Fourteen papers take advantage of advances in archaeological methods and theory to explore the role of the built environment in expressing and shaping community organization and identity at prehistoric and historic nucleated settlements and early cities in the Old World.

The Black Sea lies at the junction of three major cultural areas: Europe, Central Asia and the Near East. It plays a crucial role in enduring discussions about the impact of complex Near Eastern societies on European societies, and the repercussions of early urbanization across Eurasia. This book presents the first comprehensive overview of the Black Sea region in the prehistoric period. It penetrates artificial boundaries imposed by traditions, politics and language to encompass both the European and Asiatic coasts and both Eastern European and Western scholarly literature. With a critical compilation and synthesis of archaeological data, this study situates the prehistoric Black Sea in a global historical context. By adopting the perspective of technology and innovation, it transcends a purely descriptive account of material culture and emphasizes society, human interaction, and engagement with the material world.

The organization of inhabited space is the direct expression of the deep integration of societies with their cultural and natural environment. Contributions in this volume show the progress of research in terms of understanding the use of space on different scales, from the household to the village, focusing on Neolithic and Bronze Age contexts.

This book studies current approaches to the archaeology of mountainous landscapes, presenting research results from different scientific contexts. To discuss these issues, and to study different aspects of human activity in the mountains and adjacent regions it incorporates archaeological, botanical, zooarchaeological and ethnological information.

Communities in Transition brings together scholars from different countries and backgrounds united by a common interest in the transition between the Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age in the lands around the Aegean. Neolithic community was transformed, in some places incrementally and in others rapidly, during the 5th and 4th millennia BC into one that we would commonly associate with the Bronze Age. Many different names have been assigned to this period: Final Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Eneolithic, Late Neolithic [I]-II, Copper Age which, to some extent, reflects the diversity of archaeological evidence from varied geographical regions. During this long heterogeneous period developments occurred that led to significant changes in material culture, the use of space, the adoption of metallurgical practices, establishment of far-reaching interaction and exchange networks, and increased social complexity. The 5th to 4th millennium BC transition is one of inclusions, entanglements, connectivity, and exchange of ideas, raw materials, finished products and, quite possibly, worldviews and belief systems. Most of the papers presented here are multifaceted and complex in that they do not deal with only one topic or narrowly focus on a single line of reasoning or dataset. Arranged geographically they explore a series of key themes: Chronology, cultural affinities, and synchronization in material culture; changing social structure and economy; inter- and intra-site space use and settlement patterns, caves and include both site reports and regional studies. This volume presents a tour de force examination of many multifaceted aspects of the social, cultural, technological, economic and ideological transformations that mark the transition from Neolithic to Early Bronze Age societies in the lands around the Aegean during the 5th and 4th millennium BC.

The paradigm and models of traditional soil science lack the ability to adequately address issues of soil dynamics, environmental integration, and change. Unexplainable research results obtained from traditional soil studies applied to non-traditional soil phenomena in physical geography, archaeology and ecology speak to the current need for soil science to move beyond description and classification and into a dynamic process-oriented soil science capable of providing explanations. Soils do not behave as static inert geologic detritus affected by climate, organisms, relief, and parent material through time, but instead soils behave as self-organizing systems dynamically interrelating with their environment. Recognition of this dynamic behaviour required a re-examination of how scientists in general think and in how modern soil science specifically evolved its basic paradigms and models. This book examines the dynamics of soil organic carbon and demonstrates the self-organizing nature of soil through time as soil responds to a wide range of environmental and human perturbations. - Makes soil science accessible to a wider audience by integrating soil science with biology, geography and archaeology - Demonstrates universal application by including case studies from around the world - Avoids pitfalls of determinism and vitalism by being well founded in the philosophy of science

The Program in Indo-European Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, sponsors an Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. The Conference, held on campus every fall, welcomes participation by linguists, philologists, and others engaged in all aspects of Indo-European studies. Inhalt: - David W. Anthony: Ten Constraints that Limit the Late PIE Homeland to the Steppes - Dita Frantíkovková: Hittite Common-Gender āi-stems Revisited - Sander van Hes: The Ancient Greek Local Suffixes -θεν, -θε(ν), -θι, and -σε: Function and Origin - Valérie Jeffcott and Logan Neeson: The Proto-Indo-European Negative Polarity Item *kwené - Jesse Lundquist: The Source of Strength: ἀλκί, ἀλκι-, ἀναλκιδ-, and Related - Reuben Pitts: Long-Vowel Perfects and the Aorist-Perfect Merger in Italic - Alex Roy: Redundance and Recategorization in Indo-Iranian *námas- and Allies - Paolo Sabattini: Syllabification-Driven Changes in Mycenaean: The Case of Liquid Vocalization - Ryan Sandell: Towards a Prosodic History of Indic: A Parametric Analysis of the "Classical Sanskrit Stress Rule" - Pat Snidvongs: Rig Vedic √sac as a Semantic Transitivizer - Anthony D. Yates: The Unexceptional Stress of the "Endingless Locative" in Indo-European

'Western-Pontic Culture Ambience and Pattern: In Memory of Eugen Comsa' is dedicated to the memory of Eugen Comsa, an archaeologist whose work created the foundation of the Northern Balkan prehistory and was essential for the contemporary view of the prehistory of the North-western Pontic region. This edited volume brings together researchers in the field of Circumpontic archaeology from the Neolithic to the Iron Age period. The content of the volume is offered to students and scholars who seek a deeper understanding of the prehistory of the Western Pontic region, in particular the Balkans in their Eurasian context and more broadly to enhance the scholarly collections of academic, educational, public and private libraries throughout the world.

This volume focuses on the complex issues of long-term cultural change in the populations surrounding the Western Carpathians, with the aim of striking a balance between local cultural dynamics, subsistence economy and the alleged importance of far-reaching contacts, and communication and exchange involved in this process.

Of Odysseys and Oddities is about scales and modes of interaction in prehistory, specifically between societies on both sides of the Aegean and with their nearest neighbors overland to the north and east. The 17 contributions reflect on tensions at the core of how we consider interaction in archaeology, particularly the motivations and mechanisms leading to social and material encounters or displacements. Linked to this are the ways we conceptualize spatial and social entities in past societies (scales) and how we learn about who was actively engaged in interaction and how and why they were (modes). The papers provide a broad chronological, spatial and material range but, taken together, they critically address many of the ways that scales and modes of interaction are considered in archaeological discourse. Ultimately, the intention is to foreground material culture analysis in the development of the arguments presented within this volume, informed, but not driven, by theoretical positions.