The terracotta figurines from Akragas (Agrigento) with their chubby faces, splendid furniture, and rich adornments, depict a prosperous life in the late sixth and early fifth century BCE. The extensive jewellery on the figurines contains strikingly large fibulae appliques fastening pectoral chains with several sorts of pendants. They are modelled after existing items. The form of the jewellery items changed fast, influenced by different peoples and changing fashions, which can be compared with representations of jewellery and fashion on coins of the same period from Syracuse.In contrast, the body of the figurines remained armless and abstract for some time, nor does it express its gender. The block shaped, sloping upper body might have originated with aniconic objects, but suggests here a seated person, covered with a rectangular apron on the front. In contrast, the face is detailed, and often crowned with a specific headgear, the polos. The Archaic smile reveals Greek influence on its features.An archaeological experiment in which figurines and moulds were reproduced revealed their production process. By combining data from the experiment with an analysis of their iconographic features, most of the figurines studied can be shown to have been designed and produced locally. The moulding technique, introduced by newcomers to the city, provided for relatively cheap and rapid production of terracotta figurines. Local clay and marl are found near to the city, and its composition was found to be very suitable, due to its plasticity, fine structure and soft tone on firing.Wooden figurines, the forerunners of the terracotta figurines, were used in the production of the moulds of their terracotta successors. The terracotta figurines developed to become more three-dimensional, so that they were able to stay upright unsupported. Objects and moulds were exchanged with the city of Selinous, resulting in variations of the standard and figurines with finely detailed faces. Designing and dedicating these votive figurines, and possibly also jewellery, to a cult statue might have acted as a unifying element for the perhaps multi-ethnic society of Akragas. By means of these anthropomorphic female figurines, people gave shape to their origin and narratives, using old and new symbols such as the Phoenician crescent and the Greek satyr. Their cultural influences formed a new religious setting, helping to forge a new identity unique to Sicily. The prosperity expressed by these metal adornments, fits Diodorus Siculus’ description of Akragas as a rich city.

Archaeology is in crisis. Spatial turns, material turns and the ontological turn have directed the discipline away from its hard-won battle to ­ find humanity in the past. Meanwhile, popularised science, camouflaged as archaeology, produces shock headlines built on ancient DNA analyses that reduce humanity’s most intriguing historical problems to ‘just-so stories’. Today archaeology ­finds itself less able than ever to proclaim its relevance to the modern world. This volume foregrounds the relevance of the scholarship of John C. Barrett to this crisis. Twenty-four writers representing three generations of archaeologists scrutinise the current turmoil in the discipline and highlight the resolutions that may be found through Barrett’s analytical framework. Topics include archaeology and the senses, the continuing problem of the archaeological record, practice, discourse and agency, reorienting archaeological field practice, the question of different expressions of human diversity and material ecologies. Understanding archaeology as both a universal and highly specific discipline, case studies range from the Aegean to Orkney, and encompass Anatolia, Korea, Romania, the United Kingdom and the very nature of the Universe itself. This critical examination of John Barrett’s contribution to archaeology is simultaneously a response to his urgent call to arms to reorient archaeology in the service of humanity.

Weapons and tools are frequently found depicted in rock art in many parts of the globe and different periods and in varying social contexts. This collection of papers by leading rock art specialists examines the subjective and metaphorical value of weapons and tools in art, the actions that created them, and their contexts. It also takes into account that such representations incorporate and transmit some kind of understanding about the world and the relationship between objects and humans. Contributors analyse objects and weapons as status symbols, as evidences of cultural contacts, as ideological devices, etc. Divided into regional sections which, for once, do not focus on Scandinavia, chapters deal with the representations of weapons and certain kinds of tools (such as axes and sickles) in different prehistoric, protohistoric and traditional community contexts all over the world. Attention focuses on rock art, but also looks at stelae and statue-menhirs, as well as other kinds of ‘container’ or vehicle for this kind of depiction. The major concern is to discuss the possible meanings of these embodied signs in different areas and periods, since meanings are permeable both to time and space. Papers either centre their attention in broader approaches based on a specific area, region or people, or focus on particular case studies.

Construction of the Peterborough Eastern Bypass led to the excavation of a burial mound and the discovery of a complex burial and ritual site, which lay in the Nene valley on the north bank of an old course of the river. The site was effectively sealed under alluvial deposits accumulating over the last thousand years, and almost untouched by any post-medieval disturbance. A round barrow, found by David Hall in the 1970s, was a slight bump in the flood meadows, scarcely 0. 25m above the general level. When archaeological excavation began, a change in the vegetation nearby proved to be another, older, burial monument. Work was intermittent, held up by lack of funds and only completed under a government unemployment scheme. Both burial sites span the period from the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age with evidence that they shared a sequence of development. Iron Age weaponry and currency bars were recovered from the old course of the river Nene and there was evidence that ritual or religious practice continued at the barrow into Early Saxon times. The focus of the cult may have been the tidal effect on the Nene. Cultivation in open fields up-stream during the Late Saxon and Medieval periods led to silting of the valley bottom, almost completely covering the burial mounds, the process coming to an end progressively through the eighteenth century.

The papers in Karia and the Dodekanese, Vol. I, focus on regional developments and interregional relations in western Asia Minor and the Dodekanese during the Late Classical and Early Hellenistic period. Throughout antiquity, this region was a dynamic meeting place for eastern and western civilizations. Cultural achievements of exceptional and everlasting importance, including significant creations of ancient Greek literature, philosophy, art and architecture, originated in the coastal cities of western Anatolia and the adjoining Aegean islands. In the fourth century BC, the eastern cities experienced a new economic boom, and a revival of Archaic culture, sometimes termed ‘The Ionian Renaissance’, began. The cultural revival furthered rebuilding of old major works such as the Artemision at Ephesos, the embellishment of sanctuaries and a new royal architecture, such as the Maussolleion at Halikarnassos. The rich cultural revival was initially promoted by the satrapal family of the Hekatomnids in Karia and in particular by its most famous member, Maussollos, whose influence was not confined to Asia Minor, but included the Dodekanese islands Kos and Rhodos. Partly under the influence of the Karian satrapy, a number of cities were founded on a new common urban model in Rhodos, Halikarnassos, Priene, Knidos and Kos. When Alexander the Great conquered the satrapies in western Asia Minor in 334 BC, the culture initially promoted at the satrapal courts was carried on by gifted thinkers, poets and architects, preparing the way for Hellenistic cultural centres such as Alexandria.

Karia and the Dodekanese, Vol. II, presents new research that highlights cultural interrelations and connectivity in the Southeast Aegean and western Asia Minor over a period of more than 700 years. Throughout antiquity, this region was a dynamic meeting place for eastern and western civilizations. Modern geographical limitations have been influential on both archaeological investigations and how we approach cultural relations in the region. Comprehensive and valuable research has been carried out on many individual sites in Karia and the Dodekanese, but the results have rarely been brought together in an attempt to paint a larger picture of the culture of this region. In antiquity, the sea did not constitute an obstacle to interaction between societies and cultures, but was an effective means of communication for the exchange of goods, sculptural styles, architectural form and embellishment, education, and ideas. It is clear that close relations existed between the Dodekanese and western Asia Minor during the Classical period (Vol. I), but these relations were evidently further strengthened under the shifting political influences of the Hellenistic kings, the Roman Empire, and the cosmopolitan late antique period. The contributions in this volume comprise investigations on urbanism, architectural form and embellishment, sculpture, pottery, and epigraphy.

Despite notable explorations of past dynamics, much of the archaeological literature on mobility remains dominated by accounts of earlier prehistoric gatherer-hunters, or the long-distance exchange of materials. Refinements of scientific dating techniques, isotope, trace element and aDNA analyses, in conjunction with phenomenological investigation, computer-aided landscape modelling and GIS-style approaches to large data sets, allow us to follow the movement of people, animals and objects in the past with greater precision and conviction. One route into exploring mobility in the past may be through exploring the movements and biographies of artefacts. Challenges lie not only in tracing the origins and final destinations of objects but in the less tangible ‘in between’ journeys and the hands they passed through. Biographical approaches to artefacts include the recognition that culture contact and hybridity affect material culture in meaningful ways. Furthermore, discrete and bounded ‘sites’ still dominate archaeological inquiry, leaving the spaces and connectivities between features and settlements unmapped. These are linked to an under-explored middle-spectrum of mobility, a range nestled between everyday movements and one-off ambitious voyages. We wish to explore how these travels involved entangled meshworks of people, animals, objects, knowledge sets and identities. By crossing and re-crossing cultural, contextual and tenurial boundaries, such journeys could create diasporic and novel communities, ideas and materialities.

The ERC-funded FRAGSUS Project (Fragility and sustainability in small island environments: adaptation, cultural change and collapse in prehistory, 2013-18), led by Caroline Malone (Queens University Belfast) has explored issues of environmental fragility and Neolithic social resilience and sustainability during the Holocene period in the Maltese Islands. This, the first volume of three, presents the palaeo-environmental story of early Maltese landscapes. The project employed a programme of high-resolution chronological and stratigraphic investigations of the valley systems on Malta and Gozo. Buried deposits extracted through coring and geoarchaeological study yielded rich and chronologically controlled data that allow an important new understanding of environmental change in the islands. The study combined AMS radiocarbon and OSL chronologies with detailed palynological, molluscan and geoarchaeological analyses. These enable environmental reconstruction of prehistoric landscapes and the changing resources exploited by the islanders between the seventh and second millennia bc. The interdisciplinary studies combined with excavated economic and environmental materials from archaeological sites allows Temple landscapes to examine the dramatic and damaging impacts made by the first farming communities on the islands' soil and resources. The project reveals the remarkable resilience of the soil-vegetational system of the island landscapes, as well as the adaptations made by Neolithic communities to harness their productivity, in the face of climatic change and inexorable soil erosion. Neolithic people evidently understood how to maintain soil fertility and cope with the inherently unstable changing landscapes of Malta. In contrast, second millennium bc Bronze Age societies failed to adapt effectively to the long-term aridifying trend so clearly highlighted in the soil and vegetation record. This failure led to severe and irreversible erosion and very different and short-lived socio-economic systems across the Maltese islands.

This book contains a selection of nineteen articles published by K.R. Veenhof, focusing on his main field of study: law and trade in the Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian society of the early second millennium B. C. They were originally published in journals, conference proceedings and collective volumes over the past fifty years. Their reissue here is motivated by their lasting value and their fundamental importance to the study of these subjects.It includes both “broad” articles, which give an introduction to or an overview of a specific subject, e.g. Old Assyrian trade and the practice of justice in Babylonia in the early second millennium B.C., and “narrow” ones that give an in-depth study of a single issue or a single text, such as a problematic paragraph of Hammurabi’s law code or the meaning of the noun iṣurtum. The first two articles provide a general introduction to the subject; the next nine focus on Old Assyrian society, and the final eight concern Old Babylonian.The inclusion of “broad” and “narrow” articles makes this publication of interest both to the well-informed general reader interested in the Ancient Near East and to the specialist working on Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian society.Prof. dr. Klaas

This book looks at how archaeologists in the early 21st century are dealing with the challenges and opportunities presented by development in archaeologically sensitive urban centres. Based on a session held at the 2017 EAA conference in Maastricht, the volume features case studies from across Europe and beyond – including Norway, Lithuania, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Italy and Israel. The chapters look both at individual projects and larger thematic issues. How has urban archaeology changed the ways in which archaeologists work? Is it possible to predict (and avoid or protect) sensitive archaeology in dynamic urban centres? Do technical solutions to preservation in situ actually work? How are the public involved and how do archaeologists promote public engagement? What are some of the issues and problems for the future?This book is the first publication of the EAA Urban Archaeology Community, and its editors hope that it will provoke debate, and inform future developments in urban archaeology in Europe and beyond.

This third volume of the BEFIM series addresses the life history of vessels from the Early Celtic hillfort settlements of Heuneburg and Vix-Mont Lassois, from a detailed examination of the manufacturing process to the use and modifications of the final products. An extensive experimental program of dozens of experiments has allowed a better understanding of the way this pottery was made and used. The participation of an experienced potter allowed the reprodiction of exact replicas of the different wares, and the exploration of the impact of the creation process in wear patterns and traces. The effect of alcohol production, including fermentation, on the pottery was also explored, as well as the effect of different gestures of preparing food and drink (mixing, stirring, pounding), different ways of storage and handling, and the manner of consumption like decanting using various kinds of utensils. These experimental results form the basis of the book's exploration, which adds to a more detailed insight into foodways, including drinking habits, of the Early Celtic communities of Central Europe.

Barkcloth or tapa, a cloth made from the inner bark of trees, was widely used in place of woven cloth in the Pacific islands until the 19th century. A ubiquitous material, it was integral to the lives of islanders and used for clothing, furnishings and ritual artefacts. Material Approaches to Polynesian Barkcloth takes a new approach to the study of the history of this region through its barkcloth heritage, focusing on the plants themselves and surviving objects in historic collections. This object-focused approach has filled gaps in our understanding of the production and use of this material through an investigation of this unique fabric’s physical properties, transformation during manufacture and the regional history of its development in the 18th and 19th centuries.The book is the outcome of a research project which focused on three important collections of barkcloth at The Hunterian, University of Glasgow; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. It also looks more widely at the value of barkcloth artefacts in museum collections for enhancing both contemporary practice and a wider appreciation of this remarkable fabric. The contributors include academics, curators, conservators and makers of barkcloth from Oceania and beyond, in an interdisciplinary study which draws together insights from object-based and textual reseach, fieldwork and tapa making, and information on the plants used to make fibres and colourants.This book will be of interest to tapa makers, museum professionals including curators and conservators; academics and students in the fields of anthropology, museum studies and conservation; museum visitors and anyone interested in finding out more about barkcloth.

The ‘Black Desert’ begins just south of Damascus and comprises some 40,000 km2 of dark and desolate basalt fields, which stretch from southern Syria across north-eastern Jordan and reach the sand sea of the Nefud in Saudi Arabia. The rough and highly arid terrain is often difficult to access and travel through. Despite these uninviting conditions, recent fieldwork has revealed the immense archaeological and epigraphic record of the Black Desert. This material testifies to the prominent successes achieved by indigenous nomadic peoples in exploiting the basalt range through hunting and herding across centuries and millennia.To date, there is an ever-increasing interest in the archaeology of the Black Desert. In particular, Jordan is home to a range of international research projects, and exciting new discoveries convincingly demonstrate the archaeological affluence of Jordan’s desert landscape. The present volume provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date examination of the archaeology and epigraphy of the immense basalt expanse as well as comparative perspectives from other parts of the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. This collection of papers offers detailed insights and analyses on topics ranging from mobility and landscape to developments in settlement and burial practices, as well as the role of rock art and literacy in ancient desert environments. This richly illustrated book is a significant point of reference for what is rapidly becoming a most vibrant and dynamic field of research in the Levant and Arabia.

The two tombs dealt with in this book were discovered in 2007 and 2010 by the Leiden Expedition in the New Kingdom necropolis of Saqqara. Both date to the transition period between the reign of the heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten and the return to orthodoxy under his successor Tutankhamun. They are valuable additions to the growing corpus of funerary architecture from the Memphite cemeteries, yet they are quite different. Ptahemwia was a royal butler, presumably in the Memphite palace. The wall-reliefs and inscriptions of his tomb illustrate aspects of his professional life. Yet the career of the tomb-owner preserves some mysteries, such as the assumed change of his name, his potential foreign origins, and the reason why his tomb could not be finished according to plan. Sethnakht is an even more elusive person. This simple scribe of the temple of Ptah can hardly have been the main owner of the tomb next to Ptahemwia’s, which was started in the same lavish style and then remained undecorated. There are reasons to assume that Sethnakht was just one of the relatives of the owner, who – like Ptahemwia – seems to have suffered from the political vicissitudes of the period. This publication presents the results of the recent excavations, with an introduction on the biographical data of the tomb owners followed by detailed discussions of the tomb architecture and wall decorations, as well as the objects, pottery, and skeletal material found in the area. Thus it is aimed at an audience of professional readers with an interest in funerary archaeology.

In order to understand our past, we need to understand ourselves as archaeologists and our discipline. This volume presents recent research into collecting practices of European Antiquities by national museums, institutes and individuals during the 19th and early 20th-century, and the ‘Ancient Europe’ collections that resulted and remain in many museums. This was the period during which the archaeological discipline developed as a scientific field, and the study of the archaeological paradigmatic and practical discourse of the past two centuries is therefore of importance, as are the sequence of key discoveries that shaped our field. Many national museums arose in the early 19th century and strived to acquire archaeological objects from a wide range of countries, dating from Prehistory to the Medieval period. This was done by buying, sometimes complete collections, exchanging or copying. The networks along which these objects travelled were made up out of the ranks of diplomats, aristocracy, politicians, clergymen, military officials and scholars. There were also intensive contacts between museums and universities and there were very active private dealers.The reasons for collecting antiquities were manifold. Many, however, started out from the idea of composing impressive collections brought together for patriotic or nationalistic purposes and for general comparative use. Later on, motives changed, and in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities became more scientifically oriented. Eventually these collections fossilized, ending up in the depots. The times had changed and the acquisition of archaeological objects from other European countries largely came to an end.This group of papers researches these collections of ‘Ancient Europe’ from a variety of angles. As such it forms an ideal base for further researching archaeological museum collection history and the development of the archaeological discipline.

Stone and brick tombs were repositories for the physical remains of many of Connecticut’s wealthiest and influential families. The desire was to be interred within burial vaults rather than have their wooden coffins laid into the earth in direct contact with crushing soil burden led many prominent families to construct large above-ground and semi-subterranean tombs, usually burrowed into the sides of hills as places of interment for their dead. "And So The Tomb Remains" tells the stories of the Connecticut State Archaeologist’s investigations into five 18th/19th century family tombs: the sepulchers of Squire Elisha Pitkin, Center Cemetery, East Hartford; Gershom Bulkeley, Ancient Burying Ground, Colchester; Samuel and Martha Huntington, Norwichtown Cemetery, Norwich; Henry Chauncey, Indian Hill Cemetery, Middletown; and Edwin D. Morgan, Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford. In all of these cases, the state archaeologist assisted in identifying and restoring human skeletal remains to their original burial placements when vandalized through occult rituals or contributed to the identification of unrecorded burials during restoration projects. Each investigative delves into family histories and genealogies, as well as archaeological and forensic sciences that helped identify the entombed and is told in a personal, story-telling approach. Written in essay form, each investigation highlights differing aspects of research in mortuary architecture and cemetery landscaping, public health, restoration efforts, crime scene investigations, and occult activities. These five case studies began either as “history mysteries” or as crime scene investigations. Since historic tombs were occupied by social and economic elites, forensic studies provide an opportunity to investigate the health and life stress pathologies of the wealthiest citizens in Connecticut’s historic past, while offering comparisons to the wellbeing of lower socio-economic populations.