Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa

Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa

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How West African gold and trade across the Sahara were central to the medieval worldThe Sahara Desert was a thriving crossroads of exchange for West Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe in the medieval period. Fueling this exchange was West African gold, prized for its purity and used for minting currencies and adorning luxury objects such as jewelry, textiles, and religious objects. Caravans made the arduous journey by camel southward across the Sahara carrying goods for trade--glass vessels and beads, glazed ceramics, copper, books, and foodstuffs, including salt, which was obtained in the middle of the desert. Northward, the journey brought not only gold but also ivory, animal hides and leatherwork, spices, and captives from West Africa forced into slavery.Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time draws on the latest archaeological discoveries and art historical research to construct a compelling look at medieval trans-Saharan exchange and its legacy. Contributors from diverse disciplines present case studies that form a rich portrayal of a distant time. Topics include descriptions of key medieval cities around the Sahara networks of exchange that contributed to the circulation of gold, copper, and ivory and their associated art forms and medieval glass bead production in West Africa's forest region. The volume also reflects on Morocco's Gnawa material culture, associated with descendants of West African slaves, and movements of people across the Sahara today.Featuring a wealth of color images, this fascinating book demonstrates how the rootedness of place, culture, and tradition is closely tied to the circulation of people, objects, and ideas. These fragments in time offer irrefutable evidence of the key role that Africa played in medieval history and promote a new understanding of the past and the present.Published in association with the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern UniversityExhibition ScheduleBlock Museum of Art, Northwestern UniversityJanuary 26-July 21, 2019Aga Khan Museum, TorontoSeptember 21, 2019-February 23, 2020Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DCApril 8-November 29, 2020

 

Time Team Guide to the Archaeological Sites of Britain & Ireland

Time Team Guide to the Archaeological Sites of Britain & Ireland

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Great Britain and Ireland are home to some of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. Stonehenge, Hadrian's Wall and Ironbridge are familiar to us all and each year thousands flock to witness their spectacular beauty. But what can these fascinating sites tell us about the lives and times of our ancestors?Now, Channel 4's perennially popular Time Team take us on an archaeological sight-seeing tour of Britain and Ireland. Region by region, they select the most interesting and important sites which are open to visitors, some familiar to all, others relatively unknown. Each is treated with the inimitable no-nonsense Time Team style. This book is like having Tony, Mick, Geo-Phys and the gang in the back seat of your car - sharing their specialist knowledge and fascinating historical insights wherever you travel in the British Isles...

 

Deciphering the Indus Script

Deciphering the Indus Script

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Of the writing systems of the ancient world which still await deciphering, the Indus script is the most important. It developed in the Indus or Harappan Civilization, which flourished c. 2500-1900 BC in and around modern Pakistan, collapsing before the earliest historical records of South Asia were composed. Nearly 4,000 samples of the writing survive, mainly on stamp seals and amulets, but no translations. Professor Parpola is the chief editor of the Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions. His ideas about the script, the linguistic affinity of the Harappan language, and the nature of the Indus religion are informed by a remarkable command of Aryan, Dravidian, and Mesopotamian sources, archaeological materials, and linguistic methodology. His fascinating study confirms that the Indus script was logo-syllabic, and that the Indus language belonged to the Dravidian family.

 

Swords of the Viking Age

Swords of the Viking Age

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This beautifully illustrated work fills a gap in the literature in English on the swords made and used in northern Europe during the Viking age, between the mid eighth and the mid eleventh centuries. Ewart Oakeshott outlines the significance and diversity of these ancient heirlooms co-author Ian Peirce, who handled hundreds of swords in his research for this book in museums across northern Europe, selects and describes sixty of the finest representative weapons. Where possible, full-length photographs are included, in addition to illustrations of detail an illustrated overview of blade types and construction, pattern-welding, inscription and handle forms and their classification prefaces the catalogue of examples which is the principal part of this work. IAN PEIRCE was a lecturer and museum consultant specialising in early swords EWART OAKESHOTT was renowned for his pioneer studies on a wide range of medieval swords.

 

Tutankhamun: The Story of Egyptology's Greatest Discovery

Tutankhamun: The Story of Egyptology's Greatest Discovery

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When Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon discovered the burial ground of King Tutankhamun on November 26, 1922, they found it in perfect condition, with all the richness of its contents still intact. Never before had an excavation uncovered such a perfectly preserved Egyptian tomb. Now, as the treasures of Tutankhamun once again travel the world on exhibition, this intriguing book brings to life the age of the Pharaohs as well as Carter and Carnarvon’s expedition, which revealed so much about ancient Egypt.  It draws on the personal archives of Carter himself, and contains a trove of beautiful facsimiles of his own papers, including diaries and notebooks. Photographs, drawings, and diagrams from the original expedition capture all the excitement and wonder that must have accompanied the first view of this remarkable discovery.   

 

The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples

The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples

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The names of early Germanic warrior tribes and leaders resound in songs and legends the real story of the part they played in reshaping the ancient world is no less gripping. Herwig Wolfram's panoramic history spans the great migrations of the Germanic peoples and the rise and fall of their kingdoms between the third and eighth centuries, as they invaded, settled in, and ultimately transformed the Roman Empire. As Germanic military kings and their fighting bands created kingdoms, and won political and military recognition from imperial governments through alternating confrontation and accommodation, the tribes lost their shared culture and social structure, and became sharply differentiated. They acquired their own regions and their own histories, which blended with the history of the empire. In Wolfram's words, the Germanic peoples neither destroyed the Roman world nor restored it instead, they made a home for themselves within it. This story is far from the decline and fall interpretation that held sway until recent decades. Wolfram's narrative, based on his sweeping grasp of documentary and archaeological evidence, brings new clarity to a poorly understood period of Western history.

 

Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream: Gender, Class, and Opportunity in the Twentieth Century

Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream: Gender, Class, and Opportunity in the Twentieth Century

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What accounts for the growing income inequalities in Silicon Valley, despite huge technological and economic strides? Why have the once-powerful labor unions declined in their influence? How are increasing waves of immigration and ethnic diversity changing the workplace in the Valley? Silicon Valley, Women, and the California Dream examines these questions from a fresh perspective: that provided by the history of women in Silicon Valley in the twentieth century.Silicon Valley is internationally renowned. It is less well known, however, that the Valley once contained the world's largest concentration of fruit-processing plants, set in a sea of fruit orchards. Despite the many differences between the fruit and electronics industries, one important thread connects them: the production workers have been preponderantly immigrant women. (In the early part of the twentieth century, the newcomers came primarily from southern Europe in the latter part of the century, they came mostly from Asia and Latin America, especially Mexico.) The author examines both industries, both work forces, and the changing nature of the local power structure. Although she documents the many sources of vitality and ferment that have undergirded the region's economic might, she also demonstrates that its wealth has not been equally distributed.