MANTAI

City by the Sea

20 × 29 cm

Hard cover with protective jacket

552 pages, 350 illustrations
(tables, figures, and maps; colour/b&w)

1 CD
Database of Chinese pottery
Complete photo record
Bead catalogue by Peter Francis

weight: 2.6 kg

Price: Euro 65.00
(incl. VAT) + postage

John Carswell studied at the RCA in London, and worked as draftsman for Kathleen Kenyon at Jericho. He taught fine art at the AUB, then became Curator of the ORINST Museum, and Director, DAS Museum at the University of Chicago, Director of the Islamic Department at Sotheby’s, and now Professorial Associate at SOAS. He writes extensively on Turkish and Islamic ­pottery, Chinese porcelain, and Islamic art and architecture.

Siran Deraniyagala, distinguished archaeologist and prehistorian, studied at Cambridge and Harvard, and excavated throughout Sri Lanka. As Director-General of the Archaeological Survey in Sri Lanka, he formulated the rules governing any future excavation. His seminal publication is The Prehistory of Sri Lanka: An Ecological Perspective, 1992.

Alan Graham, a graduate of the Institute of Archaeology, London, has been active in field archaeology since 1970. Living in South West England he has excavated and published numerous sites from Neolithic henge, Iron Age hillfort, Romano-British and medieval town to 17th century bronze cauldron foundry. Internationally he has worked around the Mediterranean, in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

This is the publication of the long awaited results of the excavations at Mantai in Sri Lanka between 1980 and 1984.  Supported by The Metropolitan Museum, New York, The National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, D.C., The Oriental  Institute in Chicago, The British Museum, London, the Ford Foundation, New York, and other institutions, this vital entrepot, half way between China and the ­Mediterranean, was excavated by an international team of archaeo­logists, experts and graduate students.
It was unexpectedly terminated in 1984 by the sudden outbreak of civil war. However, the following year much of the material was rescued,  forming  the basis of numerous specialist studies.

Edited by Professor John Carswell, Dr Siran ­Deraniyagala and
Alan Graham M. A., the book contains over twenty articles, many illustrated in colour, with numerous plans and text figures. It is a vital document  for the history and exploration of Mantai since the early 19th century, and is a tool for any future excavators.

Even more important is Mantai’s location as the crossroads of cultural relations between China and the Western world, and also between India and Sri Lanka, resulting in the survival of material evidence for over 1,500 years, until its demise in the early 11th century A.D.

Mantai is potentially one of the most important projects in historical archaeology today – David Whitehouse, Director, The Corning Museum.

For a PDF-file of the title & contents, please click here

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