Showing titles in Archaeology

Archaeology for Beginners offers a crash course in the fundamentals of archaeological work. It is the go-to place for student and volunteer archaeologists attending their first dig, or for anyone with a passion for human history who wants to find out more about what archaeology is all about.

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.

In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, recounting their intense rivalry, personal feuds, and fierce controversies, as well as their feats of skill and endurance. The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than 20 species of extinct humans. They have firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind but also of modern humans.

The Inka empire was the largest pre-Columbian polity in the New World. Its vast expanse, its ethnic diversity, and the fact that the empire may have been consolidated in less than a century have prompted much scholarly interest in its creation. In this study, Besom explores the ritual practices of human sacrifice and the worship of mountains, attested in both archaeological investigations and ethnohistorical sources, as tools in the establishment and preservation of political power.

Tom Chivers follows hidden pathways, explores lost islands and uncovers the geological mysteries that burst up through the pavement and bubble to the surface of our streets. From Roman ruins to a submerged playhouse, from an abandoned Tube station to underground rivers, Chivers leads us on a journey into the depths of the city he loves.

Imagine you are a hunter-gatherer some 12,000 years ago. You've got a choice - carry on foraging or plant a few seeds and move to one of those new-fangled settlements down the valley. What you won't know is that urban life is short and riddled with dozens of new diseases; your children will be shorter and sicklier than you are; they'll be plagued with gum disease and stand a decent chance of violent death at the point of a spear. Why would anyone choose this? But choose they did.

The story of the Incas is a powerful one, and their legacy remains a potent influence in the Andes of South America. In this insightful lecture series, Columbia University professor Terence D'Altroy focuses on Inca life at the height of the empire, the society's origins, its military, religion, ruling structure, and finally, the Inca legacy today.

Ein archäologischer Thriller aus dem Mittelalter Lange galt die Zeit der Ottonen als »Schicksalsepoche der Deutschen«. Die Nazis vereinnahmten das 10. Jahrhundert ideologisch, um die Vernichtungspolitik des »Tausendjährigen Reiches« zu rechtfertigen. Nun macht sich die Archäologie daran, das wahre Gesicht dieser Schlüsselzeit Europas zu enthüllen.

Tracking deep into our evolutionary history, anthropological science has begun to unravel one particular feature that sets us apart from the many, many animals that came before us—our uniquely long childhoods. Growing Up Human looks at how we have diverged from our ancestral roots to stay ‘forever young’—or at least what seems like forever—and how the evolution of childhood is a critical part of the human story.

The Mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon is an exciting story of detection involving legends, expert decipherment of ancient texts, and a vivid description of a little-known civilization. Recognized in ancient times as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the legendary Hanging Garden of Babylon and its location still remains a mystery steeped in shadow and puzzling myths. In this remarkable volume Stephanie Dalley, a world expert on ancient Babylonian language, gathers for the first time all the material on this enigmatic World Wonder.

To secure a comfortable afterlife, ancient Egyptians built fortress-like tombs and filled them with precious goods, a practice that generated staggering quantities of artifacts over the course of many millennia—and also one that has drawn thieves and tomb-raiders to Egypt since antiquity. Drawing on modern scholarship, reportage, and period sources, this book tracks the history of treasure-seekers in Egypt and the social contexts in which they operated, revealing striking continuities throughout time.

Exploring myths, mysteries and misconceptions about the past - from the legacies of figures like Pythagoras and Christopher Columbus, to the realities of life in the gun-toting Wild West, to the archaeological digs that have upset our understanding of the birth of civilisation - David Mountain reveals how ongoing revolutions in history and archaeology are shedding light on the truth.

Imagine you were transported back in time to Ancient Greece and you had to start a new life there. What would you see? How would the people around you think and believe? How would you fit in? Where would you live? What would you eat? What work would be available, and what help could you get if you got sick?

For over 400 years, the mystery of Roanoke’s “Lost Colony” has puzzled historians and spawned conspiracies - until now. Hatteras native and amateur archaeologist Scott Dawson compiles what scholars know about the Lost Colony along with what scholars have found beneath the soil of Hatteras.

Adam Ford is an archaeologist. Not only has he been on expeditions to unlock the mysteries of the past in the Caribbean, British Isles, Jordan, Syria, Israel, United Arab Emirates and Australia, he's also had heat stroke, hypothermia, and dysentery; been chased by camel spiders; been walked on by scorpions; and been pestered by bugs big enough to ride.

Is the archeologist who discovers a lost tomb a sort of hero - or a villain? If someone steals a relic from a museum and returns it to the ruin it came from, is she a thief? Craig Childs's riveting new book is a lyrical ghost story - an intense, impassioned investigation into the nature of the past and the things we leave behind. We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection.

Palmyra has long attracted the attention of the world. Well before its rediscovery in the 17th century, the ancient city gained legendary status because of its Queen Zenobia, who in the third century CE rebelled against Rome and expanded Palmyra's territory into what is now modern Turkey and Egypt.

Never before has there been a real discovery where all the physical characteristics of a proposed location matched Plato’s description of Atlantis. Not even the original Santorini hypothesis could sufficiently meet the given criteria.

All too often we think of the past as static, 'frozen in time', and indeed movement is not always easy to decipher from the archaeological record. With Jim Leary's expert eye we explore the tangible remains, from fossilized footprint tracks to prehistoric wooden trackways, ridgeways, holloways, droveways, green ways, corpse roads, and Roman roads. Isotope studies and archaeogenetics now allow us see the arduous journeys that people made across continents and oceans, proving that migration has been continuous throughout our past, an endless ebb and flow of populations.

When the Smithsonian’s Hall of Physical Anthropology opened in 1965 it featured 160 Andean skulls affixed to a wall to visualize how the world’s human population had exploded since the birth of Christ. Through a history of Inca mummies, a preHispanic surgery called trepanation, and Andean crania like these, Empires of the Dead explains how “ancient Peruvians” became the single largest population in the Smithsonian and many other museums in Peru, the Americas, and beyond.