Périgord possesses two superlative assets: unrivalled rock art and matchless cuisine. The two seem utterly incompatible: after all, it stretches one’s imagination to associate archaeologists of early humans with discerning culinary matters. In essence, these archaeologists are manqué fossil hunters, gripped by the metrics of fragmentary bones and stones. Yet again, perhaps for all their […]
Issue 39
Jordan: all that Glistens is not Gold
The CWA-allied Great Arab Revolt Project has just completed its fourth season in the Jordanian desert searching for the remains of Lawrence of Arabia’s war. Sometimes, archaeological discoveries are spectacular. More often, they are very mundane. But, argues GARP landscape archaeologist John Winterburn, the very mundane can be packed with information
Ghadames
The oasis town of Ghadames is an architectural gem in western Libya. It once lay on the trans-Saharan trade-route described in the previous feature. Words and pictures Fiona Dunlop.
Code Breaker’s Secret Diary, and the Scripta: International Journal of Writing Systems
Civilization cannot exist without spoken language, but it can without written communication. The Greek poetry of Homer was at first transmitted orally, stored in the memory, as were the Vedas, the Sanskrit hymns of the ancient Hindus, which were unwritten for centuries. The South American empire of the Incas managed its administration without writing. As […]
Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity:
The Late Bronze Age of the Near East, roughly spanning 1400-1200 BCE (Before Christian Era), has often been characterized as an ‘age of internationalism.’ The major political powers, Egypt, Mycenae, Hittite Hatti, and Assyria participated in global economy, well developed commercial and political contacts including exchange of technology, ideologies, culture, and knowledge. By the late […]
Mohenjo-daro
Mohenjo-daro represents an entire Early Bronze Age civilization on a par with those of contemporary Egypt and Mesopotamia.
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