Late Prehistoric Fortifications in Europe: Defensive, Symbolic and Territorial Aspects from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age presents the contributions to the International Colloquium ‘FortMetalAges’ (10th–12th November 2017, Guimarães, Portugal), The Colloquium was organised by the Scientific Commission ‘Metal Ages in Europe’ of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP/ IUSPP) and by the Martin Sarmento Society of Guimarães. Nineteen papers discuss different interpretive ideas for defensive structures whose construction had necessitated large investment, present new case studies, and conduct comparative analysis between different regions and chronological periods from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age.

As the editors point out, "rock art is the oldest archive of human activity," and its interpretation, although fraught with difficulty is thus of prime importance. This collection of papers, taken from the 15th UISPP congress, mainly look at specific symbols and their interpretation. Thus there are papers on faceless anthropomorphic symbols, the pentagram, spirals and lozenges, bulls horn symbols, footprint and handprint symbols, cupmarks and triangles, and net patterns and ruled rectangles. The volume is completed by two essays on particular rock art sites in Portugal and Galicia.

Ten essays from a session of the 15th UISPP Congress (2006), which demonstrate the importance of the cognitive-processual approach pioneered by Colin Renfrew in studying prehistoric iconography. Topics include the location and orientation of passage tombs in Ireland, the symbolic use of celestial bodies in Bronze Age Hungary, ship images in rock art, female statues in Romania, symbolism in the East European Chalcolothic, rock art in France, and metal deposits in the Alps. There are also three purely theoretical papers.

Filiform rock art appears as a spontaneous technique, more simple and immediate than pecking, good either for autonomous strands of expression, or for sketches and first drafts regarding works of painting or pecking. According to the order of presentation of the session's papers during the XVII IUPPS (UISPP) Conference in Burgos, the articles published here are the following: Late prehistoric incised rock art in southern Europe: a contribution for its typology, by Fernando A. Coimbra, where the author presents a preliminary typology of this kind of rock art, divided in two groups (geometric and figurative), approaching not only common themes to several countries, but also some examples that have only a regional character; Filiform rock art in mount Bego (Tende, Maritime Alps, France), by Nicoletta Bianchi, which analyses some cases where pecked carvings overlap filiforms, therefore pre-dating pecked engravings and studies the interaction of the two carvings tradition; Filiform figures in the rock art of Valcamonica from Prehistory to the Roman age, by Umberto Sansoni, Cinzia Bettineschi and Silvana Gavaldo, that provides a general corpus of the figurative incised rock art of Valcamonica with a quantitative and qualitative approach, by considering the typological variety, the long-lasting chronological dating and the strong relation with the local pecked rock art of the Camunian filiforms; Threadlike engravings of historical period on the rocks and plaster of churches and civic buildings. Some comparisons and proposals of interpretation, by Federico Troletti, which presents the incised engravings exclusively of historical time located in some sites of Valcamonica - the area of Campanine di Cimbergo and Monticolo di Darfo; The rock art from Figueiredo (Serta, Portugal): typology, parallels and chronology, by Fernando A. Coimbra and Sara Garces, focusing vi on the description of the engravings from three carved rocks with incised motives from the place of Figueiredo, in central Portugal, which were studied during different fieldworks. Two other papers of researchers that couldn't attend the Conference were also presented: The filiform rock art from Kosovo, by Shemsi Krasniqi, which presents recent findings from Kosovo with a similar typology of figures from other European countries; The filiform rock engravings of the Parete Manzi of Montelapiano (Chieti, Italy), by Tomaso Di Fraia, which analyses the problematic of incised rock art from a rock shelter in the centre of Italy.

These papers arose from a workshop at the 15th uispp congress which aimed to provide an opportunity for researchers from a number of institutions to compare ideas and to seek to develop a standardised system for recording rock art, or a family of interconnecting systems, based on information technology. The papers present various cataloguing systems, and explore issues of conservation, accessibility, and of intellectual rights.

1. The Emergence of warrior societies and its economic, social and environmental consequences. Proceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1-7 September 2014, Burgos, Spain) Session A3c edited by Fernando Coimbra and Davide Delfino: Several works have been dedicated to the aim of warfare in European Bronze Age, by a point of view of bronze technology and archaeometallurgy. The present volume wants to be a short and actualized contribution to the study and interpretation of warrior societies, through a point of view of the marks of the first warfare in Europe, its causes and its consequences in all the intelligible evidences, both from a point of view of material culture, of landscape, of human behavior and artistic manifestations. 2. Aegean - Mediterranean imports and influences in the graves from continental Europe - Bronze and Iron Ages. Proceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1-7 September 2014, Burgos, Spain) Session A16a edited by Valeriu Sirbu and Cristian Schuster: There is already a 'history' with not only different, but sometimes contradictory opinions regarding the role played by the Aegean-Mediterranean area in the evolution of the peoples who lived in continental Europe during the age of Bronze and Iron, including burial customs. The organizers of this session proposed, through ongoing communication and the discussions that followed, to obtain new data on the influences and Aegean-Mediterranean imports found in the graves, and the possible movements of groups of people who carried them. The main area of interest focused on the 'roads' and the stages of their penetration, but also considered feedback from peripheral areas. The session aims to highlight the role of the southern imports in the evolution of local communities' elites and their impact on the general development of the populations of continental Europe, the possible meanings of their deposit in the burials. Analysis of these phenomena over wide geographical areas (from the Urals to the Atlantic) and large chronological periods (the third-. first millennia BC) allow the identification of certain traits as general (eg., the continuity and discontinuity), or particular (eg., the impact of imports and southern influences on communities of different geographical areas).