Başur Höyük in southeast Turkey lies at a critical crossroads linking Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Caucasia. The site was excavated as part of the Ilısu Dam and Hydroelectric Power Plant (HEPP) project rescue excavations. During the Early Bronze Age I (3100–2900 BCE), a cemetery was created in an area previously occupied by an Uruk settlement. A stone cist grave and accompanying outer area contained several burials. Bodies interred outside the main stone chamber are thought to be the victims of human sacrifice as part of a retainer burial practice previously documented at Arslantepe and Ur. The grave contexts host an assemblage of personal ornaments that were deposited with those interred both inside and outside the stone chamber. This article considers the more than 30,000 recovered beads in light of social context, material procurement, use and value, technology, and relative differences in status of the occupants of the grave. The data are used to identify both how different identities were structured by the Early Bronze Age I residents of Başur Höyük and how the location of the site at a meeting point of trade routes and regional powers influenced material culture and social behavior in the region.

I am pleased to announce that in January 2021 the AJA will begin to release book reviews on a monthly basis. They will be announced via the AJA e-Update email and posted on AJA Online (https://www.ajaonline.org/). We are making this change to provide our content to readers more rapidly, as this new procedure will make it easier for our readers to discover new books—and ideas—that interest them. The change will also benefit authors and publishers by making reviews of their books available closer to the time of publication, as well as reviewers by issuing their contributions sooner. We currently publish book reviews between three and six months after submission; our new plan should reduce the time lag by one to two months, on average. All book reviews will continue to be available as open access content on AJA Online and listed in the table of contents of each quarterly issue. Readers can sign up for the AJA e-Update at https://www.ajaonline.org/e-update.

During the last year, we made other changes to our book review process. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many publishers are transitioning to sending ebooks or information about newly published books rather than hard copies. We want to encourage publishers to continue this practice if they desire and are asking them, if possible, to ship a printed book directly to a reviewer once the appropriate person has been identified. Our reviewers—already spending many hours reading screens—are for the most part eager to engage with books in paper formats.

The AJA welcomes new reviewers: those who hold a Ph.D. degree may submit a curriculum vitae specifying geographic, methodological, temporal, or thematic fields of expertise at the address below. To request a book, recommend a reviewer, or comment on issues of policy, I encourage all readers to contact me here as well. To share opinions on AJA book reviews, readers may use the comments feature that appears online at the end of each review.

I look forward to this new process of issuing book reviews on a monthly basis, as it promises to be a significant step toward the timely provision of resources to AJA readers. 

David L. Stone
Book Review Editor
Department of Classical Studies
University of Michigan
2160 Angell Hall
435 South State Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1003
bookreviews@archaeological.org

The use of the same obverse die by multiple cities in the Roman provinces has been much discussed from a numismatic standpoint, with particular focus on its implications for the system of coin production and for control of minting in the Roman provinces. Instead of considering die sharing as evidence to aid our understanding of the coinage, this article switches the focus onto the practice itself and examines it as a historical process in its own right. It examines how and why the practice came to be so widely adopted in the first half of the third century CE, using the spread of die sharing as a proxy for the spread of ideas. It reveals that the practice spread in a series of regional fits and starts, as the idea was experimented with by groups of cities, before being discarded and then often taken up again at a later point in time. In conclusion, I suggest that the explosion in use of shared dies in third-century CE Asia Minor can be better explained by connections between cities that were conducive to the spread of ideas than by any inherent benefit arising from the practice itself.

The water displays in Roman Greece in the villa of Herodes Atticus at Eva-Loukou and in the forecourt of the sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis demonstrate diverse uses and contexts of flowing water. By focusing on the sensorial experience an ancient individual had with these structures, especially through the framework of a sensorial assemblage, we can highlight how sensory elements had the power to create immersive encounters. This permits further understanding of how an ancient Roman experienced a monument and created memories in the surrounding built environment and natural landscape. The two water displays at Eva-Loukou and Eleusis in Greece, one in a domestic context and one in a religious context, can then be placed in relation to the empire-wide phenomenon of constructing fountains for their sensorial effects. Examinations of the two sites suggest the motivations that moved patrons to install innovative water displays and help elucidate a common Roman sense of identity connected to the display of water.