St. Eustatius, a small island in the Lesser Antilles, has played an important role in Atlantic World history. Since its first permanent European settlement in 1636, the island changed hands 22 times between the Dutch, French, and English. As a result of the Dutch free trade policy, St. Eustatius became one of the Caribbean’s main transshipment centers in the eighteenth century. During the American War of Independence (1775-1783), large amounts of arms, ammunition, and gunpowder were shipped...

One of the largest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese antiquities worldwide was accrued by the Egyptologist Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bissing (1873–1956). As a scholar, university professor, and politically engaged Prussian nobleman he was an important link in the international network of Egyptology and in the distribution of archaeological objects to museums. He was also active in other disciplines regarding the ancient world, such as Etruscology. Already during his life, the collec...

Dorestad was the largest town of the Low Countries in the Carolingian era. As an inland port on the edge of the Frankish Empire, it functioned as an international hub, connecting the North Sea World with the Continent and the Low Countries with Italy. In 2024, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden hosted its quinquennial international congress based around Dorestad, located at present-day Wijk bij Duurstede. This fourth edition, ‘Dorestad and Everything After’, coincided with the l...

This volume comprises 100 archaeological air photographs, principally of sites dating to the Iron Age and Roman periods in Northern Britain, resulting from aerial survey between 1970 and 1995, before the advent of drones when archaeological air photography was still dependent upon the use of light aircraft. The principal target areas were the Anglo-Scottish Borders, central Scotland (crannogs) and the Northern and Western Isles (brochs and duns). Practically, in order to maximise intended ...

For the first time seasonality is placed at the centre of the study of rural settlement. Using a Europe-wide approach, it provides a primer of examples, of techniques and of ideas for the identification and understanding of seasonal settlement. As such, it marks an important new step in the interpretation of the use of the countryside by historic communities linked to the annual passage of the year. The particular studies are introduced by an opening essay which draws wider conclusions about ...

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...

Pre-dating the urban revolution in Western Asia, a network of agricultural settlements developed in the forest-steppe zone northwest of the Black Sea in the late 5th and first half of the 4th millennium BCE, some of which are among the largest prehistoric mega-sites in Europe. These enormous so-called Trypillia communities are unique in many respects, and the dynamics of their formation and their development have long been a topic of intensive research. For more than ten years now, research o...

This book sketches the first archaeological history of the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq and adjacent landscapes over a period of c. 12,000 years, from the earliest signs of human presence until the mid-first millennium BCE, based on data gathered between 2013 and 2023 by the Sirwan Regional Project (SRP).

The central research objective of the SRP is to move beyond traditional historical topoi and their predominantly external and state-centric perspectives that hav...

This book sketches the first archaeological history of the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq and adjacent landscapes over a period of c. 12,000 years, from the earliest signs of human presence until the mid-first millennium BCE, based on data gathered between 2013 and 2023 by the Sirwan Regional Project (SRP).

The central research objective of the SRP is to move beyond traditional historical topoi and their predominantly external and state-centric perspectives that hav...

In the spring of 1497, the Hispaniolan cacica (chieftess) Anacaona presented Columbus’ brother, Adelantado (Governor) Bartolomé Colón, with a lavish assortment of Indigenous wealth, including both woven textiles and balls of spun cotton, “so large that a man could hardly lift them.”

These had been stored among the cacical reserves, held in readiness for distribution in ways deemed useful to the chiefs and their communities – from spun cotton for artisanal commissions, to finished ob...