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Recent Discoveries of Tetrarchic Hoards from Roman Britain and their Wider Context
This volume was prompted by the recent discovery in Britain of two large coin hoards dating from the first decade of the fourth century AD – Wold Newton and Rauceby. Coins of this early Tetrarchic period are relatively uncommon finds in Britain and elsewhere, due mainly to the brevity of...Ghey, Eleanor
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Chandragupta Maurya: The Creation of a National Hero in India
We take it for granted that some historical figures become heroes, and others do not. Chandragupta Maurya evolved from obscure ruler to contemporary national icon. The key moment in the making of this Indian hero was a meeting by the banks of the River Indus between Chandragupta and Seleucus, founder...Jansari, Sushma
history, Chandragupta Maurya, and India
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Sailing the Monsoon Winds in Miniature: Understanding Indian Ocean Boat Models
Models of non-European watercrafts are commonly found in museum collections in the UK and throughout the world. These objects are understudied, rarely used in museum displays and at risk of disposal. In addition, there are several gaps in current understanding of traditional watercraft from the Indian Ocean, the region spanning...Dixon, Charlotte
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Dyes in History and Archaeology 41
This book is a reprint of the Special Issue Dyes in History and Archaeology 41 that was published in HeritageDyer, Joanne
colourants, organic pigments, and dyes
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Late Hokusai: Society, Thought, Technique, Legacy
This publication has been developed from ideas first presented at the international symposium Late Hokusai: Thought, Technique, Society, held at the British Museum in May 2017. The symposium was organised to enable specialists in a range of disciplines relating to early modern Japan to view and consider the critically acclaimed...Clark, Timothy
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Greek and Roman Medicine at the British Museum: The Instruments and Accoutrements of Ancient Medicine
Greek and Roman Medicine at the British Museum is an authoritative and up-to-date study of Greek and Roman medicine and surgery. This book is the first full, and fully illustrated, publication of the Museum’s important collection. Strategies for the preservation of health and for the prevention and treatment of illness...Jackson, Ralph
History of collecting, History of medicine, and Classical world
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Down to Earth Archaeology
Professor William Y. Adams presents sixteen papers on Nubia, written at various times during his lengthy and productive academic career. Most of those selected had been previously published only in a limited way; encompassing a wide range of topics, Adams wanted to enable them to reach a wider readership than...Adams, William Y. ; Anderson, Julie R.
archaeology and Nubia
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Pahu: Historical Collections, Artistic Continuance
This book results from an ongoing collaboration between the Benioff Oceania Programme at the British Museum and Dennis Kanaʻe Keawe, a Hawaiian artist and artisan specialised in pahu (drum) making and based in Hilo (Hawaiʻi). Shaped and nutured through the artist’s unique lens, this volume combines a renewed understanding of... -
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Munch and his World: Graphic Arts and the Avant-garde in Paris and Berlin
Munch and his World: Graphic Arts and the Avant-garde in Paris and Berlin is a visually stunning publication which offers new insights into the life and world of the artist Edvard Munch. The art of Edvard Munch is striking for the originality and universality of its themes, which cross moments...Bartrum, Giulia
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The Hay Archive of Coptic Spells on Leather: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Materiality of Magical Practice
The Hay archive of Coptic manuscripts consists of seven fragmentary sheets of leather bearing spells for divination, protection, healing, personal advancement, cursing and the satisfaction of sexual desire. Purchased from the heir of the Scottish Egyptologist and draftsman, Robert Hay (1799–1863), the manuscripts arrived at the British Museum in 1869....O'Connell, Elisabeth
Egyptology, papyrology, Coptic studies, and religious studies
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Precious Treasures from the Diamond Throne: Finds from the Site of the Buddha’s Enlightenment
The Mahābodhi temple at Bodhgayā in eastern India has long been recognised as the place where the Buddha sat in meditation and attained enlightenment. The site, soon identified as the ‘Diamond Throne’ or vajrāsana, became a destination for pilgrims and a focus of religious attention for more than two thousand...Willis, Michael
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Charles Masson: Collections from Begram and Kabul Bazaar, Afghanistan, 1833–1838
From 1833–8, Charles Masson (1800–1853) was employed by the British East India Company to explore the ancient sites in south-east Afghanistan. In return for funding his exploration of the ancient sites of Afghanistan, the British East India Company received all of Masson’s finds. These were sent to the India Museum...Errington, Elizabeth
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Pots, Prints and Politics: Ceramics with an Agenda, from the 14th to the 20th Century
From the introduction of woodblock printing in China to the development of copper-plate engraving in Europe, the print medium has been used around the world to circulate knowledge. Ceramic artists across time and cultures have adapted these graphic sources as painted or transfer-printed images applied onto glazed or unglazed surfaces...Ferguson, Patricia F.
European art, Asian art, and Ceramics
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Imagining the Divine: Art in Religions of Late Antiquity Across Eurasia
This groundbreaking volume brings together scholars of the art and archaeology of late antiquity (c. 200−1000), across cultures and regions reaching from India to Iberia, to discuss how objects can inform our understanding of religions. During this period major transformations are visible in the production of religious art and in...Elsner, Jaś ; Wood, Rachel
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Objects as Insights: R.H. Codrington’s Ethnographic Collections from Melanesia
R.H. Codrington (1830–1922) graduated from Oxford University in 1856 and was ordained in 1857. He volunteered to work in Nelson, New Zealand, from 1860–4 and was appointed as headmaster of the Melanesian Mission training school on Norfolk Island in 1867. He spent the next twenty years in this post and...Stanley, Nick
material culture, Melanesia, Codrington, collecting history, anthropology, and Pacific studies
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Ceramic Exchange and the Indian Ocean Economy (AD 400–1275) Volume I: Analysis
From AD 500–1000, the Indian Ocean emerged as a global commercial centre, and by around 750–800 a sophisticated trade network had been established involving the movement of goods from Japan and China in the east, to southern Africa and Spain in the west. However, the Indian Ocean’s commercial system has...Priestman, Seth M.N.
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Ceramic Exchange and Indian Ocean Economy (AD 400–1275). Volume II: Indian Ocean Pottery Classification
From AD 500–1000, the Indian Ocean emerged as a global commercial centre, and by around 750–800 a sophisticated trade network had been established involving the movement of goods from Japan and China in the east, to southern Africa and Spain in the west. However, the Indian Ocean’s commercial system has...Priestman, Seth M.N.
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A Royal Renaissance Treasure and its Afterlives: The Royal Clock Salt
At centre stage in this volume is the Royal Clock Salt, an exceptional national treasure from the courtly culture of the Renaissance. Most probably made in Paris around 1530 by Pierre Mangot, the royal goldsmith to Francis I, the Clock Salt is somewhere between a jewel and a table ornament....Schroder, Timothy ; Thornton, Dora
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A Riverine Site Near York: A Possible Viking Camp?
The location known as ‘A Riverine Site Near York (ARSNY)’ represents a category of Viking site known from the historical record but one that until recently had remained largely undetected archaeologically: the Viking camp. The published investigations at Repton, Derbyshire, although undoubtedly important, created a false paradigm for the scale...Williams, Gareth
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Ceremonial Living in the Third Millennium BC: Excavations at Ringlemere Site M1, Kent, 2002–2006
The discovery in 2001 of an exquisite Early Bronze Age gold cup at Ringlemere Farm in Kent prompted an extensive survey and excavation of the site from 2002–2006. Excavation revealed a site with a long history of use, the most striking evidence being for intensive activity in the third millennium...Needham, Stuart ; Parfitt, Keith
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Inscriptions of the Aulikaras and Their Associates
The Aulikaras were the rulers of western Malwa (the northwest of Central India) in the heyday of the Imperial Guptas in the fifth century CE, and rose briefly to sovereignty at the beginning of the sixth century before disappearing from the spotlight of history. This book gathers all the epigraphic...Balogh, Dániel
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A Buddhist Ritual Manual on Agriculture: Vajratuṇḍasamayakalparāja - Critical Edition and Translation
This volume is the first in-depth study of a recently discovered Sanskrit dharani spell text from around the 5th century CE surviving in two palm-leaf and three paper manuscript compendia from Nepal. This rare Buddhist scripture focuses on the ritual practice of thaumaturgic weather control for successful agriculture through overpowering...Hidas, Gergely
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Sicily: Heritage of the World
The island of Sicily is at the heart of the Mediterranean and from ancient times to the present day it has been a hub of migration and settlement. Following on from the British Museum’s critically acclaimed 2016 exhibition Sicily: culture and conquest, this volume considers the history and material culture...Booms, Dirk ; Higgs, Peter John
Sicily, Norman history, ancient history, medieval history, and archaeology
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Relics and Relic Worship in Early Buddhism: India, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Burma
Among the world religions, only Buddhism and Christianity attach a central significance to the role of relics. These two traditions however, are different in both conceptual and material terms. In Buddhism, the most sacred relics are those considered parts of the cremated remains of the Buddha: a hair, a tooth,...Stargardt, Janice ; Willis, Michael
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Seals and Status: Power of Objects
For 7,000 years, seals have functioned as signs of authority. This publication deals specifically with aspects of status in the history of seals, exploring this theme across a diverse range of cultural contexts – from the 9th century through the Early Modern period and across the world, looking at Byzantine,...Cherry, John ; Berenbeim, Jessica ; de Beer, Lloyd
art history and History
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Dea Senuna: Treasure, Cult and Ritual at Ashwell, Hertfordshire
The hoard of Romano-British temple treasure discovered at Ashwell, Hertfordshire, in 2002, was a unique and sensational find. Comprised of some 27 gold and silver objects, it appears to have been buried in the later 3rd or 4th century AD. It includes an important silver-gilt figurine, a splendid suite of...Jackson, Ralph ; Burleigh, Gilbert
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Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic Glyphs and Stamp Seals in the British Museum
Stamp seals were used in a similar way to modern signet rings: a negative object used to impress a design into another material, often clay. They appeared around 7000 BC and have remained in use in parts of the world continuously until the present day. This volume focuses on the...Denham, Simon
material culture, Neolithic, Middle Eastern archaeology, and stamp seals
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An Etruscan Affair: The Impact of Early Etruscan Discoveries on European Culture
This volume considers how the discovery of Etruscan sites and artefacts has inspired artists, architects, statesmen, collectors, scholars and travellers to Italy from the 16th through to the 20th century, from Ferdinando de' Medici to Piranesi and Federico Fellini. Subjects include the reclaiming of Etruscan identity and its influence on...Swaddling, Judith
Italy, Etruscans, and archaeology
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Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan: Explorations, Excavations, Collections 1832−1835
From 1833–8, Charles Masson (1800–1853) was employed by the British East India Company to explore the ancient sites in south-east Afghanistan. During this period, he surveyed over a hundred sites around Kabul, Jalalabad and Wardak, making numerous drawings of the sites, together with maps, compass readings, sections of the stupas...Errington, Elizabeth
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Excavations at the British Museum: An Archaeological and Social History of Bloomsbury
In 1999 and 2007 respectively, the central courtyard and the northwest corner of the British Museum estate were redeveloped in order to create two iconic additions to the institution: the Great Court and the World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre. The execution of these projects provided the opportunity to investigate the...Haslam, Rebecca ; Ridgeway, Victoria
London, British Museum, and archaeology
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The Charles Masson Archive: British Library, British Museum and Other Documents Relating to the 1832–1838 Masson Collection from Afghanistan
Since its inception in 1993, the Masson Project has worked towards reconstructing the archaeological history of south-eastern Afghanistan through an early 19th-century collection of its antiquities now in the British Museum, in conjunction with comprehensive related manuscript records in the British Library. This is the collection and archive created by...Errington, Elizabeth
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A Celtic Feast: The Iron Age Cauldrons from Chiseldon, Wiltshire
This volume presents for the first time the results of the excavation and scientific analysis between 2005 and 2013 of seventeen Iron Age cauldrons discovered in a large pit on farmland in the parish of Chiseldon, Wiltshire, and consequently acquired by the British Museum. The assemblage is unprecedented in many...Joy, Jody ; Baldwin, Alexandra
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A Rothschild Renaissance A New Look at the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum
In 1898, Baron Ferdinand Rothschild bequeathed to the British Museum the contents from the New Smoking Room at his home at Waddesdon Manor, a collection of nearly 300 objects to be known as the Waddesdon Bequest. The Bequest contains some of the most beautiful examples of medieval and Renaissance craftsmanship,...Shirley, Pippa ; Thornton, Dora
history of collecting, Art history, Renaissance art, and Decorative arts
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Pudding Pan: A Roman Shipwreck and its Cargo in Context
For more than 300 years commercial fishermen working in the outer Thames estuary have recovered Roman pottery in their oyster dredgers and fishing nets from the seabed in the vicinity of Pudding Pan. However, despite numerous attempts to locate the source of the material, this elusive site has remained undiscovered...Walsh, Michael
Roman Britain, Roman material culture, and Roman maritime trade
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Bejewelled: Men and Jewellery in Tudor and Jacobean England
Jewellery is often viewed as a feminine preoccupation, but in Tudor and Jacobean England men wore just as much (if not more) jewellery as their female counterparts. Jewels themselves were valued not merely for their intrinsic monetary worth, but also for their ability to reflect status and lineage, as well...Awais-Dean, Natasha
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Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450
This ground-breaking, beautifully illustrated publication is the outcome of the conference ‘Ming: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450’ that accompanied the British Museum’s major exhibition Ming: 50 years that changed China (September 2014–January 2015). The scope of the exhibition and conference focused on Ming dynasty China in the years 1400 to 1450,...Clunas, Craig ; Harrison-Hall, Jessica ; Luk, Yu-ping
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Amaravati: The Art of an Early Buddhist Monument in Context
Buddhism originated in north India and spread to other parts of the subcontinent in the third century BCE. An important shrine was built at Amaravati, probably to house relics of the Buddha brought from the north. Amaravati was enlarged and embellished over several centuries from about 200 BCE, transforming it...Shimada, Akira ; Willis, Michael
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The Mildenhall Treasure: Late Roman Silver Plate from East Anglia
Discovered in Suffolk in 1942, the Mildenhall Treasure is one of the most important collections of Late Roman silver tableware from the Roman Empire and one of the most iconic sets of objects in the British Museum. This generously illustrated book offers a comprehensive study of the 28 pieces of...Hobbs, Richard
Roman Britain, archaeology, and history
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‘Some Friends Came to See Us’: Lord Moyne’s 1936 Expedition to the Asmat
Walter Edward Guinness (1880–1944), the first Lord Moyne, was an Anglo-Irish politician, businessman and explorer. Travelling across the globe in his private yacht in search for ethnographic material, Lord Moyne visited South Papua three times in 1929, 1935 and 1936. Unlike previous explorers of New Guinea, Lord Moyne and his...Stanley, Nick
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A Catalogue of the Late Antique Gold Glass in the British Museum
The British Museum holds one of the most extensive and important collections of Early Christian and Late Antique gold glass in Europe and the United States. With the last publication of the British Museum’s collection in 1901, this catalogue by Daniel Thomas Howells not only brings the collection up to...Howells, Daniel Thomas
Late Antiquity and glass
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Malaita: a pictorial history from Solomon Islands
Malaita traces the history and culture of a Pacific island from the 19th to 21st centuries through over 600 images drawn from the archives of the British Museum and public and private photographic collections around the world. Burt explores Malaita as it was represented to the wider world through photographs,...Burt, Ben
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The British Museum Citole: New Perspectives
The British Museum citole is a unique example of medieval craftsmanship and is one of very few instruments from the Middle Ages to have survived. Its long, complex history includes a connection with the court of Elizabeth I and its conversion to a violin. The essays in this volume are...Speakman, Naomi ; Robinson, James
Musicology, iconography, organology, history, and conservation
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Regarding the Dead: Human Remains in the British Museum
The British Museum holds approximately 6,000 human remains, the majority of which were recovered in the past century. Regarding the Dead addresses the British Museum’s approach to the ethical issues surrounding the inclusion of human remains in the Museum’s collection and presents solutions to the dilemmas relating to their curation,...Fletcher, Alexandra ; Antoine, Daniel ; Hill, J.D.
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The Portable Antiquities Scheme and Roman Britain
The Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) is a project run by the British Museum which encourages the voluntary reporting of archaeological artefacts discovered by members of the public in England and Wales, particularly metal detector users. Finds are recorded onto a database (available at www.finds.org.uk), and this resource now holds records...Brindle, Tom
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Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period
This publication is the outcome of the conference Matter of Faith, held to accompany the British Museum’s exhibition Treasures of Heaven, which brought together over thirty international experts in the field to present new research around the themes of medieval reliquaries and relic veneration. The result is an interdisciplinary study...Robinson, James ; de Beer, Lloyd ; Harnden, Anna
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Tell Dafana Reconsidered: The Archaeology of an Egyptian Frontier Town
This publication arises from a British Museum research project to consider the relationship between Egypt and Archaic Greece from the seventh century BC down to the fifth, through a re-assessment of the site of ancient Daphnae (now known as Tell Dafana) in the Nile Delta of Egypt. A great quantity...Leclère, François ; Spencer, Jeffrey
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Kom Firin II: The Urban Fabric and Landscape
Kom Firin, a large settlement site in the western Nile Delta, was the subject of British Museum archaeological fieldwork between 2002 and 2011. This second and final monograph presents the results of excavations in the Citadel, an area of Late Period occupation, and within the northeastern corner of the Ramesside...Spencer, Neal
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New Light on Old Glass: Recent Research on Byzantine Mosaics and Glass
Mosaics are perhaps the most outstanding examples of Byzantine art which survive, yet we know next to nothing about how they were made. Glass-making was a relatively sophisticated skill in the mediaeval world, yet no written documents survive from Byzantium about the methods used for making a mosaic or creating...Entwistle, Chris ; James, Liz
iconography, scientific research, trade and economic history, and Glass history
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The Hajj: Collected Essays
It is a sacred duty for Muslims, wherever they may reside, to go at least once in their lives to Mecca, the heartland of Islam. Now drawing millions of pilgrims annually, the Hajj is a powerful bond that brings Muslims together from across the world. Following on from the British...Porter, Venetia
Islam, Hajj, religion, archaeology, and history
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Hadrian: Art, Politics and Economy
This publication is based on papers presented at an academic conference that followed the British Museum’s exhibition Hadrian: Empire and Conflict. It offers new research by sixteen international experts on one of the most important Roman emperors. Their essays cover a wide range of aspects of Hadrian’s reign, which continues...Opper, Thorsten