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How did objects of dress and coinage shape power and identity in late Roman Britai? ractured Britannia provides an in-depth examination of the distribution of coinage and elite items of Roman dress in later and sub-Roman Britain, offering new perspectives on a period of profound social and political change. While previous research has sought to distinguish groups serving the Roman state, identifying them in the archaeological record remains challenging. The military and the civil administration relied on hierarchical structures and used similar objects to indicate rank and status. At the same time, local elites, responsible for much of the practical administration of Britain, began to adopt military styles of dress. These changes led to a clear evolution in dress accessories over the fourth century. Five extensive datasets on crossbow brooches, belt fittings, spurs, penannular brooches, and coins are examined systematically in combination. Previously studied in isolation, these objects reveal insights into social identity, regional variation, and the persistence or abandonment of Roman material culture. The evidence shows that while some regions continued relatively unchanged into the fifth century, others abandoned recognisably Roman forms as early as AD 375. By assessing existing methodologies, revising typologies, and mapping artefact distributions, this book highlights key patterns across sites and regions and makes large datasets publicly available. Ultimately, the study provides a chronological and geographic framework for understanding how Roman Britain transitioned into smaller post-Roman polities. It analyses the differential use of material culture across site types and compares patterns with the continent, shedding light on the transformation of Britain’s society and identity in the sub-Roman and early medieval world.

This monograph details the 2019 Centre for Community Archaeology excavation of Fowler’s Pottery, a nineteenth century pottery manufacturing site located in the townland of Derrybuoy, just outside Coalisland, Co. Tyrone. The site produced coarse earthenware pottery, a type which has received little academic attention to date, and this publication will therefore be of great use in advancing our limited knowledge of the coarse, utilitarian pottery used every day in nineteenth century households. Four distinct vessel forms were produced in four possible decorative styles, showing a specialised range of production which appears to have primarily targeted the rural market. Several key features of the pottery were also identified and are described at length, including the kiln, drying room and clay extraction pit, as well as large quantities of brick and kiln furniture. The narrative is greatly supplemented by historical records including personal letters, census returns and local testimony which offer a high-resolution view of precisely how and when the pottery operated. While other Post-Medieval pottery production sites have been excavated in Ireland previously, this is the second example of a nineteenth century kiln producing coarse earthenware pottery to be excavated, and the first to receive publication, meaning that this site is of critical importance to advancing our knowledge of local economy and manufacturing in the period.

The extraordinary phenomenon of Ice Age art endured for over 30,000 years of our prehistory. This book will show you how the art was discovered, how it was made, how we know its age and if it's genuine. But this art is much more than pictures and paint - it tells us more about our early ancestors than bones and tools ever will. Life during the Ice Age was a huge part of our human journey, and the people who lived then, by painting on cave walls and engraving their myths on animal bones, have reached out to us down the millennia with their stories and memories. It is unlikely we will ever know the meanings of the simple handprints or the animal silhouette paintings, or the ideas that were shared in great cave wall murals, but they are likely to be profound. And despite our inability to understand the messages, we can still marvel at the valuable gifts these Ice Age artists have bestowed on us.

The extraordinary phenomenon of Ice Age art endured for over 30,000 years of our prehistory. This book will show you how the art was discovered, how it was made, how we know its age and if it's genuine. But this art is much more than pictures and paint - it tells us more about our early ancestors than bones and tools ever will. Life during the Ice Age was a huge part of our human journey, and the people who lived then, by painting on cave walls and engraving their myths on animal bones, have reached out to us down the millennia with their stories and memories. It is unlikely we will ever know the meanings of the simple handprints or the animal silhouette paintings, or the ideas that were shared in great cave wall murals, but they are likely to be profound. And despite our inability to understand the messages, we can still marvel at the valuable gifts these Ice Age artists have bestowed on us.

The Great Sphinx has guarded the Giza Plateau in Egypt for many thousands of years. Despite there being relatively little direct evidence, it is generally assumed that this iconic monument is some 4500 years old, built at the same time as Giza’s great pyramids. This book challenges the established history of the Giza Necropolis to present the only comprehensive, evidence-led account of the history and ritual meaning of the Great Sphinx. After re-examining the archaeological evidence and then considering the important role of geology, the book concludes that the Great Sphinx and a number of related monuments, were built at Giza in the earliest stages of the Pharaonic Era – in the period before Egypt’s first pyramids were built. Perhaps more surprisingly, evidence emerges that the Great Sphinx may not have been the first monument built at Giza, with indications of ritual activity at this important site, which pre-dates Egypt’s first pharaohs. By answering these uncertainties regarding the age of the Great Sphinx, a new picture unfolds of what the concept of the human-headed lion meant to the people that originally built it.

Excavations at Carnoustie produced exceptional archaeological results from the prehistoric past. The remains of the longest early Neolithic timber hall so far found in Scotland were identified. Beside it were the postholes and pits of another contemporary but less well preserved large hall. A final but smaller timber hall was constructed at one end but within the footprint of the largest timber hall. This latter structure indicated the importance of the place and the perpetuation of ideologies and traditions of the earlier building. During the later Neolithic, other evidence included the sparse remains of an oval house built over the remains of one timber hall with temporary re-occupation of part of another. The main focus of activities during the middle and late Neolithic were groups of pits whose presence indicated changes in social structure and possibly economic conditions. A period of abandonment with only sporadic use of the area during the early Bronze Age was followed by a roundhouse settlement. A small number of buildings of the middle and late Bronze Age were replaced in rotation. The last buildings were intimately associated with a rare late Bronze Age metalwork hoard, buried close to them. The hoard included a sword, spearhead with gold decoration and a long pin wrapped in textile and sheep-skin.

The study of salt in Roman times has not benefitted from the attention paid to the exploitation of other subsoil resources like metals. This is the result of the scarcity not only of sources concerning the exploitation itself, but also of those that provide indirect information (like aspects of mining, trade or especially administration), compounded by the lack of archaeological research on this resource (particularly when compared with the archaeology of salt in prehistory or the archaeology of Roman mining). The main objectives of this volume are to analyse the existing archaeological research on salt exploitation in Roman Dacia, and to discuss the epigraphic information to better understand salt exploitation and administration as well as the relationship between mining and administrative staff and the military personnel. Based on this information, a global view of salt exploitation in Roman Dacia is presented, and the particularities of salt production, industry and consumption in this province are compared with the Roman world.

This volume is the last in a comprehensive catalogue of oil lamps in the collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority. It considers the final stage of development in the shaping and decoration of pottery lamps, drawing from earlier forms to gradually become distinct lamps in their own right while retaining characteristics of their forerunners. The change of shape from a saucer to a small closed lamp was subject to both western and eastern influences and guided the local workshops for the next thousand years. The lamps of the Islamic period clearly demonstrate this continuity, incorporating the ethnic and cultural changes among Jews, Samaritans, Christians, and Muslims in the Holy Land.This is readily discernible in the Islamic period, when lamp production throughout the country became ''culturally'' unified, as expressed by the general avoidance of depicting ethnic symbols. The lamps from the Islamic period are easily recognizable by their linear style of decoration (no relief, the avoidance of figural art). The acceptance of the shape of these lamps and their division into sections with a central pattern (the decorated ''channel'') – suggested here as a Christian means of perceiving the lamp and its light as a divine vessel – was now further adapted through the pattern along the center of the ''nozzle'' under the wick hole, rendering the torch from which the flame/light emanated (or the shrine and hanging lamp (the wick hole) beneath the lamp’s vault) as an integral part of the pattern resting on the filling hole.

This volume is devoted to the origins and early history of the Indo-Aryans. According to the generally accepted theory, they originated in the Eurasian steppe, from where they subsequently migrated to the Indian subcontinent and the Iranian plateau. However, evidence to support these developments is lacking. The author has collected linguistic, palaeogenetic and archaeological data to reconstruct the processes that occurred in the Eneolithic and Bronze Age over large areas of Eurasia, demonstrating that the ancestral homeland of the Indo-Iranians was in Northwestern Iran. From there some migrated to Southeastern Iran, which led to the emergence of Indo-Aryan dialects around the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. From the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, the migration of Indo-Aryan tribes to the north-east of Iran and Central Asia began, which later culminated with migration to India, as well as to the Near East, Eastern Europe, the Southern Urals and, occasionally, to Southern Siberia.

Pundawar Manbur is one of the largest painted rock shelters in the Drysdale River valley of the Kimberley, Western Australia. It contains more than 600 rock paintings, engravings and rock markings with a complex series of overlapping styles of rock art. It is a cultural jewel of Kwini Country, within the lands of the Balanggarra Native Title determination. This monograph presents the first detailed recording and analysis of the site and its art. There are many figures in superposition, and many also in carefully targeted patterns of superimposition, making for a rich story of sequential engagements going back many thousands of years. There is much figurative art, including images from the earliest purported phase of Kimberley art, the Irregular Infill Animal Period, but there are also stencils and other markings. There is evidence of additive reuse – some of the figures have been repainted. There is also fascinating evidence of subtractive reuse, some of the images showing signs of having been ‘battered’ and/or scratched, that is, directly engaged with subsequent to their painting. This monograph is unusual in Australian archaeology as it does not focus on an excavated site; it focuses solely on the rock art of Pundawar Manbur and gives it the attention it deserves.

Prehistoric human images have fascinated archaeological, anthropological and social researchers for many generations. They are known from the Upper Palaeolithic, but in the Neolithic their number increased significantly, forming part of the archaeological record throughout Europe. In Iberia, especially in the south, thousands of figurines have been preserved. These are small human figures of men, women, boys and girls, with female images predominating in funerary and domestic contexts. This volume brings us closer to the current state of knowledge in Iberia, from romantic archaeology to processual and post-processual archaeology. The book explores the number, geographical spread and extended chronology of the figurines – from the 6th to the 3rd millennium BC – and the social practices that lay behind their production and use. From goddesses to women, this exceptional legacy indicates an unprecedented role for women in these societies. The figurines illuminate the representation of identity, its chronological depth, the existence of workshops and distribution circuits, and the continued manipulation of these pieces over generations.

It is remarkable, given Dunkeld’s importance in medieval Scotland, that so little was known of King’s Seat fort until the 1950s. While proposed as a royal Pictish ‘nuclear’ fort in the 1980s, it was so heavily overgrown as to be effectively lost to archaeology until 2015, when the local history society instigated a programme of community archaeology to explore its story. Led by Perth and Kinross Heritage Trust, working with AOC Archaeology Group, this included excavation that revealed a high-status Pictish fort complex. Like the classic sites Dundurn and Clatchard Craig, it had a high-status summit citadel surrounded by a hierarchy of connected out-works on lower terraces. LiDAR data revealed a previously unknown south enclosure, more than doubling its total footprint and raising questions about the role of such sites and the nature of Pictish settlement. Controlling important routes from the north and west into the lower Tay region, King’s Seat was a Pictish ‘royal’ stronghold, estate, and production centre which was to attract an important early monastic foundation. While relatively short-lived, it produced evidence of elite metalworking and trade and was the venue for feasting that saw the consumption of exotic luxuries such as Continental imports and glass vessels from Anglo-Saxon England. It was abandoned, rather than destroyed, perhaps as power passed to a lower site in a new architectural form, associated with the increasing power of the church and as larger polities developed. The relics of Columba were brought to Dunkeld in the 9th century, probably as much a result of tensions between Pictish royalty and the Gaelic church as the threat of Viking raids, before its ecclesiastical importance was eclipsed by St Andrews. Dunkeld takes its name from the Gaelic dun Cailleann or ‘fort of the Caledonians’ which undoubtedly refers to King’s Seat fort. It is apt that retention of this pre-Pictish name celebrates the link between later prehistory and medieval Scotland that is so well represented by the site itself.

Myths on the Edge of Empire presents the findings of an extensive investigation into how classical mythology spread across Roman Britain, revealing which characters and deities were the most prevalent, in which contexts, and within which physical media. The reader is initially guided through a series of case studies that use individual mythical entities (Minerva, Mars, Medusa, Hercules, Mercury, and Cupid) to introduce key concepts and observations, as well as drawing attention to the pitfalls of the terminology often employed in explaining complex cultural interchanges. Building upon these findings, more complex patterns are then discussed in thematic chapters that focus on military deities, how myths were combined or displayed together, and the extent to which urban environments were fertile ground for their employment, as well as a typological breakdown and discussion of material culture. As a reference, this book presents a series of graphical displays, one per myth, that show quantities of artefacts, locations, find contexts, and prevalence over time. Finally, the book classifies and explains the vectors that were used in the cultural transmission of mythology throughout a province that was at the very edge of the Roman Empire.

L’objectif de ce travail de recherche était d’appréhender l’outillage en pierre lié a la déformation plastique des métaux, ce que l’on appelle communément les marteaux et les enclumes.Pour ces outils, encore largement méconnus, il n’existait aucun inventaire en France en 2008, et seulement quatre outils reconnus comme tel apparaissaient dans la bibliographie française. Partant des quelques exemplaires connus, un important travail d’investigation au sein des collections de musées publics ou privées principalement de la façade atlantique, dans un premier temps, a conduit a l’identification de plus d’une centaine d’outils pour la plupart inédits. Ce travail s’est ensuite poursuivi dans quelques musées de l’Est et du Sud de la France, mais les outils y semblent plus rares et difficile a localiser au sein de collections parfois anciennes. Les objectifs de cette recherche se sont concentrés sur trois aspects : appréhender la fonction de ces outils, les replacer au sein des chaînes opératoires du métal et appréhender leurs liens avec l’outillage métallique. Dans cette optique, une typologie fonctionnelle de ces outils lithiques a été réalisée en s’appuyant sur la typologie de leurs homologues métalliques afin de permettre une meilleure comparaison des performances de l’une et l’autre série d’outils dédiées au travail des métaux. La publication de ce travail présentera un inventaire le plus complet possible des outils en pierre de la façade atlantique de l’Europe.

This volume is the first in a series of archaeological resource assessments commissioned by Jersey Heritage as part of an Archaeological Research Framework for the island. It is a comprehensive study of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age of Jersey in the context of the other Channel Islands and their relationship with north-west France. The first part of the book describes our current state of knowledge and in the second part research objectives and questions are presented. These are designed to guide those responsible for the care and protection of artefacts, archaeological deposits and monuments. Researchers will benefit from the resource assessment as it provides an academic framework for future investigations in Jersey.

This volume is the second in a series commissioned by Jersey Heritage as part of an overarching Archaeological Research Framework for the island. It is a comprehensive, up-to-date study of the Neolithic of Jersey in the context of the other Channel Islands and their relationship with north-west France. After a brief reference to the preceding Mesolithic period, and a discussion of the Neolithisation of Jersey, the volume summarises our current state of knowledge and proposes key outstanding research questions for the Early Neolithic (c. 4900-4700 BC), the Middle Neolithic I (c. 4700/4600-4300 BC), the Middle Neolithic II (4300-3400 BC) and the Late – Final Neolithic and Chalcolithic (c. 3400 - 2300 BC). It offers an academic framework for future investigations in Jersey and aims to inform the actions of those responsible for the care and protection of Jersey’s artefacts, archaeological deposits and monuments.