This article focuses on the production of bone tools during the seventh millennium cal BC. A large number of fishhooks and waste from fishhook production have been found at the sites of Sævarhelleren and Viste cave, in western Norway. The data have been studied by means of the chaîne opératoire concept, meaning that the artefacts are described and analysed in order to identify the different steps in the production process and to characterize the technology in a comparative northern European perspective. The result shows that bone tools and fishhooks were crafted in a similar way at these two sites, with techniques that were mastered by all makers, and in close relation to stone tool production. When compared to other contemporaneous sites, the technology resembles the Mesolithic bone technology of north-eastern Europe. It thus contradicts the hypothesis of a strong connection between western Norway and the Maglemose cultural group in southern Scandinavia and northern Germany.

This paper provides a critical review of Smith's (1989) typological discussion of the antler ‘mattocks’ of the British Mesolithic. The evidence for use of the term ‘mattock’ is assessed in relation to a new technological analysis of antler tools from Britain. In the light of the data presented here and developments in the study of Mesolithic osseous technologies from elsewhere in northwest Europe, a redefinition of the terminology and typology used to study these artefacts is presented. The potential for this redefinition to shape research across Mesolithic Europe is demonstrated through a discussion of the earliest occurrence of antler T-axes around the North Sea basin.

This paper considers the shift from the practice of collective burials to individual (or double) burials in western Europe at the end of the Neolithic/Copper Age, around 2500–2000 BC, through the lens of a particular mortuary site—the artificial cave of Bolores (Torres Vedras, Portugal). It suggests that the practices involved in making and using collective burials played an important role in this transformation towards increasing social differentiation. It explores how a focus on materiality at different scales, both temporal and spatial, might contribute new insights into geographically widespread and relatively co-synchronous social change.

This study examines some assumptions related to Late Bronze Age interaction between the Aegean world and central Mediterranean societies. It asserts that, contrary to what is often assumed, this relationship was extremely important and had considerable social consequences. It is argued that such an importance can be appreciated only by acknowledging that interaction is constituted by real-world social encounters. On the basis of this insight, the contextual evidence from the site of Roca in Apulia is analysed. It is proposed that archaeological remains here represent a series of public events—i.e. large feasts—possibly entailing the participation of people of different cultural backgrounds and in which a subtle strategy of representation of relative distance and closeness was adopted to promote interests within Roca's community. Such interests are interpreted with reference to the increasing connections between the eastern and western portions of the Mediterranean, substantiated in the circulation of metal and pottery models and types.

Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries AD, the Lower Vistula valley represented a permeable and shifting frontier between Pomerelia (eastern Pomerania), which had been incorporated into the Polish Christian state by the end of the tenth century, and the territories of western Prussian tribes, who had resisted attempts at Christianization. Pomeranian colonization eventually began to falter in the latter decades of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, most likely as a result of Prussian incursions, which saw the abandonment of sites across the borderland. Subsequently, the Teutonic Order and its allies led a protracted holy war against the Prussian tribes, which resulted in the conquest of the region and its incorporation into a theocratic state by the end of the thirteenth century. This was accompanied by a second wave of colonization, which resulted in the settlement pattern that is still visible in the landscape of north-central Poland today. However, not all colonies were destroyed or abandoned in between the two phases of colonization. The recently excavated site of Biała Góra, situated on the western side of the Forest of Sztum overlooking the River Nogat, represents a unique example of a transitional settlement that included both Pomeranian and Teutonic Order phases. The aim of this paper is to situate the site within its broader landscape context which can be characterized as a militarized frontier, where, from the later twelfth century and throughout much of the thirteenth century, political and economic expansion was combined with the ideology of Christian holy war and missionary activity. This paper considers how the colonists provisioned and sustained themselves in comparison to other sites within the region, and how Biała Góra may be tentatively linked to a documented but otherwise lost outpost in this volatile borderland.

What do archaeologists do when approached by groups or individuals with unorthodox, or even simply inappropriate, approaches to, and ideas about the past? What should they do? While much guidance and literature points to education and engagement, in some of the more sensitive or difficult cases it is often more appealing, and simpler, to ignore the issue, in the hopes that it will simply go away. Similarly, on occasions when archaeologists step forward to criticize alternative approaches to archaeological heritage, this does not always meet with positive or desired results. In this paper, in light of recent personal experience with a controversial piece of television programming, I discuss different approaches to responding to challenges to the expertise (and authority) of archaeologists by problematic encounters with concepts of the past. I suggest that while there are arguments in support of (and against) all three of the approaches that I identify (collaboration, condemnation, or ignoring), none provide an absolute solution. In order to discuss these approaches, I draw upon key cases from the literature, as well as personal reflection.