Pantalica is a large limestone promontory in southeast Sicily known chiefly for a series of extensive cemeteries comprising thousands of chamber tombs cut out of the rock, dating mainly between the 13th and 7th centuries BCE. A UNESCO World Heritage site and nature reserve, renowned for archaeological remains in a spectacular natural setting, the site gives its name to the Late Bronze and Iron Age “Pantalica culture”, typical of southern Sicily in the period just before Greek colonization. At the time of Greek colonization in southern Sicily (8th c BCE), however, Pantalica was still one of the main indigenous centers of the region, sometimes likened to a chiefdom, dominating a sizeable territory and subsidiary settlements. The main excavations were undertaken by Paolo Orsi between 1895 and 1910 and mainly comprise information and relatively abundant finds of pottery and bronze artefacts from about 250 chamber tombs. The material is housed in the Archaeological Museum of Syracuse and is crucial for an understanding of local cultural traditions, burial practices and international contacts between Sicily and other areas (Italy, the eastern Mediterranean) in this period. The finds are only known from a small selection published by Orsi in two articles of 1895 and 1912. More than half were never published. The main aim of this volume is to provide a comprehensive study and illustrated catalogue of all the finds from the Pantalica tombs, along with new information from Orsi’s original excavation notebooks about their original context. In addition, the authors present the results of original research on different aspects of the evidence, including topography, funerary architecture (chamber tombs), funerary practices, ceramics, metals and other finds, and chronology. This volume will be an indispensable source of hitherto unpublished information of particular interest to scholars of Mediterranean later prehistory and connections between Greek colonists and native populations in the early historical period. Some new information is also provided about remains of the classical, Hellenistic, late antique and Medieval periods.

Starting from the issues of globalisation and recent studies about the mechanisms of absorption of cultures into the Roman Empire, this book focuses on the Near East, an area that has received much less attention than the Western part of the Roman empire in the context of the Romanisation debate. Cimadomo seeks to develop new understandings of imperialism and colonialism, highlighting the numerous and multiple cultural elements that existed in the eastern provinces and raising many questions, such as the bilingualism of ancient societies, the relationship between different cultures and the difficulty of using modern terminologies to explain ancient phenomena. The first focus lies on the area of Galilee and collecting all the evidence for reconstructing the history of the region. The theme of the ethnicity of the Galileans is very complex, as even the literary evidence of the first centuries BC and AD regarding Galilee doesn’t specify anything about their ethnic identities. The question of the Arabs, their origins and ethnicity is also raised, with a particular focus on the Itureans and the Nabateans. Alongside a complete analysis of the territories they occupied, Cimadomo explores the different artefacts: from the sculptures to the pottery, from the temples to the coins, a picture emerges of an area influenced by different cultures where the inhabitants were able to create their own culture, different from all other parts of the Roman empire. A chapter is devoted to the Decapolis, paying attention to the literary and architectural evidences of each city and their urban development in a little-studied period. An important feature that clearly emerges is the religious nature of the earlier settlements: most of them were probably sanctuaries during the Hellenistic time, and developed only after the coming of the Romans. It was during this development that theatres took a principal role, seemingly the first structures built in every city under Roman rule. It becomes clear that the problems of homogenization and differentiation were present even in the past. Local inhabitants challenged their identity, adapting and modifying foreign impulses, creating new societies and new ways of being Roman.

The study of dress in antiquity has expanded in the last 20 years, evolving from investigations of costume and ethnicity in ancient art and texts and analyses of terms relating to textiles and their production, to broader studies of the social roles of dressed bodies in ancient contexts, texts, and images. This volume emerges from Approaches to Dress and the Body sessions at the Annual Meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research in 2016 and 2017, as well as sessions relating to ancient dress and personal adornment at the Annual Meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America in 2018. Following the broad notion of dress first presented in Eicher and Roach-Higgins in 1992 as the “assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body,” the contributions to this volume study varied materials, including physical markings on the body, durable goods related to dressed bodies in archaeological contexts, dress as represented in the visual arts as well as in texts, most bringing overlapping bodies of evidence into play. Examining materials from a range of geographic and chronological contexts including the prehistoric Caucasus, Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria and the Levant, the Aegean, Greece, the Roman world and Late Antique Central Asia, this volume takes as its starting point that dress does not simply function as a static expression of identity or status, inscribed on the body to be “read” by others, but is a dynamic component in the construction, embodiment, performance and transformation of identity.

Early Settlers of the Insular Caribbean: Dearchaizing the Archaic offers a comprehensive coverage of the most recent advances in interdisciplinary research on the early human settling of the Caribbean islands. It covers the time span of the so-called Archaic Age and focuses on the Middle to Late Holocene period which – depending on specific case studies discussed in this volume – could range between 6000 BC and AD 1000. A similar approach to the early settlers of the Caribbean islands has never been published in one volume, impeding the realization of a holistic view on indigenous peoples’ settling, subsistence, movements, and interactions in this vast and naturally diversified macroregion. Delivered by a panel of international experts, this book provides recent and new data in the fields of archaeology, collection studies, palaeo­botany, geomorphology, paleoclimate and bioarchaeology that challenge currently existing perspectives on early human settlement patterns, subsistence strategies, migration routes and mobility and exchange. This publication compiles new approaches to ‘old’ data and museum collections, presents the results of starch grain analysis, paleocoring, seascape modelling, and network analysis. Moreover, it features newer published data from the islands such as Margarita and Aruba. All the above-mentioned data compiled in one volume fills the gap in scholarly literature, transforms some of the interpretations in vogue and enables the integration of the first settlers of the insular Caribbean into the larger Pan-American perspective. This book not only provides scholars and students with compelling new and interdisciplinary perspectives on the Early Settlers of the Insular Caribbean. It is also of interest to unspecialized readers as it discusses subjects related to archaeology, anthropology, and – broadly speaking – to the intersections between humanities and social and environmental sciences, which are of great interest to the present-day general public.

This volume explores the relationship between archaeology and contemporary society, especially as it concerns local communities living day-to-day alongside archaeological heritage. The contributors come from a range of disciplines and offer inspiring views emerging from the marriage of archaeology with a number of other fields, such as economics, social anthropology, ethnography, public policy, oral history and tourism studies, to form the discipline of ‘public archaeology’. There is growing interest in investigating the meanings of archaeology assets and archaeological landscapes, and this volume targets these issues with case studies from Greece, Italy, Turkey and elsewhere. The book addresses both general readers and scholars with an interest in how archaeological assets affected by people’s understanding of landscape and identity. It also touches upon the roles played in these interactions by public policy, international conventions, market economies and theoretical frameworks of public archaeology.

Khnumhotep I was the first governer of the Oryx nome during Egypt’s formative Twelfth Dynasty. Appointed by Amenemhat I, his tomb at Beni Hassan is one of the most significant for its insights on a pivotal period in Egyptian history. For the first time since Newberry's publication in 1893, a record of the tomb and its preserved scenes and inscriptions is provided in colour photographs and detailed line drawings. The report includes a description of the tomb’s architecture, its various scenes on daily life, desert-hunting and militaristic activities, as well as a new copy and translation of Khnumhotep I’s biography.

Butrint 6 describes the excavations carried out on the Vrina Plain by the Butrint Foundation from 2002–2007. Lying just to the south of the ancient port city of Butrint, these excavations have revealed a 1,300 year long story of a changing community that began in the 1st century AD, one which not only played its part in shaping the city of Butrint but also in how the city interacted and at times reacted to the changing political, economic and cultural situations occurring across the Mediterranean World over this period. Volume I discusses the results from the excavations, tracing the development of the area from an early Roman bridgehead suburb during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD to a major 3rd-century domus, one of the largest of its kind in the province of Epirus Vetus, its transformation into a new residential centre dominated by a Christian basilica in Late Antiquity, to becoming the home of a Byzantine archon during the 9th and 10th centuries when it was, in all but name, Butrint, and its subsequent uses following its abandonment due to the rising water table. This is followed by a description of the domus mosaics and a detailed examination of the basilica mosaics, analysing the imagery, meaning and context of this intricate and detailed pavement, together with discussions of the Vrina Plain and its place within the story of Butrint and the wider Mediterranean World during the Roman and Byzantine periods.

Greek Colonization in Local Context takes a fresh look at Greek colonies around Europe and Black Sea. The emphasis is on cultural interaction, transformation and the repercussions and local reactions to colonization in social, religious and cultural terms. Papers examine the archaeological evidence for cultural interaction in a series of case studies from locations around the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, at a variety of scales. Contributors consider the effects of colonization on urban life and developments in cities and smaller settlements as well as in the rural landscapes surrounding and supporting them. This collection of new papers by leading scholars reveals fascinating details of the native response to the imposition of Greek rule and the indigenous input into early state development in the Mediterranean and adjacent regions.

Excavations at Chalk Hill, Ramsgate in south-eastern Britain were primarily aimed at investigating the remains of a possible early Neolithic causewayed enclosure visible on aerial photographs. However, the monument could not in fact be categorised as a causewayed enclosure, but instead represented a type of early Neolithic ritual monument unique to the British Isles.The earliest significant features recorded on the site dated to the early Neolithic (roughly 3700–3600 cal BC). They took the form of three concentric arcs of intercutting pit clusters forming discrete ‘segments’, the fills of which produced rich assemblages of pottery, flintwork, animal bone and other material. Much of this material appeared to have been deliberately placed in the pits rather than representing casual disposal of refuse. There are indications that material placed in different pits at different times may have derived from the same source, a ‘midden’ or some such which was not located during the excavations. The pit clusters appeared to have resulted from repeated pit-digging in the same location over an extended period of time. The site therefore contributes a more nuanced understanding of the heterogeneity of monumental architecture in the early Neolithic of the British Isles.This report is therefore critical for understanding the early Neolithisation of southern Britain, the relations between Neolithic incomers and indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, the potential creolisation of different cultural groups and cross-Channel relations in the early 4th Millennium BC.The site probably went out of use in around 3600 cal BC, and subsequent use of the landscape in the Bronze Age and later periods is evocative of the perception of ‘special places’ in the landscape long after they were abandoned.With contributions by Enid Allison, Alex Bayliss, Robin Bendrey, Christopher Bronk Ramsey, Kate Clark, Alex Gibson, Chris Green, Louise Harrison, Frances Healy, Linda Hurcombe, Rob Ixer, Jacqueline McKinley, Barbara McNee, Ruth Pelling, Nicola Powell, Louise Rayner, Paula Reimer, Johannes van der Plicht, Alasdair Whittle and Tania Wilson

Since long, footwear has been neglected, but the Ancient Egyptian Footwear Project (AEFP), which started 10 years ago, filled in this gap in the knowledge on day-to-day ancient Egypt by studying the archaeological record as well as the imagery and textual evidence.

Asia Minor is considered to have been a fairly prosperous region in Late Antiquity. It was rarely disturbed by external invasions and remained largely untouched by the continuous Roman-Persian conflict until very late in the period, was apparently well connected to the flourishing Mediterranean economy and, as the region closest to Constantinople, is assumed to have played an important part in the provisioning of the imperial capital and the imperial armies. When exactly this prosperity came to an end – the late sixth century, the early, middle or even later seventh century – remains a matter of debate. Likewise, the impact of factors such as the dust veil event of 536, the impact of the bubonic plague that made its first appearance in AD 541/542, the costs and consequences of Justinian’s wars, the Persian attacks of the early seventh century and, eventually the Arab incursions of around the middle of the seventh century, remains controversial. This volume explores a series of themes including the physical development of large and small settlements, their financial situation, and the proportion of public and private investment. Imperial, provincial, and local initiatives in city and countryside are compared and the main motivations examined, including civic or personal pride, military incentives and religious stimuli. The evidence presented will be used to form opinions on the impact of the plague on living circumstances in the sixth century and to evaluate the significance of the Justinianic period.

Details results of excavations along the A477 from St Clears to Red Roses during the Road Improvement Scheme, 2012. Finds include a Mesolithic site in the lower Tâf valley; early Neolithic pits and a post-built structure at Cildywyll; the remains of an Early Bronze Age barrow, 38 burials (some urned), a pyre site, and a Middle Bronze Age drying oven near St Clears; and A Bronze Age burnt mound near Red Roses.

In France, there are not many books on runes. Ever since the “Introduction to Runology” by Lucien Musset in 1965, very few works have been published on this subject, which is nonetheless very rich. This new work enables the various opportunities of research on the appearance of the runes in Northern Europe to be analysed and understood. The author deals with all the theories that have been voiced and gives a novel analysis to runic inscriptions. He details the main epigraphic sources in old Fuþark of the German Iron Age and places them in their historical context. This work also offers an interesting analysis of the symbolism of the different types of inscriptions, like “ALU”, “LAUKAZ” or “OTA”. Understanding these recurrent inscriptions throughout Northern Europe enables one to revive the mental universe of these ancient Germans.

During the late 1st millennium BC into the early 1st millennium AD, the small island of Unst in the far north of the Shetland (and British) Isles was home to well-established and connected farming and fishing communities. The Iron Age settlement at Milla Skerra was occupied for at least 500 years before it was covered with storm-blown sand and abandoned. Although part of it had been lost to the sea, excavation revealed many details of the life of the settlement and how it was reused over many generations. From the middle of the 1st millennium BC people were constructing stone-walled yards and filling them with hearth waste and midden material. Later inhabitants built a house on top, with a paved floor and successive hearths, and more domestic rubbish accumulated inside it. Outside were new yards and workshops for crafts and metalworking, which were remodelled several times. The buildings fell into disrepair and became a dumping ground for domestic waste until the 2nd or 3rd century AD, when sand buried the settlement. Within a few generations, a man was buried beside the ruins along with some striking objects. Thousands of artefacts and environmental remains from Milla Skerra reveal the everyday practices and seasonal rhythms of the people that lived in this windswept and remote island settlement and their connections to both land and sea.

Eight sites were excavated along the route of the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route between Balmedy to Tipperty. The sites are mostly multi-period. One site on the banks of the River Dee, revealed nine phases of activity extending from the Upper Palaeolithic through to the post-Medieval. Extensive specialist analysis has been undertaken on all sites, along with a programme of radiocarbon dating, OSL dating and Bayesian analysis. During the excavations, it was apparent how the specific landscape of each site was key to the activities taking place there, the periods and duration of activity and the extent to which people were passing through or settling. This was chosen as the overarching theme for analysis and publication, and the geological and topographical background is woven through the presentation of each site. Broadly speaking, the landscape ‘units’ identified were the River Dee valley, the Dee-Don uplands, a second upland zone around one specific site, the River Don valley, and the coastal plains. In addition to the individual site- evidence, a concluding chapter expands on three themes highlighted through the work; Mobility (looking at the temporary/permanent nature of interaction), ‘Gaps’ (periods of time or parts of the landscape which seem unexpectedly blank and the reasons for this), and Methodologies (looking at the specific methods used to identify, test and excavate the sites and consider learnings for future linear projects). Full versions of all specialist reports, the original assessment reports and relevant catalogues are provided digitally through ADS and cross-referenced throughout the text.

A study of the construction, structure and identification of Ship 17, a Late Period baris-vessel discovered during underwater excavations at Thonis-Heracleion, a sunken city in Aboukir Bay. Ship 17 is placed within the traditions of naval architecture both in Egypt and the wider Mediterranean.