Since the earliest use of pottery, vessels have been associated with both the general shape and specific parts of the human body. The production of human-shaped pottery might be understood as one element of the spectrum of figural art in prehistoric communities. The idea of studying anthropomorphic pottery and the return of human beings into a body made of clay, which forms the core theme of this collection of 12 papers, stems from work on anthropomorphic features of Neolithic communities between the Near East and Europe. Contributors are engaged in questions about the analysis of human features and characteristics on vessels, their occurrence, function and disposal. Beginning with the European Neolithic and moving on through the Bronze and Iron Ages, papers focus on diachronic archaeological patterns and contexts as well as on the theoretical background of this particular type of container in order to shed light on similarities and differences through the ages and to understand possibilities and limits of interpretation.

Stone Age researchers spend a lot of time studying and documenting lithic artefacts. Since it is impossible to study all these artefacts physically, they often rely on images. Drawings are often the most informative because the lines and symbols in these drawing contain technological information which tells the audience how the artefact depicted was made. Conversely, making these drawings is an excellent way of learning to recognise and understand this technological information. In a distant past Yannick aspired a career as an artist and while the art world is probably better off without him, he managed to find a new purpose for his artistic bend in his career as an archaeologist in the form of making lithic illustrations. Both professional and amateur archaeologists ask him questions about the drawings regularly with “It’s probably very difficult, I’m sure?” the most prominent. Drawing lithic illustrations is bound to rules and conventions anybody can learn. Of course it helps if you have a deft hand at drawing, but this style of drawing is a craft, not an art form. A craft anybody can learn with a little perseverance. Starting from there, Yannick gives courses in drawing artefacts. While preparing these courses he noticed that almost no books or papers suitable as course material are available, a realisation eventually resulting in this book.

This book provides unique insights into Late Neolithic life, its organization and its economy, made possible by an altogether exceptional collection of recent archaeological findings in South Scandinavia from longhouses with sunken floors dating from this period.Through analysis and interpretation of these comprehensive materials, Danish archaeologist John Simonsen presents brand new findings essential for many wider interpretations of this crucial and fascinating transitional period from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age (c. 2350- c. 1600 BC).The basic materials presented and discussed in Daily Life at the Turn of the Neolithic were mainly found during new archaeological excavations in the central part of the Limfjord region of Denmark, but, in terms of the wider perspectives and considerations, often relate to the entire region and in several respects also to South Scandinavia - and beyond.

Uroš Matić and Bo Jensen have brought together a team of both young and senior researches from many different countries in this first volume that aims to explore the complex intersection between archaeology, gender and violence. Papers range from theoretical discussions on previous approaches to gender and violence and the ethical necessity to address these questions today, to case studies dealing on gender and violence from prehistoric to early medieval Europe, but also including studies on ancient Egypt, Persia and Peru. The contributors deal both with representations of violence and its gendered background in images and text, and with bioarchaeological evidence for violence and trauma with a gendered background. The volume is rich both in examples and approaches and includes opening and closing chapters by senior scholars in the field assessing the current state of work and addressing the scholarship to continue on the line of this volume.

The ‘western seaways’ are an arc of sea extending from the Channel Islands in the south, through the Isles of Scilly around to Orkney in the north. This maritime zone has long been seen as a crucial corridor of interaction during later prehistory. Connections across it potentially led, for example, to the eventual arrival of the Neolithic in Britain, almost 1000 years after it arrived on the near continent. This book’s primary focus is Early Neolithic settlement on islands within the ‘western seaways’ – sites that offer significant insight into the character of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in this particular maritime zone. It also explores a series of directly related, wider themes: the nature and effects of ‘island-ness’ in later prehistory; the visibility of material connections across the sea; the extent of Neolithic settlement variability across Britain; and the consequences of geographical biases in research for our understanding of the prehistoric past. At the heart of the book lie the results of three substantial excavations at L’Erée, Guernsey; Old Quay, St Martin’s (Isles of Scilly); and An Doirlinn, South Uist. Key findings include: the first major Mesolithic flint assemblage recovered from Scilly; one of the most extensively excavated and long-lasting Neolithic/Bronze Age occupation sites in the Channel Islands; the first substantial Neolithic settlement on Scilly; and the longest sequence of Neolithic/Early Bronze Age occupation on a single site from the Outer Hebrides. In order to contextualise the significance of these findings, we also present an extended discussion and broad synthesis of Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeology on each island group.

Late Bronze Age Aegean cooking vessels illuminate prehistoric cultures, foodways, social interactions, and communication systems. While many scholars have focused on the utility of painted fineware vessels for chronological purposes, the contributors to this volume maintain that cooking wares have the potential to answer not only chronological but also economic, political, and social questions when analysed and contrasted with assemblages from different sites or chronological periods. The text is dedicated entirely to prehistoric cooking vessels, compiles evidence from a wide range of Greek sites and incorporates new methodologies and evidence. The contributors utilise a wide variety of analytical approaches and demonstrate the impact that cooking vessels can have on the archaeological interpretation of sites and their inhabitants. These sites include major Late Bronze Age citadels and smaller settlements throughout the Aegean and surrounding Mediterranean area, including Greece, the islands, Crete, Italy, and Cyprus. In particular, contributors highlight socio-economic connections by examining the production methods, fabrics and forms of cooking vessels. Recent improvements in excavation techniques, advances in archaeological sciences, and increasing attention to socioeconomic questions make this is an opportune time to renew conversations about and explore new approaches to cooking vessels and what they can teach us.

Understanding Relations Between Scripts: The Aegean Writing Systems arises from a conference held in Cambridge in 2015. The question of how writing systems are related to each other, and how we can study those relationships, has not been studied in detail and this volume aims to fill a gap in scholarship by presenting a number of case studies focused on the writing systems of the Bronze Age Aegean. These include Cretan Hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B, used predominantly in Crete and mainland Greece, as well as the Cypro-Minoan script of Cyprus. Most of these systems (the only major exception being Linear B) remain undeciphered to some degree but we nevertheless have considerable evidence for their development and use. Each contributor focuses on a different theoretical problem and/or set of scripts. Important questions include: How and why did writing emerge in Crete in the Middle Bronze Age? What is the relationship between writing and art? Why did different writing systems co-exist with each other? What changes were made when a new system was developed from an old one? Can our understanding of how different systems are related to each other help us to reconstruct the values of script signs? The contributors tackle such questions by employing a variety of methods, from epigraphic and palaeographic analysis to typological comparison and contextual study. The result is a coherent volume that will not only enrich our understanding of the ancient Aegean writing systems in particular, but will also provide an important example for future studies of writing across the world.

This volume presents for the first time the results of the excavation and scientific analysis between 2005 and 2013 of seventeen Iron Age cauldrons discovered in a large pit on farmland in the parish of Chiseldon, Wiltshire, and consequently acquired by the British Museum. The assemblage is unprecedented in many respects and is the largest known single deposit of prehistoric cauldrons from Europe. The hoard was deposited in the fourth or third centuries BC, although hoarding as a practice is generally underrepresented during this period. The inclusion in the hoard of rare decorated cauldrons also means that it is one of very few deposits from Britain dating to the middle Iron Age known to contain multiple objects decorated with Celtic art and the only example where it is possible to ascertain that decorated objects were all deposited at the same time. Scientific investigation has revealed that the cauldrons were complicated to manufacture and sophisticated techniques such as quenching were used to make them. Examination of food residues adhering to the vessels demonstrates that they were used to prepare and serve both meat and vegetable based dishes probably including stews, gruels and porridges. The discovery of so many contemporary vessels in one deposit has important implications for our understanding of middle Iron Age society in southern Britain. Thought to be vessels made and used for feasting, the capacity represented by the Chiseldon Hoard indicates the potential in these societies to host feasts with many hundreds, if not thousands of participants, demonstrating levels of sophistication and organisation traditionally viewed as being beyond societies with relatively flat social hierarchies.

Unavailable for too long, this new edition reprints the original text of Renfrew's groundbreaking study, supplemented with a new introduction by the author and a foreword by John Cherry, in order to make this landmark publication available once again.

The Neolithic of Europe comprises eighteen specially commissioned papers on prehistoric archaeology, written by leading international scholars. The coverage is broad, ranging geographically from south-east Europe to Britain and Ireland and chronologically from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, but with a decided focus on the former. Several papers discuss new scientific approaches to key questions in Neolithic research, while others offer interpretive accounts of aspects of the archaeological record. Thematically, the main foci are on Neolithisation; the archaeology of Neolithic daily life, settlements and subsistence; as well as monuments and aspects of worldview. A number of contributions highlight the recent impact of techniques such as isotopic analysis and statistically modelled radiocarbon dates on our understanding of mobility, diet, lifestyles, events and historical processes. The volume is presented to celebrate the enormous impact that Alasdair Whittle has had on the study of prehistory, especially the European and British Neolithic, and his rich career in archaeology.

Economic archaeology is the study of how past peoples exploited animals and plants, using as evidence the remains of those animals and plants. The animal side is usually termed zooarchaeology, the plant side archaeobotany. What distinguishes them from other studies of ancient animals and plants is that their ultimate aim is to find out about human behaviour – the animal and plant remains are a means to this end. The 33 papers present a wide array of topics covering many areas of archaeological interest. Aspects of method and theory, animal bone identification, human palaeopathology, prehistoric animal utilisation in South America, and the study of dog cemeteries are covered. The long-running controversy over the milking of animals and the use of dairy products by humans is discussed as is the ecological impact of hunting by farmers, with studies from Serbia and Syria. For Britain, coverage extends from Mesolithic Star Carr, via the origins of agriculture and the farmers of Lismore Fields, through considerations of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Outside Britain, papers discuss Neolithic subsistence in Cyprus and Croatia, Iron Age society in Spain, Medieval and post-medieval animal utilisation in northern Russia, and the claimed finding of a modern red deer skeleton in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. In exploring these themes, this volume celebrates the life and work of Tony Legge (zoo)archaeologist and teacher.

This interdisciplinary volume presents a collection of 17 papers which treat the current state of research on two marine resources used in ancient textile manufacture, shellfish purple dye and sea silk. Purple dye is extracted from the glands of the molluscs Hexaplex trunculus, Bolinus Brandaris and Stramonita Haemastoma which through a chemical reaction of photosynthesis produces hues ranging from dark red to bluish purple colour. The importance of purple dye since ancient times as a status symbol, a sign of royal and religious power is well documented. Papers include the study of epigraphical and historical sources, practical experiments as well as, highlighting the presence of purple dye in the Mediterranean area in select archaeological data. Less well known is sea silk, a precious fibre derived from the tufts of the pen shell, Pinna nobilis, with which the mollusc anchors itself to the seabed. These tufts once cleaned and bleached take the aspect of golden thread. Only a handful of artisans on Sardinia still have the knowledge of how to work these fibres from the pen shell, a species protected by the EU Habitats Directive, the knowledge having been transmitted orally for generations. Papers include linguistic issues pertaining to terminology, archaeological investigation, the study of the physical and chemical properties of sea silk and the step-by-step practical working of sea silk fibres. The comprehensive multifaceted overview makes this book a valuable resource for anyone interested in ancient textiles, dyes and textile technology.

In prehistoric Europe hierarchic societies arose and developed technological systems and processes in the production of objects related to everyday use, on the one hand, and items of religious and symbolic character emulating prestige and luxury, on the other, while both types of objects may not always be clearly distinguishable. This volume deals with questions of how artisans and other social groups, involved in these productive processes and social practices, reacted to and interacted with the demands connected with elites identities formation, affirmation reconfirmation practices. Innovations and the development of new technologies designed to satisfy the needs of ostentatious behaviour and achieving prestige are key issues of this volume. For example, how can we identify the consequences of such processes, how can we define the role(s) that the craftspeople played in such contexts, and are these always as clear-cut as usually portrayed? The book’s common aim is to investigate the economic, socio-political, as well as the technological contexts and backgrounds of the make-up of material culture and technologies in these periods. We examine which role(s) artisans may have played in status and identity formation processes, in rituals and in symbolic performances, in other words, in each aspect of life and death of selected Chalcolithic, Bronze and Iron Age populations in Europe. Many aspects of the social interaction patterns between the different groups of people in those periods have not been adequately discussed and investigated, especially the artisans’ important role(s). This volume aims to redress these imbalances by investigating how social groups interacted with each other, and how we may recognize such interactions in the material remains.

Gardom's Edge is an area of gritstone upland situated on the Eastern Moors of the Derbyshire Peak District. Like other parts of the Eastern Moors, Gardom's Edge has long been renowned for the wealth of prehistoric field systems, cairns and other structures which can still be traced across the surface. Drawing on the results of original survey and excavation, An Upland Biography documents prehistoric activity across this area, exploring the changing character of occupation from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age. It also tacks back and forth between local detail and regional patterns, to better understand the broader social worlds in which Gardom's Edge was set.

The second conference report on the archaeological site of Petras, Siteia concerns the progress of research conducted about the very important and extensive cemetery of the Pre- and Proto-palatial periods in eastern Crete – one of very few excavations started in Crete in the 21st century. An international group of specialists present and discuss various aspects of the remains of the large, unplundered cemetery and the adjacent settlements traces and in contextualizing the cemetery they try to understand it in the historical, economic and political framework of Pre- and Proto-palatial Crete in general, and Eastern Crete in particular.

The Corded Ware Culture (c. 2900–2300 BC) is found in a large area, from Russia to the Netherlands and from Scandinavia to Switzerland. Supra-regional elements include beakers decorated with cord and/or spatula imprints, battle-axes, and a funerary customs involving crouched inhumations under barrows with gender-specific placement of the body gender-specific funerary gifts. Analysis of ceramics from well-preserved settlements from the Dutch coastal zone have provided very valuable new information on the Corded Ware chronology, social organisation, ideology, subsistence, and use of material culture. A critical review of the commonly applied chronological models shows that many of the underlying premises cannot be supported due to problems with (broad calibration and sample reliability of) 14C dates. This study shows that in the Neolithic Dutch coastal zone, the thin-walled ceramics reflect supra-regional (Corded Ware ) affiliations, whereas the medium-thick-walled and thick-walled ceramics reflect persistent regional (Vlaardingen) traditions. The beakers decorated with cord and spatula impressions were used primarily for cooking; indications for the often proposed use of alcohol (and associated rise of individualisation and elites) were not found.It is argued in this study that the Corded Ware Culture represents an economic alliance, a dynamic totality as well as a network linking regional groups – each with a distinct economic base, material culture and ideology. These communities all participated in a vast supra-regional network that was a platform for inter-community exchanges of goods, skills, ideas and possibly people. Affiliation to this supra-regional network was a vital aspect for all regional groups involved, and membership to it was expressed by using a set of common traits. Decorated thin-walled beakers act as symbols of these supra-regional networks and thus embody both functional and ideological roles.