Between the 3rd and 2nd Millennia BC: Exploring Cultural Diversity and Change in Late Prehistoric Communities is a collection of studies on the cultural reconfigurations that occurred in western Europe between the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. It brings together seven texts focusing on the evidence from the West of the Iberian Peninsula, and one on the South of England. The texts have their origin in a landmark meeting held at the University of Coimbra in November 2018, where scholars explored the grand narratives explaining the differences between what are traditionally considered Chalcolithic (or Late Neolithic) and Bronze Age communities. The contributions look at key aspects of these grand narratives through regional perspectives, asking the following questions: is there clear data to support the idea of an intensification of social complexity towards the emergence of the Bronze Age chiefdoms? What is the role of monumental architecture within this process? How do we best discuss the different levels of architectural visibility during this period? How can we interpret collective and individual burials in relation to the emergence of individual/territorial powers? In answering these questions, the papers explore regional diversity and argue that regional specificities resist a general interpretation of the historical process at stake. In light of this resistance, the book emphasizes that cultural singularities only become visible through contextual, medium, or low-scale approaches. The recognition of singularities challenges grand narratives, but also carries the potential to expand our understanding of the changes that occurred during this key moment of Late Prehistory. The book thus offers readers the opportunity to think about the diversity of archaeological evidence in combination with an exploration of the available range of approaches and narratives. The critical intertwining of multiple points of view is necessary, because it gets us closer to how elusive the cultural differences of prehistoric communities can be. This elusive dimension is precisely what can force us to constantly rethink what we see and what questions we ask.

Aegean prehistory has developed over the 20th century into a distinctive and vibrant area of archaeological research. The past few decades, in particular, have seen a dramatic reorientation and expansion of goals and methods as well as a flood of new fieldwork in the Agean. Keeping abreast of these new developments has become a daunting task. Aegean Prehistory: A Review contains detailed syntheses of research, originally published in the American Journal of Archaeology and newly updated here. The volume conveys the diversity and richness of current approaches to the discipline of Aegean prehistory whilst also marshalling an enormous amount of information pertaining to field projects, museum studies, analyses of materials and texts, and supporting theories of interpretation. An introduction by Tracey Cullen places the review articles in historical perspective, tracing the evolution of Aegean prehistory from the 19th century to the present. The author also considers the current status of the discipline--its relationships with classical archaeology and anthropology, and the manner in which it is shaped by various sociopolitical forces. Aegean Prehistory: A Review is a powerful research tool for the exploration of Aegean themes. With its expansive and detailed coverage, the book constitutes essential reading for professionals and students of Aegean prehistory. It will also be of great interest to all who wish to learn more about intellectual trends and current discoveries in this part of the Mediterranean. Perhaps most important, Aegean Prehistory: A Review provides a solid foundation upon which Aegean archaeology can build as it continues to thrive in the coming years.        

Goeytepe: Neolithic Excavations in the Middle Kura Valley, Azerbaijan, publishes the first round of fieldwork and research (2008-2013) at this key site for understanding the emergence and development of food-producing communities in the South Caucasus. Situated close to the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia, where Neolithisation processes occurred earlier, research in the South Caucasus raises intriguing research questions, including issues of diffusion from the latter and interaction with 'incoming' Neolithic communities as well as the possibility of independent local Neolithisation processes. In order to address these issues in the South Caucasus, a joint Azerbaijan-Japan research programme was launched in 2008 to investigate Goeytepe, one of the largest known Neolithic mounds in the South Caucasus. The results of the first phase of the project (2008-2013) presented here provide rich archaeological data from multi-disciplinary perspectives: chronology, architecture, technology, social organisation, and plant and animal exploitation, to name a few. This volume is the first to present these details in a single report of the South Caucasian Neolithic site using a high-resolution chronology based on dozens of radiocarbon dates.

A Painted Ridge is a book about the San (Bushmen) practice of rock painting. In it, David Witelson explores a suite of spatially close San rock painting sites in the Maclear District of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province. As a suite, the sites are remarkable because, despite their proximity to each other, they share patterns of similarity and simultaneous difference. They are a microcosm that reflects, in a broad sense, a trend found at other painted sites in South Africa. Rather than attempting to explain these patterns chiefly in terms of chronological breaks or cultural discontinuities, this book seeks to understand patterns of similarity and difference primarily in terms of the performative nature of San image-making. In doing so, the bygone and almost unrecorded practice of San rock art is considered relative to ethnographically well-documented and observed forms of San expressive culture. The approach in the book draws on concepts and terminology from the discipline of performance studies to characterise the San practice of image-making as well as to coordinate otherwise disparate ideas about that practice. It is a study that aims to explicate the nuances of what David Lewis-Williams called the ‘production and consumption’ of San rock art.

Clothing was crucial in human evolution, and having to cope with climate change was as true in prehistory as it is today. In Climate, Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory, Ian Gilligan offers the first complete account of the development of clothing as a response to cold exposure during the ice ages. He explores how and when clothes were invented, noting that the thermal motive alone is tenable in view of the naked condition of humans. His account shows that there is considerably more archaeological evidence for palaeolithic clothes than is generally appreciated. Moreover, Gilligan posits, clothing played a leading role in major technological innovations. He demonstrates that fibre production and the advent of woven fabrics, developed in response to global warming, were pivotal to the origins of agriculture. Drawing together evidence from many disciplines, Climate Clothing, and Agriculture in Prehistory is written in a clear and engaging style, and is illustrated with nearly 100 images.

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.

Dan Monah (11 February 1943 - 21 September 2013) was a specialist in the Neo-Eneolithic of Romania and, in particular, of the Precucuteni-Cucuteni-Tripolye cultural complex, last affiliated with the Iasi Institute of Archaeology of the Romanian Academy. His core body of work, consisting of seven books and more than one hundred articles published, primarily deals with coroplastic analysis as a mean of insight into the religion and art of the Neo-Eneolithic communities. With a unique approach to the study of what he formally named 'the religious life of Cucuteni-Tripolye communities', Dan Monah was a staunch critic of the dominant cultural-historic paradigm and its natural interpretative consequences: the supremacy of typological description, the Cartesian ranking of religious systems from simple to complex, and the avoidance of 'unclassable' occurrences. The present volume embodies his vision applied to the analysis of the Cucuteni-Tripolye anthropomorphic representations, resting on two structural pillars: an in-depth knowledge of a large body of history of religion literature, and an almost exhaustive inventory of the Cucuteni- Tripolye anthropomorphic representations, the result of over three decades of personal, patient and meticulous examination of the archaeological data. For those in his wake, Dan Monah's open and unprejudiced approach to the prehistoric imagery enclosed in this book constitutes a solid cornerstone on which further work can be built. Its pages should be turned, if not on account of the wealth of information inside, but for the author's pleasant and refreshing style at least.

Burial Mounds in Europe and Japan brings together specialists of the European Bronze and Iron Age and the Japanese Yayoi and Kofun periods for the first time to discuss burial mounds in a comparative context. The book aims to strengthen knowledge of Japanese archaeology in Europe and vice versa. The papers demonstrate many methodological and interpretive commonalities in the archaeology of burial mounds in Japan and Europe and provide a series of state-of-the-art case studies highlighting many different aspects of burial mound research in both regions. Topics addressed by both European and Japanese specialists include research histories, excavation methods, origins and development of graves with burial mounds, the relationship of burial mounds to settlements and landscape, and above all administrative power and ritual.

This volume is the final report on the excavations of a Kerma Ancien cemetery discovered by the Sudan Archaeological Research Society during its Northern Dongola Reach Survey conducted between 1993 and 1997. It is one of the very few cemeteries of this date to have been fully excavated and provides interesting data on funerary culture as practised in a rural environment, to be compared with the extensive information available from investigations of the cemetery associated with the metropolis of Kerma 100km to the north. It includes a range of specialist reports on all categories of artefacts recovered as well as on the physical anthropology, archaeobotany and archaeozoology.

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.

The 19th annual meeting of the Symposium on Mediterranean Archaeology (SOMA) was held in Kemer/Antalya (Turkey) from the 12th to the 14th of November, 2015. As has been the case in the past, this symposium continues to provide an important opportunity for scholars and researchers to come together and discuss their academic studies in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. The proceedings of SOMA 2015 contain eighteen interdisciplinary articles on themes from underwater archaeology to history, archaeometry and art history, and chronologically, the subjects of these articles range from the Bronze Age to the 20th century.

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.

In Home Francis Pryor, author of The Making of the British Landscape, archaeologist and broadcaster, takes us on his lifetime's quest: to discover the origins of family life in prehistoric Britain Francis Pryor's search for the origins of our island story has been the quest of a lifetime. In Home, the Time Team expert explores the first nine thousand years of life in Britain, from the retreat of the glaciers to the Romans' departure. Tracing the settlement of domestic communities, he shows how archaeology enables us to reconstruct the evolution of habits, traditions and customs. But this, too, is Francis Pryor's own story: of his passion for unearthing our past, from Yorkshire to the west country, Lincolnshire to Wales, digging in freezing winters, arid summers, mud and hurricanes, through frustrated journeys and euphoric discoveries. Evocative and intimate, Home shows how, in going about their daily existence, our prehistoric ancestors created the institution that remains at the heart of the way we live now: the family. 'Under his gaze, the land starts to fill with tribes and clans wandering this way and that, leaving traces that can still be seen today . . . Pryor feels the land rather than simply knowing it' - Guardian

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.

Brilliant horsemen and great fighters, the Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south - the Chinese, the Persians and the Greeks - and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe. Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different - both communities benefiting from trading with each other. This led to the development of a brilliant art style, often depicting scenes from Scythian mythology and everyday life. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, from the graves of kings on the Pontic steppe, with their elaborate gold work and vividly coloured fabrics, to the frozen tombs of the Altai mountains, where all the organic material - wooden carvings, carpets, saddles and even tattooed human bodies - is amazingly well preserved. Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence - both archaeological and textual - in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.

Caithness, the most northerly county in mainland Britain, is one of the richest cultural landscapes in Europe. The relative geographical isolation of the area, traditional landholding and the survival of large estates, combined with the use of flagstone as the main building material since earliest times, has ensured the survival of a wide range of monuments in a profusion unequalled elsewhere in Scotland. In the 19th century, Caithness was at the forefront of archaeological endeavours with many sites central to our understanding of Scottish prehistory. Since then, despite intermittent activity, the archaeology of Caithness has become somewhat marginalized and there is a perception that there are only a handful of archaeological sites for visitors to enjoy and the archaeologist to uncover and interpret. However, the county is full of hidden riches and traces of the past are visible everywhere. Caithness is dominated by landscapes rich in archaeological remains of all periods; chambered cairns, stone settings, brochs, Pictish settlements, wags, castles, harbours and post-medieval settlement, amongst many others. The authors have presented a cross section of these monument types in an attempt to re-centre the county in archaeological and early historical narratives. For the last decade, the authors have been involved in a range of heritage projects in the county, thus allowing them time to discover, observe and consider its archaeology. Their peregrinations provided opportunities for deeper contemplation of the county's archaeology, the result of which is presented in some new interpretations and perspectives which convey the excitement of working on heritage in Caithness.

The Dutch bestseller Nominated for Le Prix Nicolas Bouvier 'A masterclass in storytelling, exploring who we are and where we came from' Danielle Clode 'Gripping and brilliantly told, We Hominids deftly blends personal experience with a journalist's eye for a remarkable story' Mark McKenna WHO ARE WE? WHY ARE WE DIFFERENT FROM ANIMALS? WHAT MAKES US HUMAN? In this charming, thought-provoking book, one of Holland's greatest non-fiction writers hunts down answers to humanity's most fundamental questions: Who are we? What makes us different from animals? With an ancient skull as his starting point, he travels the globe, tracing the search for the first human being: the missing link between humans and apes. Westerman introduces us to the world of skull hunters – leading experts in our fossil ancestry – whose lives are just as fascinating as those of their primeval discoveries. He astutely reconsiders the work of illustrious paleoanthropologists in the light of new DNA technology, postcolonialism, and the rise of women in this male-dominated field. Westerman discovers a plethora of origin hypotheses and shows how any theory of who we are and where we come from is coloured by the zeitgeist. We, Hominids is a compelling mixture of reportage, travelogue and essay – reminiscent of Bruce Chatwin or Ryszard Kapuscinski – written by a brilliant storyteller and thinker.

‘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.

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.

This book details the archaeology of burnt mounds (fulachtai fia) in Ireland, one of the most frequent and under researched prehistoric site types in the country. It presents a re-evaluation of the pyrolithic phenomenon in light of some 1000 excavated burnt mounds. Charcoal-enriched soil, along with spreads and mounds of heat-affected stone, are one of the most common types of site found in Ireland, largely as a consequence of numerous discoveries made in the course of road building. They represent an accumulation of firing material associated with a prehistoric pyrolithic technology, which involved a process of heat transfer that centred on the use of hot stones immersed in water-filled troughs or placed in small, lined/unlined pits/ovens. During the Bronze Age, the use of this technology became widely adopted in Northern Europe, particularly Ireland, where the phenomenon is represented in the field as a low crescent-shaped mound. Even though burnt mounds are the most common prehistoric site type in Ireland, they have not received the same level of research as other prehistoric sites. This is primarily due to the paucity of artefact finds and the unspectacular nature of the archaeological remains, compounded by the absence of an appropriate research framework. This is the most comprehensive study undertaken on the use of pyrolithic technology in prehistoric Ireland, dealing with different aspects of site function, chronology, social role and cultural context.

Books tell stories about our lifeworld. In this book Jan Coetzee invites us to critically inquire into the aims, the content, and the context of the stories contained in a collection of old books from an old world. Without opening these old texts and without converting the original print on the pages to meaning and message, Coetzee brings the books into a dialogue with each other. Together with accompanying sculpted and/or found objects these books take on a new, broader function. By gathering them in one volume they attain a different character and tell us more than what the individual books ever could.

Funded by the AHRC, the Atlas of Hillforts of Britain and Ireland project (2012-2016) involved a team drawn from the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Cork which was responsible for compiling a massive database, now freely available online at https://hillforts.arch.ox.ac, on hillforts in Britain and Ireland. This was underpinned by a major desk-based re-assessment of accessible records. These twelve studies, presented at the end of that exercise to a conference in Edinburgh, and contributed by team members and colleagues, outline the background to and development of the project (Gary Lock) and offer a preliminary assessment of the online digital Atlas (John Pouncett) as well as presenting initial research studies using Atlas data. The volume is profusely illustrated with over 140 figures, including many new maps. Ian Ralston provides a historical assessment of key stages in the enumeration and mapping of these important monuments on both sides of the Irish Sea. The hill- and promontory forts of England, Wales and the Isle of Man are assessed by Ian Brown and those of Ireland by James O’Driscoll, Alan Hawkes and William O’Brien. Stratford Halliday’s study of the Scottish evidence focuses on the impact of the application of the Atlas criteria to the records of forts in that country. Simon Maddison deploys Percolation Analysis as an example of the potential re-use of the Atlas data in analysing new distributions; Jessica Murray presents a GIS-based approach to hillfort settings and configurations. Syntheses on insular Early Historic fortified settlements in northern Britain and Ireland, by James O’Driscoll and Gordon Noble, and on hillforts in areas of the nearer Continent are included. The latter comprise an overview by Sophie Krausz on Iron Age fortifications in France and a consideration of the south German records of hillforts and oppida by Axel Posluschny, while Fernando Rodriguez del Cueto tackles the north-western Spanish evidence.