This study considers the relationship between how we traditionally categorise pottery in archaeological analysis and the ways that it was understood in the past, using a case study from medieval Southampton (Hampshire, UK). In an effort to overcome the chronological fragmentation inherent in the study of medieval archaeology, a long temporal span is considered, from cAD700-1400. Traditionally pottery has been studied from an economic viewpoint and archaeologists have seen it as reflecting patterns of trade and wider economic or social trends. This study takes a nonrepresentative approach to the study of this material. Following work on 'Actor-Network Theory' it is argued that rather than reflecting an over-riding 'social', that engagements with pottery were active in constructing a patchwork of meanings and associations which constructed the medieval 'social'. The study begins with an overview of the state of medieval ceramic studies, demonstrating that the focus on economic issues developed from a need to provenance and date pottery, and that now we are in a position to ask more subtle questions about its role in everyday life. Chapter 2 outlines a history of categorisation studies, both in relation to archaeology and other disciplines, before moving on to introduce the non-representative framework utilised through the remainder of the study. The research questions are posed in chapter 3 and a methodology for answering them is proposed. In chapter 4 the archaeology and history of medieval Southampton is described, the pottery summarised and a résumé of other material evidence is also presented. The next three chapters reconstruct the engagements between people and pottery in medieval Southampton, through exchange, use and deposition. Chapter 8 then takes a regional perspective to these trends, looking at how pottery was exchanged, used and disposed of in Hampshire, other large towns in England and in northern France. Chapter 9 uses these engagements to examine the formation of categories of people through engagements with pottery, before these strands are all brought together in chapter 10, which considers how engagements between people and pottery were active in creating 'the social' in medieval Southampton, with a particular focus on the process of urbanism. Finally the effectiveness of the approaches taken are evaluated and ways forward for future research are outlined.

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the 2009 ratification of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001) created a turning point for maritime heritage management globally. However, in the Caribbean region on a local level many small islands are disadvantaged. Management strategies are poorly defined but even more fundamental is the absence of information on the type and nature of the resource to be managed. This thesis looks at the state of heritage management on Anguilla, a 34 mi2 island in the Lesser Antilles, and the process of developing a system for heritage management where no precedent exists. Analysis is based on participant observation and the local response to two field projects, a Shipwreck Survey to record previously undocumented underwater cultural heritage in 2009, and a land-based heritage trail (2010), both of which were completed during a 2 ½ year residency on Island. The first two chapters provide critical background data into the regional and international state of heritage management, the reasons for choosing Anguilla, and the island’s maritime heritage past and present. This history sets the stage for chapter 3, which presents the results of the 2009 Shipwreck Survey. Recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of this initiative, the following two sections are devoted to recognizing the reasons why heritage management has not developed earlier and suggests future solutions. Piloting a theory for heritage management, chapter six describes the Anguilla Heritage Trail, while the following chapters describe a heritage management strategy on Anguilla for the future. This provides a practical example of how the principles of the 2001 UNESCO Convention, particularly its Annex, may be applied and realized in areas with little infrastructure and/or previous experience managing cultural resources.

This thesis explores the potential of computer graphics as a means of producing hypothetical visual reconstructions of a painted statue of a young woman discovered at Herculaneum in 2006 (inv. 4433/87021). The visualisations incorporate accurate representation of experimentally derived data using physically accurate rendering techniques. The statue is reconstructed according to a range of different hypotheses and is visualised within a selection of architectural contexts. The work presented here constitutes both a technical and theoretical innovation for archaeological research. The methodology describes the implementation of physically accurate computer graphical simulation as a tool for the interpretation, visualisation and hypothetical reconstruction of Roman sculpture. These developments are underpinned by a theoretical re-assessment of the value of computationally generated images and computational image making processes to archaeological practice.

This research concerns Mada'in Salih, an archaeological site in north-west Saudi Arabia. Historically, it was part of the Nabataean kingdom which flourished in north west Arabia (Jordan, parts of Syria, Palestine and some parts of Saudi Arabia), with Petra in Jordan as its capital. The Nabataeans were famous for their trading role, as they transported frankincense and myrrh and exported balsam and bitumen. They built monumental tombs in Petra and Mada'in Salih as well as other public buildings such as temples theatres and baths. They were also famous for their skills in hydraulic engineering and the production of very thin, distinctively painted pottery. Mada'in Salih was an important station on the trade route which linked south Arabia with Mediterranean countries. The main feature of the site is the monumental tombs, which are about eighty in number, some of them dated and bearing inscriptions. Those inscriptions are in Aramaic and usually contain information about the owner name, legal rights, and occasionally the mason's name. Little was known about the site's history and other aspects such as the economy, culture, society and religions prior to the excavation. Various questions were raised which the thesis attempts to address. The archaeological work conducted on the site included a survey, several trenches around the town wall and in front of some of the tombs as well as an excavation in the settlement area. The excavation revealed a private house which furnished us with information regarding house planning, building techniques and materials. A large amount of pottery, small finds and coins were recovered, studied and classified. The results added some information to what was already known about the Nabataeans in general and Mada'in Salih in particular. The site had witnessed its peak during the first century A.D. As most previous archaeological work had been carried out in the northern parts of the Nabataean kingdom, the results of this excavation are important for comparative studies between this, the largest Nabataean settlement centre in the south, to the centres of the north. The trade which had been an important factor in the establishment of the site declined when the trade route was shifted from land to sea by the Romans during the last half of the first century A.D.

This study determines the methods, products a nd areas of marine resource exploitation in the northwest Maghreb during the mid-1stto late 3rd centuries AD, when the region constituted the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana. At the centre of this thesis are two data sets that are contextualised within the specific marine, lagoonal and riverine environments of the province: regional archaeological data (marine an imal remains, fishing equipment, and finds related to fish-salting practices) and relevant descriptive data (written sources, iconography and ethnography). This material included in this study derives not only from the Roman period but also the preceding Punico-Mauretanian and subsequent Late Roman periods. Such a diachronic analysis identifies the ways in which the practice and role of fishing and consumption of its products we re affected by the region’s incorporation into the Roman Empire. The region’s maritime cultural landscape was conducive to a variety of exploitation methods, practised throughout all periods examined. However, the socio-cultural, economic and technological structures that were the consequences of inclusion into the Roman political system developed to a level that reached commercialisation of the resource. Thus, for the first three centuries AD, anthropogenic factors instituted a change in the way in which people moved through and related to the marine environment of the northwest Maghreb.

Traditional approaches to Bronze Age metalwork have very often been framed within a series of dichotomous relationships often concerning either an objects production or ultimate deposition. In contrast, this thesis utilises a 'biographical approach' to material culture to illuminate what happened to objects during their often varied lifetimes, and importantly how this may have related to their deposition. A physical re-examination of wear, damage and states of fragmentation exhibited by a number of Early Bronze Age axes from Scotland (c. 2,400 to c. 1,700 cal B.C) is undertaken against a concurrent a program of experimental work. It is suggested that the physical appearance and condition of these objects were held to be indicative of both the object and its owner’s biography. It is shown that axes deposited together in hoards show recurring patterns of use wear and damage relating to both the longevity and intensity of use seen during their individual lifetimes. Moreover, it is argued that decoration may have been carried out over extended periods of time rather than in one event, or even after an object was no longer useable.

The Aterian is a frequently cited stone tool (‘lithic’) industry of the Middle Stone Age (MSA) (ca. 270-50,000-ka) of North Africa. Dating from at least 145 ka, the Aterian’s association with distinctive ‘tang’ hafted tools, the use of pigments, shell beads and other non-lithic artefacts is hypothesised to represent the earliest manifestations of identity and ethnicity, a reflection of ‘modern human cognition’. However, an alternative view contests the extent of the Aterian’s geographical, temporal and cultural integrity. This thesis is the first detailed study to quantitatively test both these hypotheses and establish the technological character of a region at the nexus of human dispersals. Nineteen spatially and temporally representative lithic assemblages from the North African MSA, together with one outgroup from the Arabian Middle Palaeolithic are compared. Building on the emerging evidence for North African population increases and climatic amelioration in Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5, this research develops nested analytical models premised on cultural ecology and niche construction. Subsequent analysis explores the North African MSA as a landscape of population differentiation and/or isolation by distance. A suite of multivariate statistics is used to isolate uncorrelated sources of variability in the data. Principal Components, Correspondence and Regression Analyses suggest that the patterns of similarity and difference observed between assemblages do not simplistically articulate with traditional divisions between named industries. In particular, the Aterian is not defined by the presence of tanged tools. Results instead indicate technological convergence and isolation-by distance structure much of the variability. The identification of aggregation sites also attests the presence of social networks. It is argued that the existence of population structure in the North African MSA has important implications for the evolutionary dynamics of modern human dispersals. The methods and models used here are particularly relevant to further exploring the origins of cultural diversification.

The aim of the study is to use ceramic finds data to provide a quantitative analysis of long-term patterns of change in the nature, volume and scale of maritime exchange within the western Indian Ocean between AD c.400 – 1275. Ceramic finds data are unique in providing a consistent measurable index of a wider system of commodity exchange in an age where few other dependable sources of systematic economic history survive. By using the available ceramic evidence as a proxy, the aim is to assess the significance of maritime exchange to the broader operation of the major state systems of the Middle East, in particular the Sasanian Empire and the Abbasid caliphate. Two main factors hold back the use of ceramics as a staple evidence base: the legacy of the slow adoption of quantitative finds recording within the Indian Ocean region, and an inability to provide a standardised definition of the same varieties of pottery that occur repeatedly in different regions. This study attempts to redress these issues by applying a single integrated system of ceramic classification to assemblages from East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Information has been collected from the largest possible range of sources by combining data from previously published reports, excavation archives, find databases, and through direct recording of archived finds collections. By presenting the largest ever compilation of quantitative ceramic evidence for the region, it is possible to revaluate a range of key assumptions regarding the operation and significance of Indian Ocean trade. The conclusions that emerge from the analysis are surprising. While the geographic range and overall number of sites engaged with long-distance exchange may have changed through time, there is no notable indication of a significant increase in the volume of ceramic imports in circulation. In addition the products of long-distance exchange continue to represent a small proportion of ceramics in regular use. This does not mean that long-distance exchange was not important. What the findings do point to is the need to develop a more sensitive understanding of how specific elements of the exchange network operated. Where alternative scales of ceramic exchange can be differentiated, it can be shown that regional exchange networks represent a major contributor to the ceramic supply system. In seeking to identify the main drivers of the maritime economy, local and regional exchange networks appear to have been significantly underemphasised and now require specific focus, and to some extent, new archaeological methodologies.

This thesis critically examines the applicability of the concept of masculinity as a descriptive or analytical category in archaeological analyses. Central to this project is the recognition that the concept of gender employed by the majority of archaeologists has limited practical application. Such a concept of gender relies upon a radical separation between sex and gender, where gender is understood to be the cultural elaboration of a natural body. Following recent feminist theorising on the body, it is argued that the categories of sex and the body are equally culturally constructed. Consequently, gender is reformulated to encompass the means by which particular ideas of the body and sex are made to appear 'natural'. Masculinity is complicit with the formulation of a binary model to sex based on the normative categories male/female. The status of the body as produced through discourse is highlighted by men's experiences of their bodies which differ from the ideals perpetuated through theory and representation. Furthermore, cross-cultural evidence indicates that bodies can be conceptualised and valorised on the basis of criteria other than the genitalia visible at birth. The analysis of figurative imagery from Late Bronze Age Knossos reveals a representational ideal of bodies largely undifferentiated by physical sexual characteristics. Rather, a single body shape is presented which is differentiated through the details of clothing, body position and gesture. The material upsets the binaries sex/gender and nature/culture. An alternative idea of bodies is operative in the imagery in which genital differences are not the primary means of categorisation, nor the defining feature of bodies. This approach to bodies has important implications for analyses of gender in archaeology. Gender can no longer be projected unproblematically onto a male/female template in the past. Furthermore, masculinity is not necessarily an appropriate basis for an archaeological inquiry. Rather, the evidence of gender can be understood as both generative and expressive of different ontologies of the body, including such concepts as masculinity.

The Social Brian Hypothesis predicts the cognitive ability of hominin species by utilising estimated brain and group sizes in relation to an ordinal scale of cognitive complexity expressed as orders of intentionality. The Social Brain Hypothesis predictions however, have never been correlated to the archaeological behavioural record in order to ascertain their behavioural validity. This thesis is concerned with testing the cognitive predictions of the Social Brain Hypothesis against the material culture evidence of hominin behaviour through a new theoretical construct termed the Identity Model. The Identity Model offers a theoretical perspective on the construction of individual and group identity through the Palaeolithic linked to a scale of cognitive complexity shared by the Social Brain Hypothesis. Embedded within the Identity Model are the notions that material culture / behaviour could be imbued with culturally significant social meaning once the ability to construct proxies had been achieved, this in turn feeds into the development of language from non-linguistic societies based on visual display to fully grammatical syntax. Using technological modes and widely held beliefs within the academic community relating to hominin behavioural practice and artefact manufacture as a heuristic, the Identity Model (and through the orders of intentionality, the Social Brain Hypothesis) has been related to the archaeological record, and the predictions preliminarily tested though a series of eleven case studies stretching circa 600,000 – 24,000 years before present. The results of the lithic analysis show that despite common perception (and the Social Brain Hypothesis predictions on cognitive potential), the use of lithic artefacts in actively negotiating hominin social relationships may not have had their genesis with the mode 2 (Acheulean) biface, but rather may be more securely associated with mode 3 prepared core technologies and the advent of the composite tool and pigment use. This in turn intimates that the Social Brain Hypothesis predicts the potential cognitive ability of ancient hominin species whilst the archaeology, through the filter of the Identity Model, illustrates the realised cognitive ability, and the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Based on the results and discussions of this thesis, it would appear that cognitive potential must therefore be in place before it can be realised, further suggesting that hominin physiological changes must occur before behavioural changes become evident within the archaeological record.