Olivier Nieuwenhuyse was a remarkable archaeologist whose work has transformed the study of later Neolithic societies in West Asia. He has inspired many colleagues and students in their own pursuit of archaeology. Through the analysis of material culture his aim was to reconstruct social meanings and practices of societies in the deep past. In this volume a series of colleagues and friends pay tribute to the scholarship of Olivier Nieuwenhuyse, who died much too young, and present a series of studies on the archaeology of Late Neolithic societies in West Asia.The volume includes a reflection on Olivier’s career in archaeology (Spoor). There are chapters on the key site of Tell Sabi Abyad, on which Olivier worked for many years, dealing with its buildings (Akkermans and Brüning), its funerary practices (Plug), and the use of bitumen at the site (Connan et al.). The next section on the book focusses on the analysis of tokens (Bennison-Chapman), figurines (Arntz, Düring), and ornaments (Belcher and Croucher), of various sites dating to the Late Neolithic in West Asia. Following this there are studies on the emergence of pottery in West Asia (Bartl, Özbal), the use of ceramic ‘husking trays’ (Balossi Restelli), and the design rules in various prehistoric pottery traditions (Bernbeck and Pollock). Finally, the last chapter presents new data on prehistoric Palmyra (Maqdissi and Ishaq).Colleagues working on Neolithic West Asia will find much of interest in this volume. We hope they will agree that this is a worthy tribute to the remarkable body of scholarship that Olivier Nieuwenhuyse has created.

This book is concerned with the origins, uses and subsequent histories of monuments. It emphasises the time scales illustrated by these structures, and their implications for archaeological research. It is concerned with the archaeology of Western and Northern Europe, with an emphasis on structures in Britain and Ireland, and the period between the Mesolithic and the Viking Age. It begins with two famous groups of monuments and introduces the problem of multiple time scales. It also considers how they influence the display of those sites today – they belong to both the present and the past. Monuments played a role from the moment they were created, but approaches to their archaeology led in opposite directions. They might have been directed to a future that their builders could not control. These structures could be adapted, destroyed, or left to decay once their significance was lost. Another perspective was to claim them as relics of a forgotten past. In that case they had to be reinterpreted.The first part of this book considers the rarity of monumental structures among hunter-gatherers, and the choice of building materials for Neolithic houses and tombs. It emphasises the difference between structures whose erection ended the use of significant places, and those whose histories could extend into the future. It also discusses ‘megalithic astronomy’ and ancient notions of time. Part Two is concerned with the reuse of ancient monuments and asks whether they really were expressions of social memory. Did links with an ‘ancestral past’ have much factual basis? It contrasts developments during the Beaker phase with those of the early medieval period. The development of monumental architecture is compared with the composition of oral literature.

Following its appearance, arguably in Orkney in the 32nd century cal BC, Grooved Ware soon became widespread across Britain and Ireland, seemingly replacing earlier pottery styles and being deposited in contexts as varied as simple pits, passage tombs, ceremonial timber circles and henge monuments. As a result, Grooved Ware lies at the heart of many ongoing debates concerning social and economic developments at the end of the 4th and during the first half of the 3rd millennia cal BC.Stemming from the 2022 Neolithic Studies Group autumn conference, and following on from Cleal and MacSween’s 1999 NSG volume on Grooved Ware, this book presents a series of papers from researchers specializing in Grooved Ware pottery and the British and Irish Neolithic, offering both regional and thematic perspectives on this important ceramic tradition. Chapters cover the development of Grooved Ware in Orkney as well as the timing and nature of its appearance, development, and subsequent demise in different regions of Britain and Ireland. In addition, thematic papers consider what Grooved Ware can contribute to understandings of inter-regional interactions during the earlier 3rd millennium cal BC, the possible meaning of Grooved Ware’s decorative motifs, and the thorny issue of the validity and significance of the various Grooved Ware sub-styles.The book will be of great value not only to archaeologists and students with a specific interest in Grooved Ware pottery but also to those with a more general interest in the development of the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland.

Bradley J. Parker made numerous contributions to the field of archaeology and Assyriology on a broad array of topics spanning six millennia of archaeological history in both ancient Mesopotamia and the Andes. His varied research interests included the archaeology of empires and imperial dynamics, frontiers and borderlands, households and micro-archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, aerial drone mapping, and the politics of archaeology and nationalism. This volume contains a collection of essays from his friends, colleagues and former students that cover three broad themes: household archaeology, frontiers and borderlands, and the archaeology of empire. Our goal is to explore Bradley’s indelible legacy in the field of archaeology and how his work will contribute to academic discourses in the future.

Economic circularity is the ability of a society to reduce waste by recycling, reusing, and repairing raw materials and finished products. This concept has gained momentum in academia, in part due to contemporary environmental concerns. Although the blurry conceptual boundaries of this term are open to a wide array of interpretations, the scholarly community generally perceives circular economy as a convenient umbrella definition that encompasses a vast array of regenerative and preservative processes. Despite the recent surge of interest, economic circularity has not been fully addressed as a macrophenomenon by historical and archaeological studies. The limitations of data and the relatively new formulation of targeted research questions mean that several processes and agents involved in ancient circular economies are still invisible to the eye of modern scholarship. Examples include forms of curation, maintenance, and repair, which must have had an influence on the economic systems of premodern societies but are rarely accounted for. Moreover, the people behind these processes, such as collectors and scavengers, are rarely investigated and poorly understood. Even better-studied mechanisms, like reuse and recycling, are not explored to their full potential within the broader picture of ancient urban economies. This volume stems from a conference held at Moesgaard Museum supported by the Carlsberg Foundation and the Centre for Urban Networks Evolutions (UrbNet) at Aarhus University. To enhance our understanding of circular economic processes, the contributions in this volume expand the framework of the discussion by exploring circular economy over the longue durée and by integrating an interdisciplinary perspective. Furthermore, the volume gives prominence to classes of material, processes, agents, and methodologies generally overlooked or ignored in modern scholarship.

This book casts light on a much neglected phase of the UNESCO world heritage site of Palmyra, namely the period between the fall of the Palmyrene ‘Empire’ (AD 272) and the end of the Umayyad dominion (AD 750). The goal of the book is to fill a substantial hole in modern scholarship - the late antique and early Islamic history of the city still has to be written. In late antiquity Palmyra remained a thriving provincial city whose existence was assured by its newly acquired role of stronghold along the eastern frontier. Palmyra maintained a prominent religious role as one of the earliest bisphoric see in central Syria and in early Islam as the political center of the powerful Banu Kalnb tribe. Post-Roman Palmyra, city and setting, provide the focus of this book. Analysis and publication of evidence for post-Roman housing enables a study of the city’s urban life, including the private residential buildings in the sanctuary of Ba’alshamin. A systematic survey is presented of the archaeological and literary evidence for the religious life of the city in Late Antiquity and Early Islam. The city’s defenses provide another focus. After a discussion of the garrison quartered in Palmyra, Diocletian’s military fortress and the city walls are investigated, with photographic and archaeological evidence used to discuss chronology and building techniques. The book concludes with a synthetic account of archaeological and written material, providing a comprehensive history of the settlement from its origins to the fall of Marwan II in 750 AD.

The volume in hand throws light on historical encounters with troubled pasts in contemporary Dutch and Greek historiography. Contributors, experts in their respective research fields with a wide range of scholarly publications, eschew dominant national accounts, deconstruct top-down narratives, and situate the historical subject(s) at the centre of the analysis. Troubled pasts are the outcome of local, national and international conflicts, of the continuous quest for growth and dominance, of Colonialism and Great Power rivalry, of ideologically-motivated purges, of Genocide, of National Liberation Struggles, and of Civil Wars. They go hand-in-hand with a great deal of human suffering and horrendous atrocities against civilians on ethnic, religious, racial and political grounds. The examination of troubled pasts and their accompanying imagery raise enduring questions: Whose past is remembered? How is the past appropriated and memorialised? Which pasts are at best neglected, at worst silenced - and why? Encounters with Troubled Pasts addresses such issues by reference to Dutch colonialism in the New World and South East Asia, the Greek campaign in Asia Minor, the Shoah and its aftermath in Greece and the Netherlands, the Greek Civil War of the 1940s, Transitional Justice in Post-Soviet Russia and the Massacre of Srebrenica. It will be of interest to postgraduate students and academics working on Colonialism, the Shoah, modern Dutch and Greek History, Memory and on Oral History.

Writing does not begin and end with the encoding of an idea into a group of symbols. It is practised by people who have learnt its principles and acquired the tools and skills for doing it, in a particular context that affects what they do and how they do it. Nor are these practices static, as those involved exploit opportunities to adapt old features and develop new ones. The act of writing then has tangible and visible consequences not only for the writers but also for those encountering what has been produced, whether they can read its content or not – with potential for a wider social visibility that can in turn affect the success and longevity of the writing system itself.With a focus on the syllabic systems of the Bronze Age Aegean, this book attempts to bring together different perspectives to create an innovative interdisciplinary outlook on what is involved in writing: from structuralist views of writing as systems of signs with their linguistic values, to archaeological and anthropological approaches to writing as a socially grounded practice. The main chapters focus on the concepts of script adoption and adaptation; different methods of logographic writing; and the vitality of writing traditions, with repercussions for the modern world.Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) is a project funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 677758), and based in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge.

Religious heritage has long been within the scope of academia, but very little research has been conducted on the heritagization of Catholic monasteries. This is remarkable considering the longstanding historical presence and social impact of these institutes that, in recent times, have also become well-visited spiritual centers and much-cherished heritage objects. This book addresses this lacuna. It does so through examining the heritagization process of De Heilige Driehoek (The Holy Triangle), a religious site comprised of three living monasteries in the south of the Netherlands. Ever since the turn of the millennium, the monastic communities living there have increasingly experienced the involvement of heritage groups. In this dynamic, the distinctive religious tradition of the monastics has led to a distinctive heritage perception of the area; one in which the spiritual and historical values of this tradition are recognized. However, as these values are translated into a secular heritage discourse, the question arises how this translation relates to the self-understanding and needs of the monastics. The aim of this book is to conceptualize through a historical lens the evolving and differing ways in which the different parties involved envision the meaning, potential, and nature of the monasteries. This study shows the struggle of heritage groups with creating a compelling narrative for their intended audiences and the often problematic impact this has on religious communities. In doing so, it offers a new perspective on the complicated relationship between religion and heritage

Now hard to believe, Eilean Donan Castle was once one of the largest castles in the west Highlands, known to have featured seven towers, the remains of which lie buried on the island. This book provides a refreshed view of the lost medieval guise of the castle, of its 13th-century origins and form, and of who was responsible for building it, allowing the castle to be positioned accurately in the complex dynamics of powerholding and display of the earls of Ross and associated militarised kindreds of the west Highlands during six centuries of change up to the castle’s destruction in 1719. A new history and the details of the below-ground archaeology allow us to see the lost medieval castle in our mind’s eye 500 years after it vanished. Focusing on the wealth of archaeological material unearthed during the campaign shows the castle hosted master craftspeople including goldsmiths, shipwrights and hereditary swordsmiths. Exquisite personal items, decorative mail armour and weapons, musical instruments, gaming pieces, imported pottery and animal bones bring the castle and its inhabitants back to life.

“What Does This Have to Do with Archaeology?” is a collection of essays published on the occasion of Reinhard Bernbeck’s 65th birthday. The distinguished archaeologist Reinhard Bernbeck from the Institute of Near Eastern Archaeology at Freie Universität Berlin is an internationally highly esteemed colleague. This commemorative volume (Festschrift) reflects his great influence on many different areas of archaeological research from the Neolithic in Central Asia to contemporary archaeology in Europe. The essays are written by an international circle of colleagues who contributed scientific papers, photographs, and personal memories of joint research and scientific exchange with Reinhard Bernbeck. The book covers a wide range of subjects, from analytical discussions on ethnology, spatial theory, and digital archaeology to more practical considerations of research practices related to fieldwork, data management, and alternative modes of archaeological writing. Case studies provide insights into new investigations and re-interpretations of ancient material culture of Southwest and Central Asia. Other contributions address the political use of archaeology in the present, as well as the heritage management and the study of the most recent past.

During the roughly hundred years (ca. 1225 – 1125 BCE) that the Middle Assyrian dunnu at Tell Sabi Abyad was in operation, some forty-nine individuals were interred in graves of a striking diversity. In this book their burial type, location, orientation, position, grave goods and osteological data are analysed in order to generate new insights on Middle Assyrian society. Most graves appear to have been inhumation graves dug into abandoned spaces in and around the settlement. Men, women, and children were placed in mudbrick-lined cists, unlined pits, pre-existing architecture, and jars. Burial practices similar to those at Tell Sabi Abyad are found at many other Middle Assyrian sites, and suggest they were part of an overarching Middle Assyrian funerary repertoire. At the same time, Tell Sabi Abyad also contained cremation graves – a burial practice that is at odds with Mesopotamian views of the afterlife. These may belong to (Hurrian) deportees that chose to adhere to the funerary traditions of their homelands. The cremated remains were deposited in jars that were subsequently buried in the ground or buried at the place of the funeral pyre. While almost all graves contained some form of grave goods – usually consisting of items of bodily adornment and ceramic bowls placed close to the head and hands – the two graves with the most grave goods were both cremation graves. Their inventories contained sumptuous items of Middle Assyrian style and iconography, suggesting people of non-Assyrian backgrounds were just as capable of socio-economic success in Assyrian society.

Excavations between 2016–2018 revealed a series of structures that were re-organised and rebuilt over time, which culminated in a stone-built winged corridor villa in the mid to late 4th century AD. Wings were added to the buildings and a portico at the front opened out onto a courtyard. The outer courtyard was flanked by ancillary buildings, one of which contained a hypocaust and another a small bath suite. Finds included a rare copper alloy figurative lamp with probable foreign origins, a lion mask and a range of pottery, glass worked stone and bone. Environmental remains indicate a mixed arable and pastoral agricultural economy that supported its inhabitants and may have produced a surplus. Wood for fuel and other purposes was obtained from surrounding hedges and copses.

Despite extensive archaeological investigations in Norwich over many decades, its Middle Saxon origins as Norvic/Northwic remain obscure and elusive, and its Anglo-Scandinavian aspects have seen relatively little recognition until recently. This report focuses on five excavations in the historic core of the settlement. Lying on either side of the River Wensum, linked by a crossing, they revealed archaeological remains of the 7th to 11th centuries. The excavations were significant in revealing in-situ archaeological features of Middle Saxon date, along with a range of contemporary finds including a dispersed ‘coin hoard’ of the late 7th or early 8th century, sufficient to add weight to the hypothesis of an early trading centre.Triggered by the Danish invasion of East Anglia of AD 865, a burh to the north of the river enclosed the earlier mercantile centre and its river crossing during the early 10th century. Sites further south lay within Conesford – again, an area with Middle Saxon origins. It formed part of Norwich’s second burh which was enclosed in the 10th or early 11th century. Much of the archaeological evidence finds parallels at other Anglo-Scandinavian centres of the period. Of particular note are the different techniques of building construction exhibited on either side of the river, including sunken-floored buildings of urban form, one of which held the remains of a fishing net.This new analysis provides the opportunity to review the pre-Norman settlement at Norwich and its relationship to the river, trade and overseas contacts, agricultural activity and the fishing industry.

People and spaces have always been connected by routes: paths, trails, roads – on land, on water and sometimes even through the air, over hill and dale as well as over wooden planks, pavement and asphalt. Humans and animals followed them. The routes directed the circulation of raw materials and goods. They determined the paths on which humans fled from misery and danger, and they constituted the physical and imagined veins of networks between communities. All these cultural and biological connectivities are the building blocks of reshaping past (and present) societies.In this booklet – the second in the booklet series of the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS at Kiel University – we uncover the roots of these routes: From the earliest stages of the Stone Age to the present day, there have been well-defined routes, which enabled the exchange of things, practices and knowledge between people. Many of these ancient routes are not only still visible today, but even continue to operate: from the Silk Roads spanning the continents to the local routes of the Ox Trail in Schleswig-Holstein, from the waterways of Mesopotamia and the river worlds of the forest zone to the spiritual routes of philosophical contemplation. Moreover, isolation and disruptions of formerly established routes, for example in the Viking diaspora, have also proven to be directional for cultural developments. In a kaleidoscope of perspectives, the roles of landscape and climate are examined. Special attention is given to those routes along which objects, rituals, and therefore also cultural practices were transported. Religious rituals, knowledge, even philosophical insights are shown to have their roots in movement along routes.These and the many other topics in this booklet illustrate to what extent the development of human societies is determined by the routes through which they are connected – or not connected. Modern narratives of a limitless, openly accessible world, grounded in an urban-industrialised experience (or agenda), can get cracks if we look deep enough into the past. It is the paths, the very concrete connections in a material as well as a spiritual sense that influence human lives, their existence and their development. Communication and dialogue along the routes and networks must be maintained, as they were and are the guarantors for a good coexistence of humans in this world.

This monograph comprises the final publication of a study supported by the British Institute of Persian Studies and undertaken by Seth Priestman and Derek Kennet at the University of Durham. The work presents and analyses an assemblage of just under 17,000 sherds of pottery and associated paper archives resulting from one of the largest and most comprehensive surveys ever undertaken on the historic archaeology of southern Iran. The survey was undertaken by Andrew George Williamson (1945–1975), a doctoral student at Oxford University between 1968 and 1971, at a time of great progress and rapid advance in the archaeological exploration of Iran. The monograph provides new archaeological evidence on the long-term development of settlement in Southern Iran, in particular the coastal region, from the Sasanian period to around the 17th century. The work provides new insights into regional settlement patterns and changing ceramic distribution, trade and use. A large amount of primary data is presented covering an extensive area from Minab to Bushehr along the coast and inland as far as Sirjan. This includes information on a number of previously undocumented archaeological sites, as well as a detailed description and analysis of the ceramic finds, which underpin the settlement evidence and provide a wider source of reference. By collecting carefully controlled archaeological evidence related to the size, distribution and period of occupation of urban and rural settlements distributed across southern Iran, Williamson aimed to reconstruct the broader historical development of the region. Due to his early death the work was never completed. The key aims of the authors of this volume were to do justice to Williamson’s remarkable vision and efforts on the one hand, and at the same time to bring this important new evidence to ongoing discussions about the development of southern Iran through the Sasanian and Islamic periods.