Sagalassos 6Since 1990, the ancient Greco-Roman city of Sagalassos in southwestern Turkey has been the focus of an interdisciplinary archaeological research project coordinated by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Sagalassos, a popular cultural attraction for visitors to Turkey, is located between a dramatic mountain range and a lush agricultural plain. It was first settled around the fourteenth century B.C.E. and various kingdoms controlled the region in turn before it became a valuable hub of trade in the Roman Empire. Sagalassos was known especially for its olives and for its elegant red-slip tableware.The essays collected in this book reveal how the meticulous systematic and interdisciplinary reconstruction of the ecology and economy of the site and its territory has enhanced our understanding of the ancient settlement and its inhabitants beyond the traditional aspects of classical archaeology in Asia Minor. Highlighting geo-archaeological, archaeometrical, and bio-archaeological work performed during excavations and surveys between 1996 and 2006, this important book's insights greatly enhance the promotion of real interdisciplinarity in classical archaeology.

Sagalassos speaks to the imagination in more ways than one. The authentic and natural beauty of the site no doubt plays a role in that. The Sagalassos Project testifies to the fact that its core business, archaeology, also appeals to the imagination. Learning about the past is fascinating, for young and old alike. Curiosity unquestionably plays a role in this. Archaeologists, as any other scientist, are driven to really know about past human activities. As they leave no stone unturned in their endeavours, archaeologists also stimulate the curiosity of society. The public at large is not only interested in the results per se, but also wants to understand how knowledge about the past comes about. This volume gives the word to the archaeologists and other scientists of the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project. They explain their ways, methods and concepts as they reconstruct and interpret the past of the archaeological site of Sagalassos and the surrounding study region. By bringing testimony to the broader discipline of archaeology, this book deserves to be read by scholars and students with an open interest in classical archaeology who wish to (re)discover some of the basics of the science and process. It will also be of interest to professionals involved with archaeologists and the wider interested public.

In two volumes.

The Roman period witnessed massive changes in the human-material environment, from monumentalised cityscapes to standardised low-value artefacts like pottery. This book explores new perspectives to understand this Roman ‘object boom’ and its impact on Roman history. In particular, the book’s international contributors question the traditional dominance of ‘representation’ in Roman archaeology, whereby objects have come to stand for social phenomena such as status, facets of group identity, or notions like Romanisation and economic growth. Drawing upon the recent material turn in anthropology and related disciplines, the essays in this volume examine what it means to materialise Roman history, focusing on the question of what objects do in history, rather than what they represent. In challenging the dominance of representation, and exploring themes such as the impact of standardisation and the role of material agency, Materialising Roman History is essential reading for anyone studying material culture from the Roman world (and beyond).

Marzano explores the exploitation of marine resources in the Roman world and its role within the economy. Bringing together literary, epigraphic, archaeological, and legal sources, she shows that these marine resources were an important feature of the Roman economy and paralleled phenomena taking place in the Roman agricultural economy on land.

The Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project has made interdisciplinary practices part of its scientific strategy from the very beginning. The project is internationally acknowledged for important achievements in this respect. Aspects of its approach to ancient Sagalassos can be considered ground-breaking for the archaeology of Anatolia and the wider fields of classical and Roman archaeology. Now that its first project director, Professor Marc Waelkens - University of Leuven -, is at the stage of shifting practices, from an active academic career to an active academic retirement, this volume represents an excellent opportunity to reflect on the wider impact of the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project. The contributors to the honorific publication build on the methods and practices of interdisciplinary archaeology from a wide variety of angles, in order to highlight the crucial role of interdisciplinary research for creating progress in the interpretation of the human past or nurture developments in their own disciplines. In particular, the contributors consider how the parcours of the Sagalassos Project helped to pave their ways. Contributors are international authorities in the field of Anatolian and classical archaeology, bio-archaeology, geo-archaeology, history and cultural heritage.

This two part volume brings together over 60 specialists to present 31 papers on the latest research into archaeozoology of the Near East. The papers are wide-ranging in terms of period and geographical coverage: from Palaeolithic rock shelter assemblages in Syria to Byzantine remains in Palestine and from the Caucasus to Cyprus. Papers are grouped into thematic sections examining patterns of Palaeolithic and Neolithic subsistence in northern Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Iranian plateau; Palaeolithic to Neolithic faunal remains from Armenia; animal exploitation in Bronze Age urban sites; new evidence concerning pastoralism, nomadism and mobility; aspects of domestication and animal exploitation in the Arabian peninsula; several case studies on ritual animal deposits; and specific analyses of patterns of animal exploitation at urban sites in Turkey, Palestine and Jordan. This important collection of significant new work builds on the well-established foundation of previous ICAZ publications to present the very latest results of archaeozoological research in the prehistory of this formative region in the development of animal exploitation.