The modern discipline of archaeology developed in tandem with the expansion of European imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Cyprus, ruled by Britain between 1878 and 1960, is a fascinating example of how archaeology was practiced and developed in a specific colonial context. This volume explores the mechanisms, the institutions and the characters who contributed to the development of Cypriot archaeology, often within a fraught political environment.

The 23 papers in this volume addre...

Geographical Information Systems has moved from the domain of the computer specialist into the wider archaeological community, providing it with an exciting new research method. This clearly written but rigorous book provides a comprehensive guide to that use. Topics covered include: the theoretical context and the basics of GIS; data acquisition including database design; interpolation of elevation models; exploratory data analysis including spatial queries; statistical spatial analysis; map...

In Van Neanderthaler tot rendierjager nemen we het publiek mee naar een bijzondere periode uit de rijke geschiedenis van de provincie Drenthe: de Oude Steentijd. De tijd van ijstijden, rendierjagers én Neanderthalers; die immer boeiende andere menssoort, die circa 40.000 jaar geleden uitstierf en ons als Homo sapiens alleen achterliet. De resten van de aanwezigheid van deze oermensen zijn door (amateur-)archeologen overal in de provincie gevonden. Hun vuurstenen werktuigen, resten van hun ka...

One of the most puzzling phenomena of the European Bronze Age, is that many communities buried or otherwise hid large numbers of valuable bronze objects, but never returned to retrieve them. This book focuses on the metal finds of one small European region, the southern Netherlands and the adjacent part of North Belgium.Fontijn considers the question of why so many elaborate bronze objects have been found in watery locations in this landscape, such as rivers, streams, and marshes, while so fe...

Ce livre est consacré à la recherche sur le développement de la production et des échanges céramiques entre le continent et les îles de Bretagne, du Néolithique à la période gallo-romaine. L'analyse archéométrique de la céramique est utilisée pour explorer le développement des réseaux de communication: la circulation des personnes et des produits entre les îles et le continent. Ces îles produisaient-elles leur propre poterie ou étaient-elles dépendantes de la production con...

Technology refers to any set of standardised procedures for transforming raw materials into finished products. Innovation consists of any change in technology which has tangible and lasting effect on human practices, whether or not it provides utilitarian advantages. Prehistoric societies were never static, but the tempo of innovation occasionally increased to the point that we can refer to transformation taking place. Prehistorians must therefore identify factors promoting or hindering innov...

At the end of the 5th millennium BCE, some of the vastest settlements of the time emerged on the forest steppe north of the Black Sea. The largest of these sites were found between the Southern Bug and Dnieper river. There they occur only tens of kilometres apart and are assumed to be partly coeval. The Trypillia 'mega-sites' reached sizes of up to 320 hectares with up to 3000 buildings in one place. During their peak times as many as 11.000 people could have lived in one of those settlements.

But how did people come together in these Trypillia 'mega-sites' with several thousand dwellings? How long were such sites inhabited, and how many people lived there? Were these settlements the first towns, preceding the Mesopotamian development? To address these questions, this book presents the results of the investigations at the Maidanets'ke 'mega-site'...

This volume is a collection of 19 articles in three sections reporting on recent research on the archaeology of shipwrecks, harbours, and maritime landscapes in the Mediterranean region. The shipwrecks section looks at excavated vessels from Mazotos, Modi Island, the port of Rhodes, Naples, and Narbonne, as well as a sailing reconstruction of the Ma‘agan Mikhael ship.

The harbours section includes articles on areas from the Levant to Seville looking at a variety of harbour defence systems a...