Contributions by Lawrence Brown, Sue Colledge, Robert Giegengack, Thomas Higham, Vladimir Hrsak, Anthony Legge†, Drago Margus, Sarah McClure, Carol Palmer, Emil Podrug, Kelly Reed, Jennifer Smith, and Josko Zaninovic. The origins and spread of farming are vital subjects of research, notably because agriculture makes possible our modern world. The Early Farming in Dalmatia Project is investigating the expansion of farming from its centre of origin in western Asia through the Mediterranean into southern Europe. This multidisciplinary ecological project combines comprehensive recovery of archaeological materials through excavation with landscape studies. It addresses several key questions, including when and how farming reached Dalmatia, what was the nature of this new economy, and what was its impact on the local environment. Excavations at Danilo Bitinj and Pokrovnik have demonstrated that their inhabitants were full-time farmers. The two sites were among the largest known Neolithic villages in the eastern Adriatic. A comprehensive program of AMS dating indicates that together they were occupied from c. 8,000 to 6,800 cal BP. Our research has begun to illuminate the details of their farming system, as well as the changes that took place in their way of life through the Neolithic. Their economy was derived from western Asia and it is likely that their ancestors came from there also. It was these people who brought agriculture and village life to the Adriatic and to the rest of the central and western Mediterranean. Once in place, this farming economy persisted in much the same form from the Neolithic down to the present.

This volume presents proceedings from the session 'Monumental Earthen Architecture in Early Societies: Technology and power display', part of the XVII World UISPP Congress, held in Burgos (Spain), the 4th September 2014. The theme of the symposium is the archaeology of earthen architecture in pre- and protohistoric cultures, with an emphasis on constructive techniques and systems, and diachronic changes in those aspects. The main interest is in monumental architecture (not domestic), where it is better possible to appreciate the building strategies that show raw earth to be as noble a material as stone or wood, but with its very own characteristics which required the development of original solutions and construction techniques. The scope on monumental buildings also allows analyzing the political, social and economical factors that made such architecture a recognized expression of societal values and political power.

This is an important book. Too often in the past archaeologists have ignored or underestimated sea travel in early prehistory but the evidence has been growing and now it is presented to us in full in this thought provoking study. No longer can those interested in the human achievement neglect to take into account the astonishing achievements of our palaeolithic, mesolithic and neolithic ancestors. This book gives a full account of stone age seafaring presenting the archaeological evidence in the context of the changing world environment and uses ethnographic sources to broaden the readers understanding of the worlds earliest sea craft. It is essential reading for all concerned to understand the human condition. - Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, Oxford The book is a comprehensive study of early navigation and its place in the development of human culture from the earliest times to the late Stone Age. This subject is very timely in light of increasing archaeological and palaeoanthropological evidence that the maritime environment had been mastered in prehistory. As the author rightly points out at the beginning of his book, the maritime environment can no longer be marginalised when portraying both hunter-gatherer and early agrarian prehistoric communities. The book is a valuable and inspiring work on a subject which had hitherto not enjoyed such in-depth treatment. It greatly enhances our perception of the beginnings of human culture and enriches it with comprehensive, convincing arguments that the maritime environment had been mastered by early humans. I congratulate the author on the effect he has achieved and on unearthing so many chronologically, geographically and thematically diverse sources. - Prof. Pawel Valde-Nowak, Jagiellonian University, Krakow The title of the book intrigues the reader and promises a fascinating read about issues approached from an innovatively broad perspective. Both the global territorial scope and the chronological range covering almost two million years of human cultural development are worthy of note. What we have here is an aspect of human activity which is often neglected and marginalised in scientific research, which is that directly related to the sea. The fact that up to 90% of Pleistocene coasts, which were after all heavily populated in the Stone Age, have been flooded in modern times is not conducive to large-scale research, as underlined by the author in the Introduction. The beginnings of human activity on the high seas are the subject of research in numerous scientific disciplines, all of which are discussed here. In writing this book the author has drawn on an exceptionally wide range of literature, mostly in English, owing to which the author's own views, as well as those of other researchers whom he cites, are credible and convincing. - Dr hab. Krzysztof Cyrek, professor of Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun

This study examines Middle-Late Bronze Age (c. 1750-600 BC) domestic settlement patterns in Ireland. Recent archaeological investigations have extended the knowledge of habitation, but no detailed, systematic attempts have been made to understand the domestic evidence, or to substantially revise the existing models for the development of complex Bronze Age societies. All available data relating to settlements dating to Middle-Late Bronze Age have been collated. An evidence-based chronology for settlement is established for the first time. The data are examined at multiple scales to investigate any spatial or chronological trends in settlement character or distribution. The relationships between settlements and the surrounding environmental and social landscapes are analysed through a GIS. The new data are investigated to see how domestic settlements operated, and if traditional concepts regarding the structure of Bronze Age society can still be upheld. Agent-based modelling and social network analysis provide another dimension to the discussion regarding power, regionalism, and hierarchy within the settlement network. The results reveal a distinct rise in the visibility, and a rapid adaption, of domestic architecture, which seems to have occurred earlier in Ireland than elsewhere in western and northern Europe.

This volume is the first of two reports on archaeological excavations undertaken ahead of the eastern expansion of Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal (DIRFT) which lies in the northern watershed region of Northamptonshire at its border with Warwickshire. The excavations, covering 178 hectares, recorded one of the most extensive Iron Age farming settlements yet discovered in the British Isles. It comprised at least five individual sites of house clusters and enclosures, spread around the rim of a shallow valley overlooking around 100 hectares of open pasture. At its peak between 400 BC and 100 BC the settlement would have contained up to 100 circular buildings. Volume 1 describes the excavation of the largest of these individual sites, that at Covert Farm, Crick, excavated by the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit. From the outset the excavations adopted an innovative approach to examine social themes in Iron Age studies, such as relationships with rubbish, fire and water, and the way life in the settlement may have been experienced by its inhabitants - themes that are presented and discussed in this book.

This volume brings together a group of peer reviewed papers, most of them presented at a workshop held at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. The event took place on 15-17 October 2011 and was part of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project Cultural Evolution of Neolithic Europe (EUROEVOL 2010-2015). The aim of the EUROEVOL project is to contribute to the new interdisciplinary field of cultural evolution that has developed over the last 30 years, and at the same time use these ideas and methods to address specific questions concerning the links between demographic, economic, social and cultural patterns and processes in the first farming societies of temperate Europe. The aim of the EUROEVOL project is to do that for the first time, and in doing so to provide the basis for a new account of the role of farming in transforming early European societies, c.6000-2000 cal BCE.

Borg in-Nadur, on the south-east coast of the island of Malta, is a major multi-period site, with archaeological remains that span several thousand years. In the course of the Late Neolithic, the steep-sided ridge was occupied by a large megalithic temple complex that was re-occupied in the succeeding Bronze Age. In the course of the second millennium BC, the ridge was heavily fortified by a massive wall to protect a settlement of huts. Excavations were carried out here in 1881 and again in 1959. This volume brings together a number of contributions that report on those excavations, providing an exhaustive account of the stratigraphy, the pottery, the lithic assemblages, the bones, and the molluscs. Additional studies look at other sites in Malta and in neighbouring Sicily in an effort to throw light on the late prehistory of the south-central Mediterranean at a period when connections with regions near and far were increasing. The volume forms a companion to another monograph which concentrated on the temple remains at Borg in-Nadur (D. Tanasi and N. C. Vella (eds), Site, artefacts and landscape: prehistoric Borg in-Nadur, Malta. Praehistorica Mediterranea 3. Monza: Polimetrica, 2011). About the Editors: Davide Tanasi (Ph.D.) is Professor of Archaeology at Arcadia University, The College of Global Studies - Arcadia Sicily Center. His research interests include Mediterranean prehistory, island archaeology, archaeometry of ancient ceramics, computer graphics in archaeology, and digital communication of cultural heritage. He has authored a hundred scientific papers in these fields and produced 3D documentaries about Sicilian archaeology and cultural heritage. His publications include La Sicilia e l'arcipelago maltese nell'eta del Bronzo Medio (Palermo, 2008) and Site, Artefacts and Landscape: Prehistoric Borg in-Nadur, Malta with Nicholas C. Vella (Monza, 2011). He is editor of the international scientific journal Open Archaeology (De Gruyter) and since 2012, he has been directing the Field School in Archaeology of Arcadia University in Sicily. Nicholas C. Vella is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta, and works on Mediterranean history and archaeology. He has co-edited another volume of essays on Malta's late prehistory called Site, Artefacts and Landscape: Prehistoric Borg in- Nadur, Malta with Davide Tanasi (Monza, 2011) and contributed, with him, to the Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean edited by P. van Dommelen and B. Knapp (Cambridge, 2014). He edits the Malta Archaeological Review, and co-directs excavations at the Zejtun Roman Villa (Malta). He is also co-investigator of the FRAGSUS project, funded by the European Research Council, that is examining the environmental and cultural background of prehistoric Malta.

Atlas Of Ceramic Fabrics 1. Italy: North-East, Adriatic, Ionian. Bronze Age: Impasto presents and interprets the petrographic composition of Bronze Age Impasto pottery (23rd-10th centuries BCE) found in the eastern part of Italy. This is the first of a series of Atlases organised according to geographical areas, chronology and types of wares. In this book 935 samples from 63 sites are included, which comprise material obtained as a result of almost 30 years of interdisciplinary archaeological, technological and archaeometric research by the authors' team. 73 petrographic fabrics (the potters' 'recipes') are defined and presented, on their lithological character - a tool that can be used to compare the different components of the ceramic pastes and to check provenance of non-local pots. The volume is organised in chapters focused on methodology, fabric description and distribution, followed by the archaeological implications and the database, with contributions by Daniele Brunelli and Andrea Di Renzoni. Illustrations and descriptions of the fabrics and a complete list of the samples are included in order to provide a rigorous and transparent presentation of the data. The archaeological implications are discussed within the topics such as technology, variability, standardisation, chronology, function, social organisation, circulation, style, typology and cultural identity. It is hoped that this work will be considered as another stepping-stone in demostrating that, in archaeology, technological variability is as important as morphological and stylistic distinctions.

In a world without plastics, ceramics, alongside organic containers, were used for almost every substance which required protection or containment: from perfume to porridge. The experience of an Etruscan person, living day to day, would have been filled with interactions with ceramics, making them objects which can recall intimate transactions in the past to the archaeologist in the present. Characterising that experience of Etruscan pottery is the concern of this book. What was it like to use and live with Etruscan pottery? How was the interaction between an Etruscan pot structured and constituted? How can that experience be related back to bigger questions about the organisation of Etruscan society, its increasingly urban nature and relationship with other Mediterranean cultures? More specifically, this volume aims to unpick both the physical encounter between vessel and hand, and the emotional interaction between the user of a pot and the images inscribed upon its surface.

Over her career Susan Sherratt has questioned our basic assumptions in many areas of the later prehistory of the Mediterranean and Europe, deploying a canny eye for detail, but never losing sight of the big picture. Her collected works include contributions on the relationship between Homeric epic and archaeology; the economy of ceramics, metals and other materials; the status of the 'Sea Peoples' and other ethnic terminologies; routes and different forms of interaction; and the history of museums/collecting (especially relating to Sir Arthur Evans). The editors of (Athyrmata) have brought together a cast of thirty-two scholars from nine different countries who have contributed these twenty-six papers to mark Sue's 65th birthday - a collection that seeks to reflect both her broad range of interests and her ever-questioning approach to uncovering the realities of life in Europe and the Mediterranean in later prehistory.

The present volume originated in session A25b ('Current Approaches to Collective Burials in the Late European Prehistory') of the XVII World Congress of the International Union of the Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP), held in Burgos in September 2014. Collective burials are quite a common feature in Prehistoric Europe, with the gathering of multiple individuals in a shared burial place occurring in different types of burial structures (natural caves, megalithic structures, artificial caves, corbelled-roof tombs, pits, etc.). Such features are generally associated with communities along the agropastoralist transition and fully agricultural societies of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic. For a long time, human skeletal remains exhumed from collective burials were dismissed as valuable sources of information, their studies being limited mostly to morphological assessments and subsequent classification in predefined 'races'. They currently represent a starting point for diversified, often interdisciplinary, research projects, allowing for a more accurate reconstruction of funerary practices, as well as of palaeobiological and environmental aspects, which are fundamental for the understanding of populations in the Late Prehistory of Europe and of the processes leading to the emergence of agricultural societies in this part of the world. The articles in this volume provide examples of different approaches currently being developed on Prehistoric collective burials of southern Europe, mostly focusing on case studies, but also including contributions of a more methodological scope.

Based on ten years of surveys and excavations in Nyiyaparli country in the eastern Chichester Ranges, north-west Australia, Crafting Country provides a unique synthesis of Holocene archaeology in the Pilbara region. The analysis of about 1000 sites, including surface artefact scatters and 19 excavated rock shelters, as well as thousands of isolated artefacts, takes a broad view of the landscape, examining the distribution of archaeological remains in time and space. Heritage compliance archaeology commonly focuses on individual sites, but this study reconsiders the evidence at different scales a at the level of artefact, site, locality, and region a to show how Aboriginal people interacted with the land and made their mark on it.Crafting Country shows that the Nyiyaparli acrafted' their country, building structures and supplying key sites with grindstones, raw material and flaked stone cores. In so doing, they created a taskscape of interwoven activities linked by paths of movement.

Physical Barriers, Cultural Connections: A Reconsideration of the Metal Flow at the Beginning of the Metal Age in the Alps considers the early copper and copper-alloy metallurgy of the entire Circum- Alpine region. It introduces a new approach to the interpretation of chemical composition data sets, which has been applied to a comprehensive regional database for the first time. An extensive use of GIS has been applied to investigate the role of topography in the distribution of metal and to undertake spatial and geostastical analysis that may highlight patterns of distribution of some specific key compositional element. The Circum-Alpine Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age show some distinctively different patterns of metal use, which can be interpreted through changes in mining and social choices. But there are also some signs of continuity, in particular those which respect the use of major landscape features such as watersheds and river systems. Interestingly, the Alpine range does not act as a north-south barrier, as major differences in composition tend to appear on an east-west axis. Conversely, the river system seems to have a key role in the movement of metal. Geostastical analyses demonstrate the presence of a remelting process, applicable also in the case of ingots; evidence that opens new and interesting questions about the role of ingots and hoards in the distribution of metal at the beginning of the Metal Age. New tools and new analysis may also be useful to identify zones where there was a primary metal production and zones where metal was mostly received and heavily manipulated.

Details results of excavations along the A477 from St Clears to Red Roses during the Road Improvement Scheme, 2012. Finds include a Mesolithic site in the lower Taf valley; early Neolithic pits and a post-built structure at Cildywyll; the remains of an Early Bronze Age barrow, 38 burials (some urned), a pyre site, and a Middle Bronze Age drying oven near St Clears; and A Bronze Age burnt mound near Red Roses.

‘Atlas of Ceramic Fabrics 2. Italy: Southern Tyrrhenian. Neolithic – Bronze Age’ presents and interprets the petrographic composition of pre-protohistoric pottery (6th-1st millennia BCE) found in southwestern part of Italy. This is the second in a Atlas series organised according to geographical areas, chronology and types of wares. In this book 890 samples from 29 sites are discussed, encompassing results of more than 50 years of interdisciplinary archaeological, technological and archaeometric research by the authors’ team. Ninety petrographic fabrics (the potters’ ‘recipes’) are defined and presented based on their lithological character – a tool that can be used to compare different components of the ceramic pastes and to check possible provenance of non-local pots. The volume is organized in chapters focused on methodology, fabric description and distribution, followed by the archaeological implications and the database, with contribution by Andrea Di Renzoni (CNR-ISMA, Roma). Illustrations and descriptions of the fabrics and a list of samples provide a rigorous and transparent presentation of the data. The archaeological implications are discussed through cross-correlatios between origin and technology, variability, standardisation, chronology, function, social organization, circulation, style, typology and cultural identity. We hope that this work will be considered an another stepping-stone in demonstrating that technological variability is as important as stylistic distinctions.

The Neolithic -a period in which the first sedentary agrarian communities were established across much of Europe-has been a key topic of archaeological research for over a century. However, the variety of evidence across Europe, the range of languages in which research is carried out, and the way research traditions in different countries have developed makes it very difficult for both students and specialists to gain an overview of continent-wide trends. The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe provides the first comprehensive, geographically extensive, thematic overview of the European Neolithic -from Iberia to Russia and from Norway to Malta -offering both a general introduction and a clear exploration of key issues and current debates surrounding evidence and interpretation. Chapters written by leading experts in the field examine topics such as the movement of plants, animals, ideas, and people (including recent trends in the application of genetics and isotope analyses); cultural change (from the first appearance of farming to the first metal artefacts); domestic architecture; subsistence; material culture; monuments; and burial and other treatments of the dead. In doing so, the volume also considers the history of research and sets out agendas and themes for future work in the field.

For more than a century, the study of hunting and gathering societies has been central to the development of both archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines, and has also generated widespread public interest and debate. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies to date, including critical engagements with older debates, new theoretical perspectives, and renewed obligations for greater engagement between researchers and indigenous communities. Chapters provide in-depth archaeological, historical, and anthropological case-studies, and examine far-reaching questions about human social relations, attitudes to technology, ecology, and management of resources and the environment, as well as issues of diet, health, and gender relations-all central topics in hunter-gatherer research, but also themes that have great relevance for modern global society and its future challenges. The Handbook also provides a strategic vision for how the integration of new methods, approaches, and study regions can ensure that future research into the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers will continue to deliver penetrating insights into the factors that underlie all human diversity.

Dosariyah: Reinvestigating a Neolithic coastal community in eastern Arabia' describes the work carried out at Dosariyah, located in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, which took place between 2010 and 2014. It was conducted by the joint German-Saudi Dosariyah Archaeological Research Project (DARP). A wealth of material remains was found during excavations within almost three metres of anthropogenic deposits. Radiocarbon dates and comparative studies of artefacts securely date the occupation of the site into the first centuries of the fifth millennium BC. The co-occurrence of locally produced artefacts that are technologically and typologically rooted in the local Arabian Middle Neolithic, and imports from southern Mesopotamia is characteristic of Dosariyah. However, the mechanisms behind this distribution of foreign materials along the Arabian Gulf coast, in particular, are still poorly understood. It is the central proposition of this book that the local societies living along the shores of the Arabian Gulf coast played an active role in the acquisition of Ubaid pottery and other objects originating in southern Mesopotamia. A predominance of imported objects, considered as 'exotic items', are understood as integral components of rituals that were part of temporary gatherings of larger groups of people at Dosariyah. Based on the material evidence from the site, such collective social events were embedded in everyday life during the fifth millennium BC.

The study of the Neolithic transition constitutes a major theme in prehistoric research. The process of economic change, from foraging to farming, involved one of the main transformations in human behavior patterns. This volume focuses on investigating the neolithization process at the periphery of one of the main routes in the expansion of the Neolithic in Europe: the Western Mediterranean region. Recent advances in radiocarbon dating, mathematical and computational models, archaeometric analysis and biomolecular techniques, together with new archaeological discoveries, provide novel insights into this topic. This volume is organized into five sections: * new discoveries and new ideas about the Mediterranean Neolithic * reconstructing times and modeling processes * landscape interaction: farming and herding * dietary subsistence of early farming communities * human dispersal mechanisms and cultural transmission This volume will also provide new empirical data to help readers assess different theoretical frameworks and narratives which underlie the models proposed to explain the expansion of farming from the Middle East into Europe.

The prehistory of the Burnley and Pendle districts of East Lancashire. This area of the South Pennines is particularly rich in early archaeology and this is seen to excellent effect here in PART ONE. A wealth of brand new evidence for the lives of people to the Early Bronze Age is provided along with over 200 B&W illustrations, photographs, maps and plans. THE book on the archaeology of this fascinating area of Northern England