Prehistoric Cypriot ceramics were widely traded, especially in the late Bronze Age, and constitute an important source of information about international trade and cultural relations in the Bronze and Iron Age eastern Mediterranean. These papers were presented at an international conference held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum in October 1989. Symposium Series II University Museum Monograph, 74

This illustrated catalogue presents 190 objects from the Collection of Palestinian Antiquities in the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Covering the 4th millennium BC to the 8th century AD, the artefacts are presented in ten thematic sections. These cover such subjects as: death and burial in the early Bronze Age; war; the domestic world in the Bronze and Iron Ages; the wider world; religion in the late Bronze and Iron Ages; Hellenistic and Byzantine trade; the villa at Tel Anafa; technology; everyday life in the hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods; and pagans, Jews and Christians. Each section begins with a discussion followed by a full description and discussion of the objects themselves, all of which are illustrated. Many types of object are represented including ceramics and lamps, personal implements and tools, religious figurines and carvings, jewellery, bone items, toilet implements, scarabs, armour and weapons, intaglio gems and ossuaries. The book begins with a brief discussion of changing attitudes and practice in the archaeology of the Holy Hand.

.".. 6th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East held in Rome on May 5th-10th, 2008 (www.6icaane.it)"--Foreword.

Ke-ra-me-ja is a woman's name that appears on a Linear B tablet from Knossos. It means "potter" (Κεράμεια, from Greek κέραμος, "potter's clay") and combines two major strands of Cynthia Shelmerdine's scholarly pursuits: Mycenaean ceramics and Linear B texts. It thereby signals her pioneering use of archaeological and textual data in a sophisticated and integrated way. The intellectual content of the essays presented to her in this volume demonstrate not only that her research has had a wide-ranging influence, but also that it is a model of scholarship to be emulated.

This volume substantiates the island of Cyprus as an important player in the history of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and Near East, and presents new theoretical and analytical approaches. The Cypriot Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age are characterised by an increasing complexity of social and political organisation, economic systems and networks. The book discusses and defines how specific types of material datasets and assemblages, such as architecture, artefacts, and ecofacts, and their contextualisation can form the basis of interpretative models of social structures and networks in ancient Cyprus. This is explored through four main themes: approaches to social dynamics; social and economic networks and connectivity; adaptability and agency; and social dynamics and inequality. The variety and transition of social structures on the island are discussed on multiple scales, from the local and relatively short-term to island-wide and eastern Mediterranean-wide and the longue durée. The focus of study ranges from urban to non-urban contexts, and are reflected in settlement, funerary, and other ritual contexts. Connections, both within the island and to the broader Eastern Mediterranean, and how these impact social and economic developments on the island, are explored. Discussions revolve around the potential of consolidating the models based on specialised studies into a cohesive interpretation of society on ancient Cyprus and its strategic connections with surrounding regions in a diachronic perspective from the Neolithic through the end of the Bronze Age, i.e. from roughly the seventh millennium to the eleventh century BCE. Prehistoric and Protohistoric Cyprus is intended for researchers and students of the archaeology and history of ancient Cyprus, the Aegean, and the Eastern Mediterranean.