The identification of ceramic imports within prehistoric and historic assemblages has long been the primary indicator for identifying connections between different sites and regions. Yet this has fostered a presence/absence diagnosis for contact between different communities. Approaches such as post-colonial perspectives and network analysis, which focus on the nature of the connections, are now beginning to offer more meaningful ways of considering past interactions. These approaches can bri...

Ancient Egyptian animal mummies can be found in almost every Egyptological museum collection. These mummified bodies of animals—from cats and falcons to scarabs and fish—played a role in animal cults and religion, but could also represent a favourite pet or serve as food for the deceased. Especially in Graeco-Roman Egypt, large numbers of animal mummies were deposited as votive offerings related to animal cults, thus playing a significant role in local economies. Studying their remains he...

Archaeological research on early villages has repeatedly shown that despite their small size these settlements were anything but simple. Excavations at the Late Neolithic and early Aeneolithic village of Monjukli Depe in the Kopet Dag foothills of Turkmenistan contribute to a picture of this complexity. General uniformities in house plans and material culture conceal underlying variability in material and social practices. Small-scale analyses of the preparation and use of space in buildings,...

During a considerable part of prehistory stone tools were indispensable. Flint in particular had properties that made it very suitable for making razor-sharp implements and could often, but not always, be collected locally. Hunters, gatherers and fishers mostly used small tools but with the transition to an agricultural way of living this situation changed, as larger implements became necessary, to cut down trees and work wood for instance.

The raw material suitable for this was often not av...

Bone tool studies are at a crossroads. A current path is to go beyond the concatenation of methods or concepts borrowed from other disciplines and aim instead at a truly integrated approach that is more in line with the objectives of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research.

The papers in this volume follow this direction by adopting various forms of dialogue and integration between old and new methods and approaches, including technological analysis, usewear analysis, typology, zooa...

Broomcorn/common/proso millet (Panicum miliaceum) is a cereal crop that originated in East Asia and was transferred westward to Europe, where it was introduced in the mid-2nd millennium BCE, at the height of the Bronze Age. Archaeobotanists from the Collaborative Research Centre 1266, supported by many colleagues, conducted a large-scale programme of radiocarbon dating of millet grains from prehistoric Europe. They discovered that the spread of this crop on the continent happened quickly, ext...

Pile dwellings have been explored over a vast region for a number of decades now. This has led to the development of different ways, methods, and even schools of under-water and peat-bog excavation practices and data analysis techniques under the influence of different research traditions in individual countries. On the one hand, these and other factors can limit our understanding of the past, whilst on the other hand they can also open up further avenues of interpretation.

By collecting the ...

Around 3000 BCE, a turning point occurred in Europe: Long-existing regional societies entered into a process of transformation. The result is a world in which new global communication networks brought different regions closer together. From 3200/3100 BCE, the Globular Amphora phenomenon (GA) was the trailblazer in Eastern and Central Europe. Due to a focus on pastoral subsistence, in comparison to more agrarian economic systems, new ritual practices formed in light of a more flexible form of ...