Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943) is renowned for his archaeological expeditions to Central Asia, India, Iran, Iraq and Jordan. The mass of books and correspondence that he collected during his lifetime are distributed among collections in Britain and his homeland of Hungary. Within the collection bequeathed to the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is a unique source of material including photographs, letters, documents, manuscripts, articles, offprints and reviews within the subjects of Indology, Iranian studies, Central Asian linguistics and archaeology and Oriental manuscripts. This important collection is discussed and presented here.

This volume details Jan Zahle's investigations of subterranean structures close to the Maussolleion. Successive spoilations -- including Newton's -- have greatly muddled the archaeological record, and the Danish excavations uncovered evidence of another complication: plans for the site appear to have changed during construction, so what was originally intended as a modest extension of the existing structures evolves into a huge tomb on an immense terrace. Zahle's thorough sifting of evidence resolves many contradictions, though uncertainties still remain.

This volume is the first in the British Museum's Egyptian catalogue series to be devoted to ostraca, as oppose to other inscribed media. It publishes in full the hieratic ostraca of the Ramesside Period - a large, rich and varied collection covering the entire range of known text-types, documentary, literary and religious. It also includes the contemporary figured ostraca. Each ostracon is presented with a photograph and where the text is in hieratic, transcriptions are provided.

This monograph presents the revolutionary results of ten years of excavation and research in the Neolithic village of Sha'ar Hagolan, Jordan Valley, Israel. Sha'ar Hagolan is dated to the Pottery Neolithic period and is the type-site for the Yarmukian culture, which occupied large parts of the Mediterranean climatic zones of Israel, Jordan and Lebanon during the sixth millennium BC. Recent excavations at the site have far-reaching implications for the entire Neolithic period, as well as for the history of agriculture, art and cult and other aspects of material culture in the ancient Near East. The evidence for the architecture and village planning, material culture and remarkable art objects shows what was previously considered to be an era of decline was a time of cultural evolution and development in the Levant.

Rhind's book on Thebes is unique in that unlike many other Egyptologists of his time, he gives a precise and detailed description of how he excavated the sites, in itself an immense value to the history of archaeology.

Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, located in the Dead Sea Rift valley, is one of the oldest non-African sites to have yielded evidence for the activities of groups of hominin hunter-gatherers. The excavations recovered thousands of Acheulian period stone tools and animal bones that had accumulated in and around an ancient lake about 780, 000 years ago. The deposits have remained waterlogged virtually ever since, and this unusual circumstance resulted in the preservation of plant macrofossils, including pieces of wood and bark that can be identified to the level of individual plant species. Most of the pieces probably accumulated naturally around the lake, but a few show signs of hominin modification - making them the oldest wooden artefacts yet discovered. The unique contribution of the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov palaeobotanical assemblage, however, lies in its value for the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of a pre-agricultural age - an age that predates changes induced by intensive human activity. This monograph describes the geological and archaeological context of the ancient wood, the criteria for its identification, and its implications for the woods surrounding Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in Lower to Middle Pleistocene times. They include detailed descriptions of the different wood taxa, discuss the present habitats of the identified species, and consider the possible mechanisms by which the wood was deposited. They also provide a survey of the wood fragments that have occasionally been found at other ancient Palaeolithic sites. This volume is the first in a series of monographs which will focus on different aspects of the multidisciplinary investigations at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov.

The late 4th millennium in South Mesopotamia is universally known as the Uruk Period because it is at Uruk that the German excavations have exposed the most remarkable manifestations of this complex society. Although the Uruk period in Iraq itself remains little understood, in recent decades artefacts and entire settlements have been discovered in places as far apart as the Mahi Dasht in Iran and the Euphrates in South-eastern Turkey. This volume attempts to track the Uruk phenomenon in the Near East, bringing together research on some of the most significant individual sites within the Levant and Egypt, placing emphasis on the artefactual evidence. The eleven papers were originally presented at a conference in Manchester in 1998. The contributors are Hans Nissen, Renate Gut, Mitchell Rothman, Virginia Badler, Joan Oates, Marcella Frangipane, Gil Stein, Fiona Stephen, Edgar Peltenburg, Govert van Driel, Graham Philip and Toby Wilkinson.

Contents: Andrzej S. Chankowski - OIPHEIN: Remarques sur les inscriptions rupestres de Thera et sur la theorie de la pederastie initiatique en Grece ancienne ; Veronique Chankowski - De l'argent jete dans les fontaines ? La " Minoe " de Delos et les jarres du tresor sacre a la fin de l'Independance ; Tomasz Derda & Pawel Janiszewski - Soterichos Oasites Revisited; Pawel Janiszewski - Eunapius of Sardis and the Solar Eclipse During the Battle on the Frigidus River; Marek Jankowiak - L'accession au trone de Marcien vue de l'Occident: une usurpation legalisee ; Jakub Lesinski - Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus: A Dictator in 217 BC? ; Adam Lajtar - Georgios, Archbishop of Dongola (died 1113) and His Epitaph; Tomasz Markiewicz - P. Duke inv. 469: A Papyrus Illustrating sacramentum corporaliter praestitum in Coptic Egypt; Przemyslaw Nehring - Warum ist das gemeinschaftliche Eigentum besser als das Privateigentum? Ein Beispiel fuer die rhetorische Argumentation des heiligen Au-gus-tin in der Auslegung des Psalmes 131 (Enarr. in Ps. CXXXI 5-7); Lukasz Niesiolowski-Spano - Biblical Prophet Amos - A Simple, Poor Shepherd From Judah?; Jerzy Rohozinski - Ritual Violence and Society in Maghreb. Regarding a Passage of St. Augustine's De doctrina Christiana; Jacek Rzepka - Ethnos, koinon, sympoliteia, and Greek Federal States; Piotr Siejkowski - Clement's View on the Mystical THEORIA. An Introduction to Clement's View on Mystical Experience; Krystyna Stebnicka - The Second Sophistic in Palestine, the Rabbinical Writings and Diocletian; Robert Suski - Aurelian and the Senate. A Few Remarks upon Emperor Aurelian's Policy of Political Nominations; Jakub Urbanik - D. 24.2.4: '...patrem tamen eius nuntium mittere posse...' - l'influsso della volonte del padre sul divorzio dei sottoposti; Marek Wecowski - Towards a Definition of the Symposion; Robert Wisniewski - Suspended in the Air. On a Peculiar Case of Exorcism in Late Ancient Christian Literature; Aleksander Wolicki - Herodote, interpolations et la societe spartiate.

Luristan in Western Iran was largely inaccessible to foreigners until the early 1960s when a new road linking the Great Khorasan Road with Susiana or Elam was built by the Danish engineering firm, Kampsax. This volume presents the settlement and tombs and graves of the centuries around 1000 BC, and includes identifications of animal and human remains, and teeth found there.

The initial aim of the Danish archaeological campaigns in Bahrain was to look for settlements contemporary with the "Hundred Thousand Gravemounds". After the first few campaigns it was evident, however, that the island was such a rich archaeological field that investigation of all periods from the earliest flint-using culture to the later Islamic world was called for. Among the Islamic remains was an exceptionally fine collection of Early Islamic pottery and glass recovered from the rubbish which filled up a well at the Barbar site where a temple from around 2000BC was excavated. These remains are published in this volume along with finds from the Islamic settlement at the Qala'a mound, especially the Islamic Fortress.

Tell Brak, ancient Nagar, was one of the most important cities in northern Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC and a focus of long-distance trade. It was also, for about a century, a provincial capital of the Akkadian Empire founded by Sargon of Agade. This is the second of four volumes on the 1976-93 excavations at Tell Brak. The construction level of Naram-Sin's Palace, discovered by Mallowan in the 1930s, has been used as a point of chronological reference to provide the first well-dated corpus of archaeological material in northern Mesopotamia belonging to the second half of the third millennium. The major Akkadian buildings at Tell Brak are the first well-preserved examples to be discovered at any site, and include a great ceremonial complex and a unique caravanserai that housed the donkey caravans bringing metals from Anatolia. During the ritual closure of these buildings beautiful silver jewellery was deposited, along with numerous copper/bronze tools and the skeletons of some of the caravan donkeys. Specialist reports provide detailed historical, geomorphological, ceramic, faunal, botanical, microstratigraphic and other data.

This first volume in a series of works on Tell Kosak Shamali focuses on the Chalcolithic deposits at the site, or the Ubaid period. Located on the east bank of the Euphrates the site held an important strategic position and one which had a diverse set of resources available. Investigated since the 1980s and most recently by the University of Tokyo, this volume reports on the results of the excavations, detailing the geographical and cultural setting of the site, the architecture and stratigraphy, the radiocarbon dates, the nature of the finds and the history of the site in the Palaeolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic. Evidence from Kosak Shamali provides important insights into the transition from Neolithic agrarian societies to more complex, increasingly urban societies of the Chalcolithic.

In 1952 in one wing of the North-West Palace at Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, Max Mallowan excavated an archive room containing royal correspondence from the reigns of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II of Assyria. Subjects include Assyrian military activity in Babylonia and on the northern frontier, royal building projects, events on the Phoenician seaboard, and relations with King Midas of Phrygia. Some texts were published in Iraq between 1955 and 1974; the majority have remained unpublished until now. Two hundred and forty-three texts are published here; most are in New Assyrian script and the remainder in New Babylonian. Chapters divide the tablets into the geographical areas they are concerned with. The texts are presented with transliterations, translation and notes. Plates at the end of the book give facsimiles of the tablets.

The 22nd British Museum Classical Colloquium, held in December 1998, was dedicated to the memory of the late Professor Olivier Masson. Throughout his long career his over-riding enthusiasm was in the study of the archaeological heritage of Cyprus, in particular through the collection of the British Museum. Contributors, from Europe and America, write about the major sites, the convictions and motives of those who investigated them, the political background, the movement of antiquities to major European museums and the ensuing rivalry between these institutions. The discussions show that we can, and indeed must, learn from the triumphs and the mistakes of the 19th century with regard to how we study, exploit and preserve a country's archaeological heritage. The book is a major contribution to the historiography of Cypriot studies.

In the early 1990s the University of Cambridge reopened excavations at the Neolithic site of Catalhöyuek in central Turkey, abandoned since the 1960s. In this volume, Ian Hodder explains his vision of archaeological excavation, where careful examination of context and an awareness of human bias allows researches exciting new insights into prehistoric cognition. The aim of the volume is to discuss some of the reflexive or postprocessual methods that have been introduced at the site in the work there since 1993. These methods involve reflexivity, interactivity, multivocality and contextuality or relationality.

Under the auspices of the British Museum, C.T. Newton started excavations in 1857 on the site of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the sepulchral monument to the Carian ruler, Maussollos. Sensational finds were made of sculptures in round and reliefs, but less attention was paid to the architectural remains of the superstructure, and afterwards it was made clear that supplementary investigations on the site would be needed, if a more complete and reliable reconstruction of the building was to be hoped for than that suggested by Newton and his collaborators. This volume describes the foundations of the Mausolleion laid within the large, rectangular cutting in the bedrock and named "the quadrangle" by Newton. In addition to architectural evidence of basic importance, its re-excavation by the Danish expedition in the years 1970-77 brought to light remains of Maussollos' tomb chamber and its treasures, among these the ornaments of gold plate and beads of semi-precious stones published in the present volume. The illustrations include a plan of the re-excavated foundations; elevations of cross-sections describing the principal features of the excavated area; excavation photos; and a plot plan of the principle levels.