In 2012, a chance encounter between a curator and a century-old expedition journal occurred in the archives of a Cambridge museum. The journal was written by a young anthropologist, Paul Denys Montague, and recorded his travels in the South Pacific Islands of New Caledonia in 1914, where he became fascinated with the culture of the local Kanak people. Returning to Cambridge at the outbreak of World War One, Montague deposited his journal and a collection of Kanak objects in the Museum of Arch...

After the first decade of large scale settlement research at Oss-Ussen (1974-1984), a second and a third decade followed (1986-2008). The present book is a report on the second decade of settlement excavations, all carried out under supervision of the first author. Started with a focus on the Bronze Age, the project developed into a large scale research of Iron Age and Roman Period settlements and cemeteries over a total area of about 13 ha. The ten campaigns of fieldwork functioned also as ...

The Pacific 'grass skirt' has provoked debates about the demeaning and sexualised depiction of Pacific bodies. While these stereotypical portrayals associated with 'nakedness' are challenged in this book, the complex uses and meanings of the garments themselves are examined, including their link to other body adornments and modifications. In nineteenth-century Fiji, beautiful fibre skirts (liku) in a great variety of shapes and colours were lifetime companions for women. First fitted around p...

In the early modern centuries, several European states issued pioneering regulations to protect what they thought of as “heritage” – that is, antiquities, monuments, and paintings considered important for their country’s splendour. These early protocols have had a substantial impact on the development of legal and aesthetic approaches to heritage protection in recent times.

In this volume, legislation is explored from both a legal and art-historical perspective in order to understand ...

Jebel Aruda, a prominent mountain ridge overlooking the Taqba Dam lake in northern Syria, was the location of a remarkable settlement that flourished between c. 3300 and 3100 BC during the so-called Uruk period. For the inhabitants the sacredness of this high place, evidenced by the discovery of a large temple complex, seems to have taken precedent over its impractical location far above the valley of the Euphrates River. The site was destroyed under unknown circumstances, leaving behind the ...

Olivier Nieuwenhuyse was a remarkable archaeologist whose work has transformed the study of later Neolithic societies in West Asia and he has inspired many colleagues and former student in their own pursuit of archaeology. Through the analysis of material culture his aim was to reconstruct social meanings and practices of societies in the deep past. In this volume a series of colleagues and friends pay tribute to the scholarship of Olivier Nieuwenhuyse, who died much too young, and presents a...

This book is a significant contribution to the field of survey pottery studies, which is not frequently theorised, and could also serve as a guide and provide inspiration to archaeologists designing their own survey projects and methodologies.

Landscape archaeology has heavily relied on pedestrian survey as a field method for more than half a century. In most field projects, archaeological ceramics constitute the lion’s share among the finds and the amount of collected sherds is overwhelmi...

This volume collects different case studies of rediscovery of Christian antiquities between 1860-1930 in Spain, in order to stimulate reflections about the impact of these rediscoveries on our culture in a period of great political transition.

By turning the light on lesser-known stories on a national horizon, this book gives a strong contribution to the history of Christian archaeology. All articles deal with many topics of the field (museology, cultural heritage protection law, history of r...

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...

This volume describes, illustrates, and analysis the finds from the excavations at Dra Abu el-Naga, an important necropolis on the east bank of the Nile in Luxor (Egypt), which was in use from Middle Kingdom times until the early Christian era. Excavations of the site have been conducted by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI).

A wide variety of leather objects or objects with leather parts have been discovered, including footwear, musical objects, loincloths as well as parts of furnitur...