This newest volume in the Çatalhöyük Research Project Series continues the interpretation of the material obtained during excavation of the site from 2009 to 2017 under the direction of Professor Ian Hodder. Çatalhöyük, a 9,000-year-old tell site in central Turkey, is of international importance due to its large size at an early date, its dense population and its long occupation. Its well-preserved buildings and rich art in the Neolithic East Mound give a unique insight into early village life, and the site allows study of many of the main questions dealing with the formation of settled villages/towns and the early intensification of agriculture. This volume, in 16 chapters by project specialists, focuses on the material artefacts recovered from the site, including a range of clay objects (ceramics, clay balls, tokens, figurines) and others made of stone, shell and textile. The analysis of these items, within a framework of intersecting and transformative “flows” of matter that are entangled with human aims and strategies, illuminates issues of procurement and exchange, house and community (including shifting cooking practices and the early management of cattle), and the organisation of production. Collectively, they reveal how change was generated across 1,100 years of occupation by the ‘productive potential’ of things.

A defining fixture of our contemporary world, video games offer a rich spectrum of engagements with the past. Beyond a source of entertainment, video games are cultural expressions that support and influence social interactions. Games educate, bring enjoyment, and encourage reflection. They are intricate achievements of coding and creative works of art. Histories, ranging from the personal to the global, are reinterpreted and retold for broad audiences in playful, digital experiences. The medium also magnifies our already complicated and confrontational relation with the past, for instance through its overreliance on violent and discriminatory game mechanics. This book continues an interdisciplinary conversation on game development and play, working towards a better understanding of how we represent and experience the past in the present. Return to the Interactive Past offers a new collection of engaging writings by game creators, historians, computer scientists, archaeologists, and others. It shows us the thoughtful processes developers go through when they design games, as well as the complex ways in which players interact with games. Building on the themes explored in the book The Interactive Past (2017), the authors go back to the past to raise new issues. How can you sensitively and evocatively use veterans’ voices to make a video game that is not about combat? How can the development of an old video game be reconstructed on the basis of its code and historic hardware limitations? Could hacking be a way to decolonize games and counter harmful stereotypes? When archaeologists study games, what kinds of maps do they draw for their digital fieldwork? And in which ways could we teach history through playing games and game-making?

The ocean conceals secrets, ancient, modern, and future. Nic Flemming's memoir recounts the life of a pioneer in ocean science. Each chapter describes a thread that structured his work: underwater cities, submerged Ice Age caverns dripping with stalactites, the limits to ocean exploitation, ocean climate change, prehistoric settlements on the continental shelf, ocean law, and safe scientific diving. Flemming is paralysed from the chest down and has used a wheelchair for the past 52 years; one chapter assesses how he has continued to work in rough conditions and at sea, visiting 60 countries since his accident. Flemming's early experience with the Royal Marines Special Boat Service provided the foundation for a scientific research career under water. Intrigued by a report of a sunken city seen from a helicopter, he set out to map the submerged Greek city at Apollonia, near Benghazi, in 1958-59, as a Cambridge undergraduate. Doctoral research on the cause of submergence and uplift of hundreds of coastal Mediterranean ruins was followed by adventures in now-submerged caves from the Ice Ages when the sea level was lower.In 1965, as industry awakened to the potential of seabed exploitation, Flemming journeyed around the world to assess marine technology and forecast future developments for UK industries. This led to participation in the UN Committee on the Law of the Sea and in the design of a Global Ocean Observing System. Flemming later turned to academic research around submerged stratified prehistoric settlements. Advances in seabed mapping now enable marine archaeologists to study and plot numerous sites in the context of the Ice Age terrestrial landscape. This is a multi-disciplinary adventure story that argues that different skills and fields can interact creatively with surprising results. It will be enjoyed by all those interested in the development of underwater archaeology, climate science, and ocean exploration.

The destruction and deposition of metalwork is a widely recognised phenomenon across Bronze Age Europe. Weapons were decommissioned and thrown into rivers; axes were fragmented and piled in hoards; and ornaments were crushed, contorted and placed in certain landscapes. Interpretation of this material is often considered in terms of whether such acts should be considered ritual offerings, or functional acts for storing, scrapping and recycling the metal. This book approaches this debate from a fresh perspective, by focusing on how the metalwork was destroyed and deposited as a means to understand the reasons behind the process. To achieve this, this study draws on experimental archaeology, as well as developing a framework for assessing what can be considered deliberate destruction. Understanding these processes not only helps us to recognise how destruction happened, but also gives us insights into the individuals involved in these practices. Through an examination of metalwork from south-west Britain, it is possible to observe the complexities involved at a localised level in the acts of destruction and deposition, as well as how they were linked to people and places. This case study is used to consider the social role of destruction and deposition more broadly in the Bronze Age, highlighting how it transformed over time and space.

Explores the Irish Mesolithic - the period after the end of the last Ice Age when Ireland was home to hunter-gatherer communities, mostly from about 10,000-6,000 years ago. At this time, Ireland was an island world, with striking similarities and differences to its European neighbours - not least in terms of the terrestrial ecology created by its island status. To understand the communities of hunter-gatherers who lived there, it is essential that we consider the connections established between people and the other beings and materials with which they shared the world and through which they grew into it. Understanding the Mesolithic means paying attention to the animals, plants, spirits and things with which hunting and gathering groups formed kinship relationships and in collaboration with which they experienced life. The book closes with a reflection on hunting and gathering in Ireland today. The overriding aim of the book is to provide a point of entry into the lives of the Irish Mesolithic, to show the different ways in which people have lived on this island, and to show how we might narrate those lives.

This volume provides an ambitious synopsis of the complex, colourful world of textiles in ancient Mediterranean iconography. A wealth of information on ancient textiles is available from depictions such as sculpture, vase painting, figurines, reliefs and mosaics. Commonly represented in clothing, textiles are also present in furnishings and through the processes of textile production. The challenge for anyone analysing ancient iconography is determining how we interpret what we see. As preserved textiles rarely survive in comparable forms, we must consider the extent to which representations of textiles reflect reality, and critically evaluate the sources. Images are not simple replicas or photographs of reality. Instead, iconography draws on select elements from the surrounding world that were recognisable to the ancient audience, and reveal the perceptions, ideologies, and ideas of the society in which they were produced. Through examining the durable evidence, this anthology reveals the ephemeral world of textiles and their integral role in the daily life, cult and economy of the ancient Mediterranean.

This volume brings together data collected from both previously published surveys and new data collected using satellite imagery on the architecture and construction of over 2,400 rural structures in nine different regions of Tripolitania and dating between the 1st c. BC and the 7th c. AD. This first part contextualises the material within the historical background of Tripolitania, previous investigations and methodological foundations, the evidence for pre-Roman architectures and settlement, and the chronology of rural settlement during the period under study based on ceramic evidence. The second part presents quantitative and qualitative analyses of the physical characteristics first of Roman military structures, and then of the main group of buildings under investigation: unfortified and fortified farm buildings. The ways in which different spaces may have been utilised and the spatial relationships between the settlement groups formed by these buildings provide insight into how and why different types of buildings developed in the countryside during between the 1st c.

Britain is internationally renowned for the high quality and exquisite crafting of its later prehistoric grave goods (c. 4000 BC to AD 43). Many of prehistoric Britain's most impressive artefacts have come from graves. Interred with both inhumations and cremations, they provide some of the most durable and well-preserved insights into personal identity and the prehistoric life-course, yet they also speak of the care shown to the dead by the living, and of people’s relationships with 'things'. Objects matter. This book's title is an intentional play on words. These are objects in burials; but they are also goods, material culture, that must be taken seriously. Within it, we outline the results of the first long-term, large-scale investigation into grave goods during this period, which enables a new level of understanding of mortuary practice and material culture throughout this major period of technological innovation and social transformation. Analysis is structured at a series of different scales, ranging from macro-scale patterning across Britain, to regional explorations of continuity and change, to site-specific histories of practice, to micro-scale analysis of specific graves and the individual objects (and people) within them. We bring these different scales of analysis together in the first ever book focusing specifically on objects and death in later prehistoric Britain. Focusing on six key case study regions, the book innovatively synthesises antiquarian reports, research projects and developer funded excavations. At the same time, it also engages with, and develops, a number of recent theoretical trends within archaeology, including personhood, object biography and materiality, ensuring that it will be of relevance right across the discipline. Its subject matter will also resonate with those working in anthropology, sociology, museology and other areas where death, burial and the role of material culture in people’s lives are key contemporary issues.

This book focuses on the introduction of Neolithic extraction practices across Europe through to the Atlantic periphery of Britain and Ireland. The key research questions are when and why were these practices adopted and what role did extraction sites play in Neolithic society. Neolithic mines and quarries have frequently been seen as fulfilling roles linked to the expansion of the Neolithic economy. However, this ignores the fact that many communities chose to selectively dig for certain types of stone in preference to others and why the products from these sites were generally deposited in special places such as wetlands. To address this question, 168 near-global ethnographic studies were analysed to identify common trends in traditional extraction practises to produce robust statistics about their motivations and material signatures. Repeated associations emerged between storied locations, the organisation of extraction practices, long-distance distribution of products, and the material evidence such activities left behind. This suggests that we can now probably identify mythologised/storied sites, seasonality, ritualised extraction, and the use-life of extraction site products. The ethnographic model was tested against data from 223 near-global archaeological extraction sites, which confirmed a similar patterning in both material records. It was used to analyse the social context of 79 Neolithic flint mine and 51 axe quarry excavations in Britain and Ireland and to review their European origins. The evidence that emerges confirms the pivotal role played by Neolithic extraction practices in European Neolithisation and that the interaction of indigenous foragers with migrant miners/farmers was fundamental to the adoption of the new agropastoral lifestyle.

Renowned environmental historian I.G. Simmons synthesises detailed research into the landscape history of the coastal area of Lincolnshire between Boston and Skegness and its hinterland of Tofts, Low Grounds and Fen as far as the Wolds. With many excellent illustrations Simmons chronicles the ways in which this low coast, backed by a wet fen, has been managed to display a set of landscapes which have significant differences that contradict the common terminology of uniformity, calling the area 'flat' or referring to everywhere from Cleethorpes to King's Lynn as 'the fens'. These usually labelled 'flat' areas of East Lincolnshire between Mablethorpe and Boston are in fact a mosaic of subtly different landscapes. They have become that way largely due to the human influences derived from agriculture and industry. Between the beginning of Norman rule and the advent of pumped drainage, a number of significant changes took place. The author has accumulated information from Roman times until the beginnings of fossil-fuel powered drainage, bringing together both scientific data and documentary evidence including medieval and early modern documents from the National Archive, Lincolnshire Archives, Bethlem Hospital and Magdalen College, Oxford, to explore the little-known archives of regional interest.

This volume aims to restore the reputation of Thomas White, who in his time was as well respected as his fellow landscape designers Lancelot 'Capability' Brown and Humphry Repton. By the end of his career, he had produced designs for at least 32 sites across northern England and over 60 in Scotland. These include nationally important designed landscapes in Yorkshire such as Harewood House, Sledmere Hall, Burton Constable Hall, Newby Hall, Mulgrave Castle as well as Raby Castle in Durham, Belle Isle in Cumbria and Brocklesby Hall in Lincolnshire. He has a vital role in the story of how northern English designed landscapes evolved in the 18th century.The book focuses on White's known commissions in England and sheds further light on the work of other designers such as Brown and Repton, who worked on many of the same sites. White set up as an independent designer in 1765, having worked for Brown from 1759, and his style developed over the next thirty years. Never merely a 'follower of Brown', as he is often erroneously described, his designs for plantations in particular were much admired and influenced the later, more informal styles of the picturesque movement. The improvement plans he produced for his clients demonstrate his surveying and artistic skills. These plans were working documents but at the same time works of art in their own right. Over 60 of his beautifully-executed coloured plans survive, which is a testament to the value his clients placed on them. This book makes available for the first time over 90% of the known plans and surveys by White for England. Also included are plans by White's contemporaries, together with later maps, estate surveys and contemporary illustrations to understand which parts of improvement plans were implemented.

A detailed report on the excavation of prehistoric features at Forteviot in eastern Scotland by the University of Glasgow's Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot (SERF) Project. Details include an extensive prehistoric landscape including a Neolithic cremation cemetery, large pit-defined enclosure, early Bronze Age henge monuments, and a Bronze Age dagger-cist burial. The monuments appear to have survived into the early historic period and were modified in the first millennium AD.

A detailed report on excavation of early historic features at Forteviot in eastern Scotland by the University of Glasgow's Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot (SERF) Project. Features include a potential royal palace and early church, with a discussion of their relationship with prehistoric remains. This report also includes a detailed analysis of early medieval sculpture from the Forteviot area.

This memoir is not really about research questions or main conclusions. It tells the story of a boy growing up in Plymouth, Devon, getting excited about archaeology after visits to mainland Greece and Crete, trying to get into Greek archaeology and re-locating northwards into the Balkans, where he spent a career in prehistoric research. The chapters alternate between museum/university experiences and my major research projects. The experiences of working in that part of the world as the Third Balkan War was starting were dramatic and a history-style chapter is devoted to these beginnings. The Balkan prehistoric club in the west is a very small and select group so there is an intrinsic interest about how westerners did their archaeology there and how they interacted with local colleagues. There is also a sense of a ‘colonial relationship’ between westerners knowledgeable about theory and method, with well-stocked libraries and large research grants and easterners with little of the above. On a basic level, the memoir presents stories with implications for east - west relationships that will soon disappear from living memory. The ways that research projects originated and developed are strongly featured and there is a fund of anecdotes about prehistorians living and dead. The publication of this memoir records those fragments of the discipline’s history that are in danger of being lost forever. But my life story is not erased from this account, which is not an anthropological work but, rather, a participant account with a modicum of relevant personal details. The book providing the archaeological results is the publication Forging identities in the prehistory of Old Europe. Dividuals, individuals and communities 7000-3000 BC - a synthesis of academic research in Balkan prehistory. This memoir provides the insider story to the research results.

Winchester’s identity as a royal centre became well established between the ninth and twelfth centuries, closely tied to the significance of the religious communities who lived within and without the city walls. The reach of power of Winchester was felt throughout England and into the Continent through the relationships of the bishops, the power fluctuations of the Norman period, the pursuit of arts and history writing, the reach of the city’s saints, and more. The essays contained in this volume present early medieval Winchester not as a city alone, but a city emmeshed in wider political, social, and cultural movements and, in many cases, providing examples of authority and power that are representative of early medieval England as a whole.

London Bridge lined with houses from end to end was one of the most extraordinary structures ever seen in London. It was home to over 500 people, perched above the rushing waters of the Thames, and was one of the city’s main shopping streets. It is among the most familiar images of London in the past, but little has previously been known about the houses and the people who lived and worked in them. This book uses plentiful newly-discovered evidence, including detailed descriptions of nearly every house, to tell the story of the bridge and its houses and inhabitants. With the new information it is possible to reconstruct the plan of the bridge and houses in the seventeenth century, to trace the history of each house back through rentals and a survey to 1358, revealing the original layout, to date most of the houses which appear in later views, and to show how the houses and their occupants changed during five and half centuries. The book describes what stopped the houses falling into the river, how the houses were gradually enlarged, what their layout was inside, what goods were sold on the bridge and how these changed over time, the extensive rebuilding in 1477-1548 and 1683-96, and the removal of the houses around 1760.There are many new discoveries - about the structure of the bridge, the width of the roadway, the original layout of the houses, how the houses were supported, the size and internal planning of the houses, the quality of their architecture, and the trades practised on the bridge. The book includes five newly-commissioned reconstruction drawings showing what we now know about the bridge and its houses.