Books published by BAR Publishing

The Chalcolithic wedge tombs of Ireland represent a dramatic re-emergence of megalithism over a millennium after most Neolithic megaliths were built and many centuries after most had gone out of use. This resurgence of building monuments associated with the dead may well have been associated with a period of social instability caused by the expansion of exchange networks and associated with the introduction of metallurgy. Regional, group, and individual identities all seem to have undergone change at this time, probably in a dynamic demographic context. Variations in the distribution and scale of wedge tombs in Co. Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, provide an interesting study that may reveal a pattern of clan affiliations, status competition, and enduring links to an important and ancient locale.

Provincias de Buenos Aires y Mendoza Argentina

This book includes papers from a Round Table event on small vertebrate research held by l'Institut Ecologie et Environment du CNRS in October 2009.

Bridgwater: Personality, Place and the Built Environment traces the history and development of the town of Bridgwater as a physical entity from its origins to 1700. This includes not only the physical layout of the town as a whole, but also the plan and structure of its individual plots and buildings. These have been reconstructed through the hundreds of leases from the medieval period and sixteenth and seventeenth centuries preserved in the town's archives. Although the area around Bridgwater was settled in prehistory and Roman times, Bridgwater itself first appeared in the early eleventh century. In contrast to previous histories of the town, the book shows that rather than being the village depicted in the Domesday survey, Bridgwater was founded as a bridgehead burh by its Anglo-Saxon lord, Maerleswein. It was later promoted to Anglo-Norman borough c. 1200 by the Devon magnate, William de Brewer, who added the castle and parks as part of a planned aristocratic landscape. The book places the settlement and development of the town within the context of the wider changes in the landscape of Somerset, such as the colonisation and drainage of the Levels, the expansion of road and river communications and the urbanisation of Europe from the tenth century onwards. It also examines the effect of the late medieval urban crisis and the Reformation on the physical structure of the town.

This study investigates the nature of indigenous settlement in northern England. The main focus is on artefactual and settlement patterning evidence. Chapter 1 covers the geological background, modern literature on the Brigantes and the history of archaeological work in the area. Chapter 2 considers the relevant literature and epigraphy: these are Roman in origin, and mostly post-date the period in question. It also considers Roman place-name evidence, discussing possible evidence for lack of linguistic change and the significance of the name Carlisle in relation to native society on the Solway Plain. This chapter reveals the weaknesses of the literature as evidence for the presence of tribes and regional identities in northern Britain. Chapter 3 discusses the artefactual and material evidence covering pottery, metalwork, taphonomy, querns, glass and coinage. Regional patterns based on use, decorative styles and the use of imported Roman goods and styles, are identified which may indicate the presence of indigenous societies. Chapter 4 also identifies evidence for regionalisms by observing patterning in settlement sites themselves. In both cases factors affecting the archaeological record are highlighted. These two diverse approaches produce broadly similar results. In chapter 5 conclusions are drawn regarding indigenous society and possible regional identities. There are no grounds for asserting the existence of one large regional group in northern England. The combined evidence reveals a number of different regions of which six are thought to display sufficient variation to indicate the presence of regional identities. Where possible names drawn from Chapter 2 are notionally attributed to these areas. The book concludes that the Tees Valley is the region most likely to have been inhabited by a regional group who may have recognised the name 'Brigantes'; there is no evidence that their control extended further.

Ar Rasfa is a Middle Paleolithic open-air site located in the Rift Valley of Northwest Jordan excavated between 1997-1999. This book presents a detailed technological, typological, and paleoanthropological analysis of the stone tool assemblage from Ar Rasfa. Artifacts reflecting the initial preparation and exploitation of local flint sources dominate the Ar Rasfa assemblage. Typologically, the assemblage is most similar to Levantine Mousterian assemblages such as those from Naamé, Skhul and Qafzeh. Patterns of lithic variability and contextual evidence suggest Ar Rasfa was visited intermittently by human populations circulating between lake/river-edge resources in the Rift Valley bottom and woodland habitats along the ridge of the Transjordan Plateau.

Papers from the conference held by The Friends of the Whithorn Trust in Whithorn on September 15th 2007This book includes papers from the international conference held at Chester, England, in February 2007 on Roman Amphitheatres and Spectacular.

This work presents a history of Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, in an overlapping double vision. One image presents the more traditionally understood place that Dorchester holds as the 'oppidum' that grew to be a town and retained that urban identity in the face of the crumbling fifth century, while the alternate hypothesis challenges the notion of 'urban' community, suggesting that stability of geographical presence and perseverance of spatial identity are more considerable factors in the longevity of Dorchester's significance.

This detailed survey of the archaeological evidence reassesses the Middle Assyrian period, when the first Assyrian empire can be said to have been founded as a result of large scale military expansion.

A catalogue and analysis of over 1000 Roman-period oil lamps from the Holy Land within the collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The Roman period in Palestine begins with the conquest of the East by Pompey in 63 BCE - essentially the period representing the continuation of the partial political and cultural annexation of the country to Western civilisation following the earlier arrival of Greek and Hellenistic culture. By the same author, see also BAR S1598 2007: Oil-Lamps in the Holy Land: Saucer Lamps and BAR S2015 2009: Greek and Hellenistic Wheel and Mould Made Closed Oil Lamps in the Holy Land.

Papers from the II International Conference of Transition Archaeology: Death Archaeology 29th April -­ 1st May 2013

This book investigates the archaeological evidence for crafts and production in early medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100, with a particular focus on the extensive excavated evidence from rural secular and ecclesiastical settlements. The volume firstly provides an overview of the social and ideological contexts of crafts and technologies in early Ireland. It then outlines the extant evidence specifically for iron-working, non-ferrous metalworking, glass, enamel and millefiori, bone, antler and horn, and stone working, and characterises each craft practice in terms of scale, outputs and implications for society. Tables provide additional information on wood craft and pottery. The book then provides a detailed review of the use of different materials in dress and ornament, touches on cloth and textile production, and explores how social identities were performed through objects and material practices. The book then provides a voluminous site gazetteer accounting for all evidence for craft and production on hundreds of early medieval settlements, with numerous tables of data, site plans, artefact drawings and photographs and an extensive bibliography. The book is based on the work of the Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP), which was funded through the Irish Heritage Council and Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht's INSTAR programme, a collaborative research project carried out by University College Dublin and Queens University Belfast which reviewed all archaeological excavations in Ireland between c.1930-2012. This particular book, building on EMAP's previous studies of dwellings and settlements, and agriculture and economy, provides the baseline for a generation of studies of early medieval crafts and production in Ireland in its northwest European contexts.

The Seminar on the Archaeology of Western France, which focused on the islands of Brittany, was held on 1 April 2014 at the University of Rennes 1. The desire to organize this seminar arose spontaneously from the dynamism which currently animates archaeological research on island spaces of the western seaboard of France. Indeed, the seminar took place during a pivotal period of archaeological research covering these islands. A multidisciplinary approach to the question of insularity appears essential, in view of the large amount of research currently undertaken on this topic from the historical, ethnographic and geographical points of view. Accordingly, a comparative analysis of prehistoric and recent island societies would seem to have a true long-term potential for research (to understand in a diachronic way the organization between islands, the relations between large and small islands, the dynamics of exploitation of resources and the degree of dependence with respect to the continent, etc.). Comparisons with other island systems would also offer a particularly rich and relevant approach to refine our study of the problems of insularity. This publication brings together various participants of research on islands, including archeologists, archeometrists, archeomalacologists, geographers, historians, etc.

Archaeobotanical investigation was conducted on a total of thirty two thousand (n=32,000) pot fragments, baked clay and fired clay collected from different sites belonging to five Cultural Groups in Eastern Sudan. The Cultural Groups include Amm Adam, Butana, Gash, Jebel Mokram, and Hagiz. Soil samples (6 kilos) were also analyzed from various excavation spots at Mahal Teglinos, a major site that rendered data on Butana, Gash, Jebel Mokram and Hagiz Groups. The objective of the study was to reconstruct ancient food systems of the pre-historic inhabitants of a region of Northeast Africa and its environmental milieu. The result of the study demonstrated the subsistence bases of the inhabitants from ca. 6,000 B.C. to 200/300 A.D. Crops like the small seededmillets (Setaria sp., Eleusine sp., Paspalum sp., Echinochloa sp., Pennisetum sp.), Sorghum verticilliflorum, Sorghum bicolor bicolor, Hordeum sp., Triticum monococcum/dicoccum, and seeds and fruit stones (Vigna unguiculata, Grewia bicolor Juss., Ziziphus sp. (mainly Ziziphus spina christi) and Celtis integrifolia) were cultivated for consumption during this period. The study has also shed new light on the domestication history of Sorghum bicolor. The wild Sorghum, Sorghum bicolor verticilliflorum and its cultivated variety, Sorghum bicolor were simultaneously exploited by the Jebel Mokram Group people between 2,000 B.C. and 1,000 B.C. One of the oldest domesticated morphotype of Sorghum bicolor, i.e. an intermediary phase between the wild progenitor and its domesticated variety was revealed by the same investigation. Morphological change that has occurred while the species was evolving from wild to cultivated is measured using a Leica Qwin software.

Archaeological investigations of the early eighteenth century fortifications in Casale Monferrato, northern Italy.

South American Archaeology Series No 23Reliable sex and age estimate on human bone remains is a fundamental aspect in bioarchaeological investigation since such estimates represent the basis on which supplementary studies aiming at contributing to the knowledge of biological and cultural aspects of prehistoric populations are structured. However, since many features, both metrical and morphological ones are specific for each population, and knowing that growth and development patterns as well as sexual dimorphism vary among groups, this work aims at understanding sex and age biological markers on archaeological osteological collections from the Northwest of Argentina. These collections are made up of different sets of skeletons belonging to native populations and fitting different time periods. The fundamental objective of this work has been to study the behavior of sex and age variability general pattern inside and among the collections observed, and, therefore, basic information concerning age and sex patterns of the whole population set they belong to can be provided.

Archaeological investigations of the systems of agriculture and irrigation at two sites in Northwest Argentina: El Shincal and Los Colorados.

These archaeological studies offer to provide an alternative tour through Vesuvian cities. One way to see Pompeii, for example, is via its hydraulic systems, from the higher parts to waterlogged landfills at the mouth of Sarno. They invite you to walk the streets amidst the traces of regulation issued in municipal law and the free initiative of those who built and maintained the sidewalks. The graffiti and paintings allow us to take a tour specially designed to understand the tastes and devotions of the inhabitants of the Vesuvian cities. Thus, disparate themes researched separately may be presented here as a coherent work that initiates the visitor into Vesuvian studies. Each author gives us a particular tour of the specifics of the cities and villages of the Vesuvian area, its story, furniture, findings and the research process that has been developed over many years.

This research focuses on the Bronze Age in selected areas of Korea; Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi province. Two forms of evidence - settlements and monuments - are taken into account to identify their relationship with landscape and the social changes occurring between ca. 1500 to 400 cal BC. Life and death in the Bronze Age in Korea has not been synthetically investigated before, due to the lack of evidence from settlements. However, since academic and rescue excavations have increased, it is now possible to examine the relationship between settlements and monuments on a broad scale and over a long-term sequence, although there are still limitations in the archaeological evidence. The results of GIS (Geographical Information System) analysis and Bayesian modelling of the radiocarbon dates from this region can be interpreted as suggesting that Bronze Age people in the mid-Korean peninsula had certain preferences for their habitation and mortuary places. The locations of two archaeological sites were identified and statistical significance was generated for their positioning on soil that was associated with agriculture. It was found that settlements tended to be located at a higher elevation with fine views and that monuments tended to be situated in the border zones between mountains and plains and also within the boundary of a 5km site catchment adjusted for energy expenditure, centring on each settlement. This configuration is reminiscent of the concept of the auspicious location, as set out in the traditional geomantic theory of Pungsu. It can be argued that Bronze Age people chose the place for the living and the dead with a holistic perspective and a metaphysical approach that placed human interaction with the natural world at the centre of their decision-making processes. These concepts were formed out of the process of a practical adaptation to the Bronze Age landscape and environment in order to practice agriculture as a subsistence economy, but they also exerted a profound influence upon later Korean peoples and their identities.

In this paper the authors study a specific type of pottery from the northwest Iberian Peninsula, known as the Wide Horizontal Rim (WHR) vessel. One of its distinctive aspects is precisely the fact that it is exclusively found in this region, which now comprises the Spanish region of Galicia and northern Portugal, as far south as the River Duero. This type of pottery, of which there are only scarce references in literature, has a greater impact than its presence in the archaeological record. For this reason, the authors carried out the first systematic global study for the region, consisting on identifying the WHR pottery type from an extensive catalogue of 76 vessels, some of which are little-known or completely unknown, characterising the pottery as the first step. Four formal groups were identified, only two of which can be referred to as WHR vessels (WHR1 or the 'classic' shape, and WHR2), while the other two groups are referred to as vessels with WHR. They then contextualise the different groups classified in the different types of sites to which they are associated, in three main spheres where WHR vessels are found: the funerary sphere (the best known), domestic sphere and undetermined, in a total of 49 archaeological sites. In the north of Portugal, the archaeological record points towards a preferred distribution of these sites in the interior, on the contrary to the situation found in Galicia, where there seems to have been a preference for coastal areas. After examining the contexts the authors offer a summary and review of the available datings associated with WHR vessels to date in order to propose a chronological table, indicating the distribution of WHR vessels and vessels with WHR over time, based on an analysis of the absolute and relativechronology.

The subject of this work is the 'vici' settlements of Gaul, or more precisely of the Three Gauls; Aquitania, Lugdunensis, and Belgica; ten areas in all are covered, taking in the north-west, south-west, central, and eastern Gaul. The time span covered is approximately from the conquest culminating in the victory of Caesar at Alesia in 52 BC, to the loss of Roman control at the beginning of the fifth century. The initial objectives are to catalogue the 'vici' and provide an overview of the origins and development, structural complexity and character, and the functions of these settlements. The 'vici' made a special contribution to the life of Roman Gaul, through their workshop industry, their involvement in trade and transport, their cult centres, and the culture of their inhabitants. Contains maps, site plans and extensive gazetteer.

During the first to the fifth centuries AD the Danube-Balkan region formed a buffer zone between the Latin speaking world of the west and the Greek speaking lands of the east. This book deals with the development and influence of the architectural plan of the late Roman villa in the Danube-Balkan region. It combines an archaeological and an architectural historical approach to the examination of the plans which form the primary focus of the research. At the same time, the functional and decorative elements of the buildings are considered in detail where appropriate. The research is based on extensive fieldwork and draws together the existing literature to elucidate the architecture of the late Roman villa in the Danube-Balkan region and to establish its broader significance. A systematic study of this nature has not previously been carried out.

The papers that form up this collection of studies originate in a session organized by the present author at the 15th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists at Riva del Garda, in 15-20 September 2009.

Bronze Age metalwork has always caught the interest of archaeologists, largely due to the very large volume and variety of objects that is still being recovered on an almost daily basis. Regional catalogues have been repeatedly undertaken in an attempt to manage the sheer wealth of data and analyse the implications. In 1983, one Susan Pearce published such a study of south western Britain (BAR 120, 1983), contributing a catalogue of 896 find spots. This discussion embraced the wider understanding of metalworking in the region, how this fitted with traditions across the rest of the country and the European continent, and how the metalwork was integrated into prehistoric society. This volume is intended to bring the 1983 corpus of south western Bronze Age metalwork finds up to date by documenting finds made in the four counties between January 1980 and July 2014. The intention here is not to undertake a full re-examination of the south western metalwork and its context - such a discussion is beyond the confines of this publication - but instead to suggest some of the broad parameters within which such a discussion might take place, and to point to several key themes that have become prominent in Bronze Age studies since 1983 and to some that remain relatively underexplored. A digital copy of the 1983 corpus is available to download as part of this publication to allow access to the complete collection of find spots in south western Britain.

A feast is a sensory, sacralised and social occasion. Its multiple resonances and experiences extend far beyond the nutritive consumption of food and drink by a group of people. To understand a feasting event more comprehensively, it is necessary to analyse the whole series of experiences that the original participant would have undergone during the course of a feast, and to trace the footsteps of the diner through each stage of what was presumably a major event in his/her calendar. While the author examines the totality of feasting occasions in this book, her principal focus lies on how feasts serve as an arena for social negotiations: the creation of obligations to a powerful host, the cohesion augmented between companions, the privileging of high-status individuals, the emphasised inferiority of those of lesser status, and the creation of new connections through shared emotive experiences. This work thus explores on a broad scale the multi-faceted use of feasting in mainland Greece by placing it in a diachronic perspective, commencing at the beginning of the Early Mycenaean period (MHIII/LHI) and continuing to the end of the Early Iron Age (EIA). This long-range study is given focus by viewing it specifically from the angle of social changes, developments and negotiations, in order to analyse how socio-political events in Greece throughout the nine centuries under consideration both affected commensal events and were directly or indirectly produced by them.

Studies in Classical Archaeology VThis study examines Greek archaeological and literary evidence between 600 and 300 BC, to discover how ancient Greeks regarded, interacted with, used, and treated tame and domestic animals. Also included are some of the more frequently encountered wild pest species, selected on the basis of their appearance in art and literature. Of primary interest are relationships between human and animal well-being. One of the significant problems in studying ancient Greece is that surviving literary and artistic evidence strongly emphasises élite values and activities, leaving the commonplace relatively untreated. The purpose of this work is to attempt recovery of ordinary, everyday human-animal relationships, to enhance our understanding of animals' fundamental social and practical roles in ancient Greece. Thus the focus is not the depiction of animals as art, or narratives about them, but literary evidence, artefacts, and animal remains as historical records, revealing a Greek social history of human-animal relationships. To discuss the entirety of human-animal interactions in the ancient Greek world would require numerous volumes. Some limitation is necessary. This has been achieved by investigating only chosen themes, and by biological class and species exclusions. It is hoped that this will allow the presentation of an adequately representative analysis, taking into account a sufficient sample of creatures.

This monograph deals with the destruction and disappearance of the palaces and palace societies of Late Bronze Age or Mycenaean Greece c.1200 and aspects of continuity and change in the subsequent Postpalatial period of the twelfth and eleventh centuries (LHIIIC). It is primarily concerned with mainland Greece and the islands, excluding Crete. An emphasis in this work, where analysis of the Greek material itself or theories based upon it is attempted, is the potential for differences between palatial and non-palatial areas. In order to set in context the discussion of collapse and of Postpalatial society, Chapter 1 is a brief introduction to Mycenaean material culture and interpretations of Mycenaean society. A limited survey is also offered, in order to clarify the extent and chronology of the collapse. Chapter 2 reviews developments in general collapse theory as drawn from recent and major publications. It further examines recent discussion of specific examples of collapse to identify current trends in interpretation. Chapter 3 critically examines theories of the Mycenaean collapse, concentrating on major styles of interpretation and ending in a discussion of the present consensus. Chapter 4 uses recent discussions of the Hittite, Maya and Roman collapses and continuities to suggest possible analogies for processes at work in LBA Greece. Chapter 5 examines the evidence for migrations and population mobility in Postpalatial Greece, discussing settlements and sites, and noting the contribution of survey. Chapter 6 deals with changes in rulership and social structure in the Postpalatial period, emphasising distinctions between areas of Greece that had palaces and non-palatial regions. The conclusion draws together the preceding discussions.

19 papers presented at the Proceedings of a Prehistoric Society conference at Sheffield University in February 2001.

This work focuses on the persistence of the 'Gates of Hades' iconographic theme among the peoples of the ancient Mediterranean. The analysis considers both the written tradition and the iconographic evidence surviving in funerary contexts, showing how the idea of the nether world among the eastern civilizations constituted a background for Greek and Etruscan imagary. The chronological period considered begins with Egyptian tombs of the Ancient Kingdom and moves on to concentrate on the period between the 7th and 5th centuries B. C., when the 'Gates of Hades' theme appears in Etruscan and Lydian necropoleis and on Attic vase painting.