This article examines the evidence for fragmentation practices on Middle–Late Bronze Age (c. 1600–700 bc) settlement sites in Ireland by looking at two kinds of material: human remains, both burnt and non-burnt, and quern stones. It highlights evidence for the manipulation of non-burnt skulls through ‘de-facing’ and the potential retention of cranial and other fragments for ‘burial’ in settlements. It also explores the more difficult task of determining whether incomplete skeletal representation in cremated remains can be interpreted as deliberate fragmentation, and how the context of deposition must be considered. Human agency in relation to the fragmentation patterns of querns is also examined to understand whether the act of breaking these objects was intentional or unintended and if depositing them was symbolic or simply fortuitous. By discussing this evidence, I hope to contribute to the argument that the funerary and settlement spheres in later prehistoric Ireland were becoming increasingly intertwined.

Two co-authored articles in Nature (Haak et al., 2015; Allentoft et al., 2015) caused a sensation. They revealed genetically the mass migration of steppe Yamnaya culture people in the Early Bronze Age to central and northern Europe. The authors considered this event as the basis of the spread of Indo-European languages. In response, the Russian archaeologist, Leo S. Klejn, expresses critical remarks on the genetic inference, and in particular its implications for the problem of the origins of Indo-European languages. These remarks were shown to the authors and they present their objections. Klejn, however, has come to the conclusion that the authors’ objections do not assuage his doubts. He analyses these objections in a further response.

New human aDNA studies have once again brought to the forefront the role of mobility and migration in shaping social phenomena in European prehistory, processes that recent theoretical frameworks in archaeology have downplayed as an outdated explanatory notion linked to traditional culture history. While these new genetic data have provided new insights into the population history of prehistoric Europe, they are frequently interpreted and presented in a manner that recalls aspects of traditional culture-historical archaeology that were rightly criticized through the 1970s to the 1990s. They include the idea that shared material culture indicates shared participation in the same social group, or culture, and that these cultures constitute one-dimensional, homogeneous, and clearly bounded social entities. Since the new aDNA data are used to create vivid narratives describing ‘massive migrations’, the so-called cultural groups are once again likened to human populations and in turn revitalized as external drivers for socio-cultural change. Here, I argue for a more nuanced consideration of molecular data that more explicitly incorporates anthropologically informed mobility and migration models.

Epistemology and research history significantly shape scientific understandings, debates, and publication strategies, albeit often implicitly. In Palaeolithic archaeology in particular, these factors are rarely examined in depth. Here, we present a historiographic analysis of how research history has influenced the debate concerning the possible Neanderthal occupation in Scandinavia. We provide a qualitative discussion of this contentious research field as well as a citation network analysis that visualizes, quantifies, and hence clarifies some of the underlying conceptual, geographic, and temporal patterns in the development of the debate. Our results show significant regionalism as a structuring principle driving this debate as well as a basic rift between professional and avocational archaeologists in how they interpret and publish the available data. We also identify a troubling lack of cross-referencing, even when taking language barriers into account. We argue that the debate about Neanderthal occupation in Scandinavia has been shaped (negatively) by the following phenomena: regionalism, nationalism, lack of research and researchers, non-cumulative work, publication in Nordic languages, science by press release/sensationalism, and a lamentable trend towards arguments ad hominem. In order to take this research field forward, we propose an epistemological turn towards a cumulative, international, and hypothesis-driven agenda based on renewed research efforts and novel citizen science tools.

Crises are thresholds in human history, often marking substantial transformations in societies. Crises, however, are not instants in time. They start, unfold, and develop in a process that is often traumatic for social systems, with outcomes ranging from catastrophe to complete recovery. In this article, catastrophic models are employed to understand a non-catastrophic outcome: the complete recovery that nuragic Sardinia experienced after a long crisis, caused in the first place by unsustainable strategies of territorial expansion. Starting from the premises of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, it is argued that the transformation of nuragic society was the best way of avoiding the constraints that the social structure imposed on the perspective of a sustainable growth. The study is based on a geostatistical analysis of a large sample of settlements, and it attempts to quantify population growth ratios for the Late Bronze Age.

Inspired by the biographical approach to the study of material culture, a radiocarbon dating programme was undertaken to explore the chronology and temporality of the megalithic monuments in south-eastern Iberia. Instead of one or two dates per tomb, the normal way of approaching this complex issue, we carried out a complete radiocarbon dating series of single tombs based on human remains. We focused our attention on four tholos-type tombs in the cemetery of El Barranquete (Almería, Spain). According to the new radiocarbon series modelled in a Bayesian framework, four main conclusions can be drawn: that the cemetery shows a very long period of funerary activity, which began in the late fourth millennium and ended in the last centuries of the second millennium cal bc; that continuity of ritual practices attained an unexpected importance during the Bronze Age; that interments, which fall into cultural periods that would be unthinkable if only the typological properties of the grave goods were considered, occurred; and that each tomb had a complex and very different biography.

This article is focused on the deliberate orientation of longhouses observed within the wide area of the Linear Pottery culture (LBK) and succeeding cultures (post-LBK). Spatial analysis is based on the assemblage of 1546 buildings, whose purpose it was to attempt to cover the whole area of longhouse distribution. Despite variability, which considerably increased over time, the alignment of house entrances towards the south or south-east was observed. The widely accepted theory of house alignment towards the ‘ancestral homeland’ is therefore challenged by a new hypothesis, which sees orientation governed by the celestial path of the sun. Using 3D-modelling of light-and-shadow and solar impact, sun alignment is discussed as an integral element of the longhouse concept already present by the time of its genesis. The tendency of aligning longhouse entrances towards the east, which emerged during the LBK expansion westwards, is considered to be a regionally limited pattern, as no analogical shift was observed in the eastern areas of longhouse distribution.

Human representations are one of the most important groups of depictions in rock art in southern Scandinavia. These humans have long been discussed as complete, stable, and temporally-fixed images. The results of a new survey challenge this view. Recording rock art with Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) enabled us to discern a possible sequence of production of individual human representations, their bodily features, and associated objects. Figures from a rock art site in Finntorp (Tanum, Sweden) will be used as an example. Differences in the dimensions of the engraved lines, the chronology of the depicted objects, and the placement of body parts suggest that several individuals may have been involved in making human representations on the rocks, and that their appearance as complete figures is the result of repeated transformations. The results presented demonstrate that Scandinavian rock art is not stable in time. We suggest that rock art is best understood as the creation of communities over time, which enables them to engage with the past by transforming the rocks.

As the first European to claim that he travelled to China and back, Marco Polo is a celebrated traveller who described the multicultural society of Eurasia in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries ad. However, his famed account, the Travels of Marco Polo, contains many unsolved mysteries which have generated discussion among historians, while an archaeological approach has been even less convincing because the material that may link to Marco Polo is very rare. A recent re-analysis of Chinese ceramics from a wide geographical area ranging from southern China to the Indian Ocean provides some archaeological support: it suggests that a Chinese porcelain jar housed in the Treasury of San Marco in Venice dates to the era of Marco Polo and is associated with his journey to China.

This article starts from the observation that the social persona of ‘specialist’ is an important analytical unit in archaeology, typically to model social (craft) organization from a Marxist perspective. This has caused this concept to solidify around economic rather than material concerns. I argue that the ‘specialist’ has become too much an ideational concept that is no longer accurately rooted in archaeological artefacts. Hence, through a brief exploration of Early Bronze Age axes, my aim is to highlight technical skill and use this to reveal different levels of material specialization. On this basis, I suggest moving beyond the umbrella term of ‘specialist’ and using four, more precise analytical units that are better equipped to accommodate the qualitative diversity of material cultures: the amateur, showing basic knowledge but little refinement; the craftsperson, producing well-made practical objects; the master, striving for perfection and setting the norm; and the virtuoso, taking risks in creating original and unique products.

In the context of unanswered questions about the nature and development of the Late Neolithic in Orkney, we present a summary of research up to 2015 on the major site at the Ness of Brodgar, Mainland Orkney, concentrating on the impressive buildings. Finding sufficient samples for radiocarbon dating was a considerable challenge. There are indications, from both features and finds, of activity pre-dating the main set of buildings exposed so far by excavation. Forty-six dates on thirty-nine samples are presented and are interpreted in a formal chronological framework. Two models are presented, reflecting different possible readings of the sequence. Both indicate that piered architecture was in use by the thirtieth century cal bc and that the massive Structure 10, not the first building in the sequence, was also in existence by the thirtieth century cal bc. Activity associated with piered architecture came to an end (in Model 2) around 2800 cal bc. Midden and rubble infill followed. After an appreciable interval, the hearth at the centre of Structure 10 was last used around 2500 cal bc, perhaps the only activity in an otherwise abandoned site. The remains of some 400 or more cattle were deposited over the ruins of Structure 10: in Model 2, in the mid-twenty-fifth century cal bc, but in Model 1 in the late twenty-fourth or twenty-third century cal bc. The chronologies invite comparison with the near-neighbour of Barnhouse, in use from the later thirty-second to the earlier twenty-ninth century cal bc, and the Stones of Stenness, probably erected by the thirtieth century cal bc. The Ness, including Structure 10, appears to have outlasted Barnhouse, but probably did not endure as long in its primary form as previously envisaged. The decay and decommissioning of the Ness may have coincided with the further development of the sacred landscape around it; but precise chronologies for other sites in the surrounding landscape are urgently required. The spectacular feasting remains of several hundred cattle deposited above Structure 10 may belong to a radically changing world, coinciding (in Model 2) with the appearance of Beakers nationally, but it was arguably the, by now, mythic status of that building which drew people back to it.

The layout and development of field systems may reflect significant aspects of prehistoric societies such as agricultural strategies, use rights and inheritance practices. This article presents a method for analysing the developments of field systems in their entirety, based on a hierarchical sorting of field boundaries whose intersections have been used to define relations of equivalence and subordination. The formalized relational expression of the field system is analysed using a stochastic optimization algorithm. The method was successfully applied to three Danish Celtic fields from the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age, making it possible to identify five principles behind the layout: primary boundaries (probably established at community level), major parcels (administered at a household level), structured subdivisions (presumably related to inheritance), irregular subdivisions, and small-scale expansions of the field systems. The initial degree of regularity of the field systems seems to have influenced later modifications.

There are at least four wooden intertidal platforms, also known as marine crannogs, in the Firth of Clyde, on the west coast of Scotland. The interpretation of these sites partly depends on their dating and, if coeval, they could point to the presence of a native maritime hub. Furthermore, the spatial coincidence with the terminus of the Antonine Wall has led to speculation about the role they may have played in Roman-native interaction during the occupation of southern Scotland in the early first millennium cal ad. Hence, a better absolute chronology is essential to evaluate whether the marine crannogs were contemporary with one another and whether they related to any known historic events. This article presents results of a wiggle-match dating project aimed at resolving these uncertainties at two of the sites in question, Dumbuck and Erskine Bridge crannogs. The results show that the construction of these sites pre-date direct Roman influence in Scotland. Furthermore, the results indicate that the two sites were built at least 300 years apart, forcing us to consider the possibility that they may have functioned in very different historical contexts. Other findings include technical observations on the fine shape of the radiocarbon calibration curve near the turn of the first millennia bc/ad and potential evidence for persistent contamination in decayed and exposed sections of waterlogged alder.

This article explores the importance of the Derbyshire antiquarian Thomas Bateman in the context of mid-nineteenth-century debates about ethnology, craniology, and archaeological chronology. New information on the relationship between Bateman and the authors of Crania Britannica, Joseph Barnard Davis and John Thurnam, is brought to light thanks to unpublished archival material from the Sheffield Museums and the Royal Anthropological Institute. Crania Britannica was the first publication of British national skull types from prehistory to the Anglo-Saxon period. The publication employed the techniques of craniology—the systematic study of head types—as a chronological tool. Indeed, craniology is often seen as the mechanism by which the Three Age System was initially received in Britain and Ireland. Here, Bateman's involvement in the publication and his own theories on the development of the past with regard to cranial sequencing and archaeological chronology are explored in greater detail.

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.

Current knowledge of the beginnings of crop cultivation in Lithuania is based mainly on Cerealia-type pollen data supplemented by other indirect evidence such as agricultural tools. We argue that these records, predating carbonized remains of cultivated plants, are not substantial enough indicators of the early stages of agriculture in Lithuania. Here, we demonstrate that the macroremains of cultural plants that were previously reported from two Neolithic settlements in Lithuania were either mistakenly identified as domestic crops or incorrectly ascribed to the Neolithic period due to movement through the stratigraphic sequence and the absence of direct dating of cereal grains. Furthermore, we present a charred Hordeum vulgare grain from the Bronze Age settlement of Kvietiniai in western Lithuania. It was AMS-dated to 1392–1123 cal bc, and at present represents the earliest definite evidence for a crop in the eastern Baltic region. We conclude that, presently, there are no grounds to suggest that crop cultivation took place in Lithuania during the Neolithic.