Archaeology in the Aegean region has mainly focused on the prehistoric and Greco-Roman periods, which has left us with relatively little knowledge of human activity in the area in the medieval period. Meanwhile, the archaeological research that has been conducted there has tended to deal primarily with art and architecture. This volume aims to fill that gap, using the ancient past as a background against which to examine continuity and change on the island of Skyros from the late Roman period onwards.

Textiles that have been uncovered in archaeological excavations include garments, household fabrics, and sails. But until now, systematic analyses of such discoveries had not yet been undertaken for Dutch artifacts. Closing this considerable gap, Clothes Make the Man focuses on textile remains dating from between 400 and 1000 CE that have been recovered from settlements and cemeteries in what is now the Netherlands. As Chrystel R. Brandenburgh shows, such fabrics enable valuable reconstructions of burial clothing and yield important data about their production processes and...

This innovative work aims to piece together the cultural biography of Mesoamerica s precolonial codices. Today, fewer than twenty manuscripts are all that remain of the Mesoamerican book-making tradition. These pictographic and hieroglyphic texts have often been researched according to their content, but such studies have ignored their nature as material objects. By tracing the paths these books have followed over the past five hundred years, Ludo Snijders offers fascinating insights into their production, use and reuse, destruction, rediscovery, and reinvention."

Since 1992, when the World Heritage Committee established its category of "cultural landscapes," scholarly debates have ensued as to how they could best be managed. One approach, which appears to have gained significance over the past two decades, considers using traditional conservation practices in addition to engaging local indigenous communities in the stewardship of these exemplary sites. Based on the perspectives of the indigenous people of the Matobo Hills, this investigation studies the extent to which both traditional conservation practices and local involvement can be germane to the...

Tulou, the traditional fortified multifamily dwellings prevalent in southern Fujian, China, are the focus of this three-pronged biography of environments in the Hekeng River Valley. This book explores every aspect of the historical settlement environments surrounding a tulou, incorporating oral histories and interviews to create a complete picture of the cultural, architectural, agricultural, and economic influences that build up these lineage societies. Highlighted also are the tensions between political systems and families in keeping these heritage sites alive.

Egypt beyond Representation develops and applies a new approach to study Aegyptiaca Romana from a bottom-up, Roman perspective. Current approaches to these objects are often still plagued by top-down projections of modern definitions and understandings of Egypt and Egyptian material culture onto the Roman world. This book instead argues that these artefacts should be studied in their own right, without reducing them to fixed Egyptian meanings. This study shows that, while "Egyptianness" may have been among Roman associations, these objects were able to do much more than merely...