Wie gestaltete sich das soziale Zusammenleben zwischen Menschen und nichtmenschlichen Arten als eine eng verwobene Gemeinschaft in prähistorischer Zeit? In verschiedensten Disziplinen der Geistes-, Sozial- und Lebenswissenschaften werden verstärkt gesellschaftliche Grundannahmen über nichtmenschliche Arten hinterfragt. Die aus dieser Wende entstandenen neuen Fragestellungen verbreiten sich auch in der Archäologie. Archäolog*innen haben begonnen, traditionelle Ansätze zu überdenken, um ...

Salt was a commodity of great importance in the ancient past, just as it is today. Its roles in promoting human health and in making food more palatable are well-known; in peasant societies it also plays a very important role in the preservation of foodstuffs and in a range of industries. Uncovering the evidence for the ancient production and use of salt has been a concern for historians over many years, but interest in the archaeology of salt has been a particular focus of research in recent...

In prehistoric Europe hierarchic societies arose and developed technological systems and processes in the production of objects related to everyday use, on the one hand, and items of religious and symbolic character emulating prestige and luxury, on the other, while both types of objects may not always be clearly distinguishable.

This volume deals with questions of how artisans and other social groups, involved in these productive processes and social practices, reacted to and interacted with...

After World War II huge land consolidation projects measuring thousands of hectares were carried out in West-Frisia. Large scale excavations of Bronze Age settlement sites were carried out resulting in a convincing model for the Bronze Age habitation of West-Frisia. This model envisaged settlement sites situated on creek ridges in an open almost treeless landscape. After a sudden change in climate c. 800 cal BC parts of the landscape were inundated, peat bogs developed and West-Frisia was aba...

Did ancient Europeans truly believe in an active after-life, as modern Europeans would like to think they did? What purpose did grave-goods actually serve? Are archaeology and the historical sciences in general able to shed, once and for all, a curse placed upon them at their inception as research disciplines in the early nineteenth century? Searching for answers to these questions is the aim of this book which has been written on the basis of widely spread, typical components of grave-goods....

Excavations at Chalk Hill, Ramsgate in south-eastern Britain were primarily aimed at investigating the remains of a possible early Neolithic causewayed enclosure visible on aerial photographs. However, the monument could not in fact be categorised as a causewayed enclosure, but instead represented a type of early Neolithic ritual monument unique to the British Isles.The earliest significant features recorded on the site dated to the early Neolithic (roughly 3700-3600 cal BC). They took the fo...

Das Buch bietet eine detaillierte Darstellung des Jüngeren Neolithikums (ca. 2850 - 2250 v.Chr.) in Schleswig-Holstein (SH). Neben der Vorlage aller bisher bekannter Funde und Befunde der Einzelgrabkultur wird ein besonderer Fokus auf deren Hammeräxte gelegt. Sie sind das meist vorkommende Artefakt und bieten in ihren Kontexten eine Möglichkeit, soziale Praktiken des Jungneolithikums zu analysieren.

Grundsätzlich nimmt die Variationsbreite der Hammeräxte mit der Zeit zu, was - ähnlich wi...

This edited volume explores how (what is today) Scotland can be compared with, contrasted to, or was connected with other parts of Early Medieval Europe. Far from a 'dark age', Early Medieval Scotland (AD 300-900) was a crucible of different languages and cultures, the world of the Picts, Scots, Britons and Anglo-Saxons. Though long regarded as somehow peripheral to continental Europe, people in Early Medieval Scotland had mastered complex technologies and were part of sophisticated intellect...

St. Eustatius, a small island in the northeastern Lesser Antilles, was one of the busiest ports in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World. Contested between the Dutch, French, and English, the island attracted thousands of ships a year and became one of the most cosmopolitan places in the New World. Moreover, the island played an important role in the American War of Independence (1775-1783), during which large quantities of arms, ammunition, and gunpowder were shipped to the fledgling United ...