Graffiti As Devotion Along The Nile And Beyond

For ancient societies, graffiti are personal expressions otherwise rare in the archaeological and historical record. This volume is focused around a group of ancient and medieval figural graffiti found in 2015 by an archaeological project of the Kelsey Museum, University of Michigan, at the site of El-Kurru, a royal burial ground in north Sudan.

Contributions by leading archaeologists and historians pay tribute to Paul Bidwell, admired for his ground-breaking work both in the south-west and the military north of Roman Britain. This collection will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in either the civil or military aspects of Roman Britain, or the frontiers of the Roman empire.

Religion plays a central role in nearly every aspect in people's life of most pre-modern cultures. Especially the interconnection between religion and politics is a common fact but the details of this relation and interacting processes behind this are not substantially studied. Therefore, this volume does not aim to confirm the linkage of religion and politics in general but to investigate its functionalities in political processes. A focus is placed on the political role of religious personnel beyond their religious and cultic tasks and their influence in pre-modern societies from a cross-cultural perspective. Specialists from various disciplines present their research based on case studies. Thereby this interdisciplinary volume covers a wide geographical and chronological range from ancient Egypt in the Bronze Age until medieval England. These papers are organised according to core functions questioning the instrumentalisation of religious personnel.

The diverse developments in textile research of the last decade, along with the increased recognition of the importance of textile studies in adjacent fields, now merit a dedicated, full-length publication entitled “Ancient Textile Production from an Interdisciplinary Perspective: Humanities and Natural Sciences Interwoven for our Understanding of Textiles”. With this volume, the authors and the editors wish to illustrate to the current impact of textile archaeology on the scholarly perception of the past (not limited to archaeology alone). The volume presents new insights into the consumption, meaning, use and re-use of textiles and dyes, all of which are topics of growing importance in textile research. As indicated by the title, we demonstrate the continued importance of interdisciplinarity by showcasing several ‘interwoven’ approaches to environmental and archaeological remains, textual and iconographic sources, archaeological experiments and ethnographic data, from a large area covering Europe and the Mediterranean, Near East, Africa and Asia. The chronological span is deliberately wide, including materials dating from c. 6th millennium BCE to c. mid-14th century CE. The volume is organised in four parts that aim to reflect the main areas of the textile research in 2020. After the two introductory chapters (Part I: About this Volume and Textile Research in 2020), follow two chapters referring to dyes and dyeing technology in which analytical and material-based studies are linked to contextual sources (Part II: Interdisciplinarity of Colour: Dye Analyses and Dyeing Technologies). The six chapters of Part III: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Textile Tools discuss textiles and textile production starting from the analyses of tools, whether functional or as representative of technological developments or user identity. Archaeological and cultural contexts as well as textile traditions are the main topics of the six chapters in Part IV: Traditions and Contexts: Fibres, Fabrics, Techniques, Uses and Meanings. The two final chapters in Part V: Digital Tools refer to the use of digital tools in textile research, presenting two different case studies.

"The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East offers a comprehensive and fully illustrated survey of the history of Egypt and Western Asia (Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Iran) in five volumes, from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander of Great. The authors represent a highly international mix of leading academics whose expertise brings alive the people, places and times of the remote past. The emphasis lies firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities under investigation. The individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, giving special attention to the most recent archaeological finds and how they have impacted our interpretation. The first volume covers the long period from the mid-tenth millennium to the late third millennium BC and presents the history of the Near East in ten chapters "From the Beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad". Key topics include the domestication of animals and plants, the first permanent settlements, the subjugation and appropriation of the natural environment, the emergence of complex states and belief systems, the invention of the earliest writing systems and the wide-ranging trade networks that linked diverse population groups across deserts, mountains and oceans"--