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.

This book collects recent works on the subjects of sacrificial offerings, ritualised violence and the relative values thereof in the contexts of Scandinavian prehistory from the Neolithic to the Viking era. It provides a detailed re-appraisal of key aspects of prehistoric bog bodies using the latest forensic and material culture analytical techniques to examine questions of sacrifice, execution and ritual behaviour.The volume re-opens investigations into notions of value relating to diverse evidence and suggested evidence for human sacrifice and related ritualised violence. It covers a broad spectrum of issues relating to novel interpretations of the existing archaeological materials, but with a focus on the study of value and value dynamics in these diverse ritual contexts, engaging in questions of identity, cosmology, economics and social relations. Cases span from the Scandinavian Late Neolithic and Nordic Bronze Age, through to the well-known wetland deposits and bog bodies of the Iron Age, to Viking era executions, ‘deviant’ burials and contemporaneous double/multiple graves, exploring the implications for the transformation of sacrificial practices across Scandinavian prehistory.Each contributor untangles the myriad forms of value at play in different incarnations of human offerings, and provide insights into how those values were expressed, for example in the selection and treatment of victims in relation to their status, personhood, identity and life-history.The volume builds on a workshop hosted at the National Museum of Denmark in 2018 which inaugurated the beginning of the research project ‘Human Sacrifice and Value: The limits of sacred violence’ and was supported by the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. It brings together research and perspectives that go beyond the who, what and where of most archaeological and anthropological investigations of sacrificial violence to address both the underlying and explicit forms of value associated with such events.

Archaeology has gone digital for some time now! Topics such as GIS databases, 3D models, drone photography, meta- and para-data, semantic mapping, text mining, simulation, and social network analysis have become commonplace in archaeological discourse and practice. Digital and technological advancements seemingly offer limitless promises for data recording, analysis and dissemination. Yet, after several decades of innovation, we must ask ourselves which of these promises are actually fulfilled, and which persistent impasses are present. Today, some reflexive questions are more important than ever. In particular, when, how and why do our innovative archaeology tools fail? Do we approach our archaeological projects with a digital wand and (implicitly or explicitly) expect a magical solution? And when there is indeed a digital solution, at what expense does it come?In this volume, scholars and practitioners in the field discuss the state of the art, as well as the promises and impasses that digital approaches to archaeology entail. The authors discuss the current state of teaching digital archaeology, the societal impact of digital innovations, current issues in archaeological data management, promises and limitations of isotopic research and remote sensing techniques, and why subfields such as agent-based modelling and serious gaming struggle to keep momentum.

When Vasa was raised in 1961 a lost world was revealed in astonishing detail. Among the most remarkable finds were the remains of the rigging. Normally shipwrecks offer only a few clues to the structure above the waterline, but on Vasa the lower masts, a myriad of blocks and deadeyes, hundreds of metres of rope and cable and – most astonishingly – nine sails from the ship and its boat survive. The unique finds provide an unparalleled opportunity to reconstruct the rigging in detail and to form an understanding of how ships were sailed in the seventeenth century. With a sail plan, rigging, and steering gear that are substantially different to the classical full-rigged ship of the nineteenth century, the evidence from Vasa paints a vivid picture of ship-handling in the Age of Sail. Vasa II Part 1 presents more than a thousand finds of wood, metal, and cloth from the most complete rig to survive from before 1800, which form the basis for a complete reconstruction of the rig and sailing performance of a large warship of the 1620s.

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.

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.

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.

How can pottery studies contribute to the study of medieval archaeology? How do pots relate to documents, landscapes and identities? These are the questions addressed in this book which develops a new approach to the study of pottery in medieval archaeology. Utilising an interpretative framework which focuses upon the relationships between people, places and things, the effect of the production, consumption and discard of pottery is considered, to see pottery not as reflecting medieval life, but as one factor which contributed to the development of multiple experiences and realities in medieval England. By focussing on relationships we move away from viewing pottery simply as an object of study in its own right, to see it as a central component to developing understandings of medieval society. The case studies presented explore how we might use relational approaches to reconsider our approaches to medieval landscapes, overcome the methodological and theoretical divisions between documents and material culture and explore how the use of objects could have multiple implications for the formation and maintenance of identities. The use of this approach makes this book not only of interest to pottery specialists, but also to any archaeologist seeking to develop new interpretative approaches to medieval archaeology and the archaeological study of material culture.

Extensively illustrated report on an excavation in Oxfordshire near the Iron Age hillfort at Segsbury. Ephemeral traces of Mesolithic and Neolithic activity, including a possible Neolithic timber structure, were found. The remains of a probable Late Bronze Age pit alignment were also found. Small Iron Age settlements comprising round houses, pits and other structures, and burials were revealed. One particular burial in a pit had been subjected to unusual treatment that included the removal of the individual’s feet after death. Small Roman and post-Roman cemeteries also were identified. The small Late Roman cemetery included males, females and neonates. This cemetery is typical for the period and the burials were accompanied by a range of artefacts including coins, brooches, a bracelet and rings as well as an unusual fragmentary double-sided bone or antler comb with a horse motif and ring-and-dot decoration. A small undated cemetery was originally believed to be either of Roman or less likely post-Roman date. However, radiocarbon dating revealed the unaccompanied burials to be of late 7th or early 8th century AD date. Innovative scientific techniques including radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling, aDNA and isotope analysis have revealed some important details such as familial relationships and dating that would not otherwise have been known. Small assemblages of finds included worked flint and prehistoric pottery, Roman and later pottery, worked bone, glass and metalwork.

Jebel Aruda, a prominent mountain ridge overlooking the Taqba Dam lake in northern Syria, was the location of a remarkable settlement that flourished between c. 3300 and 3100 BC during the so-called Uruk period. For the inhabitants the sacredness of this high place, evidenced by the discovery of a large temple complex, seems to have taken precedent over its impractical location far above the valley of the Euphrates River. The site was destroyed under unknown circumstances, leaving behind the spectacular remains of a well preserved temple complex and numerous houses filled with a rich collection of material culture and administrative tools such as bullae and tablets. A Dutch team excavated the site between 1972 and 1982 while the Tabqua Dam was under construction. These two volumes present the results of these excavations and subsequent research of the remains, with special emphasis on the relationship between the domestic architecture and the finds.These richly illustrated volumes aim to facilitate further research and analysis of an exceptional, short-lived Uruk period settlement, comprising domestic architecture associated with a monumental temple complex. It is intended to appeal to readers interested in Mesopotamia and ancient Syria, as well as archaeologists concerned with architectural and locational analysis in a broader perspective. Volume I presents the results of the excavation, with a discussion of the individual houses and the history of the temple buildings, together with the pottery corpus, the administrative artefacts and sealings, as well as shorter chapters on other material categories (flint, stone etc). The contents of each individual house are presented in Volume II.

Jebel Aruda, a prominent mountain ridge overlooking the Taqba Dam lake in northern Syria, was the location of a remarkable settlement that flourished between c. 3300 and 3100 BC during the so-called Uruk period. For the inhabitants the sacredness of this high place, evidenced by the discovery of a large temple complex, seems to have taken precedent over its impractical location far above the valley of the Euphrates River. The site was destroyed under unknown circumstances, leaving behind the spectacular remains of a well preserved temple complex and numerous houses filled with a rich collection of material culture and administrative tools such as bullae and tablets. A Dutch team excavated the site between 1972 and 1982 while the Tabqua Dam was under construction. These two volumes present the results of these excavations and subsequent research of the remains, with special emphasis on the relationship between the domestic architecture and the finds.These richly illustrated volumes aim to facilitate further research and analysis of an exceptional, short-lived Uruk period settlement, comprising domestic architecture associated with a monumental temple complex. It is intended to appeal to readers interested in Mesopotamia and ancient Syria, as well as archaeologists concerned with architectural and locational analysis in a broader perspective. Volume I presents the results of the excavation. In Volume II the contents of each individual house are listed and illustrated as discrete room assemblages, with the specific intention of making the evidence available for more detailed analysis of the relationship between material culture and architecture and to stimulate further research into aspects such as identity and the social structure of the settlement surrounding the temples.

The Northumberland Archaeological Group’s (NAG) Wether Hill project spanned the years 1994–2015 and was located on the eponymous hilltop overlooking the mouth of the Breamish Valley in the Northumberland Cheviots. The project had been inspired by the RCHME’s ‘Southeast Cheviots Project’ that had discovered and recorded extensive prehistoric and later landscapes. The NAG project investigated several sites. Over the 11 seasons of excavation, NAG recorded evidence of residual Mesolithic activity (microliths), a burial cairn containing two Beakers in an oak coffin, which was superseded by a stone-built cist containing three Food Vessels, Iron Age cord rig cultivation and clearance cairns, a series of Middle/Late Iron Age timber-built palisaded enclosures, a cross-ridge dyke, which protected the southern approach to the Wether Hill fort, and sampled the multi-period bivallate hillfort. The hillfort sequence on Wether Hill began with a succession of palisaded enclosures, which were later replaced by bivallate earth and stone defenses; both phases appear to have been associated with timber-built houses. Eventually the fort was abandoned, and three stone-built roundhouses were constructed in the fort. The 18 radiocarbon dates obtained from various contexts in the hillfort makes this site one of the better dated forts in the Borders. The chronology of the Wether Hill fort spanned the Middle/Late Iron Age, which corresponds with dates from palisaded enclosures excavated elsewhere on the hilltop spur. Taken together, this evidence provides a snapshot of settlement hierarchies and agricultural practices during the later Iron Age in this part of the Northumberland Cheviots. The excavations also help contextualise some of the RCHME survey evidence, providing data to model chronology, potential prehistoric settlement density and land-use patterns at different time periods in the well-preserved archaeological landscapes of the Cheviots.