Old theories for the origins of domesticated animals and plants from the East and the spread of farming and husbandry in Europe have affected generations of archaeologists, resulting in several theories of migrations of populations. However, there is no evidence in the archaeological record of population movements from the East, while so far the contribution of the pre-Neolithic populations of the Aegean has been neglected. This book shows that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers developed a dense maritime network on the Aegean islands and contributed to the Neolithisation process, transferring domesticated species from the East to the Aegean through Cyprus. Their great specialization in fishing and long journeys was due to a tradition that had roots in the Palaeolithic period. This text is based on practical experience from excavations and surface surveys over the past 25 years in Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in the Aegean Basin and continental Greece.

The Art and Archaeology of the Aegean Bronze Age offers a comprehensive chronological and geographical overview of one of the most important civilizations in human history. Jean-Claude Poursat's volume provides a clear path through the rich and varied art and archaeology of Aegean prehistory, from the Neolithic period down to the end of the Bronze Age. Charting the regional differences within the Aegean world, his study covers the full range of material evidence, including architecture, pottery, frescoes, metalwork, stone, and ivory, all lucidly arranged by chapter. With nearly 300 illustrations, this volume is one of the most lavishly illustrated treatments of the subject yet published. Suggestions for further reading provide an up-to-date entry point to the full richness of the subject. Originally published in French, and translated by the author's collaborator Carl Knappett, this edition makes Poursat's deep knowledge of the Aegean Bronze Age available to an English-language audience for the first time.

As this book demonstrates, the cradle of the Mystery Cults of the Goddess and of Western civilization is the Aegean region, an area extending from the Balkans to Crete and from the Ionian Sea to Asia Minor. The Eleusinian Mysteries do not originate from Old Europe or Egypt, but from the worship of the Pelasgian goddess Daeira, Mother Earth, who preceded Demeter and whose cult was indigenous to Eleusis. As shown here, in the Mysteries of the Goddess, the initiates descend into the depths of their psyche, perceive the midnight sun, transcend duality, and achieve cosmic consciousness symbolized by the unity and harmony of the Great Goddess. The Pelasgians, Minyans, and Minoans, the Aegean region’s prehistoric tribes and ancestors of the Mycenaeans and modern Greeks, share the same cultural heritage, continuity, and autochthony with the region’s Proto-Greek, pre-Deukalion-Flood inhabitants. The book also argues that religious and scientific traces of pre-Flood knowledge can be discerned in the Mysteries and the technical achievements of prehistoric Minyan and Minoan Greeks. Even from the third millennium, the Minyans and Minoans, with their advanced nautical, geographic, and astronomical knowledge, sailed not only the Mediterranean, but using the Atlantic currents had reached the copper mines of northern Europe and America.

Over the past decade, evidence has been mounting that our ancestors developed skills to sail across large bodies of water early in prehistory. In this fascinating volume, Alan Simmons summarizes and synthesizes the evidence for prehistoric seafaring and island habitation worldwide, then focuses on the Mediterranean. Recent work in Melos, Crete, and elsewhere-- as well as Simmons’ own work in Cyprus-- demonstrate that long-distance sailing is a common Paleolithic phenomenon. His comprehensive presentation of the key evidence and findings will be of interest to both those interested in prehistory and those interested in ancient seafaring.

The revised third edition of the 'Oxford Classical Dictionary' is the ultimate reference on the classical world containing over 6,200 entries. The 2003 revision includes minor corrections and updates and all Latin and Greek words in the text are now translated into English.

This landmark volume combines classic and revisionist essays to explore the historiography of Sardinia’s exceptional transition from an island of the Byzantine empire to the rise of its own autonomous rulers, the iudikes, by the 1000s. In addition to Sardinia’s contacts with the Byzantines, Muslim North Africa and Spain, Lombard Italy, Genoa, Pisa, and the papacy, recent and older evidence is analysed through Latin, Greek and Arabic sources, vernacular charters and cartularies, the testimony of coinage, seals, onomastics and epigraphy as well as the Sardinia’s early medieval churches, arts, architecture and archaeology. The result is an important new critique of state formation at the margins of Byzantium, Islam, and the Latin West with the creation of lasting cultural, political and linguistic frontiers in the western Mediterranean. Contributors are Hervin Fernández-Aceves, Luciano Gallinari, Rossana Martorelli, Attilio Mastino, Alex Metcalfe, Marco Muresu, Michele Orrù, Andrea Pala, Giulio Paulis, Giovanni Strinna, Alberto Virdis, Maurizio Virdis, and Corrado Zedda.

This large volume draws on evidence from fieldwork, historical records, archaeology, pollen analysis and recent research in discussing the ecology of Mediterranean Europe from the past to the present day. Grove and Rackham provide clear explanations and discussions of different ecosystems, of ruined landscapes, climate fluctuations and vegetation change, the impact of fire, terracing, agriculture and man's changing subsistence strategies, of coastal erosion and deforestation. A highly readable book, packed full of information, which also assesses the pessimistic view that many people hold over the future of the landscape and environment.

Recently there has been a welcome revival of scholarly interest in the economy of classical Greece. In the face of increasingly compelling arguments for the existence of a market economy in classical Athens, the Finleyan orthodoxy is finally relinquishing its long dominion. In this book, Barry O’Halloran seeks to contribute to this renewed debate by re-interrogating the ancient evidence using more recent economic interpretative frameworks. The aim is to re-evaluate accepted orthodoxies and present the economic history of this emblematic city-state in a new light. More specifically, it analyses the economic foundations of Athens through the prism of its navy. Its macroeconomic approach utilises an employment-demand model through which enormous naval defence expenditures created an exceptional period of demand-led economic growth.

A powerful and innovative argument that explores the complexity of the human relationship with material things, demonstrating how humans and societies are entrapped into the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds Argues that the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture Offers a nuanced argument that values the physical processes of things without succumbing to materialism Discusses historical and modern examples, using evolutionary theory to show how long-standing entanglements are irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time Integrates aspects of a diverse array of contemporary theories in archaeology and related natural and biological sciences Provides a critical review of many of the key contemporary perspectives from materiality, material culture studies and phenomenology to evolutionary theory, behavioral archaeology, cognitive archaeology, human behavioral ecology, Actor Network Theory and complexity theory

The results of two related fieldwork projects are presented: a brief salvage excavation at Plakari (a Final Neolithic site near the modern town of Karystos) and a survey of prehistoric sites on the Paximadi peninsula (the western arm of the Karystos bay), both located in southern Euboea. These ventures were part of the larger mission of the Southern Euboea Exploration Project (SEEP), a multidisciplinary research program dedicated to the study of the Karystian past and which maintained a presence in southern Euboea for over 25 years. These projects have found that, contrary to what archaeologists once believed, southern Euboea was hardly an uninhabited and isolated region in prehistory. The inhabitants actively participated in the expanded maritime and social landscape that characterized the later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in the Aegean, taking part in exchange networks of stone, ceramics, marble figurines and vessels, and possibly agricultural goods and metalwork.