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...

St. Eustatius, a small island in the Lesser Antilles, has played an important role in Atlantic World history. Since its first permanent European settlement in 1636, the island changed hands 22 times between the Dutch, French, and English. As a result of the Dutch free trade policy, St. Eustatius became one of the Caribbean’s main transshipment centers in the eighteenth century. During the American War of Independence (1775-1783), large amounts of arms, ammunition, and gunpowder were shipped...

One of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese antiquities worldwide was accrued by the Egyptologist Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bissing (1873–1956). As a scholar, university professor, and politically engaged Prussian nobleman he was an important link in the international network of Egyptology and in the distribution of archaeological objects to museums. He was also active in other disciplines regarding the ancient world, such as Etruscology. Already during his life, the collec...

Dorestad was the largest town of the Low Countries in the Carolingian era. As an inland port on the edge of the Frankish Empire, it functioned as an international hub, connecting the North Sea World with the Continent and the Low Countries with Italy. In 2024, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden hosted its quinquennial international congress based around Dorestad, located at present-day Wijk bij Duurstede. This fourth edition, ‘Dorestad and Everything After’, coincided with the l...

The study of kinship from archaeology has been fluctuating. At the end of the 20th century archaeologists were reluctant or skeptical about its relevance and viability. However, in recent decades it has gained prominence and today it is experiencing a sweet moment, although not without problems. Its recent impulse has been due to the methodological development of bioscience techniques (aDNA and isotope studies) and to the profound revision and updating of other inference strategies from house...

Nineveh, de machtige hoofdstad van het Assyrische rijk, fascineerde klassieke en oosterse schrijvers, reizigers en geschiedkundigen sinds de verwoesting in 612 voor Christus. Zij schetsen een immense, dichtbevolkte stad met 90 kilometer lange stadsmuren, prachtige paleizen en kolossale standbeelden van goud. Sinds 1842 onderzoeken archeologen de ruïnes van Nineveh, die gelegen zijn aan de oostelijke oevers van de Tigris, vlakbij de moderne stad Mosul in Irak. De honderdduizenden objecten die...

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...

This book features a collection of papers produced in honour of Roger Matthews, Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Reading. Roger previously taught at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology (2001–2010), before which he served as the Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (BSAI, today BISI) in Baghdad and the British Institute at Ankara (BIA) in the 1980s and 1990s.

The volume honours Roger’s legacy by assembling interdisciplinary research by his students,...

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 ...