Approaches To The Analysis Of Production Activity At Archaeological Sites

Proceedings of a workshop held in Berlin, 2018, focusing on manufacturing activities identified at archaeological sites. New excavation techniques, ethnographic research, archaeometric approaches, GIS, experimental archaeology, and theoretical issues associated with how researchers understand production in the past, are presented here.

Glass beads, both beautiful and portable, have been produced and traded globally for thousands of years. Modern archaeologists study these artifacts through sophisticated methods that analyze the glass composition, a process which can be utilized to trace bead usage through time and across regions. This book publishes open-access compositional data obtained from laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry, from a single analytical laboratory, providing a uniquely comparative data set. The geographic range includes studies of beads produced in Europe and traded widely across North America and beads from South and Southeast Asia traded around the Indian Ocean and beyond. The contributors provide new insight on the timing of interregional interactions, technologies of bead production and patterns of trade and exchange, using glass beads as a window to the past. This volume will be a key reference for glass researchers, archaeologists, and any scholars interested in material culture and exchange; it provides a wide range of case studies in the investigation and interpretation of glass bead composition, production and exchange since ancient times.

The last 20 years have witnessed a proliferation of new approaches in archaeolog ical data recovery, analysis, and theory building that incorporate both new forms of information and new methods for investigating them. The growing importance of survey has meant an expansion of the spatial realm of traditional archaeological data recovery and analysis from its traditional focus on specific locations on the landscape-archaeological sites-to the incorporation of data both on-site and off-site from across extensive regions. Evolving survey methods have led to experiments with nonsite and distributional data recovery as well as the critical evaluation of the definition and role of archaeological sites in data recovery and analysis. In both survey and excavation, the geomorphological analysis of land scapes has become increasingly important in the analysis of archaeological ma terials. Ethnoarchaeology-the use of ethnography to sharpen archaeological understanding of cultural and natural formation processes-has concentrated study on the formation processes underlying the content and structure of archae ological deposits. These actualistic studies consider patterns of deposition at the site level and the material results of human organization at the regional scale. Ethnoarchaeological approaches have also affected research in theoretical ways by expanding investigation into the nature and organization of systems of land use per se, thus providing direction for further study of the material results of those systems.

Ancient Gordion has long been recognized as a key Iron Age site for Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean. Archaeological research has revealed much about its sequence of occupation. However, as yet no study has explored the underlying drivers of political and economic change at this site. This volume presents an overview of the political and economic histories supporting emergent elites and how they constructed power at Gordion during the Iron Age (1200-300 BCE). Based on geochemical and typological analysis of nearly 2000 Late Bronze Age to Hellenistic ceramic samples, the volume contextualizes this primary dataset through the lens of ceramic production, consumption, exchange and emulation. Synthesizing site data sets, the volume more broadly contributes to our understanding of the pivotal role of groups and their economic, social, and ritual practices in the creation of complex societies.

Households in Context shifts the focus from monumental temples, tombs, and elite material and visual culture to households and domestic life to provide a crucial new perspective on everyday dwelling practices and the interactions of families and individuals with larger social and cultural structures. A focus on households reveals the power of the everyday: the critical role of quotidian experiences, objects, and images in creating the worlds of the people who live with them. The contributors to this book share contemporary research on houses and households in both Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt to reshape the ways we think about ancient people's lived experiences of family, community, and society. Households in Context places the archaeology and history of Greco-Roman Egypt in dialogue with research on dwelling, daily practice, and materiality to reveal how ancient households functioned as laboratories for social, political, economic, and religious change. Contributors: Youssri Abdelwahed, Richard Alston, Anna Lucille Boozer, Paola Davoli, David Frankfurter, Jennifer Gates-Foster, Melanie Godsey, Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, Sabine R. Huebner, Gregory Marouard, Miriam Müller, Lisa Nevett, Bérangère Redon, Bethany Simpson, Ross I. Thomas, Dorothy J. Thompson

How did the Ancient Egyptians maintain control of their state? Topics include the controlling function of temples and theology, state borders, scribal administration, visual representation, patronage, and the Egyptian language itself, with reference to all periods of Egyptian history, from the Old Kingdom to Coptic times.

New insights into the history of Islamic glassmaking The ancient glass industry changed dramatically towards the end of the first millennium. The Roman glassmaking tradition of mineral soda glass was increasingly supplanted by the use of plant ash as the main fluxing agent at the turn of the ninth century CE. Defining primary production groups of plant ash glass has been a challenge due to the high variability of raw materials and the smaller scale of production. Islamic Glass in the Making advocates a large-scale archaeometric approach to the history of Islamic glassmaking to trace the developments in the production, trade and consumption of vitreous materials between the eighth and twelfth centuries and to separate the norm from the exception. It proposes compositional discriminants to distinguish regional production groups, and provides insights into the organisation of the glass industry and commerce during the early Islamic period. The interdisciplinary approach leads to a holistic understanding of the development of Islamic glass; assemblages from the early Islamic period in Mesopotamia, Central Asia, Egypt, Greater Syria and Iberia are evaluated, and placed in the larger geopolitical context. In doing so, this book fills a gap in the present literature and advances a large-scale approach to the history of Islamic glass.

Markets emerge in recent historical research as important spheres of economic interaction in ancient societies. In the case of ancient Egypt, traditional models imagined an all-encompassing centralized, bureaucratic economy that left practically no place for market transactions, as many surviving documents only described the activities of the royal palace and of huge institutions?mainly temples. Yet scattered references in the sources reveal that markets and traders were crucial actors in the economic life of ancient Egypt. In this perspective, this volume aims to discuss the role of markets, traders and economic interaction (not necessarily organized through markets) and the use of “money” (metals, valuable commodities) in pre-modern societies, based on archaeological, anthropological and historical evidence. Furthermore, it intends to integrate different perspectives about the social organization of transactions and exchanges and the different forms taken by markets, from meeting places where exchanges operated under ritualized procedures and conventions, to markets in which profit-seeking activities were marginal in respect with other practices that stressed, on the contrary, community collaboration. The book also deals with social forms of pre-modern exchanges in which trust and ethnic solidarity guaranteed the validity of commercial operations in the absence of formal codes of laws or accepted authorities over long distances (trade diasporas, guilds, etc.). Finally, the volume analyzes a critical aspect of small-scale trade and markets, such as the commercialization of agricultural household production and its impact on the peasant economic strategies. In all, the book covers a diversity of topics in which recent research in the fields of economic sociology, archaeology, anthropology, economics and history proves invaluable in order to analyze the role of Egyptian trade in a broader perspective, as well as to suggest new venues of comparative research, theoretical reflection and dialogue between Egyptology and social sciences. The book will also address pre-modern social organizations of trade activities in which trust and ethnic solidarity guaranteed the validity of commercial operations in the absence of formal codes of laws or accepted authorities over long distances, particularly trade diasporas, guilds, etc. This book will be the first in the new series from Oxbow, Multidisciplinary Approaches to Ancient Societies.