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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

Two strategies for social relations are defined for the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of south-eastern Europe: enchainment and commodification. Enchained relations are based upon inalienable objects exchanged between relations, while barter relations are concerned with the re-contextualisation of exotic objects into local communities. The metaphor of fragmented artefacts is explored in relation to enchained relations, while those complete objects subject to formal deposition are interpreted as symbolising integral social relations. Fragmentation analysis conducted for a variety of materials indicates the varying potential of fired clay and metals (copper and gold) for relations based on enchainment.

The social practices surrounding fragmentation and structured/formal deposition are explored in two socia-spatial contexts - the domestic arena and the mortuary arena. Fragmentation of figurines is analysed at the late Copper Age tell of Goljamo Delcevo, in north-eastern Bulgaria. By contrast, three north-eastern Bulgarian Copper Age cemeteries are analysed to examine the extent to which material culture is used to express gendered social competition in the mortuary domain. It is proposed that the tension between enchained relations and commodification is one of the key factors in the generation of dynamic hange in the Balkan Copper Age, at the time of the Varna cemetery.

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.

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.

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?

The article reviews the usefulness of the historical–anthropological models of peasantry and Germanic Mode of Production applied to the analysis of the Castro culture (Cultura Castrexa, the Iron Age of the north-western Iberian Peninsula). A historical reconstruction of the period is developed, in which the strain between local community and familial units constitutes one of the most important agents in the process of change, according to a discourse largely based on the proposals of P. Clastres on ‘societies against the state’. A relevant role is given to different forms of violence and conflict; initially they are understood as active mechanisms in inter-community relations although later they would rather become virtual and latent elements that allow the development of a model of social relations that can be defined as a non-class ‘heroic society’.

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.

The Adriatic Sea and Balkan Peninsula were an important corridor for the spread of agriculture northwards and westwards from the Near East into Europe. Therefore, the pace and nature of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition along the Adriatic coastline has important implications for the movement of new peoples and/or ideas during one of the most eventful periods in European prehistory. We present new Early Neolithic radiocarbon and stable isotope evidence from humans and animals from the Zemunica cave site in Dalmatia, Croatia. The results show that these humans date to the earliest Neolithic in the region, and they have completely terrestrial diets, where the main protein source was most likely to have come from domesticated animals. Data are then compared to previous isotope and archaeological evidence to explore models for the spread of agriculture along the eastern Adriatic coast.

This article deals with one of the most important human needs; it summarises the poor archaeological information about basic types of drinks. Although the data both for the beginning of various types of drink as well as for their frequency are mostly insufficient in archaeology, great quantities of drinking vessels of various forms appear in the late Neolithic/Eneolithic, which allow us to identify certain types of behaviour. In particular it signals (with the aid of ethnological and historical analogies) the existence of communal drinking, a respectable social custom with important consequences: the development of the etiquette of hospitality, regulation of social relations, construction of networks of reciprocal obligations among drinkers, confirmation of the internal coherence of a community, and so on. The study of drinking has significant social, economic, and political aspects.

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 wide range of grave disturbance practices seen in Viking-age burials across Scandinavia. It argues that the much-debated reopenings at high-profile sites, notably the Norwegian ‘royal’ mounds, should be seen against a background of widespread and varied evidence for burial reworking in Scandinavia throughout the first-millennium AD and into the Middle Ages. Interventions into Viking-age graves are interpreted as disruptive, intended to derail practices of memory-creation set in motion by funerary displays and monuments. However, the reopening and reworking of burials were also mnemonic citations in their own right, using a recurrent set of practices to make heroic, mythological, and genealogical allusions. The retrieval of portable artefacts was a key element in this repertoire, and in this article I use archaeological and written sources to explore the particular concepts of ownership which enabled certain possessions to work as material citations appropriating attributes of dead persons for living claimants.