Ireland's First Settlers tells the story of the archaeology and history of the first continuous phase of Ireland’s human settlement. It combines centuries of search and speculation about human antiquity in Ireland with a review of what is known today about the Irish Mesolithic. This is, in part, provided in the context of the author's 50 years of personal experience searching to make sense of what initially appeared to be little more than a collection of beach rolled and battered flint tools. The story is embedded in how the island of Ireland, its position, distinct landscape and ecology impacted on when and how Ireland was colonised. It also explores how these first settlers evolved their technologies and lifeways to suit the narrow range of abundant resources that were available. The volume concludes with discussions on how the landscape should be searched for the often ephemeral traces of these early settlers and how sites should be excavated. It asks what we really know about the thoughts and life of the people themselves and what happened to them as farming began to be introduced.

This book focuses on the introduction of Neolithic extraction practices across Europe through to the Atlantic periphery of Britain and Ireland. The key research questions are when and why were these practices adopted and what role did extraction sites play in Neolithic society. Neolithic mines and quarries have frequently been seen as fulfilling roles linked to the expansion of the Neolithic economy. However, this ignores the fact that many communities chose to selectively dig for certain types of stone in preference to others and why the products from these sites were generally deposited in special places such as wetlands. To address this question, 168 near-global ethnographic studies were analysed to identify common trends in traditional extraction practises to produce robust statistics about their motivations and material signatures. Repeated associations emerged between storied locations, the organisation of extraction practices, long-distance distribution of products, and the material evidence such activities left behind. This suggests that we can now probably identify mythologised/storied sites, seasonality, ritualised extraction, and the use-life of extraction site products. The ethnographic model was tested against data from 223 near-global archaeological extraction sites, which confirmed a similar patterning in both material records. It was used to analyse the social context of 79 Neolithic flint mine and 51 axe quarry excavations in Britain and Ireland and to review their European origins. The evidence that emerges confirms the pivotal role played by Neolithic extraction practices in European Neolithisation and that the interaction of indigenous foragers with migrant miners/farmers was fundamental to the adoption of the new agropastoral lifestyle.

Ancient Greeks at War is a lavishly illustrated tour de force covering every aspect of warfare in the Ancient Greek world from the beginnings of Greek civilization through to its assimilation into the ever expanding world of Rome. As such it begins with the onset Minoan culture on Crete around 2,000 BC, then covers the arrival of the Mycenaean civilisation and the ensuing Late Bronze Age Collapse, before moving on to Dark Age and Archaic Greece. This sets the scene for the flowering of Classical Greek civilization, as told through detailed narratives of the Greek and Persian Wars, Peloponnesian Wars and the rise of Thebes as a major power. The book then moves on to the onset of Macedonian domination under Philip II, before focusing in detail on the exploits of his son Alexander the Great, the all-conquering hero of the ancient world. His legacy was the Hellenistic world with its multiple, never ending series of conflicts that took place over a huge territory, ranging from Italy in the west all the way to India in the east. Those covered include the various Wars of the Successors, the rise of the Bactrian-Greek and Indo-Greek kingdoms, the various wars between the Antigonid Macedonian, Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms, and later the onset of the clash of cultures between the rising power of Rome in the west and the Hellenistic kingdoms. In the long run the latter proved unable to match Rome's insatiable desire for conquest in the eastern Mediterranean, and this together with the rise of Parthia in the east ensured that one by one the Hellenistic kingdoms and states fell. The book ends with the destruction of Corinth in 146 BC after the defeat by Rome of the Achaean League. The conclusion considers the legacy of the Ancients Greeks in the Roman world, and subsequently.

A detailed report on the excavation of prehistoric features at Forteviot in eastern Scotland by the University of Glasgow's Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot (SERF) Project. Details include an extensive prehistoric landscape including a Neolithic cremation cemetery, large pit-defined enclosure, early Bronze Age henge monuments, and a Bronze Age dagger-cist burial. The monuments appear to have survived into the early historic period and were modified in the first millennium AD.

This memoir is not really about research questions or main conclusions. It tells the story of a boy growing up in Plymouth, Devon, getting excited about archaeology after visits to mainland Greece and Crete, trying to get into Greek archaeology and re-locating northwards into the Balkans, where he spent a career in prehistoric research. The chapters alternate between museum/university experiences and my major research projects. The experiences of working in that part of the world as the Third Balkan War was starting were dramatic and a history-style chapter is devoted to these beginnings. The Balkan prehistoric club in the west is a very small and select group so there is an intrinsic interest about how westerners did their archaeology there and how they interacted with local colleagues. There is also a sense of a ‘colonial relationship’ between westerners knowledgeable about theory and method, with well-stocked libraries and large research grants and easterners with little of the above. On a basic level, the memoir presents stories with implications for east - west relationships that will soon disappear from living memory. The ways that research projects originated and developed are strongly featured and there is a fund of anecdotes about prehistorians living and dead. The publication of this memoir records those fragments of the discipline’s history that are in danger of being lost forever. But my life story is not erased from this account, which is not an anthropological work but, rather, a participant account with a modicum of relevant personal details. The book providing the archaeological results is the publication Forging identities in the prehistory of Old Europe. Dividuals, individuals and communities 7000-3000 BC - a synthesis of academic research in Balkan prehistory. This memoir provides the insider story to the research results.

In this book we offer an exciting new perspective on a distinctive form of megalithic monument that is found across most areas of northern Europe. In order to achieve this we have abandoned outmoded typological classifications and re-introduced the term ‘dolmen’ to embrace a range of sites that share a common form of megalithic architecture: the elevation and display of a substantial stone. By critically assessing the traditionally assigned role of these monuments and their architecture as megalithic tombs, the presence of the dead is reassessed and argued to form part of a process generating vibrancy to the materiality of the dolmen. As such this book argues that the megalithic architecture identified as a dolmen is not a chambered tomb at all but instead is a qualitatively different form of monument. We also provide an entirely different conception of the utility of this extraordinary megalithic architecture – one that seeks to emphasise its building as articulating discourses of wonder as a broad social strategy. In this respect it is important to remember that many of these monuments were erected very early in the Neolithic and as a consequence of new people entering new lands, or social transformation. In short, dolmens are monumental constructions employing experimental and emergent technologies to raise huge stones, which, once built, enchant those who come within their spaces. Our claim is that dolmens were megalithic installations of affect, magical and extraordinary in construction and strategically positioned to induce both drama and awe in their encounter.

This book provides a general self-reflexive review and critical analysis of Scandinavian rock art from the standpoint of Chris Tilley’s research in this area over the last thirty years. It offers a novel alternative theoretical perspective stressing the significance of visual narrative structure and rhythm, using musical analogies, putting particular emphasis on the embodied perception of images in a landscape context. Part I reviews the major theories and interpretative perspectives put forward to understand the images, in historical perspective, and provides a critique discussing each of the main types of motifs occurring on the rocks. Part II outlines an innovative theoretical and methodological perspective for their study stressing sequence and relationality in bodily movement from rock to rock. Part III is a detailed case study and analysis of a series of rocks from northern Bohuslän in western Sweden. The conclusions reflect on the theoretical and methodological approach being taken in relation to the disciplinary practices involved in rock art research, and its future.

Textile production and the manufacture of clothing was one of the most essential daily activities in prehistory. Textiles were significant objects of practical use, and at the same time had cultural, social and symbolic meaning, crucial for displaying the identity, gender, social rank and status, or wealth of their users. However, evidence of ancient clothing is scarce due to unfavourable preservation of organic materials. Only occasionally are prehistoric textiles and associated implements preserved, mainly as a result of exceptional environmental conditions, such as waterlogged contexts like bogs, or in very dry or cold climates. In other cases textiles are sporadically mineralised, carbonised or preserved by metal corrosion. Textiles and leather can also be visible as imprints on clay.The beginning of textile manufacture is still vague, but can be traced back to the upper Palaeolithic. Important developments in textile technology, e.g. weaving, spinning with a spindle, introduction of wool, appeared in Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age. This book is devoted to the early textile production in Europe and the Mediterranean and aims to collect and investigate the combined evidence of textile and leather remains, tools, workplaces and textile iconography.The chapters discuss the recent achievements in the research of ancient textiles and textile production, textile techniques such as spinning, fabric and skin manufacture, use of textile tools and experimental textile archaeology. The volume explores important cultural and social aspects of textile production, and its development.

This first of two volumes presents the archaeological evidence of a long sequence of settlement and funerary activity from the Beaker period (Early Bronze Age c. 2000 BC) to the Early Iron Age (c. 500 BC) at the unusually long-occupied site of Cladh Hallan on South Uist in the Western Isles of Scotland. Particular highlights of its sequence are a cremation burial ground and pyre site of the 18th–16th centuries BC and a row of three Late Bronze Age sunken-floored roundhouses constructed in the 10th century BC. Beneath these roundhouses, four inhumation graves contained skeletons, two of which were remains of composite collections of body parts with evidence for post-mortem soft tissue preservation prior to burial. They have proved to be the first evidence for mummification in Bronze Age Britain. Cladh Hallan's remarkable stratigraphic sequence, preserved in the machair sand of South Uist, includes a unique 500-year sequence of roundhouse life in Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Britain. One of the most important results of the excavation has come from intensive environmental and micro-debris sampling of house floors and outdoor areas to recover patterns of discard and to interpret the spatial use of 15 domestic interiors from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. From Cladh Hallan’s roundhouse floors we gain intimate insights into how daily life was organized within the house - where people cooked, ate, worked and slept. Such evidence rarely survives from prehistoric houses in Britain or Europe, and the results make a profound contribution to long-running debates about the sunwise organisation of roundhouse activities. Activity at Cladh Hallan ended with the construction and abandonment of two unusual double-roundhouses in the Early Iron Age. One appears to have been a smokery and steam room, and the other was used for metalworking.

Au cours des quatre derniers siècles av. n.è. les sociétés d’Europe continentale de la culture dite de La Tène développent leur propre artisanat du verre. Cette période de mutations économiques et sociales saisissantes, où les centres urbains et les réseaux d’habitats hiérarchisés se déploient, connaît également une intensification et une diversification des productions artisanales et agricoles. De l’agriculture à la métallurgie, l’étude des spécialisations artisanales laténiennes révèle des changements techniques et économiques majeurs et précise les facteurs impliqués dans ces transformations socio-économiques.Presque exclusivement dédié aux ornements du corps, l’artisanat du verre celtique produit des perles et des bracelets. Longtemps considérés comme des objets de pacotilles, babioles qui ne pouvaient être que féminines ou enfantines, ces objets sont considérés ici sous leurs aspects économiques et sociaux. La méthode d’étude pluridisciplinaire développée, combinant l’étude contextuelle des objets, l’analyse élémentaire des matériaux et l’exploration des techniques avec des artisans verriers, a permis pour la première fois d’aborder ces objets à travers toute leur chaîne de production. De la fabrication du verre brut au Proche-Orient aux poignets des populations celtiques, l’étude des parures en verre celtiques révèle désormais les réseaux d’échanges et les savoir-faire que les sociétés ont développés pour leur production. Cette redécouverte de l’artisanat verrier laténien permet d’approcher les valeurs et les fonctions de signes des parures en verre, redéfinissant ces objets comme des parures de prix, destinés à la distinction sociale des individus, mais dont la production et les consommations semblent également évoluer parallèlement à la hiérarchisation de la société du La Tène.English abstractThis books focusses on Iron Age glassmaking through a socio-economic perspective. To do so, a multidisciplinary method has been established, combining archaeological data with archaeometry and technological approaches developed with modern glassmakers. It allows us to reconstruct, step by step, the commodity chain of this craft, only dedicated to beads and bangles productions, from the raw glass production, its transformation into items of adornments but also its distribution and its consumption processes by La Tène societies.By reconstructing this production system, the social and symbolic values of these ornaments can be better understood. Glass beads and bangles are luxury products and their consumption evolved alongside the hierarchisation of La Tène societies. This new research on La Tène Glass reveals conspicuous consumption practises depending on the organisation of goods networks with the Near East, but also specialised craftspeople and production structures only dedicated to the production of objects used for the distinction of individuals.

Au cours des quatre derniers siècles av. n.è. les sociétés d’Europe continentale de la culture dite de La Tène développent leur propre artisanat du verre. Cette période de mutations économiques et sociales saisissantes, où les centres urbains et les réseaux d’habitats hiérarchisés se déploient, connaît également une intensification et une diversification des productions artisanales et agricoles. De l’agriculture à la métallurgie, l’étude des spécialisations artisanales laténiennes révèle des changements techniques et économiques majeurs et précise les facteurs impliqués dans ces transformations socio-économiques.Presque exclusivement dédié aux ornements du corps, l’artisanat du verre celtique produit des perles et des bracelets. Longtemps considérés comme des objets de pacotilles, babioles qui ne pouvaient être que féminines ou enfantines, ces objets sont considérés ici sous leurs aspects économiques et sociaux. La méthode d’étude pluridisciplinaire développée, combinant l’étude contextuelle des objets, l’analyse élémentaire des matériaux et l’exploration des techniques avec des artisans verriers, a permis pour la première fois d’aborder ces objets à travers toute leur chaîne de production. De la fabrication du verre brut au Proche-Orient aux poignets des populations celtiques, l’étude des parures en verre celtiques révèle désormais les réseaux d’échanges et les savoir-faire que les sociétés ont développés pour leur production. Cette redécouverte de l’artisanat verrier laténien permet d’approcher les valeurs et les fonctions de signes des parures en verre, redéfinissant ces objets comme des parures de prix, destinés à la distinction sociale des individus, mais dont la production et les consommations semblent également évoluer parallèlement à la hiérarchisation de la société du La Tène.English abstractThis books focusses on Iron Age glassmaking through a socio-economic perspective. To do so, a multidisciplinary method has been established, combining archaeological data with archaeometry and technological approaches developed with modern glassmakers. It allows us to reconstruct, step by step, the commodity chain of this craft, only dedicated to beads and bangles productions, from the raw glass production, its transformation into items of adornments but also its distribution and its consumption processes by La Tène societies.By reconstructing this production system, the social and symbolic values of these ornaments can be better understood. Glass beads and bangles are luxury products and their consumption evolved alongside the hierarchisation of La Tène societies. This new research on La Tène Glass reveals conspicuous consumption practises depending on the organisation of goods networks with the Near East, but also specialised craftspeople and production structures only dedicated to the production of objects used for the distinction of individuals.

The Sahara contains one of the most extensive and enigmatic collections of rock art in the world. An Engraved Landscape represents the main report on the rock art of the Wadi al-Ajal, south west Libya. Based on extensive fieldwork directed by the author between 2004 and 2009, and funded by the British Academy and Society for Libyan Studies, this monograph presents and synthesises a rich corpus of new engravings from an area of central importance in the cultural development of the Sahara. Spatial and quantitative analyses of the carvings reveal changing relationships between humans and the landscape over an 8000-year period from c.6000 BC to recent times. The volume is beautifully illustrated, with a substantial selection of the engraved panels presented in photographs and line drawings.

Towards the capstone of the European Bronze Age, in an area stretching from the Carpathians in the East to the North Sea in the West, vast cremation grave cemeteries occur that are perhaps better known as ‘urnfields.’ Today some 700 of these burial sites have come to light in the Netherlands alone. In this corner of Europe, also known as the ‘Lower-Rhine-Basin,’ these cemeteries are often characterised by vast collections of small burial mounds under which the cremated remains of decedents were buried in small shaft-like pits. In many a case the cremated remains had been put in urns first, providing these cemeteries with their very name. Though rich in numbers, urnfield graves are often described as ‘poor’ and ‘simple’ as only in rare occasions decedents were provided with grave gifts. However, when close attention is paid to the actions involved in the creation of these seemingly simple graves, they in fact reveal a richness in funerary practices that on their turn hint a complex and intricate mortuary process. This book delves into the wealth of funerary practices reflected in more than 3,000 urnfield graves excavated throughout the Netherlands in order to reconstruct the mortuary process associated with the urnfields in this particular part of Europe. Together these graves tell interesting stories about how the dead related to each other, how plain and simple objects could be used as metaphors in the creation of relational and ancestral identities and how the dead were inextricably linked to the land.

Towards the capstone of the European Bronze Age, in an area stretching from the Carpathians in the East to the North Sea in the West, vast cremation grave cemeteries occur that are perhaps better known as ‘urnfields.’ Today some 700 of these burial sites have come to light in the Netherlands alone. In this corner of Europe, also known as the ‘Lower-Rhine-Basin,’ these cemeteries are often characterised by vast collections of small burial mounds under which the cremated remains of decedents were buried in small shaft-like pits. In many a case the cremated remains had been put in urns first, providing these cemeteries with their very name. Though rich in numbers, urnfield graves are often described as ‘poor’ and ‘simple’ as only in rare occasions decedents were provided with grave gifts. However, when close attention is paid to the actions involved in the creation of these seemingly simple graves, they in fact reveal a richness in funerary practices that on their turn hint a complex and intricate mortuary process. This book delves into the wealth of funerary practices reflected in more than 3,000 urnfield graves excavated throughout the Netherlands in order to reconstruct the mortuary process associated with the urnfields in this particular part of Europe. Together these graves tell interesting stories about how the dead related to each other, how plain and simple objects could be used as metaphors in the creation of relational and ancestral identities and how the dead were inextricably linked to the land.

The Tripolye phenomenon, which displays a specific artefact complex and an extraordinary settlement layout, is also known for its so-called ‘mega sites’. Five of the largest ‘mega’ or giant settlements measure between 150-320 ha in size. These, and other big settlements, are concentrated in the Sinyukha River Basin, which is a central part of modern Ukraine. In this region, more than 100 different Tripolye sites are known. The chronology of this region is the key to understanding not only the ‘mega-site’ phenomenon, but also the dynamics of spatial development within the Tripolye phenomenon in general. The central issue of this study focusses on the reconstruction of the Tripolye chronology in the Sinyukha Basin and its surrounding areas, including the chronology of individual mega-sites, the periodization of spatial Tripolye distribution, the development of ceramic styles, the lifetime of individual sites, and Tripolye settlements in time and space. Special attention is paid to the ceramics as one of the main sources for typo-chronologies. The obtained results provide a new view on the appearance, functions and the end of Tripolye, in general, and of large sites in particular.

In dieser Dissertation hat José Eduardo M. de Medeiros einen neuen theoretischen Ansatz mit der Untersuchung konkreter Probleme in der Bronze- und Eisenzeitforschung Mitteleuropas in Einklang gebracht. Das ursprüngliche Ziel war die Untersuchung der Schmuckhorte der Spätbronzezeit in Frankreich. Aber eine anfängliche Beschäftigung mit der Literatur zu den Hortfunden der Spätbronze- und Früheisenzeit führte zu der Einsicht, dass die Grundlagen prähistorischer Interpretation einer kritischen Revision bedurften. Die angebotene Reflexion ist eng mit einer soziologischen Kulturtheorie verknüpft, die eine kritische Sicht darauf miteinbezieht, wie Menschen Objekte und Ereignisse in der Welt erklären. Es gibt einen revolutionären Wechsel zwischen vormodernen (handlungs- und substanzlogischen) und modernen (prozessualen) Erklärungen, und es war Medeiros' Aufgabe, die Folgen dieses Paradigmenwechsels für die archäologische Forschung zu verstehen. Da diese Einsichten zu einer Relativierung der Niederlegungsabsichten als heuristisches Werkzeug führen und die Niederlegungsabsicht weiterhin als ein wichtiges Instrument für die Kategorisierung von Hortfunden dient, handelt es sich um Konsequenzen für die archäologische Interpretation im Allgemeinen und für die Deutung der Hortfunde der Spätbronze- und Früheisenzeit im Speziellen. Die Arbeit zeigt, dass Schmuck-, Gefäß- und Waffenhorte verschiedene Arten von Deponierungen darstellen und dass, wenn diese Depots im religiösen Kontext der Zeit betrachtet werden, Schmuck und Gefäße die gleiche Bedeutung wie Waffen tragen. Dies steht im Widerspruch zu einer gängigen Auffassung der Spätbronze- und Früheisenzeit, welche die Krieger und ihre Waffen in den Vordergrund stellt. Der Autor zeigt, dass dies eine kulturell konstruierte, „männliche“ Voreingenommenheit ist, die psychologische und soziologische Ursachen hat. Schließlich bietet dieses Buch einen rekonstruktiven Ansatz an, der die kulturelle Bedeutung der Schmuckhorte aufklärt. English abstract Throughout his Ph.D. Thesis, José Eduardo M. de Medeiros has balanced a deeply theoretical approach with the study of concrete problems within Central European Bronze and Iron Age Archaeology. The original objective of his thesis was the investigation of Late Bronze Age jewellery hoards in France. But an initial examination of the literature on the hoards of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age led to the insight that the foundations of prehistoric interpretation required a deeper critical revision. The proposed reflection is closely linked to a sociological theory of culture that entails a critical view of how human beings explain objects and events in the world. According to this view, there is a marked revolutionary change between "pre-modern" (subject logic) and "modern" (processual logic) explanations, and it has been Medeiros’s work to understand the ramifications of this paradigm shift for archaeological investigation. Essentially, this theoretical reflection questions attempts to explain a fact through recourse to the subjective intention or plan behind the fact. Consequently, these insights lead to a relativization of the subjective intention as a tool for interpretation of archaeological remains. Such a position poses serious consequences for archaeological theories in general, and for the interpretations of the hoarding phenomenon of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age in particular. The archaeological category of hoards is currently defined as an intentional selection of objects for unknown reasons. Nevertheless, the underlying intention is a highly-important instrument for the classification of the hoard finds as being either profane and/or ritual forms of deposition. Thus, an over reliance on the intentions behind an act clearly contrasts with the negative definition of that category. This work shows that jewellery, vessels and weapons constitute different kinds of depositions (a.k.a. hoards), and that in addition, when these depositions are viewed in the religious context of the period, jewellery and vessels carry the same importance as weapons. This is contrary to the more common view that emphasizes warriors and their weapons, which the author demonstrates to be a male bias having psychological and sociological foundations. Finally, this book offers a reconstructive approach that clarifies the cultural significance of the jewellery hoards.