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The Ming Tombs, or the Thirteen Tombs as they are called in Chinese, lie about 50 kilometers to the north of Peking, off the highway that leads to the Great Wall at Badaling and the Ju Yong Pass. In the past, the Ming Tombs accommodated independent travelers who wished to linger around the more obscure tombs and reflect on the impermanence of imperial grandeur and political glory. These days, a new imperial edict has been issued. Aside from three of the tombs, apparatchiks have locked the other tumuli behind iron gates and wooden doors. The specific tombs addressed include Chang Ling, Ding Ling, Zhao Ling, De Ling, Yong Ling, Jing Ling, Xian Ling, Qing Ling, Yu Ling, Mao Ling, Kang Ling, Tai Ling, and Si Ling.

A trip to the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall can also include a visit to the Silver Mountain Pagoda Forest in Chang Ping County. The pagoda “forest” consists of seven pagodas built in a valley with a mountain range cradling them in the background. Chan Buddhism delightfully challenges the acolyte to break dualistic thought through a sudden flash of enlightenment that attends meditation on an impossible riddle. The tombs are modeled closely on the Ming Tombs, though they do not rise to the same level of exquisite design. The Temple of the Cloud Place was originally constructed in the sixth century by a monk called Jing Yuan. It is believed that there is no more fitting place to bring to close the wanderings in Old Peking.

This chapter reviews the emerging evidence for the archaeology of Skye and the Western Isles during the medieval period and later, for part of which the region was ruled by the Lords of the Isles. It examines the evolution of the baile, the architectural form of the blackhouse, and medieval castles like Kismul Castle in Barra. It also considers the symbolism and architecture of the tombs of the medieval elite.

In September 1968, Allen Jones walked for the first time through the doors of Morris High School, the school that he had enrolled in after he failed out of Taft High School. Jones had finished his second year at Taft High School the same way he finished his first: partying, getting high, and selling drugs. However, he had the feeling things were going to be different for him here somehow. The whole school and everyone in it seemed to expect trouble. Jones realized that, yet again, he had stepped into a world that he would need to learn to navigate. He was in a school and a neighborhood where everyone—even the teachers and principal—was street smart, and he would have a much harder time hiding his double life. This chapter further describes Jones's experience leading up to The Tombs—that is what they call the jailhouse down in Manhattan.

This chapter describes Allen Jones's time inside The Tombs. The night he spent in that jailhouse was the longest of his life. He was locked inside a cell with ten or twelve men, some of them pretty desperate looking and all of them claiming to be innocent. Some were sober, but most were drunk or high on drugs. The next morning arrived, at last, and they transported them to Rikers Island early. Rikers is the prison where people awaiting trial in New York City are held until they are freed or convicted and sent upstate. The sun was shining that morning, and as he saw The Rock from a distance, it looked like a school. As they rode through the streets to get to the bridge that would take them to the prison, Jones looked at all the people going about their business and he yearned to be like them, free to be in the everyday world.

Very little is known about Karakhamun and Karabasken, despite their importance for this period. This chapter lays out the excavation, conservation, and reconstruction of their tombs. It also takes a broader look at the chronology of the necropolis through the architectural development and decoration of the tombs in the area, seeking to understand their places within public and private tombs, as well as to explore the position and lives of their owners.

Archaism is a key factor in Late Period Theban tomb decoration, and this chapter explores this in the tombs of Karakhamun and Karabasken. It looks at the style of carving, the use of imagery and iconography, and techniques and innovations employed. This chapter concludes that the tomb was decorated in a relatively short period of time by a large number of building and artistic teams, yet was never completed.

Eigner revisits and builds on earlier work done on Karakhamun's tomb in the 1970s, through the new excavations of the South Asasif Project. He presents a plan of the tomb, as well as section drawings, and a detailed discussion of the decoration and architectural features of the tomb. He draws comparisons to other relevant tombs, such as TT 37 Hawra and TT 390 Irtieru, and explains how they follow the principles of temple architecture.

This chapter tells the story of Bill vanden Heuvel's work with the New York City prison system. Following riots in the Tombs detention center and a rash of suicides in late 1970, Mayor John Lindsay asked vanden Heuvel to serve as Chair of the Board of Correction, a post he held for three years. During that time, he made numerous proposals to improve conditions in the New York City prison system, developing novel approaches to health care, education, training and living conditions. His legal training gave him an eye for spotting inequities in bail and sentencing procedures, and he worked closely with advocates both inside and outside the prisons to create a system that could be remedial as well as punitive. The chapter includes his speech at a service of concern after deadly riots broke out at Attica State Prison in September 1971. His ideas for improving media coverage of the prisons are presented in his article "The Press and the Prisons," first published in June 1972.

The shift between Hafit (ca. 3100–2700 BC) and Umm an-Nar (ca. 2700–2000 BC) mortuary traditions on the Oman Peninsula is poorly understood, primarily because the semi-nomadic communities of this liminal period left little to the archaeological record, with the exception of monumental tombs. Because of the ambiguity surrounding this transition, tombs from this time are typically classified as either ‘Hafit’ or ‘Umm an-Nar’ without regard for the considerable geographic and temporal variation in tomb structure and membership throughout southeastern Arabia. Recent survey and excavation of a Bronze Age necropolis at Al Khubayb in the Sultanate of Oman have revealed Transitional tombs that—far from exhibiting a simplified dichotomy—represent a blurring of the traditionally discrete boundaries dividing the Hafit and Umm an-Nar periods. Bioarchaeological analyses of tombs at Al Khubayb further enable researchers to make a distinction between tomb types and elucidate the process by which mortuary treatments changed. Over the late fourth and into the early third millennium BC, these entombment practices changed from (a) relatively small, roughly-hewn limestone tombs known as Hafit-type cairns to (b) Transitional tombs displaying features intermediary to both Hafit and Umm an-Nar period mortuary structures to (c) large, expertly-constructed Umm an-Nar communal tombs.