For the first time seasonality is placed at the centre of the study of rural settlement. Using a Europe-wide approach, it provides a primer of examples, of techniques and of ideas for the identification and understanding of seasonal settlement. As such, it marks an important new step in the interpretation of the use of the countryside by historic communities linked to the annual passage of the year. The particular studies are introduced by an opening essay which draws wider conclusions about ...

The Netherlands are internationally renowned for the archaeology of its wetland environments. The reclamation of the Flevoland Polders in the early half of the 20th century not only exposed hundreds of shipwrecks, but also remnants of prehistoric landscapes and traces of human occupation dating to Mesolithic and Neolithic times. Ultimately, this led to the ‘discovery’ of the Swifterbant Culture in the 1960s-1970s, and which was initially seen as a Dutch equivalent of the Ertebølle Culture.

Archaeological investigations conducted by the University of Groningen, and later also the University of Amsterdam, delivered important new data on the nature of the Swifterbant Culture. It became key in the discussion about the adoption of crop cultivation and animal husbandry by hunter-gatherers living in wetland environments. Also, the Swifterbant Culture became central in the debate on the meaning of archaeologically defined ‘cultures’, questioning relationships between social interaction and material culture. With the increase of urbanisation and infrastructural works, alongside changes in the Dutch Monuments Act, dozens of small and large-scale development-led investigations got initiated at the turn of the centur...

Barrows at the Core of Bronze Age Communities argues exactly that. Round barrows do not just represent the death side of Early Bronze Age communities placed in set-a-side ritual landscapes, but were instead central to existence in many ways. This study of the Rother Region, where the Weald meets the Wessex massif, reports the results of the People of the Heath project, 2014–18. It integrates a wealth of data from comprehensive field study of all relevant sites in the region with that from e...

Towards the capstone of the European Bronze Age, in an area stretching from the Carpathians in the East to the North Sea in the West, vast cremation grave cemeteries occur that are perhaps better known as ‘urnfields.’ Today some 700 of these burial sites have come to light in the Netherlands alone.

In this corner of Europe, also known as the ‘Lower-Rhine-Basin,’ these cemeteries are often characterised by vast collections of small burial mounds under which the cremated remains of dec...

In Bronze Age Europe, an enormous amount of metalwork was buried in the ground and never retrieved. Patterns in the archaeological finds show that this was a deliberate practice: people systematically deposited valuable metal objects in specific places in the landscape, even in non-metalliferous regions. Although this practice seems strange and puzzling from our modern perspective, these patterns demonstrate that it was not simply a matter of irrational human behaviour. Instead, there were su...

The Tripolye phenomenon, which displays a specific artefact complex and an extraordinary settlement layout, is also known for its so-called ‘mega sites’. Five of the largest ‘mega’ or giant settlements measure between 150-320 ha in size. These, and other big settlements, are concentrated in the Sinyukha River Basin, which is a central part of modern Ukraine. In this region, more than 100 different Tripolye sites are known.

The chronology of this region is the key to understanding not ...

This book brings together 30 papers by leading scholars in the field of usewear and residue analysis. This publication aims to revive the debate on the role of traceology (use-wear and residues) in multidisciplinary approaches that address archaeological questions. Many studies on technological aspects of material culture deal with specific material categories (e.g. flint, ceramics, bone), often in separate or isolated ways, and this division does not really reflect the integrated nature of t...

The Netherlands are internationally renowned for the archaeology of its wetland environments. The reclamation of the Flevoland Polders in the early half of the 20th century not only exposed hundreds of shipwrecks, but also remnants of prehistoric landscapes and traces of human occupation dating to Mesolithic and Neolithic times. Ultimately, this led to the ‘discovery’ of the Swifterbant Culture in the 1960s-1970s, and which was initially seen as a Dutch equivalent of the Ertebølle Culture.

Archaeological investigations conducted by the University of Groningen, and later also the University of Amsterdam, delivered important new data on the nature of the Swifterbant Culture. It became key in the discussion about the adoption of crop cultivation and animal husbandry by hunter-gatherers living in wetland environments. Also, the Swifterbant Culture became central in the debate on the meaning of archaeologically defined ‘cultures’, questioning relationships between social interaction and material culture. With the increase of urbanisation and infrastructural works, alongside changes in the Dutch Monuments Act, dozens of small and large-scale development-led investigations got initiated at the turn of the centur...

For the first time seasonality is placed at the centre of the study of rural settlement. Using a Europe-wide approach, it provides a primer of examples, of techniques and of ideas for the identification and understanding of seasonal settlement. As such, it marks an important new step in the interpretation of the use of the countryside by historic communities linked to the annual passage of the year. The particular studies are introduced by an opening essay which draws wider conclusions about ...

If you want to understand ancient Egypt, the Nile Delta is of key importance. Excavations and surveys in the Delta keep unearthing new information about how the ancient Egyptians lived, how they envisaged the afterlife and how they interacted with other cultures. The study of finds from the Delta gives us a glimpse into the beliefs and everyday life of the ancient Egyptians.

From 1979 to 2014 Willem van Haarlem worked on several archaeological sites in the Nile Delta, focusing on the excavati...