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Water and the Law investigates water resource law in the statutory legislation codified by commune, oligarchic and seigneurial governments of cities and smaller municipalities in Northern and Central Italy from the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries. It aims to shed light on the relationship between water management norms and the local environment, that is how urban governments planned the use and distribution of water, and the protection of inhabited areas from the danger of flooding. Through a careful analysis of just two hundred statutory regulations that deal with water resources, the text compares the solutions adopted in Northern Italy, presenting a relatively large water supply and a dense network of tributaries of the river Po, with the situation in central areas of the peninsula (including Rome), where smaller watercourses with torrential characteristics - such as the Arno and the Tiber - interact with important cities and manufacturing centres like Florence. From this point of view, the book highlights the existence of a border between Continental Italy (north of the Tuscan-Emilian and Tuscany-Romagna Apennines) and the Peninsular Italy (south of it). In fact, when it came to building the necessary infrastructure for the supply of water and its distribution for irrigation purposes, municipal authorities in the Po area made provision for private-sector initiatives, whereas in the central regions of the country, such initiatives were largely the result of public works and projects pursued by the Popular governments at the helm of numerous cities. Lastly, the text relativises the awareness of legislators concerning the health and hygiene risks associated with the use and improper disposal of polluted and infected water, preferring to speak about a normative defence of the semantically broader category of decorum.

The cutting down of the tree in Sycamore Gap on Hadrian's Wall in September 2023 caused widespread shock in Britain and beyond, and for many was felt as a personal loss. Since its appearance in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991, the tree has become the iconic view of Hadrian's Wall. In a positive response, David Breeze, author of several books on Hadrian's Wall, invited 80 friends and colleagues to nominate their favourite view of the Wall. The views are presented in a visual celebration with photographs and specially commissioned line drawings, each accompanied by personal reflections. The wide-ranging contributions are testimony to the affection many hold for this evocative Roman frontier.

From Wilderness to Paradise presents an in-depth study of the large mosaic pavement in the East Church at Qasr el-Lebia in Cyrenaica, Libya. The pavement, which survives almost in its entirety, consists of fifty panels, each containing a different image. Despite being described as 'the finest and most interesting set of Christian mosaics yet found in Libya' (Illustrated London News, December 1957), subsequent studies have generally dismissed the pavement as a random selection of images with no symbolic meaning and no overarching scheme. This book argues that the remarkably rich and complex mosaic should be understood as a coherent whole. A discussion about reading imagery in Late Antiquity precedes a meticulous iconographical study. Within the pavement's overall coherence, the grid layout allows the panels to be read in different directions, rather like a crossword puzzle, their meaning shifting with each change of focus. Particular attention is paid to small groups of images related either by subject matter or location, and the discussion shows how the placement of certain panels impacts the surrounding imagery, giving meaning over and above the significance of individual motifs. The iconographical study concludes by considering the mosaic from the viewpoint of those moving across the pavement and the phenomenological responses this interaction may have elicited. It suggests that as the images passed fleetingly underfoot, a journey unfurled and one was led from a chaotic oceanic wilderness in the east, to a more orderly paradisiacal world further west.

Archaeology of Body and Thought explores what we as people can do with our bodies, what we can use them for, and how we can alter and understand them. It considers the ways in which individual human groups from the Neolithic to the Migration Period have perceived and treated the body. The analysis is based on artefacts found in graves, anthropomorphic images, and written sources, with an underlying assumption that principles of aesthetics or a canon of beauty express a way of understanding and evaluating corporality commonly adopted in a given culture. From this perspective, the human body is also an archaeological artefact and a specific kind of material culture (indeed, the most important one). The book investigates the extent to which ideology shapes our bodies and how our bodies create our world outlook. To that end, it compares bodies with other contemporary spheres of material culture and technology. Geographically, the study concentrates on central and eastern Europe, a region where various cultural trends have always intersected. Greece, Italy, Scandinavia, and Eurasian steppes are also included in the analysis.

The seventh issue of Groma publishes the research endeavours of young researchers strongly believing that methodological and technological evolution in archaeological research (and not only) should be based on strong ethical ground, i.e., on the paradigm of Open Science and on the free and open-source software and processes. Domizia D'Erasmo (LAD, Sapienza University of Rome), Cristina Gonzalez-Esteban (University of Southampton), Paolo Rosati (LAD, Sapienza University of Rome), Matteo Serpetti (Univertsita degli Studi della Tuscia) and Livia Tirabassi (University of Ghent) are the organisers of the 15th edition of the ArcheoFOSS International conference on open software, hardware, processes, data and formats in archaeological research (https: //archeofoss.org) and the editors of the papers collected in this volume. As editors of Groma, we look with great interest and gratitude to their work, for their competencies and most importantly for their enthusiasm which is by far the most important factor of the success of Groma.

Wessex is famous for its coasts, heaths, woodlands, chalk downland, limestone hills and gorges, settlements and farmed vales. This book provides an account of the physical form, development and operation of its landscape as it was shaped by our ancestors. Constituting no modern political entity, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and archaeological province of 'Wessex' may be defined by its natural resources and connectivity by both land and sea, for its borders include the English Channel and Severn Estuary. Following the tundra environments that dominated south of the ice sheets during the past two million years, the Wessex area experienced dramatic changes in climate, something reflected in its soils and vegetation cover. Humans hunted in the 'wildwood' established after the Ice Age, then cleared the land for agriculture and settlement in a 6,000 year old process. In more recent times, areas of cultural importance and nature conservation have been established as well as a thriving economy based largely on natural resources, trade and manufactures. The region comprises the counties of Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight), Dorset, Wiltshire, historic Somerset, and Berkshire. Whether through Thomas Hardy, a water company service area, or a royal title, Wessex has lingered in the imagination and secured its place in the construction of English history. The reader is taken through not only the physical landscape, but also the human institutions that have affected its evolution, including manors, great estates, monasteries and hunting forests; major themes include the development of agriculture, settlements, industry and transport.

Ajanta's Evolution: From Savakayana to Bodhisatvayana amid Hunnic Turmoil offers a new scholarly exploration of the rock-cut caves, their sculpture and paintings, meticulously tracing the rise, transformation, and legacy of these architectural marvels. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining elements of historical, archaeological, artistic and Buddhist studies. Part I treats the grand epoch of Sravakayana, discussing archaeological contexts, cave classification methodologies, and the emergence of rock-cut monasteries under the influence of King Hari Sena. Against the backdrop of Hunnic upheaval and societal transformations, Part II delves into the Bodhisatvayana era, chronicling the impact of Alchon or Alkhan Hun raids, migrations, and the evolution of the rock-cut monuments. The principle aim is to contextualize the site of Ajanta within a new historical setting. It seeks to address the paradox of how the Early Alchon or Alkhan Hunnic invasions, despite causing significant challenges to the development of the fifth-century cave temples, also provided opportunities for innovation. Another noteworthy aspect is the introduction of a novel taxonomical approach to the monuments. A revised chart for the taxonomy and typological classification of Buddhist rock-cut monuments is presented, mapping the evolutionary trajectory of architectural development over time.

Etudes Mesopotamiennes - Mesopotamian Studies 4 provides the first complete presentation of the ceramic vessels from the levels associated with the Neo-Assyrian occupation of Tell Masaikh, excavated by a French-Syrian archaeological mission between 1996 and 2010. Located in the valley of the Middle Euphrates in Syria, at a crossroads for encounters and on a key axis for communications and trade from Assyria to the Mediterranean, as well as from Anatolia to Babylonia, Tell Masaikh corresponds to the ancient city of Kar-Assurnasirpal, founded on the left bank of the Euphrates by Assurnasirpal II during his military conquests, and later becoming one of the residences of the Assyrian governor Nergal-eresh. But rather than showing the imposition of a material culture that only conforms to the models of the Assyrian Empire, the ceramic production of Tell Masaikh bears witness to an open cultural horizon, where Assyrian, Babylonian, Kassite and Levantine traditions blend and interact. In light of data documenting Syria's archaeological heritage in a region whose ancient history is still relatively obscure, this book not only presents a catalogue of previously unpublished finds, but also anchors the study of this material in a broader historical reflection on the ways Assyrian power interplayed in a specific regional context.

In 2014-2016 the Finnish-Swedish Archaeological Project in Mesopotamia (FSAPM) initiated a pilot study of an unexplored area in the Tur Abdin region in Northern Mesopotamia (present-day Mardin Province in southeastern Turkey). FSAPM is reliant on satellite image data sources for prospecting, identifying, recording, and mapping largely unknown archaeological sites as well as studying their landscapes in the region. The purpose is to record and document sites in this endangered area for saving its cultural heritage. The sites in question consist of fortified architectural remains in an ancient border zone between the Graeco-Roman/Byzantine world and Parthia/Persia. The location of the archaeological sites in the terrain and the visible archaeological remains, as well as their dimensions and sizes were determined from the ortorectified satellite images, which also provided coordinates. In addition, field documentation was carried out in situ with photographs and notes. The prospecting of sites in the Tur 'Abdin satellite imagery surpassed many of the expectations. In the first directory of archaeological sites identified, 40% are new and previously unknown, which is a small token of the huge research potential still hidden in northern Mesopotamia. Some variation appeared in the number of sites in each of the arbitrarily defined regions, and their characters appear to be quite different, too. The project has located new, important archaeological remains of the Roman military presence on the eastern border against Persia in late antiquity, and had also been able to suggest new border arrangements.

Archaeological work took place on South Quay, Hayle between 2010 and 2014. The development of Hayle started in the mid-18th century and it soon became a significant industrial centre. South Quay was constructed in 1818 by the locally influential and entrepreneurial Harvey family and was located adjacent to their large iron foundry. Activity on the quay evolved with, from the 1830s, the Harvey family becoming involved in ship building. This took place on newly constructed slipways connected to the quay. By the 1840s, wharfs, many other structures and buildings were established on the quay, all linked by rail tracks enabling products to be efficiently sent across the trading world. The decline in South Quay from c1860 was slow and little substantial new development occurred except for a short-lived industrial redevelopment of part of the site in the 1970s. The quay later became derelict and there was substantial fly tipping. Archaeological examination found that under the ground surface there were large areas where fragile historic remains and artefacts had survived such as 19th century rail tracks, chains and anchors. Other archaeological work undertaken included recording features such as the walls of the quay, which had been modified over time. Walls that had been part of the docks and slipways were exposed. Additionally, the former Carnsew Channel leading off South Quay was revealed and remains of its sluice gates, which was attached to the quay, were drawn. An 'Accommodation' bridge had been constructed within the quay during WWII to aid the assembly of 'Rhinos' in preparaton of D-Day in 1944, and was examined before it was removed. This publication has extensively used cartographic, photographic and documentary records to place the archaeological and structural features uncovered into context. The importance of these industrial remains has been shown by the fact that the former port of Hayle, including South Quay, had gained World Heritage status.

Julian Munby has gained a reputation over half a century in many branches of archaeological and historical knowledge, from his meticulous publication of the medieval timber structure of 126 High Street and his later elucidation of Tackley's Inn from J. Buckler's nineteenth century records when he was an undergraduate, to more recent work on the Historic Towns Atlas for Oxford. He has taken in the publication of the medieval castle at Portchester, the roofs of Chichester and many other cathedrals, the landscape history of Levens Park, Westmorland, the Round Table at Windsor Castle and the Field of the Cloth of Gold. He is an enthusiast for the history of Antiquity, topographical art, and for reading historical sources in the original. His lively and warm character and sense of fun has made him many friends who also in some sense feel they are his pupils, and this collection of papers has been assembled as a tribute. The first part comprises a preface by the editors, his daughter and son share accounts of being brought up in a household where it was normal for parents to be archaeologists, Jane Woodcock remembers ten years when Julian spent his day in an office arranging exams and cooking gourmet meals, and Deirdre Forde and others reveal his pioneering work teaching building archaeology. The second part consists of papers by friends who share his enthusiasm and in each case write on a facet of his interests, from his brother's paper on the superbly engineered tunnel at Box, a reminder that railways and railway architecture has always been one of Julian's loves, to Oxford topography in a number of papers and the later decor of Windsor Castle.

This book outlines the results of the 2018 archaeological survey at Tawi Said, located on the edge of the Sharqiyah desert in the Sultanate of Oman. The surveyed area of 150 x 125 m yielded close to 8,600 artifacts, with pottery sherds comprising the majority of the finds. Additional discoveries include shells, lithic tools, copper production waste, jewellery and fragments of soft-stone vessels. Of particular interest are two stamp seals, one of which bears a resemblance to the seals of Dilmun style. Two significant phases are attested by the finds from Tawi Said: the Wadi Suq period (2000-1600 BCE) and the Late Islamic period (1650-1970 CE). Together with other discoveries, the Dilmun-inspired stamp seal illustrates the interconnectedness of Tawi Said in interregional exchange during the Wadi Suq period. The connectivity of the Late Islamic period is similarly evidenced by imported pottery, glass bangles and other artefacts. The absence of architectural remains suggests that Tawi Said was a temporary place used by mobile groups throughout its existence.

Advances in UAE Archaeology details the results of new excavations conducted across the United Arab Emirates over the last few years. These excavations have revealed a wealth of new data on all periods of UAE archaeology from the Palaeolithic to the recent past. Some of these discoveries have filled in important gaps in our knowledge, while others have fundamentally revised what we thought we knew already. For example, the Marawah Island excavations have added a new facet to our understanding of the Neolithic period by revealing intriguing and hitherto unknown funerary rituals. Excavations in Al Ain in the emirate of Abu Dhabi continue to reveal extraordinary evidence of falaj irrigation, stretching back 3000 years. The ubiquity of this system across this oasis city further validates its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Of particular importance is the discovery of extensive remains from the Late Pre-Islamic period, a significant time in history that has been best revealed in the excavations at Mleiha in the emirate of Sharjah. The research presented here was conducted by specialists from across the world working alongside an ever-growing cadre of Emirati archaeologists who will take the lead in the coming years in revealing more of this country's extraordinary archaeology and history.

South Asian Goddesses and the Natural Environment is a multidisciplinary collection of 11 essays ranging from the pre-Vedic to the modern era and incorporating research on Hindu, Buddhist and tribal cultures. The authors ask whether the worship of goddesses, strongly linked to fertility rituals, might have mitigated the ecological decline of South Asia in the pre-British and post-colonial eras. The manifold powers of the Devi, whether nurturing or destructive, could be constructed as companions to the unstoppable forces of Nature. This binary paradigm, however, is misleading. For millions of South Asian people, the Devi is Nature and Nature is She. Amongst scholars, the connections between the South Asian Goddesses and the natural environment have been debated and contested for centuries. This collection of essays, the last of a trilogy on the Devi or iconic female by Australian scholars and their collaborators, interrogates the paradoxes of worshipping the feminine divine and yet ignoring the natural environment that validates Her existence. Historical and cultural sources, many of them in Sanskrit, point to the Devi-Nature complex but in ignoring the role of human agency, appear to exonerate society from taking responsibility for the ecological devastation manifested throughout the South Asian region. The Devi is omnipotent but in the role of the nurturing Mother she will not intervene if we remain passive. South Asian deities teach us to respect the environment, a necessary but insufficient condition for compelling us to behave in a manner that respects the wonders of the universe.

City of culture, 2600 BC presents the city which lies beneath the surface of the archaeological site of Abu Salabikh in south Iraq, first investigated in the 1960s and excavated in the 1970s and 1980s. It starts from the facts on the ground, and shows how the material remains can resurrect the city, illuminated by its library of literary and lexical texts, and documents from institutional administration. The archaeology and the textual data reinforce each other and together convey a picture of the city and its architecture, agricultural and industrial enterprises, and social structure. These are all integrated with our wider knowledge of south Mesopotamia at this time, and with the world view given us by the rich body of Sumerian literature - myths, epics and religious texts, but also homespun secular philosophy - to create a vivid image of city life in 2600 BC. This is an account of one city and what it tells us. Cities were the defining components of early Mesopotamia, acting as the base for all economic, social, political and cultural activity. With their shared languages and traditions they belonged to a single cultural order, and as with other similar groupings of individual urban centres - whether in Greece, Italy or China - the rivalry and emulation generates a vibrant but varied and innovative world. The book concludes therefore with a more general account of "The Land" (kalam) in the pre-imperial Early Dynastic era, and with an assessment of the nature of the early Mesopotamian urban scene.

En este libro se aborda por primera vez el trabajo de la industria osea en una provincia del Imperio romano. Hasta la fecha unicamente se habia tratado de forma particular el material depositado en un museo, o bien de un yacimiento concreto. Por tanto, estamos ante una obra pionera en la que podemos obtener una vision global y general de esta industria en un amplio territorio, Hispania. En este aspecto, en este libro se muestra las peculiaridades que se encuentran en cada territorio, asi como las influencias y conexiones locales, regionales, y con con el resto del Imperio. En una primera parte se aborda la situacion general en que se encuentra la investigacion, tanto a nivel nacional como internacional. A partir de aqui, nos centramos en los talleres hispanos y su produccion, para proseguir y profundizar, a traves de una clasificacion sencilla y abierta (con la finalidad de que se puedan ir incorporando nuevas piezas), en un analisis pormenorizado de las distintos objetos. Para una mejor comprension y manejo, la obra cuenta con abundantes imagenes en las que se puede apreciar las caracteristicas descritas y sus pequenas o grandes diferencias. El trabajo se completa con una descripcion detallada de cada grupo y posibles variantes, localizacion y areas por donde se difunde, cronologia de la pieza (cuando es posible) o de la agrupacion por comparacion, y, sobre todo, un analisis de conjunto con el que se pretende conocer mejor el grupo a tratar. Se incide de forma especial en aquellas piezas que no son tan frecuentes en los muestrarios que conocemos.

Exeter has long been known as a Roman city, but it was only in 1971 that its origin as a legionary fortress of the mid-first century AD was revealed. That discovery was the result of excavation work undertaken by the first professional archaeological unit to be based in the city. The author was one of those involved and this book explains how innovative archaeological techniques introduced in the 1970s were employed, not only to construct a picture of the legionary fortress, but to demonstrate with some confidence that the 5,000 strong garrison which manned it was the Second Augustan Legion. Whilst at Exeter the legion built its own stone bathhouse. Constructed only around 15-20 years after the Roman invasion in AD 43, it is the earliest known monumental masonry building in the South-West of Britain. Significantly, it was also possible to establish that Exeter became a Roman regional capital around AD 80 after the departure of the legion to Wales. The redundant bathhouse was converted to a basilica (council chamber and administrative centre) for the fledgling city which went on to acquire a circuit of walls by the start of the third century. Exeter continued to flourish as a Roman city on the very western edge of the Roman Empire before its ultimate demise in the late fourth century.

Ce livre reunit une vingtaine de contributions regroupees dans cinq parties: - De l'atelier a l'objet: artisanats, productions et instrumentum; - Croyances et cultes; - Iconographie, epigraphie et archeologie funeraire; - Habiter et organiser un territoire; - Decorer un edifice, qui refletent une grande partie des themes de recherche de Jean-Claude Beal a qui ces etudes sont offertes. Elles sont essentiellement centrees sur la Gaule romaine, et plus marginalement sur les provinces romaines occidentales, a l'image des aires geographiques sur lesquelles il travaille.

The ancient Egyptian Civilization dominated the northeast corner of Africa-including modern-day Egypt and, at times, northern Sudan-from about 3000 BC at the beginning of the Dynastic period to AD 642 at the end of the Roman period. Most of what it left behind consists of stones of many kinds. There were building stones for temples, pyramids, mastaba tombs, and other monumental constructions; and utilitarian stones for tools, weapons, and a wide array of mundane applications, including the raw materials for faience, glass, medicines, paint pigments, and pottery. There were also ornamental stones for decorative and structural elements in buildings, obelisks, statues, sarcophagi, stelae, vessels, shrines, offering tables, mace heads, cosmetic palettes, and other sculpted objects; and gemstones for jewellery, amulets, seals, and other small decorative items. Still more stones were processed to extract their metals, including gold, copper, iron, and lead. Two persistent problems in Egyptology have been the geological identification of these stones, and the recognition of their sources. Archaeology and Geology of Ancient Egyptian Stones seeks to identify and describe all the rocks and minerals employed by the ancient Egyptians using proper geological nomenclature, and to give an account of their sources in so far as they are known. A secondary objective is to describe the multitudinous uses of the stones as well as the technologies employed to extract, transport, carve, and thermally treat them.

Reconstructing the Development of Somerset's Early Medieval Church uses Somerset as a case study in order to contribute to a broader understanding of how the Church developed across the British Isles during the transition from the post-Roman Church to that in existence in the 11th century. To facilitate this a large retrogressive data set was constructed which enabled new patterns of development to be identified; this has pushed forward understanding of how Somerset and the South-West evolved, including the reconstruction of Somerset's early great estates and early medieval parochiae. Crucially, it demonstrates how the medieval archdeaconries and deaneries correlate with Somerset's early great estates. This book identifies the pastorally pre-eminent early medieval churches across Somerset by using a weighting system which enables comparative assessments of different types of evidence, including both historical and topographical, to enable the changing significance of individual churches to be assessed. The two most important conclusions are that the development of the Church in Somerset varied from parochia to parochia; there is no one trajectory of Church development and that there is only a weak link between early medieval minster settlements and later urbanisation. The book collates and cross-references all the earlier research into Somerset's early medieval Church and in so doing becomes the most up-to-date study of Somerset's post-Roman churches. The retrogressive systematic approach to the collection and collating of data provides a methodology for understanding the development of the early medieval Church in other regions.

This book provides a comprehensive and detailed review of the evidence for Early Bronze Age mortuary rituals on the Oman Peninsula, describing the research conducted, synthesizing the resulting data, and presenting a complete view of the state of knowledge on the topic. The author demonstrates that the construction, use, and location of mortuary cairns in the ancient landscape is no simple question in the Early Bronze Age archaeology of the region. This book explores the characteristics of ancient funerary monuments and rituals, demonstrating variations in these practices, as well as evidence for continued cairn use during this period and how some communities elaborated mortuary rituals. This book will serve as an invaluable reference volume for scholars working in the region, as an introduction for students to mortuary archaeology and to models that can be used to explore this aspect of prehistoric life on the Oman Peninsula, and as a valuable repository of currently available data. The book features extensive demonstrative illustrations and appendices summarizing the architecture, interments, and material culture found in all published Early Bronze Age mortuary monuments in the region.

Ash-sharq is a journal devoted to short articles on the archaeology, history and society of the Ancient Near East.

A Landscape of Conflict? Rural Fortifications in the Argolid (400-146 BC) is the first systematic study of Late Classical and Hellenistic rural fortifications in the territories of ancient Argos and the city-states of the Argolic Akte (northeastern Peloponnese). Based on one of the largest regional corpora of Greek fortified sites to date, the volume investigates the function of rural fortifications by placing them in the context of their surrounding landscape. This approach - combining 'traditional' methods of ancient history and landscape archaeology with GIS-based data analyses - helps to readdress the long-standing tension between 'military-strategic' and 'non-military' research agendas in Greek fortification studies, and highlights that Classical and Hellenistic rural fortifications are neither a priori fortified farmsteads nor parts of military-strategic networks of territorial defence. Instead, rural fortifications emerge in this monograph as multifunctional and multifaceted sites, which open a new window into different forms of 'formal' and 'informal' conflict in the ancient countryside and bear witness to a remarkable degree of local motivation and agency. The study thus demonstrates how ancient fortifications can provide an unexpected and so far much underappreciated opportunity for writing local or regional Greek histories - political and military as well as social and economic - from archaeological sources.

Papers from the forty-sixth meeting of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, held at the British Museum, London, 13-15 July 2012

Contents: The Paleolithic archaeology of Shirak Province and the open-air site of Aghvorik; Newly discovered Early and Middle Bronze Age tombs in Shirak, Armenia; On some Late Helladic migrants into Anatolia named in Hittite and Luwian sources, their migration to Iron Age Cilicia and their return to Greece in legend; On the origin and meaning of the Assyrian toponym Tabal; Die Mar vom griechischen und/oder wolfischen Ursprung von Lykiern, Lykaonen, Lukka und Luwija; A recently discovered Urartian stele dedicated to the god Ua from Avnik/Erzurum in East Turkey; A metal belt in the Orumiyeh museum, Iran; New observations on Urartian quarrying in Lake Van Basin; Achaemenid ceramics from the site Beniamin II (Shirak, Armenia): the end of the 6th to the mid 4th centuries BC

This volume presents a study of the tomb of Kha-em-hat TT 57 at Qurna, West Luxor, which dates back to the 18th Dynasty - the reign of King Amenhotep III. It is considered one of the most important Egyptian tomb discoveries, containing rare scenes and revealing development of the religious rituals of the time. The tomb is still in very good condition and today is open to visitors.

Schinkel 'in Athens': Meta-Narratives of 19th-Century City Planning proposes a fresh appraisal of Karl Friedrich Schinkel's urban design legacy and his involvement in the design of modern Athens in the 1830s. From the 1830s onwards, the incompatibility between Schinkel's position as a civil servant and his vocation as a scholar inspired by Fichte led him along a transcendental path of life. Transcendentalism set its own terms and conditions under which Schinkel's project of a palace atop the Acropolis of Athens (1834) might be understood. The 'contextual analysis' of Schinkel's work in this book challenges the view of this proposal as a utopian scheme, detached from the realities of nineteenth-century Greece. On the other hand, the first plan of Athens, supposedly the work of two of his former Bauakademie students, ratified a year earlier, in 1833, proposed the location of the royal residence in the new town at a few hundred metres north of the Acropolis. But, though the two options for Otto's palace were topographically dissimilar they did retain a common strong, topological significance - which, along with other factors analysed in this book, provides ample evidence for re-thinking the authorship of the new plan of the capital city of Greece. Schinkel 'in Athens', by all means!

Matriarchy in Bronze Age Crete: A Perspective from Archaeomythology and Modern Matriarchal Studies offers a very different perspective of Crete than is usually found in academic writing; making a compelling case for a matriarchal Bronze Age Crete. Bronze Age Crete evokes for many the image of an exceptionally sophisticated civilization: peaceful, artistic, and refined; a society in which women were highly visible and important, and the supreme deity was a Goddess. Yet, despite the fact that authorities acknowledge that the preeminent deity of Crete was a Female Divine, and that women played a major role in Cretan society, there is a gap in the scholarly literature, and a lively, ongoing debate regarding the centrality of women and the existence of matriarchy in Bronze Age Crete. The purpose of this work is to fill that gap, and to advance the debate over whether or not ancient Crete was a woman-centered and matriarchal society toward a more complex, detailed, and certain conclusion. To that end this publication utilises the field of modern matriarchal studies, with its carefully elucidated definition of the term matriarchy, and employs the methodology of archaeomythology - the use of historical, mythological, linguistic, and folkloric as well as archaeological sources. Given its scope, the volume will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields encompassed by archaeomythology, as well as the fields of women's studies, women's history, women's spirituality, and modern matriarchal studies.

Gallaecia Gothica offers a new interpretation of the Argimundus rebellion, one of the most difficult challenges of Reccared's reign. There are no specific details of how the conspiracy came about, but the throne was seriously threatened. The Chronicle of John of Biclaro underlined the gravity of this menace in his description of the punishment suffered by the rebel and his collaborators. His categorical condemnation of the attempted overthrow of the monarch is unlike that given to any other uprising narrated in the Chronicle, and it shows the importance that the abbot of Biclaro gave it in his narration. The fact that the Chronicle notes that Argimundus was not only a member of the Aula Regia but also a dux prouinciae (duke of a province), combined with the status of Gallaecia as a newly conquered province, suggests that this was not just a palace conspiracy, but a genuine provincial revolt which could have ruined the political settlement established by Leovigild and Reccared. However, it is difficult to prove Argimundus' ultimate aim: to replace Reccared on the Visigothic throne or, on the contrary, to restore the old Suevic kingdom in Gallaecia. This book uses numismatic and archaeological evidence seems to suggest the latter view.

Vol. 20 of Antiguo Oriente for 2022. AntOr is the annual, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal published by the Center of Studies of Ancient Near Eastern History (CEHAO). The journal publishes manuscripts related to the history of societies of the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Paleolithic to the Early Islamic Period. Antiguo Oriente publishes articles and book reviews in Spanish, English and French.