AJA

In this study, we examine the emergence and role of merchants and mercantile society on Late Bronze Age Cyprus. We present various site features that reflect the presence or daily practices of merchants, and we consider objects such as weights, scales, seals, and writing implements, discussing how these may signal links to merchants or mercantile practices. We evaluate the relevant data within two different frameworks: elite conflict and class conflict.

During the late eighth and the seventh centuries BCE, objects worked from animal materials became a common form of offering at sanctuaries across the Greek world. Contemporary dedication practices of modified bone shafts at the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta and at two sanctuaries on Rhodes (Athena Kameiras and Athena Lindia) indicate that during this period there was an emphasis on creating and offering conspicuously organic objects made from the remains of animals.

This article revisits the well-known monument of Eurysaces in the context of the Roman funerary landscape. By focusing on its structure and original context, our research demonstrates that the monument, far from being a unicum, instead conformed to contemporary commemorative practices and was in many ways typical.

Examining several hundred samples of internal red-slip vessels from the Roman sites of Musarna, Populonia, Cetamura del Chianti, Gabii, and Pompeii, this article presents a study using morphology, use-wear, and ceramic petrography to consider why this ware was produced for such a long period of time (third century BCE until at least the first century CE) and why it was so widespread in the empire.

In the winter of 2021, a previously unknown and almost inaccessible cave called Aškawt-i Daya was discovered in the heart of Bakhakuh Mountain in the west central Zagros Mountains of Iran. An exceptional feature of the cave is its collection of paintings on the walls and ceiling with animal and human motifs, rendered in black pigment, both singly and in groups involved in scenes of hunting and slaughter.

An ambitious exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, Pharaon des Deux Terres: L’épopée africaine des rois de Napata, presented a history of the kings of Napata who conquered Egypt and ruled there as its 25th Dynasty (ca. 720-664 BCE). This dynasty ruled over an empire properly known as Kush, centered in northern Sudan.