Laurence Douny 2015 Living in a landscape of scarcity, materiality and cosmology in West Africa.

In her close ethnography of a Dogon village of Mali, Douny shows how a micro-cosmology develops from people’s embodied daily and ritual practice in a landscape of scarcity. Viewed through the lens of containment practice, she describes how the villagers cope with the shortage of material items central to their lives. Douny’s study is an important addition to ecological anthropology, the study of West African cultures, understanding material culture, and anthropological theory.

Hilary Orange (ed) 2015 Reanimating industrial spaces, conducting memory work in post-industrial societies.

This book explores the relationships between people and the places of former industry. It examines the relationship between industrial heritage and memory, the involvement of memory in place-making, the strengths and pitfalls of conducting memory-work and the value of cross-disciplinary perspectives and methods. Case studies include iron-smelting in Uganda, Puerto Rican sugar mills and concrete factories in Albania. These are used to illustrate ethnography, oral history, digital technologies, excavation, and archival and documentary research.

Okasha El-Daly 2015 Kayıp Binyıl: İslam Dünyasında Hiyeroglifler Ve Eski Mısır. Istanbul: Ithaki Yayınları. Turkish edition of Egyptology, the missing millennium: Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings 2008.

El-Daly brings together for the first time the disciplines of Egyptology and Islamic Studies, seeking to overturn the conventional opinion of Western scholars that Muslims/Arabs had no interest in pre-Islamic cultures. This book examines a neglected period of a thousand years in the history of Egyptology, from the Muslim annexation of Egypt in the seventh century CE until the Ottoman conquest in the 16th century.

Trinidad Rico 2016 Constructing Destruction: Heritage Narratives in the Tsunami City.

Rico’s critical ethnography analyses heritage practices in the aftermath of the tsunami that swamped Banda Aceh, Indonesia, in 2004 and the post-destruction narratives that accompanied it, revealing the sociocultural, historical, and political agendas these discourses raise. This book documents the emergence of local heritage places, practices, and debates. It counters the globalized versions embraced by the heritage professions and offers a critical paradigm for post-destruction planning and practice that incorporates alternative models of heritage.

José C. Sánchez-Pardo & Michael G. Shapland (eds) 2015 Churches and Social Power in Early Medieval Europe. Turnhout: Brepols.

This book takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the study of early medieval churches, drawing together archaeology, history, architecture, and landscape studies in order to explore the relationship between church foundation, social power, and political organization across Europe. Key subjects addressed include the role played by local elites and the importance of the church in buttressing authority, as well as the connections between archaeology and ideology, and the importance of individual church buildings in their broader landscape contexts.

Mike Parker Pearson, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Thomas & Kate Welham 2015Stonehenge: Making Sense of a Prehistoric Mystery. York: Council for British Archaeology.

Stonehenge is an iconic monument for people all around the world. Built around 5000 years ago, it stands for mystery and forgotten secrets waiting to be decoded. In this latest book in the Council for British Archaeology’s ‘Archaeology for All’ series, Pearson and his colleagues present an up-to-date interpretation of Stonehenge and its landscape. Drawing on their years of research and excavation, the authors present a highly readable account that is lavishly illustrated with images by the photographer Adam Stanford and the reconstruction artist Peter Dunn.

Diccon Hart 2015 Around the Ancient Track: Archaeological Excavations for the Brighton and Hove Waste Water Treatment Works and adjacent housing at Peacehaven, East Sussex. SpoilHeap Monograph 10. Dorchester: SpoilHeap Publications.

This book discusses recent large-scale excavations on the South Downs which have provided a rare opportunity to examine prehistoric and Roman land use on an unprecedented scale. Key findings were the largest group of Early Neolithic pits in Sussex, an organised later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age monumental landscape, later Bronze Age field systems, a Middle Bronze Age settlement, Middle Iron Age buildings and enclosures, and a Roman farmstead. The results of the excavations, including finds and environmental material, are discussed in their regional and national context.

Hugo Anderson-Whymark and Matt Pope 2016 Late quaternary (Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and later prehistoric) human activity in the Darent Valley at Lullingstone Country Park, Eynsford, Kent. SpoilHeap Occasional Paper 5. Dorchester: SpoilHeap Publications.

This volume details investigations in the Darent River Valley, which revealed a deep sequence of Pleistocene and Holocene slope deposits. In the upper part of this sequence in situ stone artefacts were recovered which spanned the end of the last glacial period and into the Early Holocene. The cluster of refitting Terminal Upper Palaeolithic flints are characteristic of Late Glacial hunter-gatherer ‘long blade’ cultures, and the more diffuse spread of Early Mesolithic flint work, including microliths, form part of a preserved land surface.

Anna Doherty and Christopher Greatorex 2016 Excavations on St Anne’s Hill: A Middle/late Iron Age site and Anglo-Saxon cemetery at St Anne’s Road, Eastbourne, East Sussex. SpoilHeap Monogaph 11. Suffolk: SpoilHeap Publications.

This dicusses the excavations of an important multi-period site. Some 100 Middle/Late Iron Age storage pits were uncovered, many more than any other non-hillfort site in Sussex and with evidence for grain processing as well as secondary structured deposits. In the 5th century an Anglo-Saxon cemetery was established with 193 graves and 11 urned cremations. The grave goods suggest a mixed community with examples of richly furnished burials, alongside more modest examples. The volume is fully illustrated with burial plans and grave goods.

Massimiliano S. Pinarello 2016 An Archaeological Discussion of Writing Practice. Deconstruction of the Ancient Egyptian Scribe. London: Golden House Publications.

The author analyses the archaeology of ancient Egyptian communication technologies, exploring the definitions and the material culture of writing in pharaonic Egypt. In contrast with traditional approaches that define writing as a system of social separation based on literate elite and the scribe caste, writing is explored as a practice-based form of sharing visual information across society, including non-linguistic systems and scripts, in addition to scripts that verbalize linguistic content.