Prehistoric Archaeology

From the Chalcolithic onwards the culture and society of Sumer flourished along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers with communities living close to the ancient shoreline in an environment that was closely linked to the exploitation of fluvial systems the sea and the unique marshlands of the area. This volume gathers together research first presented as part of a workshop entitled Sumer and the Sea: Deltas Shoreline and Urban Water Management in 3rd Millennium Mesopotamia to explore the interaction between Sumerians and their water-dominated environment. The chapters gathered here offer updates on methodologies and the most recent research from the field to provide new understanding and fresh insights into how the Sumerians adapted to the world in which they lived.

The idea of the Nordic nations as champions of gender equality is firmly rooted in today’s perceptions of society. But how does such a modern comprehension influence our views of history? Does our understanding of gender impact on how we see the past? And do the ways in which we gender the past have an effect on our present identities?

From the Stone Age to the Early Modern period and from warriors and queens to households and burials this groundbreaking volume draws together research conducted as part of the project Gendering the Nordic Past an inter-Nordic collaboration aimed at (re)evaluating and revitalizing the field of gender studies in the region. The chapters gathered in this volume contributed by archaeologists and historians theologians art historians and specialists in gender studies aim to offer novel perspectives on the ways in which we gender the past. While many of the chapters focus explicitly on the Nordic countries comparisons are also drawn with other regions in order to provide both internal and external views on the role of the collective past in present Nordic identities. The result presented here is an essential dialogue into the importance of gender in creating and maintaining past identities as well as a new understanding of how the identities that we construct for the past can relate to heritage narratives.

The site of Lori Berd located in northern Armenia is home to an extraordinary necropolis that once housed the dead of the local elite during a period that spanned from 2200 to 400 BC. Influenced both by Urartian conquests from the south and by invasions from the Eurasian nomadic tribes from the north the people of this region buried their dead with prestigious artefacts complex customs and a particular reverence shown during the later stages of the Early and Middle Iron Ages (1000–550 BC). This volume offers a detailed account of the archaeological significance of the site providing detailed accounts of thirty-one tombs the majority of which have never before been comprehensively published and seeking to set Lori Berd in its broader historical and material context. Through this approach the book offers a comprehensive exploration of the Iron Age in the South Caucasus unravelling the interconnected themes of wealth power and cultural expressions.

Hoards are among the most enigmatic of archaeological finds. The term ‘hoard’ itself has been applied to different assemblages across space and time from the Stone Age into the modern era with an inventory that typically includes artefacts made of valuable raw materials to which significant symbolic meanings can also be assigned. Archaeologists have been trying to understand this phenomenon for much of the last century sometimes emphasizing the universal nature of hoards but more typically focusing on specific regions chronologies and finds. They have for the most part used results derived from typolo-chronological methods. Contemporary archaeology has however developed a broad spectrum of paradigms and methods and hoardresearch in the twenty-first century draws on an increasingly wide range of approaches.This volume presents examples of research that make use of these multi-faceted approaches through a focus on European hoards of metal objects dating to the Bronze and Iron Ages. The contributors to this volume make use of diverse methods among them archaeometallurgical analyses studies of use- and production-wear destruction patterns and landscape archaeology but together their common denominator is the search for a methodological toolkit that will allow researchers to better understand the phenomenon of hoard-deposition more broadly.