The aim of this research was to study the health of the early medieval population (AD 450-1066) in southern and eastern Britain and compare the data to the preceding Romano-British (AD 43-450) and subsequent late medieval (AD 1066-1600) periods. The data considered in published literature (representing dental disease and stature) showed that health improved during the early medieval period. In this study, similar results were found. Results show that the prevalence of dental caries by individual and teeth affected decreased from the Romano-British (26.4% of individuals, 7.4% of teeth) to the early medieval period (15.4% of individuals, 3.1% of teeth) and then increased again during the late medieval period (35.5 % of individuals, 9.0 % of teeth). Stature data showed that male and female stature increased from the Roman-British period (1.68m for males and 1.57m for females) to the early medieval period (1.72m for males and 1.63m for females), but decreased during the late medieval period (1.71m for males and 1.59m for females). Data also demonstrated that during the early medieval period the rate of enamel hypoplasia increased, and that there was an increased age at death through time. In addition, the rate of cribra orbitalia and tibial periostitis decreased during the early medieval period and increased again during the late medieval period. Socio-economic contextual data were considered to identify the possible reasons for this trend in health. Aspects of the general living environment, climate, trade, diet and economy, occupation, social status, access to health care, religion and burial practices were studied. The possible reasons for this suggested improvement in health during the early medieval period were considered. For example, a diet low in carbohydrates and sugars count for the decrease of dental caries, an increase in the amount of 'stress' affecting people was associated to the rise of enamel hypoplasia. On the other hand, a balance diet and introduction of new genes are possible reasons for the increase in stature. In addition, a diet providing enough iron, hygiene, less obesity and less blood loss 'episodes' was connected to the decrease of cribra orbitalia. The decrease of tibial periostitis was associated to a strong immune system and fewer injuries. The age at death profile confirmed that most males died at the young adult age and females at the young and middle adult age. The effects of psychological stress on the body were also investigated. The result demonstrated that evidence of mental illness need to be taken in consideration in paleopathological studies. And an alternative hypothesis to the results was also included.

Analysis, carried out within a wide chronological frame, of the variability of technological modalities for the lithic industries known from Yemen to date, has allowed for the fine-tuning of our knowledge of the regional prehistory of Yemen.
At the outset, this research is founded on the definition of the environmental context of the region and the methodologies used for fieldwork and analysis. A focus on the Hadramawt region follows, which is used as a strong model for defining and orienting questions related to the transformations of the role occupied by south-west Arabia throughout prehistory. Starting with the oldest recovered prehistoric lithic artefacts (Acheulian bifaces and Levallois methods) to the youngest (South Arabian microliths), and with an intensive focus on the intermediate Early to Mid- Holocene industries, this work temporally traces a large corpus of prehistoric knapping modalities in Hadramawt and compares these to adjacent regions in Yemen.
The temporal and spatial analysis of lithic technologies has enabled for a number of models of prehistoric occupation and dispersal to be proposed for Yemen. At the same time, the discovery and excavation of several stratified prehistoric sites has allowed for a reassessment and restructuring of the chronology and terminology used for the region, as well as introducing new research perspectives that have, until now, been undervalued.
(Dissertation in French)

Soil is anthropogenic wherever the physical evidence of human influences is necessary for describing that soil. Anthropogenic soils can be best identified by excavators or surveyors, using three strands of evidence together, from documentary, landscape and soil-morphology sources. This study investigates Irish anthropogenic soils through land-quality surveys, archaeological excavations, and macroscopic field-soil morphology, methods which have valuable explanatory power, even in the absence of further investigation.
Anthropogenic soils and methods for studying them are introduced, including urban and rural, industrial and agricultural, ancient and modern examples. Historical evidence for anthropogenic soils in Ireland is reviewed. Field and documentary evidence for interpreting the anthropogenic character of selected Irish soils are presented and catalogued. Four modes of presenting findings on anthropogenic soils are explored. Mapping approaches and social contexts of anthropogenic soils are discussed. Indicators for anthropogenic soils are established.
Soil surveys and archaeological excavation reports contain abundant macromorphological information on soil modification, and folklore on its origins. Re-reading these reports to identify the human determinants in soil formation has exposed the cultural characteristics in many soils morphologies. Integrating historical documentary evidence with empirical site data offers new insights into the social contexts of the human interaction with soils.
Reinterpreting soils from anthropogenic perspectives offers heuristic potential, allowing indicator suites to be developed, drawn from multiple, independent media.
The thesis argues that human action in soil genesis can be discovered using field study techniques available to excavators and surveyors, underpinning archaeological interpretations, and establishing a firm basis for ongoing interdisciplinary investigation.

This thesis examined how artefactual remains were manipulated by individuals or social groups to maintain or challenge social organisation. The study is founded upon the mortuary remains from the two X-Group royal cemeteries at Qustul and Ballana. My thesis offers the first interpretation of social life at these key sites and demonstrates the significance of the sensuous nature of artefacts in this particular time and place. This represents a significant departure from previous work which restricted the discussion of life at the sites to a limited debate about tribal groups and chronology. The proposed identity of the inhabitants of the graves was based upon fragmentary Classical sources, and the artefactual remains have been viewed as tools through which to refine a chronology for the period. In contrast, I approached the artefacts from the perspective that they were used dynamically in creating, maintaining and altering the identity of the X-Group. I undertook the study to combat the limited and unsatisfactory set of questions posed by previous debates about the activities at Ballana and Qustul. My research combined a thorough study of the material remains at the site with advances in archaeological theories of aesthetics and identity to develop a more complex interpretation.
In order to examine the material from the tombs a relational database was created. This database enabled me to explore the use of space in tombs, the use of particular materials in particular artefact types; and the aesthetic qualities of artefacts. This quantitative data was the basis from which to build an interpretation of the sites from the perspectives of socio-political organisation, and the relationships between humans, animals and artefacts. This demonstrated how a less stable society, which based control on aggressive public displays, became a more stable state, as power was mediated by magico-ritual performances, festal occasions and the rise of certain individuals. This research revealed a new way to interpret and understand X-Group culture as a materially complex indigenous culture that created and altered identities through time based on the manipulation of materials, colour and pattern which formed the basis of X-Group identities.

This thesis presents an iconographic and archaeological analysis of figurines of Venus produced in pipeclay in the Northern Roman Provinces from the first through third centuries CE and seeks to examine what uses and significance they may have had. It opens with an introduction that includes background on the current scholarship surrounding the figurines, provides an overview of the Romano-Celtic population of the Northern Provinces, and presents the methodology of the thesis. Chapter Two examines the iconography of the figurines, which exhibit characteristics of both Roman and Celtic artistic traditions, by identifying Celtic prototypes and Classical parallels, examining the most common forms of Venus in pipeclay, and contrasting the pipeclay figurines with other images of Venus from the Northern Provinces; this chapter concludes with a comprehensive typology of the Venus statuettes. The analysis in Chapter Two shows that the pipeclay figurines of Venus are distinctly different in both appearance and quantity from images of Venus in other media. Chapter Three begins with a brief overview of the manufacturing processes and locations, which is followed by a detailed analysis of the distribution of the various types of pipeclay figurines to the local populations. This analysis highlights the fact that distribution was deliberately restricted to the Northern Provinces, and that the Venus figurines were the most heavily produced and widely distributed of all pipeclay objects. Chapter Four is dedicated to the archaeology of the figurines, and it highlights important finds from a variety of locations and contexts, including temples, graves, houses, and baths, all of which indicate a strong connection between pipeclay figurines of Venus and the cult of the Mother Goddess, as well as an important role for statuettes in rituals of death. These observations further support the notion suggested by the iconography that the Venus figurines were part of a syncretic process that absorbed aspects of both Celtic and Roman religious expression, and reinterpreted them in such a way that pipeclay Venus statuettes were appropriate for use in native cult activity and burial contexts, whereas images of Venus in other media were not. Through the consideration of iconography, production, distribution, archaeology, and chronology, this study seeks to present as complete a picture as possible of the various forms, uses, and possible meanings of pipeclay Venus figurines in the Northern Provinces in this time period.

The human past has been the subject of scientific inquiry for centuries, and has long been approached by the study of material remains from traditional archaeological excavations. In recent decades the advancing fields of geophysics and geographic information systems have greatly improved the archaeological toolkit, and research to improve these methods is ongoing. This dissertation focuses on important aspects of geophysical survey as an approach to landscape-scale archaeology, each presented as stand-alone scientific papers that utilize a 1.2 hectare four-dimensional (ground-penetrating radar, magnetometry, magnetic susceptibility, and conductivity) dataset collected at Pueblo Escondido, a large prehistoric village of the Mogollon culture in southern New Mexico. Chapter 2 presents a case study showing the benefits of multidimensional geophysical surveys over large areas at archaeological sites. When paired with traditional archaeological excavations, it is possibl e to interpret the archaeological landscape on a much broader scale than is possible using excavations alone. At Pueblo Escondido, this approach led to a revised understanding of the architectural remains with broad regional significance. Chapter 3 describes new problems related to GPR surveys over large areas or extended periods of time, including issues related to correcting trace misalignments, edge discontinuities, and striping. Data processing solutions are offered. Chapter 4 presents an exploration of image classification methods for integrating multiple geophysical datasets. Unsupervised classification utilizing K-means cluster analysis and supervised classification using Mahalanobis Distance are described. The latter yielded a predictive model of archaeological features and identified some features that were not easily identified in the original datasets.

In this study, I develop an integrative approach by which archaeologists can analyze the relationship between the built environment and human behaviour in ancient societies. The approach is agent-centred and emphasizes the role of buildings in controlling movement and encounter and in serving as the contexts for interactions through which sociopolitical structures are created, transformed and reproduced. It integrates access analysis with an examination of how buildings encode meanings that are nonverbally communicated and visually perceived by inhabitants and visitors, potentially influencing their actions and interactions. I apply this approach to an investigation of how elites used monumental architecture as a means of advancing their sociopolitical power during the Late Cypriot Bronze Age (c. 1650-1100 BCE).

My analysis of monumental buildings from Enkomi, Kalavasos, Maroni and Alassa demonstrates that these structures provided contexts well suited to public-inclusive social occasions, such as ceremonial feasting and religious rituals, that created social bonds or emphasized social distance as the sociopolitical objectives of interaction required. This study highlights the importance of ashlar masonry, doorways and hearths in the definition of physical and social boundaries that were integral to the negotiation of status and identity during these social occasions. I conclude that during the Late Bronze Age, ruling elites on Cyprus embarked on an ambitious strategy of monumental place-making that provided contexts for interactions that ultimately supported their power. In this way, monumental buildings became the primary arenas in which the sociopolitical dynamics of Late Cypriot society were played out.

The emergence of sedentary village lifeways was one of the most significant landmarks in prehistory. Traditionally, archaeological studies have concentrated on two aspects of 'neolithic' lifeways: the origins of village life and its evolution into politically ranked chiefdoms and states. The current research is a diachronic study of some very long-lived village settlements known as the Wankarani Complex in west-central Bolivia. It is focused on the evolution of a persistent small-scale village settlement system over the course of more than a millennium. Rather than studying one of the early village societies that gave rise to complex societies and asking "why?" this study centers on a very resilient early village society that did not give rise to ranked polities and asks "why not?"
Excavations at two Wankarani sites dating to the Formative Period (1800 BC - 200 AD) were directed toward obtaining sizeable samples of artifacts from all phases of occupation in order to detect changes in subsistence, economy, and socio-economic and political organization.
Results suggest that, despite the absence of much development of political economy in the region, considerable changes in subsistence and economy did occur during the Formative. The Wankarani trajectory provides an excellent comparative perspective on social evolution in the Lake Titicaca Basin, where early village society led to the rise of larger settlements, politico-religious centers, and eventually centralized polities. The different trajectory followed by the Wankarani Complex may be a function of an extremely risk-minimizing agro-pastoral system that inhibited the growth of both population and political economy.

This dissertation presents the results of research in south-central Siberia directed at understanding late Pleistocene human dispersals in the Siberian mammoth-steppe. The project focuses on developing a reliable chronology for the Enisei region of south-central Siberia and characterising the region's middle Upper Palaeolithic (MUP) and late Upper Palaeolithic (LUP) complexes in terms of technological organization, provisioning, and land-use strategies.

During the late Upper Pleistocene Siberia was characterised by a rich steppe-tundra mosaic environment often termed the mammoth-steppe; however, during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) climatic conditions deteriorated, producing a harsh, wind-swept landscape with diminished floral and faunal populations. Modern humans utilising MUP technologies had been living in the region for about 10 000 years before the LGM. These hunter-gatherers utilised local lithic resources, practiced expedient technologies, and organised mobility logistically. During the LGM, between about 24 000-21 000 years ago, human populations dwindled with the rest of the mammoth-steppe fauna. Whether humans actually migrated south or east to more temperate biomes or were faced with drastic in-situ demographic decline is not known. We do know, however, that after the LGM humans appear to have repopulated the region. LUP sites exhibit a different set of adaptive strategies, producing formal and highly standardised, risk-reducing technologies, and organising mobility residentially. Possibly these strategies allowed LUP foragers to rapidly recolonise southern Siberia and eventually disperse further north during the Late Glacial into the subarctic and arctic.

Introducing the Neolithic archaeological evidences available as well as the environmental diversities into which they fit, we intend to consider the role of the Central Anatolian Neolithic in the development of the Anatolian Neolithic in a broader context including its expansion processes towards Europe. Noting that the role of the Anatolian communities in the interpretation of the neolithisation processes has been largely set aside for a long time due to the scarce excavations realized and the diverging diffusionism and indigenous neolithisation models proposed, we intend to revise those models and to consider the Centro anatolian neolithic in the light of the new archaeological sequences in Cappadocia, especially Tepecik-Çiftlik?s one. Having at our disposal a new archaeological sequence obtained in a region where, up to now, there were few archaeological testimonies, we intend to handle the Central Anatolian cultural development problematic by analyzing how pottery production processes evolved within the Tepecik-Çiftlik sequence. Combined with a diachronic approach of the ceramics productions coming from Anatolian sequences, our study underline the cultural diversity within the Central Anatolian borders and bring to light a specific stage of development, linked to regional interactions events including the expansion of the Neolithic towards Balkans and the Aegean coastlines. Thus, after a millennium of internal development, we note around ca. 6400 cal. BC, a renewal of the ties between the Central Anatolian and Mesopotamian communities, set into the neolithisation processes dynamics of expansion taking place in Thrace and on the Occidental Mediterranean coasts.

Soils in the urban environment are distinctive in that they are modified through waste amendments. Consideration has been given to how urban soil properties reflect current human influence; however, recent studies highlight their potential as historical archives. The impact of waste disposal on the nature, properties and formation of urban soils is significant, especially in historic small towns where the extent and complexity of refuse management practices is only just emerging. This study uses a multi-method approach to characterise and understand modes of urban anthrosol formation in three Scottish burghs; Lauder, Pittenweem and Wigtown. The objectives of this study are threefold; to establish the nature and diversity of urban anthrosols in and near to historic small towns, to characterise and account for the multiplicity of urban anthrosols in and near to historic small towns, and to elucidate the processes associated with waste management and disposal in historic small towns. Physical, chemical and micromorphological analysis of topsoil deposits indicate sustained addition of past waste materials to soils within and near to historic small towns. Soil characteristics were heterogeneous across burghs; however, distinct patterns according to past functional zones were identified. The burgh core and burgh acres are important areas of interest at all three burghs. Soil modification was most pronounced within burgh cores resulting in the formation of hortic horizons. Soils within burgh cores are characterised by neutral pH, increased organic matter content, enhanced magnetic susceptibility and elevated elemental concentrations such as calcium, phosphorus and potassium. In comparison the nature and extent of soil modification within burgh acres is more varied. At Lauder hortic soils were identified in the burgh acres suggesting pronounced soil modification through cultivation. Deepened topsoil in the burgh acres at Pittenweem provided evidence for application of mineral rich waste materials in the past. Moreover, magnetic and elemental enhancement (barium, phosphorus, lead, zinc) within the burgh acres south of Wigtown revealed historic soils based anthropogenic signal. It is argued that changes in soil characteristics at Lauder, Pittenweem and Wigtown can be explained through processes of waste management and disposal in the past. Evidence from micromorphological analyses suggests that waste in burgh cores typically comprised domestic waste, animal waste, building materials and fuel residues. These materials were also identified within burgh acres, although it is noted that their abundances were significantly lower. Variation in urban anthrosol characteristics between burghs is attributed to differing industries and patterns of resource exploitation, for example marine waste associated with fishing was only identified in coastal burghs. The sustained addition of waste materials to soils within and near to historic small towns was an effective waste management strategy. Waste disposal in burgh cores was likely to be a combination of direct application and midden spreading in back gardens. This led to enhanced soil fertility which was important in the development of urban horticulture; particularly for poorer inhabitants who did not have access to arable farm land adjacent to the burgh. Dunghills acted as temporary stores of waste in the main thoroughfares of Lauder, Pittenweem and Wigtown. These dunghills were systematically transported to the burgh acres for further use as a fertiliser; hence, an early form of urban composting. Processes of waste disposal could not be deduced from soil characteristics alone; however, likely methods include direct waste deposition, storage and redistribution of midden waste, and storage and redistribution of dunghills. The limitations of soil classification systems and mapping are highlighted, for example urban soils are either omitted from soil maps or are misclassified. It is recommended that urban soils in historic towns should be incorporated into future regional soil maps. Urban soils represent a complex archive of past human behaviour not necessarily reflected in archaeological excavation or documentary analysis. It is argued that soil and artefacts are equally important, hence soil should be a consideration in urban heritage and conservation strategies.

The concept of deviant burials is frequently used in archaeology, but there is a variety of different understandings of the concept. This thesis started off with exploring the meaning of deviant burial in archaeological research and then moved on to applying this concept to anthropological evidence. The result was that the dichotomous nature of the archaeological concept of deviant burials conflicts with much information in ethnographies: many societies practice a range of different mortuary practices, many of which can not be classified as normal or deviant. A new research approach was created, which distinguished between deviant burials as 'negative' burials and differentiated treatment at death, which was applied for example to different age, sex or status groups within the same society.
This approach was based on practice theory. The area around Winchester from the late Iron Age to the middle Anglo-Saxon period served as a case study area: deviant burial practices and differentiated treatment at death were analysed in a thorough contextual analysis of three cemetery sites (Lankhills: AD 310-410; Worthy Park: late fifth to early seventh centuries AD; Winnall II: mid seventh to beginning of the eight centuries AD), and, combined with an analysis and discussion of further cemeteries and sites with human remains from the late Iron Age to the middle Anglo-Saxon period in the Winchester area, a long-term perspective of continuity and change in different and deviant mortuary practices was developed.

Principally through the use of landscape archaeology, this thesis explores the medieval landscape of west Wales, particularly the cwmwd of Gwinionydd in the central Teifi valley, Ceredigion. With particular reference to the 'Age of the Princes' this thesis examines the reign of Rhys ap Gruffudd, the 'Lord Rhys' in order to locate territorial and settlement patterns. Despite the effects of Normanisation upon them it has been possible to demonstrate a degree of continuity of a complex and sophisticated landscape. The approach taken by Jones-Pierce, Glanville-Jones and Rhys Jones has been primarily document-based, concentrating on political change as a catalyst for changes in the settlement pattern, agrarian landscape and political geography. The focus of many previous studies has been the Marcher regions and the Englishries of north and south Wales, emphasising the fact that west Wales has not yet been subject to the same level of sustained academic study.
The main focus of this thesis aims to recreate the cwmwd-maenor-tref, territorial system administered by a pre-conquest Welsh aristocracy and will locate native tenures along with their specific agricultural regimes. A retroactive analysis of estate structures such as those at Llanfair and Llanllyr will establish their medieval antecedence and they will be considered alongside the monastic granges of Whitland, Strata Florida and Talley abbeys. 'Rules' concerning territory and settlement are known in an idealised form from the Laws of Hywel Dda. This project has successfully drawn upon techniques including field survey, remote sensing, geophysics, mapping and terrain modelling using Geographic Information Systems and Lidar data. These methods have been complemented by excavation to target and clarify the interpretation of some of the survey results. Thorough interrogation of the landscape is critical to a developing rural community that seeks sustainable uses for failing traditional agricultural regimes. My thesis can be seen as a multidisciplinary landscape analysis that has implications for future approaches to the study of rural Wales. This successful study of an apparently inscrutable rural landscape will be relevant for the research and curatorial disciplines alike.

This thesis examines the relationship between ancient Greek religion, cult practice, sanctuary buildings and astronomy. Its geographical range extends across the modern territory of Greece; chronologically it covers the thirteenth to second centuries BC, from a period before the development of self-standing religious architecture to the most important phases of temple construction.

Data was collected from 125 structures, giving priority to sacred structures but also considering 'secular' buildings. The hypothesis that there is an astronomical orientation in Greek religious structures is tested, and the data sample divided by geographic location, date of construction, and deity. Case studies are presented in order to examine the sample in detail, taking into account mythology, cult, rites and the local total perceived environment (land, sky and horizon). The analysis shows that religious structures were, in at least some prominent cases, oriented towards stars and constellations, not the solar range as has often been claimed. Celestial bodies were significantly integrated with the cyclical ceremonies associated with a temple, the rites performed, and the deity's attributes. This complex association of the night sky and landscape influenced the design, planning and orientation of religious buildings.

This study advances understanding of the role of landscapes in Greek religious practice, establishes the importance of astronomy and cosmology in ancient Greek religion, and demonstrates how this religious system was expressed at the local level in myths and the performance of cult rites.

This thesis sets out the evidence for burial practices in the southwest Peloponnese during the middle Helladic and early Mycenaean periods, and to interpret the evidence in terms of human agency and in relation to wider social structures. I formulated a theory of human action with reference to the funerary sphere, examining action through the human body and the locale, understanding how people perceive their environment and interpret space through routine occupancy and movement, and through knowledge. Aspects of locale impacting on human action include its place in the landscape, architecture, material culture and tradition. The human body as medium of action was considered in how it may interact with its environment and with others. Four main areas of human activity were considered: grave location, grave construction, pre-mortuary rites, and rites in the tomb. Evidence from 62 sites of varying size was analysed in order to provide answers to the following questions: where were tombs situated, how were they occupied and what was their place in the landscape; what was the meaning and effect of architecture; what did people do in tombs and as part of mortuary rites; how were practices and structures maintained and altered through time, and what brought about their widespread reproduction? The conclusions of the study traced the inception and proliferation of different practices at different times, questioning the notion of a uniform early Mycenaean culture, and offering ways in which instances of burial practice can be understood in local and regional, rather than global, contexts.

Archaeology is fundamentally concerned with both space and time: dates, chronologies, stratigraphy, plans and maps are all routinely used by archaeologists in their work. To aid in their analysis of this material, the use of GIS by archaeologists has become widespread. However, GIS are conventionally ignorant of time. Thus, if archaeologists are to achieve the fullest potential in the application of GIS to their studies, GIS are needed that properly take into account time as well as space.

A GIS capable of dealing with temporal data is referred to as a temporal-GIS (TGIS), and commercial TGIS systems currently exist. However, these are locked into a model of modern clock time. Archaeological time does not sit well within that model, being altogether fuzzier and less precise. Nor are commercial TGIS able to address the questions that archaeologists ask of their spatio-temporal data. Thus, a TGIS is needed that deals with the types of time that we encounter as archaeologists, lest we end up shaping our data and questions to the inherent capabilities of non-archaeological TGIS.

The creation of that new TGIS is the subject of this thesis: a fuzzy TGIS built specifically for the study of archaeological data that also takes into account recent developments in the theory of temporality within the discipline. The new TGIS is flexible and powerful, yet remains within the software horizons of GIS-literate archaeologists. It has been tested on two case studies, and it is hoped that archaeologists will experiment with it.

Burnt-offering places are an archaeologically heterogeneous group of finds in the Alps, predominantly occurring during the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age. Plant macrofossil and charcoal analyses were carried out at nine of these sites, targeting the assessment of the offerings and the firewood used for the altars.
A total of 99 taxa are represented by carbonised remains. One constant component in the finds are fragments of a cereal product, characterised by small-grained (less than 300µm) cereal bran and close structural resemblance to archaeological bread finds. Further classification (grain-paste, porridge or bread) was however not possible.
In opposite to the processed cereals, grain finds (mainly hulled barley, hulled wheats, broomcorn millet) are rather scarce. Older sites (LBA) show the under-representation of main crops as documented for contemporary settlements. Finds of legumes were found mainly in north Italian sites.
Oilseeds occur punctually. The useful plants spectrum, together with the archaeozoological record, confirms an 'agrarian' character of the rituals postulated earlier: domesticated plants and animals dominate over gathered plants and game. Four hypotheses are suggested to explain the role of wild plants in the rituals, however not allowing definite conclusions. Fuel wood choice was guided by local availability, only two sites indicating specific selection. Dendrological and taphonomical parameters of the charcoal point to a predominance of gathered deadwood.
Both aspects (deadwood use, no specific selection) clearly differentiate the Alpine burnt-offering from the ancient Greek ritual, which is often used as a basis for comparison.

This study sets out to present a critical synthesis of the previous work on portal tombs and to investigate many aspects of this enigmatic tomb class. 98% of portal tombs in Ireland, Wales and Cornwall have been surveyed in their landscape setting and the finds of 42 sites re-assessed. Furthermore, bone from seven portal tombs has been radiocarbon dated for this project. The results have been analysed to suggest a relative and absolute chronology for portal tombs. Morphological subtypes have been identified and the classification of portal tombs more clearly defined. The chronological and morphological similarities and differences between portal and court tombs have been investigated. Clusters of portal tombs have been especially scrutinised to show the possible interrelationships of portal tombs with other tombs of the same class, but also with monuments of other tomb classes, and with the surrounding landscape. The landscape in the micro-region has been carefully assessed and analysed to investigate if the landscape setting could be part of the underlying belief system. Finally, Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic settlement in the distribution area of portal tombs has been investigated to show any possible relationship to portal tombs.

Ancient commercial transactions were often based on the payment of a quantity of silver. This silver was measured out in a two-pan balance to an agreed upon mass. The balance compared the mass of the silver with the mass of known weights in the other pan. Many such balance weights have come to light in archaeological excavation. While other scholars have conducted metrological analyses of specific groups of balance weights, there has not yet been an attempt to collect weights from sites on or near the coast of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age, specifically Philistia.\n\nThis study looks at the various units of mass in use during the Iron Age by examining the actual balance weights. Several statistical methods are employed to evaluate and compare the masses of these weights to find their unit values. Many of these weights align with known weight systems such as that of the Mesopotamian šiqlu, the Egyptian qdt/Diban, or the Judahite sheqel; many of the weights belong to yet other systems.\n\nThe dissertation begins with a survey of ancient weighing and the weight systems known in the ancient Near East and Aegean during the Bronze and Iron Ages. Following is a catalog of the Iron Age weights from the coastal plain of the Southern Levant, including many unpublished examples. The report of statistical findings follows demonstrating which units of mass are present and the relative frequency of each. Lastly, implications for
the understanding of the inter-and intra-regional economics and politics are presented.

This dissertation research explores the making of the broader Shang world in the late second millennium B.C. Specifically, I investigate how aspects of the symbolic, social, and natural worlds converged in human interactions with animals, particularly in the realms of food and religious communication on the eastern frontier of the Shang civilization. As animals had symbolic and economic importance to the Shang, my research on patterned variation in animal remains from diverse archaeological contexts informs on status differences, economic conditions, and cultural change in the context of state expansion. While the state may have had an interest in promoting ritual institutions pertaining to its notions of order and legitimacy, local networks of power were often reproduced through simple and unconscious practices of everyday life and rituals. My dissertation investigates diverse aspects of human interaction with animals as potential loci for state reconfigurations of the ritual order as well as loci for parallel networks of power to diverge, subvert, or resist the state claim to centrality in the structure of Shang life. The process of 'becoming Shang' can be best conceptualized as reconciling on-going tensions between the state's claim to supremacy and diverse local circumstances.

The objective of this thesis is to identify and analyse the plant remains from four newly excavated Hellenistic sites in S. Pieria in Greece, three farmhouses and a part of a city, in order to reconstruct the agricultural practices, economic patterns and interactions of the period. It is the first large-scale archaeobotanical investigation of sites from the historical periods and the Classical era in Greece.\n\nAbundant Vitis-remains indicate that the farmhouse of Komboloi was specialized in viticulture and in large-scale production of wine, while Duvari I was engaged in viticulture on a much smaller scale. At the farmhouse of Platania, a generalized production involved the cultivation of a variety of staple crops supplemented by nuts and fruits. Some activity revolved around the processing of olives, indicated by the largest assemblage of Olea-remains so far retrieved in Greece. Olive oil was produced by an un-identified processing method that did not crush the olive stones during milling. Based on the wide range of plant and animal remains that indicates processing, preparation and consumption of food, Krania was identified as an urban 'extra-residential' building complex, which could have possibly served the role of a 'tavern' or a guesthouse.\n\nObservations on contemporary, traditional wine-and olive oil production provided an understanding of the processing sequences involved. Experimental charring and flotation of modern Vitis and Olea remains collected during the ethnographic work was carried out in order to aid interpretation of the archaeobotanical assemblages. It is suggested in this thesis that it is possible to detect the various products and by-products of the various crop processing stages involved in the production of wine and olive oil in the archaeobotanical samples.\n\nThe suggestion that seasonal occupation of the farmhouses from Komboloi and Platania was not a feasible option is based on the archaeobotanical remains and the archaeological record recovered from the sites. These large, autonomous estates engaged in large-scale agricultural production played a dominating role in the countryside, although not necessarily as major suppliers of vital food provisions to the nearby cities.\n\nSignificantly, the physical welfare and survival of the harbour city of Krania did not seem to have been depended on these particular, large farming estates, although the social significance and economic importance of their products, such as wine and olive oil, would have influenced local trading patterns. Other farmhouses must have produced the main bulk of crop provisions, such as grain and pulses, to cover the city's demands.

This thesis poses a series of questions about the early Christian remains of Argyll. The framework for these questions is the argument that the early Christian church in Argyll was organised along territorial lines rather than within a loose confederation of monastic houses. This organisation reflects a number of differential regional responses to the introduction of Christianity, and therefore points to a far more complex picture than is offered by the traditional paruchia model. The key question within this framework is to what extent the organisation of the early Christian landscape is a result of older, ideational landscapes of the Neolithic to the later Iron Age. The influence of these older landscapes would have been different in different regions leading to a number of different 'Christianities' within the landscape. The relationship between the past and the present, and the extent to which the past landscapes influenced the organisation of the early Christian ritual landscapes, form an additional key element of the research. These regional strategies illustrate the complexity and heterogeneity of the early Christian church.

Zooarchaeology has started to move beyond purely economic interpretations towards a social zooarchaeology. This has often concentrated upon Associated Bone Groups (ABGs), also called 'special animal deposits'. This PhD investigated the nature of ABGs from the Neolithic to the medieval period in the contrasting regions of southern England and Yorkshire.

Data from 2062 ABGs was collected, 1863 from the southern England region and 199 from Yorkshire. The largest proportion of ABGs from both regions came from Romano-British sites. The study collected data published from the 1940s onwards, and showed that the interpretation of these deposits is influenced by key publications and period-based assumptions, with ritual interpretations often only given at a meta-level. For example, Iron Age deposits are seen as 'ritual', yet this does not provide information on the actions and the associated meaning and agenda which created them.

This thesis showed that each ABG is unique, and to apply a meta-level interpretation to all ABGs, even from the same period, is inaccurate and inappropriate. A biographical approach to the investigation of these deposits was developed, indicating that there is no standard type of ABG, meaning there can be no standard interpretation. There are trends in the creation of ABGs, but each bone group is created by specific actions and it is the investigation of these individual events that moves us closer to the societies we wish to understand. This study has shown the value of not only utilising specialist data, but integrating such knowledge with other archaeological evidence.

The thesis discusses the nineteenth-century historic landscape of Devon though the creation, manipulation, and querying of a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) database. The aim is not only look at the physical evidence of change and development in the historic landscape through field and settlement patterns, but to discuss the relationship between field and settlement morphologies and patterns of nineteenth-century Tithe Surveys landholding. The investigation is undertaken through the examination of field and settlement morphology, but also Tithe Survey landholdings, field-names, and associated documentary evidence, for the three case study areas in Devon. These case study areas were chosen as areas that had seen little archaeological investigation, and were highlighted for study by the Heritage Lottery funded Community Landscapes Project (CLP). Key issues of the thesis include: how far back patterns of nineteenth-century landholding can be traced, or projected, back into the medieval period; the occurrence and extent of open field farming in Devon; and the spread of nucleated and dispersed settlements. Finally, the idea of landscape pays and the identification of regional differences in the study of the historic landscape is also addressed.

The dissertation argues that Chinese literacy emerged in the context of the management of the Shang ancestral cult, with a central role played by the divination record, sometime around the middle of the second millennium. Chapter 1 argues that early writing systems are less likely to be products of 'intelligent design' than of essentially blind evolutionary processes, and that the increasingly intensified and repetitive use of precursor sign systems, rather than utilitarian administrative needs, are what drive the emergence of literacy. Chapter 2 reviews competing hypotheses regarding the nature and extent of writing in late second-millennium China. The increasingly intense and repetitive cult activities, and the divination that informed them, provide a likely context for the emergence of writing. Moreover, the evidence for perishable writing materials suggests that they too were associated with the management of cult activities. Chapter 3 reconstructs the organisation and activities of one of the 'divination workshops' at Anyang, represented by the inscribed plastrons from Huayuanzhuang dong di H3. The collaborative nature of the workshop procedures, and the frequency with which divination was performed and recorded are quantitatively assessed, in order to demonstrate that divination record-keeping was a high-frequency activity of full-time specialists, of the kind that could have supported the emergence of a writing system. Chapter 4 provides evidence for scribal training conducted within the divination workshops at late second-millennium Anyang. The fact that divination workshops trained their own scribes suggests that literacy was not generalised or widespread, and supports the claim that the divination records were central to the use and transmission of literacy. (www.cangjie.info)

This thesis presents a spatial analysis of several archaeological materials from the Later Stone Age coastal campsite Dunefield Midden in Western Cape Province, South Africa. The combination of the site's remarkable organic preservation, lack of post-depositional disturbance and the unusually large size of the excavation represent some of the best conditions in which to undertake intra-site spatial analyses of any prehistoric site in the world. A comprehensive refitting operation is performed on several archaeological materials related to subsistence, ceramics and the bones of several differently-sized bovid species. Intra-site connections are explored with the aid of an integrated relational GIS research database. Ethnoarchaeological data are employed to formulate hypotheses with which to explain the observed spatial patterning of remains. Interpretation is further facilitated by integrating the spatial analyses with data from technical and faunal examinations of the materials themselves. The result is a detailed spatial reconstruction of on-site subsistence organisation. Activity areas implicated in carcass processing, cooking, disposal and sharing are identified using ethnoarchaeologically derived methods. A number of animal carcass processing and disposal behaviours are identified for the first time in a southern African archaeological context. The evidence for these behaviours, along with the intensity of secondary disposal at the site, seriously calls into question whether the Kalahari is an appropriate supplier of analogues for the LSA. A related issue, and another of principal concern of the thesis, is the identity of the site's inhabitants. This is assessed by integrating the refitted ceramic and sheep assemblages with data from previous studies of the site. It is suggested that the group(s) responsible for depositing DFM were coastal-dwelling hunters-with-sheep with close economic, social and perhaps even ritual ties with more fully dedicated pastoralist groups sharing the Western Cape landscape.

My thesis engaged Aristotle, Duns Scotus and Martin Heidegger in a debate over the concept of being and critically engaged with Heidegger's philosophy of art and architecture in relation to history. I engaged Husserl and Heidegger in a debate over the nature of phenomenology and examined Heidegger's phenomenology of Dasein and being-in-the-world in relation to historical manifestations of religious practice. I argued that Heidegger's temporal configuration of being as meaningful presence amounts to a univocal conception of being in terms of time. I then related this interpretation to Heidegger's later philosophy and placed Heidegger's thought in relation to archaeological hermeneutics.

The aim of my PhD was to examine the Roman urban domestic architecture of the north-eastern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula during the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD. I made a meticulous and detailed catalogue on different domestic Roman buildings. In this sense, I decided to consider five fundamental aspects: the evolution of the concept of the Roman house throughout the historiography; materials and constructive techniques used in the domestic architecture; the design of construction in relation to the metrological aspects; and the functionality of the spaces and the diversity of forms in private buildings. In this way, I was able to obtain different conclusions on the social classes or ethnic groups of the renters of the Roman houses in the Iberian Peninsula. I also analysed diverse models of the domestic architecture that were developed in this area of the Roman Empire.

Using archaeological and ethnohistorical data, this dissertation examines the character of the relationship between the Late Postclassic (c. AD 1250-1520) frontier center of Totogal, located in the western Tuxtla Mountains (Toztlan) of southern Veracruz, Mexico, and the expanding Aztec Empire. Traditional models of imperialism examine frontiers from a core perspective that limits the autonomy and agency of groups in the path of expansion. Recent ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological studies of other boundaries, however, suggest that considerable room for negotiation exists within the space of interactions, whether asymmetrical amounts of power characterize the home bases of those groups. \n\nI argue that elites at Totogal, using imperial symbols and markers of their own high status, sponsored ceremonies. Among the invitees were the non-elite public. At these events, local elites brokered the potentially conflicting interests of the Aztecs and the tribute paying population of the Tuxtlas. The invitation of the public to feasts and rituals that combined imperial and local elite symbols (and possibly green obsidian), naturalized the relationship between local elites and imperial representatives with non-elite occupants of Totogal and nearby settlements by establishing a reciprocal system of gifting whereby food and drink, served in the context of elaborate religious and commensal rituals, provided a benefit to the Tuxteco public which, along with other exotic highland goods, was viewed as an acceptable exchange for the local tribute items that the empire desired.

The mandatory enclosure of convents in early modern Spain and colonial Spanish America did not preclude a complete removal of the influences of the societies in which they flourished. Rather, convents in early modern and colonial society mirrored the religious, social, economic and ethnic ideologies of their society and in many ways helped to promote and legitimise these ideologies. Within the convent walls, however, the religious community was not the egalitarian utopia ecclesiastics envisioned; economic, ethnic and religious hierarchies were endemic in the structure and daily life of the community. Because convents were so entrenched in their societies, they can provide unique insight into colonial ideologies and the creation of colonial identities. This thesis examines the creation and expression of various forms of colonial identities in Spanish America through the case study of La Limpia Concepción convent in Riobamba, Ecuador. By taking a highly contextual approach, this study explores the complex process of personal and group identity formation and expression through art, architecture, use of space and excavated material culture. These elements are examined to explore the lives of all women living inside the convent walls and how they expressed their various forms of spiritual, sexual, ethnic, class and familial identities. This study adds to previous research in history, art-history and historical archaeology by exploring the lived experiences of women from across the social spectrum within the convent. It also emphasises the need to consider religion and personal piety as significant elements in Spanish colonial identities.

The archaeological investigation into the remains of the Predynastic Egyptian cemetery of el-Gerzeh (3600 BC-3350 BC), based on unpublished excavation and museum records are the basis for this thesis. Part I provides an overview of the evidence and assesses its chronological and spatial context. Group identity is the focus of Part II, and is viewed through the concepts of ethnicity and migration, emphasising the need to consider material culture as a correlate and medium of social practice. The material construction of the burials, and the manner in which grave goods were manipulated during the funeral, are compared with Upper and Lower Egyptian contexts and are used as evidence to argue that the community buried at Gerzeh were most likely migrants who were deeply embedded within Upper Egyptian traditions. Part III looks at the differences between graves within the cemetery as evidence for differential responses to age and social status. It is argued that previous attempts to interpret Predynastic mortuary evidence in these terms have been limited and over-simplified, a correlate partly, of employing outdated models. By appealing to more recent discussions in archaeology and anthropology a critical examination of these issues is presented. Using statistical methodologies, together with thick description of individual burial contexts, the complexity of mortuary practices and their significance for interpretation of identities are emphasised. Relevant sub-issues that are also discussed include scale, and the significance of funerary rituals to society, such as social memory, and how this is interpreted archaeologically.

The thesis explores the nature of the transitional period from Pre-Pottery to the Pottery Neolithic period through detailed analysis of the flint and obsidian assemblages of Mezraa Teleilat, a mound on the bank of the Euphrates Valley, in southeastern Turkey.
The rapid decline of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B entities in the Levant, a phase also known as the PPNC, caused a stratigraphic gap in many sites. Hence, the chronological and the cultural record of the 'transition' remains poorly known and is interpreted as either recording a cultural continuity or a cultural disruption, recently called "the PPNB collapse". Only at a few sites among many Neolithic excavations provide evidence for occupation during these two periods and can potentially elucidate the nature of the cultural transition. Mezraa Teleilat is a large mound where major exposures were excavated producing rich PPN and Pottery Neolithic deposits. Thus the site has the potentials to resolve the riddle of the "cultural transition". Given the stratigraphic observations and architectural remains the lithic assemblages of Mezraa Teleilat were worthy of an in-depth lithic investigation. In order to achieve the aims of the thesis I analyzed lithics from the three Neolithic phases in the site dating to the Late PPNB (Phase IV), the "Transitional Phase" (Phase III), and the Pottery Neolithic (Phase II). Raw material, technological, and typological analysis of flint and obsidian chipped stones uncovered two methods of lithic production at Mezraa Teleilat: local and non-local. Local production was attested by the technical attributes of most flint debitage and tools. Non-local production characterizes all obsidian and a few flint tools. Both types of production continued from Late PPNB to the PN. In addition to the stratigraphic evidence and radiometric dates, technological, typological, and spatial analysis of lithic assemblage also demonstrate that Mezraa Teleilat was not abandoned until the end of the PN. Indeed, the current study demonstrates the cultural continuity of seemingly the same population lasting for several centuries, from the late 9th to early 8th millennia.

This study focuses on movement and mobility and the role they may have played in the lives of people in Ireland's early prehistory. As one of its main contributions the project aims to present a framework for the study of these practices that allows approaching them diachronically while accommodating the most commonly available type of material evidence for early prehistoric northwest Europe, lithic artefacts. This framework is based on a critical review of the current models and ideas on mobility in archaeology, anthropology and other disciplines, which are then distilled to form a distinct strategy. Taking into account the character of the most commonly found lithic artefact evidence from early prehistoric Ireland this strategy is then employed to devise a practical research methodology. Key to this methodology is the fact that it combines lithic artefact evidence with spatial and landscape information and thus enables us to approach the material and in turn past people's movements on a landscape scale, placing the perspective of a moving person at its centre. The methodology is then tested and evaluated in three practical case studies, based on separate regional study areas in northeast, mid southeast and southeast Ireland respectively. Although evaluating the methodology is the primary purpose of these case studies, in addition to this each of them provides an interesting research project that contributes in its own right to our understanding of movement and mobility, but also life more generally during early prehistory in the respective region.

This thesis is concerned with developing an archaeological theory of movement. Movement forms one of the most important phenomena of human life. It is an essential component of being, action and identity; indeed without it we cease to live. Notwithstanding, human pedestrian movement remains little theorised within prehistoric contexts and when it is considered is usually restricted to seasonal mobilities or patterns of movement around and within the architectures of Neolithic monuments. This thesis goes beyond this narrow focus by examining movement as an integral facet of quotidian life. Notably, this thesis outlines how the bodily engagement of individuals creates a sense of space, place and architecture - essentially how the world comes into being. This point of departure, from contemporary archaeological narratives, states that gestures, movements and mobilities physically create the fabric of place, architecture and landscape, can transcend such physical features and transform them. Alongside this theoretical perspective, a Geographical Information System (GIS) methodology has been developed in which past movement can be foregrounded and analysed. In particular, this methodology elucidates general patterns of prehistoric mobility for three study areas within the Great Ouse, Nene and Welland river valleys, situated in the East Midlands/East Anglia. Through using a theoretically informed humanistic GIS methodology, changes in movement from the Late Mesolithic to the Middle Bronze Age (5000 - 1300 cal BC) have been analysed for each river valley study area.

The pollen analysis of three peat bogs (Peñalara, Rascafría and Tolla Collado de El Berrueco), two archaeopalaeontological sites (Buena Pinta cave and Navalmaíllo rockshelter, located in the Calvero de la Higuera) and recent pollen rain studies in the Lozoya Valley (Sierra de Guadarrama, Madrid) made it possible to reconstruct the dynamics of the vegetation communities of the last 5000 years, as well as the anthropic signals from prehistoric to present times.

The Holocene pollen records of this region are interpreted as relatively forested conditions at the beginning, characterised by a profusion of pine-groves and oak forests as well as other mesophyle elements like birch, followed by a progressive opening of the forest and the increase of landscape units related to anthropic effects. A palaeo-landscape of pasture dedicated to transhumant and transterminant cattle activities define different levels of anthropic pressure.

On the other hand, the pollen and non-pollen indicators of human impact, combined with electrochemical measurements (conductivity and pH), and diversity analysis (rarefaction), have been especially useful in the identification of the type of human impact on the environment. In particular, it has been possible to determine that the first clear events of human impact and deforestation of the Lozoya Valley forests occurred during the third millennium cal BC, and that the current aspect of the landscape is similar to that of theMiddle Ages.

The main contribution of this research - mainly based on space syntax theory and proxemic analysis - is the description of an architectural genotype. Although neopalatial architecture is characterised by a noticeable heterogeneity (that is to say numerous phenotypic expressions), the analysis conducted in this work highlights the existence of topological recurrences. It means that within the range of buildings selected in this study, the way spatial layouts are organised, the relationship between exterior and interior, the potential circulation networks and the rules relative to the implantation of certain types of rooms or transitional spaces are characterised by a structural redundancy, impossible to distinguish by a simple visual inspection of standard plans.

While Minoan archaeologists have previously tried, in vain, to define and characterise specific architectural structures, this work pleads for a new approach to neopalatial architecture. The identification of the existence of a genotype allows us to avoid traditional and restrictive typological classifications and to consider the different expressions of neopalatial built environment as parts of a continuum. Each building can thus be analysed in term of its adherence to the neopalatial architectural genotype, the palaces probably being its most accomplished crystallisation. Form and function can also be explored in this way. Analysis of neopalatial architecture - and by extension the society that created it - necessarily demands that different approaches be brought to bear. The analyses presented here contribute to this by offering a new means of reading neopalatial architecture.

This research examines the figurines from the urban Indus Civilisation site of Harappa (c. 3300-1700 BC) as reflections of the underlying structures of Indus society and cultural change, focusing on figurines from secure, dated archaeological contexts. The figurines are viewed as media of communication in their original social contexts, rather than as naturalistic reflections, and as artefacts whose social lives can be reconstructed through systematic analyses of stylistic and technological attributes and spatial and temporal contexts. Ethnographic data, historic texts, and contemporary ancient societies also inform these interpretations.
My research suggests that: 1) the figurine corpus is diverse, including anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and special form figurines; 2) the figurines were intentionally hand-modelled by craftspeople (not children); 3) the figurines reflect fluid concepts of sex and gender and possibly dualism; 4) the corpus was not dominated by highly decorated female figurines that represented a Mother Goddess and functioned as votive anthropomorphic lamps; and 5) the unique construction of the figurines and the diversity of the corpus suggest a rich religious ideology that included transformation and reverence, cultic ritual, sympathetic magic, and possibly shamanism, but not Hinduism. This study presents the first empirical tests of long-held interpretations about the Indus figurines and the first provisional chronological typology for figurines from an Indus site. Some continuity in traits over time may reflect the maintenance of underlying indigenous core traditions of the region, despite adaptations to a dominant culture. The dissertation thus explores questions of indigenous development and acculturation, as well as Indus identity.

The investigation into the origin of a collection of hand-painted lanternslides revealed evidence of the social, intellectual and cultural importance of various scientific societies in nineteenth-century Oxford, and the contributions made by those involved, particularly the creator of the lanternslides, H.M.J. Underhill (1855-1920). Evidence gathered from primary sources showed a fluidity of relationships between the supposed 'town and gown' in late nineteenth-century Oxford which consisted of a community of citizens, amateurs and academics, all of whom were linked by a growing interest in the real and mythological British past.

Following a discussion of the key intellectual and social influences in Britain during the latter half of the nineteenth century, including the implications of the emerging evidence of an ancient human past, the thesis focuses on individual case studies. They illustrate the roles of overlooked or neglected individuals whose work contributed to the growth of todayapos;s discipline of British prehistory. Several people, now forgotten, including Underhill, were contemporaries of Arthur Evans and Edward Tylor whose social circumstances made it easier for them to become prominent academics.

The results of this research indicate that a new approach is required in the history of archaeology; one that would draw attention to the vital contributions made by forgotten or overlooked individuals, amateur societies and popular publications. Further attention to these issues would shed new light on the way that between 1850 and 1900 prehistoric archaeology moved from an antiquarian pastime to an academic discipline.

This dissertation documents the planning, construction, use, and eventual abandonment of the roads of Xunantunich, a mid-sized Maya centre in the upper Belize River valley occupied primarily in the Late to Terminal Classic periods (ca. A.D. 600-950). In redefining the city and polity of Xunantunich in the Late Classic period, the elite planners used roads deliberately to create a coherent site plan, to integrate disparate political entities, to foster certain forms of movement and activity, and to convey significant messages about the order and legitimacy of the new sociopolitical system. Once in place, the roads were the location of a variety of activities, both ritual and mundane, that further shaped the place of Xunantunich. An investigation of these roads reveals something of the dynamism of an ancient Maya centre as it was designed and experienced. I conclude that many of the archaeologically recorded roads in the Maya area were intimately associated with the power and the person of the local ruler. Further, these political statements were often designed with reference to cosmological spatio-temporal precepts. By walking along their roads, the Maya performed time. They displayed the passage of time and the transition of temporal cycles as spatially rooted entities. Inasmuch as Classic Maya rulers aspired to be masters of time, history, and destiny, they needed roads to enact that mastery in the physical world.

The thesis analyses a dataset of 436 Egyptian votive stelae dating to the Ramesside period (1295-1069 BCE), from six sites: Deir el Medina, non-Deir el Medina stelae from the Theban area, Abu Simbel and Wadi es-Sebua in Lower Nubia, Qantir/Pi-Ramesses in the eastern Delta and Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham in the Libyan desert.

The thesis presents the votive stelae as the end result of defined social practices, exploring the role of votive stelae as social artefacts which, through image, text and materiality, are active agents in transmitting information on individual and group social status and identity, normative social structure, and alternate social organisation. The stelae are analysed according to the iconographic content, status- or function-related information (title and/or clothing of the dedicator), and original location, or context, of the stela. These elements are understood to provide information on the social context for the utilisation of stelae in Ramesside Egypt. Central to the thesis is a reading of the representations as coded references to actual events, or practices. The examination includes an analysis of the social and representational conventions within which the stelae and their representations were created.

The thesis reveals that the form, use and production of votive stelae are related to royal activity and sanctions, and promulgate the shifting central ideology and structure. The votive stelae can also, when the iconography is decoded, be linked to specific events, illuminating the local social milieu of the communities studied, and their internal social organisation.

The focus of this PhD thesis is fish-eating in Classical Greece. Fish-eating is perceived as a field of human activity which integrates economic, social and ideological aspects of past societies in Greece.
The aim of this thesis is to investigate the multiple dimensions of fishing and fish-eating in Classical Greek societies: fish as food, fishing as an occupation, fish-eating as an arena for social distinction and fish as an ideological symbol are some of the diverse, yet interconnected aspects of fishing and fish-eating. This investigation approaches the topic by combining an array of different evidence (e.g. fish remains, literary works, related artefacts) in order to explore the variety of ways in which fish consumption took place in Classical Greece. This variety is viewed as a feature inherent in any society, and a result of the specific combination of historical developments and material, social, and ideological conditions.
In order to achieve the above goals, the current study evaluates critically the ideas and methodologies of paleo-economic studies and those developed in the field of Classics, and then seeks alternative, more insightful approaches to the past, aided by anthropological thinking. It takes advantage of developments in the field of the anthropology of consumption and of ideas about food and the senses. Through the study of Classical fish-eating, this thesis aims to contribute to recent attempts to formulate theoretical frameworks and methodologies for the incorporation of such issues within archaeological research.

This thesis deals with two primary aims; (1) geological, mineralogical, and geochemical investigations of the Deh Hosein (Sn + Cu + Au), Astaneh (Au), and Nezam Abad (W + Cu + Sn) mineralisations in the Astaneh-Sarband area, west-central Iran, and (2) geochemical investigations on ancient bronze artefacts from Iran and Western Asia in order to compare their characteristics with the high-tin copper ore of Deh Hosein and examine their possible relationship.
The extensive ancient mining relics at Deh Hosein which is located at the western rim of the Luristan area and is close to Susa and Mesopotamia, the simultaneous occurrence of tin and copper in it, the good lead isotope compatibility of its ores with many bronze artefacts from Bronze and Iron Age sites distributed from the southern Persian Gulf to the Aegean, the good match for trace element patterns of ores and artefacts, the dating of surface finds of pottery and charcoal at the mine, together with frequent archaeological and ancient textual references which refer to the Iranian plateau as supplier of the raw material for the ancient Mesopotamia and south-western Iran all attest that Deh Hosein has been a major supplier of tin for ancient civilisations of Iran and Mesopotamia and perhaps even further west beginning in the third millennium BCE.
The northern part of the Sanandaj-Sirjan zone of Iran favors the occurrence of similar deposits as in the Astaneh-Sarband area in which further exploration may reveal some other ancient mines.
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This research investigates cultural change and innovation in the north-western provinces of the Roman Empire (50 BC to 50 AD). Despite the importance that is generally attributed to innovation, there is no uniform concept for this phenomenon. This is not surprising considering that innovation is a complex social process. Social sciences often deal with messy and non-linear problems for which no time-invariant objective solution exists. This is because social systems are based on human knowledge which is socially constructed and changes over time. In such cases perspective and research interest can have substantial influence on the study which often results in a plurality of definitions between various approaches.
Conceptual modelling provides a valuable tool to simplify and operationalise such complex social phenomena. This thesis suggests a conceptual model of innovation that defines it as a change of beliefs that leads to a change of behaviour. The nature of the archaeological record does not allow us to observe such a process of reconceptualisation directly and it is argued that changes in time-space constraints can be used as a proxy measure.
The usefulness of this model is demonstrated using a statistical analysis of faunal remains for the British Iron Age. The combination of this quantitative method with the discursive model allowed the identification of two different types of large Iron Age assemblages, one that later became Romanised and one that did not. This shows that major changes occurred before the Romans actually occupied the island and that time-space constraints provide a constructive means to study social change.

There is a general belief that a decline in health of prehistoric people occurred with the adoption and intensification of agriculture. However, recent bioarchaeological research in Southeast Asia does not seem to fit this model. An investigation of subadult health is particularly useful to assess this issue because immature individuals are very responsive to environmental changes.

The aim of this thesis was to produce a synthesis of subadult health and disease from late prehistoric mainland Southeast Asia and assess whether there was evidence for a change in health with agricultural intensification. The samples, comprising 325 individuals were from seven sites in Thailand, six from the Northeast and one from the Southeast coast, and collectively span from c. 4000 to 1500 BP. Two hypotheses were developed. Firstly, there would be maintenance in health with the intensification of agriculture. Secondly, contrary to the first hypothesis, an increase in infectious disease in the later samples was predicted. Analysis of mortality, fertility, growth, growth disruption and dental health found no differences among the sites that could be explained by temporality. These results support the first hypothesis, that health was maintained. The skeletal pathology results tentatively suggested an increase in these indicators in the later sites. An analysis of multiple indicators of stress in the populations indicated a possible decline in health. This interpreted with environmental evidence suggested an increase of infectious disease at the later sites. However, the earliest site of Khok Phanom Di had extremely poor health. Thus, the second hypothesis was only partially supported. The heterogeneity of the health indicators are consistent with recent interpretations of localised environments of the sites. Also, retention of a broad-spectrum subsistence economy with agriculture may have overridden some of the changes that were seen in other parts of the world. Khok Phanom Di and the later sites were undergoing major changes in their natural and cultural environment, which could have resulted in an increase of and infectious disease.

Georg Schmorl has been accepted for the last eighty years as the leading authority on the nodes he named. This study used clinical data from patients found positive for Schmorl's nodes using a sample of 3277 individuals. The radiography data was adapted to suit the collection of osteological data from five medieval skeletal samples (380 individuals). These samples represented 1000 years of British life, (sixth to sixteenth centuries AD) from rural, urban and coastal settlements, representing defensive, monastic, farming and, early industrialised communities in northern England and southern Scotland. The study revisited the Schmorl's node data provided by Schmorl, with surprising results.

Contrary to Schmorl's findings, the clinical data found no central weak areas in the vertebral end plates at the point of notochord regression in subadult vertebral columns; this indicates that the historic understanding of a central end plate weakness is incorrect and that Schmorl's nodes have a different aetiology. The greatest number of Schmorl's nodes were not formed in the first two decades of life, but in the third and four decades. Scheuermann's disease may be indirectly attributable to underlying subadult Schmorl's nodes, while in some cases adult Schmorl's nodes may be directly attributable to subadult Schmorl's nodes. The archaeological data showed that males and females from the same settlements did not produce similar frequencies of Schmorl's nodes, nor were similar patterns observed between samples. This unique clinical and archaeological study has brought a clearer understanding of the aetiology and macroscopic presentations of Schmorl's nodes.

The prevalence of dental caries in early (c. AD 450-950), middle (c. AD 950-1150) and late medieval Britain (c. AD 1150-1540) was examined. Fifty-three data-sets (46 sites, 9136 skeletons) were compiled from published and unpublished skeletal reports. Sites were distributed across the country, but the majority were located in the south and east of England, and the late medieval sites were predominantly located in urban areas. Caries prevalence in teeth from adults, males, and females are compared between: the main medieval periods; chronological sub-divisions within the early and middle medieval periods; different late medieval cemetery types (church, monastic, hospital and cathedral); non-monastic and monastic samples through time and within each period; different religious orders; coastal and inland sites; and five regions.

The data are interpreted using a biocultural approach. A low caries prevalence was observed in early and middle medieval monastic compared to non-monastic samples, but the late medieval monastic caries prevalence was significantly higher than both preceding monastic samples and the contemporary church sample; hospital sites had a particularly high caries prevalence. Early medieval coastal sites had a low caries prevalence compared to inland sites, but the trend was reversed in the late medieval period; these data are discussed in relation to the consumption of marine fish. Changes in the pattern of sex differences in caries prevalence were observed. The limitations of the data are discussed, together with a critique of the quality of data available in currently available skeletal reports.

This thesis is a study about life and death in prehistory, based on the material remains from the Early Bronze Age on the Greek mainland (c. 3100-2000 BC). It deals with the settings of daily life in the Early Helladic period, and the lives and experiences of people within it.

The analyses are based on practices of Early Helladic individuals or groups of people and are context-specific, focusing on the interaction between people and their surroundings. I present a picture of the Early Helladic people living their lives, moving through and experiencing their settlements and their surroundings, actively engaged in the appearance and workings of these surroundings. Thus, this is also a work about relationships: how the Early Helladic people related to their surroundings, how results of human activity were related to the natural topography, how parts of settlements and spheres of life were related to each other, how material culture was related to its users, to certain activities and events, and how everything is related to the archaeological remains on which we base our interpretations.

Life and death in Early Helladic Greece is the overall subject, and this double focus is manifested in a loose division of the thesis into two halves. The first deals primarily with settlement contexts, while the second is devoted to mortuary contexts. After an introduction, the study is divided into three parts, dealing with the house, the past in the past and the mortuary sphere, comprising three stops along the continuum of life and death within Early Helladic communities. Subsequently, mortuary practices provide the basis for the concluding part, in which the analysis is taken further to illustrate the interconnectedness of different parts of Early Helladic life (and death).

This study analysed evidence for pathological changes seen on the skeletal remains of early medieval populations from two countries - Britain and Germany. A total of 928 individual skeletons dated between the mid-fifth and early eighth centuries AD were studied using macroscopic techniques. Two non-pathological indicators of health and disease - demographic structure and stature - were investigated in conjunction with six disease categories as diverse as dental disease, joint disease, traumatic injuries, non-specific infections, congenital and developmental anomalies, and metabolic disorders. To provide comparisons between the obtained results, Chi-squared tests were performed and the diseases in the study populations were discussed using a bioarchaeological approach.

Despite many similarities in disease prevalence, some striking differences between the two study populations were found. Most dental diseases, non-specific infections and iron-deficiency anaemia were more prevalent in German individuals. Some of these observations may be explained by differences in environmental factors which enhance the development of these diseases. Most noticeable was the relatively high percentage of cranial injuries found in German individuals, and especially in males attesting to a higher level of inter-personal violence.

In 1995, a large database of satellite imagery with worldwide coverage taken from 1960 until 1972 was declassified. The main advantages of this imagery, known as CORONA, that made it attractive for archaeology were its moderate cost and its historical value. The main disadvantages were its unknown quality, format, geometry and the limited base of known applications.

This thesis has sought to explore the properties and potential of CORONA imagery and thus enhance its value for applications in landscape archaeology. In order to ground these investigations in a real dataset, the properties and characteristics of CORONA imagery were explored through the case study of a landscape archaeology project in the Orontes Valley, Syria. Present-day high-resolution IKONOS imagery was integrated within the study and assessed alongside CORONA imagery. The combination of these two image datasets was shown to provide a powerful set of tools for investigating past archaeological landscape in the Middle East.

The imagery was assessed qualitatively through photointerpretation for its ability to detect archaeological remains, and quantitatively through the extraction of height information after the creation of stereomodels. The imagery was also assessed spectrally through fieldwork and spectroradiometric analysis, and for its Multiple View Angle (MVA) capability through visual and statistical analysis.

Landscape archaeology requires a variety of data to be gathered from a large area, in an effective and inexpensive way. This study demonstrates an effective methodology for the deployment of CORONA and IKONOS imagery and raises a number of technical points, which the archaeological research community needs to be aware of. Simultaneously, it identified certain limitations of the data and suggested solutions for the more effective exploitation of the strengths of CORONA imagery.

This study examined the patterns of musculoskeletal stress markers in four early medieval skeletal samples from the North-East of England, and the relationship between these conditions and social status, as indicated by grave goods. Textual evidence and burial practices suggest that status may have been acquired through heredity and kinship, but it is also possible that the activities undertaken by an individual during life were important in defining status. Human skeletal remains from furnished early medieval cemeteries offer the possibility of examining patterns of skeletal change, which may be the result of physical activity, together with indicators of social stratification from burial practice.

A review of clinical and archaeological studies of markers of musculoskeletal stress (MSM) suggested that examining several MSM would produce a more reliable indication of activity in archaeological human skeletal material. Therefore, osteoarthritis of the appendicular joints, enthesopathies, Schmorl's nodes and asymmetry of the paired humeri and femora were examined in adult skeletons from Castledyke South (North Lincolnshire), Norton Mill Lane and Norton Bishopsmill (North Yorkshire) and Bamburgh (Northumberland). The patterns of these changes were interpreted in relation to burial practice at each site, and archaeological and documentary evidence for activity. Differences were found in the patterns of MSM between the status groups, and particularly between individuals that were buried with weapons and those buried with clothes fittings, suggesting that the level of activity undertaken during life may have been associated with social status.

This thesis covers the Neolithic sequence in Lower Bavaria (c. 5500-3900 cal BC), including the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), the Middle Neolithic Stichbandkeramik (SBK) and Oberlauterbach (OLB) and the Late Neolithic Münchshöfen culture. The work advocates a shift of perspective towards how personhood and community are created in the course of intimate, daily routines and during occasions such as burial.

First, the architectural sequence is re-examined. In the LBK, longhouse interiors are varied, but during the Middle Neolithic houses are progressively standardised, privileging modes of sociality based on the visual. Patterned rubbish disposal, previously structuring movement around the house and settlement, is now confined to the latter sphere, accentuating the creation of settlement communities. Increased enclosure building (e.g. roundels/Kreisgrabenanlagen) also emphasises larger collectivities. Cemetery, settlement and secondary inhumations and cremations are present in various phases, but variability is highest in the late LBK and early Middle Neolithic. Funerary rites are studied as idealised representations of identities for mourners and as performances. Different kinds of burial place different emphases on the dissolution of the body and the expression of relational personhood, comparable to the use of clay figurines. By the Late Neolithic, burials are one of several categories combined in structured deposits delimiting settlements.

These different strands of evidence reveal a creative recombination of the elements of Neolithic life at different points in the sequence, creating new ways of being Neolithic.

The thesis includes appendices providing gazetteers of sites, analyses of architecture, burial and artefact patterning, and landscape and site histories.

This study adopts a maritime cultural landscape perspective of the Tanzanian coast from the sixth to the fifteenth century AD in the vicinity of the two important trading centres of Kaole and Kilwa. Six themes are covered, namely the identification of coastal settlement sites and establishment of their chronology; recognition of principal phases in settlement development; exploitation of maritime resources and economy; identification of settlement location in relationship to the physical environment of the coast; establishment of the hierarchical nature of coastal settlement; and recognition of the principal harbour and port types.

The coastal communities exploited their marine location as basis for iron making, fishing, shellfish gathering and coral extraction (for building and lime making) with some agriculture and trade activity, the latter involving imported goods particularly in the larger settlements of Kaole in late first millennium and Kilwa from thirteenth century. Some communities were culturally homogenous throughout the period, though diversity was apparent at Kilwa in the sixth to tenth century with presence of hunter-gatherers and/or the Pastoral Neolithic in addition to iron production.

Movement of settlement occurred adapting to new shorelines following changes of sea level, and sedimentation of swamps and creation of sand spits. A six-stage settlement hierarchy existed ranging from isolated fishing camps to cities. An impressive construction phase at Kilwa included a unique and enigmatic series of platforms and causeways at the harbour entrance. Complex entrepôt port functions were associated with major settlements, but other types of port (fishing, local trading, ports of call, ferry) were identified.

My PhD research sought to take the motifs on Irish Neolithic passage tombs beyond their traditional role as passive epiphenomena and further understand them as performing active roles in the Neolithic. Rather than view the images through a representational analogy, I utilised visual cultural studies, set within a worldview perspective to paint a picture of the possible ambiguities of life and belief at some passage tomb locations.

I explored the richness of evidence from the archaeological data and literature, to move beyond previous positions, and suggested new ways to deal with a past that develop multiple narratives. Visions, context and belief layered together often generate ruptures in daily life that can facilitate new imaginings within the rhythms and sequences of images. Within such a perspective the Irish passage tomb motifs presented fresh conditions for possibility and diverse understanding. In combining broader and more fine-grained analysis of particular passage tomb sites, I demonstrated that social complexities operate at all scales. Magnified via cosmological perspectives, images on passage tombs interact with spectators through two-way intimate engagements. These actions can be enhanced via process, such as the sequential nature of some images or by the application of liquid solutions, especially when conducted at particular times and places. With passage tombs acting as 'stages' and 'islandscapes', I constructed interpretations that included both carnivalesque and axis mundi environments, which subvert, disrupt and perpetuate social beliefs. Such performances may have created dialogues and myths about the specialness of these places. These conversations would in turn factor and texture new illusions and simulations of the world, whilst creating fresh opportunities for experience.

Based on hundreds of interviews, unpublished correspondence and diaries, newly-found field notes, never-seen-before photographs and much other original material, this dissertation proves that small, informal, intimate groups, drinking tea together, may create splendid academic subjects.

This thesis investigates the interrelationship between the later prehistoric inhabitants of Cheshire and the County Palatine of Lancashire (Lancastria), and their physical and cultural landscape as it changed through time. It focuses on some of the material properties of that environment, and the way the prehistoric inhabitants responded to the constraints and opportunities that it presented. The emphasis was on the contextual analysis of the archaeological record, integrating different types of artefact, and different classes of data, because this has the potential to offer new insights into the production and reproduction of small-scale society.

The result is a reading of activity in terms of the construction and re-construction of identity at the scales of the individual, group and society. A tension is identified between membership of a wider northern European 'Bronze Age', and feelings of local affiliation, expressed at the scale of the region through the particular form of material culture placed in burials, and the particular metalwork types selected for deposition. It was through those practices that the identity of places in the landscape was continually reproduced. It was in the selection and performance of those acts that the participants defined themselves, through practices, as a community with its own identity. This is how the small-scale groups of later prehistoric Lancastria reproduced themselves as a community. (Supervisor: Marie-Louise Stig Sorensen).

Most researchers who study rock image sites are usually more interested in the meaning of images but they could have systematically obtained more empirical information about these images and their physical location.

Twenty-seven pictograph sites in the Lake of the Woods, in the Canadian Shield, were examined in this study because they exhibit traits evident in rock image studies world-wide. Fieldwork identified that images existed on cliff faces and inside caves, as well as new images and new sites. Classifying and describing any image is very difficult, since the level of description given to an image affects the way in which it can be analysed, and heavily influences the possible outcome of any discussion of perceived meaning. The choice of theoretical approach influences the fieldwork, analysis, and search for meaning. Each prescribes the types of questions asked and determines the levels of understanding obtained. The different but complementary theoretical approaches were employed sequentially using the same data to increase the potential quantity and quality of information gained. The following sequence of approaches must be utilised: culture-historical, contextual, followed by either the homological, or analogical approaches, or a combination of the latter two.

My research attempted to (a) identify the possible vocabulary of images, (b) determine whether combinatory rules exist, (c) reconstitute the life history of each site, and (d) ascertain whether the images can be related to other indigenous images to determine if this can provide information about the meaning(s) of the rock images. The images of four birch bark scrolls were examined because a detailed investigation of the scrolls, the ethnographic record, and their pictographs could provide some answers regarding the meanings of the images on the rock faces.

This thesis reassesses existing concepts concerning agro-pastoralist adaptations in the Prehispanic Andes of North-Central Peru. Through the discovery and survey of hydrological technology (including artificial pastures) associated with these camelid herding societies this work counters prevailing models of Andean culture history that emphasised agriculture over herding, and reassessed the importance of pastoralism within Andean socio-political development. This research mapped the material remains of social, economic and technological developments across three vertical eco-zones ('kichwa', 'suni' and 'puna' from 3000 to 5200 m asl) of the Cordillera Negra from the Late Intermediate to the Late Horizon Period (c. AD 1000 - AD 1537). This was based upon extensive field-walking, excavation and topographical survey of unstudied archaeological sites within these areas. Post-excavation studies included the material analysis of ceramic and textiles, identification of plant macro remains and soil analysis, and settlement and hydrological technological analysis including population modelling. The thesis also examined the ethnohistorical evidence for the relationships between 'Llacuaz' agro-pastoralists and 'Huari' mixed-farming societies in the larger Huaylas culture of the late Prehispanic and early colonial period. Using a combination of ethnohistory and ethnology it charted the social, cosmological aspects that compose an agro-pastoral identity. This analogy was tested against archaeological data to distinguish separate agricultural and pastoral spheres of influence in the prehistoric past. Research into archaeological landscape was informed by political ecology theory in which human agents actively manipulate the environment they occupy. Thus highland communities shifted between farming and herding strategies not because of environmental stresses but because of cultural choice. In the study area this meant that landscape use was not necessarily agricultural but rather followed a political ecology that emphasised herding. Thus landscape use patterns are part of human engagement strategies that stress the economic, social and political needs of the distinct communities of the area.

Kobadi, a late Neolithic mound in the Malian Sahel, belongs to the phase when Neolithic people were living the southern Sahara. Its relations with the contemporary sites located in the Sahel and the Malian Sahara are considered through the compared analysis of the technical and decorative styles of ceramics. The decorative features, particularly complex in the Kobadi ceramic sets, are analysed so that a decorative grammar can be defined.

Two contemporary productions (with osseous temper and sponge spicules) and a later one with vegetable temper are identified in Kobadi. Three decorative styles are individualised: that of the bone-tempered ceramics ('Os') and two styles related to ceramics with spicules ('Spic A' and 'Spic B'). Ceramics with spicules seem associated with the transformation of fish.

These three styles are found in several mound sites related to fishing and to bovine breeding in the Delta intérieur du Niger dated to the second millennium BC. They define 'ceramic groups' which present certain affinities with the area of Hassi el Abiod at the Malian Sahara and with the area of Niamey.

This thesis is an archaeological investigation into clove plantations on nineteenth century Zanzibar. These represent a new form of social institution on Zanzibar, introduced by Omani colonial rulers, and linked with Zanzibar's increasing integration into global capitalist economies at this time.The lives of plantation residents (Omani colonisers, their wives, children, concubines and slaves) were structured by the relations of unfree labour utilised for the purpose of agrarian production. Immigrants from Oman and Africa negotiated changing identities in relation both to one another and to local indigenous Swahili populations. Such negotiations were constrained within a complex web of colonial relations.Survey of clove plantation sites across Zanzibar, and excavations at the plantation site of Mgoli provide the body of evidence, studied in the light of recent theoretical perspectives on identity. A particular focus of this thesis is the way in which identities are composed of multiple and inseparable aspects (i.e. gender, status etc.), and that these can be understood at a microscale level of analysis, in the ways in which individuals in households created understandings of similarity and difference with one another. Material culture has been envisaged as involved in these relations through everyday practice, and not simply as a symbolic marker of identity. Interpretations therefore focus upon the way in which space, landscape, locally produced and mass produced goods were involved in understandings of gender, status and community identities through being a constituent part of the embodied practices of daily life.

This dissertation study explores the material residues of British--indigenous interaction on the nineteenth century eastern frontier of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa). Mass-produced European ceramics recovered from four historical archaeology sites - a British settler hinterland homestead, a colonial town centre, a British military fort, and a mission station with previously enslaved, previously indentured, and immigrant indigenous African inhabitants - form the focus of the study. These ceramic remains (3016 fragments obtained in surface surveys and trash dump/midden excavations) are: employed in a multiscalar strategy of cross-cultural comparison (intra-site, inter-site, and global colonial frontier scales of study) to gather insight into the construction, reproduction, and transformation of shared cultural beliefs and values during this time of culture contact and change.

This dissertation argues that the frontier inhabitants use ceramic decoration and vessel shape to reflect and actively communicate information about the making and marking of social identities (ethnicities and nationalism) within the newly emerging, colonial, social order. In illustrating the situational nature of ethnicity (as works ever-in-progress), this dissertation study provides new data, methods, and results potentially useful for deconstructing the essentialist and monolithic conceptions of identity that have long dominated the South African worldview and which continue to endure despite the realisation of more recent political dispensation. In turn, this archaeological study of ethnicity is itself contextualised in terms of the past (colonial) and more recent (Apartheid and post-Apartheid) political and social contexts shaping South African regional disciplinary practices, metropolitan Anthropology, and North American historical archaeology.

This thesis examines the networked industrial landscapes of Cape Town's nineteenth century gas supply industry, and South Africa's twentieth century grain elevator system. The thesis takes the view that, although created in very differing circumstances, both networks were explicitly constructed with the purpose of social and economic development, albeit for the narrowly defined constituencies of their times. The principal question this thesis asks is whether such networks can be conserved with the purpose of future social and economic development within the broad framework of Agenda 21.

Working within a methodological framework informed by the Kerr's Conservation Plan work, research was conducted which would provide a thorough understanding of the networks, allowing for an assessment of cultural significance, an awareness of issues that might affect that significance, and the formulation of policies for retention. Desk-based study, archival research and fieldwork was carried out at the Woodstock gas works, the Cape Town grain elevator and the surviving country grain elevators that comprise the respective networks. The key sites were recorded and detailed site inventories prepared.

The thesis concludes by proposing a new approach to dealing with networked industrial landscapes. It suggests that the surviving network of elevators can not only be put to good use for the purpose of sustainable development in terms of Agenda 21, but that the network which historically links them to Cape Town could itself be re-established in the cause of social transformation.

The thesis discusses medieval Scandinavian art, in particular church doors and portals from twelfth and thirteenth century Sweden and Norway. The entrance of the church was a demarcation of holiness, but also a meeting place for the local communities, where otherwise secular activities could be legitimated by the ecclesiastical context.

It is argued that the 'pre-Christian' and 'folkloristic' traits in the images, symbols and styles of the doors and portals have been overemphasized in earlier research. These traits should not be understood as pagan relics in an unbroken continuity from the Viking Age, but rather as the results of a newborn interest in the past from around AD 1200 and into the thirteenth century. The same tendencies existed on the Continent, where texts and motifs from Classical antiquity came to use. In Scandinavia however, there are examples of indigenous pre-Christian motifs being used instead of antique ones. This was consistent with a proto-national discourse known from written sources, and should not be understood as religiously problematic.

A variety of models of interpretation are discussed. It seems likely that both central and local actors were participating in the process of image-making, and the idea that the art functioned as a one-way propaganda should be dismissed. The most important conclusion is that the church art in this study should not be understood as reflections of a backward and peripheral Scandinavia in the thirteenth century. Rather, it was the result of assertive and fully Christianised people who were finding their own ways in a wider European context.

The Middle Stone Age began as early as 300 000 years ago and continued to as late as 35 000 years ago in Africa. During this period Homo sapiens emerged in Africa. Also during this period increasingly sophisticated technological innovations and the earliest evidence for symbolic thought entered the archaeological record. Some of these innovations associated with our earliest conspecifics include regular use of mineral pigments, composite tool manufacture, fine bone working, and the production of personal adornment. All of these events are critical for our understanding of modern human origins. It has become part of the standard explanation of our origins that the emergence of modern anatomy and modern behaviours are two separate events, with the latter occurring much more recently. This explanation is based on a few lines of empirical evidence. Each of these lines of evidence was developed in the southern African Middle Stone Age. Using data from the same region each of these lines of evidence is examined and rejected here. This dissertation focuses on the Middle Stone Age from the Cape coast of southern Africa and presents new data from the region, helping to place this important period of our evolution in context.

Reference:
Minichillo, T. 2006 Raw material use and behavioral modernity: Howiesons Poort lithic foraging strategies, Journal of Human Evolution 50: 359-364.

The protection of the cultural heritage is a matter of concern for most countries in the world, but each has to take into account its own legal, ethnical, cultural and tourism particularities (beyond its economical and geographical circumstances).

This research will show how this protection is operated in the Mayan area countries, according to these characteristics. The first chapter explains the notion of heritage and its legal aspects, and presents each Mesoamerican country's legislations along with multilateral treaties and the great international conventions. The second chapter deals with the actions of the great international organisations regarding the protection of the heritage. However, the third chapter shows that the illicit traffic of archaeological objects is still ongoing. Chapter four explains the running of the art market along with its various players. The legal frame previously explained raises several problems, specially the issue of the relations with today's populations. Subsequently chapter five studies the Mayan identity today, its survival in Guatemala and Mexico and its effect on the protection of cultural heritage. Finally, the sixth chapter analyses tourism in the Mayan area, its impact on archaeological remnants and the preservation of the Mayan population's traditions.

In conclusion, after recalling each chapter's contents and attempting to reach solutions, the notions of local heritage, national heritage and Humanity heritage will be confronted while analysing them in depth. Private management of archaeological sites is also widely discussed, along with the involvement of the governments from the Mayan area countries in the creation of solutions to some of the problems brought up in this research.

In this thesis I explore the artistic community surrounding the primary place of art production and sale in the region, Injalak Arts and Crafts (henceforth, Injalak), an art centre established in Kunbarlanja in 1989. The premise of this thesis is that the group of people (not solely artists) that interact with and through Injalak form a unique community in Kunbarlanja. This is based on the argument that 'community', rather than a geographical notion, is a condition in which individuals are enmeshed in a web of 'meaningful' relationships with others. Using multiple methods including a focus on historical research, oral histories, statistical analysis and reflexive ethnography, I discuss the social context of art production in Kunbarlanja with a focus on Injalak as a core centre for art production and artist interaction. I argue that Injalak as a place activates and draws together particular social groupings to form a sense of identity and community. It is the nature of this community that is the primary focus of this thesis as well as the final artworks which bear witness to the relationships and historical events.

I present this story in two parts; personal and collective histories and place, people, and community. The first part begins with a focus on the long history of art trading around Kunbarlanja and an exploration of the influence of this history on the emergence of Injalak in the 1980s. In the second part of this thesis, I present stories and findings from my ethnographic fieldwork in context with statistical results on artwork and artist collected during fieldwork from 2001 to 2005. These stories come together through a merging of statistical results with ethnographic interactions and the theories and histories presented in the first part of this thesis.

This thesis explores patterning in Viking age and medieval zooarchaeological assemblages from Orkney, Shetland and Caithness in northern Scotland. Its goals are to disentangle the relative importance of spatial and temporal trends in the interpretation of the animal bone record from this region of the Norse North Atlantic - and their impact on our understanding of wider developments such as the intensification of economic production at the end of the first millennium AD in North-western Europe. Existing published and archival sources are augmented by primary analysis of two substantial assemblages, Earl's Bu, Mainland Orkney, and Quoygrew, Westray. Broad trends and variations in site type, function and status are identified. Multivariate methods, including correspondence analysis, and more traditional methods of zooarchaeological quantification are both employed. Evidence for intensification of fishing is linked to the wider Fish Event Horizon of the late Viking Age and early medieval periods in Europe, and evidence of fish trade was found, including both consumer and producer sites. Earl's Bu, a high status site, received substantial quantities of prepared gadid (cod family) fish, possibly produced at Quoygrew and other sites. The high proportions of neonatal cattle are interpreted as evidence for an increasing intensification in dairying, while the unusual absence of this material from the Birsay area suggests a correlation with the high status political and ecclesiastical elite settlement there. Future work will help illuminate these results, including additional zooarchaeological and bioarchaeological research examining the diet of humans and livestock, and the origin and consumers of traded fish.

Cooked bone must account for a large proportion of the skeletal finds from archaeological sites yet it is still not possible to detect cooked bone unless it has become charred. The reason for this is that mild heating (80°C, one hour), such as is usual in cooking, does not lead to detectable changes in any biochemical parameter yet measured. The aim of thesis was to develop a technique which could detect this level of heat damage.

Differential scanning calorimetry was only able to detect catastrophic damage which occurred after extensive heating (six hours at 100°C or > 145°C). However using transmission electron microscopy it was possible to visualise heat-damage at the level of the collagen fibril after very mild heat treatment. The approach was tested on modern, forensic and archaeological material. Buried bone that had not been cooked showed some alteration similar to that caused by cooking, nevertheless paired cooked and uncooked bones could always be distinguished. Analysis of modern human material with different ages-at-death showed an apparent age-related stability; the collagen fibrils from older individuals were more resistant to thermal alteration and swelling in acid. This was also observed, more dramatically, in artificially cross-linked bone collagen. Conversely bones buried in acidic soils for a short period showed a rapid fragmentation of the collagen fibrils.

This analysis has given an insight into the very early stages of collagen collapse within bone and has shown that even when protected by mineral, it is prone to damage. Degradation of bone collagen appears to be governed by the integrity of the collagen fibril and if viewed in this way can help to explain why bone collagen can remain intact far into the archaeological record, why severely diagenetically altered bone can yield undamaged collagen molecules and why bone collagen is such a reliable material for isotopic dietary analysis and 14C dating.

The objective of this study is to introduce reliable data to the protracted debate concerning whether or not legally sanctioned antiquities markets can succeed as a solution to the illicit trade in antiquities - a solution long proffered by the collecting and dealing communities. Using the legal market in Israel as the case study this work examines how this market developed, what effect its legal and illegal aspects have on archaeological site destruction in Israel, Jordan, and the PA, and how these circumstances impact archaeological practice.

The current investigation is concerned principally with establishing a connection between demand (the purchase of archaeological artefacts) and the looting of archaeological sites. Employing a production - distribution - consumption model of trade, this thesis considers the competing stakeholders (archaeologists, collectors, dealers, government employees, and museum professionals) and their respective claims to the disposition of the cultural heritage. Examples such as the case study of a Bar Kokhba coin and testimony from archaeologists, dealers, and government employees clearly illustrate the link between consumer demand for archaeological material and the supply chain supported through the looting of archaeological sites. Qualitative data gathered during the course of this project indicates that with stricter laws, greater oversight, closer scrutiny of dealer inventories and registers, policing of archaeological sites under threat, more control at border crossings, a more ethical consumer base - one that refuses to purchase unprovenanced artefacts - and a steady influx of chance finds and de-accessioned material, a fully monitored legal market may have the potential to succeed as a deterrent to looting. Whether or not such utopian conditions could really exist remains to be examined in future research.

Given the spread of the use of virtual reconstructions in archaeological museums, apparently without a true theoretical consideration (museological and epistemological) to support them, the aim of this thesis is to find out whether and how Virtual Reality is useful for the presentation of archaeology in museums and at the same time to propose a theoretical basis for this use, through the establishment of a semiotic theoretical and methodological framework.

The thesis is structured in three sections. The first one presents a general overview of the project (goals, methodology, contribution to the state of the art, future perspectives) and also the basic concepts of archaeology (epistemological situation and social function), museums (role of objects, the museums' social function, communicational and educational role of the exhibition, first words about the use of ICT in museums) and Virtual Reality (using six vectors of approximation to the complexity of the concept) that guided the research process. The second section is devoted to the starting question and tries to find out (through a bibliographical search about each element, its application to VR and its verification through published empirical evaluations) if VR is useful as a communication tool from all the perspectives involved (perception, cognition, semiotics of images/language, archaeological epistemology, museology, museography and learning), distributed in three analytical levels: syntax, semantics and pragmatics. The third section contains a summary of the thesis and the conclusions of the research project, which correspond to the theoretical foundations of the use of VR in archaeological museums from the research and the museological perspective.

This thesis explores the role of archaeology in the development of modern conceptions of the past in Ireland. The approach contextualises archaeological studies in Ireland within broader psychoanalytic, anthropological and philosophical theories of the twentieth century. To help situate archaeological research in modern society, it explores archaeology as a psychoanalytic phenomenon which provides narratives and objects for group cohesion. It explores the foundations of the concept of a singular place known as Ireland and a singular people who are Irish and the perpetuation of this concept in modern archaeological expression. In particular, it explores nineteenth-century antiquarianism and romantic studies of the past and the continuation of this romance through the representation of Ireland, its landscape and Irish objects in the heritage and tourism industries. Then it examines the appropriation of these romantic representations of archaeology in Ireland in modern and contemporary political discourse. A case study will be made of the Hill of Tara as a spatial setting of group identity in Ireland which will explore the concepts and ideas developed. As a conclusion, the role of archaeological and historical rhetoric in political and cultural expression in Ireland will be discussed and contextualised within twentieth-century European traditions. This will illustrate the entrenchment of the representation of archaeology within modern modes of thought in Ireland, the neutralisation of heritage space in this discourse and the opportunities that are present for undertaking reflexive and participatory expressions of the archaeological narrative in Ireland.

This thesis is an attempt to compile and study, from a historiographical point of view, the archaeological documentation politically generated in Andalusia, as its archaeology and archaeological heritage remain unpublished, being stored in the libraries of Andalusia and Madrid. The historigraphical perspective entails summarising and organising this information, but also interpreting it and putting it in historical context; at the same time an evaluation of the archaeological value of this documentation was carried out, as in many cases it is the only source that remains concerning certain deposits and objects which have now disappeared.

Archaeological and historical research at the eighteenth-century core of the Tyng property in Dunstable (now Tyngsborough), Massachusetts, examines the Tyng family as culture brokers between colonial rural and urban society and the wider British-Atlantic world through their positions as inland merchants, large-scale agriculturalists, and local political and military leaders. This study highlights the roles of material culture in the formation and maintenance of personal identity and social relationships. Taking a holistic approach to identity, this dissertation examines the interwoven nature of gender (primarily masculinity), ethnicity (Anglo-American), and various aspects of position such as status and profession.

The archaeological data come from three seasons of excavation in and around two successive houses. Documentary and comparative sources were used to construct a detailed context in which to interpret architecture and land ownership, personal adornment, and dining and hospitality. Formal dining, which played a large role in urban merchant life, was relatively unimportant for the Tyngs in their rural setting. Land-ownership, on the other hand, was extremely important, and the property was an embodiment of family memory for later residents. In the realm of personal adornment, the Tyngs crafted self-presentations that used many of the forms and materials of urban society, but subtly shifted their message to address a rural audience as well.

The Tyngs selectively used material goods to craft their identities, fulfill their particular social needs, and facilitate their participation in multiple communities. Using material statements, they positioned themselves in relationship to 'cultural arguments' of the eighteenth century. These include discussions of gentility and its expression through manners and consumption; the relationships among luxury, trade, dependence, and masculinity; and the association of agriculture, patriotism, and moral purity.

Can we assume that social rank predicted consumer choice in colonial Anglo America? Did middling sorts simply emulate their social superiors? If not, how might we think about their choices' relationships to deeper social structures? These questions are central to this historical archaeological dissertation on middling identity in eighteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island, on the north-eastern coast of the United States. Colonial Newport - distinguished by burgeoning trade and a climate of religious tolerance - epitomised the successful American entrepôt. The central data set for this study is an artefactual assemblage from the Wood Lot area of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard site, including over 12 000 fragments of eighteenth-century household goods and food remains. Select printed sources and archival documents contextualize these finds.

Artefacts recovered from the Wood Lot are direct evidence of the middling individuals living there c. 1720-1775. Site evidence suggests that we should not dismiss their consumerism as an imperfect emulation of elite consumerism, as it typically has been in American historical and material studies. Notions of 'tasteful consumption' and 'middling gentility' are productive alternatives to 'emulative consumption' and 'elite gentility'. The provincial British in America and elsewhere created for themselves a heterogeneous, partial, and contested gentility based on particular circumstances. This study challenges the assumption that eighteenth-century forms of gentility were inevitable, desirable, cohesive, and elite. It also provides needed historical context for the development of modern American class systems.

Since human colonisation 2000 years ago, Madagascar's native fauna has been dramatically reduced by widespread megafaunal extinctions. Central to debates over the cause of the extinctions are accurate reconstructions of habitats occupied by the megafauna. I examine the micromammal assemblage from Ankilitelo, a late Holocene cave-site in south-western Madagascar, to address the question, were habitats used by the megafauna the same as those in the region today, or different in ways that reflect climate change or human activity?

The taxonomic and ecological diversity of the Ankilitelo assemblage is compared with 23 modern forests spanning the diversity of Madagascar's habitat types. Taxonomic diversity is quantified using species richness measures, which are compared among modern forests and Ankilitelo using cluster analysis. Based on taxonomic identifications, species are assigned to diet, locomotor, activity pattern and body size categories. These categories are used to capture the ecological structure of the modern communities and Ankilitelo, and describe their habitat. The ecological structure of each modern community and Ankilitelo are analysed and compared using multivariate statistics.

Results suggest that the habitat surrounding Ankilitelo during the late Holocene was similar to the spiny thicket of modern south-western Madagascar. Measures of taxonomic composition, species richness and ecological structure indicate that there have been minimal shifts in community boundaries in the last 500 years. Community change appears to have most severely affected the highest body size levels. These results indicate that the cause of megafaunal extinctions in south-western Madagascar represents a synergy of both human-initiated and environmental pressures.

This dissertation is based on the philosophy that technology entrenches itself in the social and geographic landscape, and can be studied in order to shed light on past behaviour. Also, Middle Stone Age assemblages, dating between 300 000 and 30 000 years ago in sub-Saharan Africa, represent a well-preserved technological system containing behavioural patterns that can be used to answer questions on the emergence of modern human behaviour. Literature on the origin and timing of modern human behaviour does not always include the evidence from East Africa, due to limited research and information. Lithic technology reflects past behaviour, and helps to understand when early humans became culturally modern. The objectives of this work were to identify technological patterns during the Middle Stone Age period; to find out whether or not there is variation between and within the Middle Stone Age assemblages studied; and to propose answers about the causes of this variation, and what they represent in behavioural terms.

Data were collected from cores, flakes, and selected tools from five previously excavated Kenyan Middle Stone Age sites. Morphological and metrical data were collected from each artefact using a number of variables. Lastly, the data gathered were analysed and interpreted in the light of current debates and anthropological theories on the beginnings of modern behaviour. There was marked variation in Middle Stone Age assemblages, which could have been caused by a number of factors including environmental conditions, resource type and availability, and choice of different reduction techniques and strategies of tool manufacture. Technological patterns reflect early stages of modern human behaviour, with little standardisation within the assemblages. These Middle Stone Age assemblages contain significant evidence of modern human behaviour which is reflected in raw material procurement, exchange patterns, adaptive behaviour, and mastery of craftsmanship. From these results, it seems that modern human behaviour evolved over time, and is manifest in developmental stages during the Middle Stone Age in several sites and assemblages from East Africa. This knowledge, built from the technological assessment, helps to explore aspects of the emergence of modern human behaviour in East Africa.

Hominin-carnivore interactions likely shaped important aspects of hominin adaptation including morphology, foraging patterns, habitat preferences, and social behaviour. Efforts to evaluate hypotheses of Oldowan hominin carcass procurement that include scavenging from larger felid kills are hindered by a current inability to recognise zooarchaeologically the specific carnivore taxa with which hominins interacted. This dissertation helps redress this limitation by documenting and quantifying taxon-specific traces of modern African carnivore consumption of size 1-4 prey carcasses: gross bone damage patterns, incidence and patterning of tooth marking, and tooth mark measurements. These results are applied to four East African Early Pleistocene archaeofaunas to test hypotheses of hominin-carnivore interaction and document hominin carcass procurement strategies.

The study of three Okote Member archaeofaunal assemblages from Koobi Fora, Kenya (FwJj14A, FwJj14B, and GaJi14) documents hominin extraction of meat and marrow from several prey carcasses at each site, with little evidence of carnivore involvement. The lack of stone tools at these sites may relate to raw material scarcity. In contrast, analyses of a landscape-scale sample from Olduvai Gorge, suggests involvement of a variety of carnivores with comparatively less hominin activity. Carnivore activity in lowermost Bed II appears to have varied over space in accordance with current predictions of vegetation regimes in different geographic locales. A model of diagnosing carnivores from bone damage and tooth mark patterns, using methodology derived from my modern studies, is applied to carcass parts from individual prey animals found in Beds I and II.

It is increasingly evident that the patterns of craniofacial morphology exhibited by several recent human populations around the world, post-date the Pleistocene. While there is an abundance of data available on the origins of recent human craniofacial patterns in Europe, Asia and the Americas, not much is known about the origins of craniofacial patterns exhibited by recent African populations. The Khoesan is an African population that has attracted the attention of physical anthropologists for more than a century. However, we still know little about their craniofacial evolution. I assess morphological variation in 153 individually dated Later Stone Age Khoesan crania from South Africa's Cape coast with the aim of reconstructing patterns of craniofacial evolution. I use information from the archaeological and skeletal records to identify events which may have been central to the development of recent patterns of craniofacial morphology.

Hypotheses centre on: (1) the origins of recognisably Khoesan cranial morphology; (2) the significance of late mid-Holocene fluctuations in Khoesan body size; and (3) the introduction of herding and population continuity/discontinuity at 2000 BP. Results indicate that Khoesan craniofacial morphology pre-dates the Holocene. Although there is a noticeable fluctuation in cranial size and concomitant changes in craniofacial shape during the late mid-Holocene, craniofacial form remains distinctly Khoesan-like. Furthermore, there are no major changes in craniofacial form after 2000 BP, indicating genetic continuity between pre-herding and post-herding populations. In conclusion, results are consistent with long term continuity in Khoesan craniofacial morphology (at least 12 000 years) in the research region.

In this dissertation I examine Swahili plant use through the analysis of macrobotanical remains from four archaeological sites on Pemba Island, Tanzania, dating to AD 700-1600. Specifically, I compare towns and villages before and during the emergence of stonetowns, settlements characterised by stone/coral household and ritual architecture and described as economic, political, and religious centres along eastern Africa 's coast. Mangrove trees, sorghum, Asian rice, and coconut are considered central to early Swahili consumption and production economies as timber, food, and fibre. It is assumed that stonetowns obtained plant products from the countryside and were not themselves primary food producers. I test these assumptions, gleaned largely from ethnohistoric sources, directly against the archaeological record in this first comprehensive study of ancient Swahili plant food production.

The rich archaeobotanical record on Pemba contained wood, parenchyma, coconut, cotton, pearl and finger millets, sorghum, Asian rice, pea, and mung bean, among others. Archaeobotanical comparisons of contemporaneous towns and villages suggest relative economic independence. Before AD 1000, this independence is manifested taxonomically - both African millets and Asian rice are present only in the town, which also bore more coconut and cotton than its neighbouring village. After AD 1100, stonetown and village plant assemblages exhibit economic independence in terms of production. An analysis of crop processing strategies reveals a predominance of household-based production in both the village and stonetown. Thus, it appears that this Pemban stonetown was probably not being provisioned by rural farming settlements, and indicates further investigation of ancient Swahili agriculture is warranted.

This thesis is a study of the rock art in caves with animals depicted by dotted painting, a specific pictorial expression of the Cantabrian region, within the context of the European Palaeolithic rock art.

The existence of a series of painted caves, in which an unusual technical procedure to represent animals exhibiting similar stylistic characteristics occurs repeatedly, had already been considered in earlier works of general character at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since, findings have been made sporadically until the end of the century, by which time their number had increased considerably, reaffirming their narrow geographic relation with the Cantabrian region although modifying slightly the distribution pattern and introducing some new features into the graphical pattern.

Our objective has been to specify these sets within the parietal graphic activity of the Cantabrian pre-Magdalenian period, in particular in terms of stylistic variability and chronological use. It has been possible to verify the existence of some extremely homogeneous characteristics that affect specially the caves of the central-eastern Cantabrian region. Further, the chronological data point towards a graphic tradition that develops through time, at least from the Gravettian to the Solutrean period, at which time a process of technical and iconographic polarisation around the dotted painting technique and reindeer representations culminates. The existence of such a rigid graphical expression during such a long period of time implies a similar stable social substrate with deep cultural relations and a developed capacity for the transmission of the graphical codes established by the community.

This thesis examines technological behaviour during the early British Middle Palaeolithic (Late OIS 9-7), as reflected by lithic artefacts. The British data-set, whilst containing few high-resolution sites providing information relevant to ethnographic-scale behavioural reconstruction, actually forms a valuable corpus of well-contextualised locales within a tightly constrained chronostratigraphic framework. Lithic artefacts from these sites can be used to address broader questions concerning the emergence and nature of particular 'Middle Palaeolithic' behaviours; specifically, the emergence of, and variability within, Levallois technology in Britain, and increasing complexity in the organisation of technology in the landscape.

The assemblages analysed in this thesis comprise the nine best-preserved British sites dated to this period, which can be placed within secure chronological, geographical and ecological contexts. Whilst previous surveys have emphasised the typological composition of such assemblages, this thesis considers the specific technological behaviours evident at particular locales, in terms of which stages of lithic reduction are represented, what specific Levallois preparatory and exploitation strategies were applied, and how the choices between such options are explicable. On this basis, it is possible to discuss the development of a technologically complex treatment of particular places in the landscape during the early Middle Palaeolithic, linked to the increased transport and curation of particular Levallois products. Whilst on a European scale, such patterns are seen as typical of the Middle Palaeolithic but are essentially undated, this study shows that such behaviours are apparent from at least OIS 8 onwards in Britain, with concomitant implications for our understanding of developing Middle Palaeolithic behaviours in Europe.

The thesis is concerned with pottery and culture during the Middle Neolithic (c. 3300-2300 cal BC) in southeast Sweden. Its purpose is to investigate and discuss the significance of pottery in the Pitted Ware culture, particularly on the island of Öland in the Baltic Sea. The history of research concerning this subject area is recounted and the known Neolithic remains from the island of Öland are reviewed. The two Pitted Ware sites so far excavated on the island, Köpingsvik and Ottenby Royal Manor, are presented in detail, and ceramics from these two sites are used in the pottery analysis that makes up the empirical core of the work. The assemblages are approached by similar methods and by posing similar questions, and the analytical methods used include recording of the large ceramic assemblages (aspects of design), microscopic analysis of ceramic thin sections and raw clay samples (aspects of raw material use and pottery technology) and lipid residue analysis performed on extracts from pulverised ceramic ware (aspects of pottery use).

The results clearly point to a rather elaborate and socially embedded ceramic craft tradition, with a strong preference for decorated vessels and clearly defined ideas on how the pots should be produced and what they should look like. The technological analysis revealed a rather complicated and restrictive raw material situation, with which the potters coped partly by developing local tempering traditions. The functional analysis revealed a striking variability in pottery use between the two sites. The differences in pottery observed between the two sites are discussed in terms of local sub-traditions within the overall Pitted Ware ceramic tradition that may have developed through the work of individual potters and contacts with different areas and groups of people. In this way an attempt is made to view pottery and the ceramic craft in the Pitted Ware culture from a more dynamic perspective.

Reference:
Print series: Theses and Papers in Scientific Archaeology 7. © Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay 2006, ISSN 1400-7835, ISBN 91-89338-13-8. Printed in Sweden by Intellecta Docusys, Stockholm 2006. Distributor: Archaeological Research Laboratory, Stockholm University. www.archaeology.su.se/arklab

Faunal analysis, and the examination of one animal in particular, the pig, can address socio-economic complexity in ancient settlements. This dissertation explores the potential of pigs as an index of economic complexity, and thus a proxy indicator of social complexity in Early Bronze Age Greece. In particular it examines the frequency of pigs in four Early Helladic settlements in the Peloponnese: Helike, Lerna, Tsoungiza and Tiryns and carries out an inter-site comparative faunal study, combining traditional zooarchaeological methods with the novel framework of behavioural ecology. This research finds that not only do pigs act as a barometer of economic complexity in ancient settlements, but they paint a portrait of an Early Helladic Greece at the birth of the social complexity that is to become the hallmark of the later Mycenaean State.

This study investigated the modes of use of Bronze Age weaponry in a combat environment through the use of two case-studies, the Aegean and Ireland. The range of equipment analysed included swords, spears, shields, helmets and armour of the Middle and Late Bronze Age in both areas. A broad range of artistic and literary sources, primarily from the Aegean, were also utilised in the course of this investigation.

A selection of the surviving pieces in museums in Ireland, Britain and Greece was examined to ascertain the nature and extent of damage caused to the edges of the weapons during combat. The author manufactured and commissioned the manufacture of more than twenty replica weapons which were subsequently used in simulated combat against other edged-weapons and shields. The swords were also used for test cutting against specifically designed test pieces, sample armours and pig cadavers. The damage on ancient pieces and the replicas was compared to ascertain likely modes of use of the various classes of weapon.

Through these complementary avenues of research, the relationship between warfare and society in the Bronze Age was investigated through the material and iconographic record without the use of prejudicial ethnographic modelling.

The thesis aims to establish a social dynamic model for the development of a local settlement network in the Fornos de Algodres municipal area (Guarda, Portugal). That social dynamic is articulated with a territorialisation process and perception of a local landscape and is considered to be a local expression of a large-scale trend of change from Neolithic communities to Bronze Age hierarchic societies. In this process of local change, identity is a vital variable analysed in the development of a local tradition during the third millennium BC.

The thesis is organised in three parts. In Part I, Chapter 1 examines the subject and theoretical and methodological aspects; Chapter 2 is concerned with the geographical description of the area of study and paleobotanic data available. Part II (Chapters 3 to 8) presents the archaeological sites researched and the data produced. It also presents artefact analysis and comparative diachronic studies. Part III establishes the model. Chapter 9 deals with architecture, function and context. In Chapter 10 the existing discourses for the region are discussed and the model for local social dynamics during the third millennium is presented. Chapter 11 addresses questions regarding identity and cognitive structures, attempting to evaluate the roles that those variables played on structuring the local tradition and its developments through the millennium. Finally, Chapter 12 contains brief considerations on personal research trajectories and parallel knowledge disclosure is exemplified in the context of an ontological and socially responsible idea of archaeological work.

The thesis presents a detailed investigation of the hillfort architecture of north Ceredigion, mid Wales. The later prehistoric settlement archaeology is diverse with nearly ninety hillforts and defended enclosures recorded within a topographically distinctive landscape.

It is argued that existing attempts to classify and interpret Welsh hillfort architecture have relied on traditional classificatory tools too inflexible to fully interrogate the complex regional architecture found away from core zones of British hillfort building. An attempt has thus been made to develop new three-dimensional approaches to studying hillforts, involving the analysis of their 'architectural components' to identify potential shared façade schemes which appear to signal the implementation of wider architectural styles. In this way a new interpretation has been developed about the likely regional groupings of particular hillforts based on shared architecture. New interpretations regarding the role and extents of architectural complexity and monumentality in hillfort façades, where construction work was developed above and beyond that required for practical enclosure and defence, are described. This perspective differs from some previous studies which suggest utilitarian approaches to rampart construction.

The research also argues for a reconsideration of the existing concept of 'west Wales', proposing instead a model for overland 'cultural contact' across the high ground of Plynlimon, linking mid Wales with other regions of western Britain. Supporting research includes a reassessment of the later prehistoric chronology, settlement pattern and economic landscape of the region.

This thesis reports an investigation of Iron Age diet in Britain using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope data obtained from skeletal material from four locations across England and southern Scotland. Both human and animal bone collagen has been analysed from Wetwang in East Yorkshire and other sites in East Lothian, Hampshire and Cornwall. Animal bone from Dorset has also been included.

The aims of the study were to characterise British Iron Age diet in general isotopic terms and also to provide a contextual base for future analysis which allows an understanding of both inter- and intra-site variation in such data for this and other periods. The comparisons across the locations allowed consideration of geographical variability within England and southern Scotland and included material from coastal sites (Cornwall and East Lothian), from sites with easy access to rivers and estuaries (Hampshire) and an inland site where access to water would have been more difficult (Wetwang).

All human groups were consuming high levels of animal protein and there was very little evidence for the consumption of aquatic resources. There was significant variation in d15N values between the locations, which was reflected both in the humans and the herbivores, such that it is likely to be related to environmental rather than to dietary differences. Intra-site group comparisons at Wetwang showed very little variation within the cemetery population according to age, sex, subjective status category or site phase. The data were very consistent within the populations, although those for Hampshire displayed more variation in nitrogen.

This study examined the elaboration of identity in Iron Age to Roman south-east Britain, in the area corresponding to the traditionally identified territories of the Trinovantes and Catuvellauni. Identity, being fundamentally expressed in everyday and ritual practice, was investigated through a study of consumption. Analysis of pottery assemblages permitted the comparative study of a range of site-types, from low status rural dwellings to urban complexes. Pottery is seen as a vehicle for the everyday social practices of eating and drinking, including the empowering forms of feasting attested in the period in the written sources and archaeological record. Closely dated pottery groups from several archaeological sites were interrogated by a range of statistical tools, including correspondence analysis, highlighting recurring patterns of contextual association of different pottery types.

Statistical analysis isolated distinct dining and drinking sets, which related to specific forms of social practice and identity, as for example, at Colchester, where tangible indigenous elite and Roman colonist identities were recognised through subtle differences in the deposition of pottery. The main trends included a Gallo-Roman inspired consumer revolution prior to the official Roman invasion, and a more widespread adoption of consumption practices based on a Roman military template in the generation after conquest, which was focused on urban centres and sites in close proximity to the new road network. These findings have significant ramifications for current debates over the role of military, indigenous and Gallic culture in the origins of urbanism in Britain, and the nature of social change in subsequent generations.

The ballgame has been a common activity in the whole of Mesoamerica for more than 2000 years. However, the unity of this cultural feature has never been doubted until the last few years. Were there one or multiple games? The study of the associated sculptures makes it possible to underline the recurrences and differences in all Mesoamerica.

The present thesis consisted of establishing a corpus as complete as possible of the sculptures associated with ballgames. The corpus consists of 570 sculptures. We initially studied the iconography and, if necessary, epigraphic texts associated with the Maya zone. From the synthesis of these data, we carried out a statistical analysis in order to make finer observations.

The main conclusion is the homogeneity of the sculptures. Indeed, if their natures are different (rings, discs, panels...), we observe that their functions are identical. This tends to underline a certain unity of the game, in spite of regional differences. We highlight the existence of three greatly different ballgames. The first is practiced along the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica and is characterised by the use of tenon sculptures. The second type of game is found in the north of the peninsula of Yucatan, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and in the central Highland. The ring is diagnostic of this variant. Lastly, the central Maya zone had a more specific game of which one of the characteristics is the presence of a bigger ball.

The Petexbatún region of Guatemala was the focus of intensive research between 1989 and 1995 by the Petexbatún Regional Archaeological Project of Vanderbilt University. This region had served in ancient times as the home of a Classic Maya kingdom centered on two sites: Tamarindito and Arroyo de Piedra. As part of the Vanderbilt research, I undertook archaeological investigations at Arroyo de Piedra in particular. Fieldwork targeted the royal compound, residential groups, and surrounding settlement.

The primary conclusion of this research was that Arroyo de Piedra could not be understood in isolation from its larger political and settlement landscape. This conclusion was supported by analysis of epigraphic records at Arroyo de Piedra and Tamarindito, whose texts showed that the Tamarindito-Arroyo de Piedra kingdom was a hegemonic polity in the Petexbatún during the sixth and the seventh centuries AD. Of the two sites, Arroyo de Piedra was the smaller, with a relatively modest palace and supporting settlement. However, around AD 671, the regionally dominant city of Tikal sent a royal prince and supporters to the Petexbatun, directly jeopardising the realm of Arroyo de Piedra and Tamarindito. The newcomers established their base at Dos Pilas, in part to secure the western frontier of Tikal and to protect nearby river routes from the then-expanding hegemony of Calakmul. By AD 740, the Dos Pilas dynasty had broken ties with Tikal and come to dominate most of the Pasión region; in a reversal of policy, the dynasty now bowed to authority of an erstwhile foe, Calakmul. In AD 761, the Petexbatún hegemony collapsed because of the defeat of Dos Pilas by Tamarindito.

This dissertation considers the ninth-century sculpture at two ancient Maya polities, Machaquila and Seibal, both located in the Pasión river region of western Petén, Guatemala. Sculptors at each site produced a series of ruler-portrait stelae proclaiming the political power of local kings following the violent demise of the region's dominant Mutal polity. The 'visual discourse' model applied in the study situates sculptural production in the context of artist-patron-audience interaction and highlights the socio-political implications of referencing visual precedents and of adaptively implementing them in particular ways.

Initially, sculptors at each site portrayed local ruler-patrons as the successors of Mutal kings by adopting the visual conventions of that polity. Subsequently, however, stelae at Machaquila and Seibal diverged significantly. Machaquila's conservative stelae presented increasingly streamlined, 'legible' compositions to stress socio-political stability and expand the potential audience to include non-elite Maya and foreign audiences. In contrast, Seibal's artists heterogeneously employed old, new, and foreign visual devices. Seibal's late stelae incorporate traditional Maya visual conventions primarily to contrast with non-local modes of expression, reflecting a decline in the traditional system's social power. The eclecticism of Seibal's late stelae contradicts past proposals of foreign invasion and takeover. Instead, Seibal's rulers chose to present themselves as 'cosmopolitan' in a context of increasingly international interaction.

The study elucidates several possible socio-political explanations of Machaquila's and Seibal's visual discourses, including each city's geopolitical situation, the increasing social power of merchants, reactions to the excesses of eighth-century Maya visual culture, and the roles of the artists, patrons, and audiences.

By analysing the settlement pattern of La Joyanca, located in the Maya Lowlands area least known by archaeologists and geographers, we intend to establish how the settlement was organised socially at its climax and how it fitted into its local environment. Moreover, the geographical research carried out for the project, along with ethnography, ethnohistory and ethnoarchaeology, which are essential to interpret archaeological remains, provide middle range theories about both the local natural environment as modified by human beings, and the different patterns of social organisation.

The settlement is considered under two different scales in space, which results in two different methods being applied: the first scale focuses on the single residential group, which corresponds to the extended family, studied by means of extensive excavations, and the second scale focuses on the entire La Joyanca settlement, which correspond to the local society, considered by means of the data obtained through a systematic survey of the site.

This multiscalar study allows us to suggest a model of social organisation: La Joyanca, as a small royal city which covered an area of 1.5 km2, in which about 1500 people were living in about AD 850, was organised into wards, that is to say into large localized co-residential groups combining many features: co-residence and inner ranking, ancestor veneration and a social identity shared by the whole group, filiation and alliance, a subordination of the work group and an intensive, collective exploitation of land holdings, which were in part located in the settlement itself.

This is a case study of the archaeology of Chechem Ha Cave, an ancient Maya ceremonial site in western Belize. It adds to the growing body of archaeological research that seeks to explain the role of ritual and symbolism in the creation and maintenance of social power and hierarchical development. Ancient Maya caves were fundamentally associated with rain control. Because of this cognitive association they became important political resources in the establishment of elite power.

Chechem Ha is the earliest radiocarbon-dated cave site in the Maya lowlands. It contains a 2000-year history of ancient Maya ritual cave use that spans the development of social complexity from early settlements through the rise of kingship and eventual political collapse. The study develops methodology to examine changes in ritual practice through time within the cave.

Ritual transformations are situated within the framework of local settlement data, socio/political histories, and historical climatic conditions, which enables the study to articulate these changes with broader social and environmental contexts. This creates a framework for understanding the ritual life of the ancient users and provides insight into the mechanisms used by agents for the consolidation and maintenance of political power during the development and elaboration of Maya social complexity. By evaluating the frequency and nature of cave ritual this study demonstrates that rain control was a major factor in both the establishment of elite dominance and the downfall of elite rulership.

This thesis aims to evaluate scientifically a collection of statues which, from an aesthetic point of view, have already been recognised as of universal importance. A corpus of stone sculptures was assembled, bringing together pieces dispersed in several museums, private collections and those still in situ. This research integrates, for the first time, the known assemblage of statues into a global and regional chronological sequence and links it to archaeological sites. 80 sites, spread over an area of over 20 000 km2, are reviewed. A study of the published and unpublished documentation allows the statues to be linked to 62 archaeological sites. The corpus consists of 415 sculptures, a total that represents more than 150 per cent of what had previously been published. The information was gathered in a standard form so that a catalogue and a database could be created for the region's sculpture.

The systematic excavations of three sites on islands in Lake Nicaragua have contributed, in their own way, contextual and chronological elements for the sculptures. Petrographic and pigment analyses inform us on technology, materials and ornamentation. The results lead us to propose a chaîne opératoire. A classification, based on variability, proposes three types and five iconographic groups. An interpretation, based on nineteenth-century accounts, suggests that the sculptures represent deities for the Chorotegas of the zone west of Lake Cocibolca and funerary offerings for the region surrounding Lake Xolotlán.

Since the nineteenth century, the Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa region, in the Guatemalan Pacific piedmont, revealed hundreds of sculptures exhibiting a particular style. Progressively, other similar monuments have been found on dozens of sites on the Guatemalan Pacific coast and piedmont, as well as in the highlands and in western El Salvador. The idea of a 'Cotzumalguapa culture' has sometimes been expressed - essentially on the basis of the sculptures - but has never been the object of a thorough investigation. The question of the existence of such a culture has motivated the realisation of this dissertation.

After presenting the background of the investigations on the postulated Cotzumalguapa culture, the works carried out in the perspective of this doctoral thesis and the geography of the area studied, I undertake a description and an analysis of the different types of remains present on the 82 sites of the corpus. We can notice that, although the lapidary style represents the principal type fossil, interesting characteristics are observable in rock paintings, the lithic remains, ceramics, spatial organisation of sites and architecture.

We can infer the existence of a Mesoamerican Cotzumalguapa culture whose zenith was in the Late Classic (AD 600-1000), although origins in the Early Classic (AD 200-600) and a continuation into the beginning of the Postclassic (AD 1000-1524) are highly probable. The dissertation questions the idea, often expressed in the past, that the Cotzumalguapa culture could have been created by Mexican invaders.

This dissertation examines the construction of social identity through the archaeological investigation of houses in the ancient community of Baking Pot, a medium-sized centre located in the Belize Valley. Excavations in five residential structures form the basis of a holistic analysis of Late and Terminal Classic domestic material remains. Analyses of architecture, ritual and refuse deposits, ceramics, lithics and faunal materials are presented with the goal of creating an internal framework of identity construction, focusing on evidence of cohesiveness and differentiation in domestic activities. Osteological analysis of human remains from Baking Pot and stable isotopic analysis of individuals from sites throughout the Belize River Valley integrate data on health and diet into interpretations of social identity.

Constructions of identity among house groups focus on cohesiveness within the Baking Pot community, but social differentiation can also be identified. The residents of Baking Pot possessed and used a set of material remains that show more internal similarity than in larger and more differentiated lowland communities. Health and diet also show little differentiation, confirming similar strategies in the daily lives of residents throughout the valley. This dissertation stresses the importance of seeking indicators of differentiation within residential assemblages, rather than relying on external models of socioeconomic status to interpret domestic behaviours and interactions.

This thesis is the result of research carried out on an assemblage of portable stone sculptures called yokes, axes and palms. It is based on a corpus of 1342 pieces; registered individually, classified by type, origin and iconographic representation. The objectives were to define these pieces for which the forms did not always correspond to the names attributed to them in recent times; to establish a unity of coherence of these complex works as well as their geographic location in Mesoamerica and in particular on the Gulf Coast and the Pacific Coast; and in view of the archaeological context and the iconographic richness, to clarify certain aspects of their function. For a long time, they were included as part of the material for the Mesoamerican ballgame. The association between these sculptures and the ballgame is in fact very indirect. Representations of these portable sculptures on reliefs make it possible to dissociate the ballgame from the organised rituals that surround it. These sculptures are linked to codified funerary and sacrificial rites. The iconographic themes show evident references to sacrifice by beheading, fertility and the Underworld. This is supported by archaeological contexts which are in the majority tombs and caches. In cutting across these givens, several themes become evident which are found in the iconography of the ballgame. The forms of the sculptures imply a horizontal or vertical scenography which conciliates the Mesoamerican cosmogony and the cyclic movement of nature and human life.

This study contributes a detailed analysis of the plants from an Early Classic (AD 1150-1250) Hohokam site in Southern Arizona and provides insight into how a group of desert agriculturalists may have managed the risk of food shortages though social networks and diversification of subsistence strategies. The Hohokam of the Sonoran Desert were prehistoric agriculturalists who lived in multi-site communities, here exemplified by the Marana community which was dominated by the Marana Mound Site. While the environment of the Sonoran Desert imposed limitations, the Hohokam also manipulated it through agricultural practices. Although at the top of the settlement hierarchy, the Marana Mound Site was located on poor agricultural land. The occupants, however, did not lack staple foods such as maize and agave. They cultivated agave, a source of both food and fibre, in nearby extensive rockpile fields and probably acquired maize from residents of other sites in the community where it was more easily grown. Maize indices and relative frequencies of agricultural weed seeds give insight into patterns of maize production and anthropogenically created environments. As the central site in the multi-site community, the Marana Mound contained public spaces, such as a platform mound, that facilitated community-wide interaction. Circulation of staple goods may have been one important function of the networked community that served to mitigate subsistence risk. Because agricultural potential varied across the community, risk of failed crops or poor harvest was also spread among the sites that were tied together socially.

This study examines the history of landscape appropriation and its role in the generation and transformation of collective social identities in the late prehistoric Andes. A 150km transect across the highlands of northern Peru was surveyed to establish inter-regional, temporal and scalar variability in people-landscape relations. Excavations in Inka and pre-Inka civic architecture in central Conchucos addressed changes in the architectural settings and practices structuring social interactions. Ethnohistorical sources were reviewed against archaeological data to reconstruct the baseline settlement strategies of the Inka state and local ethnic groups.

Results indicate that Inka control of long-distance transit and textile fibre production went hand-in-hand with the establishment of a parallel civic-ceremonial network. Interaction between state retainers and local communities and ethnic groups occurred at multiple locations and scales, not only at state installations. Colonisers and colonised became entangled through shared ritual practices, including feasting and /capacocha/ infant burials, at meaningful points in the landscape. Excavations at Gotushjirka revealed an earlier, local tradition of circular patio group enclosures, with paired ramps and stages, that served for orchestrated gatherings oriented towards Turriqaqa Mountain and the necropolis embedded in it (c. 200 BC - AD 700). Significant change in practices articulating social identities, and tighter institutional control over the spaces in which derived rights and obligations were asserted and negotiated, is suggested by the inclusion of circular kanchas at the centre of orthogonal complexes (c. AD 800).

In conclusion, mortuary practices integrated dispersed mortuary and ceremonial communities at multiple, nested yet overlapping scales, ranging from individual collective tomb to regional necropolis, and from individual enclosures to ceremonial centres.

Fuerte de Samaipata, in Eastern Bolivia, was a local capital in the Inca era, the study of which (and of its material records) enabled us to set up a relative regional chronology, which was used as the basis for the interpretation of the patterns in the main temple.

The study of nineteen new sites and nearly 5000 pieces of pottery allowed us to confirm a complex local development which testify to many interactions between the Andean area, the Amazonian basin and the Chaco region, along with the north-western part of Argentina, especially during the Middle Horizon and Late Intermediate periods (600 BC and beginning of the fifteenth century AD). Regarding Fuerte, both formative and later remains seem to bear testimony of much more ancient human activity than has been suspected so far.

Fuerte de Samaipata carved rock was the object of an exhaustive analysis which allowed us to identify circulatory ways, to have a detailed view of the carved blocks composing the monument. The presence of human groups in Fuerte before the arrival of the Incas, the discovery of other sites with carved structures and the comparison with the same type of rocks in the imperial capital (Cuzco) confirm a pre-Inca work on the surface on the rocks.

Symbolic complexes are represented, such as those of the Feline, the Snake, the Worship of Ancestors, the Cycle of Water, or the Fertility. In the case of Samaipata, their part in the carved blocks opens new vistas to interpretation and allows a genuine approach to this kind of monument.

Using a model derived from McAnany's (1995) study of ancient Mayan ancestor veneration, this study evaluated the patterns of treatment of the dead and corresponding sociopolitical implications at the Middle Horizon (AD 500-1000) site of Conchopata, a secondary centre of the Wari Empire located in Ayacucho, Peru. In addition to residential zones, public plazas, ceramic workshops and temples, Conchopata yielded an abundant sample of tombs and burial contexts including two multi-roomed mortuary complexes. This study explored how burial practices and mortuary complexes within domestic contexts related to ancestor veneration by high-status households.

The results suggest that the five zones investigated were high-status residential zones. Households within these zones contained at least one room where mortuary ceremonies and rituals were conducted. Both high-status and low-status tombs were identified within the domestic domain, including a special category of infant/child burials. The practice of ancestor veneration at Conchopata was confirmed by evidence for protracted burial rites, continued interaction with the dead, and other criteria of the McAnany model.

High-status households engaged in a specific form of ancestor veneration involving continued interaction with the ancestors through offering holes and post-burial rituals. Although all high-status households engaged in similar types of deathways, two households placed considerably greater investment in activities surrounding the dead by constructing multi-roomed mortuary complexes within their residences. Overall, the type of ancestor veneration evidenced at Conchopata differs markedly from that of the Maya (in which important ancestors were flaunted) as well as from the late prehispanic chullpa and Inka practices.

Nowadays, the vegetal landscape of the Lurin valley, which opens in the central Peruvian coast, is quite deteriorated because of the urbanisation and the overexploitation of the environment by man. According to the ethnohistorical texts, this area was covered by a luxuriant vegetation at the moment of the conquest, in spite of strong demographical pressure.

The anthracological (charcoal analytical) study of five archaeological sites (Pampa Chica, Pachacamac, Pueblo Viejo, Cinco Cerros, Cullpe), dated between the Ancient Horizon (900-200 BC) and the Late Horizon (1460-1532 AD), seems to confirm that the vegetation cover was thicker in the past in that region. A dry forest was established in the coastal plain, since the Ancient Intermediate. Several fruit trees were cultivated in association with non-forest food-producing plants. It also seems that, the more complex the societies were, the more the forest resources were under-controlled. At the Late Horizon, while the low Lurin valley was attached to the Inca empire, it appears that a policy of planting trees was used in the lomas of the left side of the Lurin, in order to face up to the demographic growth.

In this study, for the first time, the anthracological method practiced in Europe is applied to Peru and questioned by the specificity of the Andean societies. An anthracological atlas, bringing together descriptions and photos of the anatomical cuts of 85 actual woods from the western slopes of the Peruvian Andes is proposed.

The thesis focuses on the topic of Bolivian Indians who are assimilated to ethnic groups as one of the many consequences of the colonial past. An understanding of the complexity of this construction draws from disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology, history and sociology, in an effort to expose the power relations behind the construction. Based on written sources as well as the general belief that the area would lodge the most ancient of such Indians, the Uru from Lake Poopó, a specific location was selected in the mid Bolivian highlands and the province named after this people: Oruro. Their identity has been established by reference to other Indians known as the Aymara or the Quechua in the Bolivian Andes. Colonial sources written by the Spanish conquerors, both priests and soldiers or commoners, as well as modern sources are discussed and analysed, and the fieldwork combines archaeological and anthropological methods as well as techniques to approach the topic in the specific area. Finally, the importance of multidisciplinary approaches is discussed in an effort to contribute to an understanding of multi-cause phenomena.

Research conducted during the past ten years on rock art in the Río Salado Basin (Atacama desert, northern Chile) shows the existence of several representation styles for the Formative Horizon (1500 BC- AD 850) and the Late or Incan Horizon (AD 1450-1550).

The study considers 14 cave art sites, whose archaeological remains and dating are attributed to the Late Intermediate Period (AD 850-1450), allowing us to characterise and identify the presence of styles for this period, whose rock art manifestations have not been studied specifically until now.

For this work, we used the combination of various approaches:
- an iconographic and stylistic approximation in order to characterise categorically the images and to identify the panel compositions,
- a contextual approach, from the study of the associated archaeological remains and the dating performed at the rock art sites, and
- finally, the study of the rock paint pigments in order to evaluate the technology used in the realisation of these representations.

This study offers, therefore, a more global vision of the rock art in the Río Salado Basin, ultimately trying to restitute their use and function linked to the sociocultural and historical processes of the Late Intermediate Period.

In this thesis I explore the ceramic remains recovered from 13 sites in the Middle Orinoco region of Venezuela, spanning the centuries just prior to European contact through the early twentieth century. I provide a contextual analysis of the pottery, which, in the light of historical documents and oral tradition, serves to illuminate its role in the construction of identity, the imposition and maintenance of colonial hierarchies and power structures, Native resistance to colonial strategies, and the contribution of different sectors to the emerging cultural order.

The objectives of this dissertation are twofold: 1) to develop a ceramic sequence to serve as a guide for the chronological placement of the archaeological sites located in the study area, and 2) to analyse the ceramic remains in the light of cultural processes set in motion by the arrival of European colonists in the Middle Orinoco. In the first case, I define six local ceramic production styles and offer a detailed description at the level of ware, formal type and decorative variety. Chronological placement is determined through comparison with imported ceramic styles and other items that are securely dated. In the second case, I analyse different aspects related to cultural identity, status, technological innovation, commensality, and culinary practice. I also explore aspects of pottery production and consumption that can be interpreted in the light of both resistance and accommodation to the new colonial regime, and the imposition, appropriation, and reinterpretation of items across cultural boundaries.

A total of 15 862 flint remains from Halula (Syria) and Akarçay (Turkey) have been studied. Both sites, located in the middle Euphrates valley, have a chronological sequence from the mid eighth millennium the end of the seventh millennium. The objectives of this project have been to study the production process of stone tools at both sites, and by extension in the mid-Euphrates valley within that period of time.

The results suggest the existence of significant differences in the production process of stone tools during the contemporary occupations at Akarçay Tepe and Tell Halula in the mid-eighth millennium cal BC. Contextualising these results within the setting of the mid-Euphrates valley has enabled two zones to be distinguished, with a series of specific traits. The differences between the two zones do not seem to be limited to the lithic industry; rather they are documented in other material aspects, suggesting the possibility that the differences could be the result of two different communities or social groups. This fact could also be related with the sudden appearance of some new settlements along the mid-Euphrates and Balikh valleys during the second quarter of the eighth millennium cal BC.

As for the chronological evolution of the lithic production process, the results point to a continuity between the Middle and Late PPNB in this region. Second, at the very end of the eighth millennium and the beginning of the seventh millennium, a common phenomenon of divestment is documented at both sites and all along the mid-Euphrates valley.

This thesis explores the concept of style in archaeology, and its past, present and future application to the study of Levantine rock art, as a way of discerning changes in the identity of the artists.

The theoretical section explores in different chapters the concepts of style and technique searching for an appropriate methodology to discern connections and disconnections in the way of representing, in order to obtain social information.

On the basis of a regional study of the Levantine human figure, the practical chapters go over 6 sites to propose a new sequence analysing form, technique, subject matter and patterns of composition. The key finding is that Levantine rock art, normally considered to be a unified whole, contains clear stylistic sequences. Furthermore, this study has important implications for current debates concerning the evolution of human behaviours in this region. For example, while Levantine rock art is characterised as dealing primarily with hunting scenes, this study demonstrates that when humans appear for the first time in the art they are not linked to hunting scenes, and that hunting themes emerge only in the middle parts of the sequence.

Reference:
(2005) Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat de València. (CD format).
Available online at: http://www.tdx.cbuc.es/TDX-0327106-181008/index.html

Using the Wadi Sana watershed of Hadramawt, Yemen, as a case study, this dissertation examines the origins of agriculture and irrigation in Southwest Arabia. Archaeological survey and radiocarbon dating confirm that irrigation originated in Southwest Arabia during the mid-6th millennium calibrated BP and identify shruj runoff irrigation as one of the earliest techniques in the region. Conflicts between environmentally and socially focused explanations of transitions to agriculture have a long history in archaeology. This study applies: 1) geomatics to evaluate the hypothesis that ancient irrigation structure locations were chosen based on hydrological variables reflecting close behavioral ties to environmental conditions, and 2) ethnoarchaeology to interpret sociocultural, political, and ideological parameters of ancient irrigation. A sample of 174 irrigation structures is statistically compared with satellite-imagery-derived landform and hydrological Geographic Information System (GIS) map data layers. A cross-cultural overview of irrigation, synopses of typological and social aspects of contemporary irrigation in Yemen, and an ethnoarchaeological study of water-use in Wadi Sana help evaluate how organisational challenges and perceptions of landscapes and water rights shaped irrigation's origins.

Collective results indicate that a combination of scientific and humanistic perspectives including quantitative hypothesis testing and qualitative interpretation best illustrate the importance of environmental and social factors. Research findings demonstrate that ancient forager-herders in Wadi Sana chose irrigation structure locations based on intimate knowledge of monsoon runoff along rocky hillslopes, and that new understandings of landscapes as hydraulically malleable domains of anthropogenic control, exclusive rights to water, and new forms of territoriality were crucial to the origins of irrigation.

This thesis reassesses the role played by monasticism in the social, economic and political changes of Late Antiquity in the eastern Mediterranean. In particular, it takes the Roman province of Syria as its primary arena, and argues that monasteries were more active in effecting social change in this region from the fourth to the seventh centuries than has been previously supposed. In arguing for such a role, a theoretical deconstruction of the nature of archaeological research in Syria is carried out, and the reasons why the material culture of that region has been consistently left out of wider intellectual debates are demonstrated.

Instead of monastic institutions being regarded as essentially separate from broader changes affecting the way rural society was organised, a more varied, dynamic model is proposed. Running contrary to many general commentaries on the late empire, which assert that the eastern Mediterranean maintained a consistent and successful taxation base, it is argued instead that more complex, localised methods of socio-economic control can be recognised archaeologically. Instead of there being a lack of social transformation until the seventh or eighth centuries in the eastern Mediterranean, it can be suggested that some areas in fact witnessed a shift from a predominantly tax-based economy to one where tribute was given to rural institutions as early as the fifth century.

By examining both the internal morphology of monastic sites as well as their broader relationship with topography and surrounding settlement patterns, a case can be made that monasteries were at the forefront of this shift. A landscape approach is adopted in order to scrutinise this model, using an archaeological data set from the limestone massif of north-west Syria. Three specific case studies are then used to contextualise these broad conclusions. This thesis brings together information from a number of previous surveys in the region throughout the twentieth century, with results obtained through my own fieldwork undertaken in 2003 and 2004.

This is a geoarchaeological investigation that aims to understand relationships between complex culture change and environmental process in northeast Thailand. Cultural responses to environmental change create a vast web of interactions between society, economics, technology, beliefs, ideology, and politics. This research found that over the duration of several millennia in northeast Thailand, environmental change was one underlying factor in the transformation of a chiefdom type society into the complex civilisation of Angkor.

In particularly this thesis focuses on the evolution and sedimentary history of occupation mounds at the heart of Iron Age (c. 500 BC - AD 500) moated sites on the Upper Mun River floodplain, northeast Thailand as a means of understanding the relationship between human behaviour and environmental process.

Sedimentological, geochemical and radiometric data extracted from the matrix of two moated sites and surrounding landscape provide a detailed stratigraphic and Palaeo-geographic framework in which to place the prehistoric human settlement of the upper Mun River Valley of northeast Thailand. Samples are analysed using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) Radiocarbon dating, particle size analysis, inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), atomic absorption spectrophotometry (AAS), electrical conductivity (EC) and magnetic susceptibility (MS).

When site-specific processes are observed at a regional scale, a picture emerges that shows a key relationship between environmental process and changes in human behaviour. Complex social and political changes during the Iron Age were critical human responses to environmental process. These responses in turn set a key backdrop for the development of the Civilisation of Angkor.

This study focuses upon the development of urbanisation in southern Sri Lanka during the proto, early and late historical periods c. 900 BC onwards. The following research themes are addressed:
(a) Why did the southern semi-arid zone become a focus of urbanism?
(b) What were the morphological, spatial and chronological parameters of these developments?
(c) How did demography, resource availability, trade and craft specialisation, political organisation and ideology influence the process of urbanisation in this area?

An initial Land Unit classification using satellite imagery was conducted to provide a context for investigating socio-environmental relationships. The existing cultural landscape was mapped using systematic archaeological field surveys focussed on visible remains such as architectural features, ceramics and small finds. A time series archaeological site data set was established and the distribution of sites was compared to other parts of Sri Lanka using GIS (Geographical Information Systems). Coring and excavation of a series of trenches was used to establish the stratigraphic sequence to document the range of variation of finds and obtain samples for dating.

This study confirms the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa historical chronicles compiled c. AD 400-500 in showing that the southern semi-arid zones of Sri Lanka have maintained a distinct socio-political character throughout Sri Lankan history. It also provides a point of reference for understanding Sri Lankan contributions to trade and urbanism in the wider Indian Ocean region.

This thesis addresses the Brazilian rock engravings of the Serra da Capivara National Park and its surroundings, which hitherto have been overlooked as a research topic. One of the aims of this study is to challenge the current understanding that some of these graphic manifestations are non-figurative. This has been achieved partly by applying a contextual approach to combination of certain motifs, and by correlating the motifs to indigenous (Gê) mythology. The imagery and markings were recorded and classified according to their form, techniques, and patterns of association. A number of approaches — cross-cultural analogies, direct historical analogy, landscape location analysis, and contextual archaeology — were used in the analysis.

The key findings are: that engravings were frequently metonymic, depicting those parts of the human body most immediately associated with sensory contact (footprint, handprint) and with the female’s reproductive organ; that the limited number of animal species were not randomly chosen, but are an allusion to liminal creatures, which are also key characters in myths; that certain non-representational engravings were possibly the residues of repetitive activities related to dust quest; that only one type of relation between visibility/accessibility of site and the type/quantity of motifs and markings was perceived; that the truism about the exclusive location of the engravings by a water source was not confirmed; and that the placement of some specific and widespread motifs (bird print, vulva, groove and cup mark) at secluded and non-secluded spots could indicate gender-specific function, an assumption corroborated by the co-occurrence with certain style of paintings.

These findings prompted a revision of previously defined traditions of engraving for the area. An alternative classificatory scheme is proposed. The thesis reinforces the value of investigations regarding rock art as visual expressions of indigenous mythology/cosmology. It has implications for the debate about the ritual character of engraved forms.

This study presents a revised cultural chronology for the Nuvuk site, Point Barrow, Alaska. It is based on results of 10 years of work at the site, including the Nuvuk Archaeology Project.

First, the history and results of prior ethnographic and archaeological research on the North Slope are reviewed, with an emphasis on material pertaining to coastal North Alaska. Nuvuk is set in environmental context, and the results of geomorphological research associated with this project are presented.

Secondly, the findings of the pre-contact portion of the excavations are described. Notable results of this work include a previously unsuspected Ipiutak occupation, and a previously undocumented Thule occupation with an associated large cemetery. In addition, brief descriptions of various midden and activity areas resulting from the post-contact occupation of the site are provided. The detailed results of the 63 Thule burial excavations conducted to date are presented as an appendix.

Finally, the implications of the presence of Ipiutak and Thule at the Nuvuk site for the chronology of the site itself, as well as the broader chronologies of the Barrow area and the North Slope are detailed. The implications of this revised chronology for interpretation of Ipiutak and for the question of Thule origins are discussed.

Archaeologists have traditionally concentrated on the study of the emergence of urban communities, seeking explanations for the beginning, growth, and development of such communities. Moreover, many of these endeavours have advocated the construction of general principals, laws, and universal explanations for such developments (Yoffee 1991). Although the study of the phenomena of 'rise' has by no means created an agreement of academic view on the nature of the transition of primitive to civilised community, it is obvious that discussion of the collapse of urban communities and ancient states has been prominent by its absence from much of the literature on social evolution (Tainter 1988).

A network of urban communities emerged in southeast Iran during the fourth and third millennia BC. Based at Shahr-i-Sokhta, Tepe Yahya and Tepe Bampur, they connected the urban communities of the Indus Valley in the east with Elam and Mesopotamia in the west (Lamberg-Karlovsky & Tosi 1973; Lamberg-Karlovsky & Schmandt-Besserat 1977; Potts 1977). Located close to water sources in a largely inhospitable environment (Prickett 1976; Costantini & Tosi 1978; Ganji 1978), they developed functions as intermediaries for trade between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. They also developed a number of traits, which may be termed 'urban' (Childe 1979). However, after 1500 years, they collapsed during the first centuries of the second millennium BC.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the evidence for their collapse and to examine the possible causes (notably environmental, and trade and economic) and the degree of commonality between each site. Having identified appropriate models for the collapse of these communities, the thesis will then compare their evidence and explanations of decline with those advanced for the collapse of the Indus Valley.

This thesis represents the first systematic study of the commonality of causes of the collapse of urban communities in southeast Iran with those of the Indus Valley during the third and second millennia BC. It also pilots the first application and review of concepts of invasion, environmental catastrophe, long-distance trade crisis and multi-causal explanation within the context of southeast Iran using a combination of published data and new data recovered during fieldwork in 2002.

Analysis of ground stone technology from the Neolithic of Greece rarely goes beyond incomplete descriptive accounts to focus on the activities performed with these tools and the contexts of their use. Ground stone products are seen as mundane static objects devoid of meaning and lacking significance. The aim of this thesis is to move away from incomplete accounts of ground stone technology and static typologies. Drawing upon the concepts of the chaîne opératoire and 'object biographies' this thesis investigates ground stone technology as a social practice focusing on the life-cycle of artefacts from raw material selection to final deposition. The underlying premise is that a contextual approach can contribute to understanding the ways in which the production, consumption and discard of ground stone artefacts were structured within different forms and scales of social practice and the manner in which these differences articulated different meanings and social understandings. The aims of the thesis were materialised through the study of the rich ground stone assemblage from the Late Neolithic settlement of Makriyalos, Greece.

The analysis of the chaîne opératoire of the Makriyalos ground stone assemblage revealed diverse technological choices expressed throughout the cycle of production and use. Established traditions existed according to which specific materials were considered to be appropriate for the production of different objects. Furthermore, detailed analysis suggests that the resulting objects were far from mundane artefacts but were instead active media for expressing choices informed by cultural understandings of appropriateness.

Building upon analysis of the chaîne opératoire, spatial analysis of the Makriyalos assemblage indicated distinct depositional patterns of different categories of ground stone within and between the two phases of Makriyalos. This analysis offers significant insights into the way(s) these implements were incorporated into the social life of Makriyalos. Ultimately, the thesis demonstrates that ground stone artefacts were actively employed in the creation and negotiation of varied and distinct identities (individual vs. Communal) that could be transformed through different contexts of practice.

Although known from historical and archaeological sources to have been an important political centre and a focus of regional and international trade from at least the fifth century BC century, the political decline and depopulation of Aksum in northern Ethiopia during the eighth century AD has long been linked to the degradation of the local resource base. The hypothesis was originally surmised on the basis of historical records nearly a century ago but received support from the pioneering geoarchaeological study undertaken by Butzer in the early 1970s. This seminal work, the sole attempt at recovering site-specific and high-resolution data from Aksum until now, indicated accelerated soil erosion as a direct result of the impact of the population and agricultural intensification and increased precipitation. Subsequently, large scale environmental studies provided further support for deforestation, ultimately sponsoring an idea of an ecological breakdown due to human pressure in the past as well as today. From an applied perspective, this degradation narrative had important implications for the understanding of present-day conditions.

Geoarchaeological investigations by integrating soil micromorphology, phytolith analysis, charred wood identification and study of historical sources carried out for the current study in the Aksum countryside found no evidence to support this degradation hypothesis. Instead, multiple records indicate prolonged landscape stability within a dynamic ecosystem characterised by a woody savannah vegetation cover and human settlement, whereby soil development was dependent on slow erosion from the first millennium BC until the last four centuries. Furthermore, there is no evidence for the presence of forests and subsequent major deforestation, or the occurrence of ecological breakdowns.

These findings highlight the degree of variation within Aksum's landscape and call for a rethinking of the current model of environmental and cultural history. Given that modern interventions in landscape management by the state and external agencies continue to rely on degradation narratives, the results of this study have repercussions for both the definition and understanding of primary issues concerning past legacies and present-day conditions of African environments. The present study demonstrates that a site-specific approach integrating diverse and complementary methodologies is desirable to investigate diachronic relationships between environments and cultures by moving from a generalised, continental model to a refined, and culturally relevant, local scale model.

The research reported in this thesis examines formation processes of middens and the associated activities, at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, Turkey. Middens are unique deposits in that they contain traces which may be linked to specific activities that may not be found in cleaner contexts such as floors, and contain materials such as ash, animal dung, phytoliths and coprolites which can inform on plant resource use, diet and subsistence strategies at a high temporal resolution. In this research thin section micromorphology is used, combined with phytolith analysis of individual layers, to examine both the composition and associations of finely stratified midden deposits in situ. Additional analyses of mineral components using FT-IR and SEM-EDX has been carried out, along with biomolecular analysis of organic residues in coprolites by GC-MS, to further characterise material that is difficult to analyse by thin section alone. This integrated analysis contributes to the understanding of midden formation processes and activities, environment, agriculture, plant resource use, diet and fuel use, through examining evidence for these which has not previously been fully considered.

This analysis has allowed the development of a new method for classifying complex midden deposits based on their micro-inclusions and micro-structure, and has identified key deposits such as hackberry pericarps in coprolites, which can potentially be used as seasonal 'markers'. Examination of midden deposits has provided direct evidence for the use of dung as fuel through the presence of faecal spherulites and reed phytoliths in fuel ash layers, and FT-IR analysis of material embedded in ash indicates clay deposits which could be linked to large open-air firing of pottery.

The dominance of reed phytoliths in the midden assemblage supports the idea of a local wetland environment at Çatalhöyük during the Neolithic and the intensive use of these wetland resources. However, thin section observations indicate that phytolith taphonomy at the site is currently poorly understood, and that phytolith size is not a reliable indicator of the growing environment. The samples analysed were found to contain surprisingly few cereal phytoliths, which also raises questions about the taphonomy of the non-charred cereal remains.

Analysis of coprolites, a frequent deposit in middens, has indicated the presence of lithocholic acid and coprostanol which indicate a human origin for much of this material. This has raised interesting questions on the idea of cleanliness, and has allowed further analysis of diet through observing phytoliths and other inclusions, such as bone, embedded in coprolites, both in situ in thin section, and through examination of extracted phytoliths.

This thesis examines the Roman to early medieval transition in south-east Wales. It is argued that post-Roman socio-political
systems in Britain cannot be examined without first exploring the breakdown of Roman imperial control. In contrast to the 'military
zone' of west and north Wales the south-east (the Civitas Silurum) was more in keeping with the Romanised 'villa zone' of England. As a consequence the withdrawal of Roman Imperial administration from Britain in the early-fifth century had a dramatic effect upon systems of social reproduction. The archaeological and historical records for early medieval Wales are extremely limited, but the south-east in unique in the fact that its history is illuminated by a large corpus of early medieval charters and a small but significant number of archaeological excavations. It is argued that charters contained within the twelfth-century Book of Llandaff provide important information on the socio-political history of the early medieval period which complements the more limited archaeological evidence. By examining the patterns of grants within the charters it is possible to explore how the Roman civitas of the Silures broke up into several small 'petty-kingdoms' in the early-fifth century. One of these kingdoms appears to have been associated with the post-Roman royal centre at Dinas Powys. By the early-eighth century, however, the whole of south-east Wales was consolidated within the single kingdom of Glywysing and the hillfort tradition appears to have come to an end. The evidence for early medieval rural settlement is very limited, but the important settlements at Dinas Powys and Hen Gastell provide significant insights into early medieval society. It is argued that Christianity came to Wales in the third or fourth century, but it is not until the post-Roman period that evidence becomes widespread. The charters reveal important information about early medieval ecclesiastical organisation in south-east Wales. Although a large number of early medieval ecclesiastical foundations can be identified from documentary sources, archaeological evidence is limited to stone sculpture and a small number of cemeteries. A comprehensive assessment of the evidence for early medieval estate structures in Wales and Britain suggests that Glanville Jones' 'multiple estate model', which has long been considered the default model of early medieval settlement and agrarian organisation in Wales, must be rejected.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest of researchers in analysing correlations between the shape and size of the body, and skeletal massiveness expressed with musculoskeletal stress markers (MSM). So far, however, the problem has been poorly understood.

According to S.L. Steen and R.W. Lane, musculoskeletal stress markers are nonpathological or pathological osseous changes manifesting themselves in increased muscle attachment size. They are a response to regularly repeated moderately intense (or intense) motor activity (Steen, Lane 1998).

The objective of this work is: (a) to present a rating scale for the evaluation of the musculoskeletal stress markers; (b) to describe the body build of the population from Cedynia using body height, body weight, bone indices and musculoskeletal stress markers; (c) to assess the correlation between skeletal morphological traits and the size of the degree of MSM expression.

The bone material used in the study came from the medieval burial site in Cedynia (Poland). Skeletons of 201 individuals (102 males and 99 females) were analysed. Assessment of body shape and size was carried out based on V. Vančata's methodical proposal. Body height was reconstructed from humeral and femoral length. Body weight was reconstructed based on the measurements of proximal and distal sections of the femur and tibia. The reconstructed body height and weight values were used to calculate the skeletal Body Mass Index and the skeletal Rohrer index. The assessment of the somatic structure of the Cedynia population was made also based on selected scapula, humerus, radius, femur and tibia indices.

The author's own scale of musculoskeletal stress markers assessment was used in the analysis. The presented rating scale was developed based on the variability of the morphology of muscle attachment sites, observed in the skeletal material from Cedynia. The scale encompasses 10 MSM located on the scapula, humerus, radius, femur and tibia. The system reflects three degrees (1, 2, 3) of complexity of the muscle attachment sites morphology.

Investigation of correlations between the degree of the expression of musculoskeletal stress markers and morphometric traits (the length, circumference, massiveness index of bones; body height, body weight, skeletal BMI, skeletal RI) was carried out using Principal Components Analysis, Multiple Components Analysis, the Gamma correlation coefficient and Pearson correlation coefficient.

The obtained results have shown that musculoskeletal stress markers do not show any strong correlation with body height and longitudinal bone measurements. There is a correlation between MSM and bone circumferences, bone massiveness indices, body weight, skeletal BMI and skeletal RI.

Some of the previous research confirm these results. Some of them show that the relationship between the MSM and metric skeletal traits does not occur in every population.

The results of this work suggest a need to undertake further research on the use of MSM as traits which could be a supplement to the methods of somatic structure reconstruction.

The results of PhD were published as a monography: Myszka A. (2007), Rekonstrukcja budowy somatycznej człowieka na podstawie wybranych cech szkieletu (Reconstruction of the somatic structure of man on the basis of selected skeletal traits), Seria Antropologia, 24, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, Poznan', 116 pages.

My doctoral thesis is a comparative study of the colonisation and abandonment of the Mediterranean islands in prehistory. The geographical scope is pan-Mediterranean and chronologically it encompasses prehistory from the time of the earliest-known human records on a few islands to that when most Mediterranean islands had been settled (c. 10,000 to 1000 BC). By questioning established geographical boundaries and traditional chronologies, and by incorporating recent theoretical advances in island archaeology, my thesis provides alternative explanations to colonisation paradigms prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s, expanding these to include considerations of abandonment and recolonisation. The study reviews all the available data from Mediterranean island-based projects (creating a database for 150 islands) and presents a series of revised colonisation and abandonment dates and models for the islands. A key observation arising from this study is that, during the Bronze Age, the introduction of sailing and agricultural terracing made possible the settlement of the smaller islands; nonetheless, these islands experienced shorter occupation periods (lasting only a few centuries) and were abandoned more often than in earlier periods (the Neolithic). The thesis explores these issues in detail through 20 island case studies, which address how human activity on islands varied spatially and temporally, and the potential reasons behind different colonisation and abandonment processes. These new data indicate that colonisation is a more complex process than previously acknowledged, involving different types of island-human interaction. The traditional equation between colonisation and settlement, for instance, does not take into account that colonising activities entail different forms of visitation, utilisation, occupation, abandonment, and recolonisation.

This thesis explores the relationship between people and their environment during the Mature Harappan period (2500-1900 B.C.) by analysing
fuel exploitation and use strategies. Wood and other plant materials (chaff, straw, etc) played a pivotal role in all Early Civilizations as fuel for domestic and industrial uses. The continuous and extensive exploitation of fuelwood can negatively impinge on the natural environment especially in arid countries where woodland is scarce. This is particularly true during periods of rapid urban expansion and population growth when the demand for wood resources is high. In these cases alternative sources of fuel, such as dung, become vital and their widespread use, associated to specific variations in the wood assemblage, provide hints to assess the human impact on the environment.

Fuelwood is relatively easy to detect in the archaeological record but alternative forms of fuel, such as dung and crop processing leftovers, do not leave a clear signature. For this reason a specific methodology involving the study of charred wood, phytoliths, spherulites and geochemistry has been applied to samples from four sites. The combined application of these different but related techniques offers the means of clearly discriminate between the different fuel resources, thus evaluating their relative importance.

The four case-study sites that have been investigated are: Harappa (Pakistan), Alamgirpur (Uttar Pradesh, India), Kanmer and Shikarpur (Gujarat, India). These sites are all located in an arid to semi-arid region, but they are situated in slightly different ecological zones (hyper-dry, hot semi-arid and hot moist semi-arid), which allows an assessment of local adaptations. In addition, the four sites represent different settlement types with distinct socio-economic settings: from Harappa, the big urban centre that gives the name to the Civilisation, to Alamgirpur, a small village at the eastern border of the area occupied by the Harappan Civilisation itself. At all four sites the overall strategies of fuel exploitation were similar, concentrating on local, easily available resources, with the addition of some 'exotic' taxa. In terms of types of fuel used, at three sites, Harappa, Kanmer and Shikarpur, wood was used alongside alternative fuels such as dung and probably crop processing leftovers. Alamgirpur presents a different situation where the most commonly used fuel was not wood. In addition this study provides new knowledge on the ecological settings in which the Mature Harappan period settlements evolved. It shows that there was environmental stability at Harappa and Alamgirpur and a dynamic hydrological situation in Gujarat.

In skeletal remains of ancient populations, evidence of dental and craniofacial pathology is often well preserved in the form of lesions on the teeth or bones. Meticulous, detailed recording of these lesions provides baseline data on which a realistic assessment can be made of the probable impact of dental diseases and their sequelae on the health of these earlier populations.

In the present thesis, dental and cranial pathology were recorded in the remains of an Iron Age population, with special reference to the possible impact of such conditions on general health and well-being. The skeletal remains had been excavated early last century from the burial ground Smörkullen, Alvastra, Östergötland, in eastern central Sweden: osteological analyses showed that the material comprised the remains of 65 subadult individuals and 104 adult individuals of both sexes. The dental status of most of the adult individuals was poor. Calculus, periodontitis, moderate and severe carious lesions and periapical infections were recorded. In contrast, subadults showed less evidence of dental disease. The results indicate that the perception of health in adults was probably negatively affected by their poor oral status. The dental status of subadults, on the other hand, was unlikely to have had a negative impact on their general well-being. A sex difference was observed in the material, males tending to more ongoing disease than females. Overall, the frequencies of both dental and cranial pathologies increased with age.

Caries frequency in the material was noticeably higher than in numerous other studies in Scandinavian past populations. Although the high caries rates at Smörkullen may be attributable to a diet rich in carbohydrates, the result may to some extent have been influenced by observer experience. Caries rates in other populations are likely to be under-estimated in comparison with Smörkullen. However, methodological factors alone cannot explain all the observed differences.

The recording of cranial pathologies disclosed malnutrition and upper respiratory problems in all age groups in the Smörkullen material. This most certainly affected their well-being. In some cases the observed pathology was directly associated with life-threatening conditions. Analyses of combinations of pathologies suggest that concurrent linear enamel hypoplasias and cribra orbitalia, mainly observed in those who died before the age of fifteen, may have been related to a lower probability of survival.

Correlation of the osteological results with grave goods does not indicate any different treatment between those with and without grave goods.

This work advocates the application of an interdisciplinary approach to the historical archaeology of Tswana towns of the late Moloko period in South Africa, and asserts the importance of examining such sites on a case by case basis against the defined backdrop of their unique historical, political and biophysical contexts. The early 19th century Tlokwa capital of Marothodi, in the Pilanesberg region of South Africa, forms the focus of a study through which the value of this approach is demonstrated. The historical, political and biophysical context of the site is explored, with an emphasis on Tlokwa oral traditions. Archaeological investigation reveals details of settlement organisation, while preliminary ceramic analysis contributes to an understanding of ancestral identity, indicating a possible affinity with early Fokeng lineages stemming from Northern Nguni origins. A key aspect at Marothodi was the location of the town adjacent to important copper ore deposits. This location is reflected in the surplus production of copper as well as iron at Marothodi, and these metals were regionally traded. The organisation of iron and copper production is explored and analysed against the wider contextual backdrop of the capital. The intensification of metallurgical output, and the adaptation of Tswana cultural codes to the unprecedented demands of living in an aggregated community, demonstrate the degree to which historical context could influence the organisation of production, and consequently the archaeological expression of the town. Despite the scale of production and significant shifts in settlement organisation, however, the value system that structured this production does not change. In summary, this research suggests a period of ascendant political status for the Tlokwa at this time in the history of the chiefdom; a conclusion that could only have been reached through a combination of historical, biophysical, ethnographic and archaeological data.

Palaeoart includes a diverse range of art-like manifestations, predominantly comprising rock art and portable art objects, dating from the Pleistocene right through to the Holocene. A fascinating aspect of palaeoart is that striking commonalities or parallels may be observed world-wide. These parallels include a range of recurrent abstract-geometric motifs and patterns, figurative subjects and themes. Similarities in the ways in which this content is executed may also be found. Despite various attempts, these commonalities have not yet been adequately explained. Positioned within a structuralist framework, this thesis considers recent breakthroughs in neuroscience as a means of understanding them. Specifically, it examines the role of human perceptual-neurophysiological universals in governing palaeoart production, and argues for a basis of artistic parallels in aspects of the evolved neurobiology shared by all normal humans. The rock art of hunter-gatherer societies constitutes more than 90 per cent of known prehistoric art, and the scope of the study is limited to palaeoart attributed to pre-European contact, pre-literate hunter-gatherer societies. The temporal scope of the study varies with the evidence discussed.

The approach taken is partly informed by recent studies that have used neuroimaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reveal brain activation patterns associated with the perception of different types of visual stimuli. It is further informed by a wide range of additional neuroscientific and perceptual experimentation data relevant to palaeoart imagery. The value of considering human universals as a means of answering the questions how and why the same forms recur in palaeoart around the world is addressed. The approach provides a sound alternative to simplistic interpretations such as cultural diffusion based solely on visual resemblances between the arts of widely separated regions. The examination of palaeoart in light of neuroscientific data has major implications, ultimately revealing underlying reasons for the production of certain types of imagery. Abstract-geometric motifs and patterns, animals and parts of animals, and the human body and its parts are all shown to have special roles in visual information processing. It is found that shared aspects of the human nervous system influence conscious and unconscious preferences and decisions made in the process of creating graphic imagery, and that this has given rise to cross-cultural similarities in palaeoart. Recurrent forms in palaeoart are shown to be precisely those visual stimuli that are particularly powerful triggers of neural activity and correspond with prominent areas of the visual brain. These forms of visual imagery stimulate inherent neural mechanisms that have developed during human evolution specifically for the analysis of biologically significant aspects of the visual world. Palaeoart can thus be regarded as a kind of neuro-perceptual mirror demonstrating attributes and principles characteristic of human beings.

Many pre- and early-historic cultural transitions in Britain have been attributed to mass-migrations originating outside Britain. One of the most striking changes was the 5th century AD Romano-British / Anglo-Saxon transition, which has often been explained using models which focus on a mass migration and invasion of Angles, Saxons and Jutes from what is now Denmark and northern Germany. This explanation, based on cultural similarities between the two regions, has recently been strongly criticised on theoretical grounds. Most researchers of the late 20th and 21st centuries now view this transition in terms of elite settlement, and wide-scale acculturation. Within the last decade, however, research from the new field of archaeogenetics has reinvigorated this debate, with evidence showing that population movement between Britain and the continent may have been substantial. Despite this recent resurgence of interest, biological anthropological research in Britain has not followed suit, despite the development and relatively wide-scale application of quantitative genetic methods to anthropometric data elsewhere.

In this thesis, craniometric data, which were collected from skeletal collections, published and unpublished reports, represent over 1400 individuals from the Iron Age, Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon periods in Britain and Denmark. These data have been analysed using univariate, population genetic and matrix correlation methods, in order to investigate population structure and relationships in terms of continuity or change in Britain between these periods. The results of these analyses indicate a degree of temporal continuity and no evidence for geographical isolation, both within Britain, and between Britain and Denmark. Cultural affinities, however, are found to be significantly associated with biodistance, in some cases. Results indicate strong links between Britain and Denmark, in both the Iron Age and the early and later Anglo-Saxon periods, suggesting that substantial migration between Britain and the continent may have occurred. However, Romano-British samples appear distinct from Iron Age, Anglo-Saxon and Danish samples.

The questions remaining relate to the timing and nature of this migration, the situation in areas of Britain not sampled here, and the cause of the Romano-British distinctiveness in contrast to earlier and later samples.

This study is a contribution to the household archaeology of the Caribbean. The aim of the research was to come to an alternative, material definition of the precolonial house, rather than rely on Spanish colonial descriptions from the 15th and 16th centuries as is commonly done. Archaeological research from the site of El Cabo, perched on a coastal promontory at the extreme eastern end of the Dominican Republic is presented, and seven centuries of indigenous community history from its development and florescence, to eventual demise is narrated through the dominant structure, the house.

Over two thousand archaeological features cut directly into the limestone bedrock, and an artefact assemblage of pottery, shell and stone led to reconstructions of fifty domestic structures, thirty of which are houses, and interpretations of the spatial organization and chronology of the site between ca. AD 800 and 1504.

House structures are extremely regular with imposing facades, consistent orientation, and swept and clean interiors. They are the location of ritual and shared abandonment practices. Inhabitants rebuilt the same house in the same spot over the course of centuries so that a particular house was just one stage in a long process of renewal. Evidence suggests renewal was coordinated across houses, and possibly across the whole community (yucayeque). This led to the development of long-lived estates, referred to as House Trajectories, the most successful of which lasted up to 500 years. The House Trajectory is an important constituent of indigenous culture and domestic sociality.

Alice Samson is a member of the Caribbean Research Group, Leiden University, and excavated in El Cabo between 2005 and 2008. Her research interests include settlement and household archaeology with a focus in the Caribbean and NW European prehistory.

This thesis focuses on how archaeological interpretations of stone objects and stone-working can help understand the presence of metal and metallurgy in prehistoric Europe. I compare traditionally identified stone skeuomorphs — that is, meaningful imitations — of metal with their putative prototypes. Three separate corpora of these stone skeuomorphs have been identified: polished stone shafthole axes from the Netherlands and surrounding areas, identified as copies of perforated, copper axes; flint daggers from Jutland, identified as copies of bronze, metal-hilted daggers; and jet spacer-plate ornaments from the British Isles, Ireland and Brittany, identified as copies of hammered gold lunulae.

First, I examine the research history of skeuomorphism as well as its role in archaeological interpretation and propose a novel methodology for studying skeuomorphs. I argue that skeuomorphism has traditionally been used in ways that reinforce contemporary conceptions of material culture, innovation and value systems; but, with more attention paid to the social and technological contexts of their production and use, skeuomorphs have the potential to open new avenues into the ways in which different materials and objects were perceived and valued in prehistory. Consequently, I discuss the spread of metal objects and metallurgy in northwest Europe, and delineate the larger social and material context in which each of the specific skeuomorphs were made, used and deposited. In order to evaluate whether each type of object fits the definition of skeuomorphism developed earlier and what the implications of the relationship between the stone and metal objects are, I develop detailed analyses of each type of skeuomorph in terms of production technology, appearance, use, deposition and distribution and place it within the larger context of the production and use of artefacts of similar morphologies in prehistoric Europe. Finally, I use these interpretations to develop a more nuanced understanding of technological innovation in prehistory. I determine that the morphological relationship between specific metal and stone objects does not generally result from direct imitation, but rather reflects the shaping of the earliest metal objects into already widespread, socially meaningful forms. Thus, I propose that, in order to study prehistoric innovation, a range of technologies and practices need to be considered in order to place the innovation into the pre-existing social and technological systems in which it functioned and to assess the means by which it was accepted and valued.

This thesis adopts an integrated approach to explore the complex roles that animals played within Anglo-Saxon England. Previous archaeological work has tended to portray animals in primarily economic terms, viewing them simply as subsistence resources and units of wealth. However, it is argued here that the importance of animals reached far beyond this, forming integral parts of peoples' lives and constantly being drawn upon in the formation of identities. Accordingly, studying the ways in which people interacted with animals provides insight into changing social structures and ideologies. Such a perspective is especially useful for the Anglo-Saxon period, as it was a time of considerable social, economic, political and religious change. Given the wide variety of identity types, attention is focused here on five main aspects of identity: status, ethnicity, gender, religion and rural/urban perspectives. The primary resources drawn upon in this work are zooarchaeological remains, which are particularly useful since they constitute the physical residue of past human interactions with animals. In total, 183 zooarchaeological assemblages from across the country, including two previously unrecorded assemblages that were analysed personally by the author, were synthesised. Nonetheless, whilst animal bones form the main focus of this research, the complex nature of human-animal relationships necessitated an integrated approach. Accordingly, evidence is also drawn from a number of other fields, including human osteology, documentary sources, iconography, anthropology, place-names and landscape studies. Through a combination of these resources, the potential of studies into animals and their remains to inform wider archaeological research questions is demonstrated.

This study investigates the forms of exchange of goods in the second half of the XVIIIth Egyptian Dynasty (Thutmose III to Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten) (15th-14th centuries BCE) between Egypt and Western Asia, including Hatti, Mittanni, Babylon, Assyria, Alashiya and Canaan.

Its main aims are: a) to determine the role of the exchange of goods in the reorganization of the Egyptian state from Thutmose III on; b) to discern the innovations implemented in the exchanges between Egypt and the northern states during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV; c) to interpret the messages sent by the great kings with regard to the exchange of goods within the context of the ideology of each region; d) to determine the extent of economical, political, social and ideological relations within the framework of the circulation of goods.

This thesis establishes the cultural relations between Western and Central Anatolia during the Early Bronze Age; based on 49 types of archaeological evidence. Similar and contemporary finds in culturally distinctive Western and Central Anatolia indicates that interregional relations were more intense than originally thought, throughout the Early Bronze Age. Megaron and round cist graves indicate cultural impacts of architectural and burial customs. Archaeological evidence for cultural relations of Western and Central Anatolia is best represented by small finds. In total 1089 objects of terra-cotta, metal, stone and bone are studied typologically, a small amount of which were imported. Most of the finds were spread as a result of cultural relations in the area between Western and Central Anatolia. Most of the archaeological evidence which is discussed in this thesis are either from hoards or come from graves. A smaller number of finds, which were found in settlement contexts have come to light in private houses and in contexts that represent political power. Cultural impacts were spread throughout the community gradually, from wealthy to poor and from royal to citizen. Widespread finds in Western and Central Anatolia with common typology shows that cultural relations began in the EBA I, and continued increasingly during the EBA II and EBA III. Archaeological evidence which reflects the cultural relations of Western and Cental Anatolia also indicate the presence of an international trade that extended all the way to Syria and Mesopotamia.

The current study investigates skeletal evidence for interpersonal violence in Neolithic northwest Europe (5,500-1,700 B.C.). Cranial remains of 1012 individuals from Germany, Denmark and Sweden were examined for signs of skeletal trauma and injury. The resulting data were analysed at a regional and cross-regional level and discussed within their socio-cultural and environmental context.

The results show that violent trauma is a predominantly but certainly not exclusively a male phenomenon. Males were significantly more affected by trauma overall but females in the Danish and German samples presented with a higher number of unhealed injuries. Differences noted in injury patterns between males and females emphasise a division of labour in terms of active involvement in violent conflict. Violence-related injuries were not necessarily related to 'fighting age' and did affect very young children as well, but due to the underrepresentation of non-adult individuals in the analysed sample it is difficult to assess the overall impact of interpersonal violence on this section of the population. Overall, the prevalence of healed injuries was significantly higher than that of unhealed lesions but the occurrence of violent trauma was not evenly distributed throughout the study region. The Danish sample in particular showed a significantly higher prevalence of traumatic head injuries overall.

A cross-regional peak in violence-related traumatic head injuries was noted for the 4th millennium B.C and may be associated with cultural as well as environmental and climatic changes in the region. This trend towards increased violence and conflict precedes the pan-European expansion of the Corded Ware/Beaker phenomenon, which itself appears to be characterised by decreasing overall levels of skeletal evidence for violent interaction.

The results of this study highlight significant discrepancies between previously published prevalence rates of violent trauma for the period and results of directed trauma studies based on current forensic and osteological criteria. They also emphasise the importance of prevalence calculations that consider taphonomic and cultural factors. Skeletal evidence for violence and conflict has been underestimated to date and only population-specific studies can provide the data necessary to assess its causes, functions and consequences for the farming societies of Neolithic Europe.

The thesis discusses the social and architectural changes from the early Neolithic (just before 5000 cal BC; the RRBP: Rubané Récent du Bassin parisien and the VSG: Villeneuve-Saint-Germain cultures) to the middle Neolithic (from 4700 cal BC; the Cerny and Michelsberg/Chasséen cultures) in the Paris Basin, France.

Commencing with a characterisation of daily life, the thesis considers the dwelling perspective, which underpins the theoretical approach taken here, and then debates different approaches to the study of houses found in anthropology and archaeology. It is concluded that daily life in the early Neolithic of the Paris Basin can be illuminated through consideration of different practices of inhabitation, and how materials and tasks provided particular constructions of time. Thus an approach to archaeology and prehistoric architectures that envisions social life as creative, tactical and performative is advocated.

The longhouse is considered as a suite of practices that provided daily life with a particular temporality and it is argued that this temporality was increasingly challenged throughout the VSG period. The archaeological data is discussed in two case studies. The first is based around the early and middle Neolithic settlements in the Aisne and Oise valleys and the second, those sites at the Seine-Yonne confluence. This facilitates discussion of local experiences of settlement, landscape and deposition, demonstrating that different conceptions of community relations, architecture, animals and social scale existed, leading to the creation of different post-RRBP and VSG architectures in the two areas, including the Passy-style monuments. This challenges the rather static views of LBK social structure that have been prevalent in current literature. The death of the longhouse is characterised as a change in the scale of community and conceptions of temporality experienced in the middle Neolithic, inspired by the desire to explore difference in social relations in a more immediate setting than the longhouse provided. Three appendices contain a site gazetteer and discussions of the architectural and burial data from the Paris Basin.

This dissertation have as main goal explain the social production of the archaeological settlements and objects related with the first sedentary societies (1400 BC - AD 350) of the Northern Titicaca Basin, Peru. Such societies passed through for a series of events, but one that marked his history was the qualitative and quantitative change in the way of produce its archaeological settlements and objects. This deep change in its historical trajectory is related with the existence of a society that produced an unusual mass of buildings and artifacts that are distinguished from others of the Andean area and known with the name of Pukara (400 BC - AD 350). To get this goal, our dissertation is divided in five chapters related between them. Chapter 1 have as aim analyze the production of the recent archaeological discourses focus in the possibility to get an objective knowledge of the social reality and recognize the impact of the ideologies in the interpretations of this archaeologists. This debate where the ideologies are important for reinforce different political agendas is better represented in the dominant ideologies of the States and for this in Chapter 2 we focus in the relationship between dominant ideologies and archaeologies in Peru of the XX century in Peru. In the same vein, for begin to introduce us to our study subject, in Chapter 3 we analyze the archaeological discourses produced in the North Titicaca Basin and it relationship with different ideologies. Chapter 4 is focused in the archaeological settlements and objects of the first sedentary societies of the North Titicaca Basin that, for its own existence, guided us to argue archaeological representations more appropriate with an objective knowledge of the prehistoric reality. With this intention, in this chapter we try to meet the archaeological settlements and objects known through the archaeological researches conducted in the XX century and our own experience in the area to get an overview of the archaeological objects in it context of production and use. In Chapter 5 we describe our program of archaeological researches that describe the settlements and objects of the first sedentary societies (1400 BC - AD 350) of a particular area of study (Quilcamayo-Tintiri valley, Puno) and that permitted us realize a historical materialistic representation from its own concrete existence. We finalize sumarizing and set in some conclusions and futures lines of research.

Few attempts have been made to synthesise Late Bronze Age (LBA) and Iron Age trade patterns in the northern Levant on a regional scale, despite the availability of fine-grained excavation data for individual sites. Even less attention has been given to the degree of continuity or change between the economic systems that obtained across the transition between these two periods, which was marked by a widespread destruction of sites across the Eastern Mediterranean.

Long-distance trade was conducted at unprecedented levels in the Eastern Mediterranean at the close of the LBA. Ugarit was a strategic node between land and sea routes and its entrepreneurial merchants engaged in transactions for economic gain. Why Ugarit was never meaningfully resettled again after its destruction in the early 12th century BC is a question of regional importance with respect to gaining a better understanding of how and why the mechanisms of trade evolved at this critical time. That Phoenicia came to dominate maritime trade in the Mediterranean in the succeeding period is widely accepted, but the reasons behind this ascendancy are poorly understood.

This thesis quantitatively examines contextualised imported ceramic data (Aegean and Cypriot wares) and the archaeological, textual and scientific evidence of the bronze industry and its supply chains. The evidence from the northern Levant is considered within its regional setting, with coastal Syro-Palestine divided into four zones of interaction in order to improve resolution on variations in long-distance trading relationships. The evidence from Cyprus is also assessed, given its importance as a leading supplier of both ceramics and copper to the Levant. A world-systems approach is then applied to this first stage of analysis to assess the intensity and directness of LBA trading contacts between producer and consumer and how these may have developed over time.

Trading relationships between the Aegean and Cyprus with different parts of the Levant littoral were not uniform during the LBA, either in intensity or directness. Evidence for continuity in LBA trading relationships across the LBA/Iron Age transition is strongest between Phoenicia and Cyprus, particularly the west coast of the island. Interestingly, the former is not only the sole part of the Levantine littoral to escape destruction at the close of the LBA but also may well have had the most direct and intense LBA trading relationships with the Aegean.

This study is an intellectual exercise aimed at filling the theoretical and practical lacuna of GIS applications for intra-site analysis. It has long been argued that this lacuna is principally the consequence of the inability of GIS to manipulate three-dimensional data, where three-dimensionality is the main characteristic of the excavated archaeological record. The thesis is therefore devoted to the study of the role and potential of three-dimensional GIS modelling for understanding excavation data in theory and in practice.

The premise of the research is that unless one attempts to critically engage with the nature of archaeological excavation and with contemporary archaeological practice (i.e. the operations of recording archaeological data and transforming them by creating the archaeological record), it becomes very difficult to assess the effectiveness of computerised analytical systems to represent and interpret archaeology.

For this reason, this research seeks to address the following questions.

1. To what extent do archaeological data and GIS structures parallel one another and how can GIS represent an archaeological excavation?
2. Can three-dimensional dynamic GIS improve our understanding of depositional and post-depositional phenomena? If so how might this
operate?

The thesis discusses the first question in critical detail before going on to argue that the answer to the second is positive. Three-dimensional data and the development and coupling of modelling techniques to GIS allow for a better and more faceted understanding of the excavation record.

This research concentrates on experimenting and evaluating three-dimensional GIS for the study of archaeological excavation as a process that generates archaeological data at many different levels, in variously forms and across different spaces (from the site to the computer).

Whereas the research focuses more on theoretical concepts that contribute to defining the nature of archaeological data in exploratory multidimensional complex environments, the practical examples presented narrow down to the application of three-dimensional representations in two specific excavation scenarios: the Neolithic site of Kouphovouno in Greece and the Hoge Vaart excavation in the Netherlands.

Results of this study outline a conceptual framework for representing spatial (and temporal) excavation information, and provide a blueprint for creating a model for storing, manipulating and analysing archaeological excavation data. In addition to the framework, some procedures are defined for outlining the core data needed for representing excavation data in three dimensions.

This dissertation discusses the evolution of land use patterns and rural society in the Lake Suches basin of highland southern Peru, and their relationship to Holocene climate changes and socio-political development in the region since approximately 10,500 years bp. Archaeological survey documents settlement and land use patterns, and Holocene palaeoclimate is reconstructed on the basis of climate proxy archives in lacustrine sediment cores from Lake Suches. These data show a non-linear evolution of exploitation strategies and rural society that are intimately connected with regional socio-political environments. Suches is one of the highest inhabited regions of the Andean cordillera. The basin is a marginal environment located more than 4400 meters above sea level that presents severe limitations to occupation. Early inhabitants adapted to these limitations by developing a distinctive, sedentary pastoral economy focused on domesticated camelids. Long-distance socioeconomic ties supplemented local production, which changed through the rise and decline of prehispanic states in the central Andean area. Pastoral strategies relied on unique alpine wetlands ('bofedales') that provided year-round sources of high-quality pasturage and water for domestic livestock in an otherwise inhospitable region. Stable patterns of bofedal exploitation indicate that the local hydrology and biotic organization of the basin were resistant to severe Holocene climate fluctuation. Smaller-scale and resilient hydrological systems apparently contributed to stable land use. In contrast, reformulation of pastoral organization and strategies indicate that herders adjusted production modes and intensified herding in response to the integrative affects of expansive regional political economies. Rural groups reformulated community structure in distinct phase, resulting in societies that were markedly more rural in character. A lack of state intervention strongly suggests that communities autochthonously effected their reorganization by instrumental decision-making. These data force a careful consideration of climate - society interactions, and of the nature of ruralism. Rural constancy had a regionally stabilizing effect, and potentially adsorbed significant shocks from dramatic socio-political shifts and adverse climatic phases. System thresholds - at which dramatic changes in state are provoked - are more significant than gradual changes themselves. Data from Suches contribute to a greater understanding of rural dynamics, including how rural communities are created by agent-based processes.

Regional studies of obsidian artifacts in the south-central Andes have shown that over 90% of the analyzed artifacts from the Lake Titicaca Basin belong to a single geochemical obsidian type. A decade ago researchers identified the geological origin of this obsidian type as the Chivay / Cotallalli source, located 180km west of Lake Titicaca above the Colca valley in Arequipa at 71.5355° S, 15.6423° W (WGS84), and at 4972 meters above sea level. This research project focused on the obsidian source and adjacent lands within one day's travel from the source. The project included a 33 km² survey, 8 test units, and in-depth lithic attribute analysis. Mobile GIS (Arcpad) was used extensively during survey. A substantial quarry pit and an obsidian workshop were examined closely, as were consumption sites in nearby areas. The results of this study found that the earliest diagnostic materials at the source date to the Middle Archaic (8000-6000 BCE) and that intensification of obsidian production occurred earlier than previously recognized, at circa 3300 BCE Increased obsidian production appears to have been focused on the acquisition of large (> 20cm) and homogeneous obsidian nodules, although the formal tools produced with obsidian were predominantly small projectile points. It is argued that the acquisition of large, homogenous nodules was prioritized because the production potential of large nodules was highest, and because obsidian was associated with competitive display among early aggrandizers. The timing and economic associations of obsidian production and circulation suggest that the possession of large obsidian pieces in the Titicaca Basin was a demonstration of social connections to distant resources, and to regional trade networks that emerged with regularized camelid caravan transport networks. Obsidian artifacts were not inherently 'prestige goods', rather it is suggested here that obsidian was the least perishable of a number of cultural goods distributed by an expanding network of caravans that linked communities in the region. The acquisition and consumption of these cultural goods was a demonstration of economic connections and cultural influence during the dynamic period of incipient social inequality between the Terminal Archaic (3300-2000 BCE) through the Middle Formative (1300-500 BCE).

This dissertation reports on findings from three seasons of archaeological fieldwork at Pataraya, a mid-elevation site located on the western slope of the Andes in southern Peru, and its environs. these investigations began with large-scale excavations at Pataraya that were undertaken in 2007. While small, the site is an excellent example of the planned architectural style associated with the imperial expansion of the Wari state that emerged near modern-day ayacucho during the Middle Horizon (ad 750 - 1000). Intensive archaeological survey in the upland headwater valleys of the Nasca drainage was undertaken in 2008 and 2009. Two Middle Horizon sites, including another Wari compound known as incawasi, were documented in the upper Aja river valley during these efforts and subsequent test excavations were undertaken at each of them in 2009. These surveys also collected data on a prehispanic road that connects the nasca valley to the sierra. the road has been found to enter the nasca drainage near modern-day uchuymarca and travel past incawasi and Pataraya on its route to the coastal plain below. these data strongly suggest that construction of the road dates to the Middle Horizon and that linkage of important Wari political installations was its primary function.

evidence from the excavations at Pataraya, especially when considered in light of this wider regional system, illuminate the organization and political economy of the Wari empire specifically, as well as the archaeological study of empires more broadly. the evidence from Pataraya suggests that activities related to textile manufacturing was a major part of daily life at the site. Given the importance of cotton in Wari textile technology and the nasca valley's suitability for cultivation of the fiber, these data suggest that acquisition of coastal cotton and transshipment of the product to the sierra may have been one of the goals of the Wari state in establishing a colony at Pataraya. Wari control of the connection between the south coast and the sierra evidenced by both Pataraya and the newly discovered site of incawasi also illuminates our understanding of the factors that direct investment in infrastructure by empires generally by demonstrating that many factors, some of which remain unknown, drove such heavy Wari investment in building a secure route to nasca. Why empires invest heavily in one area and little or not at all in another is thus always an empirical question, one that must be evaluated and explained by real economic, environmental, political, and cultural conditions in the past.

Taking the disintegration of the Tiwanaku state (ca. AD 1000) as an example, this thesis investigates how local communities respond to state collapse. Archaeological research on collapse has largely focused on its economic and political implications. However, states also act as sources of identity and the fragmentation of a state can radically alter how its members and their descendents view themselves. Utilizing the argument that funerals are important moments for the construction, maintenance and negotiation of identities, this study examines changes in funerary practice in the Moquegua Valley, Peru to explore how community members defined themselves as groups and individuals when the Tiwanaku state fragmented. Drawing on biological and cultural data from burials at Chen Chen (a site dating to the height of Tiwanaku state presence in Moquegua) and from Tumilaca la Chimba (a smaller site established after the state disintegrated), this research indicates the complex ways in which collapse phase mourners both maintained a community identity rooted in their Tiwanaku ancestry and also redefined salient intra-community identities.

This dissertation evaluates the relative importance of craft production and ceremonial activities to the development of village communities and political hierarchy in the highland tropics of Western Panama. Previous researchers had suggested that control over the management or distribution of stone axes crucial for land clearance and woodworking activities had provided an avenue for incipient social elites to influence aspects of the broader subsistence economy. Alternatively, other researchers have stressed the importance of the role that ceremonial activities played in the development and persistence of social inequalities and political hierarchies. To evaluate these possibilities, occupational refuse was sampled from seven previously identified archaeological sites occupying different tiers of the settlement hierarchy. Artifact samples from various sites and the residential sectors within them provided the basis for an examination of approximately one millennium of social change and continuity.

This work suggests that a sparsely populated region with small agricultural villages and farmsteads provided the social context in which forms of social rank and political economy initially developed and persisted, but that these differences were expressed in variable ways over time. The sponsorship of feasting activities contributed to the expression of elevated social status and the growth of the region's largest village, while a stronger association between incipient elites and lithic craft production elsewhere in the settlement system may have resulted in distinct organizational differences. Relatively isolated farmsteads, by contrast, exhibited less diversity and intensity in various activities than villages throughout the sequence. Combining perspectives from regional and village scales, this research concludes that the evidence for political hierarchy and occupational differentiation developed gradually over time and these differences remained relatively subtle through the sequence. The emergence and persistence of elevated social rank and regional political organization accompanied increasing specialization in serving activities and stone tool production between different villages, rather than being concentrated in one. The detailed sequence presented in this dissertation provides a comparative perspective to models of sociopolitical change in Southern Central America, and highlights one of the variable pathways by which small complex societies may have developed more broadly.

This dissertation is a diachronic settlement and landscape study undertaken from an interpretive archaeology perspective. The outcome of this study has been an interpretation of the settlement and landscape configurations as well as of the sociopolitical organization during the entire prehispanic occupation (ca. 1100 B.C.- A.D. 1532) of the Upper Piura River Valley in the Far North Coast of Perú. Also, the sociopolitical interaction between the local polities of the Piura River Valley and the southern foreign Northern North Coast polities has been assessed.

The Far North Coast is not an environmentally 'marginal' area as compared to the Northern North Coast. Yet, in terms of its prehispanic cultural development, it often has been characterized as 'marginal' or 'peripheral'. Such characterization is due in part to an overemphasis on the study of Mochica style cultural materials found in the Far North Coast. In particular, the emphasis on analyses of 'high quality' Mochica ceramics has led to interpretations that view local Upper Piura River Valley sociopolitical developments from the perspective of the 'dominant' Northern North Coast societies in an unbalanced situation disregarding the perspective of the supposedly 'weaker, less developed' local societies.

In this sense, interpretations drawn from iconographic and stylistic analyses of objects on the one hand, and from landscape analyses on the other, seem like two different versions of the same story. Since the latter is so uncommon and unexplored in Andean archaeology, I chose to apply it in this dissertation. For that purpose I followed two different but complementary paths of interpretation. The first path is an interpretation of the landscape from a dwelling perspective. The goal was to create an analogy of the experience of past individuals through an embodiment process via the movement of my body and mind through the landscape features.

A second path of interpretation was merged with the first one. This second path comprised a classic settlement pattern analysis oriented to clarify the nature of the sociopolitical interaction between local polities of the Upper Piura River Valley and the intrusive polities of the Northern North Coast. The second path of interpretation also entailed overlapping the settlement patterns observed onto the spatial structures and topograms defined and interpreted by the dwelling perspective.

As a result, I found that the study area is characterized by a 2600-year long process of dwelling in the landscape. Through this process and along the years, yet following a long, local process, revolving around the topograms, the landscapes conceptualizations and configurations changed. Two moments of the settlements and landscapes configurations were defined: the 'old system' and the 'new system'. For most of its history (through all the 'old system' and the first epoch of the 'new system'), and acknowledging the mutual cultural influence with other areas (e.g., the Northern North Coast), the local landscape and settlement configurations were not disrupted and engaged in an egalitarian or coevolving sociopolitical interaction. Yet during the second epoch of the 'new system' this situation changed drastically when a hierarchical and coercive interaction structure developed during the Chimú and Inca periods.

The main goal of this doctoral research is to make a contribution to the knowledge and discussion about places and landscapes of hunter gatherers societies that dwelled, visited and moved around the central-east portion of the Tandilia range during final Pleistocene and different moments of Holocene. The study of archaeological places proposed is based on the concept that the material aspect of human life involves not only objects but human bodies and space. In that sense, the aim is to study and understand the changes and continuities in the relationship between human societies and their environment through time, integrating the information obtained from the study of archaeological objects, of the detail of these objects and of the different space scales. Thus, the research of archaeological places is here presented as a way to move forward in the understanding of the life of past Pampean societies.

The developed research plan combined a wide diversity of activities, including archaeological fieldwork, image processing and interpretation from a geomatic approach, and specific analysis and inferences on the archaeological materials based on archeometric and techno-morphological studies. These activities were complemented with anthropological fieldwork with the local community, contributing with a subjective view to the spatial analysis. It will also be used as the base material for the development of future activities of revalorization and protection of archaeological heritage. The results obtained from the different activities carried out in this doctoral research were integrated in order to characterize the studied archaeological places. Based on these characterizations, a discussion is proposed regarding the material and spatial relationships between places in different moments from the Pleistocene/Holocene transition to the period of time that followed the European conquest. A net of interconnected places arises, giving place to possible constructions on the mobility of Pampean people in the past and on the existence of social networks that represent the past social landscapes.

Este trabajo de tesis tiene como objetivo principal realizar una contribución al conocimiento y la discusión sobre los lugares y los paisajes de las sociedades de cazadores recolectores que habitaron y recorrieron el sector centro oriental del sistema serrano de Tandilia, durante el Pleistoceno final y diferentes momentos del Holoceno. El estudio de lugares arqueológicos propuesto se sustenta en la concepción según la cual la materialidad de la vida humana involucra no sólo a los objetos sino también a los cuerpos y al espacio. En este sentido, se propone entender los cambios y las continuidades a lo largo del tiempo en la relación que los grupos humanos establecieron con el medio en el que vivieron; integrando en forma dinámica la información obtenida a partir de los objetos, de detalles particulares de los objetos y del espacio en diferentes escalas. De esta forma, la investigación sobre lugares arqueológicos se presenta como una vãa que permite avanzar en la comprensión de la vida de sociedades pasadas.

El diseño de investigación llevado a cabo involucró una amplia diversidad de tareas que incluyen el trabajo de campo arqueológico, el procesamiento y la interpretación de imágenes desde un enfoque geomático y los análisis especãficos e inferencias a partir de los materiales en base a estudios arqueométricos y tecnomorfológicos. A todo esto se suma un trabajo de campo antropológico realizado con la comunidad local que aporta una perspectiva subjetiva al análisis espacial, a la vez que sirve como base para posteriores actividades destinadas a la protección y revalorización del patrimonio arqueológicos.

Los resultados obtenidos a partir de cada una de las tareas desarrolladas son integrados para dar cuenta de las caracterãsticas de los diferentes lugares arqueológicos estudiados. A partir de dichas caracterizaciones se propone una discusión sobre las relaciones materiales y espaciales que pueden establecerse ntre los mismos en diferentes momentos, desde la transición entre el Pleistoceno y el Holoceno hasta el perãodo posterior a la conquista europea. De esta manera, se da forma a una red de lugares a partir de la cual se realizan inferencias en torno a la movilidad de los grupos pampeanos y al establecimiento de redes sociales que conforman los paisajes sociales pasados.

A chronological framework was produced for the rich later prehistoric settlement landscape of the chalklands of central southern Britain, through an extensive programme of survey and surface sampling, correlated by an extensive regional excavation record. The emergence of regionally distinctive materialities in the later Iron Age, together with the diagnostic complexity and idiosyncracy of contemporary settlement forms, enabled significant changes in the distribution and spatial patterning of settlement between the middle and later Iron Age periods to be analysed. Comparative distributions indicated significant shifts in both location and settlement during the later Iron Age, with evidence of settlement nucleation in a number of previously unsettled areas.

Distribution of enclosed settlement forms, transcribed from the aerial photographic record and topographic survey, was strongly non-randomised throughout, with clear indication of nested regional and sub-regional spatial hierarchies. Rank-size curves for later Iron Age settlemernt forms produced predictable results, with consistent primo-convex patterning. This strongly suggested the existence of a series of linked sub-systems with localised settlement dominance, rather than conformity to a single, non-segmentary political centre. Differential inter-regional patterning of settement morphology displayed a series of discrete sub-system distributions, particularly of distinct enclosed settlement forms such as banjo enclosures. This is interpreted as representing the activity of expansionary segmentary lineage groups, who may themselves have been the agents of settlement change, and were themselves articulated around a series of locally-dominant elite centres. The aggregate structure of the larger regional settlement grouping, of which three coherent examples were identified in this study, may conform to the Pagi described in classical sources and identified archaeologically in parts of northern Gaul and the Limes. Analysis of the entrance orientation of enclosed settlements strongly suggests the increasing significance of cosmological principles in dictating settlement layout and design throughout the middle and later Iron Age periods.

Analysis of both pottery assemblages and querns revealed significant differentiation of site materialities, which in aggregate terms displayed high levels of correlation with other aspects of settlement ranking, including complexity, area size and relative spatial relationships within settlement groups. Regression transects and multivariate analysis of selected assemblages indicated a highly regonalised distribution of individual fabric types, which corresponded very closely to recorded patterns of settlement clustering. This suggested that patterns of production and distribution were embedded in socially-bounded exchange networks, each displaying distinctive differences in assemblage components.

Traditionally, cemetery populations from early medieval (5th-11th century) Wales and the Isle of Man have received considerably less attention than contemporaneous populations from Anglo-Saxon England. Such neglect is partly due to the scarcity of grave goods, the absence of elaborately furnished burials, and the focus placed on inscribed funerary moments. For those cemeteries with well-preserved human remains, very few skeletal collections have been analysed, or were analysed many years ago, before the advent of modern-day osteological standards and biomolecular techniques. In response to this scholarly lacuna, this thesis takes a multidisciplinary approach to the investigation of eight well-preserved cemetery populations including; Brownslade, West Angle Bay, Porthclew, Llandough and Llanbedrgoch from Wales and Peel Castle, Balladoole and Cronk keeillane from the Isle of Man. The aim is to provide a biocultural interpretation of life and death in early medieval western Britain, which focuses specifically on reconstructing individual life histories.

The remains were sampled for stable isotope analysis, and isotopic data for diet and migration were integrated into a wider corpus of archaeological, historical, osteological, and burial data. Considerable evidence was found for local and long distance mobility, with some individuals having a non-British place of origin. This study highlights many significant phenomena including; differential access to dietary resources, the use of funerary provisions in the display of status and identity, and considers how different factors (e.g. place of origin) influenced the way people were perceived and treated upon death. In sum, this study demonstrates how a biocultural approach can provide a unique insight into the lives of those individuals who lived in early medieval Wales and the Isle of Man.

This thesis will explore the agentive roles of material culture in ancient colonial encounters. It takes as a case study the Roman colonization of southern Britain, from the first century BC onwards. Using ethnographic and theoretical perspectives largely drawn from social anthropology, it seeks to demonstrate that the consumption of certain types of continental material culture by some members of communities in southern Britain, pre-disposed the local population to Roman political annexation in the later part of the first century AD.

Once the Roman colonial project proper commenced, different material cultures were introduced by colonial agents to maintain domination over a subaltern population. Throughout, the entanglement of people and things represented a reciprocal continuum, in which things moved people's minds, as much as people got to grips with particular things. In addition it will be suggested that the confrontations of material culture brought about by the colonial encounters affected the colonizer as much as the colonized.

The thesis will demonstrate the impact of a variety of novel material cultures by focusing in detail on a key area of southern Britain - Chichester and its immediate environs. Material culture will be examined in four major categories: Landscapes and Buildings; Exchange, Food and Drink; Coinages; Death and Burial. Chapters dealing with these categories will be preceded by an opening chapter on the nature of Roman colonialism, followed by an introductory one on the history and archaeology of southern Britain and the study area. The Conclusion will include some thoughts on the integration of anthropological approaches to archaeological interpretation. I intend that the thesis provides a contribution to the wider debate on the role of material culture in ancient colonial projects, and an example of the increasingly productive bidirectional entanglement of archaeology and anthropology.

Records of technological practice provide an important lens for studying societies and cultures across time and space. This dissertation takes a diachronic view of the role of ancient copper production in the formation and oscillations of power when historical 'state' level societies emerged during the late 2nd - 1st millennium BCE in the southern Levant. The primary study area is Jordan's Faynan district that contains the richest copper ore deposits in the southern Levant and constitutes one of the best preserved records of ancient copper extraction in the world. As demonstrated here, ancient metallurgy played a major role in socio-political processes for south Levantine complex societies during the Iron Age (12th - 6th centuries BCE). The core of this study is the identification of detailed chaînes opératoires of changing Iron Age copper production systems. Based on newly excavated archaeometallurgy material culture, surveys, analyses of large technology-related assemblages, and previously published data, the basic components of the changing production systems are defined, and social meanings are extracted.

My thesis reassessed the apparent Early Mediaeval collapse of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka, through explicit reference to the archaeological record. The study of Anuradhapura's terminal period has been dominated by an over-reliance upon textual sources, resulting in the establishment of a monocausal and politically charged narrative, depicting an eleventh century invasion by the South Indian Colas as the primary, if not sole, cause of the collapse of Anuradhapura (Codrington 1960), bringing to an end over a millennium of rule from Sri Lanka's first capital. Such is the dominance of this collapse 'model' that few alternative explanations for the abandonment of Anuradhapura have been posited, and just two alternative collapse models have ever been propounded; a 'malarial' model (Nicholls 1921; Still 1930) and an 'imperial' model (Spencer 1983; Indrapala 2005). My thesis set out to first test whether or not Anuradhapura truly did 'collapse', and then to test the existing models for this apparent collapse through reference to the physical archaeological record of Anuradhapura.

After archaeologically defining collapse, the three collapse models were synthesised and translated into qualitative signatures of archaeologically visible characteristics and sequences. My thesis then presented and analysed data (both qualitative and quantitative) from over a century of archaeological investigations at Anuradhapura, with specific focus upon the datasets of the ASW2 excavations within the Citadel (Coningham et al. 1999 & 2006) and the recent Anuradhapura Hinterland survey (Coningham et al. In press). Following a detailed analysis, this data was summarised and presented graphically, better facilitating comparison with the hypothetical signatures of the three collapse models. The presence/absence of the set archaeological characteristics of collapse were identified across Anuradhapura's three zones, testing whether or not Anuradhapura actually collapsed, before the archaeological signatures of collapse for each of the three zones were compared with the hypothetical signatures developed from the three collapse models, in order to determine which, if any, of the existing models could sufficiently match and explain the archaeological characteristics of Anuradhapura's terminal period. Finally, the archaeological 'collapse' of Anuradhapura was related to comparative and theoretical collapse models in an attempt to better understand the underlying dynamic processes and societal dynamics of collapse and the abandonment of Anuradhapura.

This dissertation adopts an innovative tripartite approach in recording and reaching an adequate understanding of a hitherto untheorised and under-investigated rock art complex situated in Northern Greece. Post-structuralism and phenomenology form the theoretical ground on which this study is founded. It phenomenologically explores a set of experiences not restricted to vision but related to a multi-sensory, bodily engagement with the art and the land in which it exists. It also examines the structuring of the motifs in relation to their location in the landscape in order to identify possible patterns indicative of the social actions that generated them and of which they are the material traces. The parameters of this art are then placed and assessed against what is known about the cultural background of the makers from historical sources. This study demonstrates that the conceptual and the experiential are inextricably linked, and thus structuralism and phenomenology are not mutually exclusive as has been often thought. The third aspect of my approach, namely the use of historical literature, allows assessment of the way that structures of meaning might relate to a specific cultural context. The overall aim of this thesis is to evaluate the role that the decoration of rocks may have played in the social construction of landscapes and the constitution of the social self.