Caught between the poles of remembering and forgetting, glorification and neglect, the abandoned mudbrick settlements (ḥārāt) of Oman are a vital object of conflicting processes of interpretation and negotiation. Adopting a diachronic perspective, the multi-disciplinary book’s chapters examine their past, present and future. The book presents approaches and results of archaeological, ethnographic, historical and sociological research on abandoned ḥārāt.

Oman’s landscape is dotted ...

This book explores the cost, expressed in labour, of constructing fortifications during the Late Bronze Age in Greece (ca. 1600 – 1050 BCE). The underlying question for this study is whether the cost of large scale constructions, built with large, unwieldy blocks, may have overstretched the (economic) capabilities of communities, leading to their collapse.

In order to determine the labour costs, the building process is deconstructed and for each sub-process, the costs are determined. The co...

This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the typology and chronology of pottery from Tepe Sadegh, located on the Sistan Plain of southeastern Iran. Tepe Sadegh, a suburban settlement situated 75 km southeast of Zabol and 13 km southwest of the prominent Bronze Age site Shahr-i Sokhta, serves as one of its satellite settlements. Shahr-i Sokhta, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the largest Bronze Age urban centres in the region, spans four distinct periods of occupation over ...

The famous 'Silk Roads' have long evoked a romantic picture of travel through colourful civilizations that connected the western and eastern poles of Eurasia, facilitating the exchange of exotic luxury goods, peoples, pathogens and ideas. But how far back can we trace such interaction? Increasing evidence suggests considerable time-depth for Trans-Eurasian exchange, with the expanding urban networks of the Bronze Age at times anticipating later caravan routes. Tying the Threads of Eurasia app...

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'...

Barkcloth or tapa, a cloth made from the inner bark of trees, was widely used in place of woven cloth in the Pacific islands until the 19th century. A ubiquitous material, it was integral to the lives of islanders and used for clothing, furnishings and ritual artefacts. Material Approaches to Polynesian Barkcloth takes a new approach to the study of the history of this region through its barkcloth heritage, focusing on the plants themselves and surviving objects in historic collections. This ...

This study considers the detailed archaeological and documentary records of Cyprus and Ugarit (Syria) to gain new insights into the long-term relations between two of the best known, well-connected polities in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean.

I engage with concepts such as maritime space and spheres of interaction, merchants and mercantilism, actors and agents. Some background on both Ugarit and Cyprus is presented, followed by examination of the common material features of both (e....

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...

The Winthir Collection is one of the few identified skeletal collections from the 19th century, offering a rare insight into the lives of 245 individuals recovered from a long-forgotten section of Winthir Cemetery in Munich, southern Germany. Now housed in the State Collection for Anthropology in Munich, these remains have been analysed through an interdisciplinary project that combines historical and osteological research.

For each individual, historical data such as demographics, cause of ...

Pile dwellings have been explored over a vast region for a number of decades now. This has led to the development of different ways, methods, and even schools of under-water and peat-bog excavation practices and data analysis techniques under the influence of different research traditions in individual countries. On the one hand, these and other factors can limit our understanding of the past, whilst on the other hand they can also open up further avenues of interpretation.

By collecting the ...