This paper focusses on a set of anthropomorphic figurines. It suggests that realistic human proportion and canonical body posture were pursued in the carving of these objects as a means of expressing ideology, in a context of diversified forms of manipulation of bodies in funerary practices. It is argued that, against a background of predominantly schematic art, the more realistic and canonical anthropomorphic representation of the human body was used to communicate a set of ideological statements in a more controlled and immediate way, in a period of ontological and cosmological transition.

Kent's Cavern is one of Britain's most important Palaeolithic sites. The Torquay Natural History Society excavations in the Vestibule (1926–1928 and 1932–1938) yielded Middle and Early Upper Palaeolithic deposits as well as a fragment of human jaw (KC4). Higham et al. (2011) recently identified it as the oldest modern human fossil known from North West Europe, with a date estimated, using Bayesian modelling, at 44,200–41,500 cal bp (at 95.4% probability). However, White and Pettitt (2012) and Zilhão (2013) have claimed that the poor quality of the excavations and lack of stratigraphic integrity cast doubt on the archaeological and dating evidence from the site. Here, we present a thorough re-analysis of the excavations and show that they were in fact conducted to a reasonable standard. We also carefully examine the stratigraphic and sedimentological sequence and present twelve new AMS determinations from key contexts to test the previous model and chronology. We find that, while Trench C has good stratigraphic integrity, there is some evidence of post-depositional disruption of certain parts; some post-depositional movement is also shown by a limited number of artefact refits. There are two outlying AMS determinations dating to c. 32,000 bp. We therefore cannot exclude completely the possibility that the maxilla's age could be younger than the published probability distribution function (PDF). Our analysis lends support to the assessment by Higham et al. (2011) of the site and KC4 and shows that it offers considerable potential for future study.

This article is based on an EAA session in Kiel in 2021, in which thirteen contributors provide their response to Robb and Harris's (2018) overview of studies of gender in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age, with a reply by Robb and Harris. The central premise of their 2018 article was the opposition of ‘contextual Neolithic gender’ to ‘cross-contextual Bronze Age gender’, which created uneasiness among the four co-organizers of the Kiel meeting. Reading Robb and Harris's original article leaves the impression that there is an essentialist ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Bronze Age’ gender, the former being under-theorized, unclear, and unstable, the latter binary, unchangeable, and ideological. While Robb and Harris have clearly advanced the discussion on gender, the perspectives and case studies presented here, while critical of their views, take the debate further, painting a more complex and diverse picture that strives to avoid essentialism.

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.

In this article, the author analyses a group of articles discussing the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in South Scandinavia from the standpoint of their rhetorical and narrative structure. She uses Hayden White's categories of emplotment, the time-orientation of the articles and their attitudes to centre-periphery to characterise the articles. In this way, the attitudes to modern ideological and rhetorical themes buried in each article is elucidated. In a final section, a debate is opened up on the relationship between agricultural origins and post-processualism.

This paper argues that, if we are to understand the intrinsic nature of archaeology as a social practice, we have to situate the way in which we are conducting archaeological practices in both local and global contexts for considering a way forward. This contention is supported by a critical account of the current crisis situation in which Japanese archaeology operates. It is argued that this crisis situation has resulted from changes which have been taking place in both macro- and microlevels of Japanese social reality. A Marxist tradition, which had kept theory and practice of Japanese archaeology integrated with a certain sense of reality, collapsed from changes which took place in the international political climate and in domestic social conditions. Those changes had significant effects not only upon the discursive level of the consciousness of the archaeologist but also upon the non-discursive level of the consciousness of the archaeologist. The current condition of the non-discursive consciousness of the archaeologist makes it almost impossible to grasp the causes of the crisis and to consider a possible way out.

It is argued that the creation of a critical ontology, enabling us discursively to grasp the causes of the crisis, is badly needed to improve the situation. It is proposed that such a critical ontology should enable us to grasp the mechanism of the formation of non-discursive/practical consciousness of ourselves which, together with the experience of the material conditions, constitutes the subjective conditions under which we conduct our archaeological practice.

Poggio Civitate has made an important contribution to the understanding of domestic architecture in pre-Roman central Italy since excavations commenced in 1966 uncovering two phases of monumental architecture. Interpretations of the site have been varied, with suggestions that it was the seat of a north Etruscan league or the base of a local élite family. This study argues that it was the latter, based upon an analysis of the famous ‘cowboy’ statue acroteria from the Archaic period complex. It is argued that the statues, as ancestral figures of the élite inhabitants, personified their wealth and power. The complex, and acroteria more generally, had a powerful psychological effect on those living within it, but more importantly those living in the surrounding territory. In addition the building is placed within its physical and socio-political landscape of north inland Etruria

In 2012, the authors undertook a radiocarbon dating programme to explore the chronology of southern Iberian megalithic societies. Thirty new radiocarbon dates were obtained for two tholos-type tombs, Loma de Belmonte and Loma del Campo 2, and analysed within a Bayesian framework. Results are discussed in the context of the prehistoric societies of the region and four main conclusions were reached: i) in both tombs, mortuary activity started in the last century of the fourth millennium although with significant differences in their timespan; ii) funerary rituals ended in Loma de Belmonte at least five centuries later than in Loma del Campo 2; iii) the tholoi can be considered the most recent type of tomb compared to other megalithic monuments with mortuary activity beginning in the first centuries of the fourth millennium; iv) the largest and most prominent settlement of the region, Las Pilas, was closely associated with this funerary and sacred landscape.

It has long been claimed that the coaxial stone boundaries of Céide Fields, County Mayo, are a phenomenon of the Irish Early Neolithic — analogous to later prehistoric ‘Celtic’ fields in all but age. This study argues that the age disparity is an artefact of the research methods, and that the age of the main Céide Fields complex has been overestimated by as much as two-and-a-half millennia.

Models of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Britain in recent years have tended to downplay the role of changes in the subsistence economy, emphasizing a very gradual adoption of new domesticated resources. This view has been particularly pervasive for the west coast of Scotland, which in the context of Britain presents a relatively marginal environment for farming. In this article, we challenge this too-quickly emerging orthodoxy through the presentation and discussion of both new and previously published stable isotope data and AMS dates. The palaeodietary information, while limited, strongly suggests a very rapid and complete change in the subsistence economy coincident with the earliest manifestations of the Neolithic on the west coast of Scotland early in the fourth millennium cal. BC. Whatever explanation is invoked to account for the transition needs to engage with the isotopic data. The possibility of colonization at some level needs to be seriously reconsidered.

An attempt to demonstrate the importance of a contextual approach in the interpretation of prehistoric ritual is made through a critique of Ruth Whitehouse's recent work, Underground Religion. Cult and culture in prehistoric Italy, and through a re-examination of the spatial, material, historical, and social context of the ritual use of caves in south-eastern Italy, with special reference to Grotta di Porto Badisco and other Neolithic and early-Copper-Age sites in the Salento peninsula. Alternative interpretations are offered which focus upon: variations over space and time in the use of caves for different activities; a notion of complementarity and mutuality in Neolithic gender relations; and the existence of a degree of male-bias in the archaeological evidence of the symbolic construction of gender in Grotta di Porto Badisco.

Research on Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age society in southernmost Scandinavia has to a large extent focused on the creation of social hierarchy and on elite networks upheld by individuals. This has meant that the importance of collective strategies has been underplayed. In the south-west corner of Sweden, about eighty house remains from the Late Neolithic and the earliest Bronze Age have been excavated within a small area. It is the largest concentration of houses from the period so far excavated in southern Scandinavia. The settlement pattern reveals both single farms and one site, Almhov, with a concentration of several contemporary farms with large houses. The aim of this article is to highlight collective aspects, recognizing that both collective and individual strategies are important in the formation of hierarchical societies. House remains as well as graves and their placement in relation to each other within the local landscape are the archaeological material in focus, regarded as materializations of economic and social relations. It is argued that collective strategies were an important part of creating and maintaining economic and social position.

The following paper aims to take a critical look at the role that can be played within the broad context of landscape based archaeological research by Geographical Information Systems (GIS). It will be argued that the rapid acceptance of GIS by archaeologists has not been without its problems, with a number of archaeologists wondering whether, despite the hype, any new approaches have been introduced at all. This, it will be argued, is a direct result of GIS-based applications tending to work within a largely inherited theoretical framework and, more importantly, lacking at present a critical theory of practice.

The aim of the paper is move beyond critique to suggest how GIS can provide not only an efficient means of generating simple distribution maps, but a flexible environment within which to bridge developments in theory and practice. Using an on-going case-study centred upon flood events in the palaeo-flood plain of the river Tisza, the implications of using GIS to welcome uncertainty into the analytical environment are explored and a number of approaches advocated. The significance these developments have in expanding our interpretive frameworks is explored through the fore-grounding and challenging of a number of dualistic modes of thought in that area actively encouraged and reinforced by the use of traditional GIS.

This paper discusses a group of modified human remains from Iron Age and Norse sites in Atlantic Scotland, several of which have been discovered or rediscovered over the past decade, and all of which have recently been radiocarbon dated. It investigates the ways in which these remains seem to have been recovered, used, modified and deposited by living communities, and what this may reveal about past attitudes towards the bodies of the dead. These practices are placed within a wider European later prehistoric and early historic context, to highlight how this group of evidence may add to current debates surrounding social memory, the ritualization of domestic life, and the place of the dead within the world of the living.

A Germanic settlement at Heeten, which was only partly excavated, produced evidence for large-scale iron production. Combining several research methods, an attempt was made to gain insight into the operation, scale, and structure of this production. The research was not only focussed on the excavation area itself, but also on the surrounding area. Apart from X-ray combined with sieve-residue analysis of soil-samples (taken primarily for archaeo-botanical purposes), core sampling and geoprospective explorations were carried out. The aims of these investigations were not only of scientific relevance, but can also contribute to the protection and management of the remaining part of the site.

Previously observed specialization in sheep/goat kill-off patterns from Romanian Eneolithic sites raises the question of a limited duration of the slaughtering period. In order to provide reliable month of death distribution for sheep/goats, the approach developed here takes into account uncertainties regarding the age-at-death and the month of birth, based on classic archaeozoological techniques. We show that sheep slaughtering rarely occurred from late spring to early autumn or from summer to mid-fall, both at Hârşova tell and Borduşani-Popină. Conversely, it is very likely that fishing activities took place primarily from spring to early autumn. This points to the existence of seasonal and complementary food supply strategies at both sites. Several possible explanations for these seasonal strategies are discussed. We also highlight the homogeneity in the management of domestic herds between the two sites, raising the question of a certain standardization in pastoral practices on a larger scale.

Houses and burials recorded in the settlements of Lepenski Vir I and II and burials previously ascribed to Lepenski Vir III are here discussed in view of the recent analyses of archaeological material and re-analyses of the field burial record from this site. Evidence of pottery in situ in houses of Lepenski Vir I, together with the evidence for important dietary change in the Lepenski Vir community in the course of the second half of the seventh millennium cal BC, reinforces the assumption, made by a number of scholars over several previous decades, of intensive contacts between early Neolithic groups and local hunter-gatherers. Burial practice throughout the seventh and sixth millennia cal BC at Lepenski Vir is thus reanalyzed in this new light. Apart from burials unrelated to architectural remains, five ‘types’ of burial deposition are noted in relation to houses of Lepenski Vir I–II, all but one having a distinct chronological and spatial patterning. The inhabitants' choice of mode of deposition of the deceased is always associated with a certain location in the settlement, sometimes used over several centuries. In the course of their history, these locations were often used for building a particular house or group of houses. The content of such houses is also discussed wherever it was possible. Duality in settlement organization could also be recognized in the burial practices related to settlement architecture. The attribution of the majority of burial remains to early Neolithic Lepenski Vir III is here also questioned in the light of new data and reinterpreted settlement sequences.

Vikings with artificially modified teeth have previously been documented in the south-eastern parts of Scandinavia and in England. In a project dealing with life in the Mälaren Valley in Sweden during the period AD 750–1100, new cases of people with modified maxillary teeth were observed. The hypothesis that the practice was entirely associated with adult men dating to the Viking Age was tested. The new cases demonstrate that the habit extended to eastern-central Sweden, including the proto-town of Birka, perhaps as early as in the middle of the eighth century. Additionally, cases from Sigtuna show that the practice may have ended as late as the beginning of the twelfth century. A microanalysis, using a scanning electron microscope, showed the heterogeneous character of the modifications. The affected individuals were all adult men, similar to previously published cases. Some of the men are associated with weapons and violent acts and the cases from Sigtuna were all from cemeteries with a possible association with lower social strata. However, discrepancies in archaeological contexts and in the characteristics of the modifications suggest temporal and spatial variation in the social meaning of the modifications.

In this article we present an experimental approach focused on bipolar core technology. The main goal is to define the major constraints and parameters faced when identifying the bipolar component of the Early Pleistocene site of Vallparadís (Spain). For these experiments we have used the same varieties of raw materials and blanks as those documented in the archaeological record. The methodological framework applied in the study of the experimental sample is largely based on the most diagnostic parameters recurrently cited in bipolar-related literature: double striking platforms and opposite battering damage. This information has been encoded by grouping blanks, cores and detached elements in morphotechnical types. The results suggest that the reduction process is conditioned by the morphology and fracture consistency of the knapped nodules. Although blank morphology does not categorically determine the final shape of the cores and flakes, there is a clear correlation between them. The most diagnostic parameter for identifying bipolar objects in statistical terms is the presence of opposite battering damage. However, there are many non-diagnostic pieces generated throughout the bipolar knapping process. Hence we consider it pertinent to analyse the archaeological assemblage of Vallparadís according to alternative methodological approaches (e.g. morphotechnical types).

Palisaded enclosures were huge enclosed spaces with timber boundaries found across Britain, Ireland, and Scandinavia in the Neolithic. Five such sites have been identified in Scotland dating to the later Neolithic, four of which have been excavated to varying degrees. These sites form the main focus of this paper, which draws in particular on interim results from the authors' excavations at Forteviot, Perth and Kinross, during 2007–2009. The palisaded enclosures of Scotland are part of a wider British and Irish tradition and there are a number of European parallels, the closest of which lie in southern Scandinavia. The palisaded enclosures in Scotland are tightly clustered geographically and chronologically, constructed in the centuries after 2800 cal BC. This paper explores the function, role, and meaning of palisaded enclosures in Scotland and more generally, drawing not just on the architecture of the monuments, but also the individual posts that were used to create the enclosures. The role of these monuments in reconstituting nature is also considered.