Postmedieval protestant missionaries working in exotic locations used objects both as a marker of their own ‘civilisation’ in contrast to that of the local populations and as a means of engaging these communities with Christianity. European things were displayed and conspicuously used to encourage a consumer mindset and interest in capitalism, thought to be crucial steps on the path to full conversion. Excavations at a Presbyterian mission house on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, recovered a remarkable assemblage of nineteenth-century British-made transfer-printed ceramics for such a remote location. These objects reflect multiple, complex meanings including performance of a ‘civilised’ British identity, romanticized ideals of pastoral landscapes, and conceptions of death and rebirth in the afterlife. These meanings were complicated by the context of cross-cultural interactions that were necessary to the missionary project.

There are hardly any written sources on Christianization in southwestern Germany during early Medieval times. From its beginning in the nineteenth century, archaeological research was concerned with the question of whether the interpretation of material culture is helpful in the study of Christianization. This article first deals with the history of research. It focuses on the question of how the main archaeological sources of Merovingian times – the Reihengräberfelder – were interpreted in terms of Christianization. Obviously several aspects were and still are the main focus of research: special objects with Christian symbols (brooches, belt buckles or the so-called Goldblattkreuze) are often vaguely interpreted as symbols of early Christianity or in some cases as a sign for the buried person being Christian. This results in the process of Christianization being dated to the seventh century. These explanations are influenced by a direct social-historical interpretation of the Reihengräberfelder. They are strongly influenced by the results of historical research. A basic discussion about the character and the significance of objects from graves in the context of debates about Christianization has not yet taken place. Thus, in the second part of the article, questions derived from contextual archaeology are raised which may enrich the discussion about the interpretation of Christianization on the basis of graves: what importance may objects with Christian symbols have, if considered in the context of their ritual deposition and their associated finds? Do the Medieval graves provide information about the world of the living at all? Or how is ideology manifested within them? Is it at all, therefore, possible to describe them as testimonies of a process of Christianization? The use of carefully chosen sociological, ethnographical or historical analogies is crucial for the future development of the discussion. Furthermore, it is important to view the topic from the perspective of two analogies: analogies of the archaeological context as well as of processes of Christianization.

This paper looks at how prehistory was portrayed and taught in Spanish school books in four periods (1880–1920; 1920–36; 1936–75; 1975 onwards). Through the first three periods the scientific advances of archaeology can be seen to enter books often only after a time lag of decades, and only after the dominance of scripture for human ‘origins’ gave way to secular versions of history. But until the death of Franco, there was a strong tradition of emphasising nationalistic sentiments of heroic resistance and positive characteristics of the Spanish’ race’ while concentrating on events and the deeds of individuals, usually military or political. This is graphically demonstrated with illustrations from textbooks. Since 1975 school books have changed radically. This is seen in the shift in illustrative teaching materials, from reconstructed scenes of political events to maps and pictures of source materials.

An early Neolithic settlement with western Anatolian-type material was recently found on the island of Gökçeada (Imbroz). None of the colonization models indicate that Gökçeada is the most promising island for early colonization. In this article I suggest that the importance of islands may also lie in their symbolic significance. The early Neolithic communities built up place-myths about the islands. Place-myths are closely related to place-images, which are generally derived from visual experiences. Myths enabled a Neolithic community to establish a sense of belonging to the islands. This might have led to permanent settlement of some of the islands.

Previous research has shown that physical violence had a normative presence in medieval Nordic societies. In this study, weapon-related trauma (WRT) was examined in human skeletal assemblages from two religious houses, Skriðuklaustur in Iceland, and Västerås in Sweden. The aims were to identify patterns of WRT and to relate these to the masculinities of different groups of men. Violence was a prominent component of identity among lay men, especially for men with warrior experience. The use of violence was more problematic among clerics. The hypothesis that these notions of ideal masculine behaviour would affect the ways in which masculinities were enacted and would be reflected in the patterns of WRT was borne out by the results of this study. No WRT was identified among the canons and lay brothers in Skriðuklaustur, but it was present in about thirty per cent of the males interpreted as belonging to the lay elite buried in the northern part of the church at Västerås.

In this article, the authors discuss the standard of living in medieval villages in central Europe on the basis of accessibility to dress, which is usually represented by the only archaeological material remaining—dress accessories, including buckles, strap ends, and rings. They attempt to establish a method of determining the value of the finds based on the different technological qualities of their material, decoration, and types of artefacts, and then discuss the dress accessories from selected village sites with complementary data from rural cemeteries dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Their overview shows that there was a large degree of similarity between the finds from rural areas and typical urban assemblages.

This article assesses the major changes in landscape and coastline, which took place in an area adjacent to the northern shore of the inner estuary of the river Humber, in East Yorkshire, UK, from the beginning of the Holocene to the Iron Age. It considers the effect of these changes on material culture as represented by artefact distributions, including flint assemblages and polished stone tools located during field survey. The conclusions presented here derive from a continuing programme of research in this study area and they are placed in the context of the wider Humber region and the North Sea Basin. This article advocates a restoration of balance with regard to geographical determinism – a new pragmatism – accepting that environmental factors have a great importance in determining the nature and location of certain activities in the past, though cannot be used to explain them all.

This article presents the results of multi-scalar investigations into the Later Bronze Age (LBA; 1500–600 bc) landscape of Inishark in County Galway, Ireland. The European LBA along the Atlantic coast was characterized by the development of long-distance maritime exchange systems that transformed environmentally marginal seascapes into a corridor of human interaction and movement of goods and people. Archaeological survey, test excavation, and radiocarbon analysis documented the LBA occupation on Inishark. The communities living on Inishark and other small islands on the western Irish coast were on the periphery of both the European continent and of the elite spheres of influence at hillforts in Ireland; yet they were connected to the Atlantic maritime exchange routes. A focus on small coastal islands contributes to a better understanding of LBA socioeconomic systems and the development of social complexity in Bronze Age societies.

What is the fate of the material from old excavations? This article aims to generate attention towards this question by discussing the fragmentation of assemblages due to long and disjointed excavation campaigns as well as the eagerness of museums to have representative objects from famous sites. The challenge emerging is the need to explore ways of reinstating objects that may be widely dispersed and entirely decontextualized into our database. The tell at Tószeg-Laposhalom, Hungary, is used as a case study with particular attention to the campaign of 1927. This case is important for several reasons. Tószeg is a key European Bronze Age site. It is also a good example of a site with numerous excavation campaigns and many different teams being involved. Moreover, the 1927 campaign, which is documented through the correspondence between the partners, was V.G. Childe's first excavation, and the data recovered played a key role in his Central European Bronze Age chronology.

This paper discusses the chronology of the Järrestad rock-art site in south-east Sweden. Drawing on recent developments in ship chronology, it argues that images were produced from the very beginning of the Scandinavian Bronze Age, c. 1700 BC, to the earliest Iron Age, c. 200 BC. The images are not randomly spread, however, but cluster in two phases: c. 1700–1100 BC and c. 900–200 BC, each with its different characteristics. It is argued that the later phase should be viewed against the background of central and western European Hallstatt cultures which affected not only the iconography of the Järrestad panel but also the organization of the surrounding cultural landscape.

This article aims to conceptualize the present state of public archaeology in Poland, which has recently become topical in archaeological practice. The author defines public archaeology and discusses the historical background of such activities in the context of the specific traditions of Polish archaeology. He then describes the main forms of outreach activities undertaken by archaeologists in Poland and presents community-oriented initiatives that go beyond the education of the general public about the past and strive to engage local communities in activities focused on archaeology and archaeological heritage. He concludes by outlining some directions that this sub-discipline may adopt in future.

In this article I explore different ways archaeologists can contribute to and learn from theorizing the digital world beyond the traditional functionalistic means of applying computational methods. I argue that current digital technologies can be a very constructive tool to create non-human experience and awareness. I pursue this argument by presenting ideas from a work-in-progress project experimenting with the post-human and the virtual, and by exploring significant otherness in Roman religion and the dark spots in human perception, through the analysis of an absent temple in Rome. Applying post-human philosophies and an expanded concept of virtuality beyond the digital makes it possible to change our approach to object/human/divine relations in Roman cults and how we present Roman heritage towards a post-humanist framework. Through this, digital archaeology can become one of the ways of re-examining and reinventing our ideas of the human, the past and the digital.

This article presents current research on cooking stone pits in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia and examines their function and interpretation. It focuses on recent findings at the site of Mang de Bargen in northern Germany, which contained pit arrangements in various configurations, including a new circular one. The latest 14C dates from Mang de Bargen suggest that the circular formations constitute the earliest evidence of cooking stone pits known so far. A supra-regional comparison, concentrating on the distribution and dating of cooking stone pits in northern Europe, and an analysis of their content, arrangement, and topographic location allows the author to propose how they may have been used.

This article explores a meshwork of citations to other material cultures and architectures created by the form and ornament of house-shaped early medieval recumbent stone monuments popularly known in Britain as ‘hogbacks’. In addition to citing the form and ornament of contemporary buildings, shrines, and tombs, this article suggests recumbent mortuary monuments referenced a far broader range of contemporary portable artefacts and architectures. The approach takes attention away from identifying any single source of origin for hogbacks. Instead, considering multi-scalar and multi-media references within the form and ornament of different carved stones provides the basis for revisiting their inherent variability and their commemorative efficacy by creating the sense of an inhabited mortuary space in which the dead are in dialogue with the living. By alluding to an entangled material world spanning Norse and Insular, ecclesiastical and secular spheres, hogbacks were versatile technologies of mortuary remembrance in the Viking Age.

This hand-list is devoted to the published writings of Vere Gordon Childe (1892–1957). It was compiled for two reasons: the limitations of earlier lists of his works, and the changing needs of scholars studying Childe and the disciplines to which he contributed.

The earliest and then most complete list of Childe’s writings was produced by Isobel Smith for the Childe festschrift published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 21(1956): 295–304. Both Bruce Trigger and Sally Green have added items missed by Smith to the bibliographies of their books on Childe. However, the present bibliography contains over twice as many published items by Childe as have appeared previously.

Epistemology and research history significantly shape scientific understandings, debates, and publication strategies, albeit often implicitly. In Palaeolithic archaeology in particular, these factors are rarely examined in depth. Here, we present a historiographic analysis of how research history has influenced the debate concerning the possible Neanderthal occupation in Scandinavia. We provide a qualitative discussion of this contentious research field as well as a citation network analysis that visualizes, quantifies, and hence clarifies some of the underlying conceptual, geographic, and temporal patterns in the development of the debate. Our results show significant regionalism as a structuring principle driving this debate as well as a basic rift between professional and avocational archaeologists in how they interpret and publish the available data. We also identify a troubling lack of cross-referencing, even when taking language barriers into account. We argue that the debate about Neanderthal occupation in Scandinavia has been shaped (negatively) by the following phenomena: regionalism, nationalism, lack of research and researchers, non-cumulative work, publication in Nordic languages, science by press release/sensationalism, and a lamentable trend towards arguments ad hominem. In order to take this research field forward, we propose an epistemological turn towards a cumulative, international, and hypothesis-driven agenda based on renewed research efforts and novel citizen science tools.

There is a wealth of archaeological evidence, from bones excavated in prehistoric middens, piles of fruit stones and sea shells, that give us concrete indications of food consumed at various prehistoric sites around Europe. In addition to this information, we have pollen analysis from settlement sites and charred plant macrofossils. Wetland archaeology informs us in much more detail about not only the types of foods that were being eaten in prehistory but also, in some cases, their cooking techniques. This paper will explore whether or not a popular misconception about the daily diet in prehistory has its roots in the analysis of stomach contents of various bog bodies found in Europe.

This article presents the different types of pendant crosses found in the burials of a Middle Byzantine graveyard at the Pisidian settlement of Sagalassos in south-western Turkey. The aim is to study both the chronology and function of these pectoral crosses. A variety of sources are used, ranging from stratigraphy and radiocarbon dates to contextual information and skeletal data. The crosses could be broadly dated to between the eleventh and thirteenth century AD, thus providing an indication of the lifespan of the cemetery. Moreover, the typological evolution, which was corroborated by parallels from other sites in the Byzantine Empire, allowed us to establish a horizontal stratigraphy for the graveyard. The pectoral crosses discussed here shed light on the funerary practices in this part of the Byzantine world. These generally proved to belong to very young children. They constitute a category of material culture that not only provides insights into the lives of the Byzantine population, especially in early childhood, but are also the material manifestation of the intersection between popular religion, magic, and funerary rites.

This study discusses the changing trends in the supply of wine, olive oil, fish sauce and domestic pottery in Pompeii over a period of more than two centuries through the examination of a pottery assemblage excavated recently in the House of the Vestals. The ceramic evidence is viewed in the light of broader political and economic trends that affected production and trade over the course of time. A clear shift from regional self-sufficiency to a heavier reliance upon extra-regional goods, particularly from the Roman provinces of Africa and Spain, is observed. The authors point out that while the ceramic record is a useful indicator of general supply trends, conclusions must be drawn with caution and scholars need to consider what is not apparent in the archaeological record in order to gain a more complete picture of the past.

In the Bronze Age, warriors are probably the best-known social class. Evidence for warfare and other violent encounters links them to aggression and bloodshed that could be translated into social status. This made warriors a potential two-fold threat to the social cohesion of their communities: not only did they risk threatening the integrity of communities as agents of death but also they could challenge local authority and cause internal conflict. Here, the author presents evidence that suggests that internal conflict was a major concern for Nordic Bronze Age societies, in that warriors constituted an internal social challenge, and proposes that local communities may have mitigated this threat in rituals such as the sacrifice of weapons and the construction of social narratives through rock art.