Ezinge Revisited - The Ancient Roots of a Terp Settlement
Ezinge Revisited - The Ancient Roots of a Terp Settlement

Author: Annet Nieuwhof

Publisher: Barkhuis

Published: 2021-01-19

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9493194159

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The excavations at Ezinge between 1923 and 1934 are among the most famous excavations in the history of Dutch archaeology. The excellent preservation of organic remains, especially the impressive remnants of houses from the pre-Roman Iron Age, attracted a great deal of attention even during the excavations. In northwestern European archaeology, Ezinge has for a long time been considered exemplary of a late-prehistoric settlement, and many publications still refer to it. Yet this excavation has never been published in full. Analysis of the wealth of data that the excavations in Ezinge provided was simply too complicated. The analysis and publication of the excavation results has been resumed in 2011, now with the aid of databases and handmade local pottery as a fine dating instrument. This book, which will be published in two volumes, is written not only to reveal what was hidden in the archives, it also aims at presenting new insights into the habitation history of Ezinge and of terp settlements in general, by combining excavation results with the findings and interpretations of modern research. This first volume describes the excavation itself, the salt marsh landscape that formed the natural environment of the terp settlements before embankment was undertaken in the Middle Ages, and the way the inhabitants made a living in this extreme natural environment. A major part of this volume is occupied by a catalog of excavation plans with the accompanying finds and finds descriptions. Volume 2 will be devoted to the buildings and the habitation history since the first settlers arrived around 500 BC, and will also describe and discuss what we can learn about ritual practice and social life from the Ezinge findings.

Imperial Rome, Indian Ocean Regions and Muziris
Imperial Rome, Indian Ocean Regions and Muziris

Author: K.S. Mathew

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-25

Total Pages: 517

ISBN-13: 1351997513

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The battle of Actium waged in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt in 30 BC to the Roman Empire opened up avenues for increased commercial contact between the Roman Empire, South Asia in general and India in particular and the port of Muziris was the premier trading post of India. In this volume, eminent international scholars from the USA, Switzerland, United Kingdom, France, Italy as well as India provide detailed analysis of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean region in the early historic period.

Archaeological Investigations in a Northern Albanian Province: Results of the Projekti Arkeologjik I Shkodrës (PASH)
Archaeological Investigations in a Northern Albanian Province: Results of the Projekti Arkeologjik I Shkodrës (PASH)

Author: Michael L. Galaty

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2023-09-12

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 1951538692

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To date, very few northern Albanian archaeological sites have been surveyed and excavated. Situated beyond the reach, and allure, of the Classical Greek colonies of south-central Albania, the region has drawn less scholarly attention. But in various ways, northern Albania is just as important to the ongoing archaeological debates regarding the origins of inequality and the rise of social complexity. Some of the earliest and largest hill forts and tumuli (burial mounds) in Albania, dating to the Bronze and Iron Age, are located in Shkodër. Shkodër (Rozafa) Castle became the capital of the so-called Illyrian Kingdom, which was conquered by Rome in the early 3rd century BC. This research report, focused on the province of Shkodër, is based on five years of field and laboratory work and is the first synthetic archaeological treatment of this region. The results of the Projekti Arkeologjik i Shkodrës (or PASH) are presented here in two volumes. Volume 1 includes geological context, a literature review, historical background, and reports on the regional survey and test excavations at three settlements and three tumuli. In Volume 2, the authors describe the artifacts recovered through survey and excavation, including chipped stone, small finds, and pottery from the prehistoric, Classical, Roman, medieval, and post-medieval periods. They also present results of faunal, petrographic, chemical, carpological, and strontium isotope analyses of the artifacts. Extensive supporting data is available on the University of Michigan's Deep Blue data repository: https: //doi.org/10.7302/xnpy-0e60 These two volumes place northern Albania--and the Shkodër Province in particular--at the forefront of archaeological research in the Balkans.

Romano-British Settlement and Cemeteries at Mucking
Romano-British Settlement and Cemeteries at Mucking

Author: Sam Lucy

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2016-11-30

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 1785702718

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Excavations at Mucking, Essex, between 1965 and 1978, revealed extensive evidence for a multiphase rural Romano-British settlement, perhaps an estate center, and five associated cemetery areas (170 burials) with different burial areas reserved for different groups within the settlement. The settlement demonstrated clear continuity from the preceding Iron Age occupation with unbroken sequences of artefacts and enclosures through the first century AD, followed by rapid and extensive remodeling, which included the laying out a Central Enclosure and an organized water supply with wells, accompanied by the start of large-scale pottery production. After the mid-second century AD the Central Enclosure was largely abandoned and settlement shifted its focus more to the Southern Enclosure system with a gradual decline though the 3rd and 4th centuries although continued burial, pottery and artefactual deposition indicate that a form of settlement continued, possibly with some low-level pottery production. Some of the latest Roman pottery was strongly associated with the earliest Anglo-Saxon style pottery suggesting the existence of a terminal Roman settlement phase that essentially involved an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ community. Given recent revisions of the chronology for the early Anglo-Saxon period, this casts an intriguing light on the transition, with radical implications for understandings of this period. Each of the cemetery areas was in use for a considerable length of time. Taken as a whole, Mucking was very much a componented place/complex; it was its respective parts that fostered its many cemeteries, whose diverse rites reflect the variability and roles of the settlement’s evidently varied inhabitants.

Northern Emporium
Northern Emporium

Author: Søren M. Sindbæk

Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag

Published: 2022-07-01

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 8793423764

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In the early Middle Ages, a network of maritime trading towns – emporia – emerged along the northern coasts of Europe. These early urban sites are among archaeology’s most notable contributions to our knowledge of the period between the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire and the growth of a maritime-oriented world in the Viking Age. Ribe, on the western coast of Denmark, is one of these sites. In 2017-18 the Northern Emporium research project conducted seminal research excavations, which provided new foundations for the study of this nodal point between Western Europe, Scandinavia, and the world beyond. This first volume presents the results of these excavations and analyses to piece together the history of the emporium and its social fabric. The research employs novel, high-definition methods to explore the networks of the site, integrating an extensive use of geoarchaeology and 3D stratigraphic recording with intensive environmental sampling and artefact recovery, resulting in more than 100,000 artefact finds. The results transform our understanding of key points of the early history of the North Sea region. Through the remains of dwellings and workshops – the traces left by traders, sailors, weavers, tailors, comb makers, and skilled producers of glass beads and metal ornaments – we follow the creation of Viking Age social networks, along with some of the most iconic artistic products of this world and the daily lives of some of its notable inhabitants.

Figurine Makers of Prehistoric Cyprus
Figurine Makers of Prehistoric Cyprus

Author: Edgar Peltenburg

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2019-07-31

Total Pages: 903

ISBN-13: 178925020X

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The Chalcolithic period in Cyprus has been known since Porphyrios Dikaios’ excavations at Erimi in the 1930s and through the appearance in the antiquities market of illicitly acquired anthropomorphic cruciform figures, often manufactured from picrolite, a soft blue-green stone. The excavations of the settlement and cemetery at Souskiou Laona reported on in this volume paint a very different picture of life on the island during the late 4th and early 3rd millennia BC. Burial practices at other known sites are generally single inhumations in intramural pit graves, only rarely equipped with artifacts. At Souskiou, multiple inhumations were interred in deep rock-cut tombs clustered in extra-mural cemeteries. Although the sites were also subjected to extensive looting, excavations have revealed complex multi-stage burial practices with arrangements of disarticulated and articulated burials accompanied by a rich variety of grave goods. Chief among these are a multitude of cruciform figurines and pendants. This unusual treatment of the dead, which has not been recorded elsewhere in Cyprus, shifts the focus from the individual to the communal, and provides evidence for significant changes involving kinship group links to common ancestors. Excavations at the Laona settlement have furnished evidence suggesting that it functioned as a specialised center for the procurement and manufacture of picrolite during its early phase. The subsequent decline of picrolite production and the earliest known occurrence of new types of ornaments, such as faience beads and copper spiral pendants, attest to important changes involving the transformation of personal and social identities during the first centuries of the 3rd millennium BC, a topic that forms a central theme of this final report on the site.