The Beaker People: isotopes, mobility and diet in prehistoric Britain presents the results of a major project that sought to address a century-old question about the people who were buried with Beakers a – the distinctive pottery of Continental origin that was current, predominantly in equally distinctive burials, in Britain from around 2450 BC. Who were these people? Were they immigrants and how far did they move around? What did they eat? What was their lifestyle? How do they compare with Britain’s earlier inhabitants and with contemporaries who did not use Beaker pottery? An international team of leading archaeologists and scientists, led by Professor Mike Parker Pearson, was assembled to address these questions.Around 300 skeletons were subjected to isotope analysis to explore patterns of mobility and diet, and 150 new radiocarbon dates were obtained. Dental microwear was examined for 64 individuals to provide further information about the food they had eaten, and new information on the sex and age of 201 people obtained. A comparative study was undertaken of the shape and size of Beaker users’ skulls and those of Neolithic people in the Peak District of England, to examine the long-held claim that there was a switch from long-headed to round-headed people with the appearance of Beakers. Tantalizing evidence for head-binding among Neolithic people was found. The range of objects found in Beaker graves was reviewed.In addition, the Beaker People Project was able to incorporate the results of another project, focusing on Beaker users in north-east Scotland (The Beakers and Bodies Project) along with other recently obtained data, including ancient DNA results. Overall, new light has been shed on 369 people: 333 Beaker and non-Beaker users from the core 2500–1500 BC period, along with 17 from the Neolithic and 19 from after 1500 BC. While the genetic data provide convincing evidence for immigration by Continental Beaker users, the isotopic data indicate a more detailed picture of movements, mostly of fairly short distances within Britain, by the descendants of the first Beaker users. This lavishly illustrated book presents a body of data that will be vital to studies of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain for decades to come.

The Hadrian’s Wall Community Archaeology Project (WallCAP) conducted a series of fieldwork projects along the Hadrian’s Wall corridor between 2019 and 2021. The work focused on sites that were poorly understood or under particular threat and aimed to improve understanding of them so they could be better managed in future. At several sites excavation was followed by conservation and consolidation work. This volume brings together the final reports of these excavations, at seven Roman sites in the Wall corridor. As the sites were spread along the length of the Wall the character and afterlife of the Wall in very different landscape locations could be compared. An assessment of the Vallum at Heddon on the Wall identified how earthwork archaeology survived in a sloped, heavily ploughed landscape. Three excavations investigated the condition of the stone Wall curtain at Port Carlisle, Walltown Crags, and Steel Rigg and Cats Stairs. At each site the Wall builders had responded to the demands of the local terrain and made use of local resources. It is also clear how at each site the Wall had a different post-Roman history. Excavations at the bridging point of the Cam Beck revealed for the first time how the Wall was carried over a ‘minor’ watercourse, and discovered traces of the Turf Wall. Small buildings were also identified just south of the Wall as it approached the bridge. At Corbridge Roman town, excavations on the northern periphery of the settlement demonstrated that from early in its history the most northerly town in Europe was of considerable extent. The area investigated showed that, even at the edge of town, shops lined the roads alongside well-appointed houses with bustling yards. Later on in the Roman period the town contracted behind walls and cremation burials were inserted by the road.Each site is reported on independently, presenting the primary data for each investigation. The volume concludes with a synthetic analysis of what the results of these excavations together reveal about Hadrian’s Wall, considering, amongst other things, construction details and the decay and destruction of the monument in the centuries following Roman occupation.

This third volume in the Material Religion in Antiquity series stems from the First International Congress on the Archaeology of Symbols (ICAS I) that took place in Florence in May 2022. The archaeological process of reconstructing and understanding our past has undergone several reassessments in the last century, producing an equal number of new perspectives and approaches. The recent materiality turn emphasizes the necessity to ground those achievements in order to build fresh avenues of interpretation and reach new boundaries in the study of the human kind and its ecology. Symbols must not be conceived only as allegory but also, and perhaps mainly, as reason (raison d’être) and meaning (culture). They may be considered key elements leading to interpretation, not only in their physical manifestation but by being infused with the gestures, beliefs and intentions of their creators, created in a specific context and with a specific chaîne opératoire.In this volume a variety of case studies is offered, representing disparate ancient cultures in the Mediterranean and central Europe and the Near East. The thread that connects them revolves around the prominence of symbols and allegorical aspects in archaeology, whether they are considered as expressions of iconographic evidence, material culture or ritual ceremonies, seen from a multicultural perspective. This (and subsequent ICAS) volumes, therefore, aims to embrace all the different aspects pertaining to symbols in archaeology in a specific ‘place’, allowing the reader to deepen their knowledge of such a fascinating and multifaceted topic, by looking at it from a multicultural perspective.

This volume collects different case studies of rediscovery of Christian antiquities between 1860-1930 in Spain, in order to stimulate reflections about the impact of these rediscoveries on our culture in a period of great political transition.By turning the light on lesser-known stories on a national horizon, this book gives a strong contribution to the history of Christian archaeology. All articles deal with many topics of the field (museology, cultural heritage protection law, history of religion, field archaeology), and therefore offer a strong interdisciplinary cut. This book is second product of the international online workshop series “Revealing Christian Heritage. Talks on the rediscovery of Christian archaeology between 1860-1930”.

In 2020 and 2021 the Research Group on Storage in Ancient Egypt and Sudan organised two online workshops focusing on earthen storage buildings in ancient Egypt and Nubia. Following these two meetings, the nine contributions of this volume present often unpublished case studies (from the IVth millennium BCE to the Greco-Roman Period), as well as issues and perspectives of current research. They are authored by archaeologists working in Egypt, Sudan and Western Africa as well as architects specialised in earthen architecture. The interdisciplinary approach adopted to investigate storage strategies along the ancient Nile Valley effectively address the subject’s complexity and the socioeconomic issues involved, which not only pertain to the ancient world but are also relevant to modern-day societies. Throughout the volume, functional and technical analysis of the architectural and archaeological remains helps understand how specific layouts, building materials and techniques were employed in the past to create suitable conditions for short-, medium- and long-term storage. Ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological comparisons with West African vernacular traditions are used as a fruitful line of research for better understand of building practices, storage strategies and possible volumes of archaeological remains. Furthermore, extending the scope of the research to other geographical areas shows how different human groups may have used similar responses to overcome similar technical problems. Ancient and traditional practices and know-how, on the other hand, proved effective in a contemporary onion storehouse project in Senegal to find sustainable, low-cost solutions to protection and development of local products.The volume also include the preliminary results of an experimental archaeology project which led to the construction of a mud-brick silo – according to ancient Egyptian techniques – and further ensiling. The issue is highly topical since these ancient earthen facilities offer valuable information for the current debates on sustainable strategies for foodstuff storage.

In the final decades of the twentieth century, the advent of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) offered a revolutionary new perspective that transformed the classical neo-Darwinian, gene-centered study of evolution. In The Architecture of Evolution, Marco Tamborini demonstrates how this radical innovation was made possible by the largely forgotten study of morphology. Despite the key role morphology played in the development of evolutionary biology since the 1940s, the architecture of organisms was excluded from the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. And yet, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 1970s and ’80s, morphologists sought to understand how organisms were built and how organismal forms could be generated and controlled. The generation of organic form was, they believed, essential to understanding the mechanisms of evolution. Tamborini explores how the development of evo-devo and the recent organismal turn in biology involved not only the work of morphologists but those outside the biological community with whom they exchanged their data, knowledge, and practices. Together with architects and engineers, they worked to establish a mathematical and theoretical basis for the study of organic form as a mode of construction, developing and reinterpreting important notions that would play a central role in the development of evolutionary developmental biology in the late 1980s. This book sheds light not only on the interdisciplinary basis for many of the key concepts in current developmental biology but also on contributions to the study of organic form outside the English-speaking world.PRAISE"Marco Tamborini’s book is a much-needed history of morphological thought in the twentieth century. It provides an engaging intellectual journey, leading us through biology, architecture, philosophy, engineering, mathematics, politics, and art. This is a highly original contribution that shows how the science of form emerged from an international and interdisciplinary enterprise." ~Maurizio Esposito, University of Lisbon, Portugal

This volume presents a new reconstruction of the Norwegian Viking-Age ship from Oseberg, dated to 820 AD. In 1987 a full‐scale reconstruction of the ship, was built based on drawings made of the exhibited ship. The reconstruction, Dronningen, capsized and sank during the first test‐sailing, giving rise to many questions, concerning the ships original performance. The purpose of the present work has been to reconstruct the ship’s form and construction anew. In 2012, a new full‐scale reconstruction, Saga Oseberg, was built based on the new reconstruction. The subsequent test‐sailing revealed that the Oseberg Ship was originally technically advanced and seaworthy, and the former skepticism regarding the ship’s sailing abilities can now be disproved.

Martin Hense has been travelling to North Africa and West Asia to excavate and draw for more than 25 years. This book presents his reconstructions and archaeological drawings from various excavations with full colour illustrations. Reconstructing ancient ruins, with detailed knowledge of ancient architecture and building technology, he has become an expert over the years.

In 2016, construction workers in Philadelphia unexpectedly uncovered a long forgotten burial ground. Archaeologists quickly discovered this was the location of the burial ground of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, used as early as 1722. It was thought to have been exhumed and moved in 1859. Months of excavations revealed almost 500 individual burials still remained.This book shares the complex story of the discovery and excavations. It provides backgrounds of the church, Philadelphia, and the religious climate of the time to give context to the thousands of artifacts that were discovered and are presented in their entirety. The numerous coffin handles and plaques link directly back to English production and are embedded with powerful mortuary symbols. Highlighting cultural exchange between colonial America and England, Artifacts of Mourning provides an important record of 18th- and 19th-century funerary culture.

This book is a significant contribution to the field of survey pottery studies, which is not frequently theorised, and could also serve as a guide and provide inspiration to archaeologists designing their own survey projects and methodologies. Landscape archaeology has heavily relied on pedestrian survey as a field method for more than half a century. In most field projects, archaeological ceramics constitute the lion’s share among the finds and the amount of collected sherds is overwhelming. Survey ceramics provide the basis for understanding human activity in a landscape, and sherds serve as convenient chronological markers for the archaeological sites discovered in field projects. However, how this pottery is collected and studied determines the possibilities for using the sherds as a source material. Not only the collection practices, but also the process and practicalities of ceramic analysis are rarely made explicit, even though the archaeological interpretations of human activity in the landscape strongly rely on it. Most contributions in this volume provide an insight in collection, processing and interpretation practices in a specific survey project, and we hope this transparency is inspiring and contributes to a better understanding of surface ceramics as a basis for historical interpretations. Three themes run as a red thread through the contributions in this book: first of all transparency in ceramic collecting, processing and interpretation, secondly, improving diagnosticity, and thirdly, expanding the interpretive potential of survey ceramics. The chapters are geographically oriented towards Greece and Italy, two countries in which archaeological surface survey is widely practised. Chronologically, the contributions range from the Bronze Age to the Medieval period.

The Faroese boat has been developed and adapted to the special sailing conditions around the Faroe Islands with strong currents and sudden gusts. The boat was primarily developed as a rowing boat but could also be powered by sail. It was built in different sizes, but the boatbuilders always had to rely on materials imported from abroad or in addition use driftwood for various boat components. This volume presents the building and use of the Faroese boat. It shows the boat’s great importance to the Faroese society, for fishing and transporting people and goods. The building process, craftsmanship and seamanship are examined in great detail, and the maritime history of the Faroese Islands from the Viking Age and until the 1970’s are presented.

This is a revised second edition of the best-selling book which incorporates new and additional material on the majority of the objects as well as an expanded glossary which will be of interest to both collector and scholar. The first edition was long-listed for the R.L. Shep Award by the Textile Society of America and chosen as one of the twelve best books of the year by the Crafts Council of the UK, both in 2020.

In the 1930s the famous Smithsonian archaeologist Henry B. Collins discovered 2000 year old Eskimo cultures by excavating ancient sites in the Bering Sea region. Since then, archaeologists have pieced together a detailed history of how Eskimos spread east along the arctic coasts of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland to become the region’s Inuit peoples of today. What remained unknown is the origin of the Alaskan proto-Eskimos. Did they develop from tundra hunting peoples of northern Eurasia? from river fishermen of the Amur who learned to hunt sea mammals? or from early maritime peoples of Japan and Korea?Central Asia seemed like an odd place for me to search for ancient Eskimos, but many paths led me to investigate the Bronze and Iron Age cultures of Mongolia ca. 2000-0 BCE. Besides physical and genetic similarities, I was intrigued by links in art and shamanic religion as revealed in Mongolia’s mysterious, unstudied deer stone monuments. Perhaps deer stone art might provide clues about the origin of Eskimo culture and its ancient Asian heritage. This task led me to Mongolia for the decade of anthropological and archaeological studies reported in this book.Full Description

This book is intended to be a groundwork of how to theorise prehistory and archaeology and how to make connectivities between the past and the present. It is divided into four parts. The first part is epistemological. It explains why there must be theoretical investments if past ways of human life are to be understood and explained. This insight is specified to a ladder-model (sensu Hawkes) with conceptual scaffoldings on each step. Stepwise, sets of concepts are introduced. This constitutes a reflective turn for archaeologists by showing how theoretical investments can be justified, substantiated and rejected. The second part makes a specific investment: original historical materialism. It claims that the Neolithic transformation makes humans economic agents. Stepwise, economic agency and its categories must have come to mind to earlier humans once they started to “produce”. This part harbours Marx’s idea that modern economic theories help to explain archaic economic activities. The third part claims that the Anthropocene originates within the Neolithic transformation. A chorus song of Sophocles is taken as an intellectual spike of the early Anthropocene. Crucial qualitative achievements of the Neolithic transformation can be expanded in their quantities without intrinsic limitations. Under modern boundary conditions, such expansions transform into the “Great Acceleration”. If so, the current trajectories of growth have deep roots. Given this ongoing transformation into the Anthropocene, a concept of responsibility becomes unavoidable. This concept grounds the fourth part that asks for ethical principles for a “good” Anthropocene in different fields of policy-making. A focus is laid on adaptation to climatic change. Some ethical building blocks for a second axial age are proposed. The book concludes with reflections upon heterarchical modes of life and upon the lifeworld of practical reasons.

Like Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan thought that Europeans could reach the Far East by sailing West. He aspired to dominion, displaying military prowess, navigational skill, powers of persuasion and unwavering determination. Bettering Columbus, his venture led to the circumnavigation of the world by European seamen, the most audacious in maritime history. He proved his theory possible, dying in the process. 500 years have now passed since Magellan’s voyage. Allen Mawer closely examines the historical sources, charts and eyewitness records and considers afresh what we can know of Magellan and the details of his voyage.

For 70 years powerful countries despatched expeditions to explore the south polar regions. By 1843 they had seen enough to realise that this most remote and impenetrable place offered considerable danger and no strategic or economic benefit. The great nations turned away. In the 1880s Melbourne’s men of science formed a committee to revive interest in Antarctic exploration. They canvassed the colonies and the world in attempts to raise an expedition. Ultimately unsuccessful, they did though inspire the first publicly recorded landing on the Antarctic continent by Henrik Bull and the crew of his whaling expedition. This created a sensation and led to the first overwintering on the Antarctic continent by crewman C.E. Borchgrevink’s expedition. The book outlines early Antarctic exploration and concentrates on Melbourne’s Antarctic Exploration Committee and the voyages of Bull and Borchgrevink.Andrew McConville is a reference and research librarian at the State Library of Victoria. Andrew has a particular interest in the history of 19th century Antarctic exploration.