Welcome to the first issue of the European Journal of Archaeology (EJA) for 2019. In this issue, we present six articles and nine book reviews, all covering topics of European significance.
Manar Kerdy, Patricia Chiquet and Jörg Schibler review the available mammalian zooarchaeological data to enhance our understanding of changing Neolithic subsistence economies and human-environment interactions at 18 lakeside settlements in western Switzerland between 4000 and 2500 cal. bc. Large game hunting (especially of red deer) played a significant part in the faunal economy, particularly during a period of climatically-induced economic crisis in the thirty-seventh and thirty-sixth centuries cal. bc. However, husbandry predominated (especially of cattle and pigs, also of sheep and goats), with cow's milk being systematically exploited and with intensified pig-keeping greatly increasing meat production from the thirty-fourth century bc onwards. Overall, this study highlights the resilience, flexibility and strategic orientation of these Neolithic communities when it came to securing their food supply.
William Anderson and colleagues explore the human occupation of the southern Caucasus highlands through the lens of a recently surveyed, later prehistoric and medieval, complex at Varneti in southern Georgia. Sites, including the tell-like Varneti Gora occupation mound and the Varneti hillfort, were situated advantageously on a ridge between the upper Kura river valley and pasturage on the adjacent plateau. Their combined political and economic significance ensured their long-term, if episodic and mutable, occupations between c. 4800 and 600 cal. bc and again between c. ad 1000 and 1300. Future fieldwork will hopefully shed more light on the movements and flows that animated this significant place in the landscape.
Colin Quinn and colleagues present the results of their multi-scalar field project on the island of Inishark on the west coast of Ireland, where they reveal the existence of a Later Bronze Age islandscape marked by promontory-forts, roundhouses, field systems and burnt mounds, dated to c. 1500–1100 cal. bc. In interpreting these remains, they seek to connect the purportedly ‘marginal’ islanders of Inishark and other small island communities to the development of long-distance mobility and exchange systems along the Atlantic façade during the Later Bronze Age, without denying the influence of elites based at large fortified regional centres. The new archaeological data do not yet prove this connection, but do highlight the question of the degree of agency that these islanders had in the development of the larger maritime networks.
Oliver Davis compares and contrasts the occupational sequences of two of the best-known Iron Age hillforts in temperate Europe―Heuneburg, flanking the River Danube in south-western Germany, and Danebury in the chalk downland of Wessex in southern England―in order to bridge the growing gap between continental and British hillfort studies. The different trajectories of these two sites suggest that hillforts in different parts of Europe were the creation of very different Iron Age societies, while their similarities are argued to be a consequence of communities responding in similar ways to similar problems―especially social tensions resulting from the transformation of previously dispersed rural societies into increasingly enclosed and centrally controlled ones. This is a plausible model, future iterations of which will need to take greater account of economic factors.
Owen Doonan combines the results of archaeological survey work on the Sinop promontory in northern Turkey with the observations of Xenophon—the Athenian general and writer who travelled through the region—to develop a new model for indigenous Iron Age settlement, economy and cultural relations in the Pontic mountains and Black Sea coastal region of Anatolia during the mid-first millennium bc. A more complex pattern emerges, consisting of: old-established networks of dispersed indigenous settlements in the highlands with only a marginal interest in the sea; their growing economic engagement with outsiders on the coast at Sinope, which became an important Ionian colony; and a related intensification of rivalries between indigenous groups marked by the emergence of larger, fortified centres in the uplands. It might be questioned whether Xenophon's account of life on the Pontic shore actually corroborates the evidence from the upland archaeological survey, or merely fails to contradict it, but future refinements in the dating of first millennium ceramics in this region will certainly help to refine the model.
Laia Colomer discusses the complex story of the political and cultural heritage management of Born, the well-preserved archaeological site of an early eighteenth century market in Barcelona and witness to the defeat of the Catalans during the War of the Spanish Succession. (Many EAA members will remember the Born cultural centre as the venue for the reception following the opening ceremony of the annual conference in August 2018.) Colomer critically evaluates this case-study in the context of Barcelona's dynamic identity politics, the city's pioneering model of urban rebranding linked to cultural tourism, the politics of remembering and forgetting, and the marginalization of archaeologists in urban heritage management. This is a story both unique to Barcelona and one that contains salutary lessons for urban archaeology on a much wider scale.
In our reviews section, we begin with a thought-provoking evaluation of a new book on ‘environmental archaeology’ which rejects the utility of that term. Next come reviews of three thematic volumes dedicated to: children, death and burial; ritual, play and belief; then borders, boundaries and frontiers (in relation to Turkey). We then have five book reviews focussing on later prehistoric periods, regions and key sites, including Knowth in Ireland and Ayia Sotira (a Mycenaean tomb cemetery) in Greece.
If you are interested in submitting an article on any aspect of European archaeology, or have recently published a book that you would like us to review, do please get in touch with a member of our editorial team or visit us on https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-archaeology
