The focus of this thesis is the rock art of Nevada, a state in the western United States. While the previously dominant models of rock art interpretation (hunting-magic and shamanism) have produced significant bodies of research, I argue that both are based on faulty Anthropological theory and produce theorisations which are one dimensional because of the focus on rock art imagery at the expense of site contexts. Because meaning is not derived from the images themselves, but is rather derived from the social contexts of use and production, it is these which must be reconstructed and which will elucidate the imagery. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the details of rock art site contexts, rather than simply select a model and apply it to the site regardless of fit. In short, rock art must be approached as archaeology, albeit informed by ethnography when possible. In this thesis I examine in detail the official rock art site records for the state of Nevada and identify patterns in the contexts and distributions and examine variation and similarities throughout the state. Based on these, I suggest alternative analyses of Nevada's rock art and discuss the role that it may have played in the colonization of the Americas; the symbolic construction of social and ethnic identities; the identification of ritual spaces in pre-history; and the significance of rock art to modern Native Americans.

In the first three centuries AD an explosion in the long distance trade between the Roman Empire and various states in India, East Africa and South Arabia, known as the Erythraean Sea Trade, was sparked by Roman Imperial interests and the expensive tastes of Rome’s growing elite. In the north of the Red Sea, this created bustling, cosmopolitan port communities at Aila, Berenike and Myos Hormos. The peoples of both Egypt and Nabataea could only await the implications for their lives in being subject to empire and the economic opportunities available through providing for its elite. More specifically, these annexed kingdoms had indigenous populations who inhabited the desert coastal regions of the Red Sea, which were perceived in antiquity as being ethnically distinct and whose various relationships with the Roman Imperial authorities were varied, often chequered. Here they are discussed. The purpose of this study is to discover the role of maritime activities in the construction of group identities in the Northern Red Sea ports of the first three centuries AD. This question has five component parts: How is group identity (such as ethnicity) defined? How is identity represented archaeologically? How to identify maritime activities? How important were maritime activities in defining group identities? And: How can we recognise the various power relationships that shaped these identities? This study provides detailed analysis of original material from Aila, Berenike and Myos Hormos, namely maritime artefacts that cover many finds groups (metal, cordage, basketry, bone, shell, horn, wood, pitch, stone) as well as reanalysis of published or forthcoming material from the finds groups of ceramics, stoppers, and faunal remains from these sites. These artefacts provide an independent source of information with which to compare historical documents on these communities. This is an original approach to the question of how ethnic identity was distinguished within port communities through assessing consumption practices (such as diet) and maritime activities.

Despite many years work on the technology of pottery production by archaeologists it is perhaps surprising that the origins of the potter’s wheel in Egypt have yet to be determined. This present project seeks to rectify this situation by determining when the potter’s wheel was introduced to Egypt, establishing in what contexts wheel-made pottery occurs, and considering the reasons why the Egyptians introduced the wheel when a well-established handmade pottery industry already existed. The potter’s wheel is often thought to have originated in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium B.C. and subsequently its use spread to the Levant and Egypt, but little analysis has been undertaken as to why this occurred, or how its use came to be so widespread. Through a thorough analysis of all available sources, such as manufacturing marks on pottery, provenance potter’s wheels and depictions of potters in art and texts this thesis will assess the evidence for the introduction of the potter’s wheel. Through examining manufacturing marks on pottery and determining characteristics of wheel made marks by comparing them to experimental examples it is hoped a more complete view of when and in what manner the Egyptians were manufacturing their pottery vessels on the wheel will be gained. The potter’s wheel is arguably the most significant machine introduced into Egypt during the Old Kingdom, second only perhaps to the lever. This thesis concludes that the potter’s wheel was introduced to Egypt from the Levant during the reign of Pharoh Sneferu in the 4th dynasty (c.2600 B.C.). Sneferu or a member of his court sponsored their potters to use the elite-stone basalt potter’s wheel in and entirely new way, to throw pottery. The impact of this innovation would not just have affected the Egyptian potters themselves learning a new skill but also signalled the beginnings of a more complex and technologically advanced society.

Despite evidence showing that emotion dysregulation is a key feature of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), it remains unclear how the process of emotion regulation is disrupted in this population. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by exploring how emotion regulation is conducted by individuals with high levels of Borderline Personality Features (BPF), in an attempt to clarify the features of emotion regulation that may be problematic for these individuals. This was achieved using a multi-methodological approach with student samples to investigate several aspects of emotion regulation that have been identified in the literature as being important for emotion regulation success in relation to BPF. Study 1 investigated the overall experiences of emotion regulation and the types of emotion regulation strategies used by individuals with high levels of BPF using semi-structured interviews. Study 2a built on findings of Study 1 by quantifying the type and number of strategies used for positive and negative emotion regulation attempts using self-report questionnaires. Study 2b investigated the intensity of emotions when regulated and the duration of emotion regulation attempts using Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM).The final study, Study 2c, investigated implicit valuing of emotion regulation and emotion utility using two computer-based implicit tasks. Findings from studies 1 and 2a demonstrated that although individuals with high-levels of BPF demonstrate knowledge of a range of strategies, they appear to select and implement more unhelpful strategies and less helpful strategies. Moreover, this was found for the regulation of negative and positive emotion regulation. This finding provides evidence for a sufficient knowledge of emotion regulation strategies in this population, an area currently disputed within the literature. Additionally these findings address important gaps in the literature regarding positive emotion regulation and the use of helpful strategies in this population, areas neglected in past research. Findings from study 2b demonstrated that individuals with high levels of BPF appear to regulate their negative emotions when emotion intensity is higher. Theoretically, this indicates that these individuals attempt to regulate their emotions later in the emotion generation process, when intensity is high. However, BPF did not predict an increase in the duration of negative emotion regulation attempts, despite past research demonstrating that longer periods of emotion regulation may be necessary when emotion intensity is high. Together these findings highlight two potentially problematic areas of emotion regulation for individuals with high levels of BPF; timing and duration of emotion regulation attempts. Past research suggests that this pattern of emotion regulation influence emotion regulation strategy choice and limits emotion regulation success. In addition, it was also found that BPF predicted shorter durations of positive emotion regulation attempts. The investigation of positive emotion regulation has been largely neglected in the field of BPF. Thus this finding makes a unique contribution to the literature by indicating that these individuals may also demonstrate disturbances in positive emotion regulation processes. Findings from the final study, Study 2c, suggest that individuals with high levels of BPF do not differ in their implicit evaluations of emotion expression or emotion control, suggesting that implicit motivation for emotion regulation is not disrupted in this population. However, it was found that these individuals implicitly perceive avoidance emotions, such as worry or nervousness, as unhelpful when faced with a threatening task. This suggests that these individuals may demonstrate deficits in their understanding of emotion utility and ability to use emotions effectively. Overall, the research included in this thesis makes an important theoretical contribution to the literature by identifying specific features within the emotion regulation process that may be problematic for individuals with high levels of BPF. The identification of these features has important implications for non-clinical support services by highlighting specific targets for treatment. These findings may also be useful in informing clinical interventions for emotion dysregulation, subject to replication in clinical populations.

The purpose of this research was to investigate temporal and spatial trends in the Marine Radiocarbon Reservoir Effect (MRE) on the North Sea coast of Scotland throughout the Holocene. The MRE is a 14C age offset between contemporaneous marine derived carbon and its terrestrial counterpart, owing to the extended residence time of 14C in oceanic environments. This results in marine samples being depleted in 14C relative to contemporaneous terrestrial samples and consequently, the production of 14C ages that are erroneously old. The offset between contemporaneous marine and terrestrial entities varies through space and time on a global scale and so a single correction factor cannot be universally applied. In order to gain a coherent understanding of the MRE, its variability and its full impact on the radiocarbon dating of samples containing marine derived carbon, a brief background to the fundamental principles of radiocarbon dating is presented. This is followed by a global overview of variability in the MRE before focussing on the UK coastal environment, and in particular the North Sea coast of Scotland. Using contemporaneous multiple terrestrial and marine entities from secure archaeological contexts, this thesis investigates the MRE as represented by 13 contexts from 9 archaeological sites spanning a geographical range from Aberdeen in the north to Dunbar in the south. The sites are predominantly Medieval in age, owing to sample availability, and cover a calendar age range of c. 600 – 1500 AD. This thesis recommends the use of the multiple paired sample approach for ΔR calculations and the publication of ΔR using histograms alongside weighted mean values and the standard error for predicted values in order to provide a more accurate estimate of where ΔR values measured in the future for a similar site and location may lie. In so doing, a weighted mean for the sites studied in this thesis has produced a ΔR for the period described above of -19 ± 52 14C yrs. This thesis also compared ΔR values calculated using mollusc shell with those calculated from fish bone and found that although fish bone produces a slightly increased ΔR, this offset is not significant using the standard error for predicted values. When the fish bone results are included in the weighted mean for the study region; ΔR = -29 ± 51 14C years. This thesis highlights the variability inherent within the calculation of ΔR values and places caution on drawing definitive conclusions using ΔR as a proxy for large scale changes in oceanographic/climatic regimes. It also provides new methods of interpreting and presenting ΔR values and their associated errors for publication, alongside recommending best practice statistical treatment of the data used in ΔR calculations. Previous MRE research in this geographic area is limited and therefore this thesis contributes significantly to the understanding of the temporal and spatial trends in the MRE on the North Sea coast of Scotland within the Medieval period.

The broad aim of this study is to examine the way in which people build worlds which are liveable and which make sense; to explore the means by which a social, intellectual order particular to time and place is embedded within the material universe. The phenomenon of monumentality is considered in the context of changing narratives of place and biographies of person and landscape, which are implicated in the making of the self and society and the perception of being in place. Three groups of megalithic mortuary monuments of quite different formal characteristics, constructed and used predominantly during the fourth and third millennia BC, are analyzed in detail within their landscape setting: a series of Clyde tombs on the Isle of Arran in southwest Scotland; a group of cairns in the Black Isle of peninsula in the northeast of the country, which belong primarily to the Orkney-Cromarty tradition; and a passage tomb complex situated in east-central Ireland, among the Loughcrew hills. Individual studies are presented for each of these distinct and diverse landscapes, which consider the ways in which natural and built form interact through the medium of the human body, how megalithic architecture operated as part of local strategies for creating a workable scheme to 'place' humanity in relation to a wider cosmos, and how the interrelation of physical, social and intellectual landscapes may have engendered particular understandings of the world. An attempt is made to write regionalized, localized neolithics which challenge some of the traditional frameworks of the discipline - in particular those concerned with morphological, chronological and economic classification - and modes of representation which, removing subject and monument from a specific material context, establish a spurious objectivity. (DXN 006, 349).

This thesis presents new research on the luminescence dating of burnt mounds in the Orkney and Shetland Islands. Through an examination of available evidence for Scottish burnt mounds, a number of key problematic areas have been identified in relation to our understanding of these sites and their place within the archaeological record. Previous chronological investigations of burnt mounds have so far provided little information on the likely duration of individual sites. Site information processes are likewise poorly understood. Luminescence dating has been outlined as a method suited to determining the age of both excavated and unexcavated sites, and to tackling issues of site formation. A combination of stratigraphic and surface sampling at sites on the island of Eday, Orkney and at coastally eroding sites across Shetland has provided suitable material for study. In addition, detailed sampling during excavation of Cruester burnt mound, on Bressay, Shetland has enabled the collection of a series of samples directly linked with the formation of the mound and structures at the site. Fieldwork is reported together with detailed characterisation of the external and internal dose rates of samples collected. Additive dose thermoluminescence dating techniques have been applied to extracted feldspar grains. A procedure for correcting temperature-shift due to thermal contact variation has been developed and implemented, leading to improvements in data processing. Problems have been identified relating to unequal sensitisation at different stages of equal-predose additive dose run which cause normalisation errors leading to incorrect dose estimates. Whilst the underlying physical origins of such changes are not yet firmly understood, a correction method based on modelling of the sensitisation behaviour has been applied. When both sets of corrections are applied, satisfactory plateau responses are obtained, and data from controlled experiments are consistent with external controls.

This thesis studies lithic landscapes and taskscapes from an explicit perspective of social practice. It explores the spatial and temporal dimensions of the three main interlocking lithic activities: procurement, production and use/discard. Five key concepts are used to explore human choice and interaction in these three fields: practice, knowledge, skill, strategy and tradition. Sardinia and the obsidian artefacts from the Riu Mannu Survey Project data have served as a case study. My research approach was developed to gain an understanding of the spatial and temporal developments of Sardinian lithic landscape and taskscapes. It has provided much-needed information on procurement and production strategies in Sardinia. Careful examination of the spatial and temporal interplay between source location, obsidian types, primary and secondary chaîne opératoires and aesthetic preferences has demonstrated that lithic practice is an inherently social day-to-day practice. Analysis has revealed a number of long-standing habitus in Sardinian lithic practice; procurement, production and use/discard strategies are not easily tied to specific regions or time periods. At the same time, variations also existed, and local choices are clearly visible. Production and use/discard is organised at a house-hold level and occurs primarily, but not exclusively, at permanent settlements. Part of the dataset has also shown that occasional and different activities occurred elsewhere. Moreover, this study revealed that so-called simple or expedient assemblages, especially single-stage flake, blade and mixed flake/blade reduction and bipolar flake reduction are skilfully knapped.

The Scottish Atlantic Iron Age is recognised as falling into four periods, the EIA, MIA, LIA I and LIA II. Least is known of the LIA I, the immediate post-broch period. Original analysis of the C-14 record confirms these divisions; they result as a combination of the effects of the Trondheim calibration curve but mainly the history of archaeological survival and previous excavation strategy. A large data base of pins and combs is examined and analysed, following on the earlier work of Stevenson (1955a), because these are some of the more ubiquitous and chronologically sensitive artefacts belonging to the LIA. This provides the basis for a reconsideration of the nature of LIA settlement throughout the Atlantic Province as a whole, more particularly in the study area of Orkney and Caithness. There are still severe problems in recognising LIA, particularly LIA I activity. This analysis forms the basis for a case study of Orkney and Caithness from around the early centuries of the first millennium BC to the eighth or ninth century AD. A scheme is suggested for the structural developments witnessed over this period, and on the basis of the general trends observed, a social interpretation is put forward. An attempt is made to apply Fields of Discourse, which is contrasted with previous work in this area, because of its sound methodological approach. Archaeological application of the technique of access analysis is described and used to investigate how the use of space structured and reproduced these changing social relations. The shift from locally based power sources to more centralised, in relation to Orkney and Caithness more distant, sources of authority is demonstrated, and related to the development of the southern Pictish kingdom. This change reflects the move from intensive to extensive sources of power. Other aspects of social reproduction are examined to see if they fit within this framework. On analogy with contemporary situations elsewhere and the evidence to hand, the means by which this power may have been exercised, specifically changing agricultural practice and land tenure, and the ideological power of Christianity are speculated upon.

This study's objective is to elucidate the numismatic history of the city of Corinth from the inception of the coinage to the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in 431BC. The method used in pursuit of the objective was to carry out a comprehensive die study which collected and analysed all known Corinthian dies with curved wing Pegasus type. Hoard and overstrike evidence was used to help order the sequence of the dies, as was the stylistic development. The numismatic, historical and archaeological evidence provided key dates which anchored the sequence and allowed the chronology of the coinage of Corinth to be revealed. The results of this study show that Corinth was one of the earliest Greek cities to issue coins. The silver necessary for the coinage was obtained from the coins of other cities and probably also from mines in the Thrace and Macedonian area. The main mint of Corinth was supplemented by an auxiliary mint at times and it also provided either dies or coins for Corinthian colonies. This study's conclusions indicate that the output from the Corinthian mint was sustained and prolific, and participation in the Corinthian economy was rigorously controlled by the city authorities. This study has also shown that the only evidence for a break in activity at the Corinthian mint is in the mid 450's BC, and that the operation of the mint was not affected by the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.