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.

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.

Recently rediscovered photographs of the remains of thirteen individuals buried in the Sado Valley Mesolithic shell middens of Poças de S. Bento and Arapouco, excavated in 1960 and 1962, show the potential of revisiting excavation archives with new methods. The analysis, which applies the principles of archaeothanatology and is enriched by experimental taphonomic research, confirmed details concerning the treatment of the dead body and provided new insights into the use of burial spaces. Some bodies may have been mummified prior to burial, a phenomenon possibly linked to their curation and transport, highlighting the significance of both the body and the burial place in Mesolithic south-western Portugal.

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.

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.

The major production centres of lustreware in Renaissance Italy (Deruta and Cafaggiolo) have been chosen as a case study to prove the importance of combining archaeological and written evidence, with production in Montelupo and Faenza also taken into account. The focus is on the relationship between different production centres and the movement of potters from one centre to the next as a unique means of transmitting technical knowledge. Written sources such as ‘recipes’ were not created by potters, but were usually collected by others decades after the actual transmission of skills occurred. In this respect the influence of models in the form of ‘fashionable’ objects circulating in the Mediterranean area, together with the movements of people, prove vital. The first appearance and transmission of lustreware are summarized, underlining the importance of the contacts with Spain. If the Italian tin-glazed pottery known as italo-moresca can be regarded as the result of imitated models, lustreware production requires skills that could not have been acquired by chance.

Ceramics were subjected to organic residue analysis from two collections: a series of middle Copper Age (Bodrogkeresztúr) vessels hitherto known as ‘milk jugs’, curated in the Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Budapest, and a collection of early Baden (Boleráz) vessels from the recently discovered settlement of Gyo”r-Szabadrét-domb, in western Hungary. The aim of the analyses was to establish whether or not these vessels, often associated with milk based on typological criteria, were actually used to process, store or serve dairy products. The results of the analyses revealed that no dairy products could be securely identified in the so-called ‘milk jugs’. Nevertheless dairy products were identified in other vessel types.

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.

Neolithic bodies are not only manifestations of subjective principles. Social and symbolic norms are also incorporated within the bodies of both actual and represented individuals. These norms often relate to economic and religious notions of society, as well as to effigies. Owing to high population densities in Neolithic villages, only a select group of the inhabitants were buried within settlements or represented in images. This generated a category of privileged individuals and body features, which were related to symbolic principles rather than social hierarchy. Such practices among Neolithic societies in the Balkans are evident within burials and human representations. Individuals buried inside settlements, anthropomorphic house models, and figurines from several sites in Ovče Pole, Pelagonia, and the Skopje Valley are used as case studies in this paper. Placing these sites into a wider geographical context, it is argued that gender, age and body parts were significant criteria in funerary practices and features of corporeality.

This article discusses tenth–sixteenth-century pottery kilns in the Carpathian Basin in the territory of medieval Hungary. Kilns are classified on the basis of their structure, building technique and firing technology and these characteristics are examined using archaeological evidence, ethnographical sources and also technological and pyrotechnical analysis. The archaeological and stratigraphical features and some methodological problems of medieval pottery kiln study are also discussed and a topographical analysis of the pottery kilns in relation to the workshops and settlements on the basis of archaeological and historical evidence is presented. The history of the development, origin and distribution of the types of medieval pottery kilns in the Carpathian Basin is also presented. There is a brief discussion of the contribution that pottery kiln studies can make to the understanding of workshop organization.

This paper explores one aspect of the way in which cult-iconography of the later Iron Age and Roman periods in non-Classical Europe broke the rules of mimetic (life-copying) representation, with, reference to a particular motif: the triple horn. The presence of three-horned images within the iconographic repertoire of western Europe during this period clearly illustrates two aspects of such rule-breaking. On the one hand, the image of the triple-horned bull – well-known in the archaeological record, particularly of Roman Gaul – exemplifies a recurrent Gallo-Roman and Romano-British tradition in which realism was suppressed in favour of emphasis to the power of three. On the other hand, the triple-horned emblem is not confined to the adornment of bulls but may, on occasion, be transferred to ‘inappropriate’ images, both of animals which are naturally hornless and of humans. Such emblematic transference, with its consequence of dissonance and contradiction in the visual message, on the one hand, and the presence of symbolism associated with boundaries and transition, on the other, suggests the manipulation of motifs in order to endow certain images with a particular symbolic energy, born of paradox, the deliberate introduction of disorder or chaos and the expression of liminality. The precise meaning conveyed by such iconographic ‘anarchy’ is impossible to grasp fully but – at the least – appears to convey an expression of ‘otherness’ in which order imposed by empirical observation of earthly ‘reality’ is deemed irrelevant to other states of being and to the supernatural world.

Researchers have long discussed whether Scandinavian rock art reflects narratives. Their interpretations have frequently been based on inspections of rock art panels combined with knowledge from ethnographic and historical sources. Here, the authors adopt a more focused narratological approach that takes the concept of (visual) narrativity into consideration and draws on studies by literary analysts, cognitive psychologists, and semioticians. Images of spear use in the provinces of Bohuslän and Östergötland in Sweden, given their diversity and indexical qualities, are well-suited to such a study. They reveal different kinds of indexical relationships, i.e. how the spears direct attention to possible targets, arguably corresponding to action scripts well-known to Bronze Age communities. Many spear images may be regarded as mini-narratives and mnemonic devices intended to represent schematized action sequences. The authors suggest that concepts such as iconicity, indexical relationships, scripts, and mini-narratives could be fruitfully employed in research on Scandinavian rock art and beyond.

Field research and predictive modelling of global warming and desertification by environmental scientists in the Mediterranean has concentrated on the short term. In this paper, it is argued that collaboration between the historical sciences, especially archaeology, and the environmental sciences can provide a longer-term perspective on desertification in the Mediterranean. Such collaboration has taken place recently in the Vera basin (Almería, south-east Spain), with the financial support of the European Union. Details of the archaeological and historical sequences of occupation in the basin are given, before presenting the main trends in demography, settlement and political systems from 4000 BC until the present day. This is followed by details of the long-term record of degradation in the Vera basin. The paper concludes by using the long-term record to propose recommendations for the future management of this landscape.

Martin Carver connects academic peer review with the new technologies of publishing, particularly ‘Open Access’. He recommends the development of four tiers of output: (1) the popular and commercial magazine printed in hard copy and supported by subscribers; (2) the national Open Access online journal, successor to the local journal and supported by local sponsorship; (3) the international Open Access peer-reviewed online journal, representing an intellectual or geographical research area and supported by subsidies and grants via authors. The European Journal of Archaeology is seen as an example. (4) The fourth tier is represented by a global journal such as Antiquity, serving all countries equally and maintaining its political, academic, and commercial independence through reader subscriptions.

For four years (1940–1944) after its defeat by the Third Reich, France was ruled by an anti-republican government whose active collaboration with the Nazis made a major contribution to the persecution and extermination of the Jews. Through the ‘National Revolution’, the Vichy regime developed an ideology opposed to democracy and republican roots and sought to re-invent its national origins as a justification for Pétainism. Thus, the Gallic past and archaeology in general played an important role in this new ideology by assimilating the defeat of the Gauls by Caesar to that of the French by the Nazis and by then comparing the successful incorporation of Gaul into the Roman Empire with that of France into a ‘new Europe’ dominated by Nazi Germany. At the same time, the Vichy regime provided French archaeology with its first legal and administrative structure, which allowed the development of the discipline. This legislative and administrative framework was preserved intact not only until the liberation but right up to the present day. It is the permanence of this structure which creates the problem of the relationship between current French archaeology and the Vichy regime.

This themed journal issue provides many examples of ways forward in the study of death and memory in the Viking world. While all contributions demonstrate that there are exciting new ways to study remains from funerary contexts that focus on different forms of citation involving material culture and monuments, this article will very briefly discuss dimensions that have not been addressed here. Specifically, it showcases how the mortuary citations approach can also use post-humanist theory for further development and exploration of mortuary practices in the Viking world. Although short, this article discusses rune stones, particularly rune stones with kuml inscriptions, which I have examined elsewhere. The term kuml appears on contemporary rune stones; it refers to different material entities such as rune stones, mounds/cairns, and other standing stones. The being and becoming of kuml is briefly discussed through the concepts of intra-action and agential cuts championed by Karen Barad.