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 ...

This volume offers a comprehensive overview of the historical archaeology of Venezuela, marking the first time such a detailed study is available in both English and Spanish. It compiles the work of leading Venezuelan archaeologists and includes recent fieldwork and unpublished research, covering a wide range of case studies from precolonial times to the republican period.

Structured in five parts, the book starts with a thorough review of the history of Venezuelan historical archaeological r...

This pioneering study charts the one-way traffic of cultural and historical objects during five centuries of European colonialism. It presents abundant examples of disappeared colonial objects and systematises these into war booty, confiscations by missionaries and contestable acquisitions by private persons and other categories. Former colonies consider this as a historical injustice that has not been undone.Former colonial powers have kept most of the objects in their custody. In the 1970s ...

This work is an intensive study of the Neolithic deposition of copper objects from Neuenkirchen in North-East Germany. This unique ensemble represents one of the very rare hoard finds from the early Early Neolithic, and is the first of its kind for nearly 100 years, matched only by the famous younger hoard find from Bygholm (Denmark).

The beginning of neolithization at the end of the fifth millennium is not only characterised by a change in the subsistence strategy, but also by the developmen...

Bei einer Ausgrabung im havelländischen Lietzow in Brandenburg wurden jungsteinzeitliche Siedlungsbefunde entdeckt. Sie gehören zu zwei Hofstellen der jüngeren Linienbandkeramik, die um 5100-5000 v. u. Z. datiert. Die in der äußersten Peripherie des damaligen bäuerlichen Siedlungsgebiets gelegene Siedlung Lietzow 10 bestand über ungefähr zwei Generationen. Die von dichtem Eichen-Kiefernwald umgebene Siedlung lag wie eine kleine Insel auf einer Grundmoränenplatte, die mit relativ fruc...

Since the eighteenth century, many if not most ancient and medieval manuscripts or other text-bearing or associated objects have been procured through imperial expropriation or through the antiquities market with little or no evidence of findspot or place of original deposition and with no assurance of legal provenance or authenticity. The consequences of these questionable acquisition practices for scholarship and for our understanding of the past are the focus of much enquiry.

Recent high-...

Early Settlers of the Insular Caribbean: Dearchaizing the Archaic offers a comprehensive coverage of the most recent advances in interdisciplinary research on the early human settling of the Caribbean islands. It covers the time span of the so-called Archaic Age and focuses on the Middle to Late Holocene period which - depending on specific case studies discussed in this volume - could range between 6000 BC and AD 1000. A similar approach to the early settlers of the Caribbean islands has nev...

The early Neolithic site of Vráble (5250-4950 cal BCE) is among the largest LBK settlement agglomerations in Central Europe, and exceptional within the southwest Slovakian area. Geophysical surveys revealed more than 300 houses, grouped into three contemporary neighbourhoods, one of which is delineated by a complex ditched enclosure system. This enclosure is associated with a large number of human remains, which reveal new patterns of burial and deposition practices. This volume presents the...

How did people organize their settlements in later prehistoric societies? How do architecture, spatial organization, land divisions, and landscape use relate to different modes of social organization? The papers in this book contribute to a greater understanding of the complexity and dynamics of settlement and landscape organization in the Nordic countries from the Late Bronze Age to the Renaissance.

Among the topics addressed is the notion of the wandering settlements as the standard settle...