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This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the various 'villa' sites in the region of Rome in order to differentiate the various intentions that lay behind their construction over time. This includes an analysis of the coastal villas near Ostia, the estates in the Alban Hills, the socio-political function of Imperial residences and how each site can be used to understand the social climate of the hinterland beyond the capital up until the end of the 2nd Century AD, but there have also been some examples taken from a 3rd Century context as well, which have been used on a largely comparative basis. The main focus remains the development of villas around the capital into the first two centuries of the Roman principate. The author analyses the chief characteristics of the layout of central Italian villas of the élite, using specific case studies of villas that have been excavated and/or recorded outside the city of Rome. This analysis aims to uncover correlations between the literary definition of "suburbia", the identification of villas as 'suburban' - as opposed to rural or maritime.

This book examines the transformations occurring in the cities of Latin North Africa in the Roman Empire in the course of the late third, fourth and early fifth centuries AD. These developments have been assessed through a series of case studies of North African cities using archaeological, epigraphical and literary, source material. The study examines the continued vitality of municipal life in Africa by examining the evidence for the maintenance and construction of judicial, religious, defensive and entertainment structures in the late Roman period. The book also tackles the nature of the Christianisation of the North African cities within the wider urban context. It considers the appropriation of elements of the classical urban heritage for Christian use and the construction of new Christian buildings. It reassesses the nature of the Donatist and Catholic Churches, examines their differing ideologies and indicates how these could impact upon the built environment. The study also considers the effect of the changes in the urban area on the population and movement within the city as well as demonstrating the distinctive nature of late Roman North African urbanism and its setting within an Empire-wide context. The book concludes that North African city-life was generally flourishing in this period but that a set of processes were producing a new, African cityscape.

Mesopotamian houses excavated at Ur and Nippur represent a unique archaeological context for the analysis of the interaction of verbal and nonverbal sign systems in that archaeologists can combine archival evidence of the III-II millennium BC with well-preserved house layouts. This work provides a general framework for the interpretation of other sites where textual evidence is absent or not in context. Although the aims of the book are multiple, the main objective is theoretical: The author goes beyond the interpretation of Mesopotamian domestic sociology and offers a semiotic theory of verbal and nonverbal meanings, useful for archaeology in general.

In this study the author approaches the realm of 'private religion' in Egypt some 3,300 years ago. The two broad research questions that frame this study are: What was the structure of the private religious landscape at Amarna (Central Egypt, on the Nile), and what were the ideas that shaped this landscape? The starting point is a corpus of objects and structures from settlement remains at one site, Amarna, the location of Egypt's capital for a brief period (c.350 - 330 BCE) towards the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty. At the height of its occupation, Amarna was the administrative, political and religious centre of Egypt. (Estimates of the city 's population at this time range between 20,000 and 50,000 people.) This publication is divided into three parts.Part I places the study in context. The history of the Amarna period, the layout of the site and its excavation history are summarized. Part 2 explores the issue of how to define private religion and identify its material remnants: the inventory of the material evidence - objects, architectural emplacements and buildings. It is hoped that the dissemination of this material will assist others researching similar topics, making available unpublished evidence from most of the main phases of excavation at the site. Part 3 explores the design, manufacture and acquisition of the material components of religion, and considers the forms of the conduct in which they were used. Also examined are the transcendental forces involved: the royal family and Aten, and 'traditional ' deities and spirits, including private ancestors. Part 3 also considers the shape of the religious cityscape, and the questions of who was participating in religion, and what was done with the material when it was no longer in use. The study concludes with a discussion of the motivating factors that underlay religious conduct, and which open a small window onto the ideas that shaped the religious landscape more broadly.

Assessment of the Roman Iron Age in the Central Scottish Borders and the relationship between Roman and native is based primarily on an inventory of relevant archaeological material from Roman and native sites including a significant number of finds hitherto unpublished. The introduction highlights the limitations of literary and archaeological evidence and stresses the need to reassess our understanding of the nature of contact between Roman and native in the Central Scottish Borders. The traditional association of the Selgovae with this area is investigated bearing in mind our limited knowledge of their existence and location. The political geography and socio-political and economic structure of the Roman Iron Age in the Central Scottish Borders is then examined. The narrative of Roman occupation is reviewed and also the aftermath of Roman withdrawal, the eventual emergence of new British kingdoms in southern Scotland and the spread of Christianity. The inventory comprises a record not of all finds from Roman and native sites in the Central Scottish Borders but only those relevant for the assessment of native culture, lifestyle and economy, the impact of Rome and the aftermath of Roman occupation. The presence of Roman and Romano-British material on native sites in the Central Scottish Borders and the likelihood of contemporaneous Roman and native occupation on Eildon Hill North adjacent to the Roman fort at Newstead, may suggest a workable coexistence between Roman and native within this area rather than confrontation.

This work falls into two parts. In the first, the author undertakes a summary of his ecclesiastical geological research of thirty years and in the second part this information is applied to a number of early churches in Ireland. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the characteristics of stone emplacement as they apply in particular to the Anglo-Saxon churches of England. They illustrate how the craftsmen of this period used stone in certain structural features of their ecclesiastical buildings in distinctive styles, and how these styles may be distinguished from the work of the Norman or 'Romanesque' period that followed. They also provide details of the simplified nomenclature that has been devised to describe the distinguishing bedding orientations that can existfor stones emplaced in different wall structures. In Chapter 3, some of these same styles of stone emplacement, more recently identified in various early ecclesiastical sites in Scotland and the Isle of Man, are discussed. Occurring at much the same timeas the distinctive Anglo-Saxon work in England the styles are described as 'Patterned'. The reasons for the subtle differences in styles between Scotland and England (and between regions) are considered and attributed to the specific controls of geology and available rock type. The following Chapters (4 to 6) examine a selection of early ecclesiastical sites in Ireland. Stone emplacement patterns in some thirty plus Irish ecclesiastical buildings are carefully reviewed, particularly with reference to their quoins, antae, and arch jambs. Where a high proportion of the stones in these structures are set with their bedding or lineation set vertically, they replicate the 'Patterned' style observed in buildings in England, and more especially, Scotland. Those portions of buildings perceived as reflecting these patterns are considered to be of a similar early date, and the particulars of those structures exhibiting them are detailed. This additional information enables parts of many early Irish ecclesiastical buildings to be more precisely dated. Furthermore, with so many Irish churches constructed of hard, difficult to distinguish and utilize, Palaeozoic rock lithologies, it permits different areas or periods of wall fabric to be more readily discriminated. This is exemplified in those churches which possess antae, where the workmanship provided dates of both during and after the 'Patterned' period. Although the purpose for the construction of antae may never be definitely known, Chapter 6 offers a new hypothesis based on the visible evidence revealed in the wall fabrics. This proposes that they were constructed primarily for the defence of the vulnerable corners of simple single-celled churches.

University of Birmingham IAA Interdisciplinary Series: Studies in Archaeology, History, Literature and Art. Volume IThe IAA Series is an interdisciplinary volume reflecting the wide geographical, chronological and disciplinary range of the Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity at the University of Birmingham. The volumes are based on a thematic research seminar series held at the IAA. 'Childhood' was an obvious theme to initiate the new series. The Institute has a strong record of publication in the field, and members of the Institute have made a significant contribution to childhood studies. The Institute is also host to the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past, which was established to pursue and foster interdisciplinary approaches to the study of childhood.

This is a publication of my doctoral thesis with the University of Exeter. My research aim has been to assess patterns of settlement continuity and discontinuity between the late Roman and early medieval periods over three regional case study areas: Norfolk, Kent and Somerset. Quantitative and spatial data has been collected and stored within a GIS database and queried to produce a series of spatial relationships. Using landscape archaeology principles the results have been systematically assessed across a range of distinctive character regions, or pays. The discussion of results uses distribution maps, tables and charts to help demonstrate the research outcomes and amplify regional trends in Roman and early medieval settlement relationships, relative to their physical landscape context.

Papers from a Conference held in Manchester in 2000. Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon StudiesThis volume presents 16 papers from the conference entitled "Æthelbald and Offa: Two Eighth Century Kings of Mercia" held in Manchester in 2000 at the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies.

The collection of 22 papers gathered to honour Russell Dale Guthrie, archaeologist, anthropologist, and palaeonthologist who is working on a wide variety of quaternary and evolutionary topics related to the northern parts of North America. The volume is divided into three sections, Paleoecology, Archaeology and Methods. The topics range from palaeoecology and archaeology of British Columbia, fauna of Canada and Alaska, prehistoric faunal remains on the north coast of North America to examination of butchering sites, hunting strategies, studies of food utility indices etc.Editorial Assistants: Meg L. Thornton, Tom Flanigan, Joshua Reuther and Mark C. Diab.Contributors: P.M. Anderson, P.M. Bowers, J.W. Brink, L.B. Brubaker, A. Cannon, R. DeAngelo, A. Demma, M.C. Diab, J.C. Driver, A.S. Dyke, J. Fee, T.M. Friesen, D.M. Georgina, S.C. Gerlach, T.E. Gillispie, R.D. Guthrie, D. Hanson, G. Hare, C.R. Harington, J.L. Hofman, B. Kooyman, K.D. Kusmer, A.P. McCartney, A. Magoun, P. Matheus, R.O. Mills, M.L. Moss, M. Nagy, W.W. Oswalt, B. Saleeby, D.L. Sandgathe, R. Sattler, J.M. Savelle, A.V. Sher, R.O. Stephenson, M.L. Thornton, L.C. Todd, P. Valkenberg, D.M. Vinson and D.R. Yesner.

Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 82The Kalanga state Butua, which had dominated the Zimbabwe plateau (south central Africa) for four centuries, collapsed in the 1830s due to repeated difaqane invasions, and its population became subject to Ndebele invaders. This work is a study of how the farming population coped with the stresses brought by these events and how this is manifest in the archaeological remains. A model of group behaviour under stress suggests that, with increasing stress, group solidarity at first increases, but later decreases: a series of hypotheses based on this model guides this study. The first section of the research presents a reconstruction of the 'Butua' state based on oral and documentary evidence as well as archaeological research in Botswana. The second part combines information from historical sources with archaeological evidence from two villages at Domboshaba to reconstruct events and conditions in northeastern Botswana during the turbulent 19th century.

Understanding Paleolithic animal exploitation requires a multifaceted approach. Inferences may derive from research on paleoenvironments and taphonomy, the development of new methods for interpreting seasonality patterns, and ethnoarchaeological observations. A full understanding of Paleolithic economies also requires a multiregional perspective. This volume brings together a group of scholars with research interests from across the globe to understand the nature of animal exploitation practices through the lens of taphonomy. The chapters include case studies on the types of animals that Paleolithic peoples hunted and gathered through time and space, and taphonomic analyses of non-human animal bone assemblages.

Studies in Contemporary and Historical Archaeology 2Studies in Contemporary and Historical Archaeology is a new series of edited and single-authored volumes intended to make available current work on the archaeology of the recent and contemporary past. The series brings together contributions from academic historical archaeologists, professional archaeologists and practitioners from cognate disciplines who are engaged with archaeological material and practices. In this, the second volume in the series, the author presents a nuanced account of 19th and 20th century forest sawmill communities in southern Victoria, Australia. Weaving together archaeological and historical data, issues of community development, isolation, integration, and consumption practices are sensitively explored. Not only does the volume make a valuable contribution to the historical archaeology of rural Australia, but it provides an extended case study for others studying the history and archaeology of temporary work communities elsewhere in the emerging modern world.

This volume contains a range of papers from a seminar held in Oxford in 2005. What did 'art' in its widest sense mean to 'them', the Romans, and what might it (or even should it), mean to us? The approach adopted avoids fashionable 'theory', mainly culled second-hand from the social sciences, and tries to engage directly with material culture.

This volume summarizes the archaeology of the Mimbres area. Mimbres is the archaeological term for ancient Native American peoples who lived along the river of that name (the Rio Mimbres) and several other valleys in the southwestern corner of the state of New Mexico. They flourished, artistically, from about A.D. 950 to 1150; and the characteristic black-on-white pottery of that period is represented in art museums and private collections around the world. A single Mimbres bowl can fetch tens of thousands of dollars at auction. The pottery itself was not technically remarkable (hand-formed, indifferently finished earthenware) but the designs - painted in black pigment on the white-slipped interior of bowls - constitute one of the most appealing, intriguing and recognizable Native artistic tradition of ancient North America. Any reader of this volume almost certainly has seen Mimbres art, and the chances are good that the reader possesses a Mimbres image or two on a T-shirt, a trivet, a tea towel, or even a tattoo. As well as pottery, the author investigates: cremations and burial rituals, shells and canal irrigation, and other aspects of Mimbres archaeology, as well as indicating areas for future research.

Central European Series 2In this work the author investigates the pre-Turkish Hungarian landscape and describes how medieval woodland functioned. (Particular attention is given to the woods around Pilis and Bakony.) In combining this with evidence still visible on the ground, the author goes further than seeing trees and woods as mere "environment". His study in important in that it begins to trace a common tradition of cultural landscapes in north and central Europe, taking into account coppicing, 'royal forests', common and private woodland, pollarding, monastic usages, etc.

In this volume the author studies Roman baths in Israel, including a section on the miqveh (ritual Jewish bath), which first appears in the 2nd century BCE and becomes a fairly common feature both of Hellenistic private baths and other areas such as cemeteries, oil or wine presses and synagogues in Palestine in the 1st century BCE. The geographical limits of this study are set by the ancient identification of Palestine that is Cis- and Transjordania and the scope covers the time between the reign of Alexander Jannai (103-76 BCE) and the Muslim conquest (640 CE). The author draws a picture of the development of Roman baths and thermae in Palestine using a combination of literary and archaeological sources. This includes not only an account of the purely architectural development of the buildings, but also an account of the development of the institution of "bathing the Roman way" itself and the utilisation of the Roman baths and thermae in Palestine. The book concludes with a complete catalogue of baths in Roman Palestine and a selective catalogue of Miqva'ot in Roman Palestine.

In this work the author focuses on the social and other non-material dimensions of life that are increasingly integral to landscape archaeology. Although the geographical focus of the study is southern Epirus, and in particular the lower valley of the Acheron River, the author also attempts a general, though not exhaustive, synthesis of the Bronze Age evidence from all of Greek Epirus. The Epirote Bronze Age remains poorly known and there has been no new synthesis for some time. Until recently, most of the scholarly work has been in Greek, much of it rather inaccessible, and this may have discouraged the wide dissemination of information. More importantly for the present case, however, a fresh assessment of evidence from the whole of Epirus (and to a lesser extent, surrounding regions) was essential to place events and longer-term processes in the lower Acheron valley in proper context. The landscapes of Epirus are highly diverse, and the lower Acheron valley, as lowland, coastal, and Mediterranean in climate, presented a singular set of circumstances to Bronze Age inhabitants. The important contrasts detected across Epirus throw into relief the divergent trajectory of the lower Acheron valley, and suggest certain explanations for it. It is hoped that this work will give the reader a sense of the Bronze Age landscapes of lowland southern Epirus, and a feeling for what it might have been like to inhabit them.

Mycenaean society, it is commonly asserted, was characterised by centralised decision making over an integrated and culturally homogeneous region. In matters political and economic, the local rulers held sway over a population subject to taxes in kind and corvée labour. Beyond his obligations to the Palace, the Late Helladic inhabitant of the area commanded little by way of resources to engage in anything but subsistence activities. Such is the power of this long-prevailing view that, until recently, few scholars thought of questioning the logic and implications of the various concepts and models based on it. At its most simple, the argument revolves around the issue of whether Mycenaean society was strongly centralised with redistributive traits or whether the power and homogenising influence of the power base, if any, was not strong enough to touch the furthest corners of everyday, subsistence-level life. If the latter view has anything to commend it, this will have far-reaching ramifications for our perception of the nature of life and society in the Mycenaean Argolid. If, on the other hand, the long-held view can be proved to be correct, researchers will be on much firmer ground with respect to the inferences that may legitimately be drawn. In this monograph, the author addresses these issues by evaluating the conceptual and theoretical foundation upon which the now predominant view is based, as well as the claims made with respect to the nature and character of the economic system of Late Helladic society in the Argolid. Furthermore, the present study also sets out to analyse in more detail the role of Asine, a mid-tier settlement in the Argolid, with a view to establishing the vertical and horizontal linkages that this settlement may have had with the surrounding communities.

Edited by Rachel Ives, Daniel Lines, Christopher Naunton and Nina WahlbergFollowing a successful inaugural event at the University of Oxford and an expanded second at the University of Liverpool, the Third Symposium for Current Research in Egyptology was held in December 2001, at the University of Birmingham. The symposium was again successful in bringing together UK-based graduate students of Egyptology to provide an opportunity to disseminate the results of their research. It also served to encourage communication between an otherwise disparate group of students spread across the various Egyptological institutions throughout the country. Indeed, speakers came from nine different institutions and the papers presented illustrated well the broad range of topics currently being studied throughout the United Kingdom. The topics of the 9 featured papers include: The Lotus Reborn: the creation and distribution of the Description de L'Égypte; The arrival of the horse in Egypt: new approaches and a hypothesis; Aspects of the Hyksos' role in Egyptian society from the artistic evidence; Some thoughts on the social organisation of dockyards during the new kingdom; Egyptian blue: where, when, how?; The specialness of science: it's all in the mind; Crossing the night: the depiction of mythological landscapes in the Am Duat of the New Kingdom Royal Necropolis; Trends in burial evidence: evaluating expectations for the regional and temporal distribution of mortuary behaviour in Predynastic Egypt; Representations of Hathor and Mut in the Hibis temple.

In 1827, a local collector of antiquities encountered a vehicle carrying stones from the site of Kermenchik/Simferopol on the Black Sea near Chersonesos. The director of the Odessa Museum immediately recognized the importance of these finds and rushed to the site. In the first publication on the site, the author claimed to have discovered the Neapolis built by the Scythian, King Skiluros. Thus began the archaeological discoveries at a site that has fascinated excavators to this day. The author of this present monograph summarizes the decades of research and theories connected with this important site and its environs: features, architecture, rites, material cultural, trade, and cult objects. A uniform chronological and cultural model for Scythian Neapolis is proposed and phased characteristics show its historical evolution (c.300 BC to 300 AD). A group of farmsteads developed into a settlement, then into a royal fortress with a palace/temple complex, then into a significant fortified settlement of some scale, then once more into a royal (?) fortress before becoming the unfortified centre of an agrarian territory as the headquarters of a Bosphorean deputy. One Appendix concentrates specifically on the Mausoleum of King Skiluros, while the other details the inscriptions and sculptures from the 'Southern Palace' site.Translated from Russian by Valentina Mordvintseva

The Archaeological Sciences 1999 conference hosted by BASRG at the University of Bristol brought together scientists from throughout the UK, and also international participants from France, Germany, Poland and Egypt. The papers presented provided a valuable insight into the exciting new avenues for research opening up to archaeological science within the UK. This volume is representative of the very broad range of research themes addressed during the conference.

The majority of the 17 papers in this volume were presented as conference papers at the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) conference in 1999 at Cardiff, Wales, in the session 'Peopling the Mesolithic in a Northern Environment'. The approach adopted was to investigate the social Mesolithic, a radical departure from traditional approaches to the period, which tends to focus on flint typologies rather than people. Many of the themes and debates raised by these papers have been discussed and argued at a number of subsequent conferences, sessions and day schools on reconstructing the social Mesolithic. The debate continues, and hopefully the papers in this volume will engender further discussion.

The Nordic Bronze Age provides rich and well-preserved material, including large amounts of Central European bronze. It was the northern extention of the European Bronze Age cultures, and was included in this sphere rather late. But when it happened, Nordic societies got fully engaged in large-scale bronze metallurgy and adopted many elements of foreign symbolism. This book focusses on the earliest Nordic Bronze Age, at the outset of large-scale bronze import and metallurgy - when new forms of hierarchies and leadership were in the making. A specific category of objects, the bronze scimitars of Southeastern Scandinavia, provides the opportunity to explore the issues of scale, distance and context.

A short report on the site and sanctuary of Torreparedones in rural Cordoba, constructed in the reign of Caesar and in use throughout the reign of Augustus, and abandoned in the 1st century AD. The authors summarise the archaeological evidence for the occupation of the site, the construction of the sanctuary, its use and religius significance."

The author sets himself two objectives in this study. One is to introduce alternative methods for the construction of chronological frameworks in order to determine the development sequence of Chalcolithic (5100-3500 BC) society in the Jordan Valley region of the southern Levant. In this regard, the work addresses a number of issues relating to settlement and social change throughout the period and proposes several explanations based on the sequence of events. The second objective is to evaluate the theoretical and methodological understandings associated with the classification of chronological units. This study advocates the integration of all sources of chronological information for the purpose of constructing regional sequences. In the final analysis, the agreement of both the relative and the radiocarbon sequence is considered.

The academic consensus that the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43 landed at Richborough, Kent, has been challenged in recent years. Proponents of the alternative hypothesis that it took place at or near Fishbourne, West Sussex, have claimed that this makes better sense of the account in the ancient sources. This volume asks what sense the Fishbourne hypothesis makes in terms of the options for the naval strategy of the crossing. After considering the respective archaeological and topographical contexts of the sites, the work discusses general logistical issues as well as the type of ships available to the invading forces and assesses the evidence for their performance. The study concludes by looking at the choices facing the Roman naval planners of AD 43.

The first five centuries of Christian pre-eminence in what is now modern Hungary present their own special questions. Among them, did the end of the 5th century mean a real break in the whole of the Christian world or only in Pannonia (modern Hungary), or should a chronological boundary be drawn at some other date? This survey divides the period into two, before and after Constantine (ancient and early Christianity), and, from the evidence of the finds, explores the important changes that occurred in the era. The results throw considerable light on the populations of the various faiths and the gradual acknowledgment of the Christian religion.

This volume is a collection of 18 papers resulting from a symposium organized for the Society of American Archaeology in Chicago in 1999. The objective was to facilitate discussion on the fundamental problems of the European Early Upper Paleolithic period (c.30k-45k BP), with special focus on innovative techniques, methods, or theoretical frameworks that have usefully resituated the problems and knowledge of the EUP. The work is divided into three sections - The transition from LMP to EUP; Questions of typological significance and technological organization; Explaining interassemblage variability. The sites and finds discussed range from Portugal and Spain as far as the Middle East and the Ukraine.

This book includes papers from the Symposium, Kingdom of the Coral Seas, November 17, 2007, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The symposium and lectures brought Okinawan archaeology to a wide audience, including many students, professionals and those with an interest in this fascinating part of the Japanese archipelago from across Europe and elsewhere. The current volume represents a full record of the proceedings of the symposium, hopefully bringing the Ryukyus to an even broader readership.Papers by Shijun Asato, Hiroto Takamiya, Naoko Kinoshita, Akito Shinzato, Susumu Asato, Meitoku Kamei, Takashi Uezato, and Arne Rokkum.