lamdha books -
Catalogue of books on archaeology

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71756 Alcock, Leslie 'By South Cadbury is that Camelot...' (New Aspects of Antiquity series) Excavations at Cadbury Castle 1966 - 70 Thames & Hudson, London, 1972. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine-title and upper board decoration; 224pp., many mainly monochrome photographic illustrations, maps and line drawings. Front free endpaper removed; toned and spotted text block edges. Dustwrapper shows minor edgewear and chipping; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. 'Professor Leslie Alcock was a pioneer of 'Dark Age' archaeology and led the team which excavated Cadbury Castle in Somerset, the best known and most interesting of the reputed sites of King Arthur's Camelot. A hill fort beside the village of South Cadbury rising 500 ft above the surrounding Somerset plains, Cadbury Castle consists of four lines of bank-and- ditch defences surrounding a central plateau area of about 18 acres. Its association with the fabled court of King Arthur was made by two prominent Tudor antiquarians, John Leland and William Camden. In the 1530s Leland, who had been given a royal commission "to make a search after England's Antiquities", reported in his diary that: "At the very south end of the church of South-Cadbyri standeth Camallate, sometime a famous town or castle - The people can tell nothing there but that they have heard Arthur much resorted to Camalat." Antiquarian writers from Leland onwards routinely referred to Cadbury as Camelot. The highest part of the hill is known as Arthur's Palace, a name on record as early as 1586... large-scale excavations from 1966 to 1970 under Leslie Alcock's direction (took place). The results were spectacular... But by far the most exciting discovery was that the fort had been reoccupied and refortified in the late fifth or early sixth century, and remained occupied until some time after 580. On the high part of "Arthur's Palace", Alcock and his team discovered foundations of a timber hall, 63 ft by 34 ft, its walls defined by post-holes cut in the bedrock, possibly modelled on the villa complexes of later Roman Britain. At the south-west entry were the remains of a gatehouse consisting of a square wooden tower, approached by a cobbled road 10 ft wide, which would have passed through two sets of double doors on either side of the gatehouse. Most important of all was the discovery that the surrounding rampart had been massively rebuilt in Arthurian times, providing a defended site double the size of any other known fort of the period. On top of the earth at that level was a dry stone bank or wall 16 ft thick. Within the structure, sherds of pottery from the eastern Mediterranean, including fine red bowls and amphora, were also found from this period, indicating extensive trade links. There was nothing with Arthur's name on it, but what Alcock and his team found suggested that a leader with considerable resources at his command had taken possession of the vacant hill fort and refortified it on a colossal scale. At the centre he built at least one substantial building and probably several smaller ones, enough to house not only his family, but also an army of retainers, servants and horses. At the time he was excavating Cadbury, Alcock inclined to believe that Arthur was an historical figure, a view reflected in his Arthur's Britain, a lively and scholarly account of the available historical and archaeological evidence, published in 1971 and reprinted several times. In later life, though, he distanced himself from the book, having become convinced by historians that there was no good evidence that Arthur ever existed. "There are no historically acceptable accounts, so it's pretty futile to try and identify where Camelot may or may not have been," he admitted in 1999. However, he continued to maintain that, if Arthur had lived anywhere, Cadbury Castle was the most likely site.' - The Telegraph. Click here to order $30

81733 Ames, Kenneth M., & Herbert D G Maschner Peoples of the Northwest Coast Their Archaeology and Prehistory Thames & Hudson, London, 1999. Small quarto hardcover; 288pp., monochrome plates. Lightly toned page and text block edges with spotting on upper edges. Minor wear otherwise; very good to near fine in like dustwrapper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. The authors explain briefly the new thinking about the Northwest Coast as a corridor for the original colonization of the Americas before summarising the region's archaeology. The second half of their book draws on history and ethnography as well as archaeology to review traditions of subsistence, social organisation, rites, war and the celebrated arts of the region. Throughout, they emphasise the distinctive physical environment as a source for explanation. Click here to order $30

88756 Bahn, Paul (ed.) Written in Bones - Revised and updated edition How Human Remains Unlock the Secrets of the Dead Quintet Books/New Burlington Books, London, 2012. Reprint: small quarto; gatefold paperback; 224pp, with many full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Minimal wear. Near fine. This work by international experts shows how the careful study of bones can reveal a compelling picture of the lives, cultures and beliefs of ancient societies. It reveals 36 case studies from sites around the world, including the world's oldest dwarf and the Chinchorro mummies of Chile. Click here to order $18

51034 Bibby, Geoffrey The Testimony of the Spade Life in Northern Europe from 15,000 B.C. to the time of the Vikings Collins London, 1958. Reprint. Octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine title; 448pp., with 32pp. of monochrome plates, and many maps, charts and diagrams. Boards well rubbed and dyed text block edges spotted; offset to the endpapers. Price-clipped dustwrapper is chipped along the edges and flap turns with some large chips to the spine panel extremities; now backed with archival-quality white paper and professionally protected by superior non-adhesive film. Very good. The first complete story, in the light of startling new discoveries, of the slow spread of a succession of "barbarian" tribes north of the Alps, showing prehistory turning into history in the heartland of Europe. Bibby begins from the earliest cave paintings and describes not only how life evolved in prehistoric Europe but also the often charming and remarkable stories of the academics who made archaeology a legitimate field of science. Perhaps the most striking point from the early chapters is just how revolutionary and controversial the idea was that Europe and its people were in fact older than the Bible, and entire cultures of men looking and thinking almost exactly like us had thrived for tens of thousands of years. Click here to order $30

62689 Bingham, Hiram (Introduction by John Hemming; Reginald Piggott, illus.) The Lost Cities of the Incas - Folio Society edition The Story of Machu Picchu and its Builders The Folio Society, London, 2004. First printing. Octavo; hardcover, with decorated boards, silver-gilt spine-titling and illustrated endpapers; 266pp., with a monochrome portrait frontispiece, maps and 28pp. of monochrome plates. Very minor wear. Near fine in like illustrated slipcase. First published in the 1950s, this is a classic account of the discovery in 1911 of the lost city of Machu Picchu. In 1911 Hiram Bingham, a pre-historian with a love of exotic destinations, set out to Peru in search of the legendary city of Vilcabamba, capital city of the last Inca ruler, Manco Inca. With a combination of doggedness and good fortune he stumbled on the perfectly preserved ruins of Machu Picchu perched on a cloud-capped ledge 2000 feet above the torrent of the Urubamba River. The buildings were of white granite, exquisitely carved blocks each higher than a man. Bingham had not, as it turned out, found Vilcabamba, but he had nevertheless made an astonishing and memorable discovery, which he describes in this bestselling book. Click here to order $35

202525 Butterworth, Alex, & Ray Laurence Pompeii The Living City Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London, 2005. Octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine titling; 354pp., with maps and 16pp. of colour plates. Mild wear. Dustwrapper lightly rubbed and edgeworn; a small hole to the top of the upper hinge; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. As the clouds of ash blotted out the sun following the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, so the everyday world of ancient Pompeii has become obscured by the city's almost mythic status. Drawing together the most recent archaeological and historical research, "Pompeii" offers a vivid, and unprecedented, portrait of the city during the eventful twenty-five years leading up to the eruption that destroyed it. Focusing on key individuals from each stratum of Pompeiian society, a compelling narrative emerges of the city's best and worst times, placing the reader right on the streets and in the houses, amid the sights, smells and sounds of the living city. Click here to order $25

74413 Ceram, C.W. Narrow Pass, Black Mountain The Discovery of the Hittite Empire Victor Gollancz & Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1956. First UK edition: octavo; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling and upper board decoration; 284pp., many monochrome maps and illustrations and 48pp. of monochrome plates. offset to endpapers; some spotting to the text block edges; previous retailer's bookplate on front pastedown. Illustrated dustwrapper with spotting, some marks and tiny chips from spine panel extremities; scuffing and price clipped. Otherwise very good and protected in archival film with white paper backing. Before the year 1906, the Hittites were considered to be a mythical people, known only from their sparse references in the Bible. However, since 1834, reports of an unknown race, remnants left in an undecipherable script on remote carvings and edifices around the Mediterranean, slowly came together to reveal the existence of this hidden civilisation. The author of this work takes us through the detective story that was the unearthing of the Hittites, their defeat of Rameses at Qadesh, and their treaty with the Egyptian king that determined the political landscape of Asia Minor for the successive seven centuries. Nowadays the fact of the Hittite Kingdom is a given; this book allows us to travel back to a time when that knowledge was questionable, and to see how the truth emerged. Click here to order $30

201319 Ceram, C.W. (E.B. Garside, trans.) Gods, Graves & Scholars The Story of Archaeology Victor Gollancz, London, 1952. First edition: hardcover octavo; blue boards with gilt upper board and spine titling; 433pp., monochrome plates. Foxing to endpapers, prelims and title page with scattered spotting throughout; browned and spotted text block edges. Well-rubbed yellow illustrated dustwrapper with missing segments on lower rear corner, spine panel extremities and upper rear edge; wear to edges. Good to very good otherwise and wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film with white paper backing. C.W. Ceram visualized archaeology as a wonderful combination of high adventure, romance, history and scholarship, and this book, a chronicle of man's search for his past, reads like a dramatic narrative. We travel with Heinrich Schliemann as, defying the ridicule of the learned world, he actually unearths the remains of the ancient city of Troy. We share the excitement of Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter as they first glimpse the riches of Tutankhamen's tomb, of George Smith when he found the ancient clay tablets that contained the records of the Biblical Flood. We rediscover the ruined splendours of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient wold; of Chichen Itza, the abandoned pyramids of the Maya: and the legendary Labyrinth of the Minotaur in Crete. Here is much of the history of civilization and the stories of the men who rediscovered it. Click here to order $30

7458 Doeringer, Suzannah, et al. (eds.) Art and Technology A Symposium on Classical Bronzes Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University and the MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1970. Hardcover quarto, xvi + 290pp., numerous monochrome and some colour plates. Owner's sticker on front paste-down. Spotted preliminaries and text block edges; spine slightly rolled, boards rubbed at edges, corners bumped; dustwrapper sunned, some fraying. Very good in good dustwrapper (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). If we are to accept the ancient writers, bronze was by far the most important medium of sculpture in classical antiquity. Bronzes covered a wide range of periods and cultures, depicting the hieratic and the comic, myths and scenes from daily life. This book contains the record of a symposium held in connection with the first international exhibition of Greek, Etruscan and Roman bronze sculpture held at the Fogg Art Museum in 1967. The project was a joint endeavour of neighbouring institutions Harvard and MIT to meld the 'two worlds' of art historian and technologist to such an extent that each might come to understand the basic methodologies of the other. The book is organized so that the more technical chapters precede those with an art-historical bent. Summaries of symposium discussions and introductions to each section have been carefully prepared by the editors in an attempt to interrelate the papers and to raise some broader questions for future study. Click here to order $65

8985 Fagan, Brian M. The Rape of the Nile Tomb Robbers, Tourists, and Archeologists in Egypt Book Club Associates, London, 1977. Small quarto hardcover; brown boards with gilt spine titling; 399pp., monochrome plates and illustrations. Minor wear; toning and faint spotting to upper text block edges; dustwrapper spine sunned and wear to edges especially spine panel extremities. Otherwise very good to near fine and wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. A narrative history of the cavalcade of archaeologists, charlatans, thieves, self-promoters, and sightseers who have flocked to the Nile Valley since early times to study - or steal - the wonders of ancient Egypt. The scandalous rape of Ancient Egypt is a historical vignette of greed, vanity, and dedicated archaeological research. It is a tale vividly told by renowned archaeology author, Brian Fagan, with characters that include the ancient historian Herodotus, Theban tomb robbers, obelisk-stealing Romans, Coptic Christians determined to erase the heretical past, mummy traders, leisured antiquarians, major European museums, Giovanni Belzoni, a circus strongman who removed more antiquities than Napoleon's armies, shrewd consuls and ruthless pashas, and archaeologists such Sir Flinders Petrie who changed the course of Egyptology. Click here to order $25

14660 Foster, I.LL. & Leslie Alcock Culture and Environment Essays in honour of Sir Cyril Fox Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine-titling; 558pp. [i-xix + 1 Blank + 1-538], plus 28pp. of monochrome photographic plates and a monochrome frontispiece. Previous owner's ink stamp on front free endpaper; spotted text block edges. Else very good in lightly worn dustwrapper (now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film). Texts by many hands on British archaeology focusing on the study of environment and distribution and their influence on material culture from neolithic times through to the medieval period, a number particularly pertaining to Wales. Click here to order $55

52881 Gerasimov, M.M. The Face Finder Hutchinson, London, 1971 Octavo; hardcover; 199pp., monochrome illustrations. Text block edges lightly toned. Dustwrapper lightly worn at edges. Very good. The ability of forensic researchers to re-create the faces of skulls unearthed centuries - even millennia - after their deposition, is nowadays an understood activity. Decades of Discovery Channel television shows have made this delicate process a commonplace in the archaeological toolkit. However, there was a time when the process, its theoretical framework and its results, were a hotly-debated question in scientific circles, and it was almost relegated to the reject bin of pseudoscience. Nowadays, the cloning of mammoths and other extinct creatures is undergoing the same kind of open debate. Here is the history behind this archaeological tool, and the man who brought it into being. Click here to order $20

202464 Ginn, Victoria, & Stuart Rathbone Corrstown - A Coastal Community Excavations of a Bronze Age Village in Northern Ireland Oxbow Boooks, Oxford UK, 2012. Quarto; paperback; 301pp. with maps, diagrams and many monochrome and full-colour illustrations. Minor wear; some mild rubbing to the covers. Very good to near fine. Corrstown in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, is a highly important Bronze Age site. This came to light during excavations carried out by Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd on behalf of the Northern Ireland Environment Agency in 2002-2003, the results of which are detailed here. A total of 74 Middle Bronze Age roundhouse platforms was identified and organised into pairs or short rows, the majority of which appeared to be contemporary. The Corrstown village represents a site type hitherto unknown in Britain and Ireland, where the standard settlement pattern consists of roundhouses occurring in relative isolation or in small conglomerations. A two-tier network of roads and pathways also serviced the village: one large cobbled roadway and a second probable roadway (perhaps left unsurfaced) were identified along with a multitude of smaller paths leading from the entrances of the houses onto the roadways. The large cobbled road extended beyond the village perimeter, indicating connectivity with the wider landscape. The artefact assemblage from the site was dominated by domestic pottery (over 9,000 sherds) and lithics (over 165,000 pieces). A small assemblage of stone axes and moulds was also retrieved. Radiocarbon analysis indicated that the village had three phases, an initial growth phase (commencing after c.1550 BC), followed by a considerable occupation phase (lasting up to 200 years) and a decline phase (commencing c.1150 BC). Early medieval occupation was also observed at Corrstown and the results are included as an appendix. Another Bronze Age settlement site, also excavated by Archaeological Consultancy Services, is included as an appendix. It is hoped that this volume represents a beginning of the study of the Corrstown village, a site of national and international significance that urges archaeologists to reconfigure the settlement structure and associated social patterns of the Bronze Age. Click here to order $35

92174 Gorman, Vanessa B. Miletos: The Ornament of Ionia A History of the City to 400 BCE University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI, 2004. Octavo; hardcover, with metallic-blue spine titling; 304pp., black and white maps at rear. Minor wear only; a few faint spots on upper toned text block edges. Slightly rubbed dustwrapper; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. Situated on the southwest coast of modern Turkey, Miletos stood for centuries as one of the paramount cities in the Hellenic world, a gateway between the East and West. It became especially famous as the most prolific mother city in Greek history, sending out at least forty-five known primary and secondary settlements into the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, while at home developing into an intellectual and artistic centre and one of the birthplaces of Western science and philosophy. Despite the significance of this city in antiquity and the important results of ongoing excavations there, the last full-scale discussion of Miletos was written in 1915. In Miletos, the Ornament of Ionia, Vanessa B. Gorman provides the first and only modern, integrated history of the city, collecting and scrutinizing sources about Miletos for the period stretching from the first signs of habitation until 400 B.C.E. This book reviews the archaeological evidence for the physical city, demonstrates the likelihood of both Minoan and Mycenaean settlements there, and substantiates the fact of the Persian destruction and refoundation of Miletos along orthogonal lines. With insight and diligence, Gorman surveys the cults known to have existed during this period; traces the political progress of the city through monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, and democracy; and sketches the terms of its subjugation under the Persians and later the Athenians. Click here to order $100

92192 Graham, Ian Alfred Maudslay and the Maya: A Biography British Museum Press, London, 2002. Hardcover, octavo; gray boards with gilt spine titling; 323pp., monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; mild rubbing to dustwrapper. Near fine to fine otherwise. In this fascinating biography, the first ever published about Alfred Maudslay, Ian Graham describes this extraordinary Englishman and his pioneering investigations of the ancient Maya ruins. Maudslay, the grandson of a famous English inventor and engineer, spent his formative adult years in the South Seas as a junior official in Great Britain's Colonial Office. Despite his exotic experiences, he did not find his true vocation until the age of thirty-one, when he arrived in Guatemala. Maudslay played a crucial role in exploring and documenting the monuments and architecture of the ancient Maya ruins at Palengue Copan, Chichen Itza, and other sites previously unknown. His photographs and plaster casts have proven to be invaluable in the deciphering of Maya hieroglyphics. Personal resources allowed him to undertake fieldwork at a time when no institution provided such support. He made plaster casts of large stone monuments, accurate maps of sites, and painstaking recordings of inscriptions. His Biologia Centrali-Americana, a multivolume compendium of photographs, drawings, plans, and text published almost a century ago, remains an essential foundation for Maya studies. Perhaps Maudslay's greatest legacy is the magnificent collection of glass-negative photographs, many of which are reproduced in this book. Click here to order $45

203074 Hedges, John W. (Mike Brooks, illus.) Tomb of the Eagles Death and Life in a Stone Age Tribe New Amsterdam, New York NY, 1987. First printing: octavo; paperback; 244pp., monochrome illustrations. Fine. Isbister in the Orkneys is one of those extraordinary archaeological sites where the remains of Neolithic man and his works have been so well preserved that they give us an amazingly clear picture of the life and people of 5000 years ago. In Tomb of the Eagles John W. Hedges describes vividly the activities of a tribe which had as its totem the magnificent white-tailed sea eagle. For these people the building and use of the tomb was symbol and expression of their identity. It was here that the dead joined their ancestors - but only after the flesh had been stripped from their bones. It was here, too, that offerings were made. Here broken pots were piled; fish, eagles and joints of meat mouldered; and the hands of the living sorted the heaped bones of the dead. Click here to order $17

97279 Higham, Charles The Civilization of Angkor Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2001. Hardcover, octavo; green boards with silver gilt spine titling and gray/green endpapers; 192pp., monochrome plates. Toned text block and page edges with spotting on upper edges. Very good to near fine in like dustwrapper with mild wear to edges. In the late sixteenth century a mythical encounter was reported during an elephant hunt in the dense north of the Tonle Sap, or Great Lake of central Cambodia. King Satha of Cambodia and his retainers were beating a path through the undergrowth when they were halted by stone giants and a massive wall. The King, the fable reported, ordered six thousand men to clear away the forest overgrowth around the wall, thereby exposing the city of Angkor -'lost' for over a century. Subsequent reports from Portuguese missionaries described its five gateways, with bridges flanked by stone figures leading across a moat. There were idols covered in gold, inscriptions, fountains, canals, and a 'temple with five towers, called Angor.' For four centuries, this huge complex has inspired awe among visitors from all over the world, but only now are its origins and history becoming clear. This book begins with the development of the prehistoric communities of the area and draws on the author's recent excavations to portray the rich and expansive chiefdoms that existed at the dawn of civilization. It covers the origins of early states, up to the establishment, zenith, and decline of this extraordinary civilization, whose most impressive achievement was the construction of the gilded temple mausoleum of Angkor Wat in the twelfth century, allegedly by 70,000 people. Drawing on the latest research on prehistoric archaeology, epigraphy, and art history, Charles Higham has written a clear and concise history. Click here to order $25

92379 Karageorghis, Vassos Kition: Mycenaean and Phoenician Discoveries in Cyprus New Aspects of Antiquity edited by Sir Mortimer Wheeler Thames & Hudson, London, 1976. Small quarto hardcover; red cloth boards with gilt spine titling and upper board publisher's insignia; 184pp., 20 colour plates, 106 monochrome plates and 27 line drawings. Owner's book plate. Minor wear; a few scattered spots on pastedowns; browning and spotting to page and text block edges. Otherwise very good to near fine in black illustrated dustwrapper with slightly browned rear panel edges now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Under the excavation of Vassos Karageorghis, ancient Kition on the south coast of Cyprus was revealed as a kind of stepping-stone between the Aegean and the Levant from the Early Bronze Age onwards, incorporating Minoan, Mycenaean and Phoenician elements. The city's greatness is evidenced in the wealth of Early Bronze Age tombs; its later role as a major harbour town; temples incorporating such Aegean artifacts as horns of consecration and superb Mycenaean pottery in unprecedented quantity and quality. In the Phoenician period the temple of Astarte is the largest yet found anywhere. This final period at Kition is one of political unrest as history records: the Phoenicians collaborating with the Persians held an oppressive rule over the island which finally came to an end with the death of Pumiathon - put to death by Ptolemy I of Egypt in 312 B.C. This book is a valuable addition to our knowledge of life in the Eastern Mediterranean from 2000-312 B.C. Click here to order $35

39419 Karageorghis, Vassos Salamis in Cyprus - New Aspects of Antiquity series Homeric, Hellenistic and Roman Thames & Hudson, London, 1969. Quarto; hardcover with gilt spine title and upper board decoration; 212pp., with many monochrome and full-colour photographic illustrations along with monochrome maps and line drawings. Top text block edge mildly dusted; mild offset to endpapers. Price-clipped dustwrapper is mildly rubbed; now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. The Cyprian city of Salamis reveals much about Homeric, Hellenistic and Roman occupation through its archaeology. This book covers the discovery and excavation of the city - particularly the Necropolis - highlighting the funerary practises, cross-cultural influences and layers of occupation from the earliest settlement to governance by the Ptolemies of Egypt and beyond, to the days of Romanisation. Highlighted with many images of the breathtaking discoveries made in the city, this is a fascinating work which bridges the divide between dusty academia and popular interest. Click here to order $45

215554 Kent, J.P.C. (photos. Max & Albert Hirmer) Roman Coins Thames & Hudson, London, 1978. Large quarto hardcover; green cloth boards with gilt spine titling and upper board publisher's insignia; 368pp., 1430 b&w illustrations. Mild offsetting to endpapers with toning and spotting to text block edges. White dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Very good. Roman coins have been studied for their interest and art since the fourteenth century. Napoleon's portrait on his coinage directly recalls that of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, and the conservative British coinage still retains an idealized portrait and Latin inscription from its Roman forbears. The coins tell us many things; they were the newspapers of the day - spreading the Imperial propaganda when necessary, showing us, often in brutally realistic portraits, the personalities who ruled the Imperial world. We can see mirrored in the pictorial reverse types the hopes and aspirations, the achievements and expedients of a people whose ideals of unity and order laid the foundations of modern Europe. The text and notes on the coins represent a major contribution to scholarship and will be of interest and use alike to the classical scholar, historian, numismatist and archaeologist. Click here to order $125

77324 Marinatos, Nanno, & Robin Hagg (eds.) Greek Sanctuaries New Approaches Routledge, London, 1995. Octavo; paperback; 245pp., with maps and monochrome illustrations. Owner's name. Minor wear; a few spots on text block edges and wear to spine panel extremities. Very good. The history of Greek sanctuaries reflects the development of ancient Greek culture and civilization. Traditionally studies of sanctuaries have been mainly descriptive, with much emphasis on the architectural features. This collection takes a wider view. The articles, all by archaeologists or historians of religion, explore the origin and development of sanctuaries through detailed investigations of some of the most major and some less well-known sites. They stress the social significance of sanctuaries, as well as the important role they played within particular cults. "Greek Sanctuaries: New Approaches" is important and engaging reading for students of ancient Greek history or archaeology. It will also be of interest to people visiting the sites. Click here to order $22

92193 Mitford, T.B. The Inscriptions of Kourion American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia PA, 1971. Hardcover, large octavo; tan cloth boards with red upper board and spine titling; 422pp., monochrome illustrations, plates and fold-out diagram at rear. Minor wear; mildly toned text block with light spotting on top edges; dustwrapper slightly faded along spine and upper edges; mild wear to edges with tiny tear on upper front and rear corners, chipping at tail of spine. Very good to near fine otherwise. Mitford, Reader in Archaeology in the University of St. Andrews, presents a comprehensive study of all known inscriptions from the ancient city of Kourion on the island of Cyprus. These date from the 7th, perhaps the 8th cent. B.C., through the Classical, Hellenistic and Imperial Roman periods, to the early Byzantine era. The finds are fully illustrated by photos and line drawings. Tables of syllabic signs include the signaries of Archaic Kourion, the Treasure of Kourion, Classical Kourion, Archaic and Classical Paphos, and the Common Cypriot Signary of the Classical Period. A full bibliography, a concordance of the inscriptions, and plans of archaeological sites are provided, the whole forming a richly annotated & illustrated corpus of Kourion and its environs. Click here to order $35

71133 Nickel, Douglas R. Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine A Victorian Photographer Abroad Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2004. Quarto hardcover, 239pp., monochrome illustrations. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. A Quaker by birth and an entrepreneur by nature, Frith brought to his photographic projects a sense of mission: to revive and confirm the stories of the Bible, while offering the region to armchair travellers as a seamless Oriental milieu of Romantic reverie. Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine narrates the political, intellectual and social concerns that make Frith representative of England's encounter with the East in the nineteenth century. Click here to order $40

202458 O Baoill, Ruairi Hidden History Below Our Feet - The Archaeological Story of Belfast Prehistoric Belfast; Early Christian Belfast; Medieval Belfast; 17th to 18th Century Belfast; 19th to 21st Century Belfast Northern Ireland Environment Agency/Tandem Design, Holywood County Down Northern Ireland, 2011. Quarto; paperback; 199pp., with maps diagrams, many monochrome and colour illustrations and four folding colour plates. Very minor wear. Near fine. Most people when asked to name the historical wonders in Belfast will probably mention the RMS Titanic. A select band will possibly think of its heady days as a powerhouse of Empire, with major ship building and linen works, along with a whole host of industrial marvels. Certainly, most people would be imagining the city for quite a while before they began to think in terms like "prehistoric", or even "medieval". Ruairi O Baoill, excavations director with the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork at the Queen's University Belfast, has - in this work - highlighted these aspects of Belfast's history, bringing together the disparate threads of the total story in an engaging format. Click here to order $25

92169 Palmer, L.R. The Interpretation of Mycenaean Greek Texts Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998. Hardcover, octavo; black boards with gilt spine titling; 488pp., monochrome frontispiece. Minor wear; a few faint spots to upper text block edges; slightly rubbed green dustwrapper with a few superficial scratches on rear panel and mild wear to spine panel extremities. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Near fine. Click here to order $45

206149 Piotrovsky, Boris B. (James Hogarth, trans.) The Ancient Cvilization of Urartu Cowles Book Company, New York, 1969. Octavo hardcover; beige boards with gilt spine titling and map endpapers; 221pp., colour & monochrome plates. Mild spotting to text block edges and endpapers; illustrated dustwrapper faded along the spine panel with some spotting to edges and rear panel. Very good to near fine and book encased in plain cardboard slipcase with browning at edges. Assyrian inscriptions of Shalmaneser I first mention Uruartri as one of the states of Nairi, a loose confederation of small kingdoms and tribal states in the Armenian Highland in the 13th to 11th centuries BC which he conquered. Uruartu itself was in the region around Lake Van. The Nairi states were repeatedly subjected to further attacks and invasions by the Assyrians, especially under Tukulti-Ninurta I, Tiglath-Pileser I, Ashur-bel-kala, Adad-nirari II, Tukulti-Ninurta II, and Ashurnasirpal II. Urartu re-emerged in Assyrian inscriptions in the 9th century BC as a powerful northern rival of Assyria, which lay to the south in northern Mesopotamia and northeast Syria. The Nairi states and tribes became a unified kingdom under king Aramu, whose capital at Arzashkun was captured by the Assyrians under Shalmaneser III. Roughly contemporaries of the Uruartu, living just to the west along the southern shore of the Black Sea, were the Kaskas known from Hittite sources. The economic structure of Urartu was similar to other states of the ancient world, especially Assyria. The state was heavily dependent on agriculture, which required centralized irrigation. These works were managed by kings, but implemented by free inhabitants and possibly slave labour provided by prisoners. Royal governors, influential people and, perhaps, free peoples had their own allotments. Individual territories within the state had to pay taxes to the central government: grain, horses, bulls, etc. In peacetime, Urartu probably led an active trade with Assyria, providing cattle, horses, iron and wine. According to archaeological data, farming on the territory of Urartu developed from the Neolithic period, even in the 3rd millennium BC. In the Urartian age, agriculture was well developed and closely related to Assyrian methods on the selection of cultures and methods of processing. From cuneiform sources, it is known that in Urartu grew wheat, barley, sesame, millet, and emmer, and cultivated gardens and vineyards. Many regions of the Urartu state required artificial irrigation, which has successfully been organized by the rulers of Urartu in the heyday of the state. In several regions remain ancient irrigation canals, constructed by Urartu, mainly during the Argishti I and Menua period, some of which are still used for irrigation. From the time of its fall to the Medes in the early sixth century Urartu gradually sank into oblivion. It was not until the excavations of the 1870's (including Sir Henry Austen Layard) that Urartu was correctly identified. Little, however, was known of it until the 1930s when archaeologists - including Boris Piotrovsky - began the systematic excavations that have now made it possible to reconstruct the world of Urartu. This is the first comprehensive history in English of this ancient kingdom. Click here to order $35

92728 Quilter, Jeffrey The Ancient Central Andes Routledge World Archaeology Routledge, Milton Park Abingdon Oxon. UK, 2014. Quarto; paperback; 336pp., with monochrome illustrations. Minor wear; mild wear to the covers. Very good to near fine. "The Ancient Central Andes" presents a general overview of the prehistoric peoples and cultures of the Central Andes, the region now encompassing most of Peru and significant parts of Ecuador, Bolivia, northern Chile and northwestern Argentina. The book contextualizes past and modern scholarship and provides a balanced view of current research. Two opening chapters present the intellectual, political, and practical background and history of research in the Central Andes and the spatial temporal and formal dimensions of the study of its past. Chapters then proceed in chronological order from remote antiquity to the Spanish Conquest. The book forms an up-to-date, objective survey of the archaeology of the Central Andes that is much needed. Students and interested readers will benefit greatly from this introduction to a key period in South America's past. Click here to order $30

87368 Redford, Donald B. City of the Ram-Man The Story of Ancient Mendes Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 2010. Quarto hardcover, dustwrapper; 240pp., monochrome illustrations. Remainder. New. Founded in the remote prehistoric past, inhabited continuously for 5,000 years, and abandoned only in the first-century BC, Mendes is a microcosm of ancient Egyptian history. City of the Ram-Man tells the city's full story - from its founding, through its development of a great society and its brief period as the capital of Egypt, up to its final decline. Central to the story is millennia of worship dedicated to the lascivious ram-god. The book describes the discoveries of the great temple of the ram and the 'Mansion of the Rams,' where the embalmed bodies of the avatars of the god were buried. It also discusses ancient Greek reports that these ram-gods occasionally ritually fornicated with women. In this richly illustrated book, renowned archaeologist Donald Redford draws on the latest discoveries - including many of his own - to tell the story of the ancient Egyptian city of Mendes, home of the mysterious cult of the 'fornicating ram who mounts the beauties.' Excavation by Redford and his colleagues over the past two decades has cast light on this strange centre of worship and political power located in the Nile Delta. Click here to order $25

84066 Robinson, Andrew Cracking the Egyptian Code The Revolutionary Life of Jean-Francois Champollion Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, 2012. Octavo; hardcover; 272pp., full-colour and monochrome illustrations. Dustwrapper. Remainder. New. "Is genius more like a flash of lightning, or a slow and inextinguishable smoulder? The breaking of codes and decipherment of previously unreadable old scripts like Egyptian hieroglyphic suggests it is a combination of both: a low-light background of steady and sometimes erroneous work suddenly illuminated by a moment of inspiration. Jean-Francois Champollion's eureka moment came just before noon on 14 September 1822, when the 31-year-old burst into his brother and fellow-savant's office at the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres in Paris and shouted 'I've cracked it!' before fainting dead away on the carpet. The reason for his euphoria, explained in a formal paper a fortnight later, was the realisation that Egyptian hieroglyphic was neither wholly pictographic nor alphabetical, but a combination of the two with symbols representing sounds alongside whole-word symbols and contractions. It is a form of construction that perhaps makes better sense to a post-literate audience of texters and emoticon users than to classically trained students of text. Present at Champollion's lecture but unacknowledged in his address was the brilliant Englishman Thomas Young, who had written an all-important supplement on Egypt for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Young had discovered in his slightly haphazard way that the cartouches found on the Rosetta Stone indicating royal or divine names must contain some phonetic element. Rivals in the way that only an older master and younger, more aggressive follower can be, Young and Champollion suggest different kinds of genius; the one a polymath and inveterate dabbler, the other a driven obsessive: panorama versus tunnel vision, fox as opposed to hedgehog in Isaiah Berlin's terms. Young never went to Egypt. His work was desk-bound. Champollion's dark skin - he may have been only a half-brother to Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac, who extended his name to honour their birthplace and signal social ambition - allowed him to pass as an Arab in the desert, even should his grasp of languages fail him. This is the first full biography of Champollion in English. Robinson has previously written about Young and about Michael Ventris, decipherer of Linear B, but he isn't blinded by knowledge of his subject and he lacks the faintly sensational touch of Lesley and Roy Adkins' book The Keys of Egypt: The Race to Read the Hieroglyphics. He presents instead a convincing and warm-hearted intellectual portrait of Champollion, who died at 41 after transforming our understanding of the ancient world. Champollion was a hedgehog in every possibly sense, not just single-mindedness. An early biographer said of him: 'He was a virulent polemicist, at times viperish, an implacable arguer, intolerant.' It was only when Champollion made his way to Paris that he made his breakthrough. He perhaps needed that bigger canvas, and didn't suffer from its frustrations and distractions. The greatest value of Robinson's account lies in another sharp contrast between Young and Champollion, or rather in the backgrounds they inhabited. The Englishman attended to his medical patients in Worthing by day, transcribed inscriptions by candlelight. Regency England was not Revolutionary France. The Champollion brothers were admirers of the upstart Corsican emperor and greeted him in Grenoble at the start of the 'Cent Jours'. The association haunted them ever afterward, but Jean-Francois was hard-wired for controversy even if his country were not so volatile. The all-important Lettre a M. Dacier, in which the famous lecture was published, should have been addressed to his old teacher Silvestre de Sacy but they had, predictably, fallen out. De Sacy had warned him that deciphering the Rosetta Stone was likely to depend on luck as much as steady work or inspiration. No one likes to hear that. This is an important book, not just in helping to correct a certain impression that Egyptology is the sole province of paranoid nutters hunting wheelmarks of the chariots of the gods but also more generally in showing how 'genius', with which Champollion was undoubtedly touched, is almost always combined with turbulent circumstance and almost always dependent to some degree on someone else's hard work. Robinson has drawn on a substantial literature but the real work here is admirably his own." - Brian Morton. Click here to order $25

39302 Robinson, Andrew The Man Who Deciphered Linear B The Story of Michael Ventris Thames & Hudson, London, 2002. Octavo; hardcover; 168pp., with a portrait frontispiece and many black & white illustrations and diagrams. Minor edgewear to dustwrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. Otherwise very good to near fine. More than a century ago, in 1900, one of the great archaeological finds of all time was made in Crete. Arthur Evans discovered what he believed was the palace of King Minos, with its notorious labyrinth, home of the Minotaur. As a result, Evans became obsessed with one of the epic intellectual stories of the modern era: the search for the meaning of Linear B, the mysterious script found on clay tablets in the ruined palace. Evans died without achieving his objective, and it was left to the enigmatic Michael Ventris to crack the code in 1952. This is the first book to tell not just the story of Linear B but also that of the young man who deciphered it. Based on hundreds of unpublished letters, interviews with survivors, and other primary sources, Andrew Robinson's riveting account takes the reader through the life of this intriguing and contradictory man. Stage by stage, we see how Ventris finally achieved the breakthrough that revealed Linear B as the earliest comprehensible European writing system. Click here to order $20

202072 Romer, John The Great Pyramid Ancient Egypt Revisited Cambridge University Press, New York NY, 2007. Quarto; hardcover, with gilt spine titles; 564pp., with maps and diagrams and monochrome and full-colour illustrations. Minor wear. Dustwrapper lightly rubbed. Very good to near fine. "The largest and most precise stone building in the world and a feat of Bronze Age technology, the Great Pyramid of Giza was built around 2478 B.C. in the reign of King Khufu. But how did the Great Pyramid's makers go about their daily work? What were their timetables, their ambitions? Transposing to Giza some known facts about the building rates of the Red Pyramid during the reign of Khufu's father, Sneferu, archaeologist Romer concludes that it would have taken 14 years to build the Great Pyramid and that a nationwide workforce of around 21,000 was employed during the first year of construction and almost half that number as it approached completion. Taking traditional Egyptologists to task, Romer warns readers against swallowing the 'myth' that the Great Pyramid was built by a mindless rural labour force kidnapped from distant villages and enslaved by a bureaucracy governed by talented noblemen. Instead, he posits that the workers were intelligent and inventive. Moreover, the author believes that the builders worked from a single construction plan, a 'hidden logic' denied by many scholars but that he claims he alone has recovered. " - Publishers Weekly Click here to order $40

212469 Ross, Anne & Robins, Don The Life and Death of a Druid Prince The Story of an Archaeological Sensation Rider, London, 1989. First edition. Hardcover, octavo; 176pp., monochrome plates. Minor wear; faint spotting to text block edges; dustwrapper spine panel and front lower edge mildly sunned. Very good. Wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. The authors challenge previous theories about the Celts, about Druidism and about life in Britain at the time of Boudica's revolt and in the reign of terror which followed it. The first Druid to be discovered, Lindow Man has enabled them to reconstruct a vast and surprisingly sophisticated civilisation. Click here to order $30

201799 Sherratt, Andrew (ed.) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology Cambridge University, 1980. Large quarto hardcover; black boards with silver gilt spine titling; 495pp., colour and monochrome illustrations, tables and maps. Spotting to text block edges and mild wear to black dustwrapper edges. Near fine and wrapper now professionally protected by superior non-adhesive polypropylene film. From two-million-year-old kitchen-middens in Africa to evidence of 10,000 years of agriculture in New Guinea, and the revolutionary discoveries in Macedonia, tracing the movement of human species in time and space, this is a wide-ranging compilation of articles by scholars opening up the major themes and describing the often laborious enterprises across the callings of all the specialities from all the sciences. More than fifty outstanding international scholars discuss recent archaeological advances that have shed new light on humanity's history from the emergence of the human species through to the medieval period in Europe. Click here to order $30

80064 Stiros, S., & R.E, Jones (eds.) Archaeoseismology Fitch Laboratory Occasional Paper 7 IGME - Institute of Geology & Mineral Exploration & The British School at Athens, Athens, 1996 Octavo, hardcover with illustrated green boards and white spine and upper board titling; 268pp., monochrome charts, illustrations and diagrams. Minor wear; near fine. No dustwrapper, as issued. "Reflecting on the burgeoning scientific discipline of archaeoseismology, a clear trend can be discerned. What started as an extravaganza in a good story became a multidisciplinary effort to get a maximum amount of information on the parameters of ancient earthquakes out of archaeological evidence. A clear shift can be observed from a more qualitative approach focussing on the extension of earthquake catalogues to a more quantitative approach concerning site effects. Looking into the future, the vocation of archaeoseismology may lie elsewhere. Archaeoseismology could become a holistic interdisciplinary discipline concerned with establishing the essential earthquake culture in a region" - Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. Click here to order $35

42132 Stockton, Eugene & John Merriman (eds.) Blue Mountains Dreaming - second edition The Aboriginal Heritage Blue Mountains Education & Research Trust, Lawson, NSW, Australia, 2009. Quarto; paperback; 256pp., with many maps and full-colour and monochrome illustrations. New. In 1788 the Aborigines of the Blue Mountains had had no contact with Europeans: within 30 years their traditional way of life had been irrevocably changed. Of the generations of new Mountains dwellers who followed, few appreciated the Aboriginal heritage of the region, even though evidence of their presence was known from the Nepean River and the adjacent escarpment. Increasingly however, widespread discoveries of art sites, occupation sites, stone tools, axe-grinding grooves and stone arrangements, research into the journals and early writings of European explorers and settlers, and the compilation of oral histories, are providing a rich, if incomplete, account of the traditional lifestyles and environment of the Gundungurra and Darug people. This greatly expanded second edition gathers together new information about the original inhabitants of the Blue Mountains and provides a fascinating account of histories, languages, legends and European contact. Click here to order $42

89710 Tsetskhladze, G.R., A.J.N.W. Prag & A.M. Snodgrass (eds.) Periplous Papers on Classical Art and Archaeology Presented to Sir John Boardman Thames & Hudson, London, 2000. Quarto hardcover; red cloth boards with gilt spine titling and blind-stamped publisher's insignia on centre front, mauve endpapers; 416pp., monochrome illustrations. Minor wear only; one or two scattered spots on upper text block edges very mildly toned page edges. Near fine in like illustrated dustwrapper. The idea of circumnavigation suggested by the title of this volume of essays presented to one of the world's leading classical archaeologists conjures up the sense of excitement associated with a voyage of discovery. Over forty friends, colleagues and former doctoral students whose work was supervised by John Boardman during his time as Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at Oxford University (1978-1994) have contributed essays on topics close to his heart. Now holding academic posts worldwide, they all recall with pleasure the enthusiasm and encouragement of their former teacher, whose range of publications on the art of ancient Greece is second to none. Click here to order $75

52681 Wortham, John David British Egyptology, 1549-1906 David & Charles, Newton Abbot UK, 1971. Octavo; hardcover; 171pp., monochrome illustrations. Text block edges spotted. Minor wear only otherwise; very good to near fine. This book presents a chronological account of the origins and early development of British Egyptology. It details the discoveries, adventures and misadventures of early travellers along the Nile, from Lawrence Aldersey, who published descriptions of the ruins at Alexandria and the Pyramids at Giza in the late 1500s to Alexander Rhind, who in the late 1800s pioneered the establishment of archaeological methodology. John Wortham here bases his work on early travel narratives, scholarly articles in antiquarian journals, excavation reports, proceedings of learned societies, and similar sources. Click here to order $20