Green objects of personal adornment were quite common among Neolithic and Copper Age groups in Western Europe, and variscite was one of the minerals that was most often used for such a purpose. This article presents the results of a series of archaeological campaigns designed to study the mines of Aliste and the ornament production loci of Quiruelas de Vidriales (both in the province of Zamora, Spain). We discovered that initially, during the fourth millennium cal BC, variscite from Aliste was seldom used and the ornaments’ production was dispersed, but that there was a significant shift during the third millennium cal BC: ornament production intensified and became concentrated in the production sites of Quiruelas. We relate this transformation to the socioeconomic processes that developed in the Iberian Peninsula and the growth of supra-regional socio-technical artefact exchange networks.

Because of its great potential to provide data on contacts and overseas trade, ivory has aroused a great deal of interest since the very start of research into Iberian late prehistory. Research recently undertaken by the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid in collaboration with a number of other institutions has provided valuable contributions to the study of ivory in the Iberian Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. One of the archaeological sites that is contributing the most data for analysing ivory from the Copper Age in southern Iberia is Valencina de la Concepción (Seville), which is currently the focus of several debates on the development of social complexity. This article contributes to this line of research by providing new, unpublished evidence and by examining the significance of ivory craftsmanship in commercial, social, and ideological terms. It also assesses in greater detail the prominent part played by luxury ivory items as an expression of social status and power.

Few chipped stone artefacts from prehistory were as technically complex as the flint daggers of Late Neolithic Denmark. Here Michael Stafford present a study that examines, through experimental archaeology, many aspects of dagger production.