is reinterpreted here and new subphases to Locarno Beach culture type are identified, shifting the date of the Locarno Beach- Marpole transition to around 2000 BP. The author shows that Southern Vancouver Island may exhibit a different culture history than the Fraser River.

Die Isle of Man besitzt außergewöhnlich viele und interessante 'Wikingergräber', von reich ausgestatteten Schiffs- und Hügelgräbern zu einfachen Flachbestattungen. Doch während über 150 Jahren altertumskundlicher Forschung sind etliche nur schlecht dokumentiert oder schwer zugänglich publiziert, so daß ein fundierter Einblick kaum zu erlangen ist. Die Publikation stellt alle derzeit bekannten 'Wikingergräber' der Isle of Man vor (einschließlich umfangreicher Bebilderung) und analysiert ihre Funde, Befunde und Kontexte.The Isle of Man boasts a large number of Viking graves: Richly furnished boat and mound graves as well as simple interments. But during about 150 years of research not a few of them remained pooly documented and poorly accessible, so a well-founded overview was hard to obtain. This publication presents all Viking graves in the Isle of Man known today (including extensive illustrations) and an analysis of their objects and contexts.

A collection of papers in honour of Eyptologist Ulrich Luft.

This book concerns the ways in which the adaption of a steppe innovation, the horse-drawn chariot, in Chinese society during the 12th - 3rd century BCE contributed profoundly to the development of Chinese political and social value. The importance of the steppe driving skill in warfare, and political and ritual ceremonies in Chinese society not only brought a number of steppe people to serve in Chinese states, but also largely transformed Chinese social, political, and burial practices, and value systems. These early uses were reinterpreted in later periods and still have their influence today.

Proceedings of the XVI World Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (Florianopolis, Brazil, 4-10 September 2011), Volume 2, Session 47This book includes papers from the session 'Tumuli Graves - Status Symbol of the Dead in Bronze and Iron Ages in Europe' held at the XVI IUPPS World Congress (Florianopolis, 4-10 September 2011).

Liza Cleland's study of Greek clothing led her inevitably to the Brauron Catalogues - inscriptions of great significance for any study of this kind. This book is made up of her research into the texts, and is intended as a reference text to give 'a foothold in the impenetrable faces' of the Brauron Catalogue.

This work investigates the development of social complexity and the changes of modes of pottery production from the Neolithic to early Bronze Age in the Yuanqu Basin, north-central China. The research focuses on the development of specialised pottery production in different societies. Through settlement pattern studies, the author examines the social changes during eight cultural periods from the Neolithic to the early Bronze Age (ca. 6200-1300 B.C.). The settlement analyses address 46 sites, including seven excavated sites in the Yuanqu Basin. This study argues that the initial and low-level specialisation might occur in the simple and non-stratified society, and the dramatic change in the mode of pottery production or the degree of specialisation is not necessarily related to the emergence and development of chiefdom-level societies, but rather associated with the formation of state-level societies, as demonstrated by the Yuanqu case.

This book presents proceedings of the 17th Rencontres Sabeennes held in Paris, 6-8 June 2013.

Proceedings of the international conference, Iäi, Romania, November 6-10, 2013Archaeological heritage helps to define the age and origins of a culture, the history and traditions of a nation, a country or a certain ethno-cultural space in relation to other states or cultural spaces. Today, archaeological goods are treated as part of all humanity, which needs to be treated accordingly. The preservation of archaeological sites is strongly linked to the study, safeguarding and evaluation of unearthed archaeological vestiges. At the same time, this field is faced with the need to salvage or restore sites. As cultural heritage, archaeological goods are very attractive for collectors, and become subjects of illicit activities such as illegal excavations and trade. Hence, for preserving archaeological heritage we need an efficient management with a frame of activities focused on preserving, researching, conservation, and restoration of the cultural resources for future generations.European and international Conventions play an important role in the process of archaeological heritage preservation, but one of the most important acts is the revised European Convention on the Protection of Archaeological Heritage. Two decades after the signing of the Valletta Convention (Malta, 1992), it is the time to do a large evaluation of its implementation. All countries have a rich past, but they have different systems for cultural heritage preservation, from regional autonomy to federal control.Under the aegis of the lasi Institute of Archaeology of the Romanian Academy - lasi branch, the project entitled Current Trends in Archaeological Heritage Preservation: National and International Perspectives was launched in 2011 with the financial support of the Romanian National Council of Scientific Research (CNCS), with the intent purpose of analysing the archaeological-heritage preservation policies of Romania and their interplay with the European and international counterparts.Out of the project came the organisation of an international conference which took place in lasi on the 6th- 10th November 2013. The event was organised by the Iasi Institute of Archaeology in partnership with the European Association of Archaeologists, the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi, the "Moldova" National Museum Complex from Iasi and the National Museum of Romanian History, Bucharest. The conference's goal was to share the experience and to discuss actual situation on the field of archaeological heritage preservation in various countries. This volume gathers most of the papers presented at the conference, and itspublication is meant to disseminate to an audience, as wide as possible, the latest work of those working in the field and to promote the latest trends in the protection and management of the archaeological heritage.

The Moche art style is best known through its highly refined ceramic vessels, which frequently accompanied burials. Estimates suggest that there are over 100,000 Moche vessels in museum and private collections worldwide (Donnan 1976: 13). The vessels, often decorated in a strongly pictorial style uncharacteristic of art of the Central Andean region, offer modern viewers tantalizing glimpses of Moche worldview. The highly consistent and formalized iconography on Moche vessels has been the topic of numerous studies, beginning around the middle of the last century, which have shed light on important aspects of Moche society such as mythology, social organization and ceremonialism. A particularly confounding subset of Moche ceramics portrays figures, including deities, skeletal beings, humans and animals, engaged in sexual acts. While such vessels inevitably arouse the interest of modern museum visitors, to date, relatively few scholarly studies have investigated the emic meanings of Moche sexual vessels and the artistic intent behind their creation. This study focuses on portrayals of an often-depicted Moche deity who, in this instance, copulates with a woman figure and argues that such images drew upon widespread beliefs concerning the functions of a vital cosmos to make potent ideological claims of legitimacy in a richly metaphorical visual landscape.

This book presents the rich and varied archaeological record from excavations carried out between 2004-2010 in the Saja river basin, Cantabria, northern Spain.

The Valley of Sagittarius and the Peligna Dell between the fourth and first centuries BC: Trends and Delvelopments of Romanization. In the Peligna Valley, there is a poor understanding of Romanization as a phenomenon. The state of the documentation is very substantial but it is fragmentary and unsystematic in large parts. This book examines the most significant discoveries and studies in the Sagittarius valley and Peligna Dell from the beginning of the modern era to the present time. The theme of Romanization is introduced and defined from an historical point of view and the methodology that is followed is looked at, examining the advantages and limitations involved.

Contents: Introduction (Robert Hillenbrand); I. METALWORK AND TEXTILES: The Freer Canteen: Jerusalem or Jazira? (Teresa Fitzherbert); Mamluk Textiles (Maria Sardi); The Captivating Power of Textiles (Miriam Ali-de-Unzaga); II. CERAMICS: Unravelling the Enigmatic Fourteenth-Century Mamluk and Mongol Fine Wares: How to Solve the Problem (Rosalind A.

This publication is the first volume of what is intended to be a series of publications on the archaeology of the Timpone della Motta, a hill of 280m asl at Francavilla Marittima (Calabria, southern Italy) where the Groningen Institute of Archaeology has carried out a series of excavations between 1963 and 1969. Among the excavations, the 'acropolis' site has revealed the remains of an Oenotrian-Italic sanctuary dating from circa 800-730BC. This sanctuary contained among other features an apsidal timber building with a courtyard and altar, and a large room used for textile production. Significant among the Early Iron Age ceramics is the characteristic Italic/Oenotrian-Geometric production of matt-painted pottery that existed in Calabria, Basilicata and Campania. The Oenotrian pottery workshops of Francavilla-Lagaria were very much part of this Geometric, matt-painted tradition. From the pottery from the Timpone della Motta and the tombs of the Macchiabate necropolis at Francavilla Marittima a distinctive, local, Middle Geometric decorative style emerges, one mainly based on painted undulating bands as decorative elements, which were named the 'Undulating Band Style'. The style continued in a modified form during the Late Geometric period and is the specific subject of this volume in the series.

A collection of papers presented at the Third BICANE Colloquium held at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in March of 2011.

This is the third volume on ceramics in a series of publications on research carried out by Groningen University in the period 1991-2004 on the Timpone della Motta, Francavilla Marittima (Calabria), under the direction of the author. This volume, on the 'Fringe Style', contains a fully illustrated catalogue of the material accompanied by a valuable discussion about material from this site, as well as relating it to Matt-painted pottery production at other sites, and discusses the chronological information. It therefore provides a valuable detailed account of an assemblage from pre-Roman Italy, a comparatively neglected period.