This book is a tribute to the remarkable achievements of Peter M.M.G. Akkermans in the archaeology of West Asia. A focus on previously overlooked periods and regions has been the hallmark of his work. Instead of investigating the traditional key transitions and core regions that have been central to the archaeology of West Asia, Peter always aimed to shed light on the ‘in-between’ periods and regions, often dismissed as being ‘marginal’ (in his words ‘marginal to whom or what?’). ...

This study considers the detailed archaeological and documentary records of Cyprus and Ugarit (Syria) to gain new insights into the long-term relations between two of the best known, well-connected polities in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean.

I engage with concepts such as maritime space and spheres of interaction, merchants and mercantilism, actors and agents. Some background on both Ugarit and Cyprus is presented, followed by examination of the common material features of both (e....

This study considers the detailed archaeological and documentary records of Cyprus and Ugarit (Syria) to gain new insights into the long-term relations between two of the best known, well-connected polities in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean.

I engage with concepts such as maritime space and spheres of interaction, merchants and mercantilism, actors and agents. Some background on both Ugarit and Cyprus is presented, followed by examination of the common material features of both (e....

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...

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 ...

This collection of papers was compiled in celebration of the remarkable academic career of Professor Wil Roebroeks, who has established himself as one of Europe’s leading figures in Palaeolithic archaeology over the past three decades and founded the Human origins research group at Leiden University. The volume features a diverse array of chapters contributed by close colleagues, as well as former and current students, providing a thorough overview of the flourishing field of Palaeolithic a...

The main goal of this volume is to look at social groups involved in economic activity other than members of the palace-based institutions and “elites” in Late Bronze Age Mycenaean Greek societies. The palaces and elites are the usual subject of studies of ancient economies, often from a top-down approach, but here we consider a fuller range of the members of a society, their organization, their institutions, and their contributions to the economies of those societies from bottom-up appro...

The human past is unimaginable without the horse. From our ancestors hunting and painting horses in the Upper Palaeolithic, to the earliest riders, the rise of equestrian empires, and the critical role of horses in war, settler colonialism, and modern state formation, human history is undeniably equestrian. Because of the deep and varied entanglements between people and horses, the study of horses of the past is inherently, and increasingly, interdisciplinary. However, scholars often do not u...

In the rich archives of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities lies a fascinating manuscript dealing with the autopsy on an Ancient Egyptian mummy. This was performed in 1878 by the Museum’s curator Willem Pleyte. Thanks to Pleyte’s detailed procès-verbal, the mummy (which did not survive the dissection) can be reconstructed at least on paper. The name of the deceased has been inscribed on the mummy’s cartonnage, on some of the linen bandages, and on the Book of the Dead papyrus retrieved by...