This study offers an insight into the closed world of medieval Eastern Europe and opens up a neglected archaeological tradition to English-speaking readers. Sections focus on early European ethnic formations and states, the demography of medieval populations and the nature of rural settlement and urban development. The book challenges the intellectual assumptions of medieval archaeology and questions its relationship to history and prehistory. It seeks to expose the limitations of a strictly empirical approach to studying the period when written history began and the early medieval states...

This volume explores the concept of sacred and what it means to people in differing cultures. Archaeologists, legislators and those involved in heritage management sometimes come into conflict with local populations over sites which these communities consider to be sacred. The book attempts to describe the belief systems surrounding such sites and in relating these beliefs and practices to the practical problems of heritage management. It demonstrates the need to accomodate those beliefs which are a vital part of ongoing cultural identity. The geographical coverage of this collection is wide...

Designed for students, researchers and practitioners concerned with archaeological heritage management, this book provides comprehensive, worldwide coverage - including China and the USSR - of public aspects of archaeological survey, conservation, protection and display.

This work asks whether the idea of world heritage is an essential mechanism for the protection of the world's cultural and natural heritage, or whether it subjugates a diversity of cultural traditions to specifically Western ideas.

Human cultures have been interacting with natural hazards since the dawn of time. This book explores these interactions in detail and revisits some famous catastrophes including the eruptions of Thera and Vesuvius. These studies demonstrate that diverse human cultures had well-developed strategies which facilitated their response to extreme natural events.

Archaeologists have had an abiding interest in the rise and fall of state-level societies. Now they are beginning to turn their attention to the British Empire. Informed by developments in historical archaeology and by postcolonial scholarship, the case-studies in this volume look at the colonists themselves.

Many dryland regions contain archaeological remains which suggest that there must have been intensive phases of settlement in what now seem to be dry and degraded environments. Many people have speculated about what must have happened to turn past glories into present day barrenness, opinions generally dividing between climatic change and human activity as the primary culprit. Perhaps climate shifted to greater aridity, perhaps catastrophic but short-term droughts became too frequent? Or was it that people sowed the seeds of their own destruction, for example by removing trees or developing...

This study draws together a number of specialist disciplines, such as archaeology, history, anthropology, disability studies, mental health and psychiatry, to create a new perspective on social and physical exclusion from society. A range of evidence throws light on such themes as the causes and consequences of social exclusion stigma, marginality, dangerousness and ritual power of the other in society. In addition, the emotional and intellectual effects of social and/or physical exclusion on those who are subjected to it in contemporary society are discussed. The multiple contributions to...

The exploitation of archaeological sites for commercial gain is a serious problem worldwide. In peace and during wartime archaeological sites and cultural institutions, both on land and underwater, are attacked and their contents robbed for sale on an international 'antiquities' market. Objects are excavated without record, smuggled across borders and sold for exorbitant prices in the salesrooms of Europe and North America. In some countries this looting has now reached such a scale as to threaten the very survival of their archaeological and cultural heritage.
This volume highlights the...

With case studies from North America to Australia and South Africa and covering topics from archaeological ethics to the repatriatation of human remains, this book charts the development of a new form of archaeology that is informed by indigeneous values and agendas.