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Author: Matthew G. Knight
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-07-31
Total Pages: 196
ISBN-13: 1789692490
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →How did past communities view, understand and communicate their pasts? And how can we, as archaeologists, understand this? This volume brings together a range of case studies in which objects of the past were encountered and reappropriated.
Author: Matthew G. Knight
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Published: 2022-02-28
Total Pages: 200
ISBN-13: 178925700X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The destruction and deposition of metalwork is a widely recognised phenomenon across Bronze Age Europe. Weapons were decommissioned and thrown into rivers; axes were fragmented and piled in hoards; and ornaments were crushed, contorted and placed in certain landscapes. Interpretation of this material is often considered in terms of whether such acts should be considered ritual offerings, or functional acts for storing, scrapping and recycling the metal. This book approaches this debate from a fresh perspective, by focusing on how the metalwork was destroyed and deposited as a means to understand the reasons behind the process. To achieve this, this study draws on experimental archaeology, as well as developing a framework for assessing what can be considered deliberate destruction. Understanding these processes not only helps us to recognise how destruction happened, but also gives us insights into the individuals involved in these practices. Through an examination of metalwork from south-west Britain, it is possible to observe the complexities involved at a localised level in the acts of destruction and deposition, as well as how they were linked to people and places. This case study is used to consider the social role of destruction and deposition more broadly in the Bronze Age, highlighting how it transformed over time and space.
Author: Anthony Harding
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Published: 2021-01-18
Total Pages: 207
ISBN-13: 3110705869
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Bronze Age of Europe is a crucial formative period that underlay the civilisations of Greece and Rome, fundamental to our own modern civilisation. A systematic description of it appeared in 2013, but this work offers a series of personal studies of aspects of the period by one of its best known practitioners. The book is based on the idea that different aspects of the Bronze Age can be studied as a series of “lives”: the life of people and peoples, of objects, of places, and of societies. Each of these is taken in turn and a range of aspects presented that offer interesting insights into the period. These are based on recent research (for instance on the genetic history of the Old World) as well as on fundamental earlier studies. In addition, there is a consideration of the history of Bronze Age studies, the “life of the Bronze Age”. The book provides a novel approach to the Bronze Age based on the personal interests of a well-known Bronze Age scholar. It offers insights into a period that students of other aspects of the ancient world, as well as Bronze Age specialists and general readers, will find interesting and stimulating.
Author: Danica Ramsey-Brimberg
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2024-05-15
Total Pages: 336
ISBN-13: 1040013333
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Different approaches have been conducted to analyse the interactions of the different belief systems in the early medieval world. This book assesses the relationship between clerics and Scandinavian-influenced laity in the Irish Sea area through the placement of furnished graves at or near ecclesiastical sites in the ninth through the eleventh centuries. Other areas of funerary studies have moved beyond a dichotomy of Christianity and paganism, acknowledging that practices can be multifaceted. Yet, statements regarding Viking Age furnished graves in or near ecclesiastical sites are still not as pervasively open to this line of thinking. To bridge this gap, this book delves into the historiography and context of the burial practices through multidisciplinary analysis. The ecclesiastical sites and furnished graves of the eastern (southwest Scotland and northwest England), central (Isle of Man), and western (Ireland and Northern Ireland) Irish Sea areas are then examined using various sources to understand their contexts and relationships. In the final chapters, the sites and graves are brought together to identify any trends, any unique circumstances that led to local variances, and their fit into the larger picture. Viking Age furnished graves can be seen as an acceptable variation among an array of burial practices, and the relationship between the clergy and laity is far more complex and closely tied than has been portrayed. Viking and Ecclesiastical Interactions in the Irish Sea Area from the 9th to 11th Centuries will appeal to students and scholars alike interested in the history of the Vikings in the British-Irish Isles and their relationships with ecclesiastical institutions.
Author: Andrew Sangster
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2023-03-02
Total Pages: 338
ISBN-13: 1636243134
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Wars never run according to plan, perhaps never more so than during the Italian campaign, 1943–45, where necessary coordination between the different armies added additional complexity to Allied plans. Errors in the strategies, tactics, the coalition tensions, and operations at campaign command level can clearly be seen in firsthand accounts of the period. This new account examines the Italian campaign, from Sicily to surrender in 1945, exploring the strategy, intentions, motives, plans, and deeds. It then offers a detailed insight into the five commanders who led the battles in Italy—the two British commanders, Montgomery and Alexander; two American, Patton and Clark; and the leading German commander, Field Marshal Kesselring. Their personal notes and accounts, taken alongside archival material, provides some surprising conclusions—Montgomery was not quite the master of war he is portrayed as; Patton had serious flaws, exposed by wasting men’s lives to save a relative and overlooking the shooting of prisoners of war; Clark lost lives to bolster his image; Alexander the gentleman was far too vague to be effective as a senior leader. Meanwhile, condemned war criminal Kesselring appears to be the most efficient and also, like Alexander, one of the most popular leaders.
Author: Ralph Haeussler
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Published: 2023-03-23
Total Pages: 338
ISBN-13: 1789259665
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Roman world was diverse and complex. And so were religious understandings and practices as mirrored in the enormous variety presented by archaeological, iconographic, and epigraphic evidence. Conventional approaches principally focus on the political role of civic cults as a means of social cohesion, often considered to be instrumentalized by elites. But by doing so, religious diversity is frequently overlooked, marginalizing ‘deviating’ cult activities that do not fit the Classical canon, as well as the multitude of funerary practices and other religious activities that were all part of everyday life. In the Roman Empire, a person’s religious experiences were shaped by many and sometimes seemingly incompatible cult practices, whereby the ‘civic’ and ‘imperial’ cults might have had the least impact of all. Our goal therefore is to rethink our methodologies, aiming for a more dynamic image of religion that takes into account the varied and often contradictory choices and actions of individual, which reflects the discrepant religious experiences in the Roman world. Is it possible to ‘poke into the mind’ of an individual in Roman times, whatever his/her status and ethnicity, and try to understand the individual’s diverse experiences in such a complex, interconnected empire, exploring the choices that were open to an individual? This also raises the question whether the concept of individuality is valid for Roman times. In some periods, the impact of individual actions can be more momentous: the very first adoption of Roman-style sculpture, cult practices or Latin theonyms for indigenous deities can set in motion long-term processes that will significantly influence people’s perceptions of local deities, their characteristics, and functions. Do individual choices and preferences prevail over collective identities in the Roman Empire compared to pre-Roman times? To examine these questions, this volume presents case studies that analyze individual actions in the religious sphere.
Author: Aaron Perzanowski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2022-02-08
Total Pages: 367
ISBN-13: 1108837654
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Right to Repair reveals how companies stop us from fixing our devices and explains how we can fight back.
Author: Mary S. Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2022-10-06
Total Pages: 499
ISBN-13: 1009008781
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Narrative Science examines the use of narrative in scientific research over the last two centuries. It brings together an international group of scholars who have engaged in intense collaboration to find and develop crucial cases of narrative in science. Motivated and coordinated by the Narrative Science project, funded by the European Research Council, this volume offers integrated and insightful essays examining cases that run the gamut from geology to psychology, chemistry, physics, botany, mathematics, epidemiology, and biological engineering. Taking in shipwrecks, human evolution, military intelligence, and mass extinctions, this landmark study revises our understanding of what science is, and the roles of narrative in scientists' work. This title is also available as Open Access.
Author: Jay Johnston
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2024-04-30
Total Pages: 144
ISBN-13: 1108956769
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This Element takes as its remit the production and use of amulets. The focus will be on amulets with no, or minimal, textual content like those comprising found stone, semi-precious gem and/or animal body parts. That is a material form that is unaccompanied by directive textual inscription. The analysis considers this materiality to understand its context of use including ritual and metaphysical operations. Through discussion of selected case studies from British, Celtic, and Scandinavian cultures, it demonstrates the associative range of meaning that enabled the attribution of power/agency to the amuletic object Uniquely, it will consider this material culture from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing together insights from the disciplines of cultural studies, religious studies, 'folk' studies, archaeology and Scandinavian studies. It develops the concept of 'trans-aniconism' to encapsulates an amulet's temporal relations and develops the proposition of 'landscape amulets.'
Author: Sarah Laurenson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2023-06-29
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 1501357999
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Shortlisted for the History Book Award in Scotland's National Book Awards, 2023 During the long 19th century, Scotland was home to an established body of skilled jewellers who were able to access a range of materials from the country's varied natural landscape: precious gold and silver; sparkling crystals and colourful stones; freshwater pearls, shells and parts of rare animals. Following these materials on their journey from hill and shore, across the jeweller's bench and on to the bodies of wearers, this book challenges the persistent notion that the forces of industrialisation led to the decline of craft. It instead reveals a vivid picture of skilled producers who were driving new and revived areas of hand skill, and who were key to fostering a focused cultural engagement with the natural world – among both producers and consumers – through the things they made. By placing producers and their skill in cultural context, the book reveals how examining the materiality of even the smallest of objects can offer new and multifaceted insights into the wider transformations that marked British history during the long 19th century. Uniting a vast array of jewellery objects with a range of other sources – including paintings, engravings, newspaper reports, letters, inventories of big houses and small workshops, sketchbooks, novels, works of literary geology and early travel writings – this book provides a deep dive into the cultural history of jewellery production through accessible thematic studies. In doing so, it sets out innovative methodologies for writing about the histories of craft production, the natural environment and the material world. Now available in a paperback edition, it will be an important addition to the bookshelf of cultural historians and those interested in Scotland's wild landscapes and natural objects.
