The papers collected here were originally given at a symposium during the European Archaeology Conference at Lake Garda, Italy in 2009. They have been revised and updated for this volume. Medieval and Post-Medieval ceramic studies have now for some decades been in the forefront of the archaeology of those periods, showing not only fascinating interactions with historical sources, in which both disciplines contribute novel information for each other, but also constantly exhibiting original methods and theories for the wider benefit of ceramology and archaeology in general.

How can pottery studies contribute to the study of medieval archaeology? How do pots relate to documents, landscapes and identities? These are the questions addressed in this book which develops a new approach to the study of pottery in medieval archaeology. Utilising an interpretive framework which focuses upon the relationships between people, places and things, the effect of the production, consumption and discard of pottery is considered, to see pottery not as reflecting medieval life, but as one actor which contributed to the development of multiple experiences and realities in medieval England. By focussing on relationships we move away from viewing pottery simply as an object of study in its own right, to see it as a central component to developing understandings of medieval society. The case studies presented explore how we might use relational approaches to re-consider our approaches to medieval landscapes, overcome the methodological and theoretical divisions between documents and material culture and explore how the use of objects could have multiple implications for the formation and maintenance of identities. The use of this approach makes this book not only of interest to pottery specialists, but also to any archaeologist seeking to develop new interpretive approaches to medieval archaeology and the archaeological study of material culture.

The study of landscape has in recent years been a field for considerable analytical archaeological experimentation. Although the Mediterranean is the home of classicism, it has seen the implementation of projects of this new kind, and in regions of Spain and Italy, after some delay, the proliferation of landscape archaeology studies.

Research on early medieval Cyprus has focused on the late antique "golden age" (late fourth/early fifth to seventh century) and the so-called Byzantine "Reconquista" (post-AD 965) while overlooking the intervening period. This phase was characterized, supposedly, by the division of the political sovereignty between the Umayyads and the Byzantines, bringing about the social and demographic dislocation of the population of the island. This book proposes a different story of continuities and slow transformations in the fate of Cyprus between the late sixth and the early ninth centuries. Analysis of new archaeological evidence shows signs of a continuing link to Constantinople. Moreover, together with a reassessment of the literary evidence, archaeology and material culture help us to reappraise the impact of Arab naval raids and contextualize the confrontational episodes throughout the ebb and flow of Eastern Mediterranean history: the political influence of the Caliphate looked stronger in the second half of the seventh century, the administrative and ecclesiastical influence of the Byzantine empire was held sway from the beginning of the eighth to the twelfth century. Whereas the island retained sound commercial ties with the Umayyad Levant in the seventh and eighth centuries, at the same time politically and economically it remained part of the Byzantine sphere. This belies the idea of Cyprus as an independent province only loosely tied to Constantinople and allows us to draw a different picture of the cultural identities, political practices and hierarchy of wealth and power in Cyprus during the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages.

The comparative study of empires has traditionally been addressed in the widest possible global historical perspective with comparison of New World empires such as the Aztecs and Incas side by side with the history of imperial Rome and the empires of China and Russia in the medieval and modern periods. Surprisingly little work has been carried out focusing on the evolution of state control and imperial administration in the same territory; approached in a rigorous and historically grounded fashion over a wide extent of historical time from late antiquity to the twentieth century. The empires of Rome, Byzantium, the Ottomans and the latter-day imperialists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, all inherited or seized and sought to develop overlapping parts of a common territorial base in the Eastern Mediterranean and all struggled to contain, control or otherwise alter the political, cultural and spiritual allegiances of the same indigenous population groups that were brought under their rule and administration. The task undertaken in Imperial Lineages and Legacies in the Eastern Mediterranean is to investigate the balance between continuity and change adopted at various historical conjunctures when new imperial regimes were established and to expose common features and shared approaches to the challenge of imperial rule that united otherwise divergent societies and imperial administrations. The work incorporates the contributions by twelve scholars, each leading practitioners in their respective fields and each contributing their particular insights on the shared theme of imperial identity and legacy in the Mediterranean World of the pagan, Christian and Muslim eras.

The 23 papers presented here are the product of the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and approaches to the study of kitchen pottery between archaeologists, material scientists, historians and ethnoarchaeologists. They aim to set a vital but long-neglected category of evidence in its wider social, political and economic contexts. Structured around main themes concerning technical aspects of pottery production; cooking as socioeconomic practice; and changing tastes, culinary identities and cross-cultural encounters, a range of social economic and technological models are discussed on the basis of insights gained from the study of kitchen pottery production, use and evolution. Much discussion and work in the last decade has focussed on technical and social aspects of coarse ware and in particular kitchen ware. The chapters in this volume contribute to this debate, moving kitchen pottery beyond the Binfordian ‘technomic’ category and embracing a wider view, linking processualism, ceramic-ecology, behavioral schools, and ethnoarchaeology to research on historical developments and cultural transformations covering a broad geographical area of the Mediterranean region and spanning a long chronological sequence.

In the 9th century CE, the city of Aswan, Egypt was a prosperous provincial capital on the pilgrimage route to Mecca and Medina via the Red Sea, as well as trade routes connecting the Nile River to the Wadi al-Allaqi mines, Egypt's main source of gold. The city was identified by medieval writers and geographers as situated at the frontier between Muslim Egypt and Christian Nubia. Salvage excavations under the auspices of the Swiss-Egyptian mission in Syene/Old Aswan have revealed considerable evidence of medieval Islamic activity. Evidence from 9th - 10th century ceramic assemblages uncovered during these investigations is compared and contrasted with a variety of historical sources concerning this same period. The evidence suggests that a particular style of common, utilitarian ceramics produced in the Aswan region was utilized frequently and carried or exported extensively throughout Upper Egypt, the Eastern Desert, and Lower Nubia during the 9th-10th centuries and beyond. The assemblages demonstrate a considerable distinction with the corpus of common ceramics of Fustat and Lower Egypt in the early Islamic period, as well as those of contemporary Upper Nubia and sites further south along the Nile into Northeastern Africa. Aswan and the First Cataract region came to function as a central node of a network marked by a regional material culture that transcended traditional political or religious divisions between Egypt and Nubia or Muslim and Christian. The evidence from Aswan provides an alternative interpretation of medieval landscapes and regionalism, one which prioritizes the material culture of daily life over the presumed divisions of political history or religious boundaries.

Houses and Domestic Space in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Hospitaller Malta is a study concerned with a wide spectrum of early modern dwellings in Malta, ranging from palazzi and affluent residences to peasant dwellings, troglodyte houses, and hovels. The multifaceted approach adopted in this book allows houses and domestic networks to be studied not only in terms of architecture and construction materials, but also as places of human habitation where house dwellers act, react and interact in different contexts and circumstances. Dwellings are places that permit different social and economic activities, whilst providing shelter and security to the household members. Through the available sources, the houses of Hospitaller Malta are analysed in terms of their spatial properties and how they generate privacy, interaction and communication, identity, accessibility, security, visibility, movement and encounters, and, equally important, how domestic space relates to gender roles, status, and class. This work, therefore, seeks to reach a deep and nuanced understanding of domestic space and how it relates to the islands’ history and the development of their society during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The Byzantine Dark Ages explores current debates about the sudden transformation of the Byzantine Empire in the wake of environmental, social and political changes. Those studying the Byzantine Empire, the successor to the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean, have long recognized that the mid-7th century CE ushered in sweeping variations in the way of life of many inhabitants of the Mediterranean world, with evidence of the decline of the size and economic prosperity of cities, a sharp fall in expressions of literary culture, the collapse in trade networks, and economic and political instability. Michael J. Decker looks at the material evidence for the 7th to 9th centuries, lays out the current academic discourse about its interpretation, and suggests new ways of thinking about this crucial era. Important to readers interested in understanding how and why complex societies and imperial systems undergo and adapt to stresses, this clearly written, accessible work will also challenge students of archaeology and history to think in new ways when comprehending the construction of the past.

Born from the fields of Islamic art and architectural history, the archaeological study of the Islamic societies is a relatively young discipline. With its roots in the colonial periods of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its rapid development since the 1980s warrants a reevaluation of where the field stands today. This Handbook represents for the first time a survey of Islamic archaeology on a global scale, describing its disciplinary development and offering candid critiques of the state of the field today in the Central Islamic Lands, the Islamic West, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The international contributors to the volume address such themes as the timing and process of Islamization, the problems of periodization and regionalism in material culture, cities and countryside, cultural hybridity, cultural and religious diversity, natural resource management, international trade in the later historical periods, and migration. Critical assessments of the ways in which archaeologists today engage with Islamic cultural heritage and local communities closes the volume, highlighting the ethical issues related to studying living cultures and religions. Richly illustrated, with extensive citations, it is the reference work on the debates that drive the field today.