The use of Aegean pottery – comprising a few drinking vases – is rather limited in the Iron Age cemetery of al-Bass in Tyre despite the large number of investigated tombs. This finding stands in contrast to the evidence recovered from the excavations at the settlement site of Tyre, on the ancient island, where a broad range of typologically variable Greek ceramics came to light. Nevertheless, the imported wares at the settlement seem to be represented by even lower percentages than those at the cemetery. This paper aims to analyse this discrepancy through various perspectives that include examination of typology, functionality, social dynamics and economics. The conclusions drawn from this analysis suggest that these non-local artefacts did not significantly alter the way in which the community of Tyre consumed wine. Instead, their deposition in burial and possibly other social contexts can be associated with issues of social status manipulation.

Just as the archaeology of the Zimbabwe Culture’s later phases (the Torwa and Mutapa states) can be understood as an exercise in historical archaeology structured by dialogue between the evidence of material culture and that of oral and written histories, so too can the recent past of farming communities and their neighbours south of the Limpopo. Here (and extending into modern Botswana), the archaeological record of the past several hundred years is that of the ancestors of today’s Sotho/Tswana, Nguni, Tsonga, and Venda peoples. This chapter therefore looks at the expansion of farming populations on to the temperate grasslands of South Africa’s interior; the multiple interactions between farmers, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers (something also increasingly informed by genetics); early contacts with European traders on southern Africa’s Indian Ocean coast; the creative potential of cattle, metals, and other indigenous resources to generate power and wealth; the emergence of more complex societies and denser patterns of settlement; and the construction of new built landscapes that are only now beginning to be understood in detail (notably in Mpumalanga and Gauteng).

This paper summarises some of the results obtained from Neutron Activation Analysis of early Greek pottery that was sampled in the Mediterranean. It provides an overview of analytical evidence about the provenance and geochemical clustering of major pottery wares such as the Protogeometric and Geomtric transport amporas and K-22 or common pottery types such as PSC, chevron, Thapsos and Aetos 666 bowls. Their historical implications include aspects of specialisation in pottery production, modes of technology transfer, appropriation and exchange of ‘colonial’ pottery types. Finally, this concluding chapter presents new insights into the economic and cultural relations among remote communities in the Mediterranean, and the chronological implications of our pottery analysis on the correlation of Phoenician and Greek migrations.

The opulence of Antioch and Daphne’s houses is well known; how new theoretical and methodological approaches help us evaluate this complicated archaeological record is the focus of this chapter.

The earliest Greek pottery at the coast of Málaga comprise two Middle Geometric II skyphoi from La Rebanadilla, on the mouth of the Guadalhorce River. They are associated with local, Phoenician, Cypriot and Villanovan ceramics, all of them part of feasting tableware. The Geometric pottery from La Rebanadilla is dated to the second half of the 9th century BCE by means of calibrated radiocarbon dates. In the 8th century BCE, Greek imports were not consumed at coastal Málaga, except for a transport amphora from Cerro del Villar. Despite the scarcity of Greek imports during the 8th century BCE, skyphoi of Greek type were produced in Phoenician workshops in the region of Málaga and became surprisingly common in the next century. This new local shape became common at sites such as Toscanos, demonstrating that the ritual consumption of wine with skyphoi was appropriated by the Phoenicians.

Returning to some of the themes addressed in Chapter 3, this final chapter considers the wider social responsibilities of archaeologists working in southern Africa in the twenty-first century. Matters discussed include gender and racial equity within the discipline itself (especially with respect to South Africa), how best to relate the work done by archaeologists to the wider public, heritage management and conflicts over this (including the restitution of cultural sites, property, and human remains), the roles of contract archaeology, university teaching departments, and museums, the importance of publication, and the potential for developing post-colonial approaches to the interpretation of archaeological evidence. In highlighting possible future research trends, the chapter concludes by emphasising the need for work that is both intellectually sound and socially engaged and by reiterating the global significance of southern Africa’s immensely long and varied archaeological record.

Klazomenai, in the North Ionian region of the eastern Aegean, is an important site with a long occupation history that began in the 5th millennium BCE. Recent excavations have revealed diverse data from the domestic and the funerary spheres dating to the Early Iron Age. Large dwellings located on the southern outskirts of the prehistoric mound at Liman Tepe suggest continuous occupations during the transition from the end of the Late Bronze Age and throughout the Early Iron Age. Nineteen pottery samples were selected covering a chronological sequence from the late 12th through the late 6th century BCE for NAA. The results show Klazomenai’s involvement in pottery production during the 10th through the 6th centuries BCE and prove the site’s participation in long-distance maritime trade networks in the (northern) Aegean basin during the early first millennium BCE.

This chapter sets out some of the key frameworks within which southern African archaeology operates. It first establishes the boundaries of ‘southern Africa’ for the purposes of this book and then examines the region’s physical geography. The climate and topography described frame southern Africa’s present-day ecology, which is discussed using the biome divisions of Mucina and Rutherford (2006). The chapter then considers how environmental change affected southern Africa during the Quaternary (using the well-known Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) system), the data that archaeologists and others use to reconstruct past environments, and the principal climatic mechanisms at work in the region. It concludes by outlining and assessing the major chronometric and other dating methods employed to build the chronological framework of southern Africa’s past.

This chapter explores the establishemnt of the local mint and its activities from the days of the Seleucid monarchs to the late Roman Empire.

Chapter 4 fundamentally rethinks the identity of “composite” or “hybrid” creatures as they were embodied and experienced in Crete and the southern Cyclades from the late third to mid-second millennium BCE. I argue that, when pondered closely and in their contexts, many of the creatures to which we apply this label in fact would have been experienced not as counterintuitive compounds of body parts stemming from other species, but, instead, as whole beings that were perceived as being similar to a range of other creatures. These lines of similitude could concern matters of form as well as other aspects of the creatures’ natures (e.g., color, efficacies). With this, the traditional category of the “composite” being is set aside as a larger swath of interconnected creatures comes into view. These remarkable creatures share amongst them the quality of having apparent connections both beyond the Aegean, with thingly embodiments of beasts from overseas, and more locally, with other Aegean fabricated and biological animals. An iconic creature of the Aegean Bronze Age, the griffin, provides a jumping off point for different parts of this discussion, as we reconsider the creativity realized in such beasts.

This chapter explores the role of Antioch as a military base for centuries, from the days of the Seleucid kings to the campaigns against the Persians.