Though the Vikings are remembered in popular culture as savage, helmeted barbarians, their impact on history and contribution to the expansion of civilisation suggests that they were far more than the heavy handed brutes of the Medieval world.The famed and technologically superior longships of the Viking age were vital to the expansion of medieval civilisation and to the exploration of territories far beyond Scandinavian shores. These ships and their crews of pirates, merchants and warriors were able to navigate the Volga River in Russia and reach as far east as Constantinople. To the west they found Newfoundland and to the south they explored the Spanish coastline. This superbly illustrated book studies the Vikings and their civilisation in detail, including their boats, evolving artistic styles, typology and dating of swords and also the history of Viking raids in Normandy, from their establishment in 911, until the conquest of England in 1066. French language

Even after more than 250 years since its discovery, Pompeii continues to resonate powerfully in both academic discourse and the popular imagination. This volume brings together a collection of ten papers that advance, challenge and revise the present conceptions of the city's art, industry and infrastructure. The discussions of domestic art in this book, a perennial topic for Pompeian scholars, engage previously neglected subjects such as wall ornaments in domestic decoration, the sculpture collection in the house of Octavius Quartio, and the role of the covered walkways in luxury villa architecture. The famous cupid's frieze from the house of the Vettii is given a novel and intelligent reinterpretation. The place of industry at Pompeii, in both the physical and economic landscapes has long been overlooked. The chapters on building practice in inhabited houses, on the presence of fulling workshops in atrium houses, and on the urban pottery industry serve as successful contributions to a more complete understanding of the life of the ancient city. Finally, this volume breaks new ground in the consideration of the urban infrastructure of Pompeii, a topic that has won serious attention only in the last decades, but one that is playing an increasingly central role in Pompeian studies. The final three chapters offer a reassessment of the Pompeian street network, a scientific analysis of the amount of lead in Pompeian drinking water, and a thorough analysis of the water infrastructure around the forum that supported its architectural transformation in the last decades before the eruption of mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

The post-palatial period - Late Helladic IIIC - is often seen as the twilight years of Mycenean civilisation, a period of economic decline with few achievements in terms of architecture, materials or technology. Excavation in the Citadel House area at Mycenae afforded unique opportunities to explore stratified remains of this period and to define and describe its character. In this fascicule, Dr. Elizabeth French presents her full report on the remains of this period, which, sheltered within the massive 13th century BC walls, allow us to chart something of Mycenae's history in the final years of the Bronze Age. This fascicule also contains a unique account of LH IIIC pottery, stratum by stratum, incorporating a major study by Dr. Susan Sherratt, together with a wealth of illustration of pottery vessels. The account of the other objects of terracotta, metal, ivory, stone and bone helps us to better understand the cultural materials of the post-palatial period, while Gordon Hillman's account of the plant remains from the "Granary" is a significant addition to the palaeo-botanical record for the Mycenean period as a whole and one of very few for the LH IIIC period. This book, which includes a DVD containing all the data from previous fascicules and an interactive index, will be an essential reference tool for the study of the period.

To some, the Chalcolithic (4700/4500-3700/3600 BC cal.), as the first period with metallurgy, large sprawling villages, rich mortuary offerings, and cult centres, represents a developmental stage on the road to the urban Bronze Age, the "dawn of history". Others have called it 'the end of prehistory'. More recent scholarship focuses upon the diversification of the subsistence economy, elaborated craft production, and expanded networks for resource acquisition. Many of today's Chalcolithic specialists were taught by biblical archaeologists, such that the culture history paradigm remains deeply embedded. This volume grew out of a workshop held in Madrid in 2006 and aims to kick start a dialogue about how to move beyond culture history and chronology in order to re-engage with larger theoretical discourses. A vast swathe of research in the region ignores these issues and considers theory to be irrelevant. One has the impression that the political realities of the region (including a predilection for biblical archaeology) has left a large proportion of archaeologists in the region, including prehistorians, lost without a map. Contributors to this volume recognize that culture history is the platform upon which current archaeological research is discussed but differ in the degree of emphasis placed on previously defined entities or phases. Delineating levels of difference and similarity between temporal boundaries is critical in this process. The two themes of this volume - culture and chronology - combine the need for theoretical engagement with the establishment of broader, more precise empirical data using explicit classificatory schemes. This is, essentially, the rock and the hard place where much archaeological debate is wedged, and as such the volume will have resonance for scholars of other periods and regions.

This volume investigates the archaeology of death and commemoration through thematically linked case studies drawn from the Classical world. These investigations stress the processes of burial and commemoration as inherently social and designed for an audience, and they explore the meaning and importance attached to preserving memory. While previous investigations of Greek and Roman death and burial have tended to concentrate on period- or regionally-specific sets of data, this volume instead focuses on a series of topical connections that highlight important facets of death and commemoration significant to the larger Classical world. Living through the dead investigates the subject of death and commemoration from a diverse set of archaeologically informed approaches, including visual reception, detailed analysis of excavated remains, landscape, and post-classical reflections and draws on artefactual, documentary and pictorial evidence. The nine papers present recent research by some of the leading voices on the subject, as well as some fresh perspectives. Case studies come from Thermopylae, the Bosporan kingdom, Athens, Republican Rome, Pompeii and Egypt. As a collected volume, they provide thematically linked investigations of key issues in ritual, memory and (self)presentation associated with death and burial in the Classical period. As such, this volume will be of particular interest to postgraduate students and academics with specialist interests in the archaeology of the Classical world and also more broadly, as a source of comparative material, to people working on issues related to the archaeology of death and commemoration.

Comparative Archaeologies scrutinises current thinking on the dynamics and historical trajectories of complex societies in the American Southwest (AD 900-1600) and the Iberian Peninsula (3000-1500 BC) through a focused comparison of five themes: Histories, Landscapes, Bodies, Gender, and Art. Leading archaeologists from North America and Europe - drawing on diverse intellectual traditions - engage in this innovative form of comparative archaeology which recognizes both the historicities of past societies of similar forms and the social embeddedness of archaeological practice and theory.

This volume builds upon the model of the first Stone Axe Studies volume published in 1979. It explores how scholars from various parts of the world currently approach these distinctive items. Some papers are united by specific material, such as those working on Jadeite axe blades in western and Central Europe. For others, the link is analytical (e.g., the development of new geochemical techniques), contextual (e.g., work on techniques of hafting or on patterns of deposition) or conceptual (e.g., the uses made of ethno-historic and related models). Taken together, they document the state of the art in stone axe research in Britain and abroad, at the same time providing a much needed basis for comparative study and for debate regarding analytical and interpretative issues.

This volume examines conceptions, ideas and habits connected with children in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, focusing on the "dark sides of childhood" in the pre-modern world. The authors investigate the long-term attitudes of people, as well as ruptures in habits and customs. The book is divided into three parts. "Unwanted" deals with parents who were unable to bring up their baby and handed it over to other people or the cruel whims of destiny. "Disabled" addresses what we would label as children's illnesses since disability was a concept largely unknown to ancient people. "Nearly Lost" examines demons, viewed as destructive forces with the ability to destroy children or young people, sometimes by literally sucking their lives away. The articles are written by an international team of specialists from Belgium, Finland, Italy and the United States and were presented at conferences organised by the research project "Religion and Childhood. Socialisation from the Roman Empire to Christian World", funded by the Academy of Finland (2009-2012, directed by Dr. Katariina Mustakallio), at the University of Tampere, Finland.

A review of the rich and diverse evidence for understanding past climate and environmental change in the Thames Valley, and the effects on plant and animal populations and the challenges and opportunities these presented to early humans. Part 1 of this volume covers the Pleistocene, the epoch of the Ice Ages, in an integrated review of the geological, palaeontological and archaeological data for the last half million years and more. Part 2 takes up the story from the beginning of the Holocene, the warm period in which we are still living, which began around 11,500 years ago. The authors review the evidence for early hunter-gatherer populations in the Mesolithic, the gradually increasing impact of humans in the region in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age and their rich social lives and belief systems. Much of the evidence has been recovered during extensive gravel quarrying. The volume is excellently illustrated with colour and line illustrations and maps.

Pterosauriërs is a popular scientific book about pterosaurs: flying reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs. The book answers many questions about these remarkable animals and presents the current state of research. The book features many beautiful full colour images, including palaeo-art by co-author Mark Witton.

This book explores the themes of memory and mourning from the Roman deathbed to the Roman cemetery, drawing subject matter from the literature, art, and archaeology of ancient Rome. It brings together scholarship on varied aspects of Roman death, investigating connections between ancient poetry, history and oratory and placing these alongside archaeological and textual evidence for Roman funerary and commemorative rituals. A series of case studies centred on individual authors and/or specific aspects of ritual behaviour, traces the story of Roman death: how the inhabitants of the Roman world confronted their mortality, disposed of the dead, remembered the dead and praised the dead, thereby enhancing our understanding of Roman society.

Research on the nature of cultural change in the Roman Empire has traditionally been divided between the Western and Eastern provinces. Papers in this volume aim to reunite the provinces by approaching the question of cultural change across the Empire through a range of material culture and historical sources focusing on the first 100 years of the foundation of a colony.

State Formation in Italy and Greece offers an up-to-date and comprehensive sampler of the current discourse concerning state formation in the central Mediterranean. While comparative approaches to the emergence of political complexity have been applied since the 1950s to Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, Peru, Egypt and many other contexts, Classical Archaeology as a whole has not played a particularly active role in this debate. Here, for the first time, state formation processes occurring in the Bronze Age Aegean as well as in Iron Age Greece and Italy are explicitly juxtaposed, revealing a complex interplay between similar dynamics and differing local factors. Building upon recent theoretical developments in the origins and functioning of early states, the papers in this volume experiment with a variety of new approaches to old problems. Dual-processual theory, heterarchy, agency theory and weak state theory figure very prominently in the book and offer innovative, context-sensitive comparative frameworks that match the richness of the archaeological and historical record in the Mediterranean. Contributors include scholars working in Etruscan and early Roman archaeology and history, in Aegean archaeology and on the emergence of the Greek polis. A full analytical index further facilitates the cross-referencing of common themes across the geographic scope of the book.

The so called rhyton from Danilo, an archaeological site near the coastal town of Sibenik in Dalmatia, Croatia, is a four-legged Neolithic vessel made of fired clay that according to the consensus of archaeological opinion was most likely a cult vessel used in rituals of unknown origin and content. "Danilo Culture" is the eponymous name bestowed on a culture flourishing in the period from about 5500-4500 BC at Danilo and at some neighbouring sites. This culture had great influence along the eastern Adriatic coast and its hinterland and produced a significant number of these vessels. Rhyta, which other Neolithic cultures also made, were dispersed throughout a vast area of southeast Europe, from Greece to the Alps. This book is an in-depth study of that mysterious, prehistoric archaeological artifact which, due to its antiquity, structure and symbolism, has become a kind of universal proto-matrix for all relevant mythological and spiritual structures of the Mediterranean zone of later, historic times.

The West Midlands is a region of geographical, topographical and geological contrasts, forming disparate landscapes that are reflected in the nature and diversity of its rich archaeology. This ranges from evidence of its prehistory to the important industrial heritage of its major conurbations. This book represents an attempt by the region's archaeologists to draw these varying archaeological landscapes together to produce a research framework and agenda for their future management. This is based on a comprehensive evaluation of the archaeological resource and has allowed new research directions to be followed and gaps in our knowledge to be filled. The book is arranged chronologically, each chapter addressing the important themes identified within each period. The colour images illustrate different aspects of the archaeology of the West Midlands and also include a series of distribution maps produced from data held in the region's Sites and Monuments Records and Historic Environment Records. The research agenda is an invaluable tool not only for those interested or involved in the archaeology of the West Midlands but also for those working in other regions, adding another important piece to the archaeological jigsaw of the British Isles and helping us to see the archaeology of the West Midlands more prominently in its wider context.

Understanding the calendars used by ancient and medieval cultures is essential to the writing of history. Equally important, however, is understanding the basis upon which our current knowledge of these calendars rests. This second volume of Calendars and Years explores the calendars of ancient and medieval China, India, the ancient Jewish world, the medieval Islamic world, and the Maya. Particular attention is given to the preserved evidence on which our understanding of these calendars lie, the modern historiography of their study, and the role of calendars in ancient and medieval society. Topics covered include the origin of the Chinese sexagenary cycle, evidence for the 364-day year in the ancient Jewish world, and the history of attempts to establish a correlation between Mayan dates and the Julian and Gregorian calendars. 176p, b/w illus (Oxbow Books 2011) Praise for Volume I: "Steele has assembled an essential foundation for the further study of calendariography and chronography in the ancient Near East and Egypt." Francesca Rochberg Journal for the History of Astronomy (November 2008) "It is a book from which there are absolute nuggets of incredible information to be mined." Peter A Clayton