The Oxford Handbook of Wetland Archaeology

The Oxford Handbook of Wetland Archaeology is the most comprehensive survey of global wetland archaeology ever published. Well known for the spectacular quality of its surviving evidence, from both an archaeological and environmental perspective, wetland archaeology enables scholars to investigate and reconstruct past people's dwellings, landscapes, material culture, and daily lives in great detail. Through concise essays written by some of the world's leading scholars in the field, this Handbook describes the key principles, methodologies, and revealing results of past and present archaeological investigations of wetland environments. The volume provides unique insights into past human interactions with lakes, bogs, rivers, and coastal marshlands across the world from prehistory to modern times. Opening with a detailed introduction by the editors, the Handbook is divided into seven parts and contains 54 essays and over 230 photographs, figures, maps, and graphs.

1 - General introduction to the Handbook
2 - Wetland occupations in prehistoric Europe
3 - Europe s wetlands from the Migration Period to the Middle Ages: settlement, exploitation and transformation, AD 400-1500
4 - Occupations of past wetland environments in the United States
5 - People-wetland interaction in Canada
6 - Pre-Columbian people and the wetlands in Central and South America
7 - People and wetlands in Africa
8 - Wetland Archaeology and the role of marshes in the ancient Middle East
9 - The past Eastern Russian wetlands: review of the prehistoric occupation, chronology, economy, and environment
10 - Prehistoric wetland occupations in the Lower regions of Yangtze River, China
11 - Wetland sites in Japan
12 - Wetland occupations in New Zealand
13 - Australian wetland occupations before and after the Europeans
14 - Wetland archaeology in the Highlands of New Guinea
15 - The Alpine region lake-dwellings
16 - Irish and Scottish crannogs
17 - Houses, households and settlements: architecture and living spaces
18 - Portable wooden objects from wetlands
19 - Fishing traps and weirs on the Northwest Coast of North America: new approaches and new insights
20 - Bone and antler artefacts in wetland sites
21 - Trackways and roads across the wetlands
22 - Rivers and lakes: a network of wetland highways
23 - Bog bodies: underwater burials, sacrifices and executions
24 - Detecting organic materials in waterlogged sediments
25 - Underwater survey and acoustic detection and characterisation of archaeological materials
36 - Archaeological strategies for terrestrial wetland landscapes
27 - Intertidal survey and excavation
28 - Excavation of wet sites
29 - Archaebotany: the potential of analyses of plant remains from waterlogged archaeological sites
30 - Insect analysis in wetland archaeology
31 - Palaeoecological reconstructions
32 - Geoarchaeological and soil micromorphological studies in wetland archaeology
33 - Ancient DNA research on wetland archaeological evidence
34 - Palaeoclimatology and archaeology in the wetlands
35 - Radiocarbon dating of wetland sites
36 - Dendrochronology in wetland archaeology
37 - Lacustrine varve counting as a dating technique: advantages and disadvantages
38 - Preservation against erosion: protecting lake shores and coastal environments
39 - A review of current post-excavation treatment methods for waterlogged organic archaeological materials: the last 20 years
40 - National and international wetland management policies
41 - Wet Site Archaeology on the Northwest Coast of North America and the Native Communities involvement in Managing their Wetland Heritage Sites
42 - Wetland Archaeology in the twenty-first century: adapting to climate change
43 - Life history approaches and wetland habitation: a later prehistoric case study from the Dutch delta
44 - Rhythm of wetland life: seasonality and sociality
45 - Towards an Anthropology of Wetland Archaeology: Hunter-Gatherers and Wetlands in Theory and Practice
46 - Long-distance trade routes linked to wetland settlements
47 - Integrating dry lands and wetlands in late prehistoric farming regimes
48 - People, lakes and forest in the Baltic region: a prehistoric perspective
49 - Wetland archaeology in the media and the popular literature: beyond the scholarly taboos of the twentieth century, back to the pioneers
50 - Informing the public: bridging the gap between experts and enthusiasts
51 - Museum exhibitions, open-air museums and hands-on archaeology
52 - The lake-dwelling diaspora: museums, private collectors and the evolution of ethics in archaeology
53 - The archaeology of wetlands: a personal journey
54 - Concluding remarks and future perspectives

Francesco Menotti is Professor of Archaology at the Institute of Prehistory and Archaeological Science, Basel University. He has been involved in wetland archaeological research for fifteen years, working on various projects in different parts of Europe. His publications include 'The missing period': Middle Bronze Age lake-dwellings in the Alps (2001), Living on the lake in prehistoric Europe (2004), and Wetland Archaeology and Beyond: Theory and Practice (OUP, 2012). Dr Aidan O'Sullivan is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland. He has directed many wetland archaeological projects in estuaries, lakes, rivers and boglands, and is the author of numerous books and papers on wetland archaeology, including The Archaeology of Lake Settlement in Ireland (1998) and Rethinking Wetland Archaeology (2006).