The extant corpus of early Islamic metalwork is characterised by a considerable variety as regards vessel types, shapes and functions. The large number of these surviving objects can provide extensive potential clues regarding the understanding of early Islamic metalwork. Despite this readily available pool of exploitable material, however, Islamic metalwork of the early period has not as yet been the subject of a wholly comprehensive study, and even discussions of specific sections belonging to this discipline remain surprisingly few. The present study on "Early Islamic bronze and brass ewers from the 7<SUP>th</SUP> to the mid-13<SUP>th</SUP> century" is intended to contribute to this as yet largely unexplored line of research. Early Islamic bronze and brass ewers form a vast and very heterogeneous class of objects. Given the large number of objects that survive and the diversity of their appearance, an ample spectrum of research material is at hand. The aim of the present thesis is to present a preliminary manual, which assembles, as comprehensively as possible, all relevant information available on early Islamic bronze and brass ewer types developed between the 7<SUP>th</SUP> century and the mid-13<SUP>th</SUP> century. The main body of the thesis is divided into four parts, comprising 1. the <I>Introduction</I>, 2, the <I>Discussion of the Ewers</I>, 3. <I>Additional Research Material</I> and 4. the <I>Conclusion</I>. In Part 2 ca. 350 ewers are assembled according to type, i.e. on the basis of a common or closely related profile. All in all 16 different major ewer types are described and discussed with regard to their typological origin, date and attribution in Islamic times, and its function. A catalogue completes each chapter. The first five chapters deal with ewer types developed in eastern Mediterranean and Egyptian workshops (ewer types EMW 1-5). Chapter 6-10 discuss types developed in Mesopotamian workshops (ewer types MW 1-5) and chapters 11-16 those developed in Iranian and Central Asian workshops (ewer types ICAW 1-6).

Well-preserved waterlogged timbers are increasingly being found as more wetland and submerged archaeological sites are being investigated. Such timbers can often preserve a record of the tools used in their working and it is this detail that is at the core of the current study. When a tool is used to work wood the details of its blade edge can be very well preserved on the timber's surface. Points of damage on a blade, possibly a break or bend in the edge, can be registered on the wood surface as either a ridge or a groove running down the long axis of the facet produced. The sequence of ridges or grooves created by a blade can act like a signature for the use of that particular tool. When the same sequence of ridges and grooves are found on facets from different timbers those timbers can be associated through the single tool used in their working. Associations produced in this manner represent manufacture that is probably no more than a few hours apart. Crucially this is directly related to the working of the timbers and is independent of the evidence of association that might be demonstrated through other techniques, such as dendrochronology. This thesis explores the archaeological uses of such information on waterlogged settlement sites with a number of constructional phases. Wooden material from the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age site of Oakbank Crannog, Loch Tay, Perthshire, Scotland, provides the data for this investigation. Crannogs are artificial islands found in both Scottish and Irish lochs. Many crannog sites are now completely submerged and Oakbank crannog represents the only example in Scotland to be excavated underwater using diving equipment.

Over the last 1,300 years Europe and the Islamic world have confronted each other. The dynamic and even tense relationship between them has caused cultural interchanges which are clearly marked on both. The present study focuses on portable Islamic objects in European church treasuries and, therefore, belongs to the large field of research of East-West interaction. A corpus of Islamic artefacts still or formerly in the possession of the medieval church treasuries of Europe has not as yet been the subject of wholly comprehensive examination, and the present study is intended to contribute to this as yet largely unexplored field. The scope of this study is confined to the Middle Ages, namely from the mid 7<SUP>th</SUP> century until ca. 1300, with the exception of medieval Spain which is dealt with up to the fall of the Nasrids in 1492. It examines East-West interactions only from one side of the coin, namely Islam in the West, and is restricted to the Latin West. Unlike former approaches, this study does not discuss the impact or the influence that these artefacts had on the art of the West, but tries to answer how Islamic artefacts reached the Latin West and what the attitude towards them in the ecclesiastical sphere was. The body of the thesis is divided into three main parts. In the first part the principal different 'routes' by which Islamic objects reached the Latin West are examined. The objects are classified into five groups. The first chapter deals with Islamic vessels which were brought by pilgrims as souvenirs from the Near East. The second one focuses on the exchange of royal presents. The third one examines the accounts referring to the dispersion of the Fatimid treasury.

The principal aim of this thesis is the evaluation of the social significance of core-glass vessels in the Egyptian sphere of influence in the later New Kingdom, based on the technology, typology and distribution of the vessels. To assess the technology involved, the assemblage of manufacturing debris from Amanra was catalogued and examined. This material was then used to assess the potential techniques employed. The evidence suggests that a number of methods were used to form vessels, with trailing on, coating in powdered glass and press moulding, probable techniques. This was reinforced by an evaluation of the incidence of different colours of glass in this debris and their use as either background or decorative colours. X-ray examination of the internal structure of the vessels, while inconclusive, also supports the existence of a number of different techniques. Finally, contextual analysis of the debris from Amanra shows a close connection with royal activity. These points support the widely held suggestion, that core-glass vessel production was a royal monopoly. As a basis for typological studies, the vessel fragments from Amanra and Gurob were catalogued. There were two main areas of investigation. First, the evaluation of the vessels as chronologically sensitive. Both conventional stylistic analysis, following Nolte, and quantitative analysis based on the decorative features, show that the vessels are not good indicators of chronology. The second approach compares the vessels in terms of their attributes to vessels in other materials.

Flake based chipped stone assemblages demonstrating simple reduction methods and techniques dominate post-PPN periods throughout the Levant. These 'simple core technologies' are dismissed as 'ad-hoc', simply representative of a devolution in technological progress following the sophistication of the PPN Naviform blade technology. Few assemblages with simple core technologies have been analyzed in detail providing no real understanding of the shift from production of prismatic blades to highly variable flake products. Recent archaeological theory asks us to discover variability generated by individual actors in prehistory. Later prehistoric chipped stone assemblages in the Levant, however, generally do not lend themselves to methods of refitting incorporated within recent Cognitive approaches; instead, analysis focused on changes in attribute frequencies is advocated. In attempting to describe constraints of material and mechanical structure as well as variables applicable to methodology, it may be possible to illustrate specific shifts in attribute transmission lying behind overall strategy changes. Such proportional shifts in material culture document the evolution of human culture. Experimental replication is used to create analogous data for the analysis of structural constraints and design elements manipulated in alternative reduction methods. Importantly, this approach tests conclusions regarding raw material quality used to explain the shift towards flake technologies from the Late Neolithic onwards in the Levant. Socioeconomic explanations are challenged directly by the archaeological materials analyzed, namely, material availability and sedentism. The first inference is challenged by the analysis of Late Neolithic assemblages from Qasr Burqu' located in the extensive flint covered 'hammada' of North-eastern Jordan and the Chalcolithic site of Kissonerga from Cyprus, an island known for its ubiquitous quantities of chert. Secondly, explanations linking simple core technologies to sedentism and farming are challenged not only by the previously mentioned examples, but also by assemblages from the burin site of Jebel Naja and the hunting station of Dhuweila in Transjordan.

The transition to food production in Africa follows a different trajectory to that of the European Neolithic, where, rather than the adoption of farming, pastoralism became an established and widespread way of life, long before the domestication of plants. In the early 'Green ' Holocene, hunter-gatherers lived semi-sedentary lifestyles, becoming more mobile as drying conditions commenced. Domesticated cattle, sheep and goat appeared in north Africa by the middle Holocene and faunal remains and rock art suggests that cattle played a significant role in the lives and ideology of prehistoric people in Neolithic north Africa. However, to date, no direct evidence exists that prehistoric Holocene groups were exploiting secondary products. Furthermore, archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence from sites across Holocene north Africa suggests that the gathering and processing of wild plants was a significant component in the subsistence strategies of both the early hunter-gatherers and the later pastoralists in the region. This thesis reports the results of the first organic residue analyses, using lipid biomarker and stable isotope approaches, of ceramics originating from Holocene north Africa. The pottery constitutes some of the earliest, technologically advanced ceramics in the world and thus this research provides a unique opportunity to investigate diet and subsistence strategies for the human groups living in Holocene north Africa. Lipid extracts of 443 potsherds were · analysed by gas chromatography (GC), GC-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and GC-combustion isotope ratio-MS. The pottery was sampled from archaeological sites in three distinct regions in north Africa, selected for their contrasting pastoral trajectories, with the aim of investigating the potential of organic residues analyses of preserved food residues to identify the spatiotemporal extent of the exploitation of domesticates for their dairy and carcass products, and also further elucidate diet and subsistence practices, particularly the exploitation of plants. The three areas included (1) Mediterranean north Africa including the Maghreb, (2) The Nile Valley and the adjacent dry hinterlands and (3) Saharan Africa from west of the Nile to West Africa. The exploitation of domesticates for their carcass and dairy products, in the 5th millennium BC, was identified for the first time based on the 813C and ~l3C values of preserved fatty acids using a new reference database for modern animal fats. These results also reveal that the animals giving rise to these fats subsisted on a wide range of different forages composed of C3 plants, varying combinations of C3 and C4, to diets comprising primarily C4 plants, suggesting that the ecosystems existing across the span of the early to middle Holocene in north Africa were extremely varied. This demonstrates that 8l3C values of lipids from ceramics provide a valuable environmental proxy, through vegetation driven signatures (C3 versus C4), and thus can be used to determine spatiotemporal variations in vegetation and humidity. The remarkable preservation of diagnostic plant lipid biomarkers, notably long-chain fatty acids (C20 to C2S) and n-alkanes (C23 to C33) in organic residues from sites in the Libyan Sahara and at Kadero, Sudan, has enabled identification of the earliest processing of plants in ceramic vessels. Carbon number distributions and 8l3C values indicate that in the Libyan Sahara, vessels were likely used to process edible water plants, wild cereals and emergent macrophytes. These signals persist in residues from the Early Acacus to the Middle Pastoral, suggesting that aquatic plants were exploited by both hunter-gatherers and mobile pastoralists. High frequencies of organic residues dominated by palmitic acid, and low in stearic acid, also suggest the processing of oil seeds in the vessels.

Archaeological earthworks are being damaged and destroyed at a rate and scale never before seen, which has resulted from increased mechanisation of human activity in the landscape since World War II. Along with natural degradation processes, recording earthwork metrics prior to their loss is increasingly difficult, which can subsequently hinder the interpretation of a site or landscape because of this missing evidence. A tool for regaining such data is vital to alleviate this problem and to fulfil the stipulation for metric information as required by national and international conservation charters. This research investigates whether it is possible to regain earthwork metrics from archive stereo-aerial photographs (SAPs) using digital photogrammetry to create digital surface models (DSMs) of archaeological sites within the UK dating from the 1940s to 2010. A literature search confirmed the utility of SAPs for reconstructing geomorphological events, such as landslides, whilst also verifying that such an approach had not been thoroughly investigated for archaeological adaptation. Via experimentation, a photogrammetric workflow has been designed and a number of variables identified that affect the quality of DSMs obtained from SAPs. The magnitude of these variables has been verified by quantitative assessment using independent survey data, namely Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) gathered by the Environment Agency, and ground-based collection using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS). Empirical differences between these independent data and the SAP DSMs were identified using global statistical measures such as Mean Error (ME), Standard Deviation (SD) and root mean square error (RMSE), and spatial autocorrelation techniques, namely Local Moran’s I. Two study sites were selected on which to ascertain whether variations occur in the empirical quality of SAP DSMs and archaeological content at different locations. Over six decades of photography were collected for Flowers Barrow Hillfort, situated near Lulworth in Dorset, UK, which has remained in good condition throughout this period, due to the protection afforded it by inclusion within Ministry of Defence land. Eggardon Hillfort and earthworks, near Bridport in Dorset, UK, were also selected due to the exceptional preservation state of some earthworks, versus the plough-damaged remains of others. These sites thus offered an opportunity to rigorously test the reconstruction capabilities of the SAPs. The results from both study sites confirmed that the metric quality of SAP DSMs improves as the age of the imagery decreases, although this is dependent on image quality, scanner properties (i.e. whether the scanner is photogrammetric or desktop) and the result of the block bundle adjustment in the photogrammetric software. This thesis concludes that SAPs can recreate earthwork metrics and provides a list of considerations for archaeologists to consult when planning the use of SAPs for creating DSMs. Recommendations for future work are provided that encourage the investigation of SAPs from other countries and the rigorous assessment of DSMs derived from structure-from-motion (SfM) software that is rapidly gaining popularity.

No description available.

The object of the thesis is to present a study of the later Bronze Age and Iron Age periods in the area from the river Tyne southwards to the English Midlands. A large quantity of unpublished material is illustrated, and is discussed in a suggested chronological sequence devised on the basis of site association and relevant British and European context. The evidence of settlement sites, economy, and burial is also reviewed. Specific conclusions have been reached throughout all aspects of the discussion. To a great extent these conclusions are provisional, since much evidence is not yet published and research in many fields has been limited, but some are of considerable importance. Pottery forms owing much to earlier urn styles are identified in the Late Bronze Age alongside intrusive types. The widespread influence of Hallstatt traits is discussed. The scored pottery of the East Midlands is seen to have been introduced in the fifth century B.C. or even earlier. The identification of distinctive "angular" pottery in the East Riding adds credence to the theory of an early La Tene immigration. The importance of arable farming in the Iron Age food-producing economy, and the development of an enclosed, intensively occupied landscape in parts of the south and east are shown. The fact that most excavated hill-forts in the area are demonstrably pre-fifth century B.C. is highlighted. An analysis of the distinctive character of constituent parts of the area of study is made. The results of palynological investigations are cited whenever possible to demonstrate the presence, character, and effects of prehistoric populations. It is seen that the paucity of material evidence from the north and west is not wholly a result of an imbalance in research effort. Suggestions for future work are made.

In the past, many assumptions have been made about warfare in prehistory, from beliefs in an almost constant pattern of aggression in early societies, to the imagination of a 'golden age' of peaceful societies. A major reason for these disagreements has been the limited range and nature of evidence used to identify warfare. The present paper attempts to develop a series of correlates intended to extend the range of evidence that could be utilised in this discussion with reference to warfare in pre-state communities. The proposed correlates are divided into four sections, comprising correlates related to possible causes of war, preparation for aggression, functional evidence of fighting and, finally, the possible after-effects of warfare. The paper suggests that war is a phenomenon that manifests itself over extended time scales, beyond the possibly short-lived episodes of actual combat; in seeking for symptoms of the 'before' and 'after' it may be possible to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the nature and effects of prehistoric warfare in general. Suggested correlates are compared against available evidence in three case studies, from differing periods in time, location, and types of society. The presence of much weaponry in the Later Bronze Age in the Middle Thames region suggests the possibility of an aggressive period, whereas in Gallia Belgica in the mid first century BC, there is historical confirmation of warfare. The evidence of the change in late prehistoric Hohokam communities of East Central Arizona has been widely regarded as indicating the probability of aggression. The results of the studies cannot confirm nor deny these assumptions, but may help to provide a more inclusive foundation for future discussion and research. The paper attempts to assess the potential usefulness of correlates as a tool to provide a methodological context for the study of complex human interactions such as war.