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17 scholarly books by Council for British Research in the Levant
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17 scholarly books by Council for British Research in the Levant
Archaeological Perspectives on the Transmission and Transformation of Culture in the Eastern Mediterranean
J. Clarke
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2005
The eastern Mediterranean was the centre of trade for many centuries, sitting at the junction of what are now Europe, Asia and Africa. It was the place where exotic produce and products could be traded or exchanged for things that had their origins perhaps thousands of miles away. But wherever trade takes place, a similar exchange of ideas, technology and culture also occurs. This book presents thirty papers on this very subject, looking at the ways in which we can measure the transmission of culture, and how this transmission varied across time and space.
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Archaeology and Desertification
The Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey, Southern Jordan
G. Barker
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2007
The Wadi Faynan is a harshly beautiful and desertic landscape in southern Jordan, situated between the hyper-arid deserts of the Wadi 'Arabah and the rugged and wetter Mountains of Edom. Archaeology and Desertification presents the results of the Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey, an inter-disciplinary study of landscape change undertaken in the Wadi Faynan by a team of archaeologists and geographers with the goal of contributing to present-day desertification debates by providing a long-term perspective on the relationship between environmental change and human history. The Wadi Faynan was the focus for some of the earliest farming in the Near East, and the earliest metallurgy, and in Roman times was a centre for copper and lead mining. The project reveals how past communities of farmers, shepherds, and miners managed their challenging environment, the solutions they developed, their successes and failures, and their short- and long-term environmental impacts. The richness of the palaeoclimatic, archaeological and palaeoecological data reveals an environmental/cultural history of complex pathways, synergies, and feedbacks operating at many different geographical scales, rates, and intensities. The project's findings on the complexity of past and present people:environment relations in the Wadi Faynan affirm the power of inter-disciplinary landscape archaeology to contribute significantly to the desertification debate. With global warming likely to threaten the lives of millions of people in the semi-arid and arid lands that comprise over a third of the planet through the course of this century, with potentially dire consequences for adjacent populations in better-watered regions, understanding the complexity of past responses to aridification has never been more urgent.
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Crossing the Rift
Resources, Settlements Patterns and Interaction in the Wadi Arabah
P. Bienkwoski
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2006
Most of the papers published in this volume were originally presented at a conference of the same name, organised by the editors, and held in Atlanta, Georgia, in November 2003. The Wadi Arabah falls between the two areas of southern Jordan and Negev, and has traditionally been seen as a barrier and border. This book (and the conference it came out of) is an attempt to look at this neglected area anew: bridge, rather than barrier.
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Culture, Chronology and the Chalcolithic
J. Lovell
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2011
To some, the Chalcolithic (4700/4500-3700/3600 BC cal.), as the first period with metallurgy, large sprawling villages, rich mortuary offerings, and cult centres, represents a developmental stage on the road to the urban Bronze Age, the "dawn of history". Others have called it 'the end of prehistory'. More recent scholarship focuses upon the diversification of the subsistence economy, elaborated craft production, and expanded networks for resource acquisition. Many of today's Chalcolithic specialists were taught by biblical archaeologists, such that the culture history paradigm remains deeply embedded. This volume grew out of a workshop held in Madrid in 2006 and aims to kick start a dialogue about how to move beyond culture history and chronology in order to re-engage with larger theoretical discourses. A vast swathe of research in the region ignores these issues and considers theory to be irrelevant. One has the impression that the political realities of the region (including a predilection for biblical archaeology) has left a large proportion of archaeologists in the region, including prehistorians, lost without a map. Contributors to this volume recognize that culture history is the platform upon which current archaeological research is discussed but differ in the degree of emphasis placed on previously defined entities or phases. Delineating levels of difference and similarity between temporal boundaries is critical in this process. The two themes of this volume - culture and chronology - combine the need for theoretical engagement with the establishment of broader, more precise empirical data using explicit classificatory schemes. This is, essentially, the rock and the hard place where much archaeological debate is wedged, and as such the volume will have resonance for scholars of other periods and regions.
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The Early Prehistory of Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan
Excavations at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Site of WF16 and Archaeological Survey of Wadis Faynan, Ghuwayr and Al Bustan
B. Finlayson
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2007
Early Village Life at Beidha, Jordan
Neolithic spatial organization and vernacular architecture
Brian Byrd
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2005
This book explores the spatial organization and vernacular architecture of the Early Neolithic village of Beidha in southern Jordan. This is a case study rigorously investigating changes in community organization associated with early sedentism and food production in Southwest Asia. Diana Kirkbride-Helbæk's extensive fieldwork at Beidha yielded a considerable occupation span, extensive horizontal exposure, numerous excavated buildings with well preserved architecture and features, and a relative abundance of in situ artefacts. These broad horizontal excavations revealed a moderately sized early farming community dating to the middle of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, primarily after 7000 BC. The first three chapters of the book place the early village of Beidha within the context of the origins of sedentism and food production; provide an overview of the site and the excavations; and present the analytical approach and the methods used in this study, as well as the final phasing model for the history of the settlement. The subsequent two chapters detail the stratigraphy and chronology of the early Neolithic village, and examine the built environment and architecture, focusing on the construction, remodeling, and use life of individual buildings. The next two chapters explore, by phase, architectural patterning, continuity and change, and then community organization and the utilization of space. The book concludes with a broader consideration of emerging organizational trends expressed in the remarkable built environment of early Neolithic settlements in Southwest Asia. The results reveal that the successful establishment of sedentary food-producing villages was marked by novel social and economic developments, and the autonomization of households and formalization of corporate bodies represented important trends during this transition. These two organizational trends then formed the foundation upon which later, more complex social constructions were built.
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Euphrates River Valley Settlement
The Carchemish Sector in the Third Millennium BC
E. Peltenburg
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2007
Excavations at Tel Nebi Mend, Syria Volume I
Peter J. Parr
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2015
Landscape and Interaction. The Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project, Cyprus. Volume 1. Methodology, Analysis and Interpretation
Michael Given
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2013
The Troodos Mountain range in central Cyprus is a region of great physical and cultural diversity. The landscapes range from fertile, cultivated plains to narrow, dry valleys and forested mountain regions and this physical topography is overlain by a rich human cultural landscape of farming, mining, industry, settlement, burial and ritual behaviour. Over six field seasons, a team of specialists and fieldwalkers from the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project (TAESP) investigated the northern edge of this region and explored the complex and dynamic relationship between landscape and people over 12,000 years. The results of their integrated and interpretative approach are presented here, in the first of two volumes. Beginning with a considered overview of the context, research aims and methodology of the project, Volume 1 provides detailed accounts of the archaeology, material culture, geography and environmental record of the entire survey area. This wealth of information is then bought together to produce a series of chronological and thematic analyses of the interaction between people and landscape in this region of Cyprus from the Prehistoric through to the Modern period.
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Landscape and Interaction. The Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project, Cyprus. Volume 2. The TAESP Landscape
Michael Given
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2013
The TAESP Landscape, the second of two volumes, presents an area-by-area analysis of the fieldwork and research undertaken by the Troodos Archaeological and Environmental Survey Project (TAESP) in the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus. Covering four regions of the survey area (The Plains, Karkotis Valley, Upper Lagoudhera Valley and The Mountains) the volume focuses on explicit research questions appropriate to each region. Organised geographically, chronologically and thematically, each region is investigated from the Neolithic to the present day and, through ‘Intensive Survey Zones’ – selected to give a representative range of the physical and cultural terrain – many notable new discoveries are made. These include the pattern of Bronze Age Settlement in the Plains, Archaic rural sanctuaries and cemeteries, the scope of Late Roman copper-mining and isolated Medieval mountain settlements. The TAESP Landscape provides a fully integrated and data-rich analysis of the material from a wide range of contrasting archaeological perspectives. Taken together, these wide-ranging and interdisciplinary perspectives give a nuanced and sensitive approach to a strikingly multi-faceted landscape.
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Landscapes in Transition
B. Finlayson
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2010
This volume presents a collection of papers focusing on archaeological approaches to landscape in the context of the adoption of agriculture in Southwest Asia and Northwest Europe. Case studies are presented from these contrasting regions, one where the transition to farming is indigenous, and the other where the transformation is initiated externally. This allows us to consider to what extent hunter-gatherer and farmer landscapes may be different, or the degree to which apparent differences have been constructed by our expectations and traditions of interpretation. While the concept 'landscape' enjoys considerable popularity in archaeological interpretation, it is somewhat ill-defined and inconsistently used. Some have suggested that this fluidity allows landscape to be a 'usefully ambiguous concept' but at times there is a danger that this very ambiguity affords imprecision in our narratives. This is particularly important where differing traditions of archaeological interpretation meet, as, for example, in the transition from hunting and gathering to farming. The transition has been understood as a major division in archaeological practice and attitudes to 'landscape' across the transition reflect this dichotomy. The results of these debates are illuminating, and raise questions beyond the immediate geographical scope of the volume. The contrast between the two regions provides valuable comparisons between traditions of archaeological theory and interpretation and the bodies of evidence.
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Later Prehistory of Badia
Excavation and Surverys in Eastern Jordan, Volume 2
A. Betts
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2013
The Medieval and Ottoman Hajj Route in Jordan
An Archaeological and Historical Study
A. Petersen
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2012
As one of the five pillars of Islam the pilgrimage to Mecca (the Hajj) is central to the life of all Muslims. A network of roads radiates from the Hijaz like a giant spider's web, connecting Mecca to all parts of the Muslim world. Historically the most significant of these routes starts at Damascus in Syria, and is a direct continuation of the ancient trade route connecting Arabia to the Levant. The Prophet Muhammad is known to have used this route when he travelled as a merchant from Mecca to Bosra in Syria. In more recent times this was the route chosen for the Hijaz railway which figured prominently in the great Arab Revolt. A significant part of this route runs through Jordan, from the wide grasslands of the north to the sandy desert of the far south. This book documents the archaeological and architectural remains which line this route, paying particular attention to the forts and cisterns built and maintained by the Ottoman rulers from the 16th century onwards. A series of introductory chapters provide the historical context, with an emphasis on the political and military significance of the route from the 16th to the 18th centuries. In addition to the detailed coverage of Jordanian Hajj forts, the book also describes the sites and path of the route through Syria and Saudi Arabia. The final part of the book describes the results of excavations at one of the forts, which gives an insight into the material culture of both the pilgrims and the soldiers who manned the forts.
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Neolithic Revolution
New Perspectives on Southwest Asia in Light of Recent Discoveries on Cyprus (Levant Supplementary): No. 1
E. Peltenburg
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2004
The Roman Army in Jordan
David Kennedy
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2004
This is an updated and revised second edition of a handbook originally prepared for the XVIIIth International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies in Amman, Jordan in 2000 - a reflection of the growing importance of Roman studies in Jordan in recent years. In Part A, there are chapters on geography and environment, the Romans in Jordan and the Roman army there. In Part B there are 15 chapters surveying, region by region, the evidence for forts, towers, roads, literary texts, inscriptions and excavation around the entire country, ending with a chapter on the immediately adjacent parts of Roman Arabia that now lie in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. The book is profusely illustrated throughout and has many aerial views including 20 full-page photographs in colour.
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Umm al-Biyara
Excavations by Crystal-M. Bennett in Petra 1960-1965
P. Bienkwoski
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2011
Umm al-Biyara, the highest mountain in Petra, southern Jordan, was the first Iron Age Edomite site to be extensively excavated. It was a domestic, unwalled site of stone-built longhouses dating to the 7th-6th centuries BCE. The stratigraphy, pottery, small finds and inscribed material, including the important bulla of Qos-Gabr, King of Edom are described, supplemented by chapters on the use of space and a landscape study of mountain-top sites in the Petra region. The later Nabataean remains on the edge of the summit indicate a major Nabataean complex of buildings, possibly a palace, which would make this the first Nabataean palace in Petra to be explicitly identified.
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WF16
Excavations at an Early Neolithic Settlement in Southern Jordan
Steven Mithen
Council for British Research in the Levant, 2018
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