Lapis Lazuli from the Kiln examines the history of the first glass, from its early sporadic occurrence, through the height of its production in the late second millennium BC, to its disappearance at the end of that millennium. The book draws on an exceptionally wide range of sources including ancient texts detailing recipes and trade in glass, iconographic depictions in tombs and temples, archaeological excavation of the most important sites including Amarna and Qantir, and the description of...

For all archaeological artefactual evidence, the study of the provenance, production technology and trade of raw materials must be based on archaeometry. Whereas the study of the provenance and trade of stone and ceramics is already well advanced, this is not necessarily the case for ancient glass. The nature of the raw materials used and the geographical location of their transformation into artefacts often remain unclear. Currently, these questions are addressed by the use of radiogenic iso...

Groups of burial mounds may be among the most tangible and visible remains of Europe's prehistoric past. Yet, not much is known on how "barrow landscapes" came into being . This book deals with that topic, by presenting the results of archaeological research carried out on a group of just two barrows that crown a small hilltop near the Echoput ("echo-well") in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands.

In 2007, archaeologists of the Ancestral Mounds project of Leiden University carried out an excavation of ...

Communities in Contact represents the outcome of the fourth international Leiden in the Caribbean congress entitled From Prehistory to Ethnography in the circum-Caribbean. The contributions included in this volume cover a wide range of topics from a variety of disciplines - archaeology, bioarchaeology, ethnohistory, and ethnography - revolving around the themes of mobility and exchange, culture contact, and settlement and community. The application of innovative approaches and the multi-dimen...

This final report describes the study of an exceptionally well-preserved Iron Age building discovered in northern Burkina Faso, West Africa. The site of Oursi hu-beero, meaning "the big house of Oursi" in the locally spoken Songhay language, was excavated in 2000 and 2001 by a scientific team from the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Ouagadougou. It is situated in the middle of a group of settlement mounds, nearby the modern village of Oursi. In the year 2000 deep erosion gullies were th...

This study represents a contribution to the pre-Colonial archaeology of the Windward Islands in the Caribbean. The research aimed to determine how the Ceramic Age (ca. 400 BC - AD 1492) Amerindian inhabitants of the region related to one another and others at various geographic scales, with a view to better understanding social interaction and organization within the Windward Islands as well the integration of this region within the macro-region.An island-by-island study of some 640 archaeolo...

Tot ca. 4000 jaar geleden had de mens vrijwel uitsluitend de beschikking over stenen werktuigen om zijn strijd om het bestaan succesvol te kunnen voeren. Vuursteen was zonder twijfel de meest geschikte, en daarmee meest gebruikte grondstof om gereedschappen van te vervaardigen. Het leverde vlijmscherpe werkkanten op. Door het veelvuldig gebruik van vuurstenen werktuigen en het feit dat ze gedurende duizenden jaren onveranderd in de bodem bewaard konden blijven, vormen ze een dankbaar onderwer...

'Steden in Scherven/Cities in Sherds' is de meest omvangrijke publicatie binnen het Nederlandse onderzoek naar afval in beerputten. In steden zijn de alledaagse of bijzondere voorwerpen afgedankt en weggegooid in een beerput of afvalkuil. Deze voorwerpen van keramiek en glas vormen de nalatenschap van de vroegere stadsbewoners. Voor archeologisch onderzoek is dit afval de cultuurdrager waaruit informatie over de vroegere consument wordt verkregen.Het onderzoek naar de inhoud van meer dan 150 ...

The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 is one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of all time. It took Carter and his team 10 years to clear the contents of the tomb and among the objects found was a large collection of shoes and sandals. The footwear is analysed here in detail for the first time since the discovery using Carter's records and Harry Burton's excellent photographs along with the author's analyses of the objects, all of which are housed in th...

'Rethinking Ostia' presents an archaeological and spatial approach to Roman urbanism, focused on Rome's port city. It takes the reader along the route of a 'spatial investigation', offering a fresh look and detailed insights into the past society and the built environment of this port town. Following a scaled approach, the book examines different aspects of Ostia's urban landscape, applying Space Syntax's methods for spatial analysis to the urban neighbourhood of one city block - Insula IV ii...