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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ornaments, jewellery, personal equipment and weapons in graves can be defined as relicts of ancient costumes and weapon assemblages which are connected to the social identities of the buried persons. At several late Bronze Age and early Iron Age sites in the north Caucasus (Koban culture) large numbers of richly furnished graves allow the reconstruction of specific costume and armour groups. These can be related to factors which structured these communities into a ranked society. This article is based on the investigation of two cemeteries in Chechenia (north-eastern Caucasus) which demonstrate the change in social differentiation during the developed Iron Age. The article also includes a general discussion about the concepts of costumes and their potential for reconstructing social identities.

Landscape archaeologies that pay attention to cultural importance of place have become increasingly common in recent years in many parts of the world. However, these approaches have largely failed to make inroads into Pleistocene European hunter–gatherer archaeology. This is partly due to a focus on economics, survival, and neo-liberal assumptions of ‘efficiency’ in early modern human behaviour. With evidence of lithic use drawn from cave sites, survey, and open-air excavation, I argue that Upper Paleolithic hunter–gatherers left clues to the importance of certain places in the landscape. Lithic tools in particular have been undervalued for their symbolic meaning, which goes well beyond style and ethnicity models. Raw material has been seen as evidence of mobility and trade, but possible cultural motives behind material choices have been downplayed or ignored.

Recent ground surveys in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of southern Georgia have investigated a previously undocumented group of sites along a ridge overlooking the upper Kura river valley. Features and artefacts recorded at Varneti suggest long but episodic occupation from the Chalcolithic to the later medieval periods, with prominent phases in the Early to Middle Bronze Age and the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. Varneti has the potential to contribute to understanding economic and strategic aspects of the long-term settlement pattern in the southern Caucasus, especially the interplay between lowland and highland zones. Its position in the landscape, at a transitional point between the river valley and the upland pasture (yayla), may explain its persistent use by agro-pastoral communities that operated in varied cultural situations. The survey results help us frame a series of questions regarding economic and social dynamics at a local and regional scale and the continuity and discontinuity of practice in highland environments through long timespans.

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.

The importance of fish for the medieval and early modern economy in the Baltic Sea is known through separate studies by historians and archaeologists. This article aims to combine zooarchaeological data with account books from castles in Kastelholm (Åland Islands) and Raseborg (south-western coast of Finland) in order to understand the processing and transport of fish in the area. Fish was paid as tax by the peasants but was also fished by the castle fishermen and brought to the castles to be consumed there. Here, the preserved fish products are primarily studied through pike and cod, which represent the main economically important larger fish species in the Baltic Sea. The study reveals some differences between the castles studied and the importance of fish for the castle economy.

Perforated stone plaques, known as bracers, are found across late prehistoric Europe and many of them have been recovered in Bell Beaker funerary contexts, usually associated with adult individuals. Experimental, technological, and use-wear studies have determined that the bracers were both utilitarian and symbolic objects. Very few are found in children's graves, but examples are known in the Iberian Peninsula, two of which are presented here. The analyses conducted on the two bracers, including archaeological contextualization, raw material identification, and technological and use-wear studies, allow the authors to reconstruct their respective biographies. Although these pieces were associated with young children, they had long lives before their final deposition in the graves. Use-wear marks on one of the bracers suggest that it was used in archery, despite its small size.