During excavations of the Iron Age ringfort of Sandby borg (ad 400–550), the remains of twenty-six unburied bodies were encountered inside and outside the buildings. The skeletons and the archaeological record indicate that after the individuals had died the ringfort was deserted. An osteological investigation and trauma analysis were conducted according to standard anthropological protocols. The osteological analysis identified only men, but individuals of all ages were represented. Eight individuals (31 per cent) showed evidence of perimortem trauma that was sharp, blunt, and penetrating, consistent with interpersonal violence. The location of the bodies and the trauma pattern appear to indicate a massacre rather than a battle. The ‘efficient trauma’ distribution (i.e. minimal but effective violence), the fact that the bodies were not manipulated, combined with the archaeological context, suggest that the perpetrators were numerous and that the assault was carried out effectively. The contemporary sociopolitical situation was seemingly turbulent and the suggested motive behind the massacre was to gain power and control.

Discussions of pre-Viking trade and production have for many decades focused on products made of precious metals, glass and, to some degree, iron. This is hardly surprising considering the difficulties in finding and provenancing products made of organic matter. In this article we examine gaming pieces made from bone and antler, which are not unusual in Scandinavian burials in the Vendel and Viking period (c. ad 550–1050). A special emphasis is placed on whalebone pieces that appear to dominate after around ad 550, signalling a large-scale production and exploitation of North Atlantic whale products. In combination with other goods such as bear furs, birds of prey, and an increased iron and tar production, whalebone products are part of an intensified large-scale outland exploitation and indicate strong, pre-urban trading routes across Scandinavia and Europe some 200 years before the Viking period and well before the age of the emporia.

This article presents evidence of population movements in Thessaly, Greece, during the Early Iron Age (Protogeometric period, eleventh–ninth centuries bc). The method we employed to detect non-local individuals is strontium isotope analysis (87Sr/86Sr) of tooth enamel integrated with the contextual analysis of mortuary practices and osteological analysis of the skeletal assemblage. During the Protogeometric period, social and cultural transformations occurred while society was recovering from the disintegration of the Mycenaean civilization (twelfth century bc). The analysis of the cemeteries of Voulokaliva, Chloe, and Pharsala, located in southern Thessaly, showed that non-local individuals integrated in the communities we focused on and contributed to the observed diversity in burial practices and to the developments in the formation of a social organization.

In this article, we would like to share some thoughts related to the values and principles implemented by archaeologists when bringing ‘the other’ into focus. We situate our reflections within the archaeology of modern colonialism, and revisit some aspects related to one of the most vibrant issues in historical archaeology: Eurocentrism. It is our understanding that ‘de-Eurocentring’ the discipline not only requires introducing the disenfranchised as new agents, but also questioning the most profound logics by which narratives of the past have been written. We focus on the idea of history as change, and on the notion of social continuity from a feminist standpoint. We have noticed that certain accounts of colonial situations, even those with the opposite intention, may project the prevailing Western male way of being while trying to explain past social and personal dynamics, thus blurring ontological diversity and unwittingly reinforcing the Eurocentrism we are trying to avoid.

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.

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 presents the key results of a major survey carried out by the NEARCH project on the public perception of archaeology and heritage across Europe. The analysis focuses on three main points of significance for contemporary archaeological practice. The first is the image of archaeology and its definition in the perception of the general public. The second concerns the values that archaeology represents for the public. The third focuses on the social expectations placed on archaeologists and archaeology. The NEARCH survey clearly indicates that there is a significant public expectation by Europeans that archaeology should work comprehensively across a broad range of areas, and that cultural heritage management in general needs to engage more with different archaeological and heritage groups.

This article addresses questions relating to the ‘Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site’ and seeks to introduce into this initiative some concepts derived from recent writings on contemporary mobilities and bordering, exploring the possibility of creating greater engagement between the two academic fields of ‘border studies’ and ‘Roman Frontier Studies’. By examining the relationship between the Roman Frontiers initiative and the European Union's stated aims of integration and the dissolution of borders, it argues in favour of crossing intellectual borders between the study of the present and the past to promote the value of the Roman frontiers as a means of reflecting on contemporary problems facing Europe. This article considers the potential roles of Roman Frontier Studies in this debate by emphasizing frontiers as places of encounter and transformation.

This article presents previously unknown archaeological evidence of a mid-second-millennium bc kingdom located in central western Anatolia. Discovered during the work of the Central Lydia Archaeological Survey in the Marmara Lake basin of the Gediz Valley in western Turkey, the material evidence appears to correlate well with text-based reconstructions of Late Bronze Age historical geography drawn from Hittite archives. One site in particular—Kaymakçı—stands out as a regional capital and the results of the systematic archaeological survey allow for an understanding of local settlement patterns, moving beyond traditional correlations between historical geography and capital sites alone. Comparison with contemporary sites in central western Anatolia, furthermore, identifies material commonalities in site forms that may indicate a regional architectural tradition if not just influence from Hittite hegemony.

Using the example of pottery imported into the Channel ports of southern England, an approach to examining the role of pottery in the emergence and mediation of coastal communities is proposed here. Building on recent scholarship, it is argued that it is no longer tenable to see pottery as a carrier of identity, or as part of a ‘cultural package’, with meaning emerging with identity as people interact with pottery within and without port environments. The study proposes that imported pottery found meaning in different ways, depending on the context of acquisition and use. Hence it mediated different forms of community and identity. The article ends with a consideration of the wider implications of this approach for ongoing studies of material culture, trade, and urban identities in medieval Europe.

The role of the human body in the creation of social knowledge—as an ontological and/or aesthetic category—has been applied across social theory. In all these approaches, the body is viewed as a locus for experience and knowledge. If the body is a source of subjective knowledge, then it can also become an important means of creating ontological categories of self and society. The materiality of human representations within art traditions, then, can be interpreted as providing a means for contextualizing and aestheticizing the body in order to produce a symbolic and structural knowledge category. This paper explores the effect of material choices and techniques of production when representing the human body on how societies order and categorize the world.

The first phase of the Trypillia mega-sites' methodological revolution began in 1971 with aerial photography, magnetic prospection, and archaeological excavations of huge settlements of hundreds of hectares belonging to the Trypillia culture in Ukraine. Since 2009, we have created a second phase of the methodological revolution in studies of Trypillia mega-sites, which has provided more significant advances in our understanding of these large sites than any other single research development in the last three decades, thanks partly to the participation of joint Ukrainian-foreign teams. In this paper, we outline the main aspects of the second phase, using examples from the Anglo-Ukrainian project ‘Early urbanism in prehistoric Europe: the case of the Trypillia mega-sites', working at Nebelivka (also spelled ‘Nebilivka’), and the Ukrainian-German project ‘Economy, demography and social space of Trypillia mega-sites', working at Taljanky (‘Talianki’), Maydanetske (‘Maydanetskoe’), and Dobrovody, as well as the smaller site at Apolianka.

In the nineteenth century, the continuous discharge of sewage from millions of Londoners into the River Thames caused a notorious, unbearable stench during the summer, which reached a climax in 1858 and became known as The Great Stink. In this article it is argued that such a ‘Great Stink’ also occurred in the booming and heavily populated pre-industrial town of Leiden, because cesspits were being replaced by sewers draining directly into canals. Flawed as cesspits may have been, the new, hygienic sewer infrastructure meant the advent of unsanitary conditions normally only associated with the era of the Industrial Revolution. How and why the cesspit was killed off is explained by comparing Leiden with the seventeenth-century boom town of Haarlem, where cesspits remarkably survived the ‘Golden Age’ of the seventeenth century. Using the stakeholder model it becomes clear that the shift in hygienic infrastructure was not the outcome of a single stakeholder calling the shots but was the result of interactions between tenants, housing developers, local government, and textile entrepreneurs (in the case of Leiden), or brewers (in Haarlem).