The focus of Archaeological Open-Air Museums (AOAMs) is to present both the tangible and intangible past to the public. The tangible parts of AOAMs are the archaeological remains and the reconstructions. The intangible and, in some respects the most interesting part of an AOAM, is the story of the people the museum represents. This volume explores the research and visitor agendas of structures and their life cycles as they are experienced by experimental archaeology projects and AOAMs. The pa...

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...

Every year, in the last month of the Islamic calendar, millions of Muslims from around the world come together in Mecca to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage that all capable Muslims should perform at least once in their lives. In 2013, the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden organised the exhibition Longing for Mecca. The Pilgrim's Journey. The chapters in this volume are the outcome of the two-day symposium on the Hajj, which was held at the museum in connection to the exhibition.The centr...

As the papers in this volume testify, digital scholarly editing is a vibrant practice. Scholarly editing has a long-standing tradition in the humanities. It is of crucial importance within disciplines such as literary studies, philology, history, philosophy, library and information science, and bibliography. In fact, digital scholarly editing represents one of the longest traditions in the field of Digital Humanities - and the theories, concepts, and practices that were designed for editing i...

This book is a study of 'collecting' undertaken by Joseph Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux and his shipmates in Tasmania, the western Pacific Islands, and Indonesia. In 1791-1794 Bruni d'Entrecasteaux led a French naval expedition in search of the lost vessels of La Pérouse which had last been seen by Europeans at Botany Bay in March 1788. After Bruni d'Entrecasteaux died near the end of the voyage and the expedition collapsed in political disarray in Java, its collections and records were subs...

Southeast Asia has a long history with Buddhism that continues to the present day. Centuries ago, Buddhism spread to various areas of Southeast Asia, where some of the greatest Buddhist images and monuments were produced over 1,000 years ago. These include the majestic Borobudur in Central Java and Angkor Thom in Cambodia. Images of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara in bronze were also produced in large numbers at this time.

This book deals with images of Avalokiteśvara that are unique to speci...

Colourful surface treatments form an integral element of vernacular and élite architecture of ancient societies. This is also true for the various regions of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 2nd millennium B.C.E., where elaborate wall paintings furnished temples, tombs, palatial buildings, and in general more elaborate houses. From a present-day perspective, these rich images provide invaluable insights into past realities as well as interconnections between different visual systems. However...

Maritime archaeologist Honor Frost (1917-2010) was a pioneer in her field. She left a rich legacy through her innovative research conducted in the eastern Mediterranean on the remains of ports and harbours, sea-level change, shipwrecks and ship construction, and ancient anchors.

This volume provides an appreciation of Frost's work and gives a point-in-time assessment of current projects in the region that are in effect a continuity of Frost's work. As such, it provides an insight into the deve...

Osteoarchaeology is a rich field for reconstructing past lives in that it can provide details on sex, age-at-death, stature, and pathology in conjunction with the cultural, social, and economic aspects of the person's environment and burial conditions. While osteoarchaeological research is common in the Low Countries, many of the studies done on the excellent skeletal collections remain unpublished and therefore unavailable to a larger audience.

Following on the Urban Graveyards volumes, Osteo...

This volume is themed around the interdependent relationship between humans and the environment, an important topic in the work of Corrie Bakels. How do environmental constraints and opportunities influence human behaviour and what is the human impact on the ecology and appearance of the landscape? And what can archaeological knowledge contribute to the current discussions about the use, arrangement and depletion of our (local) environment?