Encounters, Excavations and Argosies

Encounters, Excavations and Argosies

Author: John Moreland

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2017-10-09

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 178491682X

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Richard Hodges, one of Europe’s preeminent archaeologists, has, throughout his career, transformed the way we understand the early Middle Ages; this volume pays tribute to him with a series of reflections on some of the themes and issues which have been central to his work over the last forty years.


Unforgettable Encounters: Understanding Participation in Italian Community Archaeology

Unforgettable Encounters: Understanding Participation in Italian Community Archaeology

Author: Francesco Ripanti

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2022-10-13

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 180327347X

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Whether as excavators and re-enactors, or co-organising research campaigns and outreach activities, the participation of the general public in archaeology has become a well-represented practice, but the impact remains underexplored. Evaluating participation can influence fieldwork practice and enrich the academic discussion on public archaeology.


Butrint 6: Excavations on the Vrina Plain

Butrint 6: Excavations on the Vrina Plain

Author: Paul Reynolds

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2019-12-19

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 1789252229

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Butrint 6 describes the excavations carried out on the Vrina Plain by the Butrint Foundation from 2002–2007. Lying just to the south of the ancient port city of Butrint, these excavations have revealed a 1,300 year long story of a changing community that began in the 1st century AD, one which not only played its part in shaping the city of Butrint but also in how the city interacted and at times reacted to the changing political, economic and cultural situations occurring across the Mediterranean World over this period. Volume III discusses the Roman and Late Antique pottery from the Vrina Plain excavations. This detailed study of the ceramics follows the archaeological sequence recovered from the excavations in chronological order and provides a comprehensive and in depth review of the pottery, context by context, offering an important insight into the supply, as well as typology, of local and imported pottery available to the inhabitants of the Vrina Plain during this period. This is followed by a discussion on how the pottery trends found on the Vrina Plain relate to that of other sites in Butrint, both within the town (Triconch Palace; the Forum) and outside (Vrina Plain training school villa excavations; the villa of Diaporit). The volume also presents an overview of some of the principal typological developments found across Butrint so as to allow the reader to place the Vrina finds in context, including a discussion of a number of key contexts from the Forum, as well as the findings from thin-section petrology of some of the ceramics.


LRCW 6: Late Roman Coarse Wares, Cooking Wares and Amphorae in the Mediterranean: Archaeology and Archaeometry

LRCW 6: Late Roman Coarse Wares, Cooking Wares and Amphorae in the Mediterranean: Archaeology and Archaeometry

Author: Valentina Caminneci

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2023-09-07

Total Pages: 966

ISBN-13: 1803271493

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This volume presents almost 100 papers deriving from the 6th International Conference on Late Roman Coarse Wares, Cooking Wares and Amphorae in the Mediterranean. Themes comprise sea and land routes, workshops and production centres, and regional contexts (western Mediterranean, eastern Mediterranean, Sicily and the Mediterranean islands).


Human Transformations of the Earth

Human Transformations of the Earth

Author: Charles French

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2022-10-06

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1789259223

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This book charts and explains how human activities have shaped and altered the development of soils in many parts of the world, taking advantage of five decades of soil analytical work in many archaeological landscapes from around the globe. The core of this volume describes and illustrates major transformations of soils and the processes involved in these that have occurred during the Holocene and how these relate to human activities as much as natural causes and trajectories of development, right up to the present day. This is done in two ways: first by examining a number of major processes and impacts on the landscape such as Holocene warming and the development of woodland, clearance and agricultural activities, and second by examining the trajectories of these changes in soil systems in different palaeo-environmental situations in several diverse parts of the world. The transformations identified are relevant to prevalent themes of today such as over-development and soil, land and environmental degradation and resilience. The studies articulated relate to Britain, southeastern Europe, the Mediterranean basin, East Africa, northern India and Peru in South America.


Byzantium, Venice and the Medieval Adriatic

Byzantium, Venice and the Medieval Adriatic

Author: Magdalena Skoblar

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-04-15

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1108897959

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The Adriatic has long occupied a liminal position between different cultures, languages and faiths. This book offers the first synthesis of its history between the seventh and the mid-fifteenth century, a period coinciding with the existence of the Byzantine Empire which, as heir to the Roman Empire, lay claim to the region. The period also saw the rise of Venice and it is important to understand the conditions which would lead to her dominance in the late Middle Ages. An international team of historians and archaeologists examines trade, administration and cultural exchange between the Adriatic and Byzantium but also within the region itself, and makes more widely known much previously scattered and localised research and the results of archaeological excavations in both Italy and Croatia. Their bold interpretations offer many stimulating ideas for rethinking the entire history of the Mediterranean during the period.


Islamization and Archaeology

Islamization and Archaeology

Author: José C. Carvajal López

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-05-04

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1350006688

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This fresh approach to the study of Islamization proposes an innovative conceptual framework that treats the subject as a particular case of cultural change. The aim of the volume is to make Islamization amenable to archaeological and historical analyses of changes in material conditions of life without forsaking the specific history of Islam. Islam and Islamization must be understood in their particular social context, but also in relation to the conditions that hold them together over large geographical and chronological expanses. Archaeologists and historians have considered Islamization from a range of different perspectives, from conversion to cultural change, though these studies have tended to be underpinned by a normativist conception of Islam. In contrast, José C. Carvajal López takes a hermeneutical stance, wherein Islam is the result of exploration, and adopts a New Materialist theoretical analysis to explore Islamization and its impact on identities, communities and their material culture. The consequences for the study of Islamization are examined through examples that include some of the author's own experiences. This innovative take on Islamization is not exclusively interested in the spread of the religion or of the polity, and therefore it overcomes the theoretical limits imposed by the concepts of religious conversion and ideological imposition. This book will appeal to scholars interested in associating cultural and religious change and, in particular, those working on Islam, whether within or outside the discipline of archaeology.


Lombard Legacy

Lombard Legacy

Author: John Mitchell

Publisher: Pindar Press

Published: 2018-12-31

Total Pages: 765

ISBN-13: 1915837111

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Using the great south-Italian monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno, one of the best preserved monasteries of the earliest Middle Ages, as a case-study and heuristic paradigm, John Mitchell has engaged in a wide-ranging examination of the ways in which visual culture was developed and deployed by ambitious states and institutions in early medieval Europe. The present volume includes studies on the cultural dynamics of Italy and its contribution to the visual complexion of Europe in the period, as well as essays on many aspects of the artistic culture of San Vincenzo, including a series of papers on the display of script in the physical fabric of the monastery and the prominent role it played in its self-image.


The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World

The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World

Author: Bonnie Effros

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2020-05-01

Total Pages: 1166

ISBN-13: 0197510809

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The Merovingian era is one of the best studied yet least well known periods of European history. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the inhabitants of Gaul (what now comprises France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Rhineland Germany, and part of modern Switzerland), a mix of Gallo-Roman inhabitants and Germanic arrivals under the political control of the Merovingian dynasty, sought to preserve, use, and reimagine the political, cultural, and religious power of ancient Rome while simultaneously forging the beginnings of what would become medieval European culture. The forty-six essays included in this volume highlight why the Merovingian era is at the heart of historical debates about what happened to Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. The essays demonstrate that the inhabitants of the Merovingian kingdoms in these centuries created a culture that was the product of these traditions and achieved a balance between the world they inherited and the imaginative solutions they bequeathed to Europe. The Handbook highlights new perspectives and scientific approaches that shape our changing view of this extraordinary era by showing that Merovingian Gaul was situated at the crossroads of Europe, connecting the Mediterranean and the British Isles with the Byzantine empire, and it benefited from the global reach of the late Roman Empire. It tells the story of the Merovingian world through archaeology, bio-archaeology, architecture, hagiographic literature, history, liturgy, visionary literature and eschatology, patristics, numismatics, and material culture.


Weeds and the Carolingians

Weeds and the Carolingians

Author: Paolo Squatriti

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-06-09

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1009080792

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Why did weeds matter in the Carolingian empire? What was their special significance for writers in eighth- and ninth-century Europe and how was this connected with the growth of real weeds? In early medieval Europe, unwanted plants that persistently appeared among crops created extra work, reduced productivity, and challenged theologians who believed God had made all vegetation good. For the first time, in this book weeds emerge as protagonists in early medieval European history, driving human farming strategies and coloring people's imagination. Early medieval Europeans' effort to create agroecosystems that satisfied their needs and cosmologies that confirmed Christian accounts of vegetable creation both had to come to terms with unruly plants. Using diverse kinds of texts, fresh archaeobotanical data, and even mosaics, this interdisciplinary study reveals how early medieval Europeans interacted with their environments.