Author John Coleman Darnell Description Deserts, the Red Land, bracket the narrow strip of alluvial Black Land that borders the Nile. Networks of desert roads ascended to the high desert from the Nile Valley, providing access to the mineral wealth and Red Sea ports of the Eastern Desert, the oasis depressions and trade networks of […]
Category: Archaeology
Everyday Life in the Aztec World
Author Frances F. Berdan Description In Everyday Life in the Aztec World, Frances Berdan and Michael E. Smith offer a view into the lives of real people, doing very human things, in the unique cultural world of Aztec central Mexico. The first section focuses on people from an array of social classes – the emperor, […]
Prehistoric Stone Tools of Eastern Africa | A Guide
Author John J. Shea Description Stone tools are the least familiar objects that archaeologists recover from their excavations, and predictably, they struggle to understand them. Eastern Africa alone boasts a 3.4 million-year-long archaeological record but its stone tool evidence still remains disorganized, unsynthesized, and all-but-impenetrable to non-experts, and especially so to students from Eastern African […]
Human Figuration and Fragmentation in Preclassic Mesoamerica | From Figurines to Sculpture
Author Julia Guernsey Description In this book, Julia Guernsey examines the relationship between human figuration, fragmentation, bodily divisibility, personhood, and community in ancient Mesoamerica. Contending that representation of the human body in the pre-classic period gradually became a privileged act, she argues that human figuration as well as the fragmentation of both human representations and […]
The Archaeology of Urbanism in Ancient Egypt | From the Predynastic Period to the End of the Middle Kingdom
Author Nadine Moeller Description In this book, Nadine Moeller challenges prevailing views on Egypt’s non-urban past and argues for Egypt as an early urban society. She traces the emergence of urban features during the Predynastic period up to the disintegration of the powerful Middle Kingdom state (c.3500–1650 BC). This book offers a synthesis of the […]
Maritime Networks in the Mycenaean World
Author Thomas F. Tartaron Description In this book, Thomas F. Tartaron presents a new and original reassessment of the maritime world of the Mycenaean Greeks of the Late Bronze Age. By all accounts a seafaring people, they enjoyed maritime connections with peoples as distant as Egypt and Sicily. These long-distance relations have been celebrated and […]
Amenhotep III | Egypt’s Radiant Pharaoh
Author Arielle P. Kozloff Description This book follows the life story of Amenhotep III, one of the most important rulers of ancient Egypt, from his birth and into the afterlife. Amenhotep III ruled for thirty-eight years, from c.1391–1353 BC, during the apex of Egypt’s international and artistic power. Arielle P. Kozloff situates Amenhotep in his […]
The Archaeology of the Holy Land | From the Destruction of Solomon’s Temple to the Muslim Conquest
Author Jodi Magness Description This book provides an introduction to the archaeology and history of ancient Palestine – modern Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories – from the destruction of Solomon’s temple in 586 BCE to the Muslim conquest in 640 CE. Special attention is paid to the archaeology of Jerusalem and the Second Temple […]
Logic and Theism | Arguments for and against Beliefs in God
Author Jordan Howard Sobel Description This is a wide-ranging 2004 book about arguments for and against beliefs in God. The arguments for the belief are analysed in the first six chapters and include ontological arguments from Anselm to Gödel, the cosmological arguments of Aquinas and Leibniz, and arguments from evidence for design and miracles. The […]
The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Athens
Author Jenifer Neils Description Named for a goddess, epicenter of the first democracy, birthplace of tragic and comic theatre, locus of the major philosophical schools, artistically in the vanguard for centuries, ancient Athens looms large in contemporary study of the ancient world. This Companion is a comprehensive introduction the city, its topography and monuments, inhabitants […]