Textile and dress production, from raw materials to finished items, has had a significant impact on society from its earliest history. The essays in this volume offer a fresh insight into the emerging interdisciplinary research field of textile and dress studies by discussing archaeological, iconographical and textual evidence within a broad geographical and chronological spectrum. The thirteen chapters explore issues, such as the analysis of textile tools, especially spindle whorls, and textile imprints for reconstructing textile production in contexts as different as Neolithic Transylvania, the Early Bronze Age North Aegean and the Early Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean; the importance of cuneiform clay tablets as a documentary source for both drawing a detailed picture of the administration of a textile industry and for addressing gender issues, such as the construction of masculinity in the Sumerian kingdoms of the 3rd millennium BC; and discussions of royal and priestly costumes and clothing ornaments in the Mesopotamian kingdom of Mari and in Mycenaean culture. Textile terms testify to intensive exchanges between Semitic and Indo-European languages, especially within the terminology of trade goods. The production and consumption of textiles and garments are demonstrated in 2nd millennium Hittite Anatolia; from 1st millennium BC Assyria, a cross-disciplinary approach combines texts, realia and iconography to produce a systematic study of golden dress decorations; and finally, the important discussion of fibres, flax and wool, in written and archaeological sources is evidence for delineating the economy of linen and the strong symbolic value of fibre types in 1st millennium Babylonia and the Southern Levant. The volume is part of a pair together with Greek and Roman Textiles and Dress: An Interdisciplinary Anthology edited by Mary Harlow and Marie-Louise Nosch.

This books present papers on the archaeology of the region between the river Meuse and the city of Oss (Netherlands), locally known as the "Maaskant". The papers presented in this volume discuss the period from 3000 BC until 1500 AD. The wealth of archaeological data from this region indicated this part of the Netherlands was inhabited by early farmers already 5000 years ago. The strategic location near the river did not only provide fertile grounds but also formed an intersection in transport and communication routes.

From at least 1700 BC, and for several centuries thereafter, a city of substantial houses flanked the palace of Knossos in north-central Crete. Those immediately adjacent to it, like the Royal Villa or the South House, excavated by Sir Arthur Evans, are well known, as are the Little Palace and Unexplored Mansion to the north-west. In fact the whole lower western hill-slope (Bougadha Metochi, the modern village) was terraced with fine, ashlar masonry buildings, served by well-engineered paved roads. The present volume publishes part of one such building, excavated by the Greek Archaeological Service. The pottery within it — as always at Knossos astonishing in quantity and excellent in quality — is particularly important for the first stage of these large buildings, Middle Minoan IIIA (Early and Late), the 17th century BC. One piece also throws light on bull sacrifice at Knossos. Another object, a stone weight, confirms the close relationship of the Minoan, Theran and West Syrian systems of mensuration. A later pottery deposit adds to evidence of wide destruction at Knossos at the final moment of independent Minoan civilisation, Late Minoan IB c. 1440 BC. The history of the building is also set within that of the wider Cretan and southern Aegean regions during the Bronze Age.

Archaeological work ahead of pipeline construction in East and South Devon led to the excavation of over thirty sites spanning the earlier Neolithic to early modern times. Early features included a wide scatter of pits dating to the Neolithic and Beaker periods (c. 3700–2000 BC), and a variety of Middle Bronze Age features that included evidence for land division in the Otter valley and South Devon. Iron Age activity was relatively uncommon but included iron smelting near Dartington in South Devon and piecemeal settlement more widely.Later remains included evidence for a hillslope enclosure close to the River Dart and an open settlement engaging in pewter manufacture close to the River Avon, which were both Roman in date. There was also a medieval sunken outbuilding near Powderham containing charred cereals (believed to be a first for Devon), as well as a cob linhay relating to the mapped 19th-century rural landscape near Exton. Although none of the sites were particularly rich in artefacts, more than fifty radiocarbon dates have added considerably to our understanding of the changes in human activity, land use and environment over the past 5,000 years across these parts of Devon.

How may Bohuslän rock art and landscape be perceived and understood? Since the Bronze Age, the landscape has been transformed by shore displacement but, largely due to misunderstanding and certain ideas about the character of Bronze Age society, rock art research in Tanum has drawn much of its inspiration from the present agrarian landscape. This perception of the landscape has not been a major issue. This volume, republished from the GOTAC Serie B (Gothenburg Archaeological thesis 49) aims to shed light on the process of shore displacement and its social and cognitive implications for the interpretation of rock art in the prehistoric landscape. The findings clearly show that in the Bronze Age, the majority of rock art sites in Bohuslän had a very close spatial connection to the sea.Much rock art analysis focuses on the contemplative observer. The more direct activities related to rock art are seldom fully considered. Here, the basic conditions for the production of rock art, social theory and approaches to image, communication, symbolism and social action are discussed and related to palpable social forms of the “reading” of rock art. The general location and content of the Bronze Age remains indicate a tendency towards the maritime realm, which seems to have included both socio-ritual and socio-economic matters of production and consumption and that Bronze Age groups in Bohuslän were highly active and mobile. The numerous configurations of ship images on the rocks could indicate a general transition or drift towards the maritime realm. Marking or manifesting such transitions in some way may have been important and it is tempting to perceive the rock art as traces of such transitions or positions in the landscape. All this points to a maritime understanding of Bronze Age rock art in northern Bohuslän.

This volume is the outcome of collaborative European research among archaeologists, archaeobotanists, ethnographers, historians and agronomists, and frequently uses experiments in archaeology. It aims to establish new common ground for integrating different approaches and for viewing agriculture from the standpoint of the human actors involved. Each chapter provides an interdisciplinary overview of the skills used and the social context of the pursuit of agriculture, highlighting examples of tools, technologies and processes from land clearance to cereal processing and food preparation. This is the second of three volumes in the EARTH monograph series, The dynamics of non-industrial agriculture: 8,000 years of resilience and innovation , which shows the great variety of agricultural practices in human terms, in their social, political, cultural and legal contexts.

Over 150 years of research in the Circum-Alpine region have produced a vast amount of data on the lakeshore and wetland settlements found throughout the area. Particularly in the northern region, dendrochronological studies have provided highly accurate sequences of occupation, which have correlated, in turn, to palaeoclimatic reconstructions in the area. The result has been the general conclusion that the lake-dwelling tradition was governed by climatic factors, with communities abandoning the lakeshore during periods of inclement conditions, and returning when the climate was more favourable. Such a cyclical pattern occurred from the 4th millennium BC to 800 BC, at which time the lakeshores were abandoned and never extensively re-occupied. Was this final break with a long-lasting tradition solely the result of climatic fluctuation, or were cultural factors a more decisive influence for the decline of lake-dwelling occupation?Studies of material culture have shown that some of the Late Bronze Age lake-dwellings in the northern Alpine region were significant centres for the production and exchange of bronzework and manufactured products, linking northern Europe to the southern Alpine forelands and beyond. However, during the early Iron Age the former lake-dwelling region does not show such high levels of incorporation to long-distance exchange systems. Combining the evidence of material culture studies with occupation patterns and burial practices, this volume proposes an alternative to the climatically-driven models of lake-dwelling abandonment. This is not to say that climate change did not influence those communities, but that it was only one factor among many. More significantly, it was a combination of social choice to abandon the shore, and subsequent cultural developments that inhibited the full scale reoccupation of the lakes.

After the success of Medieval Costumes, 1320-1480, comes another highly-anticipated volume. Once again, we discover the materials, the accessories (and jewels), the shoes, and various outfits for men, women, and children that characterize this period of history. Additionally, an appendix included with the volume details military dress and equipment of the era. TEXT IN FRENCH

This volume is an integrated overview and synthesis of available data relating to the Quaternary evolution of the River Trent. It provides detailed descriptions of the Pleistocene sedimentary records from the Trent, its tributaries and related drainage systems - a sedimentary record that spans a period of approximately half a million years - and the biostratigraphical and archaeological material preserved therein. Significant new data are presented from recently discovered sites of geological and archaeological importance, including previously unrecognised fluvial deposits, as well as novel analyses, such as mathematical modelling of fluvial incision as recorded by the river terrace deposits. In combination with a thorough review of the literature on the Trent, these new data have contributed to revised chronostratigraphical and palaeogeographical frameworks for central England and revealed the complexity of the Pleistocene fluvial and glacial records in this region. The fragmentary Trent terrace sequence is an important element of wider reconstructions of Pleistocene palaeodrainage in Britain, providing a link between the records preserved in the English Midlands and those in East Anglia.

The Irish Neolithic has been dominated by the study of megalithic tombs, but the defining element of Irish settlement evidence is the rectangular timber Early Neolithic house, the numbers of which have more than quadrupled in the last ten years. The substantial Early Neolithic timber house was a short-lived architectural phenomenon of as little as 90 years, perhaps like short-lived Early Neolithic long barrows and causewayed enclosures. This book explores the wealth of evidence for settlement and houses throughout the Irish Neolithic, in relation to Britain and continental Europe. More importantly it incorporates the wealth of new, and often unpublished, evidence from developer-led archaeological excavations and large grey-literature resources. The settlement evidence scattered across the landscape, and found as a result of developer-funded work, provides the social context for the more famous stone monuments that have traditionally shaped our views of the Neolithic in Ireland. It provides the first comprehensive review of the Neolithic settlement of Ireland, which enables a more holistic and meaningful understanding of the Irish Neolithic.

Covering the approximately 6,500 years from the beginning of the Late Mesolithic to the transition to the Bronze Age, Mats Larsson takes the reader on a journey through the development of Swedish prehistoric society and culture set against the backdrop of climatic and landscape change. Using examples selected from a wealth of archaeological sites, artefacts and palaeo-environmental studies he explores a series of chronological themes: such as how the relationship between land and water influenced people’s lives in many ways and the development of often long-distance cultural and exchange networks, as reflected in the occurrence of ‘foreign’ stone axes, flint, copper and pottery. He describes how innovations, such as the introduction of agriculture, spread rapidly during the Neolithic, incorporating characteristics of extensive northern European cultural groups, beginning with the Funnel Beaker Culture with its array of distinctive objects, settlements and burial monuments, while retaining some specific regional and local expressions in material culture. Later, certain characteristics of the Pitted Ware Culture, such as specific types of pottery decoration, were taken up in some areas while the emergence of some regional groups can be seen as a step in the ideological and social changes that led to what we today call the Battle Axe Culture. Towards the end of the Stone Age the battle axe was replaced by the dagger as a symbol of the male warrior as a more stable society emerged in many parts of the country, concentrated around large farms with longhouses. It was only at this late stage that agriculture and the raising of livestock gained a firm hold, and the landscape was opened up permanently.

This volume presents the results of investigations undertaken by Oxford Archaeology between 2003 and 2011 in advance of construction of the Banbury Flood Alleviation Scheme, Oxfordshire. The main element of these investigations was an excavation at the site of a borrow pit for clay to be used in constructing the flood defences. Geophysical surveys of two other areas that revealed dense concentrations of buried archaeological remains not subsequently affected by the scheme are also reported. The excavation uncovered a multi-period landscape containing a regionally significant Neolithic occupation site, as well as later features. The Neolithic remains comprised 35 pits that produced large assemblages of flint and pottery, mainly Peterborough Ware of middle Neolithic date (associated with radiocarbon dates of c 3350-2650 BC). A single substantial but enigmatic middle Bronze Age ditch contained few finds, but these included a radius from an aurochs, one of the latest examples of this species in Britain.Late pre-Roman Iron Age occupation was represented by an oval double-ditched enclosure which, following a brief hiatus, was succeeded toward the end of the 1st century AD by a more extensive low-status farmstead. The settlement was redeveloped during the 2nd century before finally being abandoned in the early-mid 3rd century. Artefactual and palaeoenvironmental assemblages, as well as the spatial arrangement of the settlement, provided evidence regarding the economy, status and social organisation of the community. The volume includes a consideration of the results of the project in the context of Iron Age and Roman settlement of the Cherwell Valley.

The eruption of the Thera (Santorini) volcano in the Aegean Sea in the mid-second millennium BC was a clearly defined, specific moment in Aegean and east Mediterranean prehistory that impacted on all the major cultures of the region. The effects of the eruption have been linked with the destruction of the Minoan palace civilisation of Crete, the legend of Atlantis, and even events described in the Biblical account of the Exodus. Scientists have studied the remains of the volcano and traced eruption products and far-flung climatic impacts throughout the east Mediterranean and in ice cores and tree-ring data. At Akrotiri, a major prehistoric town buried by the eruption, archaeologists unearthed the partially intact remains multi-storey buildings, painted frescoes and myriad objects of everyday life. The date of the eruption has long been a subject of importance and controversy since accurate dating would offer a unique linchpin for the study and synchronisation of the history and cultures of the region in the mid-second millennium. It would provide a key test both for the established historical chronology of ancient Egypt and derived archaeological chronologies. Yet the exact date remained stubbornly unresolved and varied in the literature by over 100 years.A Test of Time, first published in 1999, sought to resolve the issue through a critical review of the archaeological and scientific data, including the presentation of radiocarbon dates, which together suggested a new ‘early’ chronology for the Aegean c. 1700–1400 BC. This edition comprises the original, unrevised text, together with a substantial new appended essay which critically reviews the continuing debate between 1999 and 2012 and presents a raft of new scientific data, including the Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates relating to a range of relevant archaeological sequences from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean.

The rock art found in the World Heritage sites in the Alta area, Arctic Norway, comprise thousands of images including reindeer and elk as well as fish, birds, boats, humans and geometric patterns. They contain information about peoples who lived in this northern area from about 5000 BC up until the birth of Christ; such as possible social organizations, hunting and trapping, beliefs, rituals,stories, legends, myths, cultural changes and continuities.Communicating with the world of beings addresses an understanding of the rock art in terms of communication with other people and other than-human beings. The figures could have been seen and experienced as symbols in rituals or as expressions of identity, position, power and rights, as depictions of real events and perhaps for use in storytelling. Through rock art, people might also have been able to communicate with other-than-human beings who ruled parts of the environment – in order to petition favors for themselves or others. These other-than-human beings may have been perceived as good and evil powers and spirits of the different worlds of the universe; the dead or souls; which also included the animals depicted or were even embodied in the stone.This communication may have been based on a belief that both living beings and inert objects and natural phenomena had souls, a belief that may have existed ever since the earliest settlements. Such an animistic belief means that everything was seen as having a consciousness and identity of its own, independent and imbued with a will. Therefore, it was essential that the different participants communicated with one another as equal partners.In this beautifully illustrated book Knut Helskog provides a lyrical and personal interpretation of the chronology, patterning and possible meanings behind this extraordinary landscape of prehistoric rock art.

This first monograph in the EARTH: The Dynamics of Non-Industrial Agriculture: 8,000 years of Resilience and Innovation series, approaches the great variety of agricultural practices in human terms. It focuses on the relationship between plants and people, the complexity of agricultural processes and their organisation within particular communities and societies. Collaborative European research among archaeologists, archaeobotanists, ethnographers, historians and agronomists using a broad analytical scale of investigation seeks to establish new common ground for integrating different approaches. By means of interdisciplinary examples, this book showcases the relationship between people and plants across wide ranging and diverse spatial and temporal milieus, including crop diversity, the use of wild foodstuffs, social context, status and choices of food plants.

The Weymouth Relief Road crosses an area of intricately varied geology and one of the richest and most important cultural landscapes in England, which preserves a wealth of archaeological and historical remains. Extensive fieldwork in advance of construction of the Weymouth Relief Road yielded evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement and funerary activity, along with vestiges of Roman occupation.The main sites were located at Ridgeway Hill, located on the edge of South Dorset Ridgeway, at the northern end of the scheme and at Southdown Ridge close to the southern end. At Ridgeway Hill a sequence of Neoltihic pits was investigated, along with several groups of early Bronze Age inhumation and cremation burials in pits and cists. The burials were probably originally associated with barrows that belonged to the Ridgeway Hill group, one of the densest concentrations of Bronze Age round barrows in Britain. At Southdown Ridge a settlement that spanned the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age to the late Iron Age was discovered lying adjacent to a cross-ridge dyke and prehistoric field enclosures. The inhabitants engaged in shale-working activity as well as agriculture until the settlement was abandoned and converted to a cemetery in which the dead were buried in the distinctive south Dorset tradition, accompanied by grave goods, and later in the Roman tradition of coffined burial.