In Iberia, ditched enclosures appeared during the Copper Age (late fourth to third millennium bc). These sites are linked by their circular organization, communal labour investment, and complex temporality, but vary markedly in their distribution, function, and scale. Though archaeological attention has focused on ‘mega-sites’, an assessment of small-scale enclosures in marginal environments is key to understanding the social dynamics that facilitated their emergence. Here, the authors present results from Los Melgarejos (Getafe, Spain), the first Iberian Chalcolithic enclosure (3 ha) to be extensively documented, with all structures and seven per cent of the enclosure ditches excavated. Bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, isotope analyses (δ13Cco, δ13Cap, δ15N), and radiocarbon dating are employed to compare lived experiences of diet, stress, trauma, and funerary ritual at small- and large-scale enclosures. Comparisons with the mega-site of Marroquíes reveal similarities in lived experience and ritual practice, as well as regional differences in dietary isotopes, highlighting the utility of multiscalar comparisons for understanding prehistoric lifeways.

In the last few decades, the discovery of large ditched enclosures in Iberia has revealed the diversity and complexity of deposition and manipulation of human bone remains. Alongside traditional ritual burials (mainly megalithic tombs and hypogea), fragmented and scattered human bones mixed with other kinds of material culture began to appear in many features. This is the case for Ditch 5 at Marroquíes, which offers an excellent opportunity to explore this ritual behaviour. Based on a multi-proxy approach, three main conclusions can be drawn: 1) the skeletal elements present show deliberate selection of particular categories of bones; 2) depositional episodes included the remains of people who died at different points in time and were subject to different taphonomic processes, and 3) mobility patterns indicate that all individuals, with one possible exception, were local. The movement and manipulations of body parts may reflect the active role of people after death as social and symbolic elements that retain agency and capacity for action.

This paper considers the shift from the practice of collective burials to individual (or double) burials in western Europe at the end of the Neolithic/Copper Age, around 2500–2000 BC, through the lens of a particular mortuary site—the artificial cave of Bolores (Torres Vedras, Portugal). It suggests that the practices involved in making and using collective burials played an important role in this transformation towards increasing social differentiation. It explores how a focus on materiality at different scales, both temporal and spatial, might contribute new insights into geographically widespread and relatively co-synchronous social change.

This paper considers the early copper and copper-alloy metallurgy of the entire Alpine region. It introduces a new approach to the interpretation of chemical composition data sets, which has been applied to a comprehensive regional database for the first time. The Alpine Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age each have distinctive patterns of metal use, which can be interpreted through changes in mining, social choice, and major landscape features such as watersheds and river systems. Interestingly, the Alpine range does not act as a north-south barrier, as major differences in composition tend to appear on an east-west axis. Central among these is the prevalence of tin-bronze in the western Alps compared to the east. This ‘tin-line’ is discussed in terms of metal flow through the region and evidence for a deeply rooted geographical division that runs through much of Alpine prehistory.

Much research has been carried out on identifying gendered iconography on statue-menhirs. This paper seeks to develop this perspective by considering the broader body concepts. Body concepts are of interest to archaeologists because they are closely connected to issues of sex, gender, and age. By investigating stone sculptures, however, we are looking at an ideological view of the body that was produced by reducing the stone from its natural form into a statue-menhir. The presence of bodily features on the statue-menhirs suggests that it was important to construct a body, and that certain aspects of the body were chosen to be represented, either through the size and shape of the stone or iconography, while others were neglected. We propose this is a significant means by which stones were made into bodies and gendered beings. To investigate body concepts, we pose two questions: how was a statue-menhir body made, and how was it gendered? By following the reduction sequence of the stone as the technique of production, we investigate which bodily features were important in constructing a body and in gendering it. We do this through analysing and comparing three regional examples of anthropomorphic statue-menhirs: (1) The Lunigiana groups A and B in northwestern Tuscany and eastern-most Liguria, (2) the Atesino group in Trentino-Alto Adige, and (3) the Sion Type A in the Swiss Valais and the Aosta Style I in northern Italy. Although there is a shared statue-menhir tradition in the three regions and beyond, the observations in this paper suggest that the bodily gender categories were negotiated regionally.

This study seeks to discuss the origins and early spread of metal technology in the central Mediterranean region. Neolithic and Copper Age evidence of metal-working and metal-using is first reviewed. It is claimed in particular that copper tools were first used, and probably also made, south of the Alps in the late Neolithic, and that complex polymetallic metallurgy developed in the early Copper Age after a short-lived intensification phase in the final Neolithic. In the second section, current models explaining the emergence of metallurgy in this region are then discussed, and a new proposal is put forward. This claims that metal technology, coming from eastern Europe, was imported into the whole of the east-central alpine region in the third quarter of the fifth millennium BC. Thence, it would have swiftly spread throughout northern Italy, central Italy, and Sardinia, and would have reached Corsica, southern Italy, and Sicily somewhat later. Finally, it is argued that the Copper Age metalworking communities dwelling in the western part of the central Mediterranean, and especially those located in west-central Italy, would have played a key role in transmitting knowledge of extractive metallurgy further west in the late fourth millennium BC.

Ceramics were subjected to organic residue analysis from two collections: a series of middle Copper Age (Bodrogkeresztúr) vessels hitherto known as ‘milk jugs’, curated in the Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Budapest, and a collection of early Baden (Boleráz) vessels from the recently discovered settlement of Gyo”r-Szabadrét-domb, in western Hungary. The aim of the analyses was to establish whether or not these vessels, often associated with milk based on typological criteria, were actually used to process, store or serve dairy products. The results of the analyses revealed that no dairy products could be securely identified in the so-called ‘milk jugs’. Nevertheless dairy products were identified in other vessel types.