Farming can be shown to have spread very rapidly across the British Isles and southern Scandinavia around 6000 years ago, following a long period of stasis when the agricultural ‘frontier’ lay further south on the North European Plain between northern France and northern Poland. The reasons for the delay in the adoption of agriculture on the north-west fringe of Europe have been debated by archaeologists for decades. Here, we present fresh evidence that this renewed phase of agricultural expansion was triggered by a significant change in climate. This finding may also have implications for understanding the timing of the expansion of farming into some upland areas of southern and mid-latitude Europe.

Coastal distributions such as that of the Neolithic chambered tombs of Brittany raise important questions about prehistoric beliefs and understandings relating to sea and shoreline. Concepts of liminality come particularly to the fore where headlands and islands are selected as places for the disposal of human remains. The density of chambered tombs recorded by Du Châtellier on the islands of the Molène archipelago, with its rocks, inlets and small islands exposed and covered by the tides, provides a prominent example of this coastal emphasis. The analysis presented here includes assessment of the reliability of the Du Châtellier inventory and of the topographic changes resulting from sea-level rise. It is argued that the dramatic transformative effect of the tides on the shallow waters of this archipelago will have enhanced the liminality of the setting and may have endowed the islands with special mythological or symbolic associations that may explain the density of the monuments. Ethnographic accounts of coastal beliefs from North America and northern Europe provide additional indications of the likely symbolic importance of such shoreline settings for Breton Neolithic communities.

The article focuses on problems in making generalizations about the character of Stone Age sites and the difficulties of separating sacred and secular remains. Like many other Pitted Ware sites, the middle Neolithic site of Jettböle on the Åland Islands has been characterized as a settlement site despite finds of a ritual character. This study investigates the spatial relationships and depositional patterns of different find categories, with a special focus on human remains, including DNA analysis and the ornamentation of pottery from one of the larger excavation units from the site. The character and meaning of the site seem to be more complex than previously considered. The results of the study stress the need for careful investigation of the contextual circumstances of finds before making general interpretations.

This article critically explores the century-long history of research into a particular set of archaeological finds. The ‘princely graves’ – funerary assemblages dated to the early Iron Age (seventh to fifth centuries BC) containing, among other things, luxurious objects produced in Archaic Greek workshops – are known from various parts of temperate Europe, and were first recorded in the central Balkans region by the end of the nineteenth century. By their very nature, these finds pose several important theoretical and methodological problems, one of them being the need to bridge the divide between the procedures of prehistoric and classical archaeologies. The first attempts to account for these exceptional finds, in Europe as well as in the Balkans, were guided by the culture-historical procedure, typical of the archaeological investigation of the time. During the 1960s New Archaeology brought about the notion of chiefdom as a tool to account for the Iron Age societies. The concept was introduced into research on the central Balkan finds, proving successful in overcoming the shortcomings of the previous explanations, but at the same time creating new ones, encapsulated in the critique of the evolutionary approach. This review of research into the ‘princely graves’ concludes in proposing several new lines of inquiry, already introduced in the European archaeological theory: issues of group identity and individual actors, and phenomenological approaches to time and space.

This article concerns the study of power and space within the Archbishop's Palace in Trondheim and, in particular, how the structure and organization of the precinct in the late medieval period formed a medium through which the archbishop's powers were exercised. Its aim is to explore the ways in which the spatial patterning of occupation, as revealed by the recent excavations in the palace, can cast light on the articulation of the archbishop's wealth, status and authority during the turbulent period prior to the Reformation.

The theoretical starting point is a reformulation of Michael Mann's theory of social power and Anthony Giddens's concept of ‘locale’ within a Marxist framework. It is suggested that, in the historical context of the crisis of Scandinavian feudalism, the palace at Trondheim became the focus for overlapping networks of ideological, economic, military and political power. These developments were expressed through the reorganization of the architectural space and the construction of a series of workshop complexes within the walled precinct between c. AD 1500 and 1537. By analysing the archaeological evidence for craft production, in particular minting, this paper considers how the palace formed a locale for the interaction of a specific set of social relations. It consequently examines some of the processes underpinning the expansion of the archbishop's power during the late medieval period, and discusses the social dynamics behind the conflict between the Church and the centralizing, Protestant-leaning forces of the Danish-Norwegian state.

Tuberculosis (TB), the disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has afflicted mankind for millennia. Currently, the diagnosis of TB from archaeological specimens relies on the identification of bone changes. This method is problematic, since the bone changes seen in TB are not exclusive to the disease. Here, we examine the state-of-the-art of ancient TB diagnosis using the biomarker approach. The development of biomarkers for the detection of ancient TB will provide a reliable means of diagnosis and provide archaeology with a useful tool for the investigation of the disease in archaeological populations.