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. Çatalhöyük Excavations presents the results of the excavations that took place at the site from 2000 to 2008 when the main aim was to understand the social geography of the settlement, its layout and social organization. Excavation, recording and sampling methodologies are discussed as well as dating, ‘levels’, and the grouping of buildings into social sectors. The excavations in three areas of the East Mound at Çatalhöyük are described: the South Area, the 4040 Area in the northern part of the site, and the IST Area excavated by a team from Istanbul University. The description of excavated units, features and buildings incorporates results from the analyses of animal bone, chipped stone, groundstone, shell, ceramics, phytoliths, micromorphology. The integration of such data within their context allows detailed accounts of the lives of the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük, their relationships and activities. The integration of different types of data in the excavation account mimics the process of collaborative interpretation that took place during the excavation and post-excavation process.

The historico-technical journal was founded in 2001. Published yearly, in the course of the years the journal has entered the international stage with the name “Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage”, and it is now published in English and in Italian, both in electronic format and on print. It is featured on many websites and international databases, it has been granted the opportunity to apply the Creative Commons (CC) licence and the “seal” of SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resource Coalition), and it has been officially requested by EBSCO Publishing and H. W. Wilson Company to be part of their platforms. Since 2011, it has been edited by Mimesis Edizioni (Milano-Udine). The Advisory Committee is made of experts of various competences and cultural backgrounds. The journal publishes experimental studies and research that are historical, technical, diagnostic-analytical, normative, managerial and economico-financial in nature, related to the problems of safeguarding and valorising cultural and environmental heritage within interdisciplinary and internationalist fields. Briefly put, the aims pursued are scientific, institutional and communicational, so that the quality of information can reflect the “truth” of science and the “clarity” of communication.

In July 1834 excavation of a barrow at Gristhorpe, near Scarborough, Yorkshire, recovered an intact, waterlogged, hollowed-out oak coffin containing a perfectly preserved Bronze Age skeleton that had been wrapped in an animal skin and buried with worked flints, a bronze dagger with a whalebone pommel, and a bark vessel apparently containing food residue. Gristhorpe Man became the centrepiece of the Scarborough Philosophical Society’s museum display.In 2004, planned refurbishment of the renamed Rotunda Museum provided the opportunity for a scientific re-examination of the burial and grave goods in order to eluciate the life and death of this extraordinary survival of the British Early Bronze Age. Tree-trunk coffin burials are relatively rare and Gristhorpe Man, with his range of grave goods was likely to have held a special role in society. Analysis of the skeleton included an examination of its skeletal morphology and palaeopathological conditions combined with isotopic analyses of the bones and teeth in order to investigate mobility, diet, and status of the individual whose unusual large stature, dentition, and novel methods of conservation were of particular interest. These analyses, combined with examination of the surviving coffin lid, including the unique ‘face’ carved onto one end of it, the grave goods, and radiocarbon and dendrochronological dating, reveal fascinating insights into the social position, inter-regional contacts and the burial rite associated with this enigmatic mature man who probably saw active combat and who suffered from a benign brain tumour that may have seriously altered his personality in his later years.

A fundamental component of the study of worked osseous objects is the identification of the raw materials chosen to make them. In archaeological contexts many objects become degraded to the point where identification is very difficult and the way in which these materials decay during burial and upon excavation can vary greatly. Correct identification is crucial to the investigation of objects, their conservation and future curation. Above all, understanding raw material selection aids our understanding of human-animal interaction in the past both on pragmatic and symbolic levels since the choices made by artisans vary by cultural tradition as well as availability.The 20 papers presented here explore a wealth of information pertaining to the use of osseous materials over the long period of human craftsmanship and tool manufacture by exploring several key themes:· Raw material selection and curation within tool types· Social aspects of raw material selection· New methods of materials identificationIt is demonstrated that the issue of raw material identification has numerous implications for conservation work, reproduction of objects, the physical characteristics of the tool or ornament, availability of raw materials, the materials chosen for procurement and the cultural reasons that lie behind the choice of raw materials from particular species and skeletal elements to produce planned tool and ornament types. Together, these papers emphasize the need for confident and correct materials identification and demonstrate that functionality is by no means the only, nor necessarily the most important, factor in the selection of osseous raw materials for the fabrication of tools and other cultural objects

Charting a decade of intensive fieldwork along a 2km stretch of the Colne Fen, Earith fen-edge, the scope of these books is formidable and together they include the work of 65 contributing specialists (with a foreword by Ian Hodder). The fieldwork involved innovative methodologies, and groundbreaking scientific and micro-sampling studies are presented within the volumes. Portions of text are, moreover, avowedly experimental (e. g. intertextuality and antiquarian-informed perspectives) and it explores the long-term interplay of landscape process and (proto-) historicism. Appropriate to the practice of a comparative archaeology and the ‘challenge of numbers’, throughout emphasis is given to multiple-scale settlement and spatial/distributional analyses.The scale of Volume II — the ‘Roman book’ — is even more daunting. Aside from including reports of earlier local excavations, it is primarily concerned with two major ‘set-piece’ sites. The one, Langdale Hale, was a mass-production supply farm; the other, The Camp Ground, a great inland barge-port settlement linked to the Car Dyke canal. Both reflect upon the potential role of the state and address crucial issues of ‘Romanization’, with facets of their sequences markedly contrasting with the Stonea-engendered Fenland Imperial Estate model. Besides uniquely detailing the character of the settlements’ Late Roman usage (involving terpen-like mounds and raised ‘platformed’ structures) and trade connections, the port-site’s aftermath is also discussed as an important assemblage of Anglo-Scandinavian bonework was recovered. To provide further immediate-landscape context, the results from neighbouring sites alsofeature, including an important Late Roman cemetery at Knobbs Farm, Somersham.

In the last fifty years the investigation of maritime archaeological sites in the sea, in the coastal zone and in their interconnecting locales, has emerged as one of archaeology's most dynamic and fast developing fields. No longer a niche interest, maritime archaeology is recognised as having central relevance in the integrated study of the human past. Within maritime archaeology the study of watercraft has been understandably prominent and yet their potential is far from exhausted. In this book Jon Adams evaluates key episodes of technical change in the ways that ships were conceived, designed, built, used and disposed of. As technological puzzles they have long confounded explanation but when viewed in the context of the societies in which they were created, mysteries begin to dissolve. Shipbuilding is social practice and as one of the most complex artefacts made, changes in their technology provide a lens through which to view the ideologies, strategies and agency of social change. Adams argues that the harnessing of shipbuilding was one of the ways in which medieval society became modern and, while the primary case studies are historical, he also demonstrates that the relationships between ships and society have key implications for our understanding of prehistory in which seafaring and communication had similarly profound effects on the tide of human affairs.

This book presents the proceedings of the 2009 conference relating to the 2008 exhibition at the British Museum entitled "Hadrian: Empire and Conflict" and complements and expands upon the exhibition catalogue. It covers such subjects as architecture, sculpture, archaeology, economics, numismatics and philhellenism and ranges over the Roman Empire from Britain and Spain in the West to Turkey and Georgia in the East. The original contributions by international scholars present the latest state of research and the first publication of some new material. Thorsten Opper is a curator of Greek and Roman sculpture at the British Museum. He organised the internationally acclaimed 2008 exhibition "Hadrian: Empire and Conflict" and authored the accompanying catalogue (British Museum Press 2008). He currently directs a fieldwork project at Hadrian's Villa, near Rome.

The present work is the result of the First International Chariot Conference, jointly organised by the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) and the American University in Cairo (AUC) (30 November to 2 December 2012). The intention of the conference was to make a broad assessment of the current state of knowledge about chariots in Egypt and the Near East, and to provide a forum for discussion.A wide variety of papers are included, ranging from overviews to more detailed studies focusing on a specific topic. These include philology, iconography, archaeology, engineering, history, and conservation. The book is of interest to scholars as well as anyone with an interest in ancient technology, transportation, or warfare.Dr. André J. Veldmeijer is Assistant Director for Egyptology of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo and has worked as archaeologist in Egypt since 1995 as specialist in, among others, leatherwork and footwear. He (co-) directs several projects, such as the Ancient Egyptian Leatherwork Project, which includes the Egyptian Museum Chariot Project, and the Tutankhamun Sticks & Staves Project. He has published extensively, both scientifically as popular.Dr. Salima Ikram is Professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, and has worked as an archaeologist in Egypt since 1986, directing the Animal Mummy Project, and co-directing the Predynastic Gallery project, the Egyptian Museum Chariot Project, and the North Kharga Oasis Survey. Dr. Ikram has lectured and published extensively, both for children and adults.

The TAESP Landscape, the second of two volumes, presents an area-by-area analysis of the fieldwork and research undertaken by the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project (TAESP) in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus. Covering four regions of the survey area (The Plains, Karkotis Valley, Upper Lagoudhera Valley and The Mountains) the volume focuses on explicit research questions appropriate to each region. Organised geographically, chronologically and thematically, each region is investigated from the Neolithic to the present day and, through ‘Intensive Survey Zones’ – selected to give a representative range of the physical and cultural terrain – many notable new discoveries are made. These include the pattern of Bronze Age Settlement in the Plains, Archaic rural sanctuaries and cemeteries, the scope of Late Roman copper-mining and isolated Medieval mountain settlements. The TAESP Landscape provides a fully integrated and data-rich analysis of the material from a wide range of contrasting archaeological perspectives. Taken together, these wide-ranging and interdisciplinary perspectives give a nuanced and sensitive approach to a strikingly multi-faceted landscape.

The Troodos Mountain range in central Cyprus is a region of great physical and cultural diversity. The landscapes range from fertile, cultivated plains to narrow, dry valleys and forested mountain regions and this physical topography is overlain by a rich human cultural landscape of farming, mining, industry, settlement, burial and ritual behaviour. Over six field seasons, a team of specialists and fieldwalkers from the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project (TAESP) investigated the northern edge of this region and explored the complex and dynamic relationship between landscape and people over 12,000 years. The results of their integrated and interpretative approach are presented here, in the first of two volumes. Beginning with a considered overview of the context, research aims and methodology of the project, Volume 1 provides detailed accounts of the archaeology, material culture, geography and environmental record of the entire survey area. This wealth of information is then bought together to produce a series of chronological and thematic analyses of the interaction between people and landscape in this region of Cyprus from the Prehistoric through to the Modern period.

Querns are special artefacts as they are concerned with subsistence and supporting life in a manner which few other artefacts can emulate: they transform raw material into a usable consumable commodity. Their association with women, the production of food and the movement of the upper stone, suggests symbolical links between querns and life cycles - agricultural, human and building. They can also be read in terms of gender relations and the turning of the heavens. It is not surprising therefore that they have a special symbolic role in early societies.In 1995 JD Hill published his seminal thesis that many of the rubbish pits commonly found on Wessex Iron Age sites, were carefully ‘structured’ deposits, with meaning reaching far beyond the mere disposal of refuse. He mentioned the special role of querns, but as his thesis focussed on animal bones this idea was not followed up – until now. This book analyses the deposition of querns in prehistoric south-western England, cataloguing how and where they are buried, the associated artefacts and their possible significance. The discussion is broader, however, exploring the object biography and symbolism of querns, taking the reader to unfamiliar territories around the world. This is a new ground-breaking work, which with its full bibliography will stimulate fresh studies and at the same time set the agenda for a new field of investigation. A long standing interest in querns led to the author taking a degree in archaeology as a mature student at the University of Exeter. This was followed by the in-depth research presented in this book, which formed the basis of a thesis for which she was awarded her doctorate at Exeter in 2012. She has studied and reported on querns from a wide range of sites, from Wharram Percy in Yorkshire to Dichin in Bulgaria, and has presented papers at both national and international conferences on the object biography and the function and symbolism of querns and millstones. She compiled the Data Sheet on querns for the Finds Research Group and has written and co-authored several articles. She lives in Devon with her husband, Martin, a leading molinologist, and two black cats.

Istanbul, Europe's largest city, became an urban centre of exceptional size when it was chosen by Constantine the Great as a new Roman capital city. Named ‘Constantinople' after him, the city has been studied through its rich textual sources and surviving buildings, but its archaeology remains relatively little known compared to other great urban centres of the ancient and medieval worlds. Constantinople: Archaeology of a Byzantine Megapolis is a major archaeological assessment of a key period in the development of this historic city. It uses material evidence, contemporary developments in urban archaeology and archaeological theory to explore over a thousand years of the city’s development. Moving away from the scholarly emphasis on the monumental core or city defences, the volume investigates the inter-mural area between the fifth-century land walls and the Constantinian city wall - a zone which encompasses half of the walled area but which has received little archaeological attention. Utilizing data from a variety of sources, including the 'Istanbul Rescue Archaeology Project' created to record material threatened with destruction, the analysis proposes a new model of Byzantine Constantinople. A range of themes are explored including the social, economic and cognitive development, Byzantine perceptions of the city, the consequences of imperial ideology and the impact of ‘self-organization’ brought about by many minor decisions. Constantinople casts new light on the transformation of an ancient Roman capital to an Orthodox Christian holy city and will be of great importance to archaeologists and historians.

Excavations at the Eton Rowing Course and along the Maidenhead, Windsor and Eton Flood Alleviation Channel revealed extensive evidence for occupation in an evolving landscape of floodplains and gravel terraces set amidst the shifting channels of the Thames.The most significant evidence was a series of early Neolithic midden deposits, preserved in hollows left by infilled palaeochannels. These deposits contained dense concentrations of pottery, worked flint, animal bone and other finds, and are put into context by other artefact scatters from the floodplain, pits on the gravel terrace and waterlogged environmental deposits from palaeochannels. Early Mesolithic lakeside occupation, later Mesolithic flint scatters along a former channel of the Thames, pits from the middle and late Neolithic and activity areas of the Beaker and Early Bronze Age, demonstrate longer term changes in patterns of occupation.The excavations also revealed early, middle and late Neolithic human remains in palaeochannels, middle Neolithic crouched inhumation burials and early Neolithic cremated remains. An oval barrow may have first been cut in the early Neolithic. Other ring ditches date from the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age; one contained a central cremation burial in a Collared Urn together with pyre material and the remains of a bier.

Between 1999-2006 Addyman Archaeology carried out extensive archaeological excavations on the peninsular site of Kirk Ness, North Berwick, during the building, landscaping and extension of the Scottish Seabird Centre. This book presents the results of these works but its scope is much broader. Against the background of important new discoveries made at the site it brings together and re-examines all the evidence for early North Berwick – archaeological, historical, documentary, pictorial and cartographic – and includes much previously unpublished material. An essential new resource, it opens a fascinating window on the history of the ancient burgh. Kirk Ness is well known as the site of the medieval church of the parish and later royal burgh of North Berwick but it has long been suggested that it was also a centre of early Christian activity. The dedication of the church to St Andrew was speculatively linked to the translation of the Saint's relics to St Andrews in Fife in the 8th century. An early medieval component of the site was indeed confirmed by the excavation, with structural remains, individual finds and an important new series of radiocarbon dates. Occupation of a domestic character may possibly reflect a monastic community associated with an early church. Individual finds included stone tools, lead objects, ceramic material and a faunal assemblage that included bones of butchered seals, fish and seabirds such as the now-extinct Great Auk. The site continued in use as the medieval and early post-medieval parish and burgh church of St Andrew. In this period Kirk Ness and its harbour was an important staging point for pilgrims on route to the shrine of St Andrew in Fife. Domestic occupation discovered in the excavations is likely to be associated with a pilgrims’ hospice, also suggested in historical sources. This publication also provides a new analysis of the church ruin and an account of the major unpublished excavation of the site carried out in 1951-52 by the scholar and antiquary Dr James Richardson, Scotland's first Inspector of Ancient Monuments and resident of North Berwick. The excavations also revealed areas of the cemetery associated with the church, dating to the 12th–17th centuries, where inhumations presented notable contrasts in burial practice. Osteological study shed much light upon the health and demographics of North Berwick’s early population and identified one individual who met with a particularly violent death.

The analysis of animal bone assemblages from archaeological sites provides much valuable data concerning economic and husbandry practices in the past, as well as insights into cultural and symbolic or ritual activity. Animal palaeopathology can identify diseases in archaeozoological assemblages but little interest has been expressed in investigating and understanding the cultural aspects of the diseases identified. Such assemblages represent the cumulative effects of human attitudes, decisions and influences regarding the keeping, care, treatment, neglect and exploitation of animals which result in a range of conditions, non-infectious diseases and injuries that can be recognised on ancient skeletal material. Additionally, ever since the domestication of a handful of animal species around 10,000 years ago, close physical proximity has been a mutual source of infectious disease and traumatic injury for humans and animals alike. Shuffling Nags, Lame Ducks provides an invaluable guide to the investigation of trauma and disease in archaeozoological assemblages. It provides a clear methodological approach, and describes and explains the wide range of traumatic lesions, infections, diseases, inherited disorders and other pathological changes and anomalies that can be identified. In so doing, it explores the impact that “man-made” decisions have had on animals, including special aspects of culture that may be reflected in the treatment of diseased or injured animals often incorporating powerful symbolic or religious roles, and seeks to enhance our understanding of the relationship between man and beast in the past. Chapters include:· History of studying pathological animal remains· Differences between human and animal palaeopathology· Methodology· Growth, development and ageing· Traumatic lesions· Inflammatory diseases and bone· Pathological lesions in working animals· Diseases connected to the environment

Experimental Archaeology is a volume which aims to bridge the gap in archaeology between empirical testing and humanistic approaches to understanding the material record. The contributors explore a wide variety of different fields including how a phenomenological methodology can be used to increase our understanding of how a Bronze Age temple was ‘experienced’ by people in the past; how experimentation in the production of materials such as rawhide, glass and wine-making can be used to test theories or written sources and the possibilities of studying the three-dimensional morphology of Acheulian handaxes to search for possible idiosyncratic indicators during the Lower Palaeolithic. The papers in the volume reflect the continued diversity of work that experimental archaeology is able to produce and show how experimentation can be integrated with theory to substantiate a variety of hypotheses, whether validating information from written sources or testing the inferences of more recent theoretical ideology. Experimental Archaeology will set a new precedent for the role of experimentation in future archaeological research.