This book is a presentation of the basic concept of social, environmental and cultural connectivity in past societies, as embodied in a diversity of disciplines in the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS. Thus, rather pragmatically driven ideas of socio-environmental connectivities are described, which form the basis of the Cluster of Excellence in its research.

A discussion of the fluidness of the term ‘connectivity’ and the applicability of the concept opens the arena for diverse interpretatio...

Cremation in the Early Middle Ages draws together the latest research and thinking on early medieval cremation practices. The book takes you on a journey through 19 chapters exploring cremation practices from the fifth to the eleventh centuries CE in Fennoscandia, the UK and Ireland, Frisia, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and France. In this way, the book aims to be a central resource for anyone interested in early medieval cremations, or indeed funerary practices more generally. Notably, the str...

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 volume provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of the archaeology of a single Caribbean island yet published. Drawing together scholars from the Caribbean, north America and Europe, all working from a range of disciplines within the broader scope of archaeology, and drawing upon recent and innovative fieldwork, the collected papers touch upon a wider variety of archaeological case studies.

Divided into four sections each under the editorial supervision of a specialist scholar, t...

There has been an increasing archaeological interest in human-animal-nature relations, where archaeology has shifted from a focus on deciphering meaning, or understanding symbols and the social construction of the landscape to an acknowledgement of how things, places and the environment contribute with their own agencies to the shaping of relations.

This means that the environment cannot be regarded as a blank space that landscape meaning is projected onto. Parallel to this, the field of env...

In the spring of 1497, the Hispaniolan cacica (chieftess) Anacaona presented Columbus’ brother, Adelantado (Governor) Bartolomé Colón, with a lavish assortment of Indigenous wealth, including both woven textiles and balls of spun cotton, “so large that a man could hardly lift them.”

These had been stored among the cacical reserves, held in readiness for distribution in ways deemed useful to the chiefs and their communities – from spun cotton for artisanal commissions, to finished ob...

The problem of the social dimension of technology and transformation seen in the perspective of the habitus has been repeatedly undertaken in various works. However, the complexity of these phenomena causes subsequent attempts to be presented and explained again in new contexts, bringing interesting observations.

The edited volume aims to contribute to our better understanding of a system of embodied dispositions hidden under the term 'habitus'. This will be achieved by presenting the latest ...

The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age saw many developments in metalworking, social structure, food production, nutrition, and diet. At the same time, networks in Europe intensified and human impact on the environment changed in character. What influence did these transformations have on daily life? Which proxies can researchers use to study these topics?

This volume presents scientific contributions from different fields of expertise within modern archaeology in order to investigate past living ...

This book examines the mutual influence of architecture and human action during a key period of history: the Hellenistic age. During this era, the profound transformations in the Mediterranean's archaeological and historical record are detectable, pointing to a conscious intertwining of the physical (landscape, architecture, bodies) and social (practice) components of built space.

Compiling the outcomes of a conference held in Kiel in 2018, the volume assembles contributions focusing on Hellen...