Author: Andrew Bevan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139467107
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
The societies that developed in the eastern Mediterranean during the Bronze Age produced the most prolific and diverse range of stone vessel traditions known at any time or anywhere in the world. Stone vessels are therefore a key class of artefact in the early history of this region. As a form of archaeological evidence, they offer important analytical advantages over other artefact types - virtual indestructibility, a wide range of functions and values, huge variety in manufacturing traditions, as well as the subtractive character of stone and its rich potential for geological provenancing. In this 2007 book, Andrew Bevan considers individual stone vessel industries in great detail. He also offers a highly comparative and value-led perspective on production, consumption and exchange logics throughout the eastern Mediterranean over a period of two millennia during the Bronze Age (ca.3000–1200 BC).
Author: Robert B Koehl
Publisher: INSTAP Academic Press
ISBN: 1623033136
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 469
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Book Description
Contributions by 34 scholars are brought together here to create a volume in honor of the long and fruitful career of Guenter Kopcke who is the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Articles pertain to various topics on the ancient art, architecture, and archaeology of the greater Eastern Mediterranean region: from Pre-Dynastic Egypt to the Bronze Age Aegean and Anatolia, Cyprus and the Near East, and Etruscan Italy.
Author: Valentina Gasperini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198818785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
At the end of the 19th century W.M.F. Petrie excavated a series of assemblages at the New Kingdom Fayum site of Gurob. These deposits, known in the Egyptological literature as 'Burnt Groups', were composed by several and varied materials (mainly Egyptian and imported pottery, faience, stone and wood vessels, jewellery), all deliberately burnt and buried in the harem palace area of the settlement. Since their discovery these deposits have been considered peculiar and unparalleled. Many scholars were challenged by them and different theories were formulated to explain these enigmatic 'Burnt Groups'. The materials excavated from these assemblages are now curated at several Museum collections across England: Ashmolean Museum, British Museum, Manchester Museum, and Petrie Museum. For the first time since their discovery, this book presents these materials all together. Gasperini has studied and visually analysed all the items. This research sheds new light on the chronology of deposition of these assemblages, additionally a new interpretation of their nature, primary deposition, and function is presented in the conclusive chapter. The current study also gives new information on the abandonment of the Gurob settlement and adds new social perspective on a crucial phase of the ancient Egyptian history: the transition between the late New Kingdom and the early Third Intermediate Period. Beside the traditional archaeological sources, literary evidence ('The Great Tomb Robberies Papyri') is taken into account to formulate a new theory on the deposition of these assemblages.
Author: Jo Day
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809333139
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 445
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Book Description
Since the nineteenth century, museums have kept their artifacts in glass cases to better preserve them, and drawings and photographs have become standard ways of presenting the past. These practices have led to an archaeology dominated by visual description, even though human interaction with the surrounding world involves the whole body and all of its senses. In the past few years, sensory archaeology has become more prominent, and Making Senses of the Past is one of the first collected volumes on this subject. This book presents cutting-edge research on new theoretical issues. The essays presented here take readers on a multisensory journey around the world and across time. In ancient Peru, a site provides sensory surprises as voices resound beneath the ground and hidden carvings slowly reveal their secrets. In Canada and New Zealand, the flicker of reflected light from a lake dances on the faces of painted rocks and may have influenced when and why the pigment was applied. In Mesopotamia, vessels for foodstuffs build a picture of a past cuisine that encompasses taste and social activity in the building of communities. While perfume and flowers are examined in various cultures, in the chamber tombs of ancient Roman Palestine, we are reminded that not all smells are pleasant. Making Senses of the Past explores alternative ways to perceive past societies and offers a new way of wiring archaeology that incorporates the senses.
Author: Ian Shaw
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192596985
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1595
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Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Egyptology offers a comprehensive survey of the entire study of ancient Egypt from prehistory through to the end of the Roman period. It seeks to place Egyptology within its theoretical, methodological, and historical contexts, indicating how the subject has evolved and discussing its distinctive contemporary problems, issues, and potential. Transcending conventional boundaries between archaeological and ancient textual analysis, the volume brings together 63 chapters that range widely across archaeological, philological, and cultural sub-disciplines, highlighting the extent to which Egyptology as a subject has diversified and stressing the need for it to seek multidisciplinary methods and broader collaborations if it is to remain contemporary and relevant. Organized into ten parts, it offers a comprehensive synthesis of the various sub-topics and specializations that make up the field as a whole, from the historical and geographical perspectives that have influenced its development and current characteristics, to aspects of museology and conservation, and from materials and technology - as evidenced in domestic architecture and religious and funerary items - to textual and iconographic approaches to Egyptian culture. Authoritative yet accessible, it serves not only as an invaluable reference work for scholars and students working within the discipline, but also as a gateway into Egyptology for classicists, archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and linguists.
Author: Toby C. Wilkinson
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789259622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
This volume explores the part played by different metals in use from the fourth millennium BC to the Early Iron Age, not only in the Aegean but also in the wider Old World. It addresses the divergent uses and roles of different metals, the interrelationships of these roles and the changing values that may have been accorded to them at different times and in different places by producers and consumers. Individually, the papers in the volume contemplate the particular properties of different metals and the various issues concerning their frequent under-representation in the archaeological (but not necessarily textual) record, and also point out comparative and diachronic perspectives that may have the ability to offer insights into their important roles in wider cultural and historical changes over a period of several millennia. After the Introduction and Chapter 1, which reflects on some of the parameters involved in the term ‘precious’ as applied to metals, the remaining six chapters cover the Aegean and the networks that link the Aegean with Italy, Cyprus and the Near East more generally, and south-east Anatolia and the Caucasus. Between them they discuss the beginnings of regular iron metallurgy, the uses of and attitudes to gold, silver and bronze and other copper-based alloys at various times between the fourth millennium BC and the Early Iron Age.
Author: Evangelia Kiriatzi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316798925
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 499
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Book Description
The diverse forms of regional connectivity in the ancient world have recently become an important focus for those interested in the deep history of globalisation. This volume represents a significant contribution to this new trend as it engages thematically with a wide range of connectivities in the later prehistory of the Mediterranean, from the later Neolithic of northern Greece to the Levantine Iron Age, and with diverse forms of materiality, from pottery and metal to stone and glass. With theoretical overviews from leading thinkers in prehistoric mobilities, and commentaries from top specialists in neighbouring domains, the volume integrates detailed case studies within a comparative framework. The result is a thorough treatment of many of the key issues of regional interaction and technological diversity facing archaeologists working across diverse places and periods. As this book presents key case studies for human and technological mobility across the eastern Mediterranean in later prehistory, it will be of interest primarily to Mediterranean archaeologists, though also to historians and anthropologists.
Author: Joanne Elizabeth Cutler
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1785709674
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 530
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Book Description
The mid second millennium BC material record of the southern Aegean shows evidence of strong Cretan influence. This phenomenon has traditionally been seen in terms of ‘Minoanisation’, but the nature and degree of Cretan influence, and the process/processes by which it was spread and adopted, have been widely debated. This new study addresses the question of ‘Minoanisation’ through a study of the adoption of Cretan technologies in the wider southern Aegean: principally, weaving technology. By the early Late Bronze Age, Cretan-style discoid loom weights had appeared at a number of settlements across the southern Aegean. In most cases, this represents not only the adoption of a particular type of loom weight, but also the introduction of a new weaving technology: the use of the warp-weighted loom. The evidence for, and the implications of, the adoption of this new technology is examined. Drawing upon recent advances in textile experimental archaeology, the types of textiles that are likely to have been produced at a range of sites both on Crete itself and in the wider southern Aegean are discussed, and the likely nature and scale of textile production at the various settlements is assessed. A consideration of the evidence for the timing and extent of the adoption of Cretan weaving technology in the light of additional evidence for the adoption of other Cretan technologies is used to gain insight into the potential social and economic strategies engaged in by various groups across the southern Aegean, as well as the motivations that may have driven the adoption and adaptation of Cretan cultural traits and accompanying behaviors. By examining how technological skills and techniques are learned and considering possible mechanisms for the transmission of such technical knowledge and know-how, new perspectives can be proposed concerning the processes through which Cretan techniques were taken up and imitated abroad.
Author: Andrew Bevan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315430886
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
The contributions in this volume document, both in past social contexts and recent ones, the need to understand branded commodities as part of a broader continuum with techniques of gift-giving, ritual, and sacrifice.
Author: D. Wengrow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199699429
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
A vivid new account of the 'birth of civilization' in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia where many of the foundations of modern life were laid
