Heathlands are unique cultural landscapes that once existed across vast stretches of northern Europe. Their deep-time persistence has formed an intrinsic part of economic and cultural practices. Such a complex interaction requires interdisciplinary approaches, including archaeology, across multiple regions to fully grasp all its aspects. The authors of this article review how research has been conducted in prehistoric heathlands across six nations in north-western Europe and outline the heaths’ general characteristics. They discuss the major issues in that research, namely recurring narratives derived from history, an overall absence of consideration of the cultural aspects of heathlands, and a paucity of cross-regional initiatives. They suggest a series of theoretical and methodological approaches to improve this situation across expanded geographical and temporal scales.

This article quantifies the rate at which women archaeologists are present and retained in university departments. Drawing on publicly available data, we examine gender representation in (1) doctorates earned between 2002–2003 and 2016–2017; (2) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant applications and awards at the doctoral to senior levels between 2003 and 2017; (3) tenure-stream faculty at Canadian universities in 2019; and (4) placement of Canadian PhDs in the United States. These data demonstrate that women today represent two-thirds of all Canadian doctorates in archaeology, but only one-third of Canadian tenure-stream faculty, although not all archaeologists choose an academic career. In the last 15 years, women with Canadian PhDs have been hired into tenure-track positions in Canada at rates statistically lower than men, but at higher rates in the United States. Women apply for SSHRC archaeology grants in equal proportion to their presence, but men are awarded at a slightly higher rate. We end by discussing the possible reasons for this gendered attrition, including a “chilly climate”—that is, subtle practices that stereotype, exclude, and devalue women, as well as inhospitable working environments, particularly for primary caregivers. We warn that the current COVID-19 pandemic is likely to exacerbate these existing inequalities.

In the first millennium AD, peoples across the North American Arctic began to use and exchange metal. A group known as the Late Dorset (AD 500–1300) were the first to widely exchange metal in the Eastern Arctic. However, due to differential taphonomic processes and past excavation methods, metal objects in existing collections are rare although geographically widespread. This has led to metal being seen as a broadly exchanged but uncommon raw material among Late Dorset. This article expands the known scale of Late Dorset metal use by analyzing the blade slot thicknesses of bone and ivory objects from sites across the Eastern Arctic and comparing them to the thicknesses of associated lithic and metal endblades. These results demonstrate that Late Dorset used metal at least as frequently as stone for some activities. Given the few and geographically discrete sources, metal would have been exchanged over thousands of kilometers of fragmented Arctic landscape. The lack of similar evidence in earlier periods indicates intergroup interaction increases significantly with the Late Dorset. It is through these same vectors that knowledge and information would have flowed. Metal, consequently, represents the best material for understanding the maximum extent and intensity of their interaction networks.

One of the most persistent debates in the archaeology of the North American Arctic relates to thirteenth-century AD population distributions and movements. Around this time, the final culture of the long-lived Paleo-Inuit tradition, known as Late Dorset, was replaced by Thule Inuit, who migrated from Alaska to the Eastern Arctic. Due to the almost complete lack of evidence for direct interaction between Dorset and Thule, there are currently two contrasting models for this transitional period. The first proposes a temporal hiatus between Late Dorset and Thule during which the Eastern Arctic was unoccupied. The second proposes that Late Dorset persisted to at least the late thirteenth century and still occupied some regions of the Eastern Arctic when Thule arrived. Resolution of this question depends largely on radiocarbon dates, particularly for the poorly understood Late Dorset period. This article presents 56 new AMS radiocarbon dates from three Late Dorset sites in the Iqaluktuuq region of southeastern Victoria Island in the Central Arctic. They resolve a significant part of the debate by confirming that Dorset settlement continued in this region later than AD 1300, thus overlapping with Thule settlement in adjacent regions for decades, and perhaps as much as a century.

In this article I address the relationship between European archaeologists and the European Union and argue that the dominant attitude of non-involvement that archaeologists have embraced over the past decades cannot be justified given recent political developments. The European project finds itself in a state of deep crisis, under siege from populist and far-right leaders within and around Europe. We cannot afford to watch from the sidelines when the future of hundreds of millions of people is at stake. As archaeologists we can make a positive contribution by harnessing the political dimension of our work, which we need to stop seeing in a negative light. We should deploy the past to help tackle the challenges of our society. European archaeologists should particularly focus on developing grand narratives of a shared past in Europe, to act as a foundation for a European identity.

‘European archaeology’ is an ambiguous and contested rubric. Rooted in the political histories of European archaeology, it potentially unites an academic field and provides a basis for international collaboration and inclusion, but also creates essentialized identities and exclusionary discourses. This discussion article presents a range of views on what European archaeology is, where it comes from, and what it could be.

Archives form a valuable but under-researched resource for mapping the development of prehistoric archaeology as a discipline in post-war Europe. New work on the previously un-catalogued archives of Professor Paul Jacobsthal at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, exemplify the opportunities offered by archival research. Here, we focus on the correspondence between Professor Jacobsthal of Marburg University, who sought refuge in Oxford before the war, and his colleague, Professor Merhart, who remained in Germany. The surviving personal correspondence between Germany and Oxford from 1936 to 1957 illustrates the complexities, uncertainties, and challenges to personal and academic identities in the aftermath of the war, and show how the individual responses of archaeologists to their personal experiences impacted on the directions taken by archaeological scholarship in Europe and beyond after the war.

Textile research has become an important field of archaeology. Although the established analytical methods are often viewed as specialized, their integration with other interdisciplinary approaches allows us to deal with broader archaeological issues and provides the interpretational base for a much more comprehensive investigation of textiles in ancient times. Analyses of fibres, dyes, archaeobotanical and archaeozoological remains, as well as palaeoenvironmental and geochemical investigations, provide information about available resources, while tool studies, experimental testing, and visual grouping are approaches that explore the technology and techniques. Together, these approaches can provide new knowledge about textile production and consumption and, thereby, about people and society in ancient times.