Vincenzo La Rosa (1941- 2014): Un archeologo tra Sicilia e Egeo edited by Lucia Arcifa and Pietro Militello. Paperback; 150x210mm; 172 pages; 36 figures. Italian text. Italian text. 9 2021. Available both in printed and e-versions. Printed ISBN 9781789698176. £30.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781789698183. £16.00 (Exc. VAT) Institutional Price £30.00 (Exc. UK VAT)

Vincenzo La Rosa (1941- 2014) Un archeologo tra Sicilia e Egeo collects the contributions of the Study Day Una lezione per il futuro. Vincenzo La Rosa (1941-2014) organised in 2015 by the University of Catania in collaboration with ISVNA, to re-examine the scientific figure of Vincenzo La Rosa, professor of Aegean Civilisations at the University of Catania, director of the excavations at Haghia Triada and Festòs in Crete, and the excavations at Milena in Sicily. Scholars and students demonstrate the contribution that Vincenzo La Rosa has made to our knowledge of the prehistory of Crete, Sicily and the Aegean, and to the application of a long-term perspective linking the ancient and modern worlds, emerges in his long career as a university lecturer, director of the Centre for the Study of Greek Archaeology at the C.N.R. in Catania, deputy director of the Italian Archaeological School in Athens (1993-1999) and director of the Centre of Cretan Archaeology (1998-2011).

About the Editors
Lucia Arcifa is professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of Catania and director of the archaeological excavations in Rocchicella and Milena, in Sicily. Her interests focus on Byzantine and Islamic Mediterranean and on the relation between Sicily, Byzantium, Ifrīqiya in the Early Middle Age. ;

Pietro Militello is professor of Aegean civilisation at the University of Catania and director of the Mission of Phaistos in Crete. He is also directing excavations in Sicily. His interests focus on II millennium Crete and on the relation between the Aegean and Sicily in prehistory.

Italian Description
Vincenzo La Rosa (1941- 2014) Un archeologo tra Sicilia e Egeo raccoglie i contributi della Giornata di Studio Una lezione per il futuro. Vincenzo La Rosa (1941-2014) organizzata nel 2015 dall’Università di Catania in collaborazione con l’ISVNA, per riesaminare la figura scientifico di Vincenzo La Rosa, professore ordinario di Civiltà Egee presso l’Università di Catania, e direttore degli scavi di Haghia Triada e Festòs a Creta, e degli scavi di Milena in Sicilia. Attraverso i contributi di studiosi ed allievi emerge il contributo che Vincenzo La Rosa ha apportato alla conoscenza della preistoria di Creta, della Sicilia e dell’Egeo, ed alla applicazione di una prospettiva di lunga durata che collegava il mondo antico a quello moderno, nella sua lunga carriera di docente universitario, direttore del Centro di studi sull’Archeologia greca del C.N.R. di Catania, vicedirettore della Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene (1993-1999) e Direttore del Centro di Archeologia Cretese (1998-2011).

Un sistema per la gestione dell’affidabilità e dell’interpretazione dei dati archeologici Percezione e potenzialità degli small finds: il caso studio di Festòs e Haghia Triada by Marianna Figuera. Paperback; 148x210mm; 165pp; 32 figures. Italian text with English abstract. RRP: £30.00. 8 2020. Available both in printed and e-versions. Printed ISBN 9781789696639. £30.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781789696646. £16.00 (Exc. VAT) Institutional Price £30.00 (Exc. UK VAT)

Un sistema per la gestione dell’affidabilità e dell’interpretazione dei dati archeologici aims to identify the methodological problems associated with digitalized management of archaeological data and to introduce viable solutions that embrace interpretative aspects and the reliability concept. The work develops into a prototype system that manages the data regarding what are referred to as small finds dating back to the palatial periods from the Cretan sites of Phaistos and Ayia Triada which have been studied by the Italian Archaeological Mission since the early 20th century. The analysis of the data highlighted the value of this system and its ability to adapt to the needs of the archaeologist. It provides tools capable of assisting and implementing the interpretation of archaeological data well outside the findings and sites specific to this project for the management of other categories of archaeological finds and of any context. The book can furnish practical and theoretical contributions capable of feeding the methodological debate inherent in issues such as the treatment of sources, legacy data, reuse, the management of uncertainty, and of the rational and intuitive variables inherent in archaeological work, as well as the assessment of the reliability of an interpretative event.

Marianna Figuera is an archaeologist with a Doctorate in Cultural Heritage Studies. Currently a research fellow at the University of Catania, her research focuses on the perception of small finds, metallurgy in Minoan Crete, and the management, integrity, and reliability of digitalized archaeological data. She has been part of the Italian Archaeological Mission at Phaistos and Ayia Triada since 2010.

Reviews
'I would recommend that anyone trying to construct a relational database for an archaeological project read this small book.'—David B. Small, The Classical Review

The Dialectic of Practice and the Logical Structure of the Tool Philosophy, Archaeology and the Anthropology of Technology by Jannis Kozatsas. Paperback; 150x210mm; 92pp. 7 2020. Available both in printed and e-versions. Printed ISBN 9781789694048. £19.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781789694055. £16.00 (Exc. VAT) Institutional Price £19.00 (Exc. UK VAT)

The book undertakes a critical review of recent trends in the archaeological and anthropological theory of technology from processual neo-positivism and postprocessual relativism to the contemporary French and American anthropology, and the symmetrical theory of material culture. On the basis of a critique of their logical premises and epistemological consequences, it draws on the tradition of Hegelian dialectics in order to propose an alternative understanding of technology as a material social practice within which the subject and the object –the socio-cultural and the natural– are produced concurrently as inter-constituted elements, and they are unified through their mutual negative relation to each other. Consequently, it is argued that this dynamic practical relation is consolidated in the concept of the tool. The analysis of its logical structure shows its role as an immanent moment of technological practice. According to Hegel, a tool is not a neutral means for transmitting subjective ends to an external object but the material expression of the practical relationship between artisan and matter, and of their negative unity within practice. Concerning this point, the discussion follows a detailed reconstruction of Hegel’s theoretical reflections on the tool concept, and it evaluates their significance for the contemporary debates on the question of techniques and technology.

About the Author
Jannis Kozatsas’ research broadly focuses on philosophy and archaeology. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at the Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University of Athens, as a Fellow of the State Scholarship Foundation. Since 2018 he has been lecturing in modern European philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Patras. Alongside his activity in philosophy, he is writing a doctoral thesis on Neolithic pottery at the Department of History and Archaeology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is currently co-editor-in-chief of KRISI – Biannual Scientific Review in Greece, which specializes in humanities and social sciences.

Le guerrier, le chat, l’aigle, le poisson et la colonne: la voie spiralée des signes Approche sémiologique, structurale et archéologique du disque de Phaistos by Serge Collet. 90 pages; 15 tables, 1 colour illustration. French text with English Abstract and Foreword. 6 2017. Available both in printed and e-versions. Printed ISBN 9781784916169. £19.00 (No VAT). Epublication ISBN 9781784916176. £10.00 (Exc. VAT) Institutional Price £19.00 (Exc. UK VAT)

The Phaistos Disc is one of the most studied documents of the Minoan civilization, enticing scholars and simple enthusiasts with the mysterious aura that envelops it and with its singularity among Minoan scriptures. It has entered the collective imagination, both at academic and popular levels. Representations of the Disc can be found abundantly in popular culture, from appearances in Mickey Mouse comics to a prop amidst the curios on the tables of a television magician.

It is this very overexposure that risks undermining the understanding of an object that is, first and foremost, an archaeological artefact found in a chronological and cultural context. Much has been said and much and has been written about the Disc. Collet brings a new approach. It’s not a deciphering but an interpretation, a depiction of the Minoan Weltanschauung through the symbols on the Disc and their connections with reality. This begins with the spiral-shaped construction of the inscription and its possible temporal allusions, and moves on to a structuralist view of use of the signs, and in which the repetitions take on almost ritual significance. Hence it is a pictorial interpretation rather than syllabic, whereby the pictograph is not intended as a rigid reproduction of logical discourse, but rather a path.

About the Author:
Serge Collet (1950-2016) was a French scientist who became known for his interdisciplinary research on early sea-dependent societies. His main study “Uomini e Pesce, La caccia al pesce spada tra Scilla e Cariddi” as well as his publications with SAGE Publications over the years, as well as his several contributions to international conferences (inter alia funded by the EU and FAO) gave substantial examples as to what contributions maritime ethnology and archaeology can make for the preservation of cultures and the seas over the millennia.

Ostentazione di rango e manifestazione del potere agli albori della società micenea by Federica Gonzato. 262 pages; black & white illustrations. Italian text. 4 2012. ISBN 9788876992278.  

Le manifestazioni materiali del potere sono una caratteristica fondamentale delle società umane e costituiscono pertanto, per lo studioso delle culture antiche, una delle chiavi di lettura più ricche e promettenti. In questo volume, l’autrice propone una interpretazione delle prime fasi di formazione (XVII-XV secolo a.C.) dell’organizzazione sociale della cultura micenea attraverso l’esame degli attributi di potere (insignia dignitatis) trovati nelle sepolture di questo periodo in Argolide, culla della civiltà micenea in Grecia. Lo sviluppo della realtà micenea precedente la grande fase palaziale del XIV-XIII secolo a.C. viene analizzato da un punto di vista etnoantropologico e storico, introducendo una fondamentale distinzione fra beni di prestigio ed attributi di potere (spesso effimeri e polisemantici, in quanto soggetti ad una continua variazione della nozione di valore), ma ponendo anche attenzione alle storia delle dinamiche sociali e alle strategie per il mantenimento della leadership attraverso la manipolazione di una ideologia di cui gliinsignia dignitatis rappresentano la materializzazione.

Site, Artefacts and Landscape Prehistoric Borġ in-Nadur, Malta by Davide Tanasi and Nicholas C. Vella. 450 pages; illustrated throughout in black & white. 3 450. ISBN 9788876992230.  

The Bronze Age of the Maltese archipelago has long been overlooked by archaeologists whose attention has mostly been focused on the Late Neolithic temples. This book attempts to understand the islands’ Bronze Age society in the course of the second millennium BC by exploring the history of Borg in-Nadur in south-east Malta. The site of a megalithic temple and re-used in later periods when a fortified settlement was built on the plateau, Borg in-Nadur was visited by travellers and antiquarians in the course of the Early Modern period, and was investigated by archaeologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This collection of essays discusses the early attempts to understand the site, and presents a comprehensive catalogue of the finds that have never been properly published. It also considers the site in its local landscape setting and in its regional south-central Mediterranean context, and explores issues related to past and present public outreach and site management.

La necropoli protostorica di Montagna di Caltagirone by Davide Tanasi. 451 pages; illustrated throughout in black & white. 1 2008. ISBN 9788876991158.  

Il sito della Montagna di Caltagirone (CT), indagato per la prima volta in modo sistematico da Paolo Orsi nel 1903, rappresenta un importante caso studio per la pre e protostoria siciliana e costituisce un osservatorio privilegiato per un’analisi delle problematiche legate all’interrelazione tra popolazioni autoctone e straniere. Dalla metà del II millennio a.C. fino alla colonizzazione greca, infatti, la Montagna ha svolto un ruolo fondamentale nei fenomeni d’aggregazione della popolazione del territorio calatino. Nell’età del Bronzo Tardo (XIII-XI secolo a.C.), il suo insediamento ha raggiunto il momento di maggiore splendore, con l’impianto della grande necropoli, ponendosi, insieme a Pantalica, come principale centro produttore di cultura della Sicilia Orientale.