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95776 results in Archaeology

Page 1 of 4789

From First Farmers to First Cities in Western Asia and Europe
  • The Long Revolution
  • Amy Bogaard
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    November 2026
    Print publication:
    30 November 2026
  • The relationship between farming and the emergence cities is a key question in the archaeology of western Asia and Europe.  In this study, Amy Bogaard explores how the earliest villages and cities were sustained through evolving agricultural strategies. Deploying the latest methods and evidence, she offers new approaches for predicting how settlement scale and density shaped agricultural practices, and for reconstructing farming methods as they evolved alongside urbanisation. Bogaard demonstrates how Neolithic farming took off with the integration of small-scale cultivation and herding, held together by the work and ownership claims of households. Urbanisation challenged resilient Neolithic farming practices, as early cities co-evolved with the expansion of low-input cereal monocultures.  Nevertheless, diverse Neolithic farming traditions persisted in these urban landscapes, creating richer agroecologies and more sustainable cities. Bogaard's study offers exciting insights into how farming and cities emerged in the deep past, along with the theory, toolkit, and data necessary for building knowledge of ancient farming, and for reflecting on farming futures.

Shell Artefacts
  • An Archaeological Perspective
  • Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    31 October 2026
  • Shells were an important product in the prehistoric and ancient worlds. Dating back to the Palaeolithic period, shells are among the earliest symbolic artefacts and are a key indicator of human cognitive evolution. In this volume, Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer offers a multi-disciplinary, global survey of shell artefacts in human history. Integrating approaches from biomineralogy, palaeontology, and geoarchaeology, she shows how humans exploited shells as fundamental components of material culture, alongside lithics and ceramics. Bar-Yosef Mayer traces how the transition to farming was accompanied by technological advances and innovations as reflected in new artefact types, including decorative objects, such as pendants and bangles, as well as tools and vessels, such as containers and fish-hooks. Her study also considers the use of shell money as currency in historical periods. Featuring examples of shell technology from around the world, this volume serves as an introduction to the topic and is suitable for use in courses on human prehistory and early civilizations.

Rediscovering Homer
  • The Human Experience in the Odyssey and the Iliad
  • Michael B. Cosmopoulos
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    31 October 2026
  • A timeless tale of a heroic character's journey through life, Homer's Odyssey has captured the imagination of readers from antiquity to the present day. Michael Cosmopoulos approaches this epic, together with the Iliad, not as remote works of literature, but as a living record of human experience shaped by war, loss, memory, and survival. He offers a poignant exploration of the aspects and consequences of war as captured in the Odyssey, including trauma, leadership and politics, human relations, religion and fate, and the struggle to return home and rebuild after upheaval. Cosmopoulos also situates both the Iliad and the Odyssey within the social conditions and the material realities of Greek society during the Aegean Bronze Age. Based on decades of archaeological field work and study of classical antiquity, and written in an accessible style, his book powerfully demonstrates how the poetry of ancient Greece preserves collective memory across the generations – and why these poems still speak to modern readers.

Religion, Writing, and the Shaping of the Classic Maya World
  • Mallory E. Matsumoto
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • The Classic Maya civilization (250–925 CE) in Mesoamerica innovated a hieroglyphic script that was written and read by people spread across hundreds of square kilometers and dozens of autonomous kingdoms over the course of more than a millennium. Yet, unlike other regions of the ancient world where writing was independently invented, the Maya area was never politically unified. In Religion, Writing, and the Shaping of the Classic Maya World, Mallory E. Matsumoto draws on hieroglyphic texts, imagery, and archaeological finds to reconstruct interactions through which the Classic Maya exchanged knowledge about their hieroglyphic script and how to use it. She argues that religion and ritual practice were central contexts for maintaining a coherent, mutually intelligible writing system in the absence of political centralization. The Classic Maya case challenges long-standing assumptions about the social forces underlying the origins of early writing. It also reveals religion's potential to shape human culture and technology. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The Roman Craftworkers of Late Antiquity
  • A Social History of Glass Production and Related Industries
  • Hallie G. Meredith
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • Craftworkers throughout history have nearly always worked anonymously, often as valuable assistants in the service of famed artisans but typically without proper credit or recognition. However, an unsigned piece can nevertheless reveal a world. While these craftworkers' names may be lost to history, their contributions can be properly acknowledged and their working realities in large part reconstructed through fresh methodological approaches to architectural, artefactual and epigraphic evidence and other sources. In this book, which will interest scholars in a wide range of fields, Hallie Meredith sheds new light on the crucially important but largely neglected work of fourth- to sixth-century Roman artists in traditional craft materials and processes, such as glass, ivory and marble carving. She uses these case studies to provide insights not just into the past but also into the continuing realities of uncredited creative labourers today.

The Social Networks of Early Medieval Trading Emporia
  • Harbouring Strangers in a Viking World
  • Søren Michael Sindbæk
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • Trading emporia emerged in Northern Europe in the Early Middle Ages and were the first coin-based markets and urban settlements in this region. In this study, Søren Michael Sindbæk proposes a new account of the origins of these trading centres by tracing their role in hosting strangers. Sindbæk proposes that 'weak' social ties are a widely overlooked middle ground in pre-modern societies that bridge the gap between 'strong' family ties and formal institutions. By adapting cultural norms, networks, and institutions, it was possible to combine a high level of trust within an open form of society. Emporia developed when the ancient conventions of hosting and guest-friendship became insufficient to accommodate the growing connections between peoples brought together through seafaring. Sindbæk demonstrates that the history of emporia is closely linked to the expansion of maritime trade, colonization, piracy, and warfare – the basis for what we know today as the Viking Age.

Innovation's Heritage
  • Insights on a Cultural Phenomenon from the Ancient Past
  • Saro Wallace
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • Is innovation all we think it is? In this study, Saro Wallace challenges prevalent assumptions about innovation within post-colonial, post-industrial academic, and popular frameworks. She shows how they are often predicated on recent western culture and its dominant economic frameworks, and how they draw heavily on ecological and evolutionary models in the biological sciences. Using the ancient past to examine and recast innovation in long-term perspective, she reveals innovation's ultimate social determination, historicity, and non-innateness in human groups. Wallace offers core case studies from the ancient Mediterranean and west Asia and covers the origins of metals, ceramics, textiles and cultural landscapes starting 14000 years ago and ending in the first millennium BC. She demonstrates that her compelling, wide-ranging model also applies to historical and recent  cases, suggesting that innovation is neither an engineerable phenomenon in society, nor is it inherent, organic, or inevitable.

The Mediterranean in Antiquity
  • New Perspectives from Prehistory to the Byzantine Period
  • Edited by Rubina Raja
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • This is a cross-disciplinary study of the Mediterranean, which combines archaeology, historiography, ecology, climate, globalization, and network theories. It situates the Mediterranean both within and beyond traditional area studies, promoting broader, comparative, and cross-disciplinary approaches to antiquity. Its nine contributions, written by internationally recognized scholars within their respective study areas, challenge existing frameworks and encourage scholars to rethink how the Mediterranean is conceptualized, drawing on renewed concepts and diverse evidence. The studies guide the reader to desert environments such as the Sahara, Egypt, Palmyra, and Greece, while exploring topics including urban religion, mythology, social complexity, and iconography.
Incorporating Native American Philosophies and Ontologies in Archaeological Practice

Incorporating Native American Philosophies and Ontologies in Archaeological Practice
  • Nathan R. Lawres, Delaney O'Connell, Matthew C. Sanger
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • Archaeologists increasingly rely on philosophical principles, as evidenced in the Ontological Turn, yet often only engage Western philosophers, which is unfortunate as Indigenous scholars, particularly Native American authors, have provided alternatives applicable to archaeological research. Within this volume, we introduce readers to Native American scholars whose work we apply to major topics in archaeology, including landscapes and knowledge, kinship and extended personhood, and cosmology and ceremonial practices. By contrasting with traditional, Western-based interpretive approaches, we demonstrate the transformative potential of relying on Native American philosophers not only in terms of better understanding the archaeological record but also in how archaeologists and practitioners approach issues such as repatriation, archaeological collections care and handling, and sovereignty. In all, this volume presents a powerful new approach to archaeological research that provides readers with an introduction to Native American philosophers, relevant case studies, and real-world examples that they can use in their own works.

Metaphysical Revolutions in the Ancient Andes
  • Ritual, Persons, and Power from 1500 BC until the Conquest
  • Darryl Wilkinson
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • The material and visual culture of late precolonial Andean societies-especially the Inka Empire-looked radically different from their predecessors. For millennia, the iconography of the ancient Andes was dominated by warriors, sacrificial rites, apex predators and chimerical beings whose bodies were amalgamations of multiple human and animal species. Yet by AD 1000, these images had almost entirely vanished. This study offers the first ever analysis of these dramatic transformations. Far more than simply a change of aesthetic preferences, or even a shift in ideology, it posits a series of metaphysical revolutions in which Andean sociality was fundamentally altered. The basis of personhood, the creation of value and the nature of political power itself all came to be refigured in far-reaching ways. Specifically, a once-dominant metaphysics focused on the predatory extraction of vitality from enemies disappeared, to be replaced by one grounded in reciprocal exchanges between human and nonhuman beings.
Nomads in Ancient Egypt and Nubia

Nomads in Ancient Egypt and Nubia
  • Julien Cooper
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • Nomads were a frequent fixture in the ancient landscapes of Northeast Africa and the Nile basin. Maligned by ancient riverine cultures and ignored by many historians, the nomads of ancient Egypt and Nubia comprise diverse groups of people for whom the desert was their home and herding was a way of life. This Element traces the lives of different ancient nomadic groups across Egypt and Sudan, from the Medjay to the Libyans, from Blemmyes to Saracens. Sketching out approaches from texts and archaeology, this synthesis explores issues related to nomads' mobility, social organisation and their complex relationship with urban states. This Element demonstrates that a holistic picture of ancient Northeast Africa and the states of Egypt and Nubia requires a proper appraisal of nomads and their society.

The Archaic and Early Classical Greek World
  • Using Coins as Sources
  • Keith Rutter
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • The western tradition of coinage began in Asia Minor around 650 BCE and from there the idea spread quite rapidly to other parts of the Mediterranean. This book describes and evaluates developments in coinage down to the middle of the fifth century. Early coinage was not monolithic. The new medium of exchange proved attractive to a variety of rulers and societies – kings, dynasts, tribes, city–states with varying forms of governance. The physical characteristics of the coins produced were another source of difference. Initially there was no fixed idea of what a coin should look like, and there were several experiments before a consensus emerged around a small, circular metal object with a design, or type, on both sides. This book provides students with an authoritative introduction, with all technical terms and methodologies explained, as well as illustrations of over 200 important coins with detailed captions.
Urban Life and Form in Ancient Egypt

Urban Life and Form in Ancient Egypt
  • Nadine Moeller
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • Taking into account archaeological and written sources, Egypt's urban past is remarkably evident throughout the pharaonic period, as can be demonstrated by a selection of relevant examples. There is also evidence of some unusual forms of towns and cities that do not readily fit into the common categories associated with urbanism. This Element aims to introduce ancient Egyptian urban society and form based on a theoretical framework that uses urban dimensions and attributes. This multi-faceted approach offers a degree of flexibility that is helpful for such an investigation because it can be adapted to the incomplete nature of the available evidence, which theories based on modern urbanism often lack. Additionally, it is important to highlight both commonalities and culture-specific traits of urban manifestations during the pharaonic period, which encompasses almost 3000 years. This longevity provides an exceptional opportunity to follow long-term trajectories and changes.
A Spatial Analysis Model for Exploring Human-Environment Interactions

A Spatial Analysis Model for Exploring Human-Environment Interactions
  • Pedro Trapero Fernández
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • This Element introduces a methodological framework that positions itself between site-specific archaeological investigations and broader regional approaches characteristic of historical and landscape archaeology. While traditional archaeological studies often focus on detailed analyses of individual sites, and regional studies aim to identify large-scale patterns and long-term processes, the proposed method bridges these scales through the calculation of the minimum mobility space linked to settlements or production centers. This concept enables the delineation of the effective area of influence or resource exploitation surrounding a site, thereby offering a more nuanced perspective on how past communities organized and interacted with their immediate landscapes. The approach incorporates diverse environmental and historical variables, including geology, soil types, and topographical constraints, to reconstruct the spatial logic behind site location and land use. It employs a suite of analytical techniques such as cost-surface analysis, statistical modeling, and historical-geographical integration.
Slavery in Capitalism

Slavery in Capitalism
  • A Deep History
  • Tâmis Parron
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • The enslavement of Africans in the Americas profoundly shaped the continent's demography, cultures, languages, and legal systems, playing a decisive role in modern economic growth and the rise of industrial capitalism. Yet, its historical interpretation remains contested. One view sees modern slavery as beginning with the transatlantic slave trade, disconnecting it from earlier traditions in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Another claims slavery is a universal institution, unchanged across millennia. Moving beyond this dichotomy, the book offers a new framework for the study of Black slavery in the Americas. It situates slavery within a broader and older human geography: a world region of enslavement that dates back to the deep historical formation of the Mediterranean basin. By tracing the emergence of modern slavery from within this ancient system, the book sheds new light on its conditions of existence, collapse, and reconfiguration up to the present day.
Archaeological Bird Bone and Eggshell Identification

Archaeological Bird Bone and Eggshell Identification
  • Ariel Taivalkoski
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • This element provides the reader with an easy-to-read reference guide for avian bone and eggshell analysis. Standard visual identification is the methodology outlined for the analysis of avian bone. This element details how to select reference material, what markers to look for, and tips and tricks for identifying avian bones. Cooking, butchery, pathology, and age will be discussed alongside reference images the reader can use when identifying these in their own collections. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is the method utilized for avian eggshell identification in this element. Information about creating your own reference images and performing microscopy are detailed. How to identify several types of cooking methods, embryogenesis (stage of egg development), and weathering will also be discussed. This is the first element to provide methodologies for both avian bone identification and SEM identification of avian eggshell.

The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome
  • C. Brian Rose
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026
  • Tracing the development of Rome over a span of 1200 years, The Topography and Monuments of Ancient Rome offers an overview of the changing appearance of the city and the social, political, and military factors that shaped it. C. Brian Rose places Rome's architecture, coinage, inscriptions and monuments in historical context and offers a nuanced analysis regarding the evolution of the city and its monuments over time. He brings an interdisciplinary approach to his study, merging insights gained from cutting-edge techniques in archaeological research, such as remote sensing, core-sampling, palaeobotany, neutron-activation analysis, and isotopic analysis, with literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence. Rose also includes reconstructions of the ancient city that reflect the rapid developments in digital technology and mapping in the last three decades.  Aimed at scholars and students alike, Rose's study demonstrates how evidence can be drawn from a variety of approaches. It serves as a model for studying and viewing the growth and structure of ancient cities.

  • Chapter Six - What Bundles of Trajectories Reveal about Complexification

  • Robert Drennan, University of Pittsburgh, Christian Peterson, University of Hawai’i at Manoa , C. Adam Berrey, California State University, Sacramento
  • Book:
    The Emergence of Social Complexity
    Published online:
    25 February 2026
    Print publication:
    30 June 2026, pp 158-188

  • Summary

    In addition to different dynamics in different bundles of trajectories (competition and prestige or wealth differentiation are strongly developed in some, cooperation in others), a few commonalities crosscut multiple bundles. Complexification almost always occurs in conditions of demographic growth, although the population levels vary enormously. Residential density regularly plays an important role in shaping interaction patterns related to productive differentiation, integration of local economies, and wealth accumulation on the one hand or attenuated interaction, and ritual and prestige differentiation, on the other. Such forces operate in the same way in all parts of the world, overriding supposedly typical cultural patterns.

Page 1 of 4789