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 ...

Multimodality – the integration of different semiotic resources in communication – plays a key role in the way people convey meaning. While much of the research has focused on multimodal communication in modern European and Anglo-Saxon cultures, the diverse visual and textual compositions of ancient civilizations have been less explored.

This book presents the findings of a working group on multimodal communication in Ancient Egypt and explores the multimodal nature of Egyptian artifacts...

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 ...

An Introduction to Museum Archaeology provides a comprehensive survey and synthesis of all aspects of current museum practice in relation to the discipline of archaeology. Drawing heavily on examples it deconstructs the different challenges posed by trying to tell archaeological stories in museum buildings, and on related sites. The final section sums up the state of museum archaeology in the early 21st century and discusses the major issues it is currently confronting.

There is also a detail...

Een onderzoek naar de overgang van jagen en verzamelen naar landbouw, het zogenoemde neolithisatieproces.

Het begrip van het neolithisatieproces is in de laatste decennia in Nederland aanzienlijk toegenomen. Een samenhangend overzicht van het archeobotanisch onderzoek naar de overgang van jagen en verzamelen naar landbouw, ontbrak tot nu toe.

Dit proefschrift heeft tot doel een beter begrip van het neolithisatieproces in de Nederlandse 'wetlands' te bieden. De auteur doet dit door middel van d...

Aegean archaeology has mainly concentrated on Prehistoric and Greco-Roman times and has provided relatively little information on human activity and material culture in the medieval period. Historical research concerning the medieval era is sufficiently developed but archaeological research on the medieval Aegean has mainly focused on matters of art and architecture. In fact, we have an overall picture of the medieval and post-medieval periods for only a few islands of the Aegean. This ASLU v...

This 43th volume of the ASLU series presents a useful GIS procedure to study settlement patterns in landscape archaeology. In several Mediterranean regions archaeological sites have been mapped by fieldwalking surveys, producing large amounts of data. These legacy site-based survey data represent an important resource to study ancient settlement organization. Methodological procedures are necessary to cope with the limits of these data, and more importantly with the distortions on data patter...

Ancient civilizations often developed near major rivers, like in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Central Asia, the Murghab alluvial fan in southern Turkmenistan was central to the emergence of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), also known as the Oxus Civilization, during the third and second millennia BCE. The local alluvial fan was central for the productive agriculture at the basis of the region's urban centers and the wealth that accumulated in these societies.

This volume expl...

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...