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267 results in Archaeology: General Interest

Page 1 of 14

The Idea of Cultural Heritage
  • A Liberal Perspective
  • 3rd edition
  • Derek Gillman
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026
  • The concept of cultural heritage evolved to preserve important objects and practices, in peacetime and during conflict. It now justifies export controls and government regulation and provides the background to moral claims to valuable works of art and architecture. In this new edition of The Idea of Cultural Heritage, Derek Gillman provides an updated overview of both long-standing and more recent controversies over cultural things. In the last decade, these have been further charged not only by accelerating calls for the repatriation of materials from Western museums to countries of origin, but also by institutional acknowledgement of European colonisation, and the reimagination of displays at museums and historic sites. Using cases from Asia, Africa, Europe and North America, Gillman provides a critical analysis of whether cosmopolitan or nationalist concerns should take priority in adjudicating cultural disputes, mapping the heritage debate onto positions in contemporary political philosophy and reframing it within a discussion of basic values.

Cultural Property
  • Law, Policy, and Markets
  • Amnon Lehavi
  • Published online:
    05 November 2025
    Print publication:
    30 October 2025
  • While nations, societies, and individuals have always been engaged with both the tangible and intangible aspects of cultural objects, such as archaeological artifacts, artworks, and historical documents, the twenty-first century is seeing a significant shift in the law, ethics, and public policy that have long characterized this field. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of recent developments concerning cultural property. It identifies the underlying forces that drive these changes, focusing on the new political balance between source countries and market countries, the strengthening of cross-border lawmaking and law enforcement, the growing impact of provenance research and due diligence as legal, professional, and ethical norms, and the transformative role of digital databases. The book sets out normative principles for designing a better synergy of the hard law and soft law mechanisms that govern cultural property policy and markets. It proposes a property theory of ownership and custody of cultural objects and outlines a model of 'new cultural internationalism' to promote cross-border collaboration on cultural heritage, including new restitution frameworks.

Der Orient - Fiktion oder Realität? / The Orient - Fiction or Reality?
  • A Critical Analysis of Nineteenth Century German Travel Reports
  • Mohammed Khalifa
  • Published by:
    Gerlach Press
    Published online:
    30 August 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2015
  • Following the great expeditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, travel activity in general increased from the end of the eighteenth century onwards. In addition to European destinations, the Orient and above all Egypt now became the goal of this movement embracing travel and exoticism. This work centers on the question of the received patterns of thought and argumentation that were applied consciously or unconsciously by those travelers. By way of example, the reports of the Austrian scholar and scientist Joseph (Ritter von) Russegger are examined. Russegger's visits to Egypt are notable because he traveled the country as a scientist on behalf of the Egyptian government.

Egypt and the Gulf
  • A Renewed Regional Policy Alliance
  • Edited by Robert Mason
  • Published by:
    Gerlach Press
    Published online:
    29 August 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2016
  • Egypt continues to be cultural and political beacon in the Middle East. Its control of the Suez Canal, cold peace with Israel, concern about Gaza, mediation and interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the marginalization of the Muslim Brotherhood are all points of significance. There is a close, and expanding, defence and security relationship between Egypt and the GCC states, most evident in the inclusion of Egypt in Saudi Arabia's new Sunni counter-terrorism alliance.

    The authors of this book contextualise historical linkages, and allies add to this the real postures (especially contentious relations with Qatar and Turkey) and study Egypt's strategic relations with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE in particular.

    The book's main argument derives from a complex web of political, socio-economic and military issues in a changing regional and international system. It states that the Egyptian regional policy under Sisi will generally remain consistent with existing parameters (such as broad counter-terrorism efforts, including against the Muslim brotherhood). There is strong evidence to support the idea that Cairo wishes to maintain a GCC-first policy.

A Genealogy of Method
  • Anthropology's Ancestors and the Meaning of Culture
  • Sondra L. Hausner
  • Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    14 June 2025
    Print publication:
    16 July 2024
  • What is culture? The history of our discipline - whether we call it ethnology or social anthropology - shows that there is not a constant answer to this question or even a constant object of study. How can we search for a unifying answer to what makes us human even as we observe how immensely varied we are? And how can we explain that such difference is the very core of what makes us similarly human?

    This book explores the idea of ethnography as a method for understanding cultural flow in particular contexts and suggests that anthropology can do its most important work by tracing the history of social formations. Nothing about culture is static, yet something best-called culture sustains itself over time. At the heart of anthropology is the attempt to understand the concept of culture, even as we continue to challenge its definition in our field.

    This short volume presents the Jensen Memorial Lectures delivered at the Frobenius Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropology at Goethe University, Frankfurt, in 2019. The lectures reflect on the current moment in contemporary anthropology to consider the discipline's basic premises, through the lens of its classical thinkers. Through a set of four lectures and an introduction, this book takes up anthropology's most basic question - the meaning of culture - and asks how it is that our unique method is able to elicit both fine-grained particularities about specific social orders and speak to the definition of that which makes us human.

Five Innovations That Changed Human History
  • Transitions and Impacts
  • Robin Derricourt
  • Published online:
    01 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024
  • We live in an era of major technological developments, post-pandemic social adjustment, and dramatic climate change arising from human activity. Considering these phenomena within the long span of human history, we might ask: which innovations brought about truly significant and long-lasting transformations? Drawing on both historical sources and archaeological discoveries, Robin Derricourt explores the origins and earliest development of five major achievements in our deep history, and their impacts on multiple aspects of human lives. The topics presented are the taming and control of fire, the domestication of the horse,and its later association with the wheeled vehicle, the invention of writing in early civilisations, the creation of the printing press and the printed book, and the revolution of wireless communication with the harnessing of radio waves. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Derricourt's survey of key innovations makes us consider what we mean by long-term change, and how the modern world fits into the human story.

Ancient Southeast Mesoamerica
  • Political Economies without the State
  • Patricia A. Urban, Edward M. Schortman
  • Published online:
    02 April 2024
    Print publication:
    21 March 2024
  • Ancient Southeast Mesoamerica explores the distinctive development and political history of the region from its earliest inhabitants up to the Spanish conquest. It was composed of a matrix of social networks rather than divided by distinct cultures and domains. Making use of the area's rich archaeological data, Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban provide a social network analysis of southeast Mesoamerica. They demonstrate how inhabitants from different locales were organized within such networks, and how they mobilized the assets that they needed to define and achieve their own goals. The also provide evidence for the actions of other groups, who sought to promote their importance at local and regional scales, and often opposed those efforts. Schortman and Urban's study demonstrates the fresh insights gained from study of socio-political structures via a social network perspective. It also challenges models that privilege the influence of powerful leaders in shaping those structures.

School Journey as a Third Place
  • Theories, Methods and Experiences around the World
  • Edited by Zoe Moody, Ayuko Berchtold-Sedooka, Sara Camponovo, Philip D. Jaffé, Frédéric Darbellay
  • Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    14 November 2023
    Print publication:
    07 March 2023
  • Journeys to school are important time and space transitions between homes and schools for children worldwide. This book comprises various chapters providing insights into children's experiences of this essential aspect of their lives and schooling experience. From an interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective, leading international scholars focus on how children from very different contexts travel between their homes and their schools and how this transitional space impacts their daily lives and interactions with their environment. The way to and from school becomes a third place for some children who develop meaningful social and environmental relationships, mix up with children who belong to different groups, learn, relax, and so on. Studies from a wide range of disciplines and using different methods have highlighted benefits and risks related to children's journey to school, providing insightful data regarding modes of transportation, health and wellbeing issues, school organisation and legislation, safety or urban development, and so on.

The Egyptian Social Contract
  • A History of State-Middle Class Relations
  • Relli Shechter
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    20 October 2023
    Print publication:
    31 January 2023
  • The Egyptian Social Contract explores the intricacies of the relationship between the state and its citizens, from the establishment of the semi-independent Egyptian nation in 1922 until the 2011 Uprising. The book studies how and why a social contract that had been reformed in the aftermath of World War II became the core of state-citizen relations under President Nasser. It further explores the long and tortuous search for a new social contract in Egypt since the 1970s.

    Relli Shechter looks at how this social contract channeled socioeconomic development over time, creating an Egyptian middle-class society. Shechter probes a political economy in which class vision and interests in development intertwined with the rise and entrenchment of authoritarianism. The perseverance of this social contract has mostly inhibited socioeconomic and political reforms, or the making of a new social contract, in Egypt. Such reforms would have challenged Egypt's ruling elite, and no less so its middle-class society.

Connecting Communities in Archaic Greece
  • Exploring Economic and Political Networks through Data Modelling
  • Michael Loy
  • Published online:
    13 July 2023
    Print publication:
    03 August 2023
  • This is a new history of Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries BC written for the twenty-first century. It brings together archaeological data from over 100 years of 'Big Dig' excavation in Greece, employing experimental data analysis techniques from the digital humanities to identify new patterns about Archaic Greece. By modelling trade routes, political alliances, and the formation of personal- and state-networks, the book sheds new light on how exactly the early communities of the Aegean basin were plugged into one another. Returning to the long-debated question of 'what is a polis?', this study also challenges Classical Archaeology more generally: that the discipline has at its fingertips significant datasets that can contribute to substantive historical debate -and that what can be done for the next generation of scholarship is to re-engage with old material in a new way.

The Bioarchaeology of Cardiovascular Disease
  • Edited by Michaela Binder, Charlotte A. Roberts, Daniel Antoine
  • Published online:
    31 March 2023
    Print publication:
    20 April 2023
  • Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide today, but are not just a modern phenomenon. To explore the deep roots of CVDs in human history, this book, for the first time, brings together bioarchaeological evidence from different periods, as old as 5000 BC, and geographic locations from Alaska to Northern Africa. Experts in their fields showcase the powerful tool set available to bioarchaeology, which allows a more comprehensive reconstruction of the human past through evidence for disease. The tools include aDNA and histological analyses and digital imaging techniques for studying skeletal and mummified human remains. The insights gained from these studies are not only of value to historical research but also demonstrate how the science of archaeological human remains can provide the long view of the history of disease and contributes to modern biomedical research within the context of evolutionary medicine.

Urban Life in the Distant Past
  • The Prehistory of Energized Crowding
  • Michael E. Smith
  • Published online:
    15 March 2023
    Print publication:
    30 March 2023
  • In this book, Michael Smith offers a comparative and interdisciplinary examination of ancient settlements and cities. Early cities varied considerably in their political and economic organization and dynamics. Smith here introduces a coherent approach to urbanism that is transdisciplinary in scope, scientific in epistemology, and anchored in the urban literature of the social sciences. His new insight is 'energized crowding,' a concept that captures the consequences of social interactions within the built environment resulting from increases in population size and density within settlements. Smith explores the implications of features such as empires, states, markets, households, and neighborhoods for urban life and society through case studies from around the world. Direct influences on urban life – as mediated by energized crowding-are organized into institutional (top-down forces) and generative (bottom-up processes). Smith's volume analyzes their similarities and differences with contemporary cities, and highlights the relevance of ancient cities for understanding urbanism and its challenges today.

Cultural Heritage, Ethics, and the Military
  • Edited by Peter G. Stone
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    14 February 2023
    Print publication:
    19 May 2011
  • Examines the ethical dilemma of whether, and how, archaeologists and other experts should work with the military to protect cultural property in times of conflict.

Becoming an Archaeologist
  • A Guide to Professional Pathways
  • 2nd edition
  • Joseph Flatman
  • Published online:
    27 October 2022
    Print publication:
    03 November 2022
  • Becoming an Archaeologist: A Guide to Professional Pathways is an engaging handbook on career paths in archaeology. It outlines the process of getting a job in archaeology, including various career options, the training required, and how to get positions in the academic, commercial, government and charity sectors. This new edition has been substantially revised and updated. The coverage has been expanded to include many more examples of archaeological lives and livelihoods from dozens of countries around the world. It also has more interviews, with in-depth analyses of the career paths of over twenty different archaeologists working around the world. Data on the demographics of archaeologists has also been updated, as have sections on access to and inclusion in archaeology. The volume also includes revised and updated appendices and a new bibliography. Written in an accessible style, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in a career in archaeology in the twenty-first century.

Namib
  • The Archaeology of an African Desert
  • John Kinahan
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    07 October 2022
    Print publication:
    21 January 2022
  • The first full-length examination of the archaeology and history of the Namib Desert.

Ancient Gordion
  • Lisa Kealhofer, Peter Grave, Mary M. Voigt
  • Published online:
    23 September 2022
    Print publication:
    08 September 2022
  • Ancient Gordion has long been recognized as a key Iron Age site for Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean. Archaeological research has revealed much about its sequence of occupation. However, as yet no study has explored the underlying drivers of political and economic change at this site. This volume presents an overview of the political and economic histories supporting emergent elites and how they constructed power at Gordion during the Iron Age (1200-300 BCE). Based on geochemical and typological analysis of nearly 2000 Late Bronze Age to Hellenistic ceramic samples, the volume contextualizes this primary dataset through the lens of ceramic production, consumption, exchange and emulation. Synthesizing site data sets, the volume more broadly contributes to our understanding of the pivotal role of groups and their economic, social, and ritual practices in the creation of complex societies.

Ancient Oaxaca
  • The Monte Albán State
  • 2nd edition
  • Richard E. Blanton, Gary M. Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski, Linda M. Nicholas
  • Published online:
    07 July 2022
    Print publication:
    28 July 2022
  • Over two thousand years ago, Oaxaca, Mexico, was the site of one of the New World's earliest episodes of primary state formation and urbanism, and today it is one of the world's archaeologically best-studied regions. This volume, which thoroughly revises and updates the first edition, provides a highly readable yet comprehensive path to acquaint readers with one of the earliest and best-known examples of Native American state formation and its consequences as seen from the perspectives of urbanism, technology, demography, commerce, households, and religion and ritual. Written by prominent archaeological researchers who have devoted decades to Oaxacan research and to the development of suitable social theory, the book places ancient Oaxaca within the context of the history of ideas that have addressed the causes and consequences of social evolutionary change. It also critically evaluates the potential applicability of more recent thinking about state building grounded in collective action and related theories.

The Cambridge Handbook of Material Culture Studies
  • Edited by Lu Ann De Cunzo, Catharine Dann Roeber
  • Published online:
    02 June 2022
    Print publication:
    09 June 2022
  • Material culture studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the relationships between people and their things: the production, history, preservation, and interpretation of objects. It draws on theory and practice from disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, such as anthropology, archaeology, history, and museum studies. Written by leading international scholars, this Handbook provides a comprehensive view of developments, methodologies and theories. It is divided into five broad themes, embracing both classic and emerging areas of research in the field. Chapters outline transformative moments in material culture scholarship, and present research from around the world, focusing on multiple material and digital media that show the scope and breadth of this exciting field. Written in an easy-to-read style, it is essential reading for students, researchers and professionals with an interest in material culture.

Consumption, Status, and Sustainability
  • Ecological and Anthropological Perspectives
  • Edited by Paul Roscoe, Cindy Isenhour
  • Published online:
    30 July 2021
    Print publication:
    12 August 2021
  • This volume addresses current concerns about the climate and environmental sustainability by exploring one of the key drivers of contemporary environmental problems: the role of status competition in generating what we consume, and what we throw away, to the detriment of the planet. Across time and space, humans have pursued social status in many different ways - through ritual purity, singing or dancing, child-bearing, bodily deformation, even headhunting. In many of the world's most consumptive societies, however, consumption has become closely tied to how individuals build and communicate status. Given this tight link, people will be reluctant to reduce consumption levels – and environmental impact -- and forego their ability to communicate or improve their social standing.  Drawing on cross-cultural and archaeological evidence, this book asks how a stronger understanding of the links between status and consumption across time, space, and culture might bend the curve towards a more sustainable future.

Byzantium, Venice and the Medieval Adriatic
  • Spheres of Maritime Power and Influence, c. 700-1453
  • Edited by Magdalena Skoblar
  • Published online:
    26 March 2021
    Print publication:
    15 April 2021
  • 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.

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