Uncovering, for the first time, the role played by home users in fostering energy changes, this book explores the effects of energy transitions between the medieval and industrial era on the everyday life of Europeans and considers how cultural, social and material changes in the home facilitated the transition towards a more energy-demanding world. This book delves deeper into the interactions between early modern consumers and the ecological constraints of the world surrounding them. Experts on specific aspects of domestic energy use departing from different case studies in early modern Europe confront these central issues. This book therefore offers a wide range of approaches within a long-term and comparative perspective. Different 'material cultures of energy' across time and space and across different climates in Europe are explored. Ultimately, this book aims to consider how the early modern home not just adapted to energy changes, but perhaps even prepared the way for our modern addiction to fossil energy. Energy in the Early Modern Home is the perfect resource for students and scholars of early modern Europe, premodern environmental history, the history of consumption and material culture, and the history of science and technology.

Toxic Heritage addresses the heritage value of contamination and toxic sites and provides the first in-depth examination of toxic heritage as a global issue. Bringing together case studies, visual essays and substantive chapters written by leading scholars from around the world, the volume provides a critical framing of the globally expanding field of toxic heritage. Authors from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and methodologies examine toxic heritage as both a material phenomenon and a concept. Organized into five thematic sections, the book explores the meaning and significance of toxic heritage, politics, narratives, affected communities, and activist approaches and interventions. It identifies critical issues and highlights areas of emerging research on the intersections of environmental harm with formal and informal memory practices, while also highlighting the resilience, advocacy, and creativity of communities, scholars, and heritage professionals in responding to the current environmental crises. Toxic Heritage is useful and relevant to scholars and students working across a range of disciplines, including heritage studies, environmental science, archaeology, anthropology, and geography.

This volume draws together the ground-breaking work of researchers and archaeological practitioners, working in multiple countries, to explore and understand the material and cultural impacts of the Pacific War. The combat taking place in the Pacific region during the years 1941-45 was characterized by a brutality and violence unmatched in any other theatre of the Second World War. Described by indigenous Micronesians as a 'typhoon, ' the war was an unstoppable force that rolled across the islanders' homes, leaving only a trail of destruction in its wake, with physical, psychological, and cultural impacts that continue to resonate today. This difficult period is examined in a variety of ways through chapters that include targeted studies of archaeological sites, wider surveys of battlefield landscapes, and the ways in which we commemorate the experiences and legacies of both combatants and civilian populations. The translation of important research by Okinawan, Japanese, and Russian archaeologists brings into focus regions that have previously been neglected in Anglophone literature, and enriches this comprehensive exploration of the archaeology of the Pacific War. This book will be of interest to archaeological practitioners, students, and members of the general public working in conflict studies or with an interest in the material culture, history, and legacies of the Pacific War.

This volume draws together the ground-breaking work of researchers and archaeological practitioners, working in multiple countries, to explore and understand the material and cultural impacts of the Pacific War. The combat taking place in the Pacific region during the years 1941-45 was characterized by a brutality and violence unmatched in any other theatre of the Second World War. Described by indigenous Micronesians as a 'typhoon, ' the war was an unstoppable force that rolled across the islanders' homes, leaving only a trail of destruction in its wake, with physical, psychological, and cultural impacts that continue to resonate today. This difficult period is examined in a variety of ways through chapters that include targeted studies of archaeological sites, wider surveys of battlefield landscapes, and the ways in which we commemorate the experiences and legacies of both combatants and civilian populations. The translation of important research by Okinawan, Japanese, and Russian archaeologists brings into focus regions that have previously been neglected in Anglophone literature, and enriches this comprehensive exploration of the archaeology of the Pacific War. This book will be of interest to archaeological practitioners, students, and members of the general public working in conflict studies or with an interest in the material culture, history, and legacies of the Pacific War.

The aim of this book is to introduce students in archaeology -and others interested- to the materials that form ancient ceramics, their nature and function. It is by studying the ceramic materials, the minerals, rocks, clays, and ways they have been modified for the production of ceramics that their use by potters through the ages can be explained. It allows us a better understanding of the potter's behavior and the influences on his or her craft. The book details clay, mineral and rock formations, basic geology principles, types of analyses conducted to study raw materials, and the different processes involved in making pottery. It describes the different attributes of a ceramic paste, and the different scales one can look at it. This book is conceived as an introduction to the origin of the materials which form ceramics in an archaeological context, their selection and use by potters. It is abundantly illustrated, in color, and with many case studies.

A sublime volume about one of the most important collections of ancient marble sculptures in the world, an astonishing private trove largely hidden to scholars and the public until now. Last published in a nineteenth-century catalog, the distinguished Torlonia Collection of more than 600 priceless Greek and Roman works--marbles and bronzes, reliefs and sarcophagi, depictions of gods, and portraits of emperors--is one of the most important assemblages of classical sculptures still in private hands anywhere in the world. This eagerly awaited volume presents a selection of nearly 100 sculptures, which have been chosen for their quality and historic significance and which will be featured in an unprecedented exhibition designed by David Chipperfield and held in the Villa Caffarelli, near the Musei Capitolini in Rome, before touring globally. The legendary aura surrounding this, Rome's last princely collection, is due not only to its extraordinary scope and the high quality of the works, but also to the fact that the collection has not been available to the public for decades. This revelatory book features multiple essays by leading experts on the history of the collection and scholarly entries for the works detailing important discoveries made through archaeological research as well as the cleaning and conservation of the sculptures.

Museums and cultural institutions of all sizes and budgets are striving to remain relevant in an ever-changing landscape. This volume looks at organizations that have challenged the preconceived notions about their site and its mission by working to break into new markets and develop unexpected programs for diverse and previously untapped audiences. To address this challenge, several western New York sites developed new programs to impact their visitor engagement. History Where You Least Expect It! Site-based Strategies for Teaching about the Past features programs like learning from gingerbread, playing vintage games, developing a theatrical production from places like science museums, archives, historic houses, nature centers, and cemeteries to illustrate how history can be conveyed in the most unlikely ways. While other works exist that have examined educational pedagogy and programming according to museum type, History Where You Least Expect It! Site-based Strategies for Teaching about the Past explores history through the lens of a specific program. This volume highlights how museum programming, object-based learning, and site-specific education can impact learning for people of all ages. In each chapter, the reader is walked through the development, implementation, and successes of the organization's programs, allowing practitioners the ability to learn from the work of others in order to build a successful program for themselves. While the featured institutions are regionally linked, the overarching goal of experiencing History Where You Least Expect It! can be replicated across the globe.

Considers the Native American abandonment of the South Carolina coast. A prevailing enigma in American archaeology is why vast swaths of land in the Southeast and Southwest were abandoned between AD 1200 and 1500. The most well-known abandonments occurred in the Four Corners and Mimbres areas of the Southwest and the central Mississippi valley in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and in southern Arizona and the Ohio Valley during the fifteenth century. In Megadrought in the Carolinas: The Archaeology of Mississippian Collapse, Abandonment, and Coalescence, John S. Cable demonstrates through the application of innovative ceramic analysis that yet another fifteenth-century abandonment event took place across an area of some 34.5 million acres centered on the South Carolina coast.   Most would agree that these sweeping changes were at least in part the consequence of prolonged droughts associated with a period of global warming known as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. Cable strengthens this inference by showing that these events correspond exactly with the timing of two different geographic patterns of megadrought as defined by modern climate models.   Cable extends his study by testing the proposition that the former residents of the coastal zone migrated to surrounding interior regions where the effects of drought were less severe. Abundant support for this expectation is found in the archaeology of these regions, including evidence of accelerated population growth, crowding, and increased regional hostilities. Another important implication of immigration is the eventual coalescence of ethnic and/or culturally different social groups and the ultimate transformation of societies into new cultural syntheses. Evidence for this process is not yet well documented in the Southeast, but Cable draws on his familiarity with the drought-related Puebloan intrusions into the Hohokam Core Area of southern Arizona during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to suggest strategies for examining coalescence in the Southeast. The narrative concludes by addressing the broad implications of late prehistoric societal collapse for today's human-propelled global warming era that portends similar but much more long-lasting consequences.

This book presents a new analysis of the organization, structure and changes of the pharaonic state through three millennia of its history. Moreno García sheds new light on this topic by bringing to bear recent developments in state theory and archaeology, especially comparative study of the structure of ancient states and empires. The role played by pharaonic Egypt in new studies often reiterates old views about the stability, conservatism and 'exceptionalism' of Egyptian kingship, which supposedly remained the same across the Bronze and Iron Ages. Ancient Egypt shared many parallels with other Bronze and Iron Age societies as can be shown by an analysis of the structure of the state, of the limits of royal power, of the authority of local but neglected micro-powers (such as provincial potentates and wealthy non-elite), and of the circulation and control of wealth. Furthermore, Egypt experienced deep changes in its social, economic, political and territorial organization during its history, thus making the land of the pharaohs an ideal arena in which to test applications of models of governments and to define the dynamics that rule societies on the longue durée. When seen through these new perspectives, the pharaonic monarchies appear less exceptional than previously thought, and more dependent on the balance of power, on their capacity to control the kingdom's resources and on the changing geopolitical conditions of their time.

During the early Colonial Period in the Americas, as an ancient way of life ended and the modern world began, indigenous peoples and European invaders confronted, resisted, and compromised with one another. Yet archaeological investigations of this complex era are rare. Magdalena de Cao is an exception: the first in-depth and heavily illustrated examination of what life was like at one culturally mixed town and church complex during the early Colonial Period in Peru. The field research reported in this volume took place at the site of Magdalena de Cao Viejo, a town on the edge of the Pacific Ocean whose 150-year lifespan ran from the Late Renaissance to the Age of Enlightenment. For a decade, an interdisciplinary team of researchers conducted archaeological and historical research in Peru, Spain, and the United States. Their analysis of documentary sources and recovered artifacts-including metals, textiles, beads, and fragmentary paper documents-opens new doors to understanding daily life in Magdalena de Cao during a turbulent time. Touching on themes of colonialism, cultural hybridity, resistance, and assimilation, Magdalena de Cao provides a comprehensive overview of the project itself and a rich body of data that will be of interest to researchers for years to come.