Artefacts made from skeletal materials since the Roman period were, before this book, neglected as a serious area of study. This is a comprehensive account which reviews over fifty categories of artefact. The book starts with a consideration of the formation, morphology and mechanical properties of the materials and illuminates characteristics concerning working with them. Following chapters discuss the organisation of the industry and trade in such items, including the changing status of the industry over time. Archaeological evidence is combined with that from historical and ethnological sources, with many illustrations providing key visual reference. Originally published in 1985.

Artefacts made from skeletal materials since the Roman period were, before this book, neglected as a serious area of study. This is a comprehensive account which reviews over fifty categories of artefact. The book starts with a consideration of the formation, morphology and mechanical properties of the materials and illuminates characteristics concerning working with them. Following chapters discuss the organisation of the industry and trade in such items, including the changing status of the industry over time. Archaeological evidence is combined with that from historical and ethnological sources, with many illustrations providing key visual reference. Originally published in 1985.

In the pre-plastic era everything was made from natural materials, often by skilled craftsmen. The materials that they used are now often rare and easily misidentified. Are they made from bone, ivory, horn, tortoiseshell shell, skin or scales, or some other now forgotten exotic material? This technical book will help collectors, antique dealers, museum conservationists, and frequenters of flea markets to know more about the vast array of those artifacts, their biology, rarity, value, and how to conserve and restore them. Included in this comprehensive guide are hundreds of images of actual collectibles ranging from knives to buttons.

Parts of crossed-leg chairs and richly decorated fragments of bone and ivory excavated at Kenchreai, the Eastern port of Corinth, include scenes of an emperor and a miniature ivory Corinthian arcade that decorated luxurious furniture produced in late Roman Egypt.

The Economy of Medieval Hungary is the first concise, English-language volume about the economic life of medieval Hungary. It is a product of the cooperation of specialists representing various disciplines of medieval studies, including archaeologists, archaeozoologists, specialists in medieval demography, historical hydrologists, climate and environmental historians, as well as archivists and church historians. The twenty-five chapters of the book focus on structures of medieval economy, different means and ways of human-nature interactions in production, and offer an overview of the different spheres of economic life, with a particular emphasis on taxation, income and commercial activity. Thanks to its interdisciplinary character, this volume is a basic handbook for the history of economy, production and material culture. Contributors are Krisztina Arany, László Bartosiewicz, Zoltán Batizi, Anna Zsófia Biller, Péter Csippán, László Daróczi-Szabó, Márta Daróczi-Szabó, István Draskóczy, István Feld, László Ferenczi, Erika Gál, Márton Gyöngyössy, István Kenyeres, István Kováts, András Kubinyi, Kyra Lyublyanovics, Árpád Nógrády, Éva Ágnes Nyerges, István Petrovics, Zsolt Pinke, Beatrix F. Romhányi, Katalin Szende, László Szende, Magdolna Szilágyi, Csaba Tóth, and Boglárka Weisz.

“[A] tour de force examination of the history of ivory . . . and the demise of the elephant and human decency in the process of this unholy quest.” —The Huffington Post Praised for the nuance and sensitivity with which it approaches one of the most fraught conservation issues we face today, John Frederick Walker’s Ivory’s Ghosts tells the astonishing story of the power of ivory through the ages, and its impact on elephants. Long before gold and gemstones held allure, ivory came to be prized in every culture of the world—from ancient Egypt to nineteenth-century America to modern Japan—for its beauty, rarity, and ability to be finely carved. But the beauty came at an unfathomable cost. Walker lays bare the ivory trade’s cruel connection with the slave trade and the increasing slaughter of elephants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the 1980s, elephant poaching reached levels that threatened the last great herds of the African continent, and led to a worldwide ban on the ancient international trade in tusks. But the ban has failed to stop poaching—or the emotional debate over what to do with the legitimate and growing stockpiles of ivory recovered from elephants that die of natural causes. “Ivory’s Ghost is essential reading for anyone concerned with conservation and with the tenuous future of one of the most magnificent creatures our earth has ever seen.” —George B. Schaller, author of A Naturalist and Other Beast

This is the first systematic attempt to survey in detail the archaeological evidence for the crafts and craftsmanship of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians in ancient Mesopotamia, covering the period ca. 8000-300 B.C.E. As creators of some of the earliest farming and urban communities known to us, these people were among the first pioneers of many crafts and skills that remain fundamental to modern ways of life. Many of the raw materials for crafts had to be imported from outside the river valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, providing an unusually sensitive indicator of the commercial and cultural contacts of Mesopotamia. In this book, Dr. Moorey reviews briefly the textual evidence, and then goes on to examine in detail the material evidence for a wide range of crafts using stones, both common and ornamental, animal products--from hippopotamus ivory to ostrich egg-shells--ceramics, glazed materials and glass, metals, and building materials. With a comprehensive bibliography, this will be a key work of reference for archaeologists and those interested in the early history of crafts and technology, as well as for specialist historians of the ancient Near East.

This work is intended as a modern successor to L.F. Salzman's "English Industries in the Middle Ages" (1913). The approach to each industry is by material, discussing its acquisition, working and sale as a finished product. Only industries that resulted in the production of consumer goods and where substantial numbers of artefacts survive from the Middle Ages are dealt with (fishing and brewing are therefore omitted); the text is illustrated by pictures of surviving objects and contemporary representations of medieval work.