The Dolmen de Soto is considered one of the premier Neolithic passage graves in the Iberian Peninsula. Set within a flat fertile plain and c. 8.5km south-east of the town of Trigueros in Andalucia, this monument was in use some 5000 years ago and was part of a unique pan-Atlantic European cultural revolution that included ornamentation of the internal spaces of many passage grave monuments. The site was discovered in 1923 by Armando de Soto Morillas and subsequently excavated over three consecutive seasons by the German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier. The passage and chamber are constructed within a low circular mound that measures 75m in diameter, making it one of the largest passage graves in Europe. The Dolmen de Soto has recently undergone a significant restoration programme and as part of this project, engraved and painted images upon the upright stones within the passage and chamber areas were investigated and recorded by a team of international scientists between 2016 and 2017 using a variety of photogrammetric methods. This publication tells the fascinating story of the archaeological and historical context of the site, along with the methods employed and stunning results the project yielded.

Thesymposiumdedicatedtothepresentationofthe currentresearchontheofNeolithicfuneralritualsintheUpperRhineValley heldattheUniversityofStrasbourginJune, 2011belongstoacycleofannualmeetingsofthearchaeologistsfromAlsaceandthenearbyregions.Thethemewasdictatedbythespectacularincreaseoftheneolithicgraves corpuslastyears.ThisvolumepresentsninecontributionsaboutunpublishedgravesandgraveyardsfromtheearlytothelateNeolithic, especiallythefirstLBKcremationsfoundinFranceandthefirstCordedwaregravesgroupdiscoveredinAlsace.Thesepapers, whichcoveredalltheregionalneolithicsequence, offeracompleteviewofthefuneraltraditionsoftheUpperRhineValleyfrom5300to2200BC."

ThisbookisastudyaboutfunerarypracticesofprehistoriccommunitiesinJarama sregion(CentralIberia)duringthe3rdand2ndmillenniaBC.Itsaimistodefinethedifferentwaysofburialanddetectitschangesandvariationsinordertoidentifyandexplainpossiblesocialandideologicaltransformations.ThisstudyshowsthatrelevantsocioeconomictransformationshappenedintheLatePrehistoryofCentralIberiaandthesechangesaredetectedaswellasfarasritualideologyisconcerned.Asamatteroffact, thechangeinitemsandtypeofofferingsinthegravegoodsisverysignificantbetweentheCopperandBronzeAges, showingtransformationsaswellintheideologicalconceptionofburialsandtheafterlife."

This work deals with Neanderthal subsistence behaviours during the Middle Palaeolithic in Hungary, through the example of Erd site. Very discreet, hunting and mainly scavenging, activities are shown by zooarchaeological study for meat procurement. This is different for carnivores, except for cave bears. The latter, using the place for hibernation, meant a high number of their remains are associated with "Charentian" lithic industry and with those of cave hyena. This carnivore has a significant impact on bone accumulations, herbivores and bears, and shows signs of cannibalism on its congener's remains. Human activities are visible only on a few bones belonging to large ungulates and cave bear. However, no proof supports the proposition of a clear specialization in cave bear hunting on acquiring meat resources (as written by V. Gabori Csank in the monography on Erd published in 1968); a contrario, on scavenging carcasses and/or visiting (actively?) dens for weakened wintering/hibernating bears. These results attest the contemporaneity of a part of the bear carcasses with human installation or presence on the site.

The Archaeological sites of Orkney give us an unparalleled glimpse into prehistory. Inscribed as the 'Heart of Neolithic Orkney' World Heritage Site in 1999, four great monuments - the village of Skara Brae, the Ring of Brodgar, the Stones of Stenness and the burial mound of Maeshowe - are also at the centre of the archipelago's story. This book looks at what makes these monuments so special. Caroline Wickham-Jones explores the Neolithic world in which they were built, how they caome to be a focus through the ages, and what they mean today. Picts, saints, Vikings, antiquarians and tourists populate Orkney's past: a history which is channelled through these 'dances of stones'.

Liguria, North-West Italy, is a region sited between the Mediterranean and the Alps. Between XVI and XIII c. BC the region experienced continuity and discontinuity in material culture and land occupation strategy. That chronological period, known as Middle and Late Bronze Age, coincided with movements throughout the Central Mediterranean (Aegean Sea to Sardinia-Sicily-Southern Italy) and in Central Europe (Danube Valley until Eastern France and Eastern Italy). Indirect consequences of this movement can be seen in a marginal region like Liguria. A regional panorama of settlements and material culture is presented. Pottery continuity and discontinuity is analyzed and granted new perspectives by applying a techno-typological analytical model.

Excavations at Cerro Palenque, a hilltop site in the Ulua Valley of northwest Honduras, revolutionized scholars' ideas about the Terminal Classic period (roughly ad 850-1050) of Maya history and about the way in which cultures of the southeast Maya periphery related to the Lowland Maya. In this pathfinding study, Rosemary Joyce combines archaeological data gleaned from site research in 1980-1983 with anthropological theory about the evolution of social power to reconstruct something of the culture and lifeways of the prehispanic inhabitants of Cerro Palenque. Joyce organizes her study in a novel way. Rather than presenting each category of excavated material (ceramics, lithics, etc.) in a separate chapter, she integrates this data in discussions of what people did and where they did it, resulting in a reconstruction of social activity more than in a description of material culture. Joyce's findings indicate that the precolumbian elites of the Ulua Valley had very strong and diversified contacts with Lowland Maya culture, primarily through the Bay of Honduras, with far less contact with Copan in the Highlands. The elites used their contacts with these distant, powerful cultures to reinforce their difference from the people they ruled and the legitimacy of their privileged status. Indeed, their dependence on foreign contacts ultimately led to their downfall when their foreign partners reorganized their economic and social order during the Terminal Classic period. Although archaeological research in the region has been undertaken since the 1890s, Cerro Palenque is the first full-length study of an Ulua Valley site ever published. Joyce's pioneering approach-archaeological ethnography-will be of interest to scholars dealing with any prehistoric people whose material remains provide the only clues to their culture.

Thisbookdiscussestherelationshipbetweenmobilityand/orarchaeologicalsitesfunctionalityandlithicartifacts.Theproblemsencounteredwhendealingwithsuchissuesarepresentedfromdifferenttheoreticaland/ormethodologicalperspectivesandfromdifferentspatialandtemporalscales.Thereisaconsensusthat, fromtechno typologicalanalysis, itispossibletoinferdifferentialmobilitystrategiesandsitefunctionality.Inthisregard, thevariouscasestudiesthatareincludedinthebookallowatourofdifferentwaystoapproachtheseissuesfromlithicartifactsinArgentina, sothisbookisareferencecontributionforbothspecialistsandgeneralpublic."

Les megalithes du departement du Morbihan aims at a better understanding of megalithism, or more precisely megalithisms, and presents a new approach to the relationship between standing stones (menhirs) and tombs (dolmens). The architectural analyses developed raise questions about their complementarity. They are based on a corpus of architectural plans comprising 1413 megalithic monuments from the Department of Morbihan, including 13,200 vertical slabs, the result of thirty years of research and field observations, and including more than 250 unpublished monuments. Two main approaches are discussed: descriptive architectural analysis of the plans on the one hand, and analysis of landscape and environmental elements on the other. The parallels between the stones erected in the open air and those, sometimes identical in their dimensions, their morphology and their geology, which constitute the rooms, the corridors, and the facings of the funerary monuments, consolidate and develop observations already made by other archaeologists on the reuse of these Neolithic standing stones. The observation that these parallels extend to the symmetry and aestheticism of the structures is quite new. These unprecedented and convincing results brought by this analysis of the alignments of standing stones and funerary architectures demonstrate how a subject that has been explored since the nineteenth century by many researchers can still reveal hidden truths.

Eastern North America has one of the largest inventories of Paleoindian sites anywhere in the Americas. Despite this rich record of early human settlement during the late Pleistocene, there are few widely published reports or summaries of Paleoindian research in the region. The contributors to this volume present more than four decades of Early Paleoindian research in eastern North America, including previously unpublished site reports and updates on recent research. Their work helps create a more cohesive picture of the early human occupation of North America.

This data-rich volume provides specific information on artifacts and basic site descriptions which will allow for more thorough comparisons of eastern fluted point sites. Divided into four sections--chronology and environment, reinvestigations of classic sites, new sites and perspectives, and synthesis and conclusions--the volume will encourage further consideration of the sites included and their role in shaping our understanding of huntergatherer lifeways during the late Pleistocene. "In the Eastern Fluted Point Tradition "is a must read for scholars of Paleoindian archaeology and those generally interested in the prehistory of North America.

Exploring emerging and suppressed evidence from archaeology, anthropology and biology, Frank Joseph challenges conventional theories of evolution, the age of humanity, the origins of civilisation and the purpose of megaliths around the world. Further investigating the evolutionary branches of humanity, he explores the mounting biological evidence supporting the aquatic ape theory - that our ancestors spent one or more evolutionary phases in water - and shows how these aquatic phases of humanity fall neatly into place within his revised timeline of ancient history. Tying in his extensive research into Atlantis and Lemuria, Joseph provides a 20-million-year timeline of the rise and fall of ancient civilisations, both human and pre-human, the evolutionary stages of humanity and the catastrophes and resulting climate changes that triggered them all - events that our relatively young civilisation may soon experience. He reveals 20-million-year-old quartzite tools discovered in the remains of extinct fauna in Argentina and other evidence of ancient pre-human cultures from which we are not descended. He traces the genesis of modern human civilisation to Indonesia and the Central Pacific 75,000 years ago, launched by a catastrophic volcanic eruption that abruptly reduced humanity from two million to a few thousand individuals worldwide. Examining the profound similarities of megaliths around the world, including Nabta Playa, Gobekli Tepe, Stonehenge, New Hampshire's Mystery Hill and the Japanese Oyu circles, the author explains how these precisely placed monuments of quartz were built specifically to produce altered states of consciousness, revealing the spiritual and technological sophistication of their Neolithic builders - a transoceanic civilisation fractured by the cataclysmic effects of comets. · Explores biological evidence for the aquatic ape theory and 20-million-year-old evidence of pre-human cultures from which we are not descended · Traces the genesis of modern human civilisation to Indonesia and the Central Pacific 75,000 years ago after a near-extinction-level volcanic eruption · Examines the profound similarities of megaliths around the world, including Nabta Playa and Gobekli Tepe, to reveal the transoceanic civilisation that built them all

On a remote mountainside 2,000 meters above sea level in the northern Sierra Madre Oriental, the rockshelter at La Calsada has yielded basic archaeological data for one of the least understood regions of prehistoric North America, the state of Nuevo Leon in northern Mexico. This comprehensive site report, with detailed information on artifacts and stratigraphy, provides baseline data for further explorations in the region and comparisons with other North American hunter-gatherer groups. Radiocarbon dating traces the earliest component at the site to 8600-7500 B.C., giving La Calsada arguably the earliest well-dated lithic complex in Mexico. Nance describes some 1,140 recovered stone tools, with comparisons to the archaeology of southern and southwestern Texas, as well as reported sites in Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon, Mexico. From the lithic and stratigraphic analysis, Nance deduces occupational patterns at the site, beginning with Paleo-Indian cultures that lived in the area until about 7500 B.C. Through changes in tool technology, he follows the rise of the Abasolo tradition around 3000 B.C. and the appearance of a new culture with a radically different lithic industry around 1000 A.D.

A study of prehistoric mining and metallurgy in the Prehistoric south west Iberian Peninsula. Spanish text.

The extensive work presented here takes a new look at the prehistoric art preserved on various megalithic monuments from the northwestern Iberian Peninsular. The initial chapters (1-3) deal with the objectives of the study, the history of research of megalithic art in the Iberian Peninsula, and the discussion on the area of study. In chapter 4, the research methodologies applied are described in detail: fieldwork (identification, cataloguing and diagnosis), the analysis of stone and paint samples (including radiocarbon dating), and the systems used for the recording of the images. In chapter 5, the most extensive of the book, each of the megalithic sites studied is described, with special emphasis on the description and recording of megalithic art, its state of preservation and the need for conservation actions that would stop its degradation. Chapter 6 deals with the information obtained on this kind of megalithic art. Chapters 7 and 8 deal with the degradation processes and the proposal for preservation measures, not only for the prehistoric art itself, but also for the megalithic sites. Chapter 9 contains the discussion on the main findings.

This volume is a study of later Iberian prehistory and contributes to our understanding of the range of religious beliefs and practices present in the Celtic-speaking world. There is an overview of earlier perceptions of sacrificial stones and altars presented in the context of developing visions of Celts and Druids beginning in the seventeenth century. There follows an in-depth study of one of the most extensively excavated hill top settlements Numancia a site which presents a microcosm of the issues involved in attempting to use raw archaeological evidence to interpret human behaviour. In addition there is a detailed assessment of urban and domestic sanctuaries and votive deposits; a detailed consideration of cave sanctuaries; and studies of votive metalwork, of the enigmatic verracos, of epigraphy from sanctuaries and or ritual artefacts. Spanish text.

The adoption of agriculture is often described as one of the most fundamental revolutions in human history, the starting point for urbanisation and specialisation. More recently the structure of the Neolithic mind has been proposed as a new cognitive revolution, separating us fundamentally from preceding hunter-gatherers. Without doubting that the so-called Neolithic Revolution was significant, it is important to question how we conceptualise it. This book focuses on two themes central to creating a rounded understanding of the transition: our understandings of hunter-gatherer diversity and change over time, with emphasis on the adoption of agriculture; and the relationships between our understandings of the modern world, and ourselves, and the models we impose on prehistory. The broad geographical perspective adopted here allows important comparisons to be made between two primary study areas, the Near East and Europe.

Vincenzo La Rosa (1941- 2014) Un archeologo tra Sicilia e Egeo collects the contributions of the Study Day Una lezione per il futuro. Vincenzo La Rosa (1941-2014) organised in 2015 by the University of Catania in collaboration with ISVNA, to re-examine the scientific figure of Vincenzo La Rosa, professor of Aegean Civilisations at the University of Catania, director of the excavations at Haghia Triada and Festos in Crete, and the excavations at Milena in Sicily. Scholars and students demonstrate the contribution that Vincenzo La Rosa has made to our knowledge of the prehistory of Crete, Sicily and the Aegean, and to the application of a long-term perspective linking the ancient and modern worlds, emerges in his long career as a university lecturer, director of the Centre for the Study of Greek Archaeology at the C.N.R. in Catania, deputy director of the Italian Archaeological School in Athens (1993-1999) and director of the Centre of Cretan Archaeology (1998-2011).

This study focuses on the evolution of dry-stone techniques applied to the construction of enclosures in Corsica and Tuscany from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. It examines the evidence for dry-stone walled enclosures in Corsica and Tuscany, presented in a substantial catalogue, and seeks to determine the lower incidence of such features in Tuscany. It also notes different construction techniques present in northern and southern Corsica and evaluates the social and technological reasons for them. French text.

Known for his curly red hair, day-old stubble, and uncannily preserved two-thousand-year-old physique, Grauballe Man - a mummified body discovered in 1950s Denmark - was an instant archaeological sensation. But he was not the first of his kind: recent history has resurrected from northern Europe's bogs several men, women, and children who were deposited there as sacrifices in the early Iron Age and kept startlingly intact by the chemical properties of peat. In this remarkable account of their modern afterlives, Karin Sanders argues that the discovery of bog bodies began an extraordinary - and ongoing - cultural journey. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sanders shows, these eerily preserved remains came alive in art and science as material metaphors for such concepts as trauma, nostalgia, and identity. Sigmund Freud, Joseph Beuys, Serge Vandercam, Seamus Heaney, and other major figures have used them to reconsider fundamental philosophical, literary, aesthetic, and scientific concerns. Exploring this intellectual spectrum, Sanders contends that the power of bog bodies to provoke such a wide range of responses is rooted in their unique status as both archaeological artifacts and human beings. They emerge as corporeal time capsules that transcend archaeology to challenge our assumptions about what we can know about the past. By restoring them to the roster of cultural phenomena that force us to confront our ethical and aesthetic boundaries, "Bodies in the Bog" excavates anew the question of what it means to be human.

Given the need for systematic research into the prehistory of the southwest region of Andalucia in the south of Spain, a comprehensive research proposal has been designed, based on the concept of initial class societies. In this historical dynamic, the south of the Iberian Peninsula, the southwest and the province of Huelva, prove to be the ideal spatial context, as they allow, for the first time, an evaluation of the formation mechanisms of the first stable asymmetric forms of organization by studying the mining-metallurgical activity and the social organization that came with it. The sequential development of this work begins with the definition of its general objectives, in Chapter II, from an archaeometric and archaeometallurgical point of view, supported by the application of metallographic studies within a spatial, chronological and contextual framework and on very specific evidence - metal products and remains - specified in Chapter III. In Chapter IV the conceptual definitions of metallurgy, archaeometallurgy and metallography are discussed, as well as the role played in the development of our discipline by the specific studies here presented and whose application is evaluated in Chapter V, both in the different areas of the specific peninsular geography and, particularly, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. In Chapter VI, through the so-called oHuelva caseo, the main features of the archaeological practice and its scientific production in the southwest are evaluated. Chapter VII presents the compositional and metallographic analyses. The results of the tests carried out are given in Chapter VIII. Chapter IX contains a reflection on the assessment of the metallurgical activity in the third millennium B.C.E. as regards the definition of its model of historical interpretation.

This study deals with the ceramic repertoire of the Aeolian Middle Bronze Age culture, the so called Milazzese facies. The aim of this work is twofold: to devise a formalized typology for the Milazzese ceramic repertoire (to be used as a basis for the chrono-typological analysis of the pottery assemblages) and to assess the chronological and typological achievements in an historical and, broadly speaking, cultural perspective. Italian text.

This is the first major study on bell beaker pottery in the Middle and Lower Guadiana basin (south-western Iberian Peninsula). Recent archaeological excavations in the area, because of the construction of the Alqueva dam, have provided new and substantial information relating to the 3rd millennium BC, with 54 sites with bell-beaker pottery now identified (43 settlements and 11 funerary sites). Identifying the pots as high-status items, and mapping their distibution through the region and chronologically, Garcia Rivero is able to draw conlclusions about changing social structure in the third millennium BC. Spanish text.

A study of the prehistory of the Balearic Islands, Spain, with regard to the archaeological record of the region and its social evolution before the Iron Age. Spanish text.

The Khirokitian Culture (Late Aceramic Neolithic period; from the 7th millennium to the middle of the 6th millennium cal. BC), which forms the core of this study, can be considered as the result of a colonizing process which started in Cyprus at the end of the 9th millennium BC. This study of the bone industries of Khirokitia, in the south of the island, and of Cap Andreas-Kastros, at its eastern extremity yielded a total of 2451 artefacts. The data is analysed to determine the extent of external influence on the development of settled agricultural communities in what is a relatively isolated environment. French text.

The analysis in this volume is the result of 25 years of research into the later prehistory of the international Tagus. In particular the contributors examine the spectacular rock art, paintings and engravings of the area, and how they relate to megaliths in a landscape context. They conclude that the area saw far greater occupation and activity than has often been assumed. Papers in English and Spanish.