This book is the voice of everyday people talking about their city’s poetry–prose transformation. Through the narrative-imagination of the local lives, the book takes the reader on a journey of the past–present–future of Yazd: how the city was formed and transferred from the historic core to the newer parts over time; how people daily engage with the city; why some people enjoy living in the Historic Yazd while others prefer dwelling in the Old and New cities; why these areas are still occupied with the locals keeping the whole city alive and dynamic; if there is a socio-cultural interrelationship between these areas; and hearing the locals’ wishes about the future of their city.

This book initiatively and systematically presents the latest discoveries in the context of shipwreck archaeology in China, telling the exciting story of the wrecks’ distribution, connotation and the research advances and empirically reconstructing the development of overseas trade and maritime cultures along the Maritime Silk Road, which flourished for more than 2000 years. The book features numerous high-quality images and comprehensively describes and reviews the development of the methodologies and technologies used in China’s underwater archaeology and underwater cultural heritage administration in recent decades.

When you search for the past, you just might find yourself

Andean Archaeology III represents a continuation in our effort to highlight the ?nest of current archaeological scholarship conducted in the Central Andean c- ture area. Each paper contributes in a signi?cant way to understanding prehistoric processes in the Central Andean culture tradition, adding importantly to the rich base provided by Andean Archaeology I and II. As in those former volumes we do not seek a balanced presentation of the entirety of the Andean past, but instead showcase what is new, what is innovative, and what is controversial in thinking about and investigating the great sweep of Andean cultural development. We wholeheartedly agree with Pauketat (2001:xiii) that it is “more satisfying to compare how cultural phenomena happened,” than for researchers to hasten to answer “why questions” that tend more to “reify their initial assumptions” than to inform us about prehistoric people and their embodied, cultural practices. We supporttherevitalizedstudyofsocioculturalevolution,especiallythatchampioned by Bruce Trigger (e.g., 1998, 2003), which has bene?ted by several decades of valuable critique.

Study of the origin and development of civilization is of unequaled importance for understanding the cultural processes that create human societies. Is cultural evolution directional and regular across human societies and history, or is it opportunistic and capricious? Do apparent regularities come from the way inves­ tigators construct and manage knowledge, or are they the result of real constraints on and variations in the actual processes? Can such questions even be answered? We believe so, but not easily. By comparing evolutionary sequences from different world civilizations scholars can judge degrees of similarity and difference and then attempt explanation. Of course, we must be careful to assess the influence that societies of the ancient world had on one another (the issue of pristine versus non-pristine cultural devel­ opment: see discussion in Fried 1967; Price 1978). The Central Andes were the locus of the only societies to achieve pristine civilization in the southern hemi­ sphere and only in the Central Andes did non-literate (non-written language) civ­ ilization develop. It seems clear that Central Andean civilization was independent on any graph of archaic culture change. Scholars have often expressed appreciation of the research opportunities offered by the Central Andes as a testing ground for the study of cultural evolu­ tion (see, e. g. , Carneiro 1970; Ford and Willey 1949: 5; Kosok 1965: 1-14; Lanning 1967: 2-5).

This manual provides a unique ‘user guide’ to practicing archaeology and working in the cultural heritage sector within the diverse settings of Great Britain, comprising of: England, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.