Underwater archaeology took off from 1950 following the invention of the aqualung by two Frenchmen. In 1966, France became the first country with a specialized organization for underwater archaeology (DRASSM (Département des Recherches Archéologiques Subaquatiques et Sous-Marines)). The evolution of French law has provided strong protection for this heritage. Over the last 40 years, DRASSM has identified several thousands of wrecks and has managed the excavation of many of them. Currently, DRASSM has been given a new lease of life, with a service enhanced by young recruits, new buildings, and a technologically advanced research vessel.

The article focuses on problems in making generalizations about the character of Stone Age sites and the difficulties of separating sacred and secular remains. Like many other Pitted Ware sites, the middle Neolithic site of Jettböle on the Åland Islands has been characterized as a settlement site despite finds of a ritual character. This study investigates the spatial relationships and depositional patterns of different find categories, with a special focus on human remains, including DNA analysis and the ornamentation of pottery from one of the larger excavation units from the site. The character and meaning of the site seem to be more complex than previously considered. The results of the study stress the need for careful investigation of the contextual circumstances of finds before making general interpretations.

This article reviews discussions and debates about effective communication within North American archaeology. The development of cultural resource management and the expansion of Native American control over archaeology have both influenced the practice and communication of archaeology. The concept of diverse stakeholders derives from discussions about ethics in archaeology, but is relevant to understanding the complexities of archaeological communication. Rather than focus on criticisms of archaeological communication, various examples of effective communication are provided.

Despite recent emphasis on the impact of nationalism on archaeology, the discussion has centered more on the ideological framework of the culture-historical school of archaeology, particularly on the concept of archaeological culture. Comparatively little attention has been paid to how archaeologists contributed to the construction of the national past. This article examines Slavic archaeology, a discipline crisscrossing national divisions of archaeological schools, within the broader context of the ‘politics of culture’ which characterizes all nation-states, as ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1991). Indeed, the current academic discourse about the early Slavs in Ukraine, Russia, and Romania appears as strikingly tied to political, rather than intellectual, considerations. In eastern Europe, the concept of archaeological culture is still defined in monothetic terms on the basis of the presence or absence of a list of traits or types derived from typical sites or intuitively considered to be representative cultural attributes. Archaeologists thus regarded archaeological cultures as actors on the historical stage, playing the role individuals or groups have in documentary history. Archaeological cultures became ethnic groups, and were used to legitimize claims of modern nation-states to territory and influence.

This paper looks in detail at the evidence for cult practices during the Neolithic in Italy, especially cave sites in southern Italy. The problems of recognising cult activities are highlighted; whether the simple borrowing of ethnographic parallels or the application of ethnographically derived models such as initiation rites, rites of passage, or hunting magic. Careful contextual archaeology is used to isolate phenomena best seen as special rites rather than variation of general practice, for example the rare cremations at Grotta Continenza alongside normal inhumations. The presence of pits or stone circles, imitative creations, art, the use of ochre or clay, human remains, intentional breakage of artefacts, the deposition of animal or vegetable’ offerings’, these are just some of the elements that need special investigation when suggesting cult practices in the Neolithic. The paper argues strongly against drawing hasty conclusions or proposing appealing but speculative interpretations of supposed agricultural fertility rites, child sacrifices, or male initiation rituals, for the truth is we still know much too little about Neolithic cults or even Neolithic society.

In the present article we explore the possibilities of reconstructing social behaviour through a detailed analysis of the so-called ‘ashmounds’ of the Late Bronze Age in Eastern Europe, starting from new research at a settlement of the Noua culture, Rotbav in south-eastern Transylvania. For the first time, the excavations comprised not only the ‘ashmound’ but also its vicinity, revealing the existence of structures like houses and pits. Furthermore, the analysis and comparison of the finds revealed significant differences between the ‘ashmound’ and the rest of the domestic spaces. This leads us to a new interpretation of the ‘ashmounds’ as special places, linked with feasting activities and collective leatherworking. This new interpretation is supported not only by the examination of the finds but also by new archaeozoological and chemical analyses, which are usually missing in Eastern Europe.

The contrast between monumentalized burials and almost invisible settlements has dominated Neolithic studies in western Europe, reinforcing an artificial divide between ceremonial and economically productive landscapes. By combining a material culture approach with a landscape scale, comparative artefact studies can trace connections between people, places, and social contexts. This paper investigates social networks in Late Neolithic Portugal by examining artefact provenance, biographies, and deposition on the Mondego Plateau. It focuses on three sites and four object categories characteristic of this period. The study reveals great diversity of raw materials, circulation of everyday objects, and regional availability of resources previously thought to be imports. It suggests that people used dispersed resource areas in an integrated way, and that exchange was an integral part of routine life. Evidence for links across the region is not restricted to tombs. Burial assemblages resulted from a complex web of social relations that preceded, accompanied, and followed the actions surrounding death. Understanding these places and fundamental questions about Neolithic social production and reproduction requires reconnecting tombs and settlements into wider lived landscapes.

‘The paradox of landscape’ is that, in theory, landscape aspires to a totality of human experience, but in practice it suppresses the complexity of the human experience. By supposing a ‘landscape perspective’ in the past, archaeologists are imposing a modern view of the world. In consequence, more varied perspectives should be considered during any archaeological inquiry. This is not a criticism of the use of landscape as a term to distinguish the wider spatial relationships between places which exist in the present. What is suggested as being unjustifiable is the use of the ‘landscape perspective’ to orientate and contextualize past human experience. This critique is illustrated and complemented by a case-study examining prehistoric land enclosure in Britain.

The Low Countries' Early Iron Age is marked by the emergence of lavish burials known as chieftains’ graves or princely burials. These extraordinary elite burials of the Hallstatt C/D period contain weaponry, bronze vessels as well as decorated wagons and horse-gear imported from the Hallstatt culture of Central Europe, where the same objects are found in the famous Fürstengräber. While the connection between these regions has long been recognized, the nature of this contact remains poorly understood. Here we present the preliminary results of an on-going re-examination of elite funerary practices in both regions and the likely direct long-distance interactions reflected in them. Similarities and differences in the treatment of objects and the dead in funerary rituals indicate that, to a certain extent at least, these geographically separated social groups were integrated in a specific elite burial practice, indicating frequent contact across hundreds of kilometres.

The ephemeral nature of religious practices and rituals makes them challenging to trace in the archaeological record of Late Neolithic hunter-gatherer communities in central and eastern Europe. A ritual feature with Bell Beaker elements discovered in north-eastern Poland, a region occupied by hunter-gatherer groups of the Neman cultural circle, is thus exceptional. Its syncretic character indicates its role as a harbinger of wider cultural change that led to the emergence in this region of the western group of the Bronze Age Trzciniec cultural circle.

This article concerns the study of power and space within the Archbishop's Palace in Trondheim and, in particular, how the structure and organization of the precinct in the late medieval period formed a medium through which the archbishop's powers were exercised. Its aim is to explore the ways in which the spatial patterning of occupation, as revealed by the recent excavations in the palace, can cast light on the articulation of the archbishop's wealth, status and authority during the turbulent period prior to the Reformation.

The theoretical starting point is a reformulation of Michael Mann's theory of social power and Anthony Giddens's concept of ‘locale’ within a Marxist framework. It is suggested that, in the historical context of the crisis of Scandinavian feudalism, the palace at Trondheim became the focus for overlapping networks of ideological, economic, military and political power. These developments were expressed through the reorganization of the architectural space and the construction of a series of workshop complexes within the walled precinct between c. AD 1500 and 1537. By analysing the archaeological evidence for craft production, in particular minting, this paper considers how the palace formed a locale for the interaction of a specific set of social relations. It consequently examines some of the processes underpinning the expansion of the archbishop's power during the late medieval period, and discusses the social dynamics behind the conflict between the Church and the centralizing, Protestant-leaning forces of the Danish-Norwegian state.

Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries AD, the Lower Vistula valley represented a permeable and shifting frontier between Pomerelia (eastern Pomerania), which had been incorporated into the Polish Christian state by the end of the tenth century, and the territories of western Prussian tribes, who had resisted attempts at Christianization. Pomeranian colonization eventually began to falter in the latter decades of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, most likely as a result of Prussian incursions, which saw the abandonment of sites across the borderland. Subsequently, the Teutonic Order and its allies led a protracted holy war against the Prussian tribes, which resulted in the conquest of the region and its incorporation into a theocratic state by the end of the thirteenth century. This was accompanied by a second wave of colonization, which resulted in the settlement pattern that is still visible in the landscape of north-central Poland today. However, not all colonies were destroyed or abandoned in between the two phases of colonization. The recently excavated site of Biała Góra, situated on the western side of the Forest of Sztum overlooking the River Nogat, represents a unique example of a transitional settlement that included both Pomeranian and Teutonic Order phases. The aim of this paper is to situate the site within its broader landscape context which can be characterized as a militarized frontier, where, from the later twelfth century and throughout much of the thirteenth century, political and economic expansion was combined with the ideology of Christian holy war and missionary activity. This paper considers how the colonists provisioned and sustained themselves in comparison to other sites within the region, and how Biała Góra may be tentatively linked to a documented but otherwise lost outpost in this volatile borderland.

Childe was a considerable influence on my archaeology, when I was an undergraduate at the Institute of Archaeology (London). His personality was enigmatic, as were parts of his publications. In this contribution some critical comments are made of his work, together with discussions on his Marxism, the Neolithic Revolution, what is meant by progress, and his all too brief consideration of the range of archaeological science. It will be argued that his inability to make close friendships, and other aspects of his personality, would suggest that he had Asperger's syndrome.

There are two main periods of agrarian improvement in the Iberian peninsula, the Copper Age/Bronze Age transition and the late Bronze Age/Iron Age transition, associated with the use of the plough, traction, and methods of increasing soil fertility, such as fertilising and the growing of legumes. Both were related to changes in women's inheritance. Improvements in agrarian technology appeared first in south-eastern Spain and their consequences are visible in the grave goods of the Argaric tombs. From the late Bronze Age on, the rest of the peninsula underwent similar changes. At the same time precious metals changed their meaning: from being a gift to becoming a commodity and therefore they were increasingly scarce in graves. Although there is evidence of the exchange of women during the Iron Age, they were high-ranking women, such as those of the El Carpio and Aliseda tombs, who transmitted political rights to their descendants. Yet evidence from archaeology, epigraphy, and Roman chroniclers point to the maintenance of a primitive agriculture and matrilineal practices in some parts of northern Spain until the Roman conquest.

This study is part of broader ethnoarchaeological studies of the value attributed to various cuts of beef and pork. It is aimed at establishing a perspective from which the osteological and cultural aspects of palaeodiets can be equally evaluated. Meat prices analysed in this study originate from 24 supermarkets in 16 developed countries. The great regional variability of identical cuts, and especially intestines shows the importance of local traditions which when combined with the actual nutritional value are expressed in retail prices.

Our article seeks to determine the functions of visual communication design through the lens of modern conflict and public archaeologies. The Battle of Aslıhanlar, which took place in the triangle of the villages of Çal Köy, Allıören, and Yüğlük in Kütahya from 29 to 30 August 1922, was the focus of our experimentation. Our archaeological survey project was carried out in 2013; interviews with local people, a review of the literature available and our observations of local myths and traditions that emerged after the war constitute the basis of our article. We categorized these sources for the project design in order to form a storytelling narrative, so that the viewer could participate in the process of conflict as well as the ongoing research. We foresaw three major challenges while categorizing this complex dataset: equivalence of visual language; variable outputs of the multi-dimensional research methods; and interactivity for creating a live social platform. We responded to these challenges by developing a graphic design concept and an interactive map of the data. Our design surrounds the viewer with a historical timeline, which includes all of our research findings in one interactive interface.