A catalogue of one of the finest collections of Etruscan artifacts outside of Italy, that of Wold Museum, Liverpool. This publication is highly illustrated with over 100 plates in full colour.

A catalogue of one of the finest collections of Etruscan artifacts outside of Italy, that of Wold Museum, Liverpool. This publication is highly illustrated with over 100 plates in full colour.

The Archaeology Hotspots series offers reader-friendly and engaging narratives of the archaeology in particular countries. Written by archaeological experts with a general reader in mind, each book in the series focuses on what has been found and by whom, what the controversies and scandals have been, ongoing projects, and how it all fits into a broader view of the history of the country. In Archaeology Hotspot France, Georgina Muskett provides insight into the vibrant and varied collection of archaeological sites and monuments in France. From the presence of the first humans to the royal dynasty of the Merovingians, this book takes readers into the histories, mysteries, and scandals of these illustrious sites, as well as covering the latest discoveries, early pioneers, and the innovations for which French archaeology is famous. The stunning cave art of Lascaux, the engineering excellence of the Pont-du-Gard and the amphora-laden shipwreck at Madrague de Giens are among the wealth of archaeological sites to be discovered.

This well-presented volume presents a catalogue of all 324 Etruscan and Italic objects held by the Museum preceded by eight essays which examine the historical and cultural background to the objects as well as an overview of the archaeology of early central Italy.

Covering the period from 2500 BCE to the Byzantine Era, this volume focuses on the social history of furniture found in houses, tombs and temples as narrated through the archaeological evidence. The earliest furniture can be seen as an attempt by humans to enhance their safety, comfort and social standing but it can also offer opportunities for understanding human behavior, values and thought: fine furniture was among the most valuable of possessions in the ancient world so it expressed power, wealth and status. It was appreciated as art, used in diplomacy (both as a gift and as tribute) and recorded as booty. At the same time, its practical and ceremonial uses yield important clues about the domestic environment and daily life in antiquity, as well as revealing aspects of sacred belief and funerary practices. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, this volume presents essays that examine key characteristics of the furniture of the period on the themes of Design and Motifs; Makers, Making, and Materials; Types and Uses; The Domestic Setting; The Public Setting; Exhibition and Display; Furniture and Architecture; Visual Representations; and Verbal Representations.

This is the biography of a set of rare Buddhist statues from China. Their extraordinary adventures take them from the Buddhist temples of fifteenth-century Putuo – China’s most important pilgrimage island – to their seizure by a British soldier in the First Opium War in the early 1840s, and on to a starring role in the Great Exhibition of 1851. In the 1850s, they moved in and out of dealers’ and antiquarian collections, arriving in 1867 at Liverpool Museum. Here they were re-conceptualized as specimens of the ‘Mongolian race’ and, later, as examples of Oriental art. The statues escaped the bombing of the Museum during the Second World War and lived out their existence for the next sixty years, dismembered, corroding and neglected in the stores, their histories lost and origins unknown. As the curator of Asian collections at Liverpool Museum, the author became fascinated by these bronzes, and selected them for display in the Buddhism section of the World Cultures gallery. In 2005, quite by chance, the discovery of a lithograph of the figures on prominent display in the Great Exhibition enabled the remarkable lives of these statues to be reconstructed.