Sagalassos I


Book Description

Sagalassos, once the metropolis of the Western Taurus range (Pisidia, Turkey), was only thoroughly surveyed in 1884 and 1885 by an Austrian team directed by K. Lanckoronski. In 1986-1989 this work was resumed by a British-Belgian team co-directed by Dr. Stephen Mitchell (University College of Swansea) and by Prof. Dr. Marc Waelkens (Catholic University of Leuven). In 1990 Sagalassos became a full scale Belgian project and a leading center for interdisciplinary archaeological and archaeometrical research. Due to its altitude, the site is one of the best preserved towns from classical antiquity, with a rich architectural and sculptural tradition dating from the second century BC to the sixth century AD. From early Imperial times until the early Byzantine period a complete range of coarse and red slip wares was produced locally. Excavations are concentrated on the upper and lower agoras to document the political and commercial life in the town and also in the area where a late Hellenistic fountain house, which still functions to date, and a Roman library were discovered. Major efforts are undertaken to restore the excavated monuments in their old glory. Several disciplines integrate the town again within its ancient environment and document the central role which Sagalassos played in the area.




Great House Communities Across the Chacoan Landscape


Book Description

Beginning in the tenth century, Chaco Canyon emerged as an important center whose influence shaped subsequent cultural developments throughout the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. Archaeologists investigating the prehistory of Chaco Canyon have long been impressed by its massive architecture, evidence of widespread trading activities, and ancient roadways that extended across the region. Research on Chaco Canyon today is focused on what the remains indicate about the social, political, and ideological organization of the Chacoan people. Communities with great houses located some distance away are of particular interest, because determining how and why peripheral areas became associated with the central canyon provides insight into the evolution of the Chacoan tradition. This volume brings together twelve chapters by archaeologists who suggest that the relationship between Chaco Canyon and outlying communities was not only complex but highly variable. Their new research reveals that the most distant groups may have simply appropriated Chacoan symbolism for influencing local social and political relationships, whereas many of the nearest communities appear to have interacted closely with the central canyon--perhaps even living there on a seasonal basis. The multifaceted approach taken by these authors provides different and refreshing perspectives on Chaco. Their contributions offer new insight into what a Chacoan community is and shed light on the nature of interactions among prehistoric communities.




Leaving Mesa Verde


Book Description

It is one of the great mysteries in the archaeology of the Americas: the depopulation of the northern Southwest in the late thirteenth-century AD. Considering the numbers of people affected, the distances moved, the permanence of the departures, the severity of the surrounding conditions, and the human suffering and culture change that accompanied them, the abrupt conclusion to the farming way of life in this region is one of the greatest disruptions in recorded history. Much new paleoenvironmental data, and a great deal of archaeological survey and excavation, permit the fifteen scientists represented here much greater precision in determining the timing of the depopulation, the number of people affected, and the ways in which northern Pueblo peoples coped—and failed to cope—with the rapidly changing environmental and demographic conditions they encountered throughout the 1200s. In addition, some of the scientists in this volume use models to provide insights into the processes behind the patterns they find, helping to narrow the range of plausible explanations. What emerges from these investigations is a highly pertinent story of conflict and disruption as a result of climate change, environmental degradation, social rigidity, and conflict. Taken as a whole, these contributions recognize this era as having witnessed a competition between differing social and economic organizations, in which selective migration was considerably hastened by severe climatic, environmental, and social upheaval. Moreover, the chapters show that it is at least as true that emigration led to the collapse of the northern Southwest as it is that collapse led to emigration.




Lulu Linear Punctated


Book Description

Many archaeologists and anthropologists of note contributed chapters to this collection, which pays tribute to archaeologist George Irving Quimby on his 1983 retirement from the University of Washington. James Griffin, Albert Spaulding, Lewis Binford, David Brose, and many more write here about archaeology in the Midwest and other areas of North America. Griffin contributes the first chapter: “George Irving Quimby: The Formative Years.”







Author Catalog


Book Description




Dearest of Geniuses


Book Description

Theodate Pope Riddle was one of America's first successful female architects. She was the only child of a Cleveland millionaire whose hobby was collecting Impressionist paintings. Her first architectural project, a mansion she designed to house her father's magnificent collection, is now the Hill-Stead Museum, in Farmington, CT. Theodate was an educator, who founded the prestigious Avon Old Farms School. She created its spectacular medieval campus and developed its progressive curriculum. She was a Spiritualist, who held a major position in the Society for Psychical Research. An early feminist, Theodate did not care what others thought or said, and she rebelled against society's norms and restrictions. While an unmarried woman, she took in a two-year-old boy, and after his death from polio, she raised two more orphans. She fought the men who tried to take over her school. She spoke and did as she pleased. In May 1915, despite the danger of traveling to England, she sailed on the Lusitania, and when the ship was hit by a German torpedo, she refused to join the panicked crowd trying to get into lifeboats. Instead, she jumped into the icy Irish Sea and miraculously survived. Theo's husband, John Riddle, called her his "Dearest of Geniuses," because, despite failures, tragedies, and conflicts, Theo always forged ahead. She was an extraordinary, gifted woman, who fulfilled her ambition to make the world a more beautiful and better place.




Seeking The Center Place


Book Description

A detailed view of the last Pueblo communities in the Mesa Verde region, this volume draws from a common database derived from extensive investigations at several sites.




Science and Archaeology


Book Description

If they share one common theme, these collected papers clearly indicate the directions of current research in archaeological chemistry--a term that, taken in a broad sense, includes techniques and methodologies of many areas of science other than chemistry. Dr. Brill, in fact, advocates use of the term "archaeometry" (coined by Dr. E. T. Hall of Oxford University) to describe more accurately the work of quite a few investigators in the field.Twenty-one chapters by distinguished contributors are organized in three main categories according to research objectives. Part One contains investigations of individual objects or small groups of objects, describing how they were made and their places in the early history of technology or science. Studies in Part Two consist of analyses of such diverse materials as metals, pottery, ob- sidian, and amber to uncover patterns of chemical composition for the classification of fragments according to provenance or date. A number of chapters in this section deal with neutron-activation analysis. The book's final part describes four techniques used for dating archaeological objects.The volume is generous in scope, ranging over a variety of approaches and motivations, research tools, and archaeological materials. Some of the more technically advanced studies cover up-to-date and complex instrumentation for analyzing samples more accurately, more rapidly, and with greater convenience than before, while others emphasize the detailed handling or "autopsy" of the objects themselves. The material in this book was originally prepared for the Fourth Symposium on Archaeological Chemistry, sponsored by the Division of the History of Chemistry of the American Chemical Society in 1968.Dr. Brill cites several problems that should form the basis for further research: the criteria for selecting what is necessary and significant from increasingly unwieldy bodies of data; the means by which findings in this field can be used in a more than descriptive manner to reveal something new about early man; and the continued necessity for close cooperation between the archaeometrist and archaeologist. The former, Dr. Brill points out, must take a major part in interpreting his findings and not merely leave his tabulations and statistical correlations to the historian and archaeologist.