The twenty-third Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (TRAC) was held at King’s College, London in spring 2013. During the three-day conference nearly papers were delivered, discussing issues from a wide range of geographical regions of the Roman Empire, and applying various theoretical and methodological approaches. Sessions included those looking at Roman–Barbarian interactions; identity and funerary monuments in ancient Italy; migration and social identity in the Roman Near East; theoretical approaches to Roman small finds; formation processes of in-fills in urban sites; and new reflections on Roman glass. This volume contains a selection of papers from the conference sessions.

A comprehensive evaluation of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the archaeological value of its findings particularly in relation to Roman Britain.

The Weymouth Relief Road crosses an area of intricately varied geology and one of the richest and most important cultural landscapes in England, which preserves a wealth of archaeological and historical remains. Extensive fieldwork in advance of construction of the Weymouth Relief Road yielded evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement and funerary activity, along with vestiges of Roman occupation.The main sites were located at Ridgeway Hill, located on the edge of South Dorset Ridgeway, at the northern end of the scheme and at Southdown Ridge close to the southern end. At Ridgeway Hill a sequence of Neoltihic pits was investigated, along with several groups of early Bronze Age inhumation and cremation burials in pits and cists. The burials were probably originally associated with barrows that belonged to the Ridgeway Hill group, one of the densest concentrations of Bronze Age round barrows in Britain. At Southdown Ridge a settlement that spanned the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age to the late Iron Age was discovered lying adjacent to a cross-ridge dyke and prehistoric field enclosures. The inhabitants engaged in shale-working activity as well as agriculture until the settlement was abandoned and converted to a cemetery in which the dead were buried in the distinctive south Dorset tradition, accompanied by grave goods, and later in the Roman tradition of coffined burial.

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. The present volume discusses general themes that have emerged in the analysis and interpretation of the results of excavations in 2000-2008. It synthesizes the results of research described in other volumes in the same series. The volume commences with accounts of the recent work on community collaboration at the site, and with discussions of the methods used at the site. It then synthesizes the work on landscape use and mobility, integrating the work of subsistence analysis and the analysis of human remains. The storage and sharing of food is a related topic. The ways in which houses were constructed, lived in and abandoned leads to a broad discussion of settlement and social organization at Çatalhöyük and of their change through time. For example, shifts in the themes that occur in paintings in houses change through time as part of a wider set of social, economic and ritual changes in the upper levels. The social uses of materials and technologies are explored and the roles of materials in personal adornment. Finally, the discussion of variation through place and time is recognized as dependent on scales of analysis and social process.

This volume examines the evolution of a rural landscape in north Kent from the Late Mesolithic (c 7500 BC) to the 19th century, as revealed by analysis of the results of excavation on a site overlooking the marshes and tributaries of the River Medway, near Sittingbourne. Particular emphasis is placed on the prehistoric pottery assemblage and on understanding the site in terms of local and regional developments. Slight evidence for Late Mesolithic and Neolithic activity (residual finds only) was followed by the creation of a field system. This was well established by the Late Bronze Age, when pitting and refuse disposal suggests the presence of a nearby settlement. There are inconclusive indications from associated pottery that some field boundaries may have had Middle Bronze Age origins and that some structured deposition was taking place. A period of abandonment, possibly related to rising sea levels, preceded the construction of a Middle Iron Age unenclosed farmstead represented by four roundhouses constructed at some time after c 300 BC and the re-establishment of a field system. The local field boundaries were reorganised in the Late Iron Age, and remained in use during the 1st century AD, but were abandoned thereafter, with no archaeological evidence for subsequent land use until a new farm was established in the 11th to mid 13th centuries.

Puspika 2 is the outcome of the second International Indology Graduate Research Symposium and presents the results of recent research by young scholars into pre-modern South Asian cultures with papers covering a variety of topics related to the intellectual traditions of the region. Focusing on textual sources in the languages in which they were composed, different disciplinary perceptions are offered on intellectual history, linguistics, philosophy, literary criticism and religious studies.

The book “Similar but Different. Bell Beakers in Europe” deals with a cultural phenomenon, known as the Bell Beaker culture, that during the 3rd millennium B.C. was present throughout Western and Central Europe. This development played an important role in the formation of the Bronze Age at the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium B

The early Old Kingdom tombs at Tehna are cut into the eastern escarpment bordering the Nile, some 12kms north of Minya in Upper Egypt. The cemetery consists of more than 15 rockcut tombs, 3 of which are illustrated and described in this first volume of the site. Complete with detailed colour illustrations and line drawings, the book records the wall scenes, sculpture, architecture, finds and a translation of inscriptions including a rare legal document in the tomb of Nikaiankh I.

Alfred’s Castle is a small enclosed site south of the Ridgeway on the Berkshire Downs, excavated between 1998 and 2000 by a team from Oxford University. This was the third site excavated by the Hillforts of the Ridgeway project (after White Horse Hill and Segsbury). Although small, Alfred’s Castle displayed a long and complex history, starting with early Bronze Age round barrows on which later Bronze Age linear ditches were aligned, these in turn were used to form enclosures in the Iron Age. In the early Roman period a small villa house was built inside the smaller enclosure, which then shows some use in the early medieval period. The long use of the site raises questions of memory, history and continuity, leading us to wonder how earlier phases of use affected later ones. This volume contains the results of excavations at Alfred’s Castle and an account of an art project by Simon Callery. This is the third volume dedicated to our hillfort excavations on the Berkshire Downs and it ends with an account of the area more broadly, which sees complicated developments from the Bronze Age into the medieval period through the constructions of barrows, field systems, linear ditches and sites of various forms and sizes. How these combined into communities of the living and of the dead are considered using all the evidence currently available.

Ritual happens in distinct places – in temples, in caves, along pilgrimage routes – and religious activities there incorporate a diverse set of objects such as holy water, cult statues, and sacred texts. Understanding religious ritual requires viewing it not as a disembodied event, but as emplaced, grounded in both built and natural surroundings, and integrated with its associated material objects. Here authors examine various religious practices in the Greco-Roman world and pilgrimage routes in contemporary Israel. Other contributions focus on the East, on domestic religion in prehistoric Taiwan, and the palimpsest of ritual activity in Buddhist China. One author considers not just ritual’s built and natural setting, but also the landscape of the human mind. By way of conclusion, many of the recurring issues concerning the material and topographic matrix of ritual practice are expanded upon in a final meditation on sacred space. The papers in this volume, with their disciplinary, geographic, and chronological diversity, will serve as a resource for theoretical approaches to the study of ritual practice that may have broad cross-cultural application and provide new insight into the relationship between ritual and place.The volume is based on a conference held at Brown University.

This collection of essays begins with the premise that violence, in its relationship to order, is a central element of history. Taking a broad definition of violence, including structural and symbolic violence, the contributions move beyond the problematic of civilization’s mitigating or foundational role, instead seeing violence as inherently social, and, perhaps, socially inherent (if variable). The question then becomes what forms of harm are authorized or banned in which social orders and how they change over time. Beginning with a theoretical introduction, this interdisciplinary volume includes seven papers representing cultural anthropology, history, archaeology and international relations. The papers range from China to the Americas and from the 2nd millennium BCE to the 21st century CE. Some deal with long-term developments while others focus on a single time and place. Many treat the issue of the visibility/invisibility of violence, while all in one way or another deal with the role of violence in the re-production of community. Together, the volume aims to paint, with a few strokes, the outlines of a deep historical anthropology of social violence. The volume is based on the proceedings of a symposium hosted at Brown University.

The Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey has been world famous since the 1960s when excavations revealed the large size and dense occupation of the settlement, as well as the spectacular wall paintings and reliefs uncovered inside the houses. Since 1993 an international team of archaeologists, led by Ian Hodder, has been carrying out new excavations and research, in order to shed more light on the people who inhabited the site. Çatalhöyük Excavations presents the results of the excavations that took place at the site from 2000 to 2008 when the main aim was to understand the social geography of the settlement, its layout and social organization. Excavation, recording and sampling methodologies are discussed as well as dating, ‘levels’, and the grouping of buildings into social sectors. The excavations in three areas of the East Mound at Çatalhöyük are described: the South Area, the 4040 Area in the northern part of the site, and the IST Area excavated by a team from Istanbul University. The description of excavated units, features and buildings incorporates results from the analyses of animal bone, chipped stone, groundstone, shell, ceramics, phytoliths, micromorphology. The integration of such data within their context allows detailed accounts of the lives of the inhabitants of Çatalhöyük, their relationships and activities. The integration of different types of data in the excavation account mimics the process of collaborative interpretation that took place during the excavation and post-excavation process.

The historico-technical journal was founded in 2001. Published yearly, in the course of the years the journal has entered the international stage with the name “Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage”, and it is now published in English and in Italian, both in electronic format and on print. It is featured on many websites and international databases, it has been granted the opportunity to apply the Creative Commons (CC) licence and the “seal” of SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resource Coalition), and it has been officially requested by EBSCO Publishing and H. W. Wilson Company to be part of their platforms. Since 2011, it has been edited by Mimesis Edizioni (Milano-Udine). The Advisory Committee is made of experts of various competences and cultural backgrounds. The journal publishes experimental studies and research that are historical, technical, diagnostic-analytical, normative, managerial and economico-financial in nature, related to the problems of safeguarding and valorising cultural and environmental heritage within interdisciplinary and internationalist fields. Briefly put, the aims pursued are scientific, institutional and communicational, so that the quality of information can reflect the “truth” of science and the “clarity” of communication.

In July 1834 excavation of a barrow at Gristhorpe, near Scarborough, Yorkshire, recovered an intact, waterlogged, hollowed-out oak coffin containing a perfectly preserved Bronze Age skeleton that had been wrapped in an animal skin and buried with worked flints, a bronze dagger with a whalebone pommel, and a bark vessel apparently containing food residue. Gristhorpe Man became the centrepiece of the Scarborough Philosophical Society’s museum display.In 2004, planned refurbishment of the renamed Rotunda Museum provided the opportunity for a scientific re-examination of the burial and grave goods in order to eluciate the life and death of this extraordinary survival of the British Early Bronze Age. Tree-trunk coffin burials are relatively rare and Gristhorpe Man, with his range of grave goods was likely to have held a special role in society. Analysis of the skeleton included an examination of its skeletal morphology and palaeopathological conditions combined with isotopic analyses of the bones and teeth in order to investigate mobility, diet, and status of the individual whose unusual large stature, dentition, and novel methods of conservation were of particular interest. These analyses, combined with examination of the surviving coffin lid, including the unique ‘face’ carved onto one end of it, the grave goods, and radiocarbon and dendrochronological dating, reveal fascinating insights into the social position, inter-regional contacts and the burial rite associated with this enigmatic mature man who probably saw active combat and who suffered from a benign brain tumour that may have seriously altered his personality in his later years.

A fundamental component of the study of worked osseous objects is the identification of the raw materials chosen to make them. In archaeological contexts many objects become degraded to the point where identification is very difficult and the way in which these materials decay during burial and upon excavation can vary greatly. Correct identification is crucial to the investigation of objects, their conservation and future curation. Above all, understanding raw material selection aids our understanding of human-animal interaction in the past both on pragmatic and symbolic levels since the choices made by artisans vary by cultural tradition as well as availability.The 20 papers presented here explore a wealth of information pertaining to the use of osseous materials over the long period of human craftsmanship and tool manufacture by exploring several key themes:· Raw material selection and curation within tool types· Social aspects of raw material selection· New methods of materials identificationIt is demonstrated that the issue of raw material identification has numerous implications for conservation work, reproduction of objects, the physical characteristics of the tool or ornament, availability of raw materials, the materials chosen for procurement and the cultural reasons that lie behind the choice of raw materials from particular species and skeletal elements to produce planned tool and ornament types. Together, these papers emphasize the need for confident and correct materials identification and demonstrate that functionality is by no means the only, nor necessarily the most important, factor in the selection of osseous raw materials for the fabrication of tools and other cultural objects

Charting a decade of intensive fieldwork along a 2km stretch of the Colne Fen, Earith fen-edge, the scope of these books is formidable and together they include the work of 65 contributing specialists (with a foreword by Ian Hodder). The fieldwork involved innovative methodologies, and groundbreaking scientific and micro-sampling studies are presented within the volumes. Portions of text are, moreover, avowedly experimental (e. g. intertextuality and antiquarian-informed perspectives) and it explores the long-term interplay of landscape process and (proto-) historicism. Appropriate to the practice of a comparative archaeology and the ‘challenge of numbers’, throughout emphasis is given to multiple-scale settlement and spatial/distributional analyses.The scale of Volume II — the ‘Roman book’ — is even more daunting. Aside from including reports of earlier local excavations, it is primarily concerned with two major ‘set-piece’ sites. The one, Langdale Hale, was a mass-production supply farm; the other, The Camp Ground, a great inland barge-port settlement linked to the Car Dyke canal. Both reflect upon the potential role of the state and address crucial issues of ‘Romanization’, with facets of their sequences markedly contrasting with the Stonea-engendered Fenland Imperial Estate model. Besides uniquely detailing the character of the settlements’ Late Roman usage (involving terpen-like mounds and raised ‘platformed’ structures) and trade connections, the port-site’s aftermath is also discussed as an important assemblage of Anglo-Scandinavian bonework was recovered. To provide further immediate-landscape context, the results from neighbouring sites alsofeature, including an important Late Roman cemetery at Knobbs Farm, Somersham.