Commons are an important part of the English landscape. Survivors from a once more extensive network otherwise eroded by the inexorable progress of enclosure, they provide a taste of wildness, crucial habitats for wildlife and valued spaces for recreation. To many people they seem to offer a tangible link with happier, more egalitarian times, when communities controlled the land;or with periods yet more remote, representing fragments of the wilderness of remote prehistory. But commons are shrouded in misunderstanding and myth. They were shaped by local societies that were highly hierarchical in character, and always embedded in inequalities of property and power. Their ecology, moulded by centuries of intensive exploitation – followed in most cases by a long period of dereliction – has only a tangential connection with the truly ‘natural’ habitats of the deep past. And a surprising number of our legally recognised commons are not, in reality, common land at all.This innovative study, which concentrates on the county of Norfolk but ranges widely, is firmly focused on the character of commons as physical environments and places, as landscapes. Using a wide range of documentary, archaeological and ecological evidence, it discusses the development and management of commons from earliest times;explains their morphology, location and distribution;and explores why some examples survived the process of enclosure – and the distinctive traces left by those that did not. Above all, it describes the characteristic physical features of different kinds of common and explains how their ecology has, in innumerable ways, been shaped by history.Highly readable and copiously illustrated, this book will appeal to all with an interest in the English rural landscape, and will be essential reading for those with a particular enthusiasm for common land.

Butrint 8 is largely devoted to the Middle Byzantine archaeology discovered by the Butrint Foundation’s projects at Butrint itself, in its environs, and in the nearby port of Saranda, ancient Onchesmos. The volume includes a full report on the excavations in Butrint’s western defenses, built in the 6th century as a proteichisma, and maintained in use until the 9th century when tower 1 partly perished in a fire and tower 2 was abandoned. From these 9th-century levels came a major assemblage of traded and local ceramics as well as glass cullet. The report also describes the reuse of the defenses until the 16th century when Butrint was abandoned. This volume also includes a section devoted to Butrint’s Middle Byzantine enclave occupying its hinterland, including a new study of the Dema (boundary) wall, the hilltop fortress of Çuka e Aitoit and an excavation of a settlement on the plain opposite the town. The third part of the book focuses upon Saranda, ancient Onchesmos. This includes a short report on excavations made in the port that brought to light Middle Byzantine remains as well as a major reassessment of the sanctuary church of Santa Quaranta, re-examining its Late Roman origins and its major rebuilding in the Middle Byzantine period. Butrint 8 is a benchmark for research on the Middle Byzantine period in the southern Adriatic Sea region, shedding light on an age when Butrint lay on the western limits of Byzantium, on the long-distance trade of this period, and on the character of settlement in this period.

Obsidian, a shiny volcanic glass, was first used to make vessels in the mid-sixth millennium BC in the Near East, although other stone had been exploited for vessel manufacture since the thirteenth millennium BC. Unlike the stone used to make the earliest vessels, which was acquired from local and regional sources, obsidian had to be obtained from volcanoes located hundreds of kilometers from where vessels were made and used. The obsidian from these sources had long been exploited for making tools and by the tenth millennium BC obsidian artifacts can be found in communities located far distant from the sources. Nevertheless, it was not until the mid-sixth millennium BC that it was used to make vessels and even then they are rare: less than 200 have been found spread over four millennia (c. 5400–1500 BC). This is perhaps in part due to obsidian’s exotic origins but also because its comparative hardness and brittle nature made it difficult to work.To obtain a wider perspective on the use of obsidian for making vessels this book looks briefly at the properties of obsidian and the characteristics of the relevant sources and gives an overview of how obsidian has been understood and used by various communities around the world. The main part of the book examines the obsidian vessels found in the Near East. Previous studies have tended to take a site-specific viewpoint but here the opportunity has been taken to adopt a more holistic and integrated approach. This approach brings together different aspects of the vessels, including the provenance of the obsidian from which they were made, their morphologies, evidence for techniques of manufacture and the socioeconomic contexts in which they were produced and used, and attempts to determine whether the use of obsidian was of itself meaningful or significant.

Textile tools offer a fascinating and yet intimate approach to ancient people. Textile production has been one of the core activities for millennia, spanning from domestic production to royal needs. Textiles were light and easy to transport goods, often exchanged over long distances. Technology and knowhow, however, might not have always traveled so easily. This work examines spinning and weaving tools from the Southern Levant (inland and coastal) and Egypt. The chronology of the study is broad, ranging from the Neolithic until the beginning of the Persian period (600 BC). The objects are investigated from both a diachronic and synchronic perspective to understand their evolution and continuity of use, as well as regional differences and textile production methods. The two areas present an only apparent discontinuity, as political boundaries gave way at various historical moments and the two areas had very close contacts, such as during the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt or the Egyptian domination of the Late Bronze Age. This seems to be reflected in textile documentation, which shows the appearance of Egyptian tools in the Levant, such as spinning bowls, and Levantine tools in Egypt, such as loom weights. However, the result is not so predictable.

In Britain, Ireland and Southern Scandinavia, the Early Neolithic is characterised by monumental constructions (e.g. causewayed enclosures, dolmens) and by specific traditions of depositional practice. Some aspects of these practices are similar in both regions, for example the shapes and use of monuments, their overall developmental sequences, and the traditions of deposition (kinds of objects and their treatment, locations chosen and so on). In spite of these similarities, however, there has been little explicit comparative work, largely also because of research paradigms that tended to stress local and regional peculiarities over wide-spread similarities.Given the increasing evidence for group and personal mobility in recent years, this begs the question of whether such similarities are the result of accidental convergence on the basis of a broadly shared “Neolithic” lifeway, or rather the result of contacts, whether direct or as part of a large-scale, but loose network of interaction. The papers in this volume provide initial case studies to address this issue. Regional case studies of Britain, Ireland, southern Scandinavia, northern France and northern Germany form the basis for reflecting on the similarities and differences of sites and materials to those from adjacent areas, and on the forms and rhythms any potential contact might have taken. Authors draw on both archaeological studies of specific material categories or site patterns, as well as on aDNA evidence or modelling of 14C dates. Papers also offer theoretical reflections on the modalities of contacts and connections at this time, defining more directed questions and priorities to further develop this line of research in the future.

This volume collects papers on the pre-Corded Ware horizon in central Europe and adjacent areas (i.e. from c. 3500 – 2800 BC). This phase is very patchily researched, partly also because certain kinds of evidence, notably domestic architecture and burials, are rare or absent in many regions. This has occasionally been interpreted as signs of a major crisis and population bottleneck, which in turn facilitated the migration of new populations from the steppe, bringing with them amongst others new economic regimes, ideologies and settlement patterns.Research over the last few years has shown that this scenario needs to be nuanced. Although evidence remains scattered, a picture of regional diversity is emerging, with probably mobile but well-connected Late Neolithic societies undergoing social changes of their own, and instituting several key innovations long before the appearance of the Corded War

The modern discipline of archaeology developed in tandem with the expansion of European imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Cyprus, ruled by Britain between 1878 and 1960, is a fascinating example of how archaeology was practiced and developed in a specific colonial context. This volume explores the mechanisms, the institutions and the characters who contributed to the development of Cypriot archaeology, often within a fraught political environment. The 23 papers in this volume address aspects such as the role of local agents within a colonial environment; changing attitudes towards and interpretations of cultural heritage; the export of excavated materials and their onward journeys; the development of legal frameworks to prevent looting, and their practical application; co-operation and competition between different nation-states at the peak and decline of empires; the conflicts caused by economic priorities; and the impact of institutions and individuals who attempted to support or control rights over the heritage of the island. Through the lens of British-period Cyprus they trace the evolution of institutions and practices that remain important for archaeology in Cyprus to this day.This volume will be of interest to archaeologists, cultural heritage practitioners, museums, and anyone with an interest in the history of Cyprus.

The main goal of this volume is to look at social groups involved in economic activity other than members of the palace-based institutions and “elites” in Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greek societies. The palaces and elites are the usual subject of studies of ancient economies, often from a top-down approach, but here we consider a fuller range of the members of a society, their organization, their institutions, and their contributions to the economies of those societies from bottom-up approaches.The traditional model of a highly centralized, redistributive based economy controlled by a palace and its officials is no longer viable. Non-palatial components, institutions, and individuals and how those might be organized are increasingly recognized as major components in economic activity in the Mycenaean world. In this volume we examine the various scales and of actors and institutions in Mycenaean economic activities outside palatial control, including the individual, the household, larger groups such as House societies, and markets. The possibility of Firms in the institutional economic sense is also addressed.In addition to theoretical and methodological chapters, we present several case studies involving craft production, especially of ceramics. The results of these case studies show how economic organization in the Mycenaean world varies greatly in scale, independence of palatial control, and adaption and resilience to change.The papers in this volume demonstrate that the economy in Mycenaean states was a complex web of institutions, organizations, and actors, and invites closer comparison to the economy in other ancient and archaic states.

In the 5th millennium BCE, the first farming societies in the Western Alps developed unique burial practices characterized by Chamblandes-type graves. These box-shaped graves, constructed from stone slabs or wooden planks, have intrigued archaeologists since the 19th century, particularly around Lake Geneva and the Upper Rhône Valley. This study delves into the origins, spread, and distinctive characteristics of these graves, especially their transalpine significance with an extensive focus on previously under-researched areas like the Italian Aosta Valley or the German-speaking part of Switzerland. By significantly increasing the number of available radiocarbon dates, as well as comprehensively analyzing the grave goods and the treatment of human remains in the context of funerary practices, the study provides new insights into the chronology and regional variations of Chamblandes-type graves. This research reveals the contemporaneous emergence of the use of these graves in several Alpine valleys and the southern shore of Lake Geneva around 4800 BCE, as well as providing evidence for the process of their subsequent spread and sharp decline in use after 4000 BCE.The findings reveal shared practices among these early farming communities, yet also indicate distinct funerary customs between inner Alpine valleys and the Swiss Plateau. Highlighting that local prehistoric societies in the Western Alpine region reacted similarly to the death of an individual within the community, as expressed by grave architecture and the treatment of human remains. Demonstrating additionally, that the Alps should not be understood as barriers, but as a conduit for social exchange and interaction across valleys and mountain passes more than 6000 years ago. This nuanced understanding is essential for future research, setting the stage for studies on the social structure, mobility, and diet of these Neolithic populations through paleogenetic and isotopic analyses.

For many years now, the main thrust of European prehistory has followed a fundamentally terrestrial plot line. This terrestrial paradigm has undervalued the story of Europe as a peninsula between the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic, and likewise downplayed that of many navigable rivers that reach deeply inland and the large lakes important for travel and subsistence. In vast areas of Europe the survival of incoming groups depended on coping and interacting with a seascape as much as a landscape. From the late Mesolithic onwards, in regions such as Scandinavia, the British Isles and the Mediterranean, most occupation was coastal; seas or rivers provided the most important infrastructure for transport, exchange and communication. Know-how about seascapes, boatbuilding, navigation and maritime networks had a profound impact on social organisation, ritual monuments and iconography, and the spread of materials and ideas, enabled by the adaptation of languages to these new environments. Given these facts the time is long overdue to critique the dominant terrestrial paradigm of European prehistory. This book is the first in the multi-author series Maritime Encounters, outputs of the major six-year (2022–2028) international research initiative funded by Sweden’s central bank. Our programme is based on a maritime perspective, a counterpoint to prevailing land-based vantages on Europe’s prehistory. In the Maritime Encounters project a highly international cross-disciplinary team has embarked on a diverse range of research goals to provide a more detailed and nuanced story of how prehistoric societies realised major and minor sea crossings, organised long-distance exchange, and adapted to ways of life by the sea in prehistory.

From the first steps taken into the darkness of High Pasture Cave, it was clear that this complex site would challenge current thinking on cave use and function in prehistory, and wider understanding of Iron Age cultural practice and beliefs. Situated in a dramatic location under the slopes of the Cuillin Mountains on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, this cave and its monumentalised environs were a focus for specific and special activities throughout the Iron Age – a venue for spectacular and extensive ceremonies featuring feasts, fire, crafts and the symbolic deposition of a plethora of artefacts and environmental materials, as well as human remains. This volume sets out the results of fieldwork carried out at High Pastures between 2004 and 2010, presents results from the extensive post-excavation analysis, and provides a biography of the High Pasture Cave complex from the early Bronze Age through 900 years of Iron Age activity. Recent research has led to a resurgence of interest in caves, in particular the place of these enigmatic sites in the worldviews of later prehistoric communities. Their investigation in the past has generally attributed a domestic function, comprising temporary homes and shelter for hunter-gatherers, farmers and pastoralists, and as workshops and places of refuge. However, it is now proposed that many caves, including High Pasture, were used for rituals involving the preparation and display of human remains, the deposition of material culture and other types of organic materials. These were clearly performative acts and the recurrent use of caves as the arenas for such performances, tells us much about their role in the cosmology of later prehistoric communities.

This book sketches the first archaeological history of the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq and adjacent landscapes over a period of c. 12,000 years, from the earliest signs of human presence until the mid-first millennium BCE, based on data gathered between 2013 and 2023 by the Sirwan Regional Project (SRP).The central research objective of the SRP is to move beyond traditional historical topoi and their predominantly external and state-centric perspectives that have dominated narratives of the region thus far. Instead, we develop an in-depth, archaeological understanding of the nature of the region’s past communities, their cultural and economic practices, the modes of socio-political organisation they developed, adopted, and rejected, and their long-term developments.In order to reconstruct past Sirwan lifeways, the book interweaves regional-scale datasets with the results of ongoing and completed excavations at the Late Chalcolithic site of Shakhi Kora and the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age site of Kani Masi, as well as the results of a wide range of archaeological, Assyriological, art historical, and archaeometric analyses.

The essays in this book focus on archaeological approaches to the utilization of highland regions in southwestern and central Asia, examining the interplay between human communities and highland landscapes from the Paleolithic era to the present.Contributions combine case studies with theoretical considerations to explore adaptive strategies of movement. They discuss the significance of mobility within archaeological and anthropological discourse. Contributors engage with critical questions: How can archaeologists discern traces of movement and unravel material footprints of diverse mobility? How can they track shifts in mobility through time or regions? By systematizing observations on human spatial behavior across epochs and settings, these essays seek to test and refine traditional archaeological methodologies. They present nuanced frameworks and shed light on the adaptability and resilience of these communities.“Appropriating Height” aims to understand the human experience in highland environments. It is essential for those fascinated by the entanglement between people, place, and time, providing a comprehensive perspective on the legacy of human movement.This book is the second volume of a series published by the German-Iranian research cooperation “The Iranian Highlands: Resiliences and Integration in Premodern Societies”. The goal of the research project is to shine a new light on communities and societies that populated the Iranian highlands and their more or less successful strategies to cope with the many vagaries, the constant changes and risks of their natural and humanly shaped environments.

This study considers the detailed archaeological and documentary records of Cyprus and Ugarit (Syria) to gain new insights into the long-term relations between two of the best known, well-connected polities in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean.I engage with concepts such as maritime space and spheres of interaction, merchants and mercantilism, actors and agents. Some background on both Ugarit and Cyprus is presented, followed by examination of the common material features of both (e. g., ashlar masonry, urban mortuary practices, composite anchors, the Cypro-Minoan script). The study then zeroes in more specifically to present the Cypriot material uncovered in Ugarit (especially seals, metals and pottery), followed by some of the Levantine materials found on Cyprus.All known documentary evidence related to these two polities is presented and discussed with respect to three factors: people, politics and professions. The discussion section that follows takes a broader look at material and mercantile connectivity in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean, considering in turn the merchants of Ugarit and Cyprus, maritime spheres of interaction, and the actors and agents involved in these mercantile worlds. Although Ugarit and Cyprus were two very different kinds of society, they shared a vital, commercial link, one that — over time — had a transformative impact on Cyprus.

The island of Antirhodos, isolated from the contemporary Alexandrian shoreline, was according to Strabo the property of kings (Geography 17.1.9). It was here in the third century BC that the Ptolemies built a palace and on a monumental quayside reaching back towards the city a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis. Facing out into the harbor, the Iseum would have been a striking landmark in the scenography of Alexandria, placing Isis in the heart of the Portus Magnus and presenting the view of her temple as one of the first that sailors arriving in the port would have seen. It continued to receive donations and to be redecorated into the period of Roman rule. The quayside upon which it stood did not share the strong natural foundations of the island and its banks failed, most likely during an earthquake. This event, dated to around AD 50, brought the temple crashing into the waters of the Portus Magnus on either side of the quayside. These collapse deposits, including important pieces of sculpture, objects from the temple treasury and remnants of its architecture and decoration, were largely protected from the recycling of the remains of the temple that on land. They were rediscovered during surveys and excavations in the Portus Magnus by the Institut Européen d’Archéologie Sous-Marine under the direction of the author, Franck Goddio. In this volume, Goddio examines the archaeological remains from the temple that identify it as an Iseum and discusses its changing role in late Hellenistic and early Roman Alexandria.

For ambitious late antique homeowners seeking to demonstrate their status and taste, water and its display offered almost infinite possibilities. Water Displays in Domestic Spaces across the Late Roman West: Cultivating Living Buildings presents the first synthesis of the archaeological evidence for late antique water features in both urban houses and extra-urban villas across the western Empire. Ginny Wheeler examines a wide and varied range of examples: from decorative basins and pools to fountains of all forms to water-equipped dining couches. Through careful analysis and evocative reconstruction of the water displays in their diverse contexts, this book explores how they were incorporated into late antique residences, the different ways that they enhanced domestic spaces, and the potential motives behind their insertion. To assess the great efforts to which homeowners, particularly in urban settings, went to ensure their installation and continued operation, one case study focuses on the best-preserved cityscape of Ostia. While the roles of water features ranged from practical to aesthetic, to social and symbolic, this book highlights their previously under-considered contributions to thermal comfort and sensory experience through in-depth analyses of two Iberian villas. Wheeler identifies broad patterns and regional distinctions in form and decor before reflecting on the multifaceted significance of water in the domestic sphere, informed by literary, epigraphic, and iconographic sources. Beyond contributing to the ongoing debate over fountains’ utility versus aesthetics, this research offers new insights into the organization of life at household and neighborhood levels, the social relations between homeowners occasioned by water installations, and the understanding and application of environmental design in Antiquity.