Archaeological research on early villages has repeatedly shown that despite their small size these settlements were anything but simple. Excavations at the Late Neolithic and early Aeneolithic village of Monjukli Depe in the Kopet Dag foothills of Turkmenistan contribute to a picture of this complexity. General uniformities in house plans and material culture conceal underlying variability in material and social practices. Small-scale analyses of the preparation and use of space in buildings,...

Growing mountains of waste, decreasing resources and global environmental pollution confront us today with challenges of unprecedented dimensions. Against this background, interest in sustainable and resource-saving concepts is increasing; it is not uncommon to fall back on (supposedly) traditional approaches from times past. But what do we really know about the roots of the circular economy? What turns everyday objects into worthless rubbish, what turns others into highly sought-after object...

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...

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,...

This book includes papers on Nature and Human Nature focusing on Ancient Greek Philosophy and its Reception. The book encompasses papers of academics who participated in the homonymous Symposium which was held in October 2023 at the Netherlands Institute at Athens.

All papers deal with philosophers, philosophical works and treatises which belong to the broad subject of the inquiry into nature, including human nature.

A large period in the History of Philosophy is covered, beginning from Class...

Power and prestige in Europe during the first millennium AD were predominantly expressed in two portable materials: silver and gold. These precious metals underpinned the emergence of early Medieval kingdoms in Europe by providing the raw materials for objects that were used to create, contest and reflect status within and between societies. They also provide a key source of evidence for understanding reactions to the political vacuum caused by the disintegration of the Roman Empire and the e...

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 ...

The art of painting on bark was once widely found in many parts of the Pacific, including the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea, the home of the Kwoma people who are the subject of this study. The styles of the paintings and the subjects of designs were as varied as the hundreds of languages spoken in this region.

Following European contact at the end of the nineteenth century, and the social change this brought, many New Guinea peoples discontinued producing their vibrant designs on ba...

The five tombs dealt with in this book were explored between 2009 and 2017 by the Leiden-Turin Expedition in the New Kingdom necropolis of Saqqara. All of them can be described as minor tombs, constructed wherever some space was still available in the cemetery between the major monuments of 18th Dynasty date. Some of them were clearly built against the exterior walls of these previous monuments, whereas their unusual plans show how the builders had to adapt to the cramped conditions in the ce...