This volume collects papers on the pre-Corded Ware horizon in central Europe and adjacent areas (i.e. from c. 3500 – 2800 BC). This phase is very patchily researched, partly also because certain kinds of evidence, notably domestic architecture and burials, are rare or absent in many regions. This has occasionally been interpreted as signs of a major crisis and population bottleneck, which in turn facilitated the migration of new populations from the steppe, bringing with them amongst others new economic regimes, ideologies and settlement patterns.Research over the last few years has shown that this scenario needs to be nuanced. Although evidence remains scattered, a picture of regional diversity is emerging, with probably mobile but well-connected Late Neolithic societies undergoing social changes of their own, and instituting several key innovations long before the appearance of the Corded War

This book is the first in the multi-author series Maritime Encounters, outputs of the major six-year (2022–2028) international research initiative, funded by Sweden’s central bank. Our programme is based on a maritime perspective, a counterpoint to prevailing land-based vantages on Europe’s prehistory. In the Maritime Encounters project a highly international cross-disciplinary team has embarked on a diverse range of research goals to provide a more detailed and nuanced story of how prehistoric societies realised major and minor sea crossings, organised long-distance exchange, and adapted to ways of life by the sea in prehistory. Recent advances with ancient DNA have brought migration back into archaeological explanation, but little attention has been paid to maritime aspects of these movements or the maritime legacies inherited from indigenous cultures. The formation of the populations, cultures and languages of Europe are now seen largely as consequences of three great prehistoric migrations: hunter-gatherers repopulating the post-glacial landscape, followed by farmers spreading from Anatolia, and then Indo-European-speaking pastoralists from the steppe.There is a significant gap in this current model that we sense most acutely in Scandinavia and the British Isles. Unanswered questions include: How these groups reached the islands and peninsulas of Atlantic Europe? What types of boats were used? How many people and animals could they carry? To what extent did indigenous coastal peoples contribute traditions and knowledge of boats, boat building, seaways, navigation, and subsistence in coastal environments. How was the long-distance trade in metals organised during the European Bronze Age? And what was the impact of this sea-crossing network on the cultures, languages, and populations of the producers and consumers of bronze?

From the first steps taken into the darkness of High Pasture Cave, it was clear that this complex site would challenge current thinking on cave use and function in prehistory, and wider understanding of Iron Age cultural practice and beliefs. Situated in a dramatic location under the slopes of the Cuillin Mountains on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, this cave and its monumentalised environs were a focus for specific and special activities throughout the Iron Age – a venue for spectacular and extensive ceremonies featuring feasts, fire, crafts and the symbolic deposition of a plethora of artefacts and environmental materials, as well as human remains. This volume sets out the results of fieldwork carried out at High Pastures between 2004 and 2010, presents results from the extensive post-excavation analysis, and provides a biography of the High Pasture Cave complex from the early Bronze Age through 900 years of Iron Age activity. Recent research has led to a resurgence of interest in caves, in particular the place of these enigmatic sites in the worldviews of later prehistoric communities. Their investigation in the past has generally attributed a domestic function, comprising temporary homes and shelter for hunter-gatherers, farmers and pastoralists, and as workshops and places of refuge. However, it is now proposed that many caves, including High Pasture, were used for rituals involving the preparation and display of human remains, the deposition of material culture and other types of organic materials. These were clearly performative acts and the recurrent use of caves as the arenas for such performances, tells us much about their role in the cosmology of later prehistoric communities.

The aim of the thesis was to provide a framework for the identification and analysis of individual craftspeople in bifacial flint production. Flint production flakes from replications of South Scandinavian Late Neolithic daggers and Early Bronze Age sickles were the focus of the study, in contrast to research so far, mostly relying on finished and often exceptional pieces.To identify technical traditions within technological systems and/or personal approaches to production, it is necessary to analyse the complete production process. Studies concerned with the process have mostly relied on typical and easy to identify production flakes. This facilitates the identification of tool manufacture and prevents mixing with other production processes, but it also prevents the actual identification of individual approaches to bifacial flint production. Typical flint flakes are typical because physical laws restrict the mode of possible removal. They are, by definition, strategic moments in the production process, which cannot be changed without altering the outcome, so everyone has to work the flint in more or less the same way. Personal or traditional approaches will not be found there, but in the small, flexible steps in between. This is what the volume presents.By detailed analysis of the working procedures of modern knappers, combined with statistical analysis of technical attributes on the production flakes, the possibilities for identification of differing approaches are explored. The analysis shows that the differences on personal or traditional levels are not to be found in the process of removal, but are more clearly distinguished in the preparation for removal. Likewise, the preferences for certain working techniques can be reconstructed and used to distinguish between knappers’ approaches. The results and the approach of the thesis can help us gain a clearer picture of local technical traditions of flint production. They also provide opportunities to identify and analyse processes of knowledge transmission and by this to reconstruct possible paths of learning, contacts between groups and the development and change of technological systems.

This work deals with topics related to mobility, contacts and transmission of knowledge. The study of these topics regarding the past can promote an understanding of the social implications of migration, communication and learning today through long-term perspectives of change. This volume focuses on these topics in the Mesolithic by analysing a specialised lithic concept known previously from Scandinavia and Northern Germany. The implementation of the Handle Core Pressure Concept (HCPC) is based on a pressure technique to produce small regular blades from single-fronted cores, often utilised in slotted bone points. The use of pressure technique means that the HCPC requires social learning for maintenance and diffusion of the tradition.The research questions focus on three aspects of the HCPC: technology, chronology and the transmission of knowledge that are involved in the diffusion process. Materials from across Northern Europe have been studied and analysed. The results show that the morphology of the materials is similar across Europe, but that there are differences in the technological choices made by knappers in different parts of the area. These variations relate to the core preparation. The technological differences are also connected to two different chronologies that are centred east and west of the Baltic Sea, which would indicate two separate technological and social traditions.The cores east of the Baltic Sea still require more research in order to understand how they relate to other concepts in and around Northern Europe. The cores from Scandinavia, however, exhibit strong technological similarities to an older pressure-based blade concept that was already used in Scandinavia in the Early Mesolithic. The long-term use and the rapid diffusion of the HCPC indicate that knowledge and know-how must have diffused via both vertical and horizontal directionalities. These results exemplify the complex ways that mobility, social learning, material availability, tradition and many other aspects played a role in the transmission of knowledge in Mesolithic societies.

Land was the ideal store of wealth in the ancient Mediterranean world. It brought social respectability, and its possession allowed participation in the politics of the cities governed by landowning elites. Crucial defense of the interests of a given polity through armed services often involved the distribution of lands to laborers still not integrated in these societies. Mediterranean urban dynamics also involved paid labor and were always in need of short-contract manpower, including skilled soldiers and warriors. For short-time military services, lands were not always available so soldiers and warriors were paid with coins and riches.Because of their superior development, urban economies in the Mediterranean were able to attract migrant paid labor. When returning home, the migrant warriors carried coins and riches that would enable them to maximize the return that a homecoming entailed. Although difficult to prove whether these men were paid in advance or when discharged, it is an important issue as it shows the strength of one contractor over another and helps to better understand the construction of statehood in ancient and early medieval times.This collection of papers sheds light on how coins, riches, and lands were gained and distributed among soldiers, warriors, and mercenaries. Contributions cover a wide chronological span from Late Pharaonic to early medieval times, linking a well-defined core area, the Mediterranean basin, with its peripheries: Central Europe and Scandinavia to the north and the margins of the Sahara Desert and the Fertile Crescent to the south and the east.

For over 60 years, spectacular discoveries have been made on a wooded hillside at Snettisham, overlooking the northwest Norfolk coast, close to Hunstanton. The location of the discoveries, at Ken Hill, is known as the ‘gold field’ because of the large number of gold and silver alloy neck-rings (‘torcs’) and coins recovered from the site. Known as the ‘Snettisham Treasure’, these objects represent one of the largest collections of prehistoric precious metal objects ever discovered, and one of the largest concentrations of Celtic art. The objects were found in at least 14 separate hoards buried between 150 BC and AD 100 – spanning the late Iron Age and early Roman periods, but with a peak of activity during the late Iron Age. The objects from Snettisham are widely known, but the site has never been fully published. This book is the first comprehensive account of the discoveries and excavations at the site and presents a full catalogue of the finds. The majority are in the British Museum, with a significant collection also held by Norwich Castle Museum. The book also presents the results of extensive scientific analysis, revealing new and exciting details about how torcs were manufactured. The final section places Snettisham in its wider social and landscape context. The authors argue that each hoard represents different collection and depositional histories. The repeated, yet varied, acts of deposition at the site were part of creating, negotiating and reinforcing social structures, as well as performing and creating social change.

5,000 years ago, a migration shaped Europe’s future. Migrating communities spread across Europe within two centuries, leaving lasting changes in interconnectivity, language, and ancestry. Yet these migrating communities did not enter an empty continent. Across Europe, they encountered indigenous communities with millennia-old roots. What interactions between migrating and indigenous communities gave rise to those lasting changes?This study sheds new light on this question with an innovative approach to ceramics. Ceramics bear traces of the production techniques which potters learned and applied to create them. The approach developed here combines a chaîne opératoire analysis of these traces with network analysis and probability theory to provide a quantitative estimate of the amount of shared knowledge between the prehistoric potters who made these ceramics.This approach is applied to ceramics from migrating Corded Ware communities and indigenous Funnel Beaker West communities in the Netherlands. The aim is to detect whether potters in these communities interacted and shared knowledge. The outcomes offer a unique perspective on this period and prehistoric migrations in general. Migrating and indigenous communities are shown to co-exist for several centuries at the start of the third millennium BCE with evidence for migrant potters learning repeatedly from indigenous potters and incorporating this knowledge into the production of Corded Ware vessels.

In 1896 a remarkable hoard was discovered near Ommerschans in the eastern Netherlands that included a spectacular object: a giant bronze sword. It was obtained by the landowner and kept by a forester, until it was first documented by archaeologist J.H. Holwerda in 1927. For over 85 years it remained in private ownership and inaccessible to science. Over time this sword, or rather dirk, would prove not to be a singular exception. Instead it is now part of a select family of six discovered in England (Oxborough and Rudham), France (Plougrescant and Beaune) and the Netherlands (Jutphaas and Ommerschans). In 2017 the Ommerschans hoard was obtained by the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities, bringing all six into the public domain.The Plougrescant-Ommerschans type swords are some of the most spectacular finds of the European Bronze Age. They are extremely rare, beautiful, expertly crafted and too large and heavy to wield as weapons. Furthermore, their strong resemblance seems to have been crucial, as all six are extremely alike in design, decoration, metal composition and size (with the exception of Jutphaas). But why?This book aims to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding this exceptional group of larger-than-life Bronze Age blades. It offers a detailed overview of the discovery and find context of the Ommerschans hoard, as well as a physical description and analysis of all finds. Also included is a comparative overview of the other five swords, including the primary publication of the Rudham dirk. The findings are subsequently interpreted focusing on their contextualisation within Bronze Age deposition practices, the importance of the visual cohesion of this group, the power and role of aggrandised objects and their potential purpose within the social and metaphysical realm of Bronze Age communities.

This volume has been written in honour of Professor Annelou van Gijn in order to celebrate her distinguished career as an archaeologist and, above all, as an expert in the study of material culture. Annelou started her research with the use-wear analysis of prehistoric flint from the Netherlands, and she extended her interests in every possible direction: time, space, materials and technologies. This volume has been compiled to reflect the broad oeuvre of her work. It focuses on the biographies of a wide range of artefact types made from an equally wide range of materials from Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe, but also glimpses beyond into other periods and geographic regions. The papers focus on different aspects of artefact biographies including raw material acquisition, artefact production, use, and discard, and even the afterlife of objects in our modern society. The objects in question include quotidian tools such as querns and harvesting tools, adhesives that held objects together, and elaborate objects such as maceheads, jewellery, and flint superblades.Whatever the subject of Annelou’s individual publications, at the heart of all of her work is the love of objects and the stories that they have to tell us. The stories in this bundle are a testament of her contagious enthusiasm.

Bei einer Ausgrabung im havelländischen Lietzow in Brandenburg wurden jungsteinzeitliche Siedlungsbefunde entdeckt. Sie gehören zu zwei Hofstellen der jüngeren Linienbandkeramik, die um 5100-5000 v. u. Z. datiert. Die in der äußersten Peripherie des damaligen bäuerlichen Siedlungsgebiets gelegene Siedlung Lietzow 10 bestand über ungefähr zwei Generationen. Die von dichtem Eichen-Kiefernwald umgebene Siedlung lag wie eine kleine Insel auf einer Grundmoränenplatte, die mit relativ fruchtbarem Boden und guter Grundwasserversorgung einen günstigen Standort für eine bäuerliche Existenz bot. Die nahen Niederungsgebiete waren zur gleichen Zeit von mesolithischen Wildbeutergruppen bewohnt.Die Analysen der zahlreichen Tier- und Pflanzenreste von Lietzow 10 zeigen das Bild einer voll entwickelten neolithischen Landwirtschaft mit dem Rind als wichtigstem Nutztier und Emmer als Hauptgetreide. Fischfang und wohl auch Sammelwirtschaft trugen in größerem Umfang zur Nahrungssicherung bei. Die Jagd spielte nur eine untergeordnete Rolle.Trotz ihrer randlichen Lage war die Siedlung aber keinesfalls isoliert. Der Großteil der Formen und Verzierungen des umfangreichen Keramikinventars zeigt deutlich den Einfluss aus dem mitteldeutschen Raum. Darüber hinaus sind weitreichende Fernbeziehungen bis Süddeutschland nachweisbar. Auch die Steinartefakte belegen Fernkontakte. Der Großteil der Steingeräte verweist auf ein regionales Netzwerk, da Flint und Mahlsteinrohstoff als Vollkerne von in einiger Entfernung zur Siedlung gelegenen Abbaustellen stammen. Hingegen fehlt ein eindeutiger Beweis für einen Austausch zwischen den mesolithischen und neolithischen Gruppen im Havelland.English abstractThis publication presents research on the first peasants of the Linear Pottery group in Brandenburg, northern Germany. The region is of particular interest because it is situated in the absolute periphery of the Linear Pottery area. The volume combines the results on settlement features, pottery and stone tools with archaeobotanical and archaeozoological studies on the diet and economy of these Neolithic people with focus on the site of Lietzow 10. This holistic approach fulfils a research desideratum, because the state of knowledge about such enclaves of agricultural life in the midst of the settlement area of forager groups is still incomplete.The excavation of the site Lietzow 10 yielded features from which a settlement site with two farmsteads could be reconstructed, which was inhabited for 2-3 generations. Large quantities of pottery were found, according to typology dating into the period around 5100 to 5000 BCE at the latest, i.e. to the younger LBK. Several radiocarbon dates support this chronological classification and confirm the Linear Pottery chronologies from Central Germany for Brandenburg features.Despite its peripheral location, the settlement site was by no means isolated; the pottery finds even attest to long-distance contacts. The supply of raw material for the stone implements points to a regional network, for flint and grindstone raw material were not extracted in the vicinity of the site, but were apparently mined some distance away.The archaeozoological and archaeobotanical investigations – for the latter, samples from other Neolithic settlements in Havelland were also available – provide insights into the economic practices and diet of the settlers. The cereals found were almost exclusively emmer, other crops were flax and pea. Animal husbandry was of outstanding importance for the food supply. Among the domestic animals, cattle probably played the greatest economic role, but pigs and small ruminants were also significant. Both, the crop and the domestic animal evidence show a fully developed agriculture. In addition, there is evidence for extensive gathering. Hunting – unlike fishing – did not play a major role in the diet, although wide range of game species is represented.

The Celtic languages and groups called Keltoi (i.e. ‘Celts’) emerge into our written records at the pre-Roman Iron Ag

The Late Bronze Age pile-dwelling settlement at Must Farm is one of the most important and best-preserved prehistoric sites to have been systematically excavated in Europe. The settlement comprised a curving palisade enclosing five stilt-raised houses erected above a freshwater river channel at the edge of one most Britain’s most intensively studied and internationally renowned Bronze Age landscapes: the Flag Fen Basin. Built in the mid-9th century bc, the pile-dwelling was engulfed by a catastrophic fire less than a year after construction, sending the buildings and their artefact-rich contents into the sluggish waters below. A combination of fire, water and rapid burial ensured extraordinary levels of preservation, whilst the manner of collapse and brevity of settlement gave the structural remains, and their vibrant material assemblages, a pristine quality. Each household had its own inventory comprising combinations of delicate textiles, wooden containers, hafts and wheels, complete pottery sets, bronze toolkits and the scattered remnants of necklaces of glass beads. Food remains included butchered wild and domestic animal bones, charred plants and seeds, and even the burnt residues of individual meals. This comprehensive and methodologically innovative investigation, incorporating an array of scientific studies and collaborations amongst leading specialists, provides unprecedented insights into the nature of daily life and domestic practice in Bronze Age society. These challenge many expectations about the material worlds that people inhabited, shedding new light on aspects of architecture, material abundance, foodways, woodland management, landscape change and wetland living. The collective results are truly ground-breaking for Wetland Archaeology and wider Bronze Age studies. Volume 1 provides a thematic interpretive synthesis of the site, with a focus on landscape, architecture and occupation, whilst Volume 2 offers in-depth studies of the river setting, construction, dating, material culture and biological remains.

This third volume in the Material Religion in Antiquity series stems from the First International Congress on the Archaeology of Symbols (ICAS I) that took place in Florence in May 2022. The archaeological process of reconstructing and understanding our past has undergone several reassessments in the last century, producing an equal number of new perspectives and approaches. The recent materiality turn emphasizes the necessity to ground those achievements in order to build fresh avenues of interpretation and reach new boundaries in the study of the human kind and its ecology. Symbols must not be conceived only as allegory but also, and perhaps mainly, as reason (raison d’être) and meaning (culture). They may be considered key elements leading to interpretation, not only in their physical manifestation but by being infused with the gestures, beliefs and intentions of their creators, created in a specific context and with a specific chaîne opératoire.In this volume a variety of case studies is offered, representing disparate ancient cultures in the Mediterranean and central Europe and the Near East. The thread that connects them revolves around the prominence of symbols and allegorical aspects in archaeology, whether they are considered as expressions of iconographic evidence, material culture or ritual ceremonies, seen from a multicultural perspective. This (and subsequent ICAS) volumes, therefore, aims to embrace all the different aspects pertaining to symbols in archaeology in a specific ‘place’, allowing the reader to deepen their knowledge of such a fascinating and multifaceted topic, by looking at it from a multicultural perspective.

A few scatters of Mesolithic and Neolithic flint were found across the development area. Slightly more extensive evidence for Neolithic occupation was represented by a small number of pits from which flint-tempered Neolithic pottery, worked flint, charred plant remains and animal bone were recovered. During the later Bronze Age and Iron Age the first permanent settlements were established. They were characterized by post-built circular structures, pits and cremation burials. Settlement began in the river valley and the western edge of the clay plateau but during the Iron Age settlement shifted onto the clay plateau with eh creation of a five-sided enclosure. By the Late Iron Age and Roman period a farmstead and managed fields were established. This farmstead has been defined as a complex-type farmstead and seems to have been involved in the large-scale production of spelt. Limited evidence was identified for Saxon activity but a few features, including the remains of a tree-lined avenue, may have been associated with the 17th century Hadham and Wickham Halls which were owned by the Capel family. This volume describes the archaeological remains as well as the artefacts and ecofactual material recovered from the excavations.

Traditional archaeological ideas about Neolithic societies were shaped by questionable premises. The modern concept of social and cultural coherence of residence groups as well as the ethnic interpretation of ‘archaeological cultures’ fostered ideas of static and homogeneous social entities with fixed borders. Farming – as the core of the Neolithic way of life – was associated with sedentariness rather than with spatial mobility and cross-regional social networks. Furthermore, the widely used (neo-)evolutionist thinking universally assumed a growing social complexity and hierarchisation during prehistory. After all, such ‘top-down'–perspectives deprived individuals and groups of genuine agency and creativity while underestimating the relational dynamic between the social and material worlds. In recent years, a wide array of empirical results on social practices related to material culture and settlement dynamics, (inter-)regional entanglements and spatial mobility were published. For the latter the adoption of the relatively new scientific methods in archaeology like Stable Isotope Analysis as well as aDNA played a crucial role. Yet the question of possible inferences regarding spatial and temporal differences in forms of social organisation has not been addressed sufficiently. The aim of this volume is therefore to rethink former top-down concepts of Neolithic societies by studying social practices and different forms of Neolithic social life by adopting bottom-up social archaeological perspectives. Furthermore, the validity and relevance of terms like ‘society’, ‘community’, ‘social group’ etc. will be discussed. The contributions reach from theoretical to empirical ones and thematize a variety of social theoretical approaches as well as methodological ways of combining different sorts of data. They show the potential of such bottom-up approaches to infer models of social practices and configurations which may live up to the potential social diversity and dynamism of Neolithic societies. The contribution shed light on spatial mobility, social complexity, the importance of (political) interests and factors of kinship etc. We hope that this volume, with its focus on the Neolithic of Europe, will contribute to the ongoing critical debates of theories and concepts as well as on our premises and perspectives on Neolithic societies in general – and the practices of social archaeology as such.