Exploring the origins of urbanism – the emergence and development of the first cities, has long constituted one of the main challenges of archaeological and ancient historical research. Studying cities in a long-term and cross-cultural perspective links the past with the present, allowing a better understanding of one of the most important developments in human history. Moreover, archaeological research on ancient cities can contribute to a better understanding of contemporary processes of urbanisation. The 21 papers in this volume aim bring together the latest continental and English-speaking research with contributions by well-established researchers and younger colleagues providing innovative perspectives. The whole Iron Age – ca. 800 BC to the beginning of the Common Era – is considered on an international basis to consider such topics as the similarities and differences observed between centralisation and urbanisation processes of the Early and Late Iron Age; new approaches to the internal organisation of settlements and their formation processes; the supply management of central places and economic support from their environment; and the crucial role of sanctuaries in the formation of urban settlements. Contributions cover an area stretching from central Spain to Moravia and from southern France to Britain. The aim has been to produce a work of reference for readers interested in Iron Age archaeology in particular, and in urbanisation processes in general.

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.

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.

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.

La présente étude propose une approche technologique de la céramique rubanée, au travers de l’étude de huit sites localisés dans le quart nord-est de la France et en Belgique (5300-4900 av. J.C. ). Les études typologiques de la céramique rubanée avaient abouti à une perception plutôt homogène des assemblages et l’analyse des décors avait permis la mise au point de séquences chronologiques particulièrement précises. Pourtant, plusieurs questions restaient en suspens, en particulier sur le contexte de production des vases, ainsi que sur l’origine des producteurs de la céramique dite du Limbourg, présente en petite quantité sur certains sites de la zone d’étude, qui se distingue de la céramique rubanée par une forme et un dégraissant spécifiques.Dans chacun des villages étudiés, il semble que la production céramique ait eu lieu à l’échelle de la maisonnée, bien qu’il ne soit pas possible d’exclure des formes de coopération entre maisons voire entre villages. La mise en perspective chronologique et spatiale des résultats technologiques à l’échelle intrasite permet de supposer que les dynamiques d’implantation des producteurs à l’échelle locale différaient d’un site à l’autre. À l’échelle macro-régionale, une distribution préférentielle des différentes traditions techniques dans certaines régions de peuplement a pu être observée, parfois tout au long de la séquence. Cette répartition pourrait suggérer des contacts privilégiés entre certaines zones de peuplement rubané, qu’il s’agisse de la circulation de savoir-faire, de récipients ou d’individus.L’étude technologique des vases Limbourg révèle des manières de faire variées. Il est possible d’opposer un Limbourg « standard », dont les caractères formels et techniques sont homogènes et dont la distribution est transrégionale à un Limbourg « imité ». Les vases Limbourg « imités » présentent des caractères formels typiques du Limbourg « standards », mais ils ont été façonnés selon des traditions majoritairement employées pour la réalisation des vases rubanés. Ce résultat original permet d’envisager que les vases Limbourg avaient un statut tout à fait particulier pour les communautés rubanées et conduit à formuler plusieurs hypothèses sur l’identité de leurs fabricants.

The famous ‘Silk Roads’ have long evoked a romantic picture of travel through colourful civilizations that connected the western and eastern poles of Eurasia, facilitating the exchange of exotic luxury goods, peoples, pathogens and ideas. But how far back can we trace such interaction? Increasing evidence suggests considerable time-depth for Trans-Eurasian exchange, with the expanding urban networks of the Bronze Age at times anticipating later caravan routes. Tying the Threads of Eurasia applies advanced GIS modelling and critical social archaeology to carefully selected material remains from these earlier connections in order to understand and explain macro-scale processes of interaction in the wider ancient Near East between 3000 and 1500BC. Evidence related to precious stone, metal and textile objects found in Transcaucasia, eastern Anatolia and Central Asia are examined critically and spatially to provide new insights into changing socio-economic relations within and beyond these case-study regions.This book will be of interest to archaeologists and historians researching routes of exchange and interaction, macro-scale historical change or GIS approaches to archaeology, and to specialists of the Bronze Age Near East, especially Anatolia, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Iran.

The Irish Neolithic has been dominated by the study of megalithic tombs, but the defining element of Irish settlement evidence is the rectangular timber Early Neolithic house, the numbers of which have more than quadrupled in the last ten years. The substantial Early Neolithic timber house was a short-lived architectural phenomenon of as little as 90 years, perhaps like short-lived Early Neolithic long barrows and causewayed enclosures. This book explores the wealth of evidence for settlement and houses throughout the Irish Neolithic, in relation to Britain and continental Europe. More importantly it incorporates the wealth of new, and often unpublished, evidence from developer-led archaeological excavations and large grey-literature resources. The settlement evidence scattered across the landscape, and found as a result of developer-funded work, provides the social context for the more famous stone monuments that have traditionally shaped our views of the Neolithic in Ireland. It provides the first comprehensive review of the Neolithic settlement of Ireland, which enables a more holistic and meaningful understanding of the Irish Neolithic.

In this pioneering study, first published in German as Pyrsos Hymnon. Festliche Gegenwart und mythisch-rituelle Tradition als Voraussetzung einer Pindarinterpretation (Isthmie 4, Pythie 5, Olympie 1 und 3) (1990), Eveline Krummen examines the related problems of the unity (or intelligibility and cohesion) and the ‘occasionality’ (the heuristic importance of the original performance situation) of Pindaric epinicia. She uses various approaches - including narratology, archaeology, and art history, as well as philology - to recover information about original performance occasions and original audience expectations, and thus to come to a clearer understanding of the structure and strategies of this sometimes baffing poetry. Throughout the book she focuses primarily on the interactions between myths and cult festivals, and on Pindar’s skill in integrating and innovating upon traditional material. An introductory chapter discusses ‘occasionality’ and surveys scholarly views of the unity of Pindaric victory odes in general. The four main chapters deal in turn with each of the Odes selected as ‘case-studies’. These all contain a passage referring to a cult festival. In Isthmian 4 and Pythian 5 the reference is explicit, and to a festival currently being celebrated: in Olympian 1 reference is made to a festival celebrated earlier at the place of victory, and in Olympian 3 the reference is again arguably to a festival still in progress. Krummen delineates the historical settings of the cults and their related festivals, and each chapter ends with a consideration of how the cult passage fits into the poem as a whole. Brief appendixes list Pindaric allusions to festivals and cults are listed, and give sketch maps of the topography of Thebes and of Cyrene. A bibliography and indexes are included. Study of the cult passages naturally includes study of their related myths. Adopting the approach of modern researchers in religious history, Krummen details the basic patterns, the ‘programmes of actions’ underlying Pindar’s mythical and ritual narratives, patterns fixed in the cultures of the communities concerned. On this basis she shows, for example, that Pindar’s treatment of the myth of Pelops in Olympian 1 goes beyond mere rationalisation; rather he alters its role within the audience’s cultural expectations, in a way that makes his revision not only convincing but also profoundly acceptable. Modern approaches to Greek lyric narrative enable Krummen to clarify sequences of events in Pindar’s foundation myth of Cyrene in Pythian 5, and archaeology guides her to the true role of his topographical allusions within his narrative. Comparison with rituals in other parts of Greece helps to explicate the text in both Olympian 3 and Isthmian 4, and Weinrich’s theory of metaphor, in combination with archaeology, enables Krummen to identify the ‘new-built crownings of altars’ in Isthmian 4 and to reveal their full significance. Finally Krummen’s view of the original occasions and the myths of these odes makes full use of surviving works of art. Throughout, the Greek text is kept firmly in sight: for instance, her meticulous discussion of text, grammar, and tense provides a sound basis for a convincing identification of the Antenorids in Pythian 5 and for the reconstruction of their role in the Carnea in Cyrene. Finally, Krummen reveals how in all four odes the cult passages contribute at literal, figurative, and associative levels to the praise of the patron. In that sense Krummen brings us closer to grasping the unity of these poems. Cult, Myth, and Occasion in Pindar’s Victory Odes has already proved influential in its original German form. J.G. Howie’s English translation will make it widely accessible to students and scholars throughout the English-speaking world. The author. Eveline Krummen has pursued the study of Classical Philology at the Universities of Bern, Zürich, Cambridge, and Tübingen, and she taught as an adjunct at the Universities of Bern and Zürich, occasionally standing in for Professor Most at the University of Heidelberg. At Zürich she was licensed in 1987 with a dissertation later published (1990) as Pyrsos Hymnon. Festliche Gegenwart und mythisch-rituelle Tradition als Voraussetzung einer Pindarinterpretation (Isthmie 4, Pythie 5, Olympie 1 und 3). She was habilitated at Zürich in 1997, with a two-part thesis: a monograph on the early Greek lyric in its cultural context; and a text and commentary of Jacoby;s FGrHist Teil IV fasc. 2 on ancient historical writings. In 1999 she was appointed to her present position as Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Graz, Austria. Her research interests are in early Greek literature, Greek historiography, and Greek religion, and she has contributed in these fields to a number of periodicals, collected papers, and encyclopaedias. The Translator. J. Gordon Howie studied at the Universities of Glasgow and Oxford (Balliol College), and taught in the Department of Greek (later Classics) at the University of Edinburgh, where he was Senior Lecturer in Classics and is currently an Honorary Research Fellow. He is a Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting. In addition to his own scholarly articles on early Greek literature, now collected in Exemplum and Myth, Criticism and Creation (2012), his translation of Detlev Fehling’s Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot, on which he worked closely with the author to produce a definitive version, Herotodus and his ‘Sources’ (1989), is widely known and appreciated. He has also collaborated with Douglas Cairns on the translations in that scholar’s Bacchylides. Five epinician Odes (2010).

Covering the approximately 6,500 years from the beginning of the Late Mesolithic to the transition to the Bronze Age, Mats Larsson takes the reader on a journey through the development of Swedish prehistoric society and culture set against the backdrop of climatic and landscape change. Using examples selected from a wealth of archaeological sites, artefacts and palaeo-environmental studies he explores a series of chronological themes: such as how the relationship between land and water influenced people’s lives in many ways and the development of often long-distance cultural and exchange networks, as reflected in the occurrence of ‘foreign’ stone axes, flint, copper and pottery. He describes how innovations, such as the introduction of agriculture, spread rapidly during the Neolithic, incorporating characteristics of extensive northern European cultural groups, beginning with the Funnel Beaker Culture with its array of distinctive objects, settlements and burial monuments, while retaining some specific regional and local expressions in material culture. Later, certain characteristics of the Pitted Ware Culture, such as specific types of pottery decoration, were taken up in some areas while the emergence of some regional groups can be seen as a step in the ideological and social changes that led to what we today call the Battle Axe Culture. Towards the end of the Stone Age the battle axe was replaced by the dagger as a symbol of the male warrior as a more stable society emerged in many parts of the country, concentrated around large farms with longhouses. It was only at this late stage that agriculture and the raising of livestock gained a firm hold, and the landscape was opened up permanently.

This volume presents the results of investigations undertaken by Oxford Archaeology between 2003 and 2011 in advance of construction of the Banbury Flood Alleviation Scheme, Oxfordshire. The main element of these investigations was an excavation at the site of a borrow pit for clay to be used in constructing the flood defences. Geophysical surveys of two other areas that revealed dense concentrations of buried archaeological remains not subsequently affected by the scheme are also reported. The excavation uncovered a multi-period landscape containing a regionally significant Neolithic occupation site, as well as later features. The Neolithic remains comprised 35 pits that produced large assemblages of flint and pottery, mainly Peterborough Ware of middle Neolithic date (associated with radiocarbon dates of c 3350-2650 BC). A single substantial but enigmatic middle Bronze Age ditch contained few finds, but these included a radius from an aurochs, one of the latest examples of this species in Britain.Late pre-Roman Iron Age occupation was represented by an oval double-ditched enclosure which, following a brief hiatus, was succeeded toward the end of the 1st century AD by a more extensive low-status farmstead. The settlement was redeveloped during the 2nd century before finally being abandoned in the early-mid 3rd century. Artefactual and palaeoenvironmental assemblages, as well as the spatial arrangement of the settlement, provided evidence regarding the economy, status and social organisation of the community. The volume includes a consideration of the results of the project in the context of Iron Age and Roman settlement of the Cherwell Valley.

The eruption of the Thera (Santorini) volcano in the Aegean Sea in the mid-second millennium BC was a clearly defined, specific moment in Aegean and east Mediterranean prehistory that impacted on all the major cultures of the region. The effects of the eruption have been linked with the destruction of the Minoan palace civilisation of Crete, the legend of Atlantis, and even events described in the Biblical account of the Exodus. Scientists have studied the remains of the volcano and traced eruption products and far-flung climatic impacts throughout the east Mediterranean and in ice cores and tree-ring data. At Akrotiri, a major prehistoric town buried by the eruption, archaeologists unearthed the partially intact remains multi-storey buildings, painted frescoes and myriad objects of everyday life. The date of the eruption has long been a subject of importance and controversy since accurate dating would offer a unique linchpin for the study and synchronisation of the history and cultures of the region in the mid-second millennium. It would provide a key test both for the established historical chronology of ancient Egypt and derived archaeological chronologies. Yet the exact date remained stubbornly unresolved and varied in the literature by over 100 years.A Test of Time, first published in 1999, sought to resolve the issue through a critical review of the archaeological and scientific data, including the presentation of radiocarbon dates, which together suggested a new ‘early’ chronology for the Aegean c. 1700–1400 BC. This edition comprises the original, unrevised text, together with a substantial new appended essay which critically reviews the continuing debate between 1999 and 2012 and presents a raft of new scientific data, including the Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates relating to a range of relevant archaeological sequences from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean.

The rock art found in the World Heritage sites in the Alta area, Arctic Norway, comprise thousands of images including reindeer and elk as well as fish, birds, boats, humans and geometric patterns. They contain information about peoples who lived in this northern area from about 5000 BC up until the birth of Christ; such as possible social organizations, hunting and trapping, beliefs, rituals,stories, legends, myths, cultural changes and continuities.Communicating with the world of beings addresses an understanding of the rock art in terms of communication with other people and other than-human beings. The figures could have been seen and experienced as symbols in rituals or as expressions of identity, position, power and rights, as depictions of real events and perhaps for use in storytelling. Through rock art, people might also have been able to communicate with other-than-human beings who ruled parts of the environment – in order to petition favors for themselves or others. These other-than-human beings may have been perceived as good and evil powers and spirits of the different worlds of the universe; the dead or souls; which also included the animals depicted or were even embodied in the stone.This communication may have been based on a belief that both living beings and inert objects and natural phenomena had souls, a belief that may have existed ever since the earliest settlements. Such an animistic belief means that everything was seen as having a consciousness and identity of its own, independent and imbued with a will. Therefore, it was essential that the different participants communicated with one another as equal partners.In this beautifully illustrated book Knut Helskog provides a lyrical and personal interpretation of the chronology, patterning and possible meanings behind this extraordinary landscape of prehistoric rock art.

The fourteenth Current Research in Egyptology conference, held at the University of Cambridge in March 2013 brought together speakers and attendees from six continents and hosted more than 50 presentations covering multiple aspects of Egyptology and its related fields. The aim of the conference was to cross cultural and disciplinary boundaries. The papers presented in these proceedings reflect this aim by presenting current research that draws on insights derived from anthropology, archaeology, archaeobotany, ethnography, organic chemistry, geography, linguistics, and law, amongst others.

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.

This first monograph in the EARTH: The Dynamics of Non-Industrial Agriculture: 8,000 years of Resilience and Innovation series, approaches the great variety of agricultural practices in human terms. It focuses on the relationship between plants and people, the complexity of agricultural processes and their organisation within particular communities and societies. Collaborative European research among archaeologists, archaeobotanists, ethnographers, historians and agronomists using a broad analytical scale of investigation seeks to establish new common ground for integrating different approaches. By means of interdisciplinary examples, this book showcases the relationship between people and plants across wide ranging and diverse spatial and temporal milieus, including crop diversity, the use of wild foodstuffs, social context, status and choices of food plants.

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.