There has been an increasing archaeological interest in human-animal-nature relations, where archaeology has shifted from a focus on deciphering meaning, or understanding symbols and the social construction of the landscape to an acknowledgement of how things, places and the environment contribute with their own agencies to the shaping of relations. This means that the environment cannot be regarded as a blank space that landscape meaning is projected onto. Parallel to this, the field of environmental humanities poses the question of how to work with the intermeshing of humans and their surroundings. To allow the environment back in as an active agent of change, means that landscape archaeology can deal better with issues such as global warming, an escalating loss of biodiversity as well as increasingly toxic environment. However, this does not leave human agency out of the equation. It is humans who reinforce the environmental challenges of today. The scholarly field of the humanities deal with questions like how is meaning attributed, what cultural factors drive human action, what role is played by ethics, how is landscape experienced emotionally, as well as how concepts derived from art, literature, and history function in such processes of meaning attribution and other cultural processes. This humanities approach is of outmost importance when dealing with climate and environmental challenges ahead and we need a new landscape archaeology that meets these challenges, but also that meets well across disciplinary boundaries. Here inspiration can be found in discussions with scholars in the emerging field of Environmental Humanities.

Social inequality is a subject of contemporary concerns. Life capabilities and the access to resources vary significantly in rich and poor countries, between elites and others. Furthermore, inequalities based on bio-anthropological and non-bio-anthropological causes are almost universal. Accordingly, inequality was also inherent in past societies and archaeologists have continually examined and interpreted social inequalities in sources such as burial grounds.This book continues such analyses with a new multi-proxy approach. It reveals social inequalities in selected past burial grounds from Southwestern Germany. The burial grounds date to the Early Neolithic (Schwetzingen), the Late Neolithic (Lauda-Königshofen), the Early Bronze Age (Singen), the Early Iron Age (Magdalenenbergle), and the Early Medieval period (Horb-Altheim). The challenge was to identify hierarchical and heterarchical differences and inequalities within the burial grounds based on a multitude of different proxies. The examination encompasses variations in the distribution of grave goods, burial pit sizes, bio-anthropological and isotope data. Furthermore, spatial analyses of burial grounds and, in particular, on the distances between the graves play an essential role in this examination.The results reveal social inequalities among and within genders and age cohorts that are differently pronounced in the respective cemeteries. Furthermore, the results of multi-proxy analyses lead to the interpretation that the sites differ concerning the respective degrees of inequality and power strategy modes. In detail, it can be observed that the Early Iron Age and the Early Bronze Age sites demonstrate a relatively high degree of inequality as compared to the other sites. More specifically, the investigation of sites from the Early Iron Age and the Late Neolithic rather reveal a network-based power strategy, whereas sites from the Early Neolithic, the Early Bronze Age and the Early Medieval period tend to show a corporate-based power strategy.

Bathing culture was one of the pillars of Roman society and bathhouses are one of the largest categories of a particular type of construction excavated in the Roman world. The large number of surviving remains and their regional variety make bathhouses vital for the study of the local societies in the Roman-Byzantine period. This book presents the archaeological evidence of close to 200 Roman-style bathhouses from the region of Iudaea/Syria-Palaestina and Provincia Arabia, part of the provinces of the Roman East, constructed from the reign of Herod the Great (second half of the 1st century BCE) to the end of the Umayyad rule (mid-8th century CE). The bathing complexes of the Roman, Byzantine, and the Early Islamic periods, ranging from large public thermae to small bathing suites, are for the first time analysed as unified data with an unprecedented amount of detail, considering a variety of parameters - from dating and setting, through building techniques and materials, to plans and decorations. Typologies of the bathhouses and their components are supplemented by exploration of the socio-cultural insight provided by this particular type of construction. The historical narrative of the regional bathing facilities is updated in the light of new information. The full raw data used for the study is provided in the expandable open-access online database.

This volume presents interpreting of agency of individual officials in in different periods of ancient Egyptian history. Their activity and careers are observed using different methods different methods of complex network of more general trends operating the society at a given stage of its evolution. We are confident that this is one of the most promising and proven ways to gain deeper insights into day-to-day lives of the people of the past. In recent years, this research approach has evolved independently at several institutions exploring ancient Egypt.

The Journal of Roman Pottery Studies continues to present a range of important new research in the field by both established and early career scholars. Volume XVIII has a strong theme on pottery production with papers on kiln sites, mortaria and late Roman pottery production in East Anglia and at a small town in Belgium. A major new third century assemblage from civitas Cananefatium in South Holland is presented. The second part of an important gazetteer of less common samian ware fabrics and types in northern and western Britain covers fabrics from Central and East Gaul.

Markets emerge in recent historical research as important spheres of economic interaction in ancient societies. In the case of ancient Egypt, traditional models imagined an all-encompassing centralized, bureaucratic economy that left practically no place for market transactions, as many surviving documents only described the activities of the royal palace and of huge institutions, mainly temples. Yet scattered references in the sources reveal that markets and traders were crucial actors in the economic life of ancient Egypt. In this perspective, this volume aims to discuss the role of markets, traders and economic interaction (not necessarily organized through markets) and the use of "money" (metals, valuable commodities) in pre-modern societies, based on archaeological, anthropological and historical evidence. Furthermore, it intends to integrate different perspectives about the social organization of transactions and exchanges and the different forms taken by markets, from meeting places where exchanges operated under ritualized procedures and conventions, to markets in which profit-seeking activities were marginal in respect with other practices that stressed, on the contrary, community collaboration. The book also deals with social forms of pre-modern exchanges in which trust and ethnic solidarity guaranteed the validity of commercial operations in the absence of formal codes of laws or accepted authorities over long distances (trade diasporas, guilds, etc.). Finally, the volume analyzes a critical aspect of small-scale trade and markets, such as the commercialization of agricultural household production and its impact on the peasant economic strategies. In all, the book covers a diversity of topics in which recent research in the fields of economic sociology, archaeology, anthropology, economics and history proves invaluable in order to analyze the role of Egyptian trade in a broader perspective, as well as to suggest new venues of comparative research, theoretical reflection and dialogue between Egyptology and social sciences.

The period covered by the Old Testament - beginning in approximately 3000 BC - was one of great technological development and innovation in warfare, as competing cultures clashed in the ancient Middle East. The Sumerians were the first to introduce the use of bronze into warfare, and were centuries ahead of the Egyptians in the use of the wheel. The Assyrians developed chariot warfare and set the standard for a new equine-based military culture. The Babylonians had an army whose people were granted land in return for army service. This authoritative history gives an overview of warfare and fighting in the age of the Old Testament, from the Akkadians, Early and Middle Kingdom Egypt and their enemies, Mycenean and Minoan Greece and Crete, Assyrians and New Kingdom Egyptians, the Hittites, the Sea Peoples who gave rise to the Philistines, the Hebrew kingdom, the Babylonian kingdom, the Medes and later Persian Empires, through to early Classical Greece. Author Simon Elliott explores how archaeology can shed light on events in the Bible including the famous tumbling walls of Jericho, the career of David the boy warrior who faced the Philistines, and Gideon, who was able to defeat an army that vastly outnumbered his own.

The Brough of Birsay was the power-centre of the Viking earldom of Orkney and is one of Historic Environment Scotland’s key monuments and visitor attractions on the islands. This publication is the culmination of 60 years of investigations that took place on the site between 1954 and 2014.This new volume incorporates comprehensive accounts of work undertaken by Dr Ralegh Radford and Mr Stewart Cruden between 1954 and 1964, excavations by the Viking and Early Settlement Research Project under the direction of the author on site between 1974 and 1981, a rescue excavation in 1993, a geophysical survey in 2007 and archival research up to 2014. Specialist artefactual and palaeobiological studies of metallurgical material, ogham inscriptions and a gilt-bronze mount of Insular origin are included, together with re-analysis of the radiocarbon dates from all sites in Birsay Bay, and a re-assessment of the architecture and dating of the church and related buildings on the Brough itself.The final two chapters put the Brough, as both a Pictish power-centre and the hub of the Viking earldom, in the overall context of Birsay Bay and Viking and late Norse Orkney, and the wider world between the Pictish and late Norse/Medieval periods.As well as being the author’s third and final volume reporting on work for the Birsay Bay Project, this volume completes a trilogy of studies of the Brough itself, alongside Mrs Cecil Curle’s and Prof John Hunter’s earlier monographs.

The human body serves as a symbolic bridge between communities of the living and the divine. This is clearly evident in mythological stories that recount the creation of humans by deities within ancient and contemporaneous societies across a very broad geographical environment. In certain circumstances, parts of selected humans can become an ideal proxy for connecting with the supernatural, as demonstrated by the cult of human skulls in Near Eastern Neolithic communities, as well as the cult of relics of Christian saints from the early Christian era. To go deeper into this topic, this volume undertakes a cross-cultural investigation of the role played by both humans and human remains in creating forms of relationality with the divine in antiquity. This approach highlights how the human body can be envisioned as part of a broader materialisation of religious beliefs that is based on connecting different realms of materiality in the perception of the supernatural by communities of the living.

Network theory and methodologies have become central to exploring and explaining social, economic and political relationships and connections in past societies. However, in archaeology, the deployment of networks has sometimes been more descriptive than analytical. Methodologies have often depended upon underlying assumptions which inevitably simplify relationships that were complex and multi-faceted. However, the fragmentary, heterogenous and usually proxy data we possess are not always amenable to reconstructing that complexity. In ancient societies, we must infer the movement of knowledge about 'how to make things' largely from objects themselves. This is because we usually lack direct evidence of the human relationships that entwined people with objects and their makers, and hence have only imperfect understanding of the full range of diverse factors that shaped the relationships that constituted these networks. The chapters in this volume aim to interrogate the interpretative potential of network concepts for understanding the movement over time and space of ideas about making, using and moving things through a range of archaeological case studies, which reveal both functional and dysfunctional relationships. The purpose is to consider how more broadly contextualised and multi-faceted studies can both enhance, and be enhanced by, network and related approaches. The volume contributes to the search for greater understanding of the movement and transmission of knowledge (or in some cases their absence), and to debates about how best to expand the utility of network concepts and approaches.

Objects of adornment have been a subject of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic study for well over a century. Within archaeology, personal ornaments have traditionally been viewed as decorative embellishments associated with status and wealth, materializations of power relations and social strategies, or markers of underlying social categories such as those related to gender, class, and ethnic affiliation. Personal Adornment and the Construction of Identity seeks to understand these artefacts not as signals of steady, pre-existing cultural units and relations, but as important components in the active and contingent constitution of identities. Drawing on contemporary scholarship on materiality and relationality in archaeological and social theory, this book uses one genre of material culture - items of bodily adornment - to illustrate how humans and objects construct one another. Providing case studies spanning 10 countries, three continents, and more than 9,000 years of human history, the authors demonstrate the myriad and dynamic ways personal ornaments were intertwined with embodied practice and identity performativity, the creation and remaking of social memories, and relational collections of persons, materials, and practices in the past. The authors’ careful analyses of production methods and composition, curation/heirlooming and reworking, decorative attributes and iconography, position within assemblages, and depositional context illuminate the varied material and relational axes along which objects of adornment contained social value and meaning. When paired with the broad temporal and geographic scope collectively represented by these studies, we gain a deeper appreciation for the subtle but vital roles these items played in human lives.

Clothing was an essential part of material culture in ancient societies both as a form of body protection and as house equipment. Besides a practical function, textiles played a crucial role in communicating various aspects of social and personal identity. Based largely on the analysis of textile tools, this book is intended to be the first systematic attempt at reconstructing textile culture in ancient Sicily. Textile implements represent the most abundant category of evidence for textile activity in Sicily and in this book they are used as a means to explore the social dynamics within cultural interactions in the final Bronze–Iron Age and Archaic Sicily. The book begins with an overview of the cultural complexity of communities in Sicily and the Aeolian islands, focusing on two crucial periods of Sicilian history, which are characterised by intense movements of peoples from the Italian peninsula and the establishment of Greek and Phoenician settlements. Through the investigation of textile tools, the book discusses several key aspects, including technological features of textile technology and production, knowledge transfer, networks of weavers, as well as the social significance of textile activity. By employing an interdisciplinary perspective, this book is important not only for textile specialists but also for scholars and students dealing with culturally hybrid frameworks of ancient Sicily and provides a springboard for future studies on textile culture and cultural interactions in the ancient world.

This book investigates the complex relationship between funerary treatment and wider social dynamics through a contextual analysis of human skeletal remains and associated mortuary data from Voudeni, an important Mycenaean (1450-1050 BC) chamber tomb cemetery in Achaea, Greece. Voudeni is one of the most significant sites of Achaea, thoroughly investigated under the direction of the Honorary General Director of Antiquities, Dr Lazaros Kolonas. Over 60 chamber tombs, spanning the entire Late Helladic III period, have been excavated, yielding an unprecedented wealth of biocultural information. This study explores the post-mortem treatment of the body in the Voudeni cemetery, through a novel interpretive approach that transcends unproductive cross-disciplinary divisions. This biosocial approach integrates traditional archaeology, current reflections in mortuary archaeological theory and cutting-edge bioarchaeological methods, primarily focused on funerary taphonomy and archaeothanatology of commingled skeletal assemblages. The author proposes that the most effective route to explore the social dimensions of mortuary data is through an emic understanding of historically situated actions and experiences, both of the living actors, the mourners, and of the dead themselves. Human skeletal remains are used as the primary strand of evidence, both as the object of the acts of the living and the subject of their own lived experiences. Most importantly, this study aspires to show how reconciliation between abstract theoretical advances and empirical biocultural data may be possible, providing the most insightful path to a better understanding of the archaeological mortuary record. The book provides a thorough background on Mycenaean mortuary research and explores the topic in successive stages: a) theoretical and methodological framework, b) detailed taphonomic analysis and osteological results of 20 tombs, c) multivariate analysis of bio-cultural data across socio-temporal parameters (with special emphasis on the distinction between the palatial LHIIIA-B and the transitional post-palatial LHIIIC period), and d) final synthesis, addressing questions pertaining to changing social conditions in Achaea and key issues of current Mycenaean mortuary research. These include: tomb re-use; form, diversity, sequence and frequency of mortuary activities; mortality profiles; differential inclusion, visibility and funerary treatment of different groups/identities; changes in treatment of the dead body, reflecting shifts in notions of the self and social relationships. The results shed new light on social developments in Mycenaean Achaea, showing that the complex interaction between changing social conditions and mortuary practice is often reflected in subtle, yet meaningful, shifts of emphasis in the post-mortem treatment of bodies and bones, rather than in blatant radical changes.

This volume reports on the ways in which humans engaged in their material and biotic environments at Çatalhöyük, using a wide range of archaeological evidence. This volume also summarizes work on the skeletal remains recovered from the site, as well as analytical research on isotopes and aDNA.

Published by Oxford University in the Thames Valley Landscapes Monograph Series, this volume (no. 43) brings together the work of an award-winning, five-year lottery-funded university/community research project ("Archeox") on the landscape and history of East Oxford, part of the City of Oxford (UK). It documents field and geophysical surveys, archive and collections research, excavations at two Medieval ecclesiastical sites (a leper hospital and a Benedictine nunnery), at a prehistoric pit alignment, together with an extensive campaign of test-pitting which has given new insights into the Roman, Medieval and post-Medieval settlement pattern. The book tells the prehistory and history of a formerly rural area on the eastern outskirts of Oxford which underwent rapid urbanisation after 1850, and is now an integral part of the city. The research plan relied upon engaging and working with the community to participate and to provide access to many study areas, and offered a comprehensive programme of training and education to all those who took part, ensuring that the work done was to an appropriately high standard. It has produced new insights into a number of nationally-important archaeological sites, gained new overviews of the development of the landscape, and brought out from obscurity many under-studied or forgotten finds in local collections. Fundamentally a project which sought to unite university and city, the contemporary story of people and their heritage is a key part of its message. Working in and among some of Oxford's most deprived communities, "Archeox" has been recognised as an exemplar of good practice in breaking down barriers to higher education. Over seven hundred people participated as volunteers, and the project reached many more through outreach and engagement programmes and events. The book is extensively illustrated with many maps, plans and photographs, and is authored by 55 participants in the project, ranging from leading Professors of Archaeology to volunteers who are achieving published work for the first time.

This book brings together 30 papers by leading scholars in the field of usewear and residue analysis. This publication aims to revive the debate on the role of traceology (use-wear and residues) in multidisciplinary approaches that address archaeological questions. Many studies on technological aspects of material culture deal with specific material categories (e. g. flint, ceramics, bone), often in separate or isolated ways, and this division does not really reflect the integrated nature of technical systems in which different material categories are in dynamic interaction. Hence, exploring the interaction between different chaînes opératoires is crucial for a more global concept of the toolkit with all its components and it is a precondition for paleo-ethnographic reconstructions of technical systems and economies. Starting from a functional perspective, the papers in this book explore various topics such as apprenticeship, group dynamics, social status, economy, technological evolution, spatial organization, mobility patterns and territories, or adaptations to cultural and environmental changes.This collection of papers, presented at the AWRANA conference in 2018, constitutes a major sign of the dynamism, popularity and scientific importance of our discipline in current archaeological research. AWRANA 2018 was dedicated to the memory of H. Keeley.