Showing titles in Archaeology

It's easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk of extinction. In What Is Ancient History?, Walter Scheidel presents a compelling case for a new kind of ancient history—a global history that captures antiquity's pivotal role as a decisive phase in human development, one that provided the shared foundation of our world and continues to shape our lives today.

Discover exciting new research illuminating the most mysterious centuries of British history. How Roman Britain ended is one of the most controversial questions in British history. Unique among former Roman citizens in Western Europe, the Britons established long-lived kingdoms, resisting...

Paleoanthropologist Silvana Condemi and science journalist François Savatier tell the Denisovans’ story in The Secret World of Denisovans. Leading us through the excavation of Denisova cave, the sequencing of the Denisovan genome, and recent research on Denisovan fossils, Condemi and Savatier uncover how the Denisovans migrated to Asia, who they interacted with along the way, and why traces of Denisovan DNA can be found in modern-day humans.

According to legend, the Roman emperor Nero set fire to his majestic imperial capital on the night of July 19, 64 AD and fiddled while the city burned. It’s a story that has been told for more than two millennia - and it’s likely that almost none of it is true. In Rome Is Burning, distinguished Roman historian Anthony Barrett sets the record straight, providing a comprehensive and authoritative account of the Great Fire of Rome, its immediate aftermath, and its damaging long term consequences for the Roman world.

Brought to you by Penguin. Wonderfully engaging, expansive and ambitious, Sound Tracks tells the history of our relationship with music in sixty detective stories, each focusing on the discovery of a musical instrument - or its fragments - in archaeological digs around the world. Taking us from...

My whole adult life, I have made a study of death. A stunning blend of the personal and professional, The Archaeology of Loss is Sarah Tarlow’s first memoir. An accomplished archaeologist, much of Sarah’s work is concerned with the ritual and belief behind the practice of grief. In 2012, she...

Using the writings of Cosmas and a wealth of other historical and archaeological evidence from the period, eminent historian G. W. Bowersock carefully reconstructs this fascinating but overlooked chapter in pre-Islamic Arabian history. The flashpoint of the war, Bowersock tells us, occurred when Yusuf, the Jewish king of Himyar, massacred hundreds of Christians living in Najran. The Christian ruler of Ethiopia, Kaleb, urged on by the Byzantine emperor Justin, led a force of 120,000 men across the Red Sea to defeat Yusuf.

Imagine you were transported back in time to Ancient Egypt and you had to start a new life there. How would you fit in? Where would you live? What would you eat? Where would you go to have your hair done? Who would you go to if you got ill, or if you were mugged in the street? All these questions, and many more, will be answered in this how-to guide for time travelers.

From the birth of Islam in the seventh century to the voyages of European exploration in the 15th, Africa was at the center of a vibrant exchange of goods and ideas. It was an African golden age in which places like Ghana, Nubia, and Zimbabwe became the crossroads of civilizations, and where African royals, thinkers, and artists played celebrated roles in the globalized world of the Middle Ages. The Golden Rhinoceros brings this unsung era marvelously to life, taking listeners from the Sahara and the Nile River Valley to the Ethiopian highlands and Southern Africa. 

A spaceport in the Andes! A computer chart in Egyptian ruins! Primitive sculptures of figures wearing space suits! Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods stunned the world with the archaeological discovery that alien beings once colonized earth.

Soon after Billy Griffiths joins his first archaeological dig as camp manager and cook, he is hooked. Equipped with a historian’s inquiring mind, he embarks on a journey through time, seeking to understand the extraordinary deep history of the Australian continent. Deep Time Dreaming is the passionate product of that journey. It investigates a twin revolution: the reassertion of Aboriginal identity in the second half of the 20th century and the uncovering of the traces of ancient Australia.

Bloomsbury presents Roman Britain in Twenty Towns by Richard Hingley, read by Nial Lucas From Hadrian’s Wall to Sulis Minerva’s spa at Bath and the public buildings and walled circuits of other towns, Britain has a wealth of Roman urban remains to examine. Designed for visitors wishing to...

Since the late 1980s the dominant theory of human origins has been that a "cognitive revolution" (c. 50,000 years ago) led to the advent of our species, Homo sapiens. As a result of this revolution our species spread and eventually replaced all existing archaic Homo species, ultimately leading...

Why did Elon Musk feel compelled to send a red Tesla into space? What accounts for the multiple rocket-themed playgrounds constructed after the Russians launched Sputnik? Gorman - affectionately known as "Dr Space Junk" - takes listeners on a journey through the solar system and beyond, deploying space artifacts, historical explorations, and even the occasional cocktail recipe in search of the ways that we make space meaningful. Engaging and erudite, Gorman recounts her background as a (nonspace) archaeologist and how she became interested in space artifacts.

John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today—that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning.

This groundbreaking study is based on the author's systematic comparative analysis of the vast textile collections in Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands, materials that are largely unknown even to archaeologists and span 1,000 years. Through these garments and fragments, Hayeur Smith provides new insights into how the women of these island nations influenced international trade by producing cloth (vaðmál); how they shaped the development of national identities by creating clothing; and how they helped their communities survive climate change.

*National Bestseller* A sweeping account of America's oldest unsolved mystery, the people racing to unearth its answer, and the sobering truths--about race, gender, and immigration--exposed by the Lost Colony of Roanoke In 1587, 115 men, women, and children arrived at Roanoke Island on the coast...

Bill Schindler takes us deep into his lifetime of archaeological research to show us why and how our dietary choices and cooking techniques need to follow our ancestors' lead and focus on nutrient density and bioavailability. Our relationship to food is filled with confusion and insecurity...

British Redcoats torch the White House and 6,000 American sailors languish in the world’s largest prisoner-of-war camp, Dartmoor. A myriad of races and backgrounds, with some prisoners as young as 13. Known as the ‘hated cage’, Dartmoor wasn’t a place you’d expect to be full of life and invention. Yet prisoners taught each other foreign languages and science, put on plays and staged boxing matches. In daring efforts to escape they lived every prison-break cliché—how to hide the tunnel entrances, what to do with the earth.

A real-life "Indiana Jones", Donald P. Ryan, PhD, offers a breathtaking personal account of his adventures in archaeology in Beneath the Sands of Egypt. Fans of The Lost City of Z will thrill to the exploits of this "unconventional archaeologist" as he retrieves the remains of Egypt's past - including his breakthrough discovery in the Valley of the Kings of Egypt's famous female pharaoh, Hatshepsut.