Over one hundred and seventy maps and plans are preserved from the ancient Near East, drawn on clay tablets or inscribed in stone, though a full study of all the available cartographic material from Mesopotamia has never before been undertaken. This thesis offers a critical analysis of these maps and plans, with particular focus on their graphic conventions, typology and function in Near Eastern society. The text on many of these maps is also undeciphered and a number of examples are translated here for the first time, including an unpublished map of an irrigation network in the Schøyen Collection. By examining all this material in a single study, it becomes clear that there was a coherent documentary genre in Mesopotamia which was cartographic in nature, and which served a variety of administrative and planning purposes. The Near Eastern cartographic corpus is also contextualised within the wider history of cartography, so that its place in the global development of graphic mapping can be better understood.

This work seeks to explore the progress of rural settlement and colonization in the county of Worcestershire in the period prior to the Black Death of 1349 . The study is organised into three sections, each of which is based upon particular forms of evidence. Thus, the first part utilises archaeological, place name and charter evidence to establish settlement patterns in the pre-conquest period. The second part makes a detailed study of the Domesday evidence for the county, utilising simple statistical techniques to establish relationships within the data and to identify local Domesday economies. The final part uses a wide range of manorial, Exchequer and Taxation documents to chart the post-conquest progress of colonization, settlement initiation and woodland clearance. The impact of these developments upon selected local Domesday economies, identified in part two, is achieved by the study of manorial documentation relating to the manors of the Bishop and Priory of Worcester and those of Guy de Beauchamp. Each section of the work contains three chapters in which an assessment is made of the evidence available for a study of settlement and colonization before proceeding to its analysis. Continuity between the sections is maintained by the production of a series of 'clearance' maps which chart the progress of settlement at the expense of woodland at the end of each of the main historical periods. The development of settlement patterns is framed within the evolution of territorial units of organisation, which allows an assessment to be made of the impact of seigniorial control as well as the influences stemming from the physical geography of the county.

This study focuses on the idiosyncratic type of pottery called Handmade Burnished Ware (HBW) which appears in the Eastern Mediterranean and more particularly in the Mycenaean area during the 13th-12th centuries BC. It includes my own in corpore study of published and unpublished material from various sites in the Aegean region, as well as previously unstudied material from Mycenae itself. A major part of the study is devoted to a detailed definition of the chronological, geographical and depositional contexts of HBW, of its shapes and its varieties, in terms both of fabric and manufacture. This analysis was a necessary prerequisite to my goals of understanding the origin(s) and distribution of this pottery, of determining whether it is one ware or several similar ones and of understanding its role and significance in the social, economic and historical contexts in which it appeared. I conclude that this group of pottery is a cultural marker for the presence of a small foreign population who produced these vessels and were living amongst the local population already during the Mycenaean Palatial (LH IIIB) period but also in the following phase (LH IIIC), after the major destructions. The close relationship of this cultural marker, whether contextual, technological or in terms of origin, with several different types of artefacts linked to craft activities such as textile production or bronze-smithing, seems to point toward the interpretation of the occupation of the HBW makers as possible travelling artisans.

Although there are enough studies on the economic history of late 8th-early 13th century Rhomanian Greece (for my use of the term ‘Rhomanian’ rather than ‘Byzantine’, see the end of section I) to warrant years of intensive reading, few of them are regional or multi-regional in their scope. Largescale interpretations have been correspondingly few. The most noteworthy one – with regard to the regions that I am studying – is that Boeotia was home to one of the finest silk industries in the Empire in the late 11th-12th centuries. Using all available sources of information (ecclesiastical, hagiographical, geographic monographs, court chronicles, weather station statistics, archaeological monuments and artifacts, and so on), I examined urban settlements based on five main criteria: the quality and pervasiveness of ceramic material, the distribution of currency, the presence of a Jewish population, the incidence of sigillographic data, the magnitude, quality, and frequency of architectural projects, and the size and number of settlements. I found that there is ample evidence for growth in the domains of demography, silk production (whose quantitative element still hangs in the balance, however), exports to Constantinople, religious construction projects, coin use, and high-quality production imports/production. These trends are then probed for natural and human explanations, and used to discuss the relationship between my regions of study and Rhomania as a whole.

Although remains at Knossos have been reported to some extent throughout its history, archaeological research into the Roman city has traditionally been overshadowed by the exploration of the well-known ‘Minoan’ Bronze Age palace and its immediate surroundings. The Knossos 2000 Project, jointly established by the University of Birmingham and the British School at Athens, has provided the opportunity for the systematic investigation of an area in close proximity to the Roman forum, incorporating the partial excavation of a number of substantial buildings, both public and private. The large quantities of pottery recovered from a range of stratified deposits have enabled this specific study, designed to complement existing works which are, on the whole, dedicated to earlier periods. The objectives from the outset were to provide the chronological framework for the Knossos 2000 excavations, to concentrate on an investigation of the latest Roman pottery (to-date poorly represented by excavations carried out in areas away from the main foci of Roman activity) and, where possible, to present an extension to the existing ceramic sequence in order to help facilitate a better understanding of Knossos and its economic history during the Roman and Early Byzantine periods.

The development of unenclosed common waste, parks, hamlets, moated sites and isolated individual settlements in Sutton Chase is traced, using archaeological, documentary and environmental evidence. The value of employing a combination of different methods and sources in the study of landscape development is shown, provided their potential and limitations are critically assessed. The largest waste areas were probably heathland by Roman times, and they were conserved through the Middle Ages as part of the hunting reserve of Sutton Chase, but following the demise of Sutton Chase in 1528, settlement and cultivation of waste areas was encouraged. Deer parks were created in parts of the study area between the 12th and 14th centuries. In the later Middle ages some of these were extended and new parks were created. Most of the hamlets and individual settlements were shown to have been in existence by the Middle Ages, but few of them were on the same sites as Roman settlements. The relative influence of the physical environment, population fluctuations and human policy in the development of the landscape is discussed, and possible future work suggested by the results of the study is outlined.

Crocodylians today comprise only 24 recognised species, and are often regarded as morphologically conservative. However, the fossil record of crocodylomorphs, which includes the extinct relatives of crocodylians, is much richer and extends over the last ~220 million years. This great biodiversity is reflected in their morphological disparity, with crocodylomorph species occupying a much wider range of ecological niches. Research effort has concentrated mostly on the description of new taxa and on placing them within the crocodylomorph evolutionary tree, and has greatly contributed to our understanding of crocodylomorph phylogeny and diversity. Nevertheless, another fundamental aspect of crocodylomorph macroevolution, morphological disparity, has only recently been the subject of quantitative scrutiny, with the focus often limited to specific subgroups rather than the entire clade. In this thesis, crocodylomorph morphological disparity is quantitatively assessed using distinct types of data. Body size patterns, characterised via a model-fitting approach, provide new insights into the adaptive landscape of crocodylomorphs. Patterns of cranial shape variation suggest an important link between ecological diversification and morphological disparity. Finally, the action of heterochrony, underlying remarkable cranial modifications in the crocodylomorph clade Notosuchia, is tested using geometric morphometrics. Together, these results represent a significant contribution to better understanding crocodylomorph phenotypic evolution.

The early stages of colonisation in the Thracian Littoral are not well understood. These sites are often viewed with reference to the cultural contributions of Greece, to the exclusion of the Thracian participants. The Oisyme collection provides a unique opportunity to view ritual activity with a view of the archaeological evidence informed by the contributions of local, regional and ‘international’ players. In order to contextualize the pottery, I created a detailed study on the architecture and landscape of Oisyme, with reference to the Thracian culture contributions. It is from this vantage point that the East Greek, North Aegean and Oisymian pottery from the acropolis and south necropolis of Oisyme are analysed. These pottery groups are included together because they are the earliest traditions present at Oisyme and stylistically linked. They range in date from the earliest Thracian settlement through the emporion, apoikia and polis phases, as I have defined them at Oisyme. By focusing on the predominant shape (Drinking Vessels) and the origins of each variety in context, this study alters our view of Oisyme by demonstrating earlier contact, trade connections and a complex pattern of depositional preferences. All these suggest the construction of an identity by the Oisymians themselves.

In this thesis I construct, implement and evaluate a Lefebvrian model of space and society suitable for archaeology, using the Neolithic Peak District as my case study. Archaeologists have largely overlooked the work of French Marxist philosopher and social theorist Henri Lefebvre or come to it second-hand, meaning that his dialectical model of the production of space has never been used to understand prehistoric society. My thesis demonstrates the value to archaeology of such an approach by applying Lefebvre’s three-part dialectical model of the production of space to the monuments and landscape of the Neolithic Peak. In doing so, it challenges simplistic binary readings of social space, replacing them with a Lefebvrian social geography approach to space. Not only does this reveal previously hidden facets of Neolithic society and architecture in the Peak, but my research also provides the first detailed study of this subject in some years. It highlights inter-regional connections between the Peak and other parts of the UK, and illustrates the sheer wealth and diversity of Neolithic monuments in the region, which until now have been sorely neglected. One of its central achievements is to introduce the ‘cross-fertilisation’ monument as a novel class of structure.

Temple-church conversion was a deeply meaningful process that took many different forms throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. It was not simple triumphalism, nor was it motivated purely by expedience. No such single, overarching explanations are found. Instead, many factors influenced the process, with factors local to specific sites key to understanding why conversion took place and why different forms were taken. This variety led, both intentionally and not, to a vast array of created, appropriated and adapted user experiences. Unlike many previous studies, I believe one can only understand temple-church conversion by considering user experience, not by categorising them by type, e.g. direct, indirect, cella-church, and related types. Indeed, I actively divorce analysis from such types and demonstrate throughout the necessity of doing so. Rather, I develop a theoretical approach and thematic method in Part One that allows for in-depth analysis of specific sites in terms of user experience. This focusses upon phenomenological analysis, with memory, landscape, materiality and biography important. By placing this theoretical basis at the fore, I repopulate often sterile architecture. In so doing, the terms temple-church and temple-church conversion are reconsidered and new definitions that focus upon user understanding and experience are created that replace those that rely heavily on architectural continuity. I am then able to tackle the three central research questions of this thesis: why conversion took place; why examples took the forms that they did; and what the process actually meant to users. I focus upon three regions of the Eastern Mediterranean: the Levant; Asia Minor; and Greece, which constitute Parts Two, Three and Four. Within each, analysis is divided into a number of sections that focus upon themes of experience and use, e.g. Temple replacement, Experiences of temple inversion, and Appropriation of associations and spaces, enabling analysis to focus upon user experience and understanding. By examining examples in depth within these thematic sections reinterpretations and new analyses of specific sites are provided and key local factors explored, enabling questions of motivations, forms and user understandings to be considered. Broader Eastern Mediterranean-wide comparisons are discussed in the final part, Part Five. Data is gathered from architectural, archaeological and literary sources. Architectural study is brought together with archaeological context and theory, the two too often kept separate. Similarly, literary evidence, often excluded or marginalised in archaeological studies, is used critically to enable comparisons between literary and archaeological data to be made and to allow for analysis of the often quite different narratives each created. In turn this enables the experiences of readers and listeners to be added to the evolving biographies of sites. By focussing upon user experience and developing and utilising a new theoretical approach, this thesis demonstrates the inadequacy of any typology of temple-church forms and its use in analysing the phenomenon, while also demonstrating that temple-church conversion did not in many ways constitute a unified phenomenon; a vast array of forms, experiences and interpretations were created and appropriated.