Representing both a barrier and a corridor between the Eurasian and Asian continents, the Caucasus has constituted the setting for various socio-economic transformations throughout prehistory. The transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age in the Northern Caucasus is a period characterised by a shift from pastoral lifeways in the steppe to sedentary lifestyles in the high mountains, and the change from hierarchical to egalitarian societies. In this context, this book provides basic sci...

This book examines the mutual influence of architecture and human action during a key period of history: the Hellenistic age. During this era, the profound transformations in the Mediterranean's archaeological and historical record are detectable, pointing to a conscious intertwining of the physical (landscape, architecture, bodies) and social (practice) components of built space.

Compiling the outcomes of a conference held in Kiel in 2018, the volume assembles contributions focusing on Hellen...

In this book you will find a complete overview of medieval shoes from Olaf Goubitz. There are contributions of Carol van Driel-Murray on Roman shoes and from Willy Groenman-van Waatering on prehistoric shoes. You will find hundreds and hundreds of drawings and reconstructions and viarities. It is possible to make your own shoes, based on the reconstructions and drawings presented. The specialist finds a complete classification model for medieval shoes and will find it easy to classify his own...

Ancient Egyptian animal mummies can be found in almost every Egyptological museum collection. These mummified bodies of animals—from cats and falcons to scarabs and fish—played a role in animal cults and religion, but could also represent a favourite pet or serve as food for the deceased. Especially in Graeco-Roman Egypt, large numbers of animal mummies were deposited as votive offerings related to animal cults, thus playing a significant role in local economies. Studying their remains he...

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,...

Bone tool studies are at a crossroads. A current path is to go beyond the concatenation of methods or concepts borrowed from other disciplines and aim instead at a truly integrated approach that is more in line with the objectives of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research.

The papers in this volume follow this direction by adopting various forms of dialogue and integration between old and new methods and approaches, including technological analysis, usewear analysis, typology, zooa...

Broomcorn/common/proso millet (Panicum miliaceum) is a cereal crop that originated in East Asia and was transferred westward to Europe, where it was introduced in the mid-2nd millennium BCE, at the height of the Bronze Age. Archaeobotanists from the Collaborative Research Centre 1266, supported by many colleagues, conducted a large-scale programme of radiocarbon dating of millet grains from prehistoric Europe. They discovered that the spread of this crop on the continent happened quickly, ext...

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 ...

Around 3000 BCE, a turning point occurred in Europe: Long-existing regional societies entered into a process of transformation. The result is a world in which new global communication networks brought different regions closer together. From 3200/3100 BCE, the Globular Amphora phenomenon (GA) was the trailblazer in Eastern and Central Europe. Due to a focus on pastoral subsistence, in comparison to more agrarian economic systems, new ritual practices formed in light of a more flexible form of ...