The ancient Celtic world evokes debate, discussion, romanticism and mythicism. On the one hand it represents a specialist area of archaeological interest, on the other, it has a wide general appeal. The Celtic world is accessible through archaeology, history, linguistics and art history. Of these disciplines, art history offers the most direct message to a wider audience. This volume of 37 papers brings together a truly international group of pre-eminent specialists in the field of Celtic art and Celtic studies. It is a benchmark volume the like of which has not been seen since the publication of Paul Jacobsthal’s Early Celtic Art in 1944. The papers chart the history of attempts to understand Celtic art and argue for novel approaches in discussions spanning the whole of Continental Europe and the British Isles. This new body of international scholarship will give the reader a sense of the richness of the material and current debates. Artefacts of rich form and decoration, which we might call art, provide a most sensitive set of indicators of key areas of past societies, their power, politics and transformations. With its broad geographical scope, this volume offers a timely opportunity to re-assess contacts, context, transmission and meaning in Celtic art for understanding the development of European cultures, identities and economies in pre- and proto-history. Essays in honour of Vincent Megaw on his 80th birthday.

Animal Secondary Products investigates domestic animal exploitation and the animal economy from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze and Iron Ages across Eurasia (Europe, Near East, Siberia and China). Incorporating current zooarchaeological theory and cutting-edge methodological developments, it critically assesses Andrew Sherratt’s concept of a Secondary Products Revolution that proposed that a package of new subsistence practices and technologies swept across much of Eurasia at the end of the Neolithic, which triggered large-scale changes in economies and settlement across the landscape. This model argues that these changes were associated with a genuine shift from an emphasis upon domestic animals for their primary (meat hide, bone) products to a more diversified exploitation pattern which included their secondary (milk, wool, traction) products. Sherratt’s model attempted to conceptualise the changes between the Neolithic and Bronze Age that dramatically transformed the nature of animal exploitation strategies, cultivation practices, land management strategies, nature of settlement, and political and economic organization in Europe and the Near East that set the stage for the evolution of historic land use and animal exploitation patterns. Though setting the parameters for debate within the discipline for over 30 years, science has moved on and many kinds of new data, methods and techniques have been proposed since then that allow greater insights into these issues.In this volume, thirteen papers present a holistic discussion of Sherratt’s concept and investigate the theoretical development in our understanding of the origins of milking, wool production, transhumance, as well as examining the need for a contextualised zooarchaeological analysis and harvest profiles from various international sites in order to reconstruct the nature of Secondary Products exploitation. It also extends the secondary products concept across the Old World into Siberia and China and back in time to the Palaeolithic with the domestication of dogs. Through reviewing artefacts and textual evidence, the book bridges an important divide by cross-referencing statistical and scientific data with more traditional archaeological techniques and demonstrates the necessity of using many techniques to analyse data before interpreting patterns as exploitation practices. Offering fresh insight into the development of civilisation from the Neolithic and Bronze and Iron Ages in the Near East, Europe, and China, this book will be important for archaeozoologists and prehistorians.

There are many recoverable aspects and indications concerning medicine and healing in the ancient past – from the archaeological evidence of skeletal remains, grave-goods comprising medical and/or surgical equipment and visual representations in tombs and other monuments thorough to epigraphic and literary sources. The 42 papers presented here cover many aspects medicine in the Mediterranean world during Antiquity and early Byzantine times, bringing together both internationally established specialists on the history of medicine and researchers in the early stages of their career. The contributions are grouped under a series of headings: medicine and archaeology; media (online access to electronic corpus); the Aegean; medical authors/schools of medicine; surgery; medicaments and cures; skeletal remains; new research in Cyprus; Asklepios and incubation; and Byzantine, Arab and medieval sources. These subject areas are addressed through a combination of wide ranging archaeological and osteological data and the examination and interpretation of philosophical, literary and historiographical texts to provide a comprehensive suite of studies into early practices in this fundamental field of human experience.

The SEARCH (Sheffield Environmental and Archaeological Research Campaign in the Hebrides) project began in 1987 and covers the Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. The aim of the project is to investigate how human societies adapted in the long-term to the isolated environment of the Outer Hebrides. The first major excavation on South Uist discovered that what was thought to be a shell midden at Cill Donnain was in fact a wheelhouse, a type of dwelling used in the period c. 300 BC – AD 500; under which lay the remains of a Bronze Age settlement. This settlement was partly investigated by Marik Zvelebil in 1991 and then later by Mike Parker Pearson and Kate MacDonald in 2003. The site itself is situated at the foot of a high steep-sided dune on the eastern edge of a large sand valley, close to the western shore of Loch Cill Donnain. The archaeological report of the excavation at the Cill Donnain wheelhouse shows that, in comparison with contemporary neighbouring settlements, it was unlikely that each was an independent unit and that they were linked by social and economic inter-dependency. The wheelhouse thus provides striking new evidence that contributes to developing theories about the social, material and economic life in the period.This volume presents the extensive archaeological evidence found at the site, including pottery, faunal remains and a variety of bone and metal tools, illustrating that the Cill Donnain landscape is rich in archaeological sites of all periods from the Beaker to the post-Medieval.

Athenian Potters and Painters III presents a rich mass of new material on Greek vases, including finds from excavations at the Kerameikos in Athens and Despotiko in the Cyclades. Some contributions focus on painters or workshops – Paseas, the Robinson Group, and the structure of the figured pottery industry in Athens; others on vase forms – plates, phialai, cups, and the change in shapes at the end of the sixth century BC. Context, trade, kalos inscriptions, reception, the fabrication of inscribed painters’ names to create a fictitious biography, and the reconstruction of the contents of an Etruscan tomb are also explored. The iconography and iconology of various types of figured scenes on Attic pottery serve as the subject of a wide range of papers – chariots, dogs, baskets, heads, departures, an Amazonomachy, Menelaus and Helen, red-figure komasts, symposia, and scenes of pursuit. Among the special vases presented are a black spotlight stamnos and a column krater by the Suessula Painter. Athenian Potters and Painters III, the proceedings of an international conference held at the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 2012, will, like the previous two volumes, become a standard reference work in the study of Greek pottery.

Textiles were a hugely important Roman industry yet, because of their perishable nature, only fragments remain. These twenty-two essays provide a detailed study of surviving fragments from across the Roman world, from the dry sands of Egypt to the Atlantic coast and the northern frontiers and beyond. The result is a comprehensive reconstruction of both everyday and exotic Roman clothing with information about the influences of fashion and of Roman weaving techniques. Written by friends and colleagues, the contributions are offered as a tribute to John Peter Wild whose own studies of Roman textiles have been the inspiration of so much recent work.

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.

People are drawn to places where geology performs its miracles: ice-cold spring waters gushing from the rock, mysterious caves which act as conduits for ancestors and divinities traveling back and forth to the underworld, sacred bodies of water where communities make libations and offer sacrifices. This volume presents a series of archaeological landscapes from the Iranian highlands to the Anatolian Plateau, and from the Mediterranean borderlands to Mesoamerica. Contributors all have a deep interest in the making and the long-term history of unorthodox places of human interaction with the mineral world, specifically the landscapes of rocks and water. Working with rock reliefs, sacred springs and lakes, caves, cairns, ruins and other meaningful places, they draw attention to the need for a rigorous field methodology and theoretical framework for working with such special places. At a time when network models, urban-centered and macro-scale perspectives dominate discussions of ancient landscapes, this unusual volume takes us to remote, unmappable places of cultural practice, social imagination and political appropriation. It offers not only a diverse set of case studies approaching small meaningful places in their special geological grounding, but also suggests new methodologies and interpretive approaches to understand places and the processes of place-making.

This is the second volume on fourth century Coptic documents written on papyri and boards, found in the ruins of houses at Kellis, the Roman predecessor of the village of Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis. It is concerned with 75 letters and associated household accounts and lists, mostly from House 3. The documents are transcribed and translated with commentary. Together, these two volumes break new ground in providing a unique insight into the social and economic relations of a sectarian group within a late antique village, and the opportunity to study that group’s interaction with other communities. They give voice to ordinary people and provide genuine insights into literacy and the role of women, communications and travel, multilingual society and normative forms of belief and practice.

Archaeoastronomy and the Maya illustrates archaeoastronomical approaches to ancient Mayan cultural production. The book is contextualized through a history of archaeoastronomical investigations into Mayan sites, originating in the 19th century discovery of astronomical tables within hieroglyphic books. Early 20th century archaeological excavations revealed inscriptions carved into stone that also preserved astronomical records, along with architecture that was built to reflect astronomical orientations. These materials provided the basis of a growing professionalized archaeoastronomy, blossoming in the 1970s and expanding into recent years. The chapters here exemplify the advances made in the field during the early 21st century as well as the on-going diversity of approaches, presenting new perspectives and discoveries in ancient Mayan astronomy that result from recent studies of architectural alignments, codices, epigraphy, iconography, ethnography, and calendrics. More than just investigations of esoteric ancient sciences, studies of ancient Mayan astronomy have profoundly aided our understanding of Mayan worldviews. Concepts of time and space, meanings encoded in religious art, intentions underlying architectural alignments, and even methods of political legitimization are all illuminated through the study of Mayan astronomy.

The Tortugas shipwreck excavated at a depth of 405 meters in the Straits of Florida contained a major collection of 3,800 intact and fragmentary olive jars, tablewares, cooking vessels and tobacco pipes. Identified as the Portuguese-built and Spanish-operated 117-ton Buen Jesús y Nuestra Señora del Rosario, the ship’s Seville dominated tablewares are a revealing index of unchanged cultural tastes and continued production at the end of Spain’s Golden Age. For cooking the crew relied on Afro-Caribbean colonoware, possibly the first recorded archaeological evidence of maritime slavery in the Americas fleets. Two tin-glazed plates painted with papal coat of arms – the Keys of Heaven and triple crown – may have been used by Spain-bound clergymen from the newly formed Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith. Samples of all ceramics were subjected to Inductively-Coupled Plasma Spectrometry (ICPS) analysis to determine vessel origins.Six chapters focus on the tablewares, tin-glazed papal plates, Afro-Caribbean cooking wares, the olive jars, Inductively-Coupled Plasma Spectrometry results, and a study of how the pottery reflects Spanish colonial economic models, also compared to Roman and medieval structures.

Between 2007 and 2012 the Department for Underwater Archaeology of the Croatian Conservation Institute from Zagreb and the Department of Humanistic Studies of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice collaborated in the recording, underwater excavation and analysis of the unusually well-preserved wreck of a 16th century Venetian merchantman in the Svetti Pavao shallow off the southern shore of the island of Mljet, Croatia. The shipwreck preserved many personal possessions of the crew as well as a number of bronze artillery pieces and the remains of a cargo of luxury and richly decorated ceramic material from Iznik and other oriental workshops.Although the excavation is not complete, this volume presents the results of the project so far. The methodological and technical aspects of the underwater investigation of the site, mainly by photogrammetry, are described; the historical and archaeological context of navigation in the late Medieval period in the eastern Mediterranean discussed; and the recovered artefacts described and catalogued in detail, together with the remains of the ship and its equipment that, because of depth and of problems of conservation, have been left in situ. The conservation and restoration of the finds are described in an appendix.

Before the foundation of academies of art in London in 1768 and Philadelphia in 1805, most individuals who were to emerge as artists trained in workshops of varying degrees of relevance. Easel painters began their careers apprenticed to carriage, house, sign or ship painters, whilst a few were placed with those who made pictures. Sculptors emerged from a training as ornamental plasterers or carvers. Of the many other trades in a position to offer an appropriate background were ‘limning’, staining, engraving, surveying, chasing and die-sinking. In addition, plumbers gained the right to use oil painting and, for plasterers, the application of distemper was an extension of their trade. Central to the theme of this book is the notion that, for those who were to become either painters or sculptors, a training in a trade met their practical needs. This ‘training’ was of an altogether different nature to an ‘education’ in an art school. In the past, prospective artists were offered, by means of apprenticeships, an empirical rather than a theoretical understanding of their ultimate vocation. James Ayres provides a lively account of the inter-relationship between art and trade in the late 17th to early 19th centuries, in both Britain and North America. He demonstrates with numerous, illustrated examples, the many cross-overs in the ‘art and mystery’ of artistic training, and, to modern eyes, the sometimes incongruous relationships between the various trades that contributed to the blossoming of many artistic careers, including some of the most illustrious names of the ‘long’ 18th century.

The Tribal Hidage, attributed to the 7th century, records the named groups and polities of early Anglo-Saxon England and the taxation tribute due from their lands and surpluses. Whilst providing some indication of relative wealth and its distribution, rather little can be deduced from the Hidage concerning the underlying economic and social realities of the communities documented. Sue Harrington and the late Martin Welch have adopted a new approach to these issues, based on archaeological information from 12,000 burials and 28,000 objects of the period AD 450–650. The nature, distribution and spatial relationships of settlement and burial evidence are examined over time against a background of the productive capabilities of the environment in which they are set, the availability of raw materials, evidence for metalworking and other industrial/craft activities, and communication and trade routes. This has enabled the identification of central areas of wealth that influenced places around them. Key within this period was the influence of the Franks who may have driven economic exploitation by building on the pre-existing Roman infrastructure of the south-east. Frankish material culture was as widespread as that of the Kentish people, whose wealth is evident in many well-furnished graves, but more nuanced approaches to wealth distribution are apparent further to the West, perhaps due to ongoing interaction with communities who maintained an essentially ‘Romano-British’ way of life.

Jenny March’s acclaimed Dictionary of Classical Mythology, first published in 1998 but long out of print, has been extensively revised and expanded including a completely new set of beautiful line-drawing illustrations for this Oxbow edition. It is a comprehensive A – Z guide to Greek and Roman mythology. All major myths, legends and fables are here, including gods and goddesses, heroes and villains, dangerous women, legendary creatures and monsters. Characters such as Achilles and Odysseus have extensive entries, as do epic journeys and heroic quests, like that of Jason and the Argonauts to win the Golden Fleece, all alongside a plethora of information on the creation of the cosmos, the many metamorphoses of gods and humans, and the Trojan War, plus more minor figures – nymphs, seers, kings, rivers, to name but a few.In this superbly authoritative work the myths are brilliantly retold, along with any major variants, and with extensive translations from ancient authors that give life to the narratives and a sense of the vibrant cultures that shaped the development of classical myth. The 172 illustrations give visual immediacy to the words, by showing how ancient artists perceived their gods and heroes. The impact of myths on ancient art is also explored, as is and their influence in the post-classical arts, emphasising the ongoing inspiration afforded by the ancient myths.Also included are two maps of the ancient world, a list of the ancient sources and their chronology, the more important genealogies, and an index of recurrent mythical motifs.Praise for the first edition:“… the Dictionary of Classical Mythology is exemplary, indeed the best I have consulted … clearly and engagingly written …it not only gives reliable answers but also encourages reading on.” Simon Goldhill, Times Literary Supplement“a prodigious, authoritative gazetteer, each entry both typographically and stylistically readable, and if you know more than is contained in these pages then you have no need of it.” Nicholas Lezard, Guardian Book of the Week“Greek myths pervade our own art and literature almost as much as they influenced that of classical times, and this will be an invaluable guide.” The Good Book Guide“… a modern encyclopaedia of myth and legend which is user-friendly in layout, presentation and style … vivid and readable.” Paula James, The Classical Review“These stories are frequently the spark that ignites a wider interest in the classical world, and March provides a wealth of inflammatory material.” Charles Paterson, JACT Review“This dictionary will still be valuable all through the next century.” Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones“… vivid, detailed where it matters, yet concise, accurate, no padding, always to the point – it’s a joy to read.” Herwig Maehler

Presented through 20 case studies covering Europe and the Near East, Neighbours and Successors of Rome investigates development in the production of glass and the mechanisms of the wider glass economy as part of a wider material culture in Europe and the Near East around the later first millennium AD. Though highlighting and solidifying chronology, patterns of distribution, and typology, the primary aims of the collection are to present a new methodology that emphasises regional workshops, scientific data, and the wider trade culture.This methodology embraces a shift in conceptual approach to the study of glass by explaining typological change through the existence of a thriving supra-national commercial network that responded to market demands and combines the results of a range of new scientific techniques into a framework that stresses co-dependence and similarities between the various sites considered. Such an approach, particularly within Byzantine and Early Islamic glass production, is a pioneering concept that contextualises individual sites within the wider region.By twinning a critique of archaeometric methods with the latest archaeological research, the contributors present a foundation for glass research, seen through the lens of consumption demands and geographical necessity, that analyses production centres and traditional typological knowledge. In so doing the they bridge an important divide by demonstrating the co-habitability of diverse approaches and disciplines, linking, for example, the production of Campanulate bowls from Gallaecia with the burgeoning international late antique style. Equally, the particular details of those pieces allow us to identify a regional style as well as local production. As such this compilation provides a highly valuable resource for archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians.