This article aims to provide an interpretation of the structure and spatial patterning of the non-ceramic refuse from the Neolithic site of Bylany. The data are considered at three levels: tackling questions of refuse management and deposition in the vicinity of houses; the spatial distribution of refuse within the settlement area as a whole; and the quantity and structure of non-ceramic refuse from a long-term settlement perspective. The analysed assemblage of non-ceramic finds is divided into five categories: chipped stone, polished stone, whetstones, manos/metates, and other stones without use-wear traces. The analysis is based on GIS and multivariate statistics. The spatial distribution and quantity of refuse are analysed with respect to space (in terms of proximity to Neolithic houses and the whole of the excavated settlement area) and time (the duration of settlement in six chronological stages). No deliberate pattern of refuse management was identified in the vicinity of the houses, but the refuse was found to have a tendency towards peripheral grouping within the settled area as a whole. Refuse quantity depends on the number of houses and settlement duration. The negative correlation between the mean density of non-ceramic artefacts per house and the number of houses in corresponding chronological stages may be explained by the interpretation that refuse was commonly deposited within abandoned houses, which would be consistent with ethnoarchaeological observations.

In recent years, scientific methods of bio- and geoarchaeology have become increasingly important for archaeological research. Political changes since the 1990s have reshaped the archaeological community. At the same time environmental topics have gained importance in modern society, but the debate lacks an historical understanding. Regarding medieval rural archaeology, we need to ask how this influences our archaeological research on medieval settlements, and how ecological approaches fit into the self-concept of medieval archaeology as a primarily historical discipline. Based mainly on a background in German medieval archaeology, this article calls attention to more complex ecological research questions. Medieval village formation and the late medieval crisis are taken as examples to sketch some hypotheses and research questions. The perspective of a village ecosystem helps bring together economic aspects, human ecology and environmental history. There are several implications for archaeological theory as well as for archaeological practice. Traditional approaches from landscape archaeology are insufficient to understand the changes within village ecosystems. We need to consider social aspects and subjective recognition of the environment by past humans as a crucial part of human–nature interaction. Use of the perspective of village ecosystems as a theoretical background offers a way to examine individual historical case studies with close attention to human agency. Thinking in terms of human ecology and environmental history raises awareness of some interrelations that are crucial to understanding past societies and cultural change.

Two new series of radiocarbon dates on human bones from passage graves in the Falbygden area in south-western Sweden are presented. It has long been nearly axiomatic that dolmens appeared earlier than passage graves, but the new dates indicate taht both types of megalithic grave were introduced at the same time in the later part of the early Neolithic. This also means that the oldest types vary between different regions. In Denmark, the oldest type of megalithic grave is the domens, while passage graves were built from the beginning in Falbygden.

Sami are indigenous people of Northern Fennoscandia. Some Sami offering sites have been used for over a thousand years. During this time, the offering traditions have changed and various people have started using the places based on different motivations. Present day archaeological finds give evidence of both continuing traditions and new meanings attached to these sites, as well as to sites that were probably not originally used for rituals in the Sami ethnic religion. In some cases, the authenticity of the place seems to lie in the stories and current beliefs more than in a historical continuity or any specifically sacred aspects of the topography or nature it is situated in. Today's new users include, for example, local (Sami) people, tourists, and neo-pagans. This paper discusses what informs these users, what identifies certain locations as offering sites, and what current users believe their relationship to these places should be. What roles do scholarly traditions, heritage tourism, and internal culture have in (re)defining Sami offering sites and similarly what roles do ‘appropriate’ rituals have in ascribing meaning to particular places? How do we mediate wishes for multivocality with our professional opinions when it comes to defining sacredness?

Scholars of Roman archaeology, epigraphy, and history are increasingly discussing urban maintenance and waste disposal, but the impact of these phenomena on the archaeological record remains largely understudied. The presence of waste disposal systems in Roman towns entails that a large part of what was discarded was periodically removed from the urban area. This in turn implies that whole historical periods may be underrepresented by the finds recovered within the city. This aspect can be apprehended through the post-excavation analysis of the House of Titus Macer in Aquileia, whose mid-imperial phase, during which the domus was inhabited and regularly maintained, is poorly represented. What has been observed suggests that great caution must be exercised when using data collected within urban sites to draw conclusions on ancient economic trends. To tackle this problem, our research agendas should target large extra moenia dumps more frequently.

This paper explores the nature and chronology of La Tène and early Roman unenclosed agglomerations in central-eastern France. It has been prompted by the discovery of a c. 115 ha La Tène D2b/Augustan (c. 50 BC to AD 15) site close to Bibracte in the Morvan, located around the source of the River Yonne. This complex provides a new perspective on the chronology and role of Late La Tène and early Roman unenclosed settlements, adding further complexity to the story of the development of Late La Tène oppida. It indicates that these ‘agglomerations’ followed remarkably varied chronological trajectories, raising important issues concerning the nature of landscape and social change at the end of the Iron Age.

This article seeks to clarify the reason for the flourishing of daggers during the first millennia of metal use in Europe. Flint daggers, usually characterized as direct copies of contemporary metal blades, circulated widely from around 4000 cal BC to 1500 cal BC in different parts of Europe. Among the best studied and most well-known flint dagger varieties are the early second millennium cal BC fishtail-handled varieties made in southern Scandinavia which are universally described as skeuomorphs of Central European metal-hilted daggers. In this paper, their putative skeuomorphism is re-evaluated through a close technological and contextual analysis, and a new way of conceiving of the relationship between fishtail flint daggers and metal-hilted daggers is proposed. Like most of the other widely circulating flint dagger types in Neolithic Europe, fishtail and metal-hilted daggers are produced through the application of specialized/standardized production processes and demonstrate a desire to cultivate special and perhaps circumscribed technologies on the part of the people who made and used them. This shared technological background is identified as the root of the ‘dagger idea’ which emerges in Europe at this period. Daggers, in any material, are identified as ‘boundary objects’ – things which bridge social boundaries, allowing people with different backgrounds to recognize similar values and ways of life in each other's cultures and which, consequently, facilitate communication and exchange, in this case of metal and of the technological concepts which were part of its adoption.

Thirty-six Atlantic flesh-hooks are documented, classified and discussed after critical evaluation of previously identified examples and the addition of new ones. A chronological progression is shown from the more simple classes to the more complex from 1300 to 800 cal BC, but even the latter examples begin as early as c.1100 cal BC. Although highly distinctive, the Atlantic series derives ultimately from similar hooked instruments to the east and newly recognized Sicilian examples introduce an alternative path of dissemination from the more usually accepted intermediary route of the Urnfield culture. The rarity of flesh-hooks is striking and understanding of their social role needs to take into account not only their marked individuality in terms of technological construction or iconographic features, but also their relationship to other contemporary prestige feasting gear. The distributions of flesh-hooks and rotary spits are mutually exclusive over most of Atlantic Europe; thus, not only did they function differently at a practical level, but also at an ideological one. On the other hand, flesh-hooks and cauldrons have very similar distributions but they have a paucity of direct associations. Rather than implying a limited functional relationship, this is interpreted as resulting from their different symbolic meanings and thus different depositional practices. The zoomorphic imagery encountered on Atlantic spits and occasionally on flesh-hooks is found to be unique to each instrument and thus seen to contrast with that of the Urnfield world, suggesting the signalling of tribal or clan identity rather than an over-arching symbolism.

Ancient DNA from Yersinia pestis has been identified in skeletons at four urban burial grounds in Cambridge, England, and at a nearby rural cemetery. Dating to between ad 1349 and 1561, these represent individuals who died of plague during the second pandemic. Most come from normative individual burials, rather than mass graves. This pattern represents a major advance in archaeological knowledge, shifting focus away from a few exceptional discoveries of mass burials to what was normal practice in most medieval contexts. Detailed consideration of context allows the authors to identify a range of burial responses to the second pandemic within a single town and its hinterland. This permits the creation of a richer and more varied narrative than has previously been possible.

This paper addresses the way in which social identity is articulated through the body at death and linked up with cycles of gift-giving and the architecture of tombs during the Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age in eastern Yorkshire. The dynamics of funerary rites are explored and longer-term historical changes in the archaeological record are interpreted in terms of modifications to these ‘everyday’ dynamics. Grave goods, seen as part of a network of gift-giving, articulate this process by closing/initiating debts in the course of death which threatens to rupture this network. In a later transformation, however, different practices involving grave goods serve to marginalise death from strategies for the maintenance of social identity.

With the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Roman Empire, the different societies in the north, north-west, north-east, east, and centre were grouped into the same province, Hispania Tarraconensis. This article sets out to assess whether this new, Roman, territorial organization affected previous animal husbandry and hunting practices. The taxonomic and osteometric study of faunal remains from ninety-four sites dated between the fifth century bc and third century ad provides an overview of animal husbandry and hunting before and after the Roman conquest. It shows that important changes took place and that this province was differentially exploited in terms of animal husbandry.

This article examines the cultural and social dynamics of a multi-ethnic medieval town. Taking the lower town of Tallinn as a case study, this paper identifies the major urban ethnic groups living in the town and discusses their co-existence, self-definition, and processes of categorization. It explores ambiguities arising from daily interactions in the shared physical landscape of the town, such as material exchanges, and the development of new technological solutions, and the simultaneous insistence on maintenance of sharp inter-group boundaries. As material culture plays a significant role in the negotiation of identities and in visualizing sameness and difference, emphasis is placed on the ways objects were used in the daily lives of Tallinn's multi-ethnic communities.

The settlement record of the Neolithic of the northern Alpine foreland is used to address the question of what difference having high-resolution chronology — in this case principally provided by dendrochronology — makes to the kinds of narrative we seek to write about the Neolithic. In a search for detailed histories, three kinds of scale are examined. The longer-term development of cultural patterns and boundaries is found to correlate very imprecisely with the character and architecture of settlements. Individual houses and settlements were generally short-lived, suggesting considerable fluidity in social relations at the local level. Greater continuity can be found in the landscape, perhaps involving more than individual communities. We argue that the particular history of the northern Alpine foreland is best understood by interweaving multiple temporal scales, an approach that will need to be extended to other case studies.

The aim of this research is to compare the cloth cultures of Europe and Egypt in the Bronze Age and New Kingdom. The comparison focuses on the fourteenth century cal BC and includes four geographically separate areas, including the oak coffin burials of southern Scandinavia, the Hallstatt salt mines of central Europe, Late Minoan Crete, and the tombs and towns of the later Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. The comparative approach can bring insights even when applied to unconnected cultures or regions. However, in this study I concentrate on a restricted chronological period and areas that were connected, directly or indirectly, by widespread networks of trade or exchange. The concept of cloth cultures is used to include both textiles and animal skins as these were closely related materials in the prehistoric past. Information was gathered according to the following categories: raw materials, including textile fibre, and species of skins; fabric structure and thread count (only for textiles); decoration and finish; and use and context. From this study, it is possible to recognize the universally shared principles of cloth cultures and the great versatility and creativity in the regional cloth cultures of the Bronze Age.

This article seeks to demonstrate the permanent character of at least parts of the marketplace in Ribe (Denmark) from the first decades of its existence at the beginning of the eighth century. As with other early medieval emporia in northern Europe, it has been debated whether the marketplace was a permanent or seasonal site, the conclusion generally being that it would not have become permanently occupied until the AD 780s–790s. Although other markers of ‘urbanness’ can be found in the archaeological evidence from eighth-century Ribe, permanency is here considered as a decisive argument for its definition. Indeed, it is believed that it is through year-round, long-lasting occupation that a distinctively un-rural daily life could take shape. The material from the excavations conducted in 1985–1986 at Sct Nicolajgade 8 forms the empirical basis for this reassessment. By integrating artefacts in the contextual interpretation of the well-stratified deposits that characterize the archaeology of the marketplace, it is possible to identify several markers of permanency (site foundation, domestic life, and houses). Among them, particular focus is put on houses, whose presence at the site has been the object of controversy in previous research. By reconsidering the evidence and by comparing it to house finds from contemporary urban sites in northwestern Europe, former statements about the presence of houses at the marketplace in Ribe are challenged.

The deposition of huge amounts of copper and bronze items is one of the major changes in ritual which distinguishes the European Bronze Age from previous and later periods. A macroeconomic approach has been chosen for characterizing two transitional phases in Central Europe: The beginning of Early Bronze Age and the formation of Late Bronze Age civilization. Both are characterized by new features on two levels: ritual practices and the organisation of exchange. The general acceptance of copper and bronze for a variety of new functions (medium of exchange, symbols of rank, votive offerings) promoted increased demand. Regional response led to technological progress in sulphide copper smelting which expanded continuously. A crash of the Early Bronze Age cultural system in the eastern part of Central Europe is suspected to have completely altered the situation. The following second phase brought a new cultural network and changed the attitude towards bronze. It promoted an incipient economy of demand using weighed metal as a multiple-purpose money. The circulation of scrap metal and ingots, both graded according to weight or size, are relevant indicators. Fragments of ox-hide ingots from southern Germany underscore the wide range of interacting regional systems.

This article presents a summary of new evidence for the Mesolithic in the Dinaric Alps of Montenegro. The region is one of the best areas in south-eastern Europe to study Early Holocene foragers and the nature of the transition to Neolithic lifeways at the end of the seventh and the beginning of the sixth millennium cal bc thanks to the existence of biodiverse landscapes and numerous karstic features. We argue that harpoons found at two different sites in this regional context represent a curated technology that has its roots in a local Mesolithic cultural tradition. The continued use of this standardized hunting tool kit in the Neolithic provides an important indication about the character of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition. We also use this regional case study to address wider questions concerning the visibility and modes of Mesolithic occupation in south-eastern Europe as a whole.

In 1904, a Viking Age ship was found and excavated in Oseberg, on the west side of the Oslo Fjord, south of Oslo, Norway. The skeletal remnants of two females buried onboard were anthropologically examined during the inter-war years. Questions surrounding their identities have prompted much speculation, and many people like to believe that one of the women could be Queen Åsa, the grandmother of Norway's first king. When the skeletons were reburied in 1948, a few smaller pieces were held back and stored in the Anatomical Institute at the University of Oslo. Those fragments have now been radiocarbon dated at 1220±40 and 1230±40 BP. Their similar δ13 = −21.6‰/−21.0‰ indicates that they both were nourished by a diet consisting primarily of terrestrial food and only to a lesser degree by fish. To answer the question of whether the two women were related, Dr Tom Gilbert at the Panum Institute in Copenhagen managed to obtain a DNA profile from the younger of the two, which profile indicates that her sample falls into the haplogroup U7. This finding is interesting, as this haplogroup is nearly absent in modern Europeans but is common in Iranians. Perhaps this could mean that the young lady's ancestors came from the district around the Black Sea, as Snorri Sturlusson notes in his Saga. Unfortunately, the bones from the older woman were too contaminated to provide a clear profile. Because there is reason to fear that the reburied skeletal material will slowly disintegrate in the coffins, some scholars desired that the mound be reopened in order to save the remains and to determine whether it is possible to obtain another DNA profile before such an opportunity is lost.

An extensive high-resolution geophysical survey covering 2 km2 was undertaken to the north of Stonehenge in June and October 2011. The survey is important in providing, for the first time, abundant detail on the form and structure of the Stonehenge Cursus, including the recognition of entrances in both of the long sides. Much additional information about the internal form of round barrows in the Cursus Round Barrow Cemetery, the course of the Avenue, the course of the so-called Gate Ditch, and numerous tracks and early roads crossing the landscape was recorded. A series of previously unrecognized features were identified: a pit-arc or cove below a barrow on the west side of King Barrow Ridge, a square-shaped feature surrounded by pits on the east side of Stonehenge Bottom, and a linear ditch on the same solstical axis, and parallel to, the southern section of the Stonehenge Avenue. An extensive scatter of small metallic anomalies marking the position of camping grounds associated with the Stonehenge Free Festival in the late 1970s and early 1980s raise interesting conservation and management issues.

Taking German Siedlungsarchäologie as its starting point and background this article attempts to turn from a critique of traditional approaches in settlement archaeology to a new definition of landscape and a new apporach in landscape archaeology. Landscape is defined via its constituting parts: space, place, and boundary. From here a theory of landscape is developed as the plenum which is at the same time a passive social and economic resource and active in structuring perception, in socializing, in giving meaning to the world. Key concepts in this approach are therefore experience and perception, or making and seeing.