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A unique wooden sculpture collected by James Cook during his first voyage to the Pacific is widely considered to be a masterpiece of Oceanic art, but its exact provenance has been unclear. New analysis of shavings from the object now indicate that a) the tree from which it was carved was felled between 1690 and 1728, and that the carving was therefore up to 80 years old when obtained, and b) it originated in Tahiti, despite its stylistic affinities with art from the Austral Islands. Motifs and forms clearly travelled within regions, and populations interacted in ways that blur presumed tribal boundaries. It is perhaps time to reconsider the association between region and style upon which the cataloguing and identification of objects routinely depends.

This chapter explores practices of rock carving on the Anatolian peninsula from a diachronic perspective, with special emphasis on the Late Bronze Age and Early-Middle Iron Ages. Linking together the materiality of monuments, rock-carving technologies and issues of landscape imagination, it focuses on the commemorative rock reliefs across the Anatolian landscape. The monuments of concern range from Hittite and post-Hittite commemorative rock reliefs to Urartian, Phrygian and Paphlagonian practices of carving the living rock for cultic, commemorative and funerary purposes. The chapter also critiques the specialised art historical and epigraphic approaches to rock reliefs and rock-cut structures, which portray them as stand-alone monuments and show a certain disregard for their micro-geographical context. Finally, it contributes to studies of landscape and place in Mediterranean archaeology by promoting a shift of focus from macro-scale explanations of the environment to micro-scale engagement with located practices of place-making.

In this chapter, I explore practices of rock carving on the Anatolian peninsula from a diachronic perspective, with special emphasis on the Late Bronze Age and Early–Middle Iron Ages (ca. 1600–550 BC). Linking together the materiality of monuments, rock-carving technologies and issues of landscape imagination, I focus i rst on the commemorative rock reliefs across the Anatolian landscape, sponsored by the Hittite , Assyria n and Syro-Hittite states . Rock reliefs were carved at geologically prominent and culturally signii cant places such as springs, caves, sinkholes, rivers sources or along the river gorges. They constituted places for communicating with the underworld, the world of divinities and dead ancestor s. I then venture into the Urartian and Paphlagonian rock-cut tomb-carving practices and Phrygian rock-cut sanctuaries of the Iron Age to argue for the broader dissemination of the idea of altering karstic landscapes for cultic and funerary purposes. I maintain that rock monuments can only be understood as always being part of a complex assemblage in the long-term history of places. Using a limited number of examples, this chapter contributes to studies of landscape and place in Mediterranean archaeology by promoting a shift of focus from macro-scale explanations of the environment to micro-scale engagement with located practices of place-making.

A ll the islands I have seen are very populous along the whole length of the coast, where are generally large flats covered with a great many bread-fruit and cocoanut trees. There are houses scarcely fifty yards apart, with their little plantations of plantains, the trees from which they make their cloth, etc. But the inland parts are totally uninhabited, except in the valleys, where there are rivers, and even there there are but a small proportion of people in comparison with the numbers who live upon the flats. These people are of the larger size of Europeans, all very well made, and some handsome, both men and women; the only bad feature they have is their noses, which are in general flat, but to balance this their teeth are almost without exception even and white to perfection, and the eyes of the women especially are full of expression and fire. In colour they differ very much; those of inferior rank who are obliged in the exercise of their profession, fishing especially, to be much exposed to the sun and air, are of a dark brown, while those of superior rank, who spend most of their time in their houses under shelter, are seldom browner (the women particularly) than that kind of brunette which many in Europe prefer to the finest red and white. Complexion, indeed, they seldom have, though some I have seen show a blush very manifestly; this is perhaps owing to the thickness of their skin, but that fault is in my opinion well compensated by their infinite smoothness, much superior to anything I have met with in Europe.

SOCIAL POLITY T he ancient Yorubas were very simple in their manners, their tastes, and habits. Their houses all on the ground floor are built in compounds called Agbo Ile (lit. a flock of houses), that is to say in the form of a hollow square, horse shoe or a circle, enclosing a large central area, with one principal gateway the house being divided into compartments to hold several families, all more or less related or united by ties of kinship, or friendship. One piazza runs right round the whole, and is used for all ordinary purposes by day, and for the reception of visitors. The central area is used in common by all the inmates for general purposes; usually horses, sheep and goats are found tethered in it. The compartment of the head of the house is usually opposite the main gateway or a little to the right. It is larger, the roof loftier and the piazza more spacious than the rest. Here the master is expected to be found at all times (during visiting hours) by a doorway which leads to his harem at the back of the house. This particular doorway is known as where the master “shows his face” (for the reception of visitors); it is an essential adjunct to the houses of chiefs or important personages, being used for no other purpose, for at all other times it is kept closed.

The second chapter of this book presented the techniques of strategic thinking in terms of the nature of problem solving, how discoveries are made and tested, how creativity can be harnessed and enhanced, and how attitude and style affect strategic problem solving effectiveness. This provides the foundation for actual strategic problem solving in terms of the mastery of one's cognitive tools and abilities. Such an understanding is essential to success, but there is more to it than this. There are characteristics of the problems themselves that one must also get a feel for before even the best strategist can be successful. To make an analogy, it is not sufficient for the sculptor to have an aesthetic vision, to know the symbolism he wishes to convey, and to have harnessed his mental faculties to the task, it is also essential that he understand the nature of his materials: the way that different woods respond to carving and polishing, the receptivity of these woods to stain, the susceptibility of different types of stone to cracking, and so on. That is, one must know something about the subject to be strategized about per se. This is usually considered domain-specific knowledge (of cars or diseases, of pizza or electronics) which of course is beyond the scope of this book because there are hundreds of domains and their intersections where people are faced with problems.

The last two chapters considered some general approaches to value and then concentrated on the subject of eastern Mediterranean trade. This chapter is yet more specific, looking closely at the details of how stone vessels are made. Production strategies are not simply a sum total of local technical knowledge but are steeped in local values. Working stone into vessels involves balancing a variety of sometimes conflicting priorities and parameters: the properties of the stone, the availability of specific tools, a preference for particular designs, the intended quality of the finished product, and acceptable levels of accidental breakage. In any given cultural context, this balance will reflect both some conscious, strategic choices on the part of the artisan and the inertia of an inherited crafting tradition (for a similar perspective on potting, see Gosselain 2000). Both short-term decisions and longer-term traditions can be interrogated for how they reflect value-led priorities and stone objects offer particularly rich opportunities for such analysis (though chipped stone has hitherto received most of the limelight: Renfrew and Zubrow 1994). Stone-working is a subtractive process, one which begins with a raw lump and gradually reduces it to a finished artefact by removing fragments, usually in a carefully ordered sequence. Telltale traces of these production stages are often well preserved both on half-finished objects and on final products. Understanding the details of such sequences casts light on a whole range of producer and consumer-driven interests.

This (highly selective) survey of the various kinds of travel writing circulating in both manuscript and print between 1557 and 1695 begins with the development of mid-sixteenth-century domestic travel writing as an offshoot of the growing antiquarian fascination with the history (as opposed to the legends) of the British Isles. William Petty, the Physician General of the British troops in Ireland, completed the first scientific map survey ofIreland, called the 'Down survey' not for the use of travellers but primarily for the carving up of the land among Cromwell's supporters. Fetherstone reprinted much of Hakluyt's material, along with more recent Virginia and East India voyages, enabling Purchas to lend his support to the now well established English colonialist activities in the New World and India. When considering narratives of individual voyages, it is also important to note that several (sometimes conflicting) accounts of the same voyage might well be circulated, sometimes simultaneously, in both manuscript and print.