This study adopts a landscape approach to all the rock-art sites on Rombalds Moor in West Yorkshire, 252 unmoved sites, to consider views of and from the sites. British rock-art is generally believed to date from the later Neolithic to the later Bronze Age, but a case is made for it perhaps beginning in the later Mesolithic. What is known of environments for the Moor over this whole period provides a basis for a reconstruction of rock-art landscapes. A case is made for the applicability of ethnography from the whole circumpolar region to the personal construction of people’s landscapes in prehistoric Britain. All sites were visited, and the sites and their views recorded, both as written records and as photographs. The data was analysed at four spatial scales, from the whole Moor down to the individual rock. Several large prominent carved rocks, interpreted as natural monuments, were found to be visible from many much smaller rock-art sites. Several clusters of rock-art sites were identified. An alignment was also identified, composed of carved stones perhaps moved into position, and other perhaps-moved carved stones were also identified. The possibility that far-distant views might be significant was also indicated by some of the findings. The physicality of carving arose as a major theme. The natural monuments are all difficult or dangerous to carve, leading to considerations of risk, including being seen to embrace risk. Conversely, the more common, simple sites mostly required the carver to kneel or crouch down. This leads to comparisons with what is known of North American rock-art, where some highly visible sites were carved by religious specialists, and others, much smaller and inconspicuous, were carved by ordinary people. This was not an expected finding for British rock-art, and further research is indicated.

Starting from the premise that symbols are among the most reliable and efficient representatives of a society and that, Minoan society in particular, appears as overly dependent on symbols and their ritual use for the operation of its socio-political structure, this thesis will examine the social role of six of its most emblematic symbols: the double axe, the horns of consecration, the figure-of-eight shield, the sacred knot, the triton and the shell. Based on a large amount of data and recognizing the enormous value of contextual analysis, the social role of the symbols is illustrated through the comparison of patterns of use from a number of sites in North Central and East Crete. The selection of North Central Crete and East Crete is justified by the diversity of socio-political factors offered by the two areas: North Central Crete was a geographically unified area, where the Palace Knossos, the largest and most complex palace of Minoan Crete was built, while East Crete was a geographically fragmented area with relatively isolated settlements, which developed different degrees of palatial complexity. The variation in the responses to the emergence of the palatial system in these two inherently different geographical units is here used to demonstrate the significance of the study of Minoan symbols for the understanding of past societies. The above patterns are interpreted under the scope of an interactive relation between different social groups, individuals and objects, as well as the spaces which become fields of action for the symbols. In this frame, symbols are viewed as constantly changing formations which reflect dynamic social relations.

What in 1897 Ernst Weber first called ‘Dissoi Logoi’ is an untitled work written by an anonymous author in a peculiar kind of Doric dialect and which was handed down at the end of a few manuscripts of Sextus Empiricus. Since Thomas Robinson’s authoritative edition in 1979, most scholars have regarded Dissoi Logoi as a collection of lecture notes by a sophist lived between the 5th and 4th century BCE. In this thesis, articulated in five chapters, I will analyse and, where necessary, rethink the standard view about the most salient historical, philological and philosophical matters concerning Dissoi Logoi. After briefing the reader on the theoretical and methodological framework of my research (Preface), I will devote the first chapter (Introduction) to the transmission, language, literary influences, date, place, and nature of the work. In the second chapter (Critical Text and Translation), I will offer my critical Greek text of Dissoi Logoi and a parallel English translation of it. In the third chapter (Commentary), I will closely analyse the most relevant lemmas, from a linguistic, rhetorical and philosophical viewpoint. In the fourth chapter (The Author’s Message), firstly, I will investigate the work as a whole, thus tackling the highly debated problem of its unity; then, I will draw an overall outline of the author’s sophistic thought; finally, I will assess the possible theoretical connections between this work and the later Pyrrhonean tradition. At the end of this journey, I will summarize the various conclusions which I have reached throughout the thesis and which delineate a new portrait of Dissoi Logoi, alternative to that of the standard view (Conclusion).

The Bronze Age China presents to us a significant contrast to the rest of Eurasia in two aspects, the great commitment to the complicated bronze ritual vessels and the immense scale of production. Both features reached their zenith in the late Shang period in the late second millennium BC but left a delicate puzzle to archaeologists: through what trajectories was the metal moved and engaged with human societies in China? The traditional approach is heavily confined to either cultural-historic paradigms or text-oriented researches. Whilst the increasing number of scientific studies in recent decades allows scholars to be more precisely focused on bronze artefacts, their sometimes overwhelming obsession on the provenance of metal provokes criticism in many ways. Drawing from approximately 3000 alloying analyses, 1000 trace elemental data and 1100 lead isotopes, this thesis delivers a series of systematic comparative studies on copper-based artefacts with the newly developed Oxford system. The waning and waxing of various types of metal in different time and space depict a constantly and unpredictably changing pattern. People inhabited along the borderlands appeared to be greatly dependent on local supply of metal whereas Anyang undoubtedly absorbed metal from a variety of regions. Intriguingly, seen from the current database, very little evidence can be highlighted in support of some large-scale mixing or recycling, particularly for ritual vessels of top elites at Anyang. The newly discovered compositional difference of bronzes between Zhengzhou and Panlongcheng calls into question on the classical model on the relation between the two sites. Striking domination of clean copper in southwestern China shed new light on the issues of local production and local supply of metal. In conclusion, the chemical and isotopic analyses of copper-based objects carry a huge amount of information not just on provenance but many others. People living in various parts of China had chosen differing strategies to obtain metal. The elaborate data structures are a result of a highly efficient and dynamic network supplying system. Through combining the changes in metal compositions with other archaeological information, it becomes viable to reveal more subtle knowledge about this remote world and give us better-defined questions.

Despite the prevailing interest in authority in Ovidian studies, studies have often focussed on Ovid's response to political authority in his individual works rather than narrative authority, the means by which the poet claims authority to narrate and constructs a persona that his audience will find persuasive and believable. Evidence of Ovid's interest in authority can be found throughout his body of work, but it is particularly explicit in the Metamorphoses, Fasti, Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, whose contrasting genres, content and mood allow Ovid to entertain an exceptionally broad range of different perspectives on authority. The primary bases of narrative authority in Ovid's poetry are age and memory, references to tradition, the prophetic/poetic status of vates, and sight, all of which had acquired a strong cultural and literary currency in Augustan Rome. Ovid challenges his readers not to believe things simply because of the authority of their narrator, encouraging them instead to engage with narratives and to critically evaluate their authority. He thereby undermines the traditional perception of authority as monumental and unchanging. Ovidian authority is a far more fluid concept, which acknowledges the inherent flaws in narrative as a transmitted medium. Narrative authority can be undermined, destroyed, or transformed, and is always open to being questioned. As such, it is in a constant state of change, and the reader is an active participant in its negotiation.

No description available.

Re-use of ancient Egyptian architectural styles outside Egypt began in the time of the pharaohs and continues to the present day. The style draws on the structures, elements and motifs of ancient Egypt using both ancient and replica/pastiche pieces. I will argue that appropriation of the style should be seen as an active process designed to create a cultural object with specific meaning within the coeval social world. Drawing on the tenets of reception theory, I aim to explore the appropriation of Egyptian obelisks to early imperial Rome by considering the social circumstances, possible producer motivation and potential audience responses to the monuments. I will propose that the appropriation of Egyptian obelisks to Rome is a creative negotiation that prioritises particular aspects of the monument to address specific economic, political and religious circumstances within the appropriating society. At the same time it is important to consider the coeval perceptions of Egypt circulating in Rome and how these perceptions impact on the selection and reception of obelisks in the city. Central to my research is the presentation of a data set relating to fourteen obelisks appropriated to Rome, a detailed discussion of the ‘transfer vehicles’ which carried crucial information about ancient Egypt and obelisks from Egypt into the Roman world, and the identification of clusters of appropriation points within the imperial period; all of which help to create a more nuanced picture of why at least fifty obelisks were raised in Rome and how we might start to understand these acts of appropriation two thousand years later.

No description available.

The Channel Plain Region, now largely submerged by high sea-level, incorporates the UK Crown dependencies of the Channel Islands, Northern France (specifically Brittany and Normandy), and southern Britain. La Cotte de St Brelade sits within this landscape, and is pivotal in understanding the Early Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthal occupations of the area. This research presents a series of new palaeogeographic models, new analysis of the lithic assemblages of the lower, Saalian deposits at La Cotte, and chronostratigraphic and technological relationship(s) across the region. This includes sites such as Piégu, Menez-Dregan, Grainfollet and Les Gastines. Overall, this provides an up-to-date synthesis of Neanderthal behaviour between c. 220 – 160 kya within North Western Europe. Specifically, continuities and changes in behaviour over the period in question are highlighted, including changes in lithic acquisition practices related to climate and landscape changes. Finally, this research adds to the recent re-analysis of the upper “bone heap” assemblages (Pope et al. 2012; Scott et al. 2014; Smith 2015; Shaw et al. 2016), within the later Saalian (>160 kya), and the upper Weichselian deposits (Wragg Sykes 2011; Bates et al. 2013; Scott et al. 2014; Shaw et al. 2016), at La Cotte de St. Brelade.

Growth is a heavily studied field in juvenile bioarchaeological studies. The question of shape or developmental trajectories, however, has only recently been investigated as methodological advances such as geometric morphometrics (GM) have become more available. This thesis applied GM to archaeological juveniles and explored how biological processes affect bone shape during ontogeny to answer ‘what is bone shape and what do shape trajectories tell us?’ The application of GM allows for a novel analysis of developmental trajectories as whole bone morphology is analysed and visualised in a three-dimensional space. To determine if long bone plasticity is influenced by archaeological site and time period, 178 juveniles of Anglo-Saxon to Post-Medieval foetal to 12 year old long bones were examined; they formed a comprehensive dataset to integrate GM with traditional bioarchaeological methodologies of growth and development. The objective of this thesis was to develop a reproducible methodology that captures the torsion, curvature, and whole bone growth and development of the juvenile femora, tibiae, and humeri. This was accomplished through two validation studies; the first aimed to determine if GM can be used on cylindrically shaped long bones. Here, the methodological applicability of 3D GM on juvenile long bones examined linear measurements, 3D GM with landmark and semi-landmarks, and automated 3D GM. The second aimed to assess if different scanning methods, inducing laser, photogrammetry, and structured light scanning affect geometric morphometric analyses of bone shape. This thesis contributes new insights on the applicability and importance of geometric morphometric approaches to the study of human juvenile long bones. The principal findings were that long bone shape is statistically significant by site and period from foetal to 5 years old and that shape is not a linear progression of increasingly larger shapes but rather fluctuations in the changes of shape. It was also found that the developmental trajectories had different potential in the extent of shape that could be achieved for each age group, and that trajectories could change as a result of developmental pathways such as nutritional or environmental stress that occurred during growth.