This volume celebrates the academic life of prof. Raymond Corbey. It gathers contributions by diverse scholars and professionals from both science and society to engage with a range of key topics Raymond has grappled with at different stages of his capricious career. The volume not only provides an opinionated portrait of Raymond as an academic persona and sometimes controversial scholarly figure, unpacking key tropes of his intellectual journey such as “sitting on the fence” or the “em...

In Britain, Ireland and Southern Scandinavia, the Early Neolithic is characterised by monumental constructions (e.g. causewayed enclosures, dolmens) and by specific traditions of depositional practice. Some aspects of these practices are similar in both regions, for example the shapes and use of monuments, their overall developmental sequences, and the traditions of deposition (kinds of objects and their treatment, locations chosen and so on). In spite of these similarities, however, there ha...

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...

This volume collects papers on the pre-Corded Ware horizon in central Europe and adjacent areas (i.e. from c. 3500 – 2800 BC). This phase is very patchily researched, partly also because certain kinds of evidence, notably domestic architecture and burials, are rare or absent in many regions. This has occasionally been interpreted as signs of a major crisis and population bottleneck, which in turn facilitated the migration of new populations from the steppe, bringing with them amongst others...

Ancient civilizations often developed near major rivers, like in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Central Asia, the Murghab alluvial fan in southern Turkmenistan was central to the emergence of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), also known as the Oxus Civilization, during the third and second millennia BCE. The local alluvial fan was central for the productive agriculture at the basis of the region's urban centers and the wealth that accumulated in these societies.

This volume expl...

The main goal of this volume is to look at social groups involved in economic activity other than members of the palace-based institutions and “elites” in Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greek societies. The palaces and elites are the usual subject of studies of ancient economies, often from a top-down approach, but here we consider a fuller range of the members of a society, their organization, their institutions, and their contributions to the economies of those societies from bottom-up appro...

The human past is unimaginable without the horse. From our ancestors hunting and painting horses in the Upper Palaeolithic, to the earliest riders, the rise of equestrian empires, and the critical role of horses in war, settler colonialism, and modern state formation, human history is undeniably equestrian. Because of the deep and varied entanglements between people and horses, the study of horses of the past is inherently, and increasingly, interdisciplinary. However, scholars often do not u...

In the rich archives of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities lies a fascinating manuscript dealing with the autopsy on an Ancient Egyptian mummy. This was performed in 1878 by the Museum’s curator Willem Pleyte. Thanks to Pleyte’s detailed procès-verbal, the mummy (which did not survive the dissection) can be reconstructed at least on paper. The name of the deceased has been inscribed on the mummy’s cartonnage, on some of the linen bandages, and on the Book of the Dead papyrus retrieved by...

This volume presents the proceedings of the HOMER 2021 international conference, held in September/October 2021 on the Island of Oléron, France. The conference focused on recent advances in coastal and island archaeology across a wide geographical area, covering the Atlantic north of the equator. From the 55 oral presentations and 24 posters, 49 papers emerged, contributed by scholars from seven countries.

The publication showcases the diversity of maritime archaeology, spanning fieldwork to...