Books published by BAR Publishing

The Mesolithic is regarded as a period of transition and, in recent years, a series of notable sites have been discovered in France that have begun to elucidate the nature and timing of that transition.

This volume deals with the appearance of an imported commodity and its associated accoutrements in Later Iron Age Britain. Wine begins to appear in the archaeological record in southern Britain in the early first century BC. Wine is so much part of the culture of the classical world that its appearance in Britain cannot be seen in isolation. Part 1 of this work sets the scene by examining the ancient sources and looks into the influence of the god of wine, Dionysios, and his Roman counterpart, Bacchus. The literary and archaeological evidence for wine in temperate Europe (Iron Age France) is also briefly reviewed. Part 2 contains a detailed consideration of the evidence and contexts of wine in Late Iron Age Britain, including, crucially, wine use at ritual and ceremonial sites. The author suggests that the use of wine in burials was one of the major forces driving wine imports into Britain at this time.

with English summary

Proceedings of the XV World Congress UISPP Lisbon, 4-9 September 2006 Volume 14, Session C54Session C54 in the proceedings of the XV World Congress of the International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP / IUPPS), held in September 2006, in Lisbon, concerned with recent rockshelter research.

A fresh look at Minoan Kato Zakro and its region (eastern Crete), in which the author explores the possible socio-economic development of this ever-fascinating site.

This volume charts the changing human-animal relationship at one particular location, Dudley Castle, West Midlands, over several centuries. The temporal span considered (the 11th-18th centuries) is, arguably, one of the most formative in the evolving relationship between humans and animals. The period was one of profound economic, social and demographic change, witnessing not only the evolution of modern breeds of domestic animals, but also a change in the way animals were perceived and treated. In this study, the animal bones recovered from archaeological excavations at Dudley Castle have been integrated with historical documentation to provide a basis from which to explore these issues. The size of the faunal assemblage, its chronology and location, combine to make the results of this analysis invaluable in enhancing our current state of knowledge. Just as human-animal relationships in the period reflected a combination of economic, social and cultural values, so the questions addressed in this volume reflect this diversity and inter-connectivity at a number of different scales. Thus, site-specific questions, as well as broader trends within the social and economic landscape of the medieval and post-medieval periods in England are considered. This study also attempts to explore dietary patterns on site, and the way in which the acquisition and consumption of food was used in the negotiation of social relationships.

The five-hundred year occupation of Insula IX at Silchester has yielded a sequence of 87 whetstones, mostly tabular but some bar- or rod-shaped. These are described, illustrated and characterized with the help of thin-section microscopic petrography. The whetstones originated in many geological sources, not all of which can at present be identified. Whetstones from the earliest levels at Silchester are comparatively local in origin (sarsen, ironstone) or were made from discarded, imported milling stones(Quartz Conglomerate, Upper Old Red Sandstone). During the first and second centuries AD substantial number of bar-shaped whetstones manufactured in the Wroxeter manner from sandstones in the Weald Clay Formation (earliest Cretaceous) were imported into Silchester. Almost all the whetstones of the later Roman period are secondary in character produced from discarded roofing tiles of Brownstones (Lower Old Red Sandstone) and Pennant sandstone (later Upper Carboniferous) imported from the West Country. Small numbers of whetstones can be traced to the Portland Group (Upper Jurassic) and to the Lower and Upper Greens and Groups (Lower Cretaceous). The provision of sharpening stones to Silchester as a whole is estimated to run into many thousands.

In the late 4th century AD, the site of Kourion, Cyprus was destroyed by an earthquake that struck with little or no warning, trapping victims and objects where they lay. Although much of the site was reoccupied and rebuilt, some areas were not, thus providing a unique example of a moment truly "frozen" in time. This work presents the results of a comprehensive study of the architecture, stratigraphy, and material culture assemblage recovered from the "Earthquake House," a multi-roomed domestic structure destroyed during this seismic event. The architectural analysis revealed a number of modifications to the structure that increased its overall size and subdivided its internal spaces, although their timing and reasons remain unknown at present. Study of the artifact assemblage provided significant insights into the processes surrounding the use, re-use, and discard of artifacts. This analysis identified numerous behaviors including consumable and non-consumable storage, storage of material for reuse and/or recycling, food preparation, and waste disposal, including a partial reconstruction of the domestic "waste stream." This study produced a more nuanced model for understanding the distribution of artifacts in ancient domestic contexts and demonstrates that even in cases of near instantaneous destruction without significant disturbance, a wide variety of variables must be considered when examining the artifacts of domestic assemblages.

The papers published here are developed from presentations made at a Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies Conference entitled 'The Anglo-Saxons in their World' held in 2010. An eclectic collection of studies drawing on Latin, Old English and Old Norse texts, artefacts and archaeology, papers are grouped into five themed sections: 'Chosen people in their place'; 'Life in Anglo-Saxon England'; 'Beyond the shore'; 'The Mediterranean and beyond'; and 'The North, The Universe', though other connections may be found. Two papers focus largely on early archaeology (Battaglia, Trzaska-Nartowski and Riddler) and King's study is also of an archaeological find. A majority of papers relate to the intellectual climate of the early Christian period in England (Larpi, Higham, Grocock, King, Cesario, Barker and to some extent Sebo). Several take evidence from later Anglo-Saxon manuscripts (Scragg, Hill, Frederick, Sebo). Fafinski attempts a chronological sweep beginning in the Roman period, and Banham from the seventh century to the eleventh.

Debates of alleged human modernity and archaism have dominated much of the recent Eurasian Paleolithic archaeological literature. Most debate has tended to proceed through the position and relative disposition of various interesting theoretical questions, such as "When did Modernity arrive in Europe?", or "Which Pleistocene human chronospecies brought Modernity to Europe?", or even, "Were Neanderthals modern?" Some even ask, "Were Neanderthals human?" The evidence on which such debates have occurred have tended to consist of data derived from artifact seriations and various attribute analyses of lithic technology, and, especially since the late 1980s and 1990s, upon mitochondrial DNA and other (unfortunately non-comprehensive) genetic studies. Some of the issues arising from these debates provide the focus for this present study.

In May 2011, a team of archaeologists from the Department of Prehistory and Historical Archaeology of the University of Vienna, assisted by colleagues from the Czech Republic and Norway, carried out a research excavation at the Law Ting Holm in Tingwall on Shetland's Mainland. The site is believed to be the place of the main assembly of Shetland, which was in use most likely from the Norse period to the second half of the 16th century.With contributions by Günther K. Kunst, Zoe Outram, Sam E. Harris, Cathy M. Batt, Louise Brown, Erich Nau, Michael Doneus, Anthony Newton and Karin Wiltschke-Schrotta

Proceedings of the XVI IUPPS World Congress (Florianopolis 4-10 September 2011) / Actes du XVI Congrès Mondial UISPP (Florianópolis 4-10 Septembre 2011) Session VII, Volume 5.This book presents a collection of peer-reviewed papers from the sixteenth UISPP / SAB, session VII, titled Underwater Archaeology, Coastal and Lakeside, held in the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Campus Trindade, Florianópolis / SC - Brazil, in September 2011. Papers are brought under two main headings: Archaeology Pre and Proto-Historic and Legislation, Methodologies and Applied Sciences.

Maresha is located in the Judean lowlands approximately 40 km southwest of Jerusalem and approximately 30 km southeast of Ashkelon. This volume is the final report of one of the most interesting subterranean complexes at Maresha. Located in close proximity to an area identified as a temple or shrine, its contents suggest a possible connection to this structure. It was within this cave complex that the "Heliodorus" stele was discovered (Chapter 12), along with Aramaic (Chapter 8) and Greek ostraca (Chapter 9), numerous figurines (Chapter 6), kernos lamps (Chapter 5), coins (Chapter 10), stamped handles (Chapter 7), astragals and an extraordinary array of faunal remains (Chapter 11). In addition, a 7th century BCE bulla of a sphinxa was found (Chapter 4).With contributions by Bernie Alpert, Einat Ambar-Armon, Donald Ariel, Baruch Brandl, Avner Ecker, Adi Erlich, Esther Eshel, Gerald Finkielsztejn, Dov Gera, Hava Korzakova and Lee Perry-Gal.

The research reported in this monograph follows on directly from the findings that were reported in BAR 492, in which, among many other discoveries, the author recognised that the courses of both Roman Dere Street and Hadrian's Wall had been underpinned by frameworks of long-distance alignments. Stimulated by the detection of several more of these alignments across northern England by another researcher, Robert Entwistle, the author, who is a chartered engineer as well as an archaeologist, seeks to examine why, how, and when such long-distance alignments may have been laid out. Consideration is then given to the processes by which some of these alignments seem subsequently to have been adopted to help set out the courses of Roman roads. These processes are shown, at times, to have been far from straightforward, and this appears to offer an explanation for many of the minor divergences that Roman roads, as built, take from such alignments in practice. The courses of four well-known Roman roads in Northern England are then examined in detail to diagnose the processes by which they are likely to have been planned and laid out. These roads are the Western Main Road from Manchester northwards through the Lune Gorge, the Maiden Way, the network of cross-country roads from Kirkham to Aldborough, and the Devil's Causeway.

One of the most tenacious and long-running controversies regarding the origin and development of the late Anglo-Saxon town has been the nature and function of 'heterogeneous tenure', one of the defining characteristics of the Domesday borough. This refers to the basic division of the larger boroughs as described in Domesday Book into the customary burgesses or tenements which owed dues and obligations to the king alone, and the non-customary burgesses or tenements which were appurtenant to the various manors of tenants-in-chief of the shire (and sometimes neighbouring shires) to whom they paid rent and owed other dues and services. This present study outlines a preliminary model for the development of these rural-urban connections, based primarily on a reassessment of the evidence in Domesday Book and in earlier charters, where available, and the spatial relationships of the manors enumerated in it to their central boroughs, their neighbours, and to shire and other early boundaries, as well as to other features of the physical and historic landscape. This model is developed and tested by the analysis of evidence from several adjoining areas in central England - 1) Wiltshire (chapters 2 and 3); 2) Hampshire (chapter 4); 3) Warwickshire and south Staffordshire (chapter 5); 4) Gloucestershire (including the former Winchcombeshire) (chapter 6); 5) Worcestershire (chapter 7); and 6) Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire (chapters 10-12).

Sudan Archaeological Research SocietyPublication Number 21This volume (Volume 1) is the last to be printed in a series describing in detail the results of the so-called West Bank Survey, an archaeological survey in the northernmost part of Sudanese Nubia, undertaken on the West Bank between the villages of Faras in the north and Gemai in the south during the period 1960-64. This project was carried out in anticipation of the flooding of the Aswan High Dam. The whole series has been divided into three volumes, no. 2 including sites from the Meroitic and Ballana periods (BAR S1335: Adams 2004), no. 3 including sites of the Christian age (BAR S1421: Adams 2005), while the present volume, no. 1, consists of detailed descriptions of sites and finds of the Early Nubian, Middle Nubian and Pharaonic New Kingdom periods.

With a Supplementary Report 'Mapping Matters with the Antonine Wall' by Peter McKeague and a Preface by David J. Breeze.

This study explores the insights into provincial Roman societies that can be gained from the archaeological evidence for burial practice, focused on Britain, drawing on wider work in the archaeology of death. It evaluates the distribution of burial evidence and the factors that condition it, including, it is argued, archaeologically invisible burial continuing from the Iron Age .It reviews the archaeological evidence for cremation rituals and explores how social status was expressed through burial, primarily in case studies from south-east England. Funerary ritual was a dynamic arena for asserting social status throughout the Roman period, taking forms that can be read as both 'traditional' and 'Roman'. The setting of burial is assessed to establish spatial relationships between living and dead in town and country and the distribution of funerary display across the landscape.

This study explores the changing relationship between humans and two important animals, pigs and cattle, during the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in Britain. Faunal remains from prehistoric sites in southern Britain were studied in order to understand changes in the size and shape of animals, changes in population structure and other information useful for understanding changing human motivations. Its results contribute to our understanding of Neolithisation process in Britain, early animal husbandry practices in the study area and the role that pigs and cattle had in Mesolithic and Neolithic society.

This book is the second volume of the report on excavations at the Aztec-period sites of Cuexcomate and Capilco, carried out in 1986. This book is the first complete report of the entire range of artefacts excavated from Aztec domestic contexts. It is a descriptive report that focuses on the artefacts in addition to reporting the system of analysis and the artefact sampling program. Ceramics are described in two chapters, with tables on quantities of various types and attributes. One surprising result is the wide range of special ceramic forms present in domestic middens, including musical instruments, other ritual objects, and production-related objects. Chipped stone artifacts are covered; although several thousand pieces of obsidian were recovered, very few were manufactured at these sites. Ground-stone artifacts, metal objects and, finally, flora and fauna are also presented here.

A Conference of young researchers working in the Ancient Near East, Egypt and Central Asia, University of Torino, October 2011Edited by Giorgio Affanni, Cristina Baccarin, Laura Cordera, Angelo Di Michele and Katia GavagninBroadening Horizons is an international congress dedicated to postgraduate students and early-stage researchers working with disciplines in the area of Ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean studies. With Broadening Horizons 4 the thematic areas were broadened, opening the congress up to the Central Asia studies. The conference was hosted at Università degli Studi di Torino, from the 25th to the 28th of October 2011. Broadening Horizons 4 was a huge success. A total of seventy-four participants from fifteen countries attended the congress, making it the most successful edition. This volume includes most of papers presented at the congress and the key lecture by St John Simpson. The volume has been arranged according to the sessions: settlement patterns and exchange networks; socio-economic reconstruction of ancient societies based on archaeological, historical or environmental records; application of new technologies in archaeological research; impact of human dynamics on landscape evolution; exploitation of the natural environment and sustenance strategies; and posters. Anyone with an interest in the Ancient Near East, Eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia studies will find much to enjoy and appreciate in this volume.

The Lateglacial and Postglacial pioneer colonisation of northern Europe is a recurrent and ever-popular topic in archaeology. This volume presents a modern review of the topic and provides a wealth of new information on sites, approaches, dates and models. The chapters range geographically from Poland and Germany in the south and west to Finland and western Russia in the north and east, thus framing virtually the entire North European Plain and its northern extension. The volume will serve as a major resource for the study of the human pioneer colonization of the North.

The dome shaped object commonly referred to as a 'cone on the head' originated in tomb scenes of the early New Kingdom. At first, it appeared in very few scenes and the type of scene in which it was included was limited. Its depiction increased in frequency and by category of scene, until by the Twentieth Dynasty the cone can be seen in a wide range of numerous mortuary images. From tomb scenes, it spread to the images on coffins and mortuary papyri, and it remained in use up to, and including, the Ptolemaic period. Its widespread and lasting depiction demonstrates that it held an important and extensive significance for the afterlife of the deceased. Yet in spite of the wide-ranging and frequent depiction of the cone on the head, it has received relatively little serious study and opinions on its meaning have not been based on the rigorous research that a symbol of this importance requires. The primary aim of this study is to discover whether the cone has a symbolic meaning that is relevant for the different categories of New Kingdom tomb scenes in which it appears on the tomb owner with significant frequency.

Inspired in part by the famous blue monkeys of Thera, in this original work, the author provides a survey of the diverse cultural attitudes toward monkeys through an examination of the iconographical, physical and textual evidence from several Mediterranean cultures.

Khirbet er-Rasm is a small site in the upper Shephelah, about 1 km south-southwest of Tel 'Azekah (Israel). The remains include mainly a concentration of ruins on top of the hill, where many walls were visible before the beginning of the excavations, including a row of still standing monoliths. The site is small and rural in nature, and is not identified with any known historical sites, and this was in part the reason for its exploration. The site was excavated and surveyed in the years 1997-2003. Khirbet er-Rasm was first settled during the Chalcolithic period. The site was then resettled during the late Iron Age I and / or early Iron Age II. More significant remains were dated to the late Iron Age II, and some finds are attributed to the Persian period, but the main period of occupation at the site dates from the early Hellenistic period up to the late second century BCE. The vast majority of the finds at Kh. er-Rasm are dated to the late second century BCE, as this is the time when the site was destroyed, and this is the period for which there is most data. Some reoccupation took place in the Early Roman period, and from then on the site was abandoned and was used by farmers and herders.With contributions by Oren Ackerman, Einat Armon-Ambar, Guy Bar-Oz, Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer, Rachel Barkay, Elisabetta Boaretto, Deborah Cassuto, Anat Cohen-Weinberger, Yael Gorin-Rosen, Nili Liphschitz, Ofer Marder, Ravit Nenner-Soriano, Rinat Peshin, Jessie A. Pincus, Noa Raban-Gerstel, Débora Sandhaus, Avi Sasson, Izhak Shai, Inbal Shoam, Ehud Weiss and Yair Zoran

Preface by Dieter Quast. Appendices by Birgit Arrhenius, Paola Comba and Marco Aimone.The Desana Treasure has been well known since its discovery, or rather, since it was purchased on the antiques market in 1938 by the 'Museo Civico di Arte Antica' in Turin. The composition of the Desana treasure shows that is was 'collected' over centuries. A ring with gemstone and a chain from the 2/3rd century are the oldest elements and objects from early 6th century the most recent. The latter give the date for the burial. Though, most objects are from the late 5th / early 6th century AD, that is from the reign of Theoderich the Great. The composition of the Desana treasure is interesting from another point of view as well. There are male and female dress adornments and silverware in the form of spoons. This new analysis of the Desana treasure allows a fresh view on this complex and offers insights into society in Ostrogothic Italy, especially into the relationship between old Latin landowners and Ostrogothic nobility. The detailed description and photographs of the 51 objects give valuable information regarding the goldsmith's art, which is extremely important because of the lack in Italy of burials of the same value belonging to that period. So, this description is crucial for future research about goldsmith's workshops in the late antique Mediterranean.

In the autumn of 2007 a large-scale salvage excavation took place on the western margins of Beisamoun in the Hula Valley in northern Israel, as part of the development of the Rosh Pina-Qiryat Shmona highway. Excavation in the western part of the greater area of the Beisamoun site, formerly known for its Pre-Pottery Neolithic B finds, revealed a wealth of a archaeological objects attributed to an early phase of the Pottery Neolithic period. This volume presents the final reports of the 2007 salvage excavation, and it discusses relevent issues concerning the Prehistory of the Hula Valley during the earliest stages of the Pottery Neolithic period.Written by Danny Rosenberg with contributions by Nurit Shtober, Iris Gorman-Yeroslavski, Vered Eshed,Noa Raban-Gerstel, Guy Bar-Oz, Yotam Tepper and Ariel Berman.

Edited by: Ana Cruz, Enrique Cerrillo-Cuenca, Primitiva Bueno Ramírez, João Carlos Caninas and Carlos Batata.Proceedings of the conference held in Abrantes, Portugal, 11 May 2013.This book offers a perspective on death and memory in recent Prehistory on the western Iberian Peninsula (Portugal, Spanish Extremadura and Andalusia). Within this territory the contributors to this volume record the variability of architectonic forms indicative of lengthy period changes in funerary contexts and transformations in the ideological-symbolic substrate of pre-writing communities. The Portuguese karstic region explored in this study lacks megalithic monuments despite the abundant raw material. The contributors attempt to answer questions such as whether this signifies a break with our understanding of 'Megalithism' as a result of identity ideologies. Other regions exhibit an expansion of Megalithism, often with exuberant forms, reflecting territorial expansion, while in others we encounter cists, pits and tumuli - all indicators of a new funerary order. The examples investigated in this collection of papers include - for the Neolithic: Oleiros, Castelo Branco, Alto Alentejo and Mondego; for the Neo-Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age: Tomar, Abrantes, Santarém; for the Bronze Age: Pampilhosa da Serra, Alcoutim, Abrantes, Santarém, Viseu, Vila Nova de Paiva, Castro Daire. Included in this study are the necropolis caves of Spanish Extremadura, representing as they do a chronological continuum from the Early Neolithic to the Bronze Age, and other related sites such as the Canaleja Gorge karstic complex and a range of other megalithic phenomena (menhirs, stelae, cromlechs, dolmens) in the southern Iberian Peninsula (Alentejo and Andalusia).

This study of subsistence activities (fishing, hunting, gathering, and manufacture) in the Cuitzeo and Pátzcuaro lake basins (Michoacán, Western Mexico) underscores the value of ethnoarchaeology as a tool for reconstructing the ancient aquatic lifeway in the territory of the Protohistoric Tarascan state (ca. AD 1450-1530), which flourished in an environment dominated by lakes, rivers, swamps and marshes. Mesoamerica was the only civilization in the ancient world that lacked major domesticated sources of animal protein; therefore, abundant wild aquatic species (fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and plants, etc.) all played strategic roles in the diet and economy of most Mesoamerican cultures, including the Tarascans.

This volume describes the results of the first ten years of the joint Anglo-Georgian excavations at Nokalakevi, West Georgia. The site, known to the Byzantines as Archaeopolis, was a major fortress in the fourth to sixth centuries A.D. often described as the capital of Lazika-Egrisi. Known to medieval Georgian chroniclers as Tsikhegoji, the site is also thought to be the capital of Colchis at the time of the first unification of Georgia in Hellenistic times. Extensively excavated since 1973, and by AGEN since 2001, this is the first significant publication of results to be produced in English.