New Books in Archaeology

Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, "War and Community in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

27 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, War and Community in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2026) Late Antiquity (ca. 250–600 CE) was a world at war: barb...

Jessica Clarke, "A New History of Ancient Roman Theatre" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

13 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

"Roman theatre" is a term often used to describe the theatre of ancient Italy during the second and third century BCE. Plautus and Terence are referre...

Kim Bowes, "Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent" (Princeton UP, 2025)

12 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The story of ancient Rome is predominantly one of great men with great fortunes. Surviving Rome: The Economic Lives of the Ninety Percent (Princ...

Mike Pitts, "Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

11 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Rapa Nui, known to Western cultures as Easter Island for centuries, has long been a source of mystery. While the massive stone statues that populate t...

Margaret S. Graves, "Invisible Hands: Fabrication, Forgery, and the Art of Islamic Ceramics" (Princeton UP, 2026)

27 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the heyday of Islamic art collecting around the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of premodern ceramic objects circulated on the internation...

Himanshu Prabha Ray ed., "Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections" (Routledge, 2026)

15 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Recentering Southeast Asia: Politics, Religion and Maritime Connections (Routledge, 2026) assesses the impact of European colonization in the late 1...

Samuel Holley-Kline, "In the Shadow of El Tajín: The Political Economy of Archaeology in Modern Mexico" (U Nebraska Press, 2025)

03 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Located in the Papantla municipality of the Mexican state of Veracruz, El Tajín is a UNESCO World Heritage site but a lesser-known tourist destinatio...

Jerry Moore, "Cat Tales: A History" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)

14 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For as long as cats have coexisted with humans, they have been feared, revered and respected. They appear as dynamic hunters in Palaeolithic carvings ...

Stephen Murphy, "Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2024)

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This important new work, Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2023) by Stephen Murphy...

Charles Higham, "Early Southeast Asia: From First Humans to First Civilizations" (NUS Press, 2024)

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In September 2025 the Dutch government announced that it would return to Indonesia the fossilized remains of the famous ‘Java Man’, the first know...

Paulette F. C. Steeves, "The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere" (U Nebraska Press, 2021)

30 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere (U Nebraska Press, 2021) is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North a...

Nayanjot Lahiri, "Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand" (SUNY Press, 2023)

29 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Blending travelogue, history, and archaeology, Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand (SUNY Press, 2023) unravels...

Max Adams and Colm O’Brien, "Northumbria AD 367-867: Earth Hall, Ring Gift and Heaven’s Field" (Birlinn, 2025)

18 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The story of the lands between the Forth and Humber from the end of the Roman period to the Viking kingdom of York is one of the most richly fascinati...

Eric H. Cline, "Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed" (Princeton UP, 2025)

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C., a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of th...

Sarah Griswold, "Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate" (Cornell UP, 2025)

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate (Cornell UP, 2025), Dr. Sarah Griswold shows how the Levant became a crucial front in ...

John Blair, "Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World" (Princeton UP, 2025)

30 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World (Princeton UP, 2025) by Professor John Blair provides the first in-depth, globa...

Joe Watkins, "Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

26 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Indigenizing Japan: Ainu Past, Present, and Future (University of Arizona Press, 2025), archaeologist Joe E. Watkins provides a comprehensive lo...

Michael B. Cosmopoulos, "The World of Homer: Archaeology, Social Memory, and the Emergence of Greek Epic Poetry" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

24 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Epic poetry, notably the Iliad and the Odyssey, stands as one of the most enduring legacies of ancient Greece. Although the impact of these epics o...

Angelos Chaniotis, "Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander to Hadrian" (Harvard UP, 2018)

19 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death in 323 BCE. In Age of Conquests: The Greek World from Alexander...

Moudhy Al-Rashid, "Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History" (W.W. Norton, 2025)

16 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1923, archaeologist Leonard Woolley stumbled upon a room that dated back to 530BC, the time of the Babylonians. Oddly, the room was filled with art...

Michelle Wang, "The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

14 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What can a map do, beyond showing us where things are? Michelle Wang's new book, The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China (U Chicago Press, 2...

Daniel J. Sherman, "Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Sarah talks to Daniel J. Sherman about his most recent book, Sensations: French Archaeology Between Science and Spectacle, 1890-1940...

Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, "Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East" (UP of Colorado, 2025)

04 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East (University Press of Colorado, 2025) by Dr. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni offers an in-...

Walter Scheidel, "What Is Ancient History?" (Princeton UP, 2025)

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s easy to think that ancient history is, well, ancient history—obsolete, irrelevant, unjustifiably focused on Greece and Rome, and at risk o...

Kirin Narayan, "Cave of My Ancestors: Vishwakarma and the Artisans of Ellora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On the podcast today I am joined by Kirin Narayan, emerita professor at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. Kir...

Lizzie Wade, "Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures" (Harper, 2025)

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A richly imagined new view on the great human tradition of apocalypse, from the rise of Homo sapiens to the climate instability of our present, that...

Graham Harman and Christopher Witmore, "Objects Untimely: Object-Oriented Philosophy and Archaeology" (Polity Press, 2023)

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Objects generate time; time does not generate or change objects. That is the central thesis of this book by the philosopher Graham Harman and the arch...

J. P. Mallory, "The Indo-Europeans Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution Is Rewriting Their Story" (Thames & Hudson, 2025)

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today the number of native speakers of Indo-European languages across the world is approximated to be over 2.6 billion—about 45 percent of the Earth...

Emily Hauser, "Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It" (Univ of Chicago Press, 2025)

19 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Achilles. Agamemnon. Odysseus. Hector. The lives of these and many other men in the greatest epics of ancient Greece have been pored over endlessly in...

Andrew Smith, "First People: The Lost History of the Khoisan" (Jonathan Ball, 2022)

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

First people communities are the early groups of hunter gatherers, herders, and the oldest human lineages of Africa, some migrating from as far as Eas...

Robert Garland, "What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife" (Princeton UP, 2025)

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A lively story of death, What to Expect When You're Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife (Princeton University Press, 2025) by Dr. Rober...

Richard D. Oram, "A Land Won from Waste: Scotland AD 400-1400" (Birlinn, 2025)

24 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland e...

Annalisa Marzano, "Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome" (Cambridge UP. 2022)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Plants, Politics and Empire in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Annalisa Marzano investigates the cultural and political dimens...

Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2012, Steve Green, billionaire and president of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, announced a recent purchase of a Biblical artefact—a fragm...

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, "The Idea of the City in Late Antiquity: A Study in Resilience" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The city was one of the central and defining features of the world of the Greek and Roman Mediterranean. Challenging the idea that the ancient city 'd...

Roland Mayer, "The Ruins of Rome: A Cultural History" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The beguiling ruins of Rome have a long history of allure. They first engaged the attention of later mediaeval tourists, just as they do today. The in...

Rune Nyord, "Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

29 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Many of us are familiar with the ancient Egyptians’ obsession with immortality and the great efforts they made to secure the quality of their afterl...

Sureshkumar Muthukumaran, "The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean" (U California Press, 2023)

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean (University of California Press, 2023) chronicles the ea...

Selena Wisnom, "The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

13 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen...

Vera Tiesler, "Ancient Maya Teeth: Dental Modification, Cosmology, and Social Identity in Mesoamerica" (U Texas Press, 2024)

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dental modification was common across ancient societies, but perhaps none were more avid practitioners than the Maya. They filed their teeth flat or p...

Ashish Avikunthak, "Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

21 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bureaucratic Archaeology: State, Science and Past in Postcolonial India (Cambridge UP, 2022) presents a novel ethnographic examination of archaeologi...

Caitlín Eilís Barrett, "Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens" (Oxford UP, 2019)

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Domesticating Empire: Egyptian Landscapes in Pompeian Gardens (Oxford University Press, 2019) is the first contextually-oriented monograph on Egyptian...

Robert D. Miller II, "Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God" (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021)

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Recognizing the absence of a God named Yahweh outside of ancient Israel, this study addresses the related questions of Yahweh's origins and the biblic...

A. L. McClanan, "Griffinology: The Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art" (Reaktion, 2024)

14 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A. L. McClanan's Griffinology: The Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art (Reaktion, 2024) is a fascinating exploration of the mythical creature'...

Persistent Pastoralism: Monuments and Settlements in the Archaeology of Dhofar

07 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Joy McCorriston about Persistent Pastoralism: Monuments and Settlements in the Archaeology of Dhofar (Archaeopress Publishing, 2...

Jeffrey M. Pilcher, "Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity" (Oxford UP, 2024)

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today I’m speaking with Jeffrey Pilcher, Professor of Food History at the University of Toronto. We are discussing his new book, Hopped Up: How Tra...

Andrew Fleming, "The Gravity of Feathers: Fame, Fortune and the Story of St Kilda" (Birlinn, 2024)

24 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When the last 36 inhabitants of St Kilda, 40 miles west of the Scottish Hebrides, were evacuated in 1930, the archipelago at ‘the edge of the world’...

Nicolas Delsol, "Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas: A Zooarchaeological Historical Study" (UP of Florida, 2024)

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas: A Zooarchaeological Historical Study (University Press of Florida, 2024), Nicolas Delsol compares zooarch...

Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, "Desert Ascetics of Egypt" (ARC Humanities Press, 2020)

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Egypt is revered as the home of the famous Desert Ascetics, who first embraced a monastic life and established homosocial communities on the borders o...

William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)

29 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the Rockies to the Himalayas, the bond between horses and humans has spanned across time and civilizations. In this archaeological journey, Willi...

John Schofield, "Wicked Problems for Archaeologists: Heritage as Transformative Practice" (Oxford UP, 2024)

15 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

'Wicked Problems' are those problems facing the planet and its inhabitants, present and future, which are hard (if not impossible) to resolve and for ...

Theodore Papakostas, "How to Fit All of Ancient Greece in an Elevator" (William Collins, 2024)

14 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Two strangers meet in a trapped elevator. One is an archaeologist, the other isn’t. A simple question, ‘What do you do?’, becomes the springboar...

Paul J. Kosmin, "Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire" (Harvard UP, 2018)

07 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, the Seleucid kings ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia to Anatolia, Armenia to ...

Richard D. Oram, "Where Men No More May Reap Or Sow: The Little Ice Age: Scotland 1400-1850" (Birlinn, 2024)

30 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing together the evidence of archaeology, palaeoecology, climate history and the historical record, this first environmental history of Scotland e...

Rubina Raja, "Shaping Archaeological Archives: Dialogues Between Fieldwork, Museum Collections, and Private Archives" (Brepols, 2023)

19 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Archaeology as a discipline has undergone significant changes over the past decades, in particular concerning best practices for how to handle the vas...

Bryan K. Miller, "Xiongnu: The World's First Nomadic Empire" (Oxford UP, 2024)

01 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Xiongnu: The World’s First Nomadic Empire (Oxford UP, 2024), Bryan K. Miller weaves together archaeology and history to chart the course of t...

Stefanos Geroulanos, "The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins" (Liveright, 2024)

31 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings an...

Whitney Nell Stewart, "This Is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations" (UNC Press, 2023)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The cultural memory of plantations in the Old South has long been clouded by myth. A recent reckoning with the centrality of slavery to the US nationa...

Mpho Ngoepe and Sindiso Bhebhe, "Indigenous Archives in Postcolonial Contexts: Recalling the Pasts" (Routledge, 2024)

02 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Mpho Ngoepe and Sindiso Bhebhe's Indigenous Archives in Postcolonial Contexts: Recalling the Pasts (Routledge, 2024) revisits the definition of a r...

What Can We Learn From A Pottery Shard? Uncovering the Ancient Past Through Biblical Archeology with Professor Aren Maeir

17 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Some people are good at what they do, some are enthusiastic about their work. This guest brings both to bear in his exploration of the ancient past. T...

Seth Bernard, "Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy" (Oxford UP, 2018)

07 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Building Mid-Republican Rome: Labor, Architecture, and the Urban Economy (Oxford University Press, 2018), offers a holistic treatment of the developme...

Martyn Whittock, "American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America" (Pegasus Books, 2023)

05 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A vivid and illuminating new history--separate fact from fiction, myth from legend--exploring the early Vikings settlements in North America. Vikings ...

Douglas Hunter, "Beardmore: The Viking Hoax That Rewrote History" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2018)

30 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1936, long before the discovery of the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, the Royal Ontario Museum made a sensational acquisition: the conten...

Yaron Eliav, "A Jew in the Roman Bathhouse: Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Mediterranean" (Princeton UP, 2023)

17 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Public bathhouses embodied the Roman way of life, from food and fashion to sculpture and sports. The most popular institution of the ancient Mediterra...

Megan Nutzman, "Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual Healing in Roman and Late Antique Palestine" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

05 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the ancient Mediterranean world, individuals routinely looked for divine aid to cure physical afflictions. Contested Cures: Identity and Ritual He...

Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale, "Why Men?: A Human History of Violence and Inequality" (Hurst, 2023)

03 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did humans, a species that evolved to be cooperative and egalitarian, develop societies of enforced inequality? Why did our ancestors create patri...

Christopher P. Barton, "The Archaeology of Race and Class at Timbuctoo: A Black Community in New Jersey" (UP of Florida, 2023)

25 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Archaeology of Race and Class at Timbuctoo: A Black Community in New Jersey (UP of Florida, 2023) is the first book to examine the historic Black...

Trenton W. Holliday, "Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe" (Columbia UP, 2023)

23 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

During the Last Ice Age, Europe was a cold, dry place teeming with mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, bison, cave bears, cave hyenas, and cave l...

Jonathan Downs, "Discovery at Rosetta: Revealing Ancient Egypt" (American University in Cairo Press, 2020)

15 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In 1798, young French general Napoleon Bonaparte entered Egypt with a veteran army and a specialist group of savants—scientists, engineers, and arti...

A Better Way to Buy Books

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has alre...

Jason Thompson, "Wonderful Things: A History of Egyptology" (AU of Cairo, 2018)

14 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When asked what he saw after reverently peering into the freshly opened tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, Egyptologist Howard Carter could only find the wo...

Jack Green and Ros Henry, "Olga Tufnell’s 'Perfect Journey': Letters and Photographs of an Archaeologist in the Levant and Mediterranean" (UCL Press, 2021)

02 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Olga Tufnell (1905–85) was a British archaeologist working in Egypt, Cyprus, and Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s, a period often described as a gol...

Marnie Feneley, "Reconstructing God: Style, Hydraulics, Political Power and Angkor's West Mebon Visnu" (National U of Singapore Press, 2022)

01 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In December 1936, a villager was led by a dream to the ruins of the West Mebon shrine in Angkor where he uncovered remains of a bronze sculpture. This...

Archaeology and Nomadism in the Russian Empire: An interview with Ismael Biyashev

29 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the second half of the 19th century, both professional and amateur archaeologists, surveyors, and explorers of the “periphery” of the Russian ...

Yonatan Adler, "The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal" (Yale UP, 2022)

29 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal (Yale University Press, 2022), Yonatan Adler pursues the societal adoption of r...

Nayanjot Lahiri, "Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand" (SUNY Press, 2023)

29 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Blending travelogue, history, and archaeology, Searching for Ashoka: Questing for a Buddhist King from India to Thailand (SUNY Press, 2023) unravels...

Timothy R. Pauketat, "Gods of Thunder: How Climate Change, Travel, and Spirituality Reshaped Precolonial America" (Oxford UP,

27 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Timothy R. Pauketat’s Gods of Thunder: How Climate Change, Travel, and Spirituality Reshaped Precolonial America (Oxford UP, 2023) is a sweeping ...

John Soderberg, "Animals and Sacred Bodies in Early Medieval Ireland: Religion and Urbanism at Clonmacnoise" (Lexington Books, 2021)

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Clonmacnoise was among the busiest, most economically complex, and intensely sacred places in early medieval Ireland. In Animals and Sacred Bodies in...

Claudia Brittenham, "Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica" (U Texas Press, 2023)

24 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica (U Texas Press, 2023), Claudia Brittenham unravels one of the most puzzling phenomen...

Mark Axel Tveskov and Ashley Ann Bissonnette, "Conflict Archaeology, Historical Memory, and the Experience of War: Beyond the Battlefield" (UP of Florida, 2023)

10 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Axel Tveskov and Ashley Ann Bissonnette's Conflict Archaeology, Historical Memory, and the Experience of War: Beyond the Battlefield (UP of Flo...

William Carruthers, "Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology" (Cornell UP, 2022)

05 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology (Cornell UP, 2022) examines a world famous yet critically underexamined event—...

Amanda Podany, "Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East" (Oxford UP, 2022)

25 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East (Oxford University Press, 2022), a sweeping history of the ancient Near East,...

Digging for Answers: The Archaeology of Jerusalem and the Politics of Archaeology

23 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Katharina Galor, an archaeology professor at the at the Program in Judaic Studies at Brown University who has done a lot of excavation in Israel, is t...

Why Should Cultural Heritage Be Protected?

20 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Where people are killed and abused in warfare and violent conflict, artifacts of cultural heritage are often destroyed and mistreated as well. Indeed,...

Brian Lander, "The King's Harvest: A Political Ecology of China from the First Farmers to the First Empire" (Yale UP, 2022)

15 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The King's Harvest: A Political Ecology of China from the First Farmers to the First Empire (Yale UP, 2021) is a multidisciplinary study of the eco...

Yonatan Adler, "The Origins of Judaism: An Archaeological-Historical Reappraisal" (Yale UP, 2022)

01 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout much of history, the Jewish way of life has been characterized by strict adherence to the practices and prohibitions legislated by the Tora...

Walking the Via Dolorosa: An Archaeologist Follows Jesus from His Trial to His Crucifixion

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Archaeologist Ilka Knüppel discusses her master's thesis—The Search for Jesus's Final Steps: How Archaeological and Literary Evidence Reroutes the ...

Padma Kaimal, "Opening Kailasanatha: The Temple in Kanchipuram Revealed in Time and Space" (U Washington Press, 2020)

26 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Opening Kailasanatha: The Temple in Kanchipuram Revealed in Time and Space (U Washington Press, 2020), Padma Kaimal deciphers the intentions of t...

Rock Art in the Nomadic Landscape of the Black Desert

04 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The "Black Desert" in the northern Arabian Peninsula is home to thousands of pieces of rock art - both written inscriptions and figural images - left ...

Iraqi Bedouin and Intangible Cultural Heritage

02 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A conversation with Dr. Salah Hatem and Dr. Jaafar Jotheri, professors of archaeology at al-Qadisiyah University, about their research project documen...

Samuel J. Redman, "Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums" (Harvard UP, 2022)

15 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Harvard University Press, 2022 for paperback edition), Samuel J. Redman, Assoc...

Fintan Walsh, "The Road to Kells: Prehistoric Archaeology of the M3, Navan to Kells and N52, Kells Bypass Road Project" (Wordwell Books, 2022)

13 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this latest publication in the TII Heritage series, the long prehistory of Kells and its hinterland is shown to be written on the landscape in foun...

Victoria Hoyle, "The Remaking of Archival Values" (Routledge, 2022)

11 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Remaking of Archival Values by Victoria Hoyle (Routledge, October 2022) posits that archival theory and practice are fields in flux, and that rec...

Ahmad Al-Jallad, "The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia: A Reconstruction Based on the Safaitic Inscriptions" (Brill, 2022)

17 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia: A Reconstruction Based on the Safaitic Inscriptions (Brill, 2022) by Ahmad al-Jallad p...

Natali Pearson, "Belitung: The Afterlives of a Shipwreck" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In 1998, the Belitung, a ninth-century western Indian Ocean–style vessel, was discovered in Indonesian waters. Onboard was a full cargo load, likel...

Sara Rich, "Shipwreck Hauntography: Underwater Ruins and the Uncanny" (Amsterdam UP, 2021)

14 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing on a broad theoretical range from speculative realism to feminist psychoanalysis and anti-colonialism, this book represents a radical departur...

John Darnell and Colleen Darnell, "Egypt's Golden Couple: When Akhenaten and Nefertiti Were Gods on Earth" (St. Martin's Press, 2022)

11 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Two celebrated Egyptologists bring to vivid life the intriguing and controversial reign of King Tut's parents. Akhenaten has been the subject of radic...

Cynthia Kros et al., "Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History" ( Wits UP, 2022)

11 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Archives of Times Past: Conversations about South Africa’s Deep History (NYU Press, 2022) is an exploration of particular sources of evidence on so...

Morgan Pitelka, "Reading Medieval Ruins: Urban Life and Destruction in Sixteenth-Century Japan" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The Japanese provincial city of Ichijōdani was destroyed in the civil wars of the late sixteenth century but never rebuilt. Archaeological excavation...

Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, "The Many Lives of the First Emperor of China" (U Washington Press, 2022)

27 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In the strategy game Civilization VI, where players choose world leaders to be their avatar, Qin Shihuang, the First Emperor of China, has one goal in...