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This book is the first systematic collection and discussion of dwellings in the Umayyad 'cities' (mad¿¿in) and 'palaces' (qü¿r) of Bil¿d al-Sh¿m. Giuseppe Labisi offers an overview of the apartments within and identifies the architectural models that inspired Umayyad dwellings. This study also allows the precise identification of the origin of pre-Islamic dwelling models and their reinterpretation in Umayyad domestic architecture. Through classification, the author has been able to group the apartments of qü¿r chronologically by the reigns of the Umayyad caliphs. The identification of the dictates of Islamic domestic tradition and the characteristics of early Islamic Arabia and Late Antique houses offer original insight and allow us to situate the Umayyad residences of Bil¿d al-Sh¿m in their wider cultural context. Additionally, Umayyad dwellings have been classified and presented in a rich catalogue as an appendix within the text.

En este libro se presentan y discuten resultados de estudios sobre diagénesis ósea en restos humanos y de mamíferos grandes, recuperados en una región subtropical del sur de Sudamérica: el centro-este de Argentina. Tales estudios se llevaron a cabo desde la perspectiva teórico-metodológica de la tafonomía regional, cuyo objetivo es el reconocimiento de espacios dentro de los cuales hay mayores probabilidades de depositación, enterramiento y preservación de huesos. En este marco, un objetivo central fue especificar las condiciones que producen tasas variables de destrucción del registro óseo, así como identificar áreas con potencial de preservación diferencial de huesos. Para ello, se construyeron modelos espaciales predictivos basados en las propiedades de los suelos, mediante el uso de Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG). Estos modelos fueron luego contrastados con información empírica obtenida de análisis específicos realizados sobre huesos recuperados en sitios arqueológicos del área.This book presents and discusses the results of studies on bone diagenesis in human and large mammal remains, recovered in a subtropical region of southern South America: the central-eastern area of Argentina.

This study examines the origins of complex society in the Maya Lowlands during the Middle Preclassic period. Excavations at Cahal Pech - a mid-sized Maya settlement in the Belize River Valley - revealed complex architectural sequences over a 600-year developmental period, which spans the time of the earliest permanent villages in the area and the emergence of institutionalized hierarchy characteristic of later Maya civilization. The author uses spatial analysis to investigate artifact distribution patterns related to architectural change and marshals a diverse dataset to support a network framework for understanding developing complexity. This new theoretical framing expands on studies of long-distance exchange to examine how households and communities could gain advantage by participating in interaction networks, and how the positioning of some entities in networks could have produced socioeconomic inequalities that became entrenched through time.

How did the 'Fall of the Roman Empire' change social and economic networks in eastern Gaul, and how did new 'barbarian' political frontiers shape those changes? Synthesising historical and archaeological approaches, this interdisciplinary study combines text-based prosopography with distribution analysis of ceramics and 'pseudo-imperial' coins in Burgundy and beyond. The study reveals that the frontiers of the second Burgundian kingdom (5th-6th centuries) curtailed traditional movements along one of Europe's key riverine corridors and reshaped, temporarily, the mental geographies imagined by local Gallo-Romans, until Merovingian princes conquered the region. The book includes the most thorough assessment to date of the distribution of Burgundian coins found across France. Illuminating the Burgundian kingdom's internal dynamics and its foreign relations, this assessment revises current understandings of the circulation of gold money across sixth-century Gaul, correcting over-generalisations that can obscure the importance of political frontiers at the end of antiquity.

In the summer of 2000 archaeological excavations on the periphery of the Roman 'small town' at Worcester revealed extensive evidence for timber-framed buildings, probably representing the lower status homes of some of the settlement's inhabitants. Major changes during the later Roman period led to much of the site being levelled and a series of gravel and cobbled surfaces being laid out. Several new structures were then built in this area, including a substantial post-built rectangular building, together defining a courtyard associated with a number of hearths, thought to be part of a smithy complex. It may even have formed one element of a wider 'light industrial' zone of the settlement, with evidence for pottery production and other metalworking in the vicinity. This volume presents the results of this work, setting it in the context of increasing archaeological investigation of Roman Worcester, which together is transforming our understanding of the settlement.

The Resilience of the Roman Empire discusses the relationship between population and regional development in the Roman world from the perspective of archaeology. By adapting a comparative approach, the focus of the volume lies on exploring the various ways in which regional communities actively responded to population growth or decline in order to keep going on the land available to them. The starting point of the theoretical framework for the case studies is the agricultural intensification models developed by Thomas Malthus and Ester Boserup. In order to advance the debate on the validity of these models for identifying the societal and economic pathways of the Roman world, the contributors incorporate the concepts of resilience and diversity into their approach, and shift attention from the longue-durée to how people managed to sustain themselves over shorter periods of time. The aim of the volume is not to discard the theories of Malthus and Boserup, but rather to deconstruct overly strict Malthusian or Boserupian scenarios, and as such introduce novel and more layered ways of thinking by exploring resilience and variability in human responses to population growth/decline in the Roman world.

Medieval cetacean (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) exploitation has frequently been connected to various medieval societies, including the Basques, Norse, Normans, and Flemish. Primarily for the ninth to the twelfth centuries AD, it has been argued that the symbolic significance of cetaceans surpassed their utilitarian value and that their consumption was restricted to the social elite. The extent to which active whaling was practised remains unclear. The identification of zooarchaeological cetacean fragments to the species level is hard and as a result they are frequently merely identified as 'whale', resulting in a poor understanding of human-cetacean interaction in the past. Zooarchaeological research as part of this study has revealed that medieval cetacean exploitation was widespread and especially the harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena), common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), and the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) were frequently targeted. The exploitation additionally seems to have often been restricted to the social elite.

In a number of significant sites of the vast ancient pasturelands of the Old World, generations of wandering shepherds have left their testimony in the form of graffiti drafted on the rocks, sometimes in their tens of thousands, over a period of hundreds of years from ancient to modern times. The phenomenon is a conspicuous one, and has considerable significance for two reasons. On the one hand, the study of such pastoral graffiti may convey fresh ethnoarchaeological information as to the circumstances of the pastoral activities and the pastoral economy of the past. On the other hand, these signs, which can be often fully alphabetic as well as drawing upon ancient symbolic repertoires, can be of some aid in the interpretation of rock art as a whole genre of human expression, and projected back, in their significance and their modes of appearance, the earliest times of prehistory.

Este libro presenta la investigacio¿n sobre la explotacio¿n alimenticia y tecnolo¿gica de restos de artiodäctilos, Hippocamelus bisulcus (huemul) y Lama guanicoe (guanaco) provenientes de contextos arqueolo¿gicos heteroge¿neos del Holoceno medio y tardi¿o de Fuego-Patagonia en Chile. Anälisis especi¿ficos arqueozoolo¿gicos y tecnolo¿gicos entregan como resultado las diferentes etapas vinculadas al procesamiento de estas dos especies desde la desarticulacio¿n hasta la fracturacio¿n de huesos largos y falanges para la obtencio¿n de me¿dula como recurso alimenticio. Resultados fracturas de huesos largos permitieron vincular patrones de desbaste para la obtencio¿n de soportes y posteriores procesos tecnolo¿gicos para la confeccio¿n de una importante diversidad de artefactos o¿seos. Los anälisis permitieron determinar procesos tecnolo¿gicos para el tratamiento de los huesos, aplicados indistintamente a una u otra especie para la elaboracio¿n de la industria o¿sea, complementando de esta manera un estudio integral y la proposicio¿n de cadenas operativas globales de tratamiento por parte de grupos cazadores-recolectores en Fuego-Patagonia. This book presents research on the dietary and technological exploitation of the remains of artiodactyls, Hippocamelus bisulcus (huemul) and Lama guanicoe (guanaco) from the heterogeneous archaeological contexts of the Middle and Late Holocene in Chile. Specific archaeozoological and technological analyses demonstrate the different stages linked to the processing of these two species from disarticulation to the fracture of long bones and phalanges to obtain marrow as a food resource. Results of long bone fractures allowed us to link patterns of grinding to obtain supports and subsequent technological processes for the manufacture of a wide variety of bone artifacts. The analyses made it possible to determine technological processes for the treatment of bones, applied indifferently to one species or another for the elaboration of the bone industry, thus complementing a comprehensive study and the proposal of global operational treatment chains by hunter-gatherer groups in Fuego Patagonia.

Drawn and Written in Stone explores the religious history of the highest part of the Tibetan Plateau through its rock art and inscriptions. It is focused on facsimiles of ritual and ceremonial monuments carved and painted on stone surfaces and rock inscriptions in the Tibetan language, vital archaeological and historical materials for appraising the development of religion in Tibet, ca. 100 BCE to 1400 CE. By probing the complexion of figures and letters in stone, this work considers how early cult traditions contributed to the establishment of Tibetan Buddhism and a rival faith known as Yungdrung Bon. Outside of the Indian cultural context, relatively little has been written about the historical antecedents of these popular Tibetan religions for a want of sources. This monograph helps remedy this large gap in Tibetan studies by drawing upon the author's surveys of rock art and rock inscriptions conducted in upmost Tibet between 1995 and 2013.

El presente trabajo aborda el estudio de la figura del servidor del ka durante el periodo cronológico del Reino Antiguo. Por medio de una amplia selección de fuentes se emprende la reconstrucción de las principales características que definieron este título ahondando en sus funciones específicas y en los contextos en los cuales las ejercieron. El carácter de la documentación nos ha impuesto un enfoque iconográfico y de análisis textual y arqueológico que combinado ha permitido obtener el máximo rendimiento posible a la evidencia disponible. Con ello, el servidor del ka se revela como una figura fundamental en la implementación de la religión funeraria del Reino Antiguo. Su papel principal fue efectuar el culto debido a los difuntos particulares garantizando su bienestar a través de la presentación de ofrendas. Pese a ser este su carácter primario, su posición como un miembro del grupo de parentesco del propietario le sitúa, además, como una parte activa en la gestión de las propiedades del difunto con el objetivo de garantizar los productos necesarios para el culto funerario. This book examines the figure of the ka-servant during the chronological period of the Old Kingdom (Third to Sixth Dynasties).

Over 40,000 lethal bronze weapons were discovered with thousands of terracotta warriors in the tomb complex of the Qin First Emperor (259-210 BC). This book carries out the first systematic and comprehensive study on these weapons to investigate the mass production and labour organisation in early imperial China. The research draws upon extensive measurements, typological analysis and related statistical treatment, as well as a study of the spatial distribution of the bronze weapons. A combination of metrical and spatial data is used to assess the degree of standardisation of the weapons' production, and to evaluate the spatial patterns in the array of the Terracotta Army. This provides further information about the labour organisation behind the production, transportation and placement of weapons as they were moved from the workshop and/or arsenal to the funeral pits. Integrating these insights with inscriptions, tool marks, and chemical analysis, this book fills a gap in the study of mass production, the behaviour of craftspeople, and related imperial logistical organisation in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC), marking the most crucial early stage in Chinese political unification.

El paisaje urbano maya: del Preclásico al Virreinato lleva a cabo una reflexión en torno a ese término en el ámbito de la cultura maya. El volumen se aproxima desde diferentes perspectivas: urbano, contextual, arquitectónico e iconográfico, es decir, todos aquellos aspectos que inciden en la configuración del entorno en el que las diferentes comunidades mayas se desarrollaron. Las contribuciones ofrecen nuevas interpretaciones sobre el funcionamiento urbano y las dinámicas cotidianas que en muchos de ellos ocurrieron desde el preclásico tardío, a lo largo del clásico y hasta época colonial. Esa mezcla entre versiones actualizadas de espacios clásicos en la bibliografía y nuevos espacios hasta la fecha desconocidos otorga al libro un valor importante que permite transformarse en referencia para colegas y estudiantes, tanto del ámbito de la cultura maya, como de aquellos que se interesan por el análisis del paisaje cultural como simbiosis entre lo natural y la acción humana como binomio a lo largo del tiempo y del espacio.This series of essays reflects on the concept of the Maya Cultural Landscape, using, amongst other things, the archaeological record, urban and architectural models, and the study of iconography.

Chadwell St Mary is a village in the unitary authority of Thurrock, in southern Essex. This part of the county contains a high proportion of prehistoric settlement. This volume describes the archaeological excavation of a site to the east of Chadwell St Mary and the late Bronze Age and Anglo-Saxon settlements that were recorded there. The Bronze Age settlement contains a ringwork or 'Springfield style enclosure', relatively rare sites with a restricted geographical distribution, and is significant because of its proximity to the similar site at Mucking. This volume examines the function of such enclosures, their significance in the landscape of southern Essex, and looks, in general, at our current understanding of the utilisation of the Bronze Age landscape. The small Anglo-Saxon settlement is of significance due to its potential relationship with the larger contemporary settlement at Mucking. The book examines Anglo-Saxon structures and settlement form and layout.

Stories from the Edge identifies a methodology to illuminate the early medieval history of places that lack the compelling evidence to be included in national surveys of the period. It demonstrates that even in seemingly unpromising places something can be said about the people of the period. In landscape terms it is a study of the little world, the local, the manorial complex with its church and burial place, a micro-topography, investigating the construction of social memory. Through this we see the way the early medieval landscape was perceived and how people engaged with it in a creative and imaginative series of responses. Their past and present were negotiated and expressed through the landscape. It is about stories and storytelling, about the creation of memory, the invention of home, spirituality and social hierarchy. This study re-tells some of those stories and recaptures the early medieval sense of place in Pirehill. Above all though, this is an account of living in a mutable landscape and the stories people once told there.

Inspired by a session held at the EAA conference in Vilnius in 2016, The Life Biography of Artefacts and Ritual Practice focuses on creating biographies from material culture as a means of understanding the relationship between the life of an artefact, the temporality of ritual practices and an object's final deposition. The temporal and geographic scope of these chapters range from Mesolithic Scandinavia, Neolithic practices found across Eastern, Central, Northern and Western Europe and stretches into the Eneolithic, Copper Age and early Bronze Age of central Europe. This volume explores the idea that one can create a narrative of an artefacts' life-biography by engaging various scientific methods and theoretical approaches. With a foreword by Joshua Pollard.

Gold studies on the Indian Ocean- West Philippine/ South China Sea world system have tended to focus on global and often homogenous patterns in the fields of archaeology and history. However, there is increasing interest in pursuing the gold studies by starting from the putative 'peripheries' from where gold nuggets were mined in crude tunnels or panned in streams. Remote Sensing the Margins of the Gold Trade shows how Igorot societies negotiated their peripherality in the expansive porcelain-for-gold exchange system that was creeping onto their shores. The research looks at how the Igorot miners practiced their agency through their participation in tabu-tabuans or evanescent market encounter at the coastal trading centers. The findings are based on multiscalar and multidisciplinary analyses using regional GIS data, high resolution multispectral satellite remote sensing data, ethnographic data, primary and secondary written historical data, archival maps and images, oral tradition data, and archaeological data on the Early Historical to Historical period.

The Edge of Europe addresses the significance of Romanian WWI sites as places of remembrance and heritage. By measuring the case of Maramures against national and international heritage standards the work demonstrates that the Prislop Pass places of war hold heritage value both in terms of physical preservation and in terms of mapping the memorial-historical record. As well as providing the first ever gazetteer and survey of WWI sites on the Eastern Front, Roman's research suggests a model of conflictual landscape for approaching aspects of previously unexplored material culture of war and a tool kit for the assessment of unrecognised heritage.

Oleksandr Shelekhan comprehensively examines Scythian bladed weapons belonging to farmer tribes who lived in the East European Forest-Steppe from the 7th century to between the 4th and early 3rd centuries BC. The analysis demonstrates a detailed typological and chronological distribution, showing distinctive tendencies of adoption and dissemination of the different weapon types across the period and the region. The author uses this evidence to produce a social and historical reconstruction of Scythian culture. Swords and daggers found in burials are connected with certain sex and age groups. The correlation of swords and daggers with other prestigious artefacts and ritual features indicate the high social status of a majority of swordsmen. The Scythians were high ranking amongst the social structure of farmer tribes, and the Forest-Steppe region was included in the military-political structure of Great Scythia during the Early Iron Age.

La domus del Mitreo a Tarquinia presenta i risultati della ricerca archeologica a Tarquinia dal 2016 al 2018. Lo scavo di un grande complesso ha fornito documentazione della Tarquinia romana tra il III secolo a.C. e la tarda antichità. Chiodi votivi inscritti in latino e una fontana con un serbatoio d'acqua nascosto nelle sue pareti sono caratteristiche originali di questo edificio, da cui è venuta alla luce anche una statua di Mitra. I risultati mostrano due fasi principali: una nel II secolo a.C. e un'altra in età augustea. Anche le fasi finali sono importanti: nel IV secolo si verificò un crollo e l'area fu rialzata e livellata quasi ovunque e infine abbandonata nel VII secolo.La domus del Mitreo a Tarquinia presents the results of archaeological research in Tarquinia from 2016 to 2018. The excavation of a large complex provided us with rich documentation of Roman Tarquinia between the 3rd century BCE and Late Antiquity. Votive nails inscribed in Latin and a fountain with a water reservoir concealed in its walls are original features of this building, from which a statue of Mithras also came to light. The results show two main phases: one in the 2nd century BCE and another in the Augustan Age. The final phases are also important: in the 4th century a collapse occurred and the area was raised and flattened almost everywhere and finally abandoned in the 7th century.

The village of Exning in the most westerly part of Suffolk is a small settlement appended to the north-west of the larger town of Newmarket. Despite its modern inferiority to Newmarket, it is understood to have been an important location in the Anglo-Saxon period. Statements in the Liber Eliensis or 'Book of Ely' suggest that St Æthelthryth, or Etheldreda, the daughter of King Anna of East Anglia, who would become Abbess of Ely, was born here. This volume describes the archaeological excavation of the site and the 7th century Anglo-Saxon cemetery that was recorded here. Grave goods present with several of the burials in the cemetery were indicative of high status. Of further note is the similarity of the richest grave at this site with a grave recorded at a cemetery on the Isle of Ely which is considered to have had links with the religious community there.

This book examines the archaeological investigations undertaken between 1979 and 2009 on the wreck of the Stirling Castle a 70-gun third-rate ship of the line, lost on the Goodwin Sands, Kent during the Great Storm of 1703. Included is a history of the warship, a detailed account of archaeological investigations undertaken and the environmental factors impacting the seabed remains. A review of the ship’s construction draws on records of structure remaining on the seabed and recovered material. The artefact collection is considered by material and type. Specialist analysis has enabled greater understanding of ship fittings, weapons, navigation equipment, medical artefacts, food preparation and consumption, clothing and apparel, and life onboard. The volume demonstrates the value of studying dispersed archives from shipwreck excavations and their potential to add considerably to maritime history and archaeology. In this case the examined archaeological records and artefacts from the Stirling Castle offer a compelling insight into the maritime world of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from a range of perspectives. 

Este libro propone una forma de estudiar la historia de los modos de vida en paisajes mineros desde una perspectiva histórica-arqueológica, más precisamente, desde el análisis de la documentación histórica disponible y la materialidad sociocultural recuperada en sitios arqueológicos mineros del norte de la provincia de Mendoza, en el centro oeste de Argentina. Especialmente, el estudio aborda los procesos de transformaciones y transiciones generadas en los sistemas de trabajo y modos de vida ocurridos en contextos mineros en la larga duración (siglos XVII al XX inclusive). Este trabajo realiza una descripción densa de las particularidades sociohistóricas y ambientales que configuraron a las labores mineras del área de estudio, identificando los sistemas tecnológicos y métodos de trabajo, la construcción del espacio doméstico-productivo y el impacto socioambiental que caracteriza a estas actividades mineras.This book studies the way of life in mining landscapes from a historical-archaeological perspective, analysing the available historical documentation and material culture recovered from mining archaeological sites in the north of Mendoza, in central western Argentina.  

This archaeological and art-historical study is woven around rock art and ancient metallic articles attributed to Tibet. The silver bowls, gold finial, and copper alloy spouted jars and trapezoidal plaques featured are assigned to the Iron Age and Protohistoric period. These rare objects are adorned with zoomorphic subjects mimicking those found in rock art and embody an artistic zeitgeist widely diffused in Central Eurasia in Late Prehistory. Diverse sources of inspiration and technological capability are revealed in these objects and rock art, shedding light on their transcultural dimension. The archaeological and aesthetic materials in this work prefigure the Tibetan cosmopolitanism of early historic times promoted through the spread of Buddhist ideas, art and craft from abroad. The metallic articles and petroglyphs of this study are markers of relationships between Tibet and her neighbours. These transactions enabled a fusion of Tibetan innovation and foreign inventiveness, a synthesis of disparate ideas, aesthetics and technologies in the objects and rock art presented.

The Christian cultural heritage of north Africa is ancient and rich, but at risk after recent political events. The Christian, Coptic heritage of Egypt remains poorly studied from the perspective of heritage management and is also at risk from a number of factors. Using first-hand study and analysis based upon original fieldwork, Egypt's Christian Heritage offers an assessment to the risks facing Coptic monuments in Egypt today. It does this by situating Egyptian heritage policy within the English framework, and it establishes theoretical approaches to value, significance, meaning, and interpretation in Egyptian heritage within a wider global framework. The research is based on the analysis of three markedly different Egyptian Christian Coptic sites, each with their own unique management issues. This book offers a series of solutions and ideas to preserve, manage and interpret this unique material culture and to emphasise community solutions as being the most viable and sustainable approaches, whilst taking into account the varied levels of significance of these monuments.

This volume presents the finds from an Early Bronze Age necropolis in the Jüna Morava Basin in the heart of the Balkans holding exclusively incinerated deceased. A total of 21 deceased were registered in the same number of graves, distributed in three segments. The remains of the deceased, along with grave goods, were covered by a small circular stone construction (c. 1 m) and then with a bigger circular stone structure between 1.5 and 3 m. The grave goods comprised fragmented or completely preserved vessels of which ember containers were the most specific. Besides a traditional archaeological approach to the topic, such as studies of necropolis architecture, burial rites, grave goods, and absolute dates, the book contains two analytical reports which approach the topic from a multidisciplinary perpspective. The first one (Filipovi¿, Filatova) analyses the remains of wood from the pyre and the second one (Gaji¿ et al.) deals with the physical-chemical composition of pottery from the necropolis.

En momentos de incremento de los gobiernos de extrema derecha en todo el mundo, la emergencia de regímenes autoritarios es, de nuevo, un tema de actualidad. La arqueología tiene mucho que decir a este respecto, dado que se adentra en los cimientos ideológicos y materiales de las formaciones políticas. Qué caracteriza a un régimen dictatorial, cuáles son los factores estructurales que los permiten emerger y consolidarse y cómo mantienen el poder y el control sobre la población son algunas de las cuestiones principales consideradas en este volumen desde un punto de vista arqueológico. Este volumen recoge contribuciones de ocho países distintos de Latinoamérica y Europa que aplican distintas metodologías arqueológicas sobre casos de estudio claves para analizar los regímenes dictatoriales del siglo XX. En el trasfondo, el volumen discute en profundidad las posibilidades, límites y retos de una arqueología de la dictadura tanto como metodología de análisis del pasado contemporáneo y como forma de entender mejor nuestro presente.Written during a time of increasingly extreme right politics across the globe, the emergence of authoritarian regimes is once again a relevant and pressing issue. This volume gathers contributions from eight different Latin American and European countries which apply different archaeological methodologies on key case studies to confront dictatorial regimes of the 20th century.

En esta investigación se han estudiado los restos malacológicos recuperados en el conchero mesolítico de El Mazo (Asturias, España) aplicando diferentes análisis arqueológicos y geoquímicos. El estudio interdisciplinar desarrollado ha permitido reconstruir, por primera vez, el efecto del evento climático frío 8,2 ka cal BP en las condiciones marinas del norte de la península ibérica. Así mismo, también se ha estudiado el impacto de este cambio climático abrupto en las estrategias de subsistencia de los últimos cazadores-recolectores-pescadores en esta área litoral. La evolución biométrica de las conchas marinas ha permitido inferir cambios a corto plazo en los patrones de explotación del litoral durante el Mesolítico, deduciendo así lapsos temporales en los que se produjo una mayor presión sobre los recursos costeros. Por otro lado, los análisis de isótopos estables de oxígeno en conchas marinas de la especie Phorcus lineatus también permitieron deducir la estación o estaciones en las que se produjo la captura de estos moluscos. El desarrollo de un programa experimental, en el que se recolectaron moluscos modernos, posibilitó evaluar la gestión que los grupos humanos hicieron de los recursos costeros durante el Mesolítico.This book presents the results of an interdisciplinary archaeomalacological investigation carried out using mollusc shell remains recovered from the mesolithic shell midden site of El Mazo cave (Asturias, Spain).

This monograph analyses human figures that appear in Aegean Bronze Age art, considering the roles and relations between genders, and interpreting differential status or power implications. Susan E. Poole studies a comprehensive range of figures that appear on wall paintings, glyptics (seals, seal impressions and finger rings), and some three-dimensional objects. The gestures and postures displayed in the body language are examined, together with placements and orientations between the figures. The author considers the way figures occupy their surrounding space, possible gender distinct activities, the seating of figures, and processions. A structural iconographic method is used to interpret the material, together with ethological, sociological and linguistic approaches, and a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis is applied. The research includes a rich corpus of images from a wide range of sources to illustrate observations.

This book addresses a paradox concerning the role of clay at Çatalhöyük that arises from conflicting material culture and landscape views of what clay truly afforded this early agricultural community. The highly-developed and artistically rich clay-based material culture points to clay being a major contributor to the site's success. However, the underlying thick, impermeable clay beds are also thought to have impeded the drainage of seasonal floods, periodically isolating the community in extensive wetlands and clearly hostile to early agriculture. A landscape re-appraisal is made based on the recognition that the heavier clay artifacts must have been locally sourced and can therefore be read as direct samples of the local Neolithic landscape. The result is a revised landscape interpretation that no longer conflicts with the observed patterns of clay use or broader subsistence practice at Çatalhöyük. Clay's role is re-examined in this revised landscape context to demonstrate a fuller and more complex picture than previously thought.