This work presents the newest trends appearing in the field of Roman Law particularly devoted to the fault-based liability – culpa – that were addressed at the International Conference organised by the Faculty of Law and Administration of Warsaw University in February 2010. Articles written by Merola, Rampazzo and Tucillo touch the problem of culpa in the public law. The authors concentrated on the question of liability of public officers and their culpa or negligence during the performance of their duties. The social scope of culpa as the prerequisite for a censorial note has been presented by Tarwacka. Adamo addressed some important aspect of fault-related liability in criminal law dealing with the regulations of Theodosian Code. Private law side fault based-liability in contracts was presented by Benincasa and Kordasiewicz. They both analysed contracts used in maritime trade, the former regarding armature’s partnership, the latter in the aspect of the transition from objective liability to the liability based on fault in the case of guarantee for the goods admitted by the sailor. Manni and Święcicka devoted their studies to the delictual liability based on culpa. Finally, Alonso and Urbanik attempted to present culpa-liability in the light of papyrological sources, confronting Roman Law sources and documents of legal practice. These studies provide a wealth of information on the law of antiquity in the subject of liability based on fault, both in the aspect of private and public law.

Lindsay Allason-Jones has been at the forefront of small finds and Roman frontier research for 40 years in a career focussed on, but not exclusive to, the north of Britain, encompassing an enormous range of object types and subject areas. Divided into thematic sections the contributions presented here to celebrate her many achievements all represent at least one aspect of Lindsay’s research interests. These encompass social and industrial aspects of northern frontier forts; new insights into inscribed and sculptural stones specific to military communities; religious, cultural and economic connotations of Roman armour finds; the economic and ideological penetration of romanitas in the frontiers as reflected by individual objects and classes of finds; evidence of trans-frontier interactions and invisible people; the role of John Clayton in the exploration and preservation of Hadrian’s Wall and its material culture; the detailed consideration of individual objects of significant interest; and a discussion of the widespread occurrence of mice in Roman art.

Archaeological excavation by MOLA at Watermark Place in the City of London revealed evidence for the development of the city waterfront from the 13th century onwards. The remains of substantial and well-preserved timber river walls and timber/stone dock walls were recorded, and the use of tree-ring dating enabled the construction of one large timber river wall and dock to be dated to the year 1339. Many of the recorded structures related to the medieval wharf known as the Haywharf, probably originally so-named because it was where hay was imported into the city before c 1300. In common with other excavations of medieval waterfronts in the City, the waterlogged deposits associated with the structural remains produced a remarkable array of finds, including over 700 accessioned finds. Large medieval foundations on the site probably relate to the mansion known as Coldharbour, which was constructed on the site by the early 14th century. Later remains included a sequence of 15th- to 16th-century industrial stone hearths or furnaces, and documentary evidence suggests that it is likely these were associated with either brewing or dyeing on the site. Also recorded were structures associated with the Calvert’s/City of London brewery, which stood on the site from the 18th century until it was bombed during World War II.

The twenty-third Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (TRAC) was held at King’s College, London in spring 2013. During the three-day conference nearly papers were delivered, discussing issues from a wide range of geographical regions of the Roman Empire, and applying various theoretical and methodological approaches. Sessions included those looking at Roman–Barbarian interactions; identity and funerary monuments in ancient Italy; migration and social identity in the Roman Near East; theoretical approaches to Roman small finds; formation processes of in-fills in urban sites; and new reflections on Roman glass. This volume contains a selection of papers from the conference sessions.

A comprehensive evaluation of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the archaeological value of its findings particularly in relation to Roman Britain.

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.

Until recently, the Dutch draughtsman Johan Thopas, who was born in 1626 both deaf and dumb, was only known to a small group of connoisseurs, dealers and collectors. However, his remarkable, subtle and technically refined portrait drawings on parchment deserve a wider audience. This handsome publication, the first devoted to his work, will prove to be an eye opener for many art lovers. Beginning with his earliest works (two beautiful miniatures of 1646 in the Fondation Custodia in Paris), Thopas produced incredibly refined drawings, usually with lead point on parchment. He had an almost magic control of the lead point, and his sense of texture and the way he was able to achieve this with minimal means is astounding, setting him apart from other draughtsmen in the Dutch Golden Age. Thopas was also able to capture brilliantly the characters of his sitters – such as the sulky husband and trouser-wearing wife in the 1684 companion pieces in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Apart from lead-point drawings, Thopas made several drawings in colour, on parchment and on Japanese paper. In most cases these drawings were done after life, although we do know that the large commission he received from the Bas-Kerckrinck family in Amsterdam included several drawings that were done after existing portraits. Furthermore, he produced at least one brilliant copy after a painting by Cornelis Cornelisz van Haarlem, Venus, Mars and Cupid, and even a painting, portraying a dead child. He must have made more paintings and certainly more drawings than the seventy we know today (all of which are catalogued and illustrated here). In this exhibition his only known painting and the one mythological drawing are accompanied by thirty of his most beautiful portraits, from private collections in the US, Canada, United Kingdom and the Netherlands, as well as well-known museums and print rooms, such as the Albertina in Vienna, the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, the Städel in Frankfurt or the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.The author of the catalogue, Prof. Dr Rudolf E.O. Ekkart, is regarded as the most important connoisseur in the field of Dutch sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraiture and the author of many important monographs and other publications in the field of Dutch portraiture. He was Director of the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) in The Hague between 1990 and 2012 and gained momentum as Chairman of the Committee that carried his name and proved responsible for the return of many looted works of art that were returned to the heirs of many Jewish collectors in The Netherlands. Included in the book are Dutch and German translations of the essays.

A masterpiece of medieval Arab metalwork revealed, shedding light on courtly life in northern Iraq under the Mongol governorship. Accompanying a major scholarly exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, this book explores one of the most beautiful and enigmatic objects in The Courtauld’s collection: the so-called ‘Courtauld wallet’, a brass container richly inlaid with gold and silver, imitating a lady’s textile or leather bag, and probably made in Mosul in northern Iraq around 1300. No other object of this kind is known. Decorated all round with courtly figuresand on the top with an elaborate banqueting scene featuring an enthroned couple, it has long been recognised as a masterpiece of Arab metalwork. Yet, despite the superb quality of its design and craftsmanship and its status as a unique object, this exceptional metalwork bag has never been properly published. Thus it remainslittle known outside a small circle of specialists, and little understood even within that circle. Encompassing a variety of multidisciplinary essays by distinguished historians and art historians – on subjects ranging from music at the Mongol court, Mosul under Mongol governorship and Mongol marriage customs to the role of womenunder the Ilkhanids –this publication aims to explore the origins, function and iconography of this splendid luxury object as well as the cultural context in which it was made and used. It will bring together other images of enthroned Mongols with female consorts, as well as scenes of hunters, revellers and musicians in a varietyof media, including illustrated manuscripts, ceramics, textile, and metalwork. By presenting the bag alongside carefully selected contemporary material, it will provide an insight into courtly life under the Mongols in the newly conquered areas of their empire, and will also provide an unrivalled opportunity to investigate the inlaid brass tradition in Mosul after the Mongol Conquest. Objects made before and after this seismic event will be reproduced side by side to demonstrate how the Mosul metalworkers adapted their work for their new patrons.

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume discusses general themes that have emerged in the analysis and interpretation of the results of excavations in 2000-2008. It synthesizes the results of research described in other volumes in the same series. The volume commences with accounts of the recent work on community collaboration at the site, and with discussions of the methods used at the site. It then synthesizes the work on landscape use and mobility, integrating the work of subsistence analysis and the analysis of human remains. The storage and sharing of food is a related topic. The ways in which houses were constructed, lived in and abandoned leads to a broad discussion of settlement and social organization at Çatalhöyük and of their change through time. For example, shifts in the themes that occur in paintings in houses change through time as part of a wider set of social, economic and ritual changes in the upper levels. The social uses of materials and technologies are explored and the roles of materials in personal adornment. Finally, the discussion of variation through place and time is recognized as dependent on scales of analysis and social process.

This volume examines the evolution of a rural landscape in north Kent from the Late Mesolithic (c 7500 BC) to the 19th century, as revealed by analysis of the results of excavation on a site overlooking the marshes and tributaries of the River Medway, near Sittingbourne. Particular emphasis is placed on the prehistoric pottery assemblage and on understanding the site in terms of local and regional developments. Slight evidence for Late Mesolithic and Neolithic activity (residual finds only) was followed by the creation of a field system. This was well established by the Late Bronze Age, when pitting and refuse disposal suggests the presence of a nearby settlement. There are inconclusive indications from associated pottery that some field boundaries may have had Middle Bronze Age origins and that some structured deposition was taking place. A period of abandonment, possibly related to rising sea levels, preceded the construction of a Middle Iron Age unenclosed farmstead represented by four roundhouses constructed at some time after c 300 BC and the re-establishment of a field system. The local field boundaries were reorganised in the Late Iron Age, and remained in use during the 1st century AD, but were abandoned thereafter, with no archaeological evidence for subsequent land use until a new farm was established in the 11th to mid 13th centuries.

Puspika 2 is the outcome of the second International Indology Graduate Research Symposium and presents the results of recent research by young scholars into pre-modern South Asian cultures with papers covering a variety of topics related to the intellectual traditions of the region. Focusing on textual sources in the languages in which they were composed, different disciplinary perceptions are offered on intellectual history, linguistics, philosophy, literary criticism and religious studies.

The book “Similar but Different. Bell Beakers in Europe” deals with a cultural phenomenon, known as the Bell Beaker culture, that during the 3rd millennium B.C. was present throughout Western and Central Europe. This development played an important role in the formation of the Bronze Age at the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium B

The early Old Kingdom tombs at Tehna are cut into the eastern escarpment bordering the Nile, some 12kms north of Minya in Upper Egypt. The cemetery consists of more than 15 rockcut tombs, 3 of which are illustrated and described in this first volume of the site. Complete with detailed colour illustrations and line drawings, the book records the wall scenes, sculpture, architecture, finds and a translation of inscriptions including a rare legal document in the tomb of Nikaiankh I.

Alfred’s Castle is a small enclosed site south of the Ridgeway on the Berkshire Downs, excavated between 1998 and 2000 by a team from Oxford University. This was the third site excavated by the Hillforts of the Ridgeway project (after White Horse Hill and Segsbury). Although small, Alfred’s Castle displayed a long and complex history, starting with early Bronze Age round barrows on which later Bronze Age linear ditches were aligned, these in turn were used to form enclosures in the Iron Age. In the early Roman period a small villa house was built inside the smaller enclosure, which then shows some use in the early medieval period. The long use of the site raises questions of memory, history and continuity, leading us to wonder how earlier phases of use affected later ones. This volume contains the results of excavations at Alfred’s Castle and an account of an art project by Simon Callery. This is the third volume dedicated to our hillfort excavations on the Berkshire Downs and it ends with an account of the area more broadly, which sees complicated developments from the Bronze Age into the medieval period through the constructions of barrows, field systems, linear ditches and sites of various forms and sizes. How these combined into communities of the living and of the dead are considered using all the evidence currently available.

Ritual happens in distinct places – in temples, in caves, along pilgrimage routes – and religious activities there incorporate a diverse set of objects such as holy water, cult statues, and sacred texts. Understanding religious ritual requires viewing it not as a disembodied event, but as emplaced, grounded in both built and natural surroundings, and integrated with its associated material objects. Here authors examine various religious practices in the Greco-Roman world and pilgrimage routes in contemporary Israel. Other contributions focus on the East, on domestic religion in prehistoric Taiwan, and the palimpsest of ritual activity in Buddhist China. One author considers not just ritual’s built and natural setting, but also the landscape of the human mind. By way of conclusion, many of the recurring issues concerning the material and topographic matrix of ritual practice are expanded upon in a final meditation on sacred space. The papers in this volume, with their disciplinary, geographic, and chronological diversity, will serve as a resource for theoretical approaches to the study of ritual practice that may have broad cross-cultural application and provide new insight into the relationship between ritual and place.The volume is based on a conference held at Brown University.

This collection of essays begins with the premise that violence, in its relationship to order, is a central element of history. Taking a broad definition of violence, including structural and symbolic violence, the contributions move beyond the problematic of civilization’s mitigating or foundational role, instead seeing violence as inherently social, and, perhaps, socially inherent (if variable). The question then becomes what forms of harm are authorized or banned in which social orders and how they change over time. Beginning with a theoretical introduction, this interdisciplinary volume includes seven papers representing cultural anthropology, history, archaeology and international relations. The papers range from China to the Americas and from the 2nd millennium BCE to the 21st century CE. Some deal with long-term developments while others focus on a single time and place. Many treat the issue of the visibility/invisibility of violence, while all in one way or another deal with the role of violence in the re-production of community. Together, the volume aims to paint, with a few strokes, the outlines of a deep historical anthropology of social violence. The volume is based on the proceedings of a symposium hosted at Brown University.