The role of the human body in the creation of social knowledge—as an ontological and/or aesthetic category—has been applied across social theory. In all these approaches, the body is viewed as a locus for experience and knowledge. If the body is a source of subjective knowledge, then it can also become an important means of creating ontological categories of self and society. The materiality of human representations within art traditions, then, can be interpreted as providing a means for contextualizing and aestheticizing the body in order to produce a symbolic and structural knowledge category. This paper explores the effect of material choices and techniques of production when representing the human body on how societies order and categorize the world.

There are at least four wooden intertidal platforms, also known as marine crannogs, in the Firth of Clyde, on the west coast of Scotland. The interpretation of these sites partly depends on their dating and, if coeval, they could point to the presence of a native maritime hub. Furthermore, the spatial coincidence with the terminus of the Antonine Wall has led to speculation about the role they may have played in Roman-native interaction during the occupation of southern Scotland in the early first millennium cal ad. Hence, a better absolute chronology is essential to evaluate whether the marine crannogs were contemporary with one another and whether they related to any known historic events. This article presents results of a wiggle-match dating project aimed at resolving these uncertainties at two of the sites in question, Dumbuck and Erskine Bridge crannogs. The results show that the construction of these sites pre-date direct Roman influence in Scotland. Furthermore, the results indicate that the two sites were built at least 300 years apart, forcing us to consider the possibility that they may have functioned in very different historical contexts. Other findings include technical observations on the fine shape of the radiocarbon calibration curve near the turn of the first millennia bc/ad and potential evidence for persistent contamination in decayed and exposed sections of waterlogged alder.

This article explores the importance of the Derbyshire antiquarian Thomas Bateman in the context of mid-nineteenth-century debates about ethnology, craniology, and archaeological chronology. New information on the relationship between Bateman and the authors of Crania Britannica, Joseph Barnard Davis and John Thurnam, is brought to light thanks to unpublished archival material from the Sheffield Museums and the Royal Anthropological Institute. Crania Britannica was the first publication of British national skull types from prehistory to the Anglo-Saxon period. The publication employed the techniques of craniology—the systematic study of head types—as a chronological tool. Indeed, craniology is often seen as the mechanism by which the Three Age System was initially received in Britain and Ireland. Here, Bateman's involvement in the publication and his own theories on the development of the past with regard to cranial sequencing and archaeological chronology are explored in greater detail.

This paper is intended to show the incorrect uses of archaeological documents to legitimise current political positions. In accordance with these aims, a better knowledge of poorly known archaeological concepts is proposed to guard against such wrong practices. Concepts such as ‘ethnic groups’ will, of course, remain in use regardless of these considerations. This question is discussed from two different viewpoints: the dialectic relationship between the prevailing history and ‘intrahistory’, and the relationship between the individual aristocratic power and the power held by communities or rural groups during the Iron Age in Europe.

Este articulo quiere destacar el abuso que se hace del documento arqueologico como legitimador de situaciones politicas actuales. Tambien propene defenderse de este tipo de actuaciones profundizando en el conocimiento de conceptos arqueologicos poco desarrollados. No por evitar el debate conceptual de cuestiones como la etnia, se evitara su existencia por ultimo el articulo plantea dos puntos de partida para el debate: de un lado la realcion entre la historia dominante y la intrahistoria, y de otra parte la relacion entre el espacio de poder individual y comunal durante la Edad del hierro en Europa.

The Hittite state was founded c. 1650 BC and developed thereafter. The Hittites were able to establish their rule in Anatolia's hostile landscape and overcome the difficulties it presented to create an empire—an objective that they achieved with the aid of their remarkable organizational skills. Despite the frequent occurrence of geographical names in the state archives, only a small number of them can be safely localized and, although Hittitology is a 100-year-old field, the regional names have only recently been determined. This article serves as a general introduction to the Hittites as well as a review of the problem of geographical names, revealing the complexity it presents.

This paper was conceived as a keynote lecture for the Medieval Europe Research Congress (MERC) 2012 in Helsinki. The author himself has gone a long way from the more or less exclusively ship-functionalist perspective he presented at the first conference of this kind, Medieval Europe in 1992 in York. The intention here is to inspire other maritime archaeologists who may be stuck in studying ship technologies to apply their knowledge in contextual and cross-disciplinary approaches to ships, landscapes, and the human mind of the Middle Ages. A few examples of possible ways are discussed, albeit admittedly incompletely. These include a number of examples from the author's own research, which were strongly under the influence of a functionalist and techno-practical perspective in the 1990s.

The goal of this study was to identify cognitive processes in a particular technical subsystem – flint blade debitage in the Linear Pottery Culture (Linearbandkeramik or LBK, dating to the second half of the sixth millennium BC). The study was based on new archaeological data from pits with debitage waste on a site at Verlaine, near Liège in Belgian Hesbaye. The project mainly involved refitting and analysis of a concentration of blade debitage waste, which had been almost completely preserved; an exceptional situation for this period. This detailed analysis has produced new data for the early Neolithic on the mental conception and technical procedures involved in debitage of large blocks of flint and suggests that the evidence from Verlaine reflects a system of ‘surplus’ production. The objective of Neolithic knappers at Verlaine was clearly to surpass the needs of the local communities, with a view to long-distance distribution well outside the region.

The polycentric nature of Neolithic developments in the Middle East has prompted several discussions related to the processes driving regional diversification in the emergence of agglomerate societies. Archaeologists have recognized how diverse social, environmental, and material landscapes shaped various communities, resulting in a heterogenous Neolithic world. In this paper, we use portable x-ray fluorescence analysis to determine the use of different chert resources at the site of Çatalhöyük, Turkey, and question how their consumption affected, and was affected by, different social and material practices enacted within the community. We adopt a network perspective to examine the range of behaviours that consumed particular resources, and trace how alterations in these networks impacted the social fabric of Çatalhöyük. Ultimately, we conclude that different investments involved in the consumption of each resource either promoted or restricted their use through time. A more complete picture of Neolithic life, we suggest, takes note of the varied relationships that communities developed with nearby social and environmental landscapes, including nuances in the ways in which resources were incorporated into different facets of each community.

Since the 1980s, Barcelona's local institutions have been pioneers in creating a close relationship between culture, urban regeneration, and the social and economic development of the city, and subsequently in implementing a new paradigm in cultural policy for entrepreneurial, cultural, and creative cities. As a consequence, the city has also become a model for place branding and cultural tourism. In this context, Born, an archaeological site of the early eighteenth century which offers detailed testimony to both the cultural and economic lifestyle of the city at that time and the defeat of the Catalans during the War of the Spanish Succession, has been preserved and opened to the public in line with the city's varying cultural policies and attitudes to national identity over the last two decades. This article discusses Born from 2000 to 2017 and the political and cultural management context in relation to the Barcelona model that has defined its current form as a cultural centre. In this context, this article also discusses the role of archaeology in Barcelona's cultural governance, as a case study through which to consider the role of urban archaeological heritage management today.

In this article, the authors investigate the effectiveness of glass and metal recycling in Roman towns. The comparison of sealed primary deposits (reflecting what was in use in Roman towns) with dumping sites shows a marked drop in glass and metal finds in the dumps. Although different replacement ratios and fragmentation indices affect the composition of the assemblages recovered in dumps, recycling appears to have played a fundamental role, very effectively reintroducing into the productive chain most glass and metal items before their final discard. After presenting a case study from Pompeii, the authors examine contexts from other sites that suggest that recycling practices were not occasional. In sum, recycling should be considered as an effective and systematic activity that shaped the economy of Roman towns.

A Copper Age settlement and cemetery was fully excavated at Rákóczifalva-Bivaly-tó Site 1/C in 2005-2007, making it possible to compare the use of its material culture in closely related, coeval, but different archaeological contexts. Such a rare set of circumstances allows the authors to highlight methodological issues associated with the distorting effect of archaeological finds made on sites where only settlement or burial data are available, and on the importance of choosing appropriate analytical units.

Childe's time as a student in Oxford has received little critical attention, partly because of an apparent lack of evidence. His reasons for going to Oxford are explored, and attention is drawn to two factors: the role of one of his tutors in Sydney, W.J. Woodhouse; and the state of prehistoric European studies in England at the time, dominated by Oxford and the figures of Arthur Evans and John Myres. Childe's study visit to Greece in 1915 is discussed and it is suggested that he had already embarked on his major research project before it was interrupted by the unexpected duration of the First World War. He left Oxford in 1917 to return to Australia, and though he may have feared conscription, the impossibility of pursuing his archaeological research was also a critical factor. In 1921 Childe returned to England and soon resumed the project he had started and suspended.

Dans le cadre de programmes de recherches portant, d'une part, sur le processus d'apparition du Néolithique dans l'Quest de la France, et, d'autre part, sur les échanges de lames polies alpines, une réflexion particulière s'attache actuellement aux biens de prestige qui semblent accompagner l'accroissement des échanges économiques et sans doute matrimoniaux entre sociétés d'agriculteurs et sociétés sédentaires ‘Mésolithiques’ des régions cotières de l'Armorique. Les lames de haches polies non fonctionnelles, concernées par cette étude, sont un des éléments participant de cette nouvelle compétition sociale située dans la première moltié du Vème millénaire av. J.-C.

Some generalising approaches to the study of European Iron Age as demonstrated in the case of the La Tène period rectangular enclosures and pottery in Central Europe are critically evaluated. The regional diversity in the evolution of settlement structure and material culture, with the structure of find assemblages varying substantially in time and place, must be considered. It is therefore hardly possible to discuss issues of site function by comparison with the structure of ceramic assemblages from sites differing in type and in regional specificity at the same time. There are many reasons to believe that the Central European La Tène rectangular enclosures cannot be viewed as venues for feasting accompanied by drinking, as proposed by Murray (1995). Theoretical models and non-traditional methodological approaches are needed in European studies, conservative in many aspects up to now, and are most welcome, but not without respecting the related data sets and their regional background in their full complexity.

The Roman presence in high mountainous areas has traditionally been considered marginal, but recent archaeological studies in several European regions have reshaped our understanding of the occupation and exploitation of these regions. Archaeological research conducted in the Cerdanya valley shows this to be the case in the eastern Pyrenees. The discovery and excavation of several indigenous settlements have allowed us to document an earlier and more intensive Roman presence there, attested by military activity and the exploitation of the area's resources. The site of Tossal de Baltarga (Lleida), where a group of Roman seal-rings was recovered, offers a window into this situation.

The latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of prehistoric archaeology as a scientific discipline in Italy, as well as the founding of the Italian nation state. Evolutionism, positivism, and a sense of national identity informed prehistoric research and the activities of individuals, such as Strobel, Pigorini, and Chierici, who are regarded today as the founding fathers of Italian prehistory. It is in this dynamic cultural and political climate that the civic museums of Reggio Emilia, Modena, and Bologna were created, both as a response to intense local archaeological activity and in reaction to the centralizing structure of the newly formed kingdom of Italy. These civic museums were among the first museums of prehistory in Italy and the products of the cultural and political climate of late nineteenth-century Europe. This article explores the circumstances surrounding the foundation of these museums and considers how the work of the first prehistorians and the museums' own histories, as civic and cultural institutions, continues to affect their role and management in the present.

According to Childe, the Bronze Age in Europe is thought to be the first ‘golden age’ in European history. The development of metallurgy, clearly associated with the production of weapons, and the expansion of exchange networks covering all types of goods are considered essential in the process of consolidation of social elites, and, by extension, of social inequalities. The significance of textile production has, however, been undervalued as a specialized craft and as a manufacturing process that creates cultural differences and signals social inequalities. Being associated with domestic contexts rather than with specialized workshops, textile production in the eastern Iberian Peninsula has been underestimated; it is addressed here, as is its potential importance in societies immersed in a process of social stratification.

Bjerre 7 is a modest Late Bronze Age house in Thy, Denmark. Excellent preservation and full-recovery techniques provided comprehensive evidence of farm self-sufficiency, local exchange, and amber collection for trade. Spatial analyses of ceramics, lithics, plant macrofossils, and amber identified distinctive activity areas at both ends of the house and outside. Routines are discussed for refuse disposal, ceramic use in everyday activities, ad hoc knapping and use of flint tools, plant processing, and amber storage. The household was economically generalized and largely self-sufficient, with limited specialization. Located close to the North Sea, the householders collected raw amber for trade. Metal was obtained from outside for a small-scale, household industry. Although some division of labour is likely, it seems that the whole household engaged in the diverse activities identified on site.

In the late Avar period (eighth to ninth century ad), vast quantities of utilitarian artefacts were produced in series in the Carpathian Basin, a phenomenon not seen since the end of the Roman period. The distribution of these articles reflects not only the region's settlement pattern, but also how these artefacts were disseminated. The communication network in the Carpathian Basin underwent a significant transformation between the early and late Avar period: its major nodes, equated with population centres but not necessarily with elite centres, contributed to moulding a social and cultural milieu that included specialized craftsmen. An early single hub in southern Transdanubia was replaced by multiple centres by the late Avar period. Around ad 700, a bipolar settlement pattern emerges in the southern part of the Carpathian Basin. It seems that the Great Hungarian Plain began to play an equal, if not dominant, role in the communication network of the Carpathian Basin at this time.