Anders Högberg is a Swedish archaeologist whose research offers an original perspective on prehistoric flint technology but he has also been directing some innovative projects in archaeological teaching and learning. In this interview I am exploring some of the ideas that have been guiding his work in both realms. Although part of the interview is about work conducted in the past, equal weight is given to new opportunities and developments that affect the future of archaeology. Anders Högberg's ideas cannot be said to be typical or representative for any larger community, but he is operating in very specific historic circumstances that are shared to a greater or lesser extent by many other archaeologists living and working today. This interview documents the particular views on material culture, public archaeology, and the field of archaeology more generally that were held by one European archaeologist in 2008.

This article summarizes and discusses recent research into the Danish Bell Beaker phenomenon c.2350–1950 BC. Its focus is on the meaning of material culture here represented by Bell Beakers and bifacial lanceolate flint daggers, both seen from a social perspective. The Bell Beaker pottery is known to have had a very wide distribution. However, questions remain as to why Bell Beakers were only adopted in some regions and what meaning this special pottery had? Similarly the Danish type I daggers, which were manufactured within the context of the Danish Bell Beaker phenomenon in the northern parts of Jutland, had a wide distribution. Daggers of this type, which in general denote male identity, were exported in vast quantities, especially to Norway and the western parts of Sweden. In both case studies the evidence from a Danish Bell Beaker settlement site excavated in recent years – Bejsebakken – plays a major part.

Middle Bronze Age Hungary provides an opportunity to investigate prehistoric ‘landscapes of the body’, as perceptions and attitudes to the body affect burial practices and other body practices, including the wearing of dress and the use of pottery. This article explores the cultural diversity expressed by the roughly contemporary and neighbouring groups of the Encrusted Ware, Vatya, and Füzesabony Cultures. Amongst others, differences between the three groups are articulated through their burials (scattered cremations, urn burials as well as crouched inhumations) and the diverse use of material culture. At the same time, despite formal differences in the burials, the analysis shows that cremations and inhumations in this area share a number of characteristics, and it is the other practices through which the dead body is manipulated that are the primary means of expressing regional differences. Simultaneously, whilst being a means of formulating understandings of the deceased body, burial practices are also tied into subtle differences in lifestyles, daily routines and regional subsistence strategies, as the landscapes of the living provide metaphors, know-how and practical understanding.

This article proposes an alternative way to explore a series of definitions, concepts, meanings and, sometimes, polysemies of island worlds, by using mainly ancient Greek literary sources, diachronic island names, and their etymologies, epithets, and other systems of labelling and describing them. It argues that such evidence literally and metaphorically involves mirrors and maps, and transcribes important parameters of an eloquent cognitive geography, forged from long-established knowledge and empirical wisdom, and relevant to modern scientific insights, including archaeological ones. If systematically investigated and thoroughly deciphered, this may disclose numerous meaningful elements of the insular topoi we study; and thus enrich significantly our efforts to conceive them as ‘total’ natural and cultural geographies – or ‘insularities’ – through time. Here, a limited number of cited examples illustrate a few, and mainly physical, aspects of their morphological, geological, topographic and other environmental traits – only tentatively touching upon their human-made landscapes. All the same, the information this provides may be also relevant, even if indirectly, to the islands' cultural environments. Furthermore, this approach can certainly be expanded to cover various other general and specific insular properties – including their inhabitants and diachronic monuments.

This article seeks to illustrate the decisive contribution of the sea environment and particularly the sea-surface circulation (which is determined by the circulation of sea currents and the winds) to the early growth of seafaring and maritime communications in the prehistoric Aegean. Given the means and techniques of navigation in that era, an attempt is made to reveal a dense network of sea routes which vessels could follow through the Aegean, in order to facilitate their trip. These sea routes are primarily based on environmental data and are confirmed concurrently by archaeological evidence and data of ancient sources. Therefore, it is evident that these sea routes played an important role not only in the early inhabitation of the Aegean islands and the foundation of coastal settlements throughout the Aegean area from the sixth millennium BC to the end of the third millennium BC, but in the development of the Aegean civilization during earlier prehistoric times as well.

The association of Tomb II at Vergina, Greece, with Philip II initiated a debate concerning the use of barrel-vaults in Macedonian tombs. The accepted theory at the time held that, since no Macedonian tomb was dated prior to the last quarter of the 4th century BC, Macedonians copied the barrel-vault from the Persians after the military campaign of Alexander the Great in Asia, and therefore Tomb II should be dated to a later period. After an intense dispute, fresh archaeological evidence proved that this theory was false. This article examines the ways we structure knowledge in archaeology from hypothesis to theory that can develop to consensus, and how later consensus exercises a conservative influence on the production of new knowledge. New evidence that contradicts consensual theories is approached with stronger hostility and is confronted with higher demands of confirmation. I suggest that the same amount of scrutiny should be applied to the established theories, which are not unchangeable representations of reality, but conventionally shared property of archaeologists.

This article explores the proposition that the archaeological record of small, remote islands with scarce resources reflects the intensity of long-distance interaction in prehistory, taking as an example the Adriatic offshore islands. The best represented periods, the early Neolithic and the end of the Copper Age, correspond to the times of large-scale stylistic unity, the former, of the Mediterranean Impressed Wares, and the latter, of Bell Beakers. During those periods, radical innovations were introduced over vast areas of Europe, first, a new subsistence economy, and second, a different kind of social organization. In both cases, long-distance interaction would have played a crucial role.

Palaeoenvironmental data and vegetation histories derived from local datasets are examined in the light of Early Neolithic agro-pastoral activities and resource exploitation in the southeastern Adriatic Sea. Palynological evidence is summarized from three locations within the study area and compared to contemporaneous archaeological evidence. Coastal marine archaeological assemblages in the study area indicate that Early Neolithic inhabitants expended significant energy on terrestrial and marine hunting and gathering, and long distance maritime travel, well after the regional introduction of agro-pastoralism.