The ephemeral nature of religious practices and rituals makes them challenging to trace in the archaeological record of Late Neolithic hunter-gatherer communities in central and eastern Europe. A ritual feature with Bell Beaker elements discovered in north-eastern Poland, a region occupied by hunter-gatherer groups of the Neman cultural circle, is thus exceptional. Its syncretic character indicates its role as a harbinger of wider cultural change that led to the emergence in this region of the western group of the Bronze Age Trzciniec cultural circle.

The association of Tomb II at Vergina, Greece, with Philip II initiated a debate concerning the use of barrel-vaults in Macedonian tombs. The accepted theory at the time held that, since no Macedonian tomb was dated prior to the last quarter of the 4th century BC, Macedonians copied the barrel-vault from the Persians after the military campaign of Alexander the Great in Asia, and therefore Tomb II should be dated to a later period. After an intense dispute, fresh archaeological evidence proved that this theory was false. This article examines the ways we structure knowledge in archaeology from hypothesis to theory that can develop to consensus, and how later consensus exercises a conservative influence on the production of new knowledge. New evidence that contradicts consensual theories is approached with stronger hostility and is confronted with higher demands of confirmation. I suggest that the same amount of scrutiny should be applied to the established theories, which are not unchangeable representations of reality, but conventionally shared property of archaeologists.

The end of the villa landscape in the north-western Roman provinces is characterized by significant transformation. One facet is the use of the villa complex and its surrounding area for funerary purposes. Traditionally, these burials have been divided into large-scale reuse of sites in the Migration period and small-scale transitional burials. The study of the latter has previously often been misguided or neglected. In this article, the author examines these transitional burials, addresses their historical background, and presents a new approach for assessing the scale, temporal distribution, and characteristics of a group of sites with funerary evidence in Belgica, Britannia, and the Germanic provinces.

Arthur Evans is most noted for his work in Crete, particularly the excavation of the Palace of Knossos, which he began in the year 1900. As a consequence, Arthur Evans' earlier archaeology is often overlooked. This paper focuses on a series of lectures, largely unpublished, on the development of megalithic monuments and the religious cult they embodied, delivered by Evans in 1885. Evans' ideas of cult were embedded in contemporary late nineteenth century anthropological concepts set within an evolutionary context. This paper shows that these underlying ideas were also evident in Evans' later writings on the Aegean: notably, the famous article on the Tree and Pillar Cult that formed the basis of his concept of Minoan religion. By contextualizing Evans' early work, we gain a fuller understanding of why he prioritized certain information in constructing his concept of a Minoan civilization.

The author summarises recent research undertaken at Freiburg University on settlement in south-western Germany during the Roman and Merovingian periods. Following the Germanic conquest of the Agri decumates and the retreat of the Roman limes to the Rhine and Danube (AD 260), hillfort settlements appeared. They were the pinnacle of Alamannic settlement hierarchy, forming the counterpoint to the late Roman castellae along the Rhein, which were also garrisoned by Alamanni warriors. New research, however, suggests an otherwise strong continuity of the Roman settlement pattern (particularly the pattern established by villae rusticae), and a major shift only occurred around AD 500 when the hilltop settlements disappeared and village-like settlements replaced scattered farmsteads.

The timing and nature of the emergence of art in human evolution has been one of the more debated subjects in palaeoanthropology in the last few years, and one of the areas where archaeology has made impressive advances. Here, we discuss the first evidence of figurative art on portable materials in the north of Spain. After analysis of the stratigraphic contexts of all examples potentially of this age, which eliminated those of uncertain provenance, only three examples can be said to be Gravettian with a degree of confidence. We examine their stratigraphic provenance, the integrity of their archaeological contexts, and the absolute dates available for them. We then discuss their thematic and stylistic traits, comparing them to the wider database of material in the adjacent regions of the French Pyrenees and Mediterranean Iberia. We conclude that figurative depictions were scarce in the Gravettian of south-western Europe, in contrast to the relatively abundant examples of cave art assigned to this period in the region. If this is correct, we should nuance our discussions of ‘Palaeolithic art’ by considering that parietal and portable art had their own trajectories and functions, at least in the Early to mid-Upper Palaeolithic.

This article proposes an alternative way to explore a series of definitions, concepts, meanings and, sometimes, polysemies of island worlds, by using mainly ancient Greek literary sources, diachronic island names, and their etymologies, epithets, and other systems of labelling and describing them. It argues that such evidence literally and metaphorically involves mirrors and maps, and transcribes important parameters of an eloquent cognitive geography, forged from long-established knowledge and empirical wisdom, and relevant to modern scientific insights, including archaeological ones. If systematically investigated and thoroughly deciphered, this may disclose numerous meaningful elements of the insular topoi we study; and thus enrich significantly our efforts to conceive them as ‘total’ natural and cultural geographies – or ‘insularities’ – through time. Here, a limited number of cited examples illustrate a few, and mainly physical, aspects of their morphological, geological, topographic and other environmental traits – only tentatively touching upon their human-made landscapes. All the same, the information this provides may be also relevant, even if indirectly, to the islands' cultural environments. Furthermore, this approach can certainly be expanded to cover various other general and specific insular properties – including their inhabitants and diachronic monuments.

In the last few decades, the discovery of large ditched enclosures in Iberia has revealed the diversity and complexity of deposition and manipulation of human bone remains. Alongside traditional ritual burials (mainly megalithic tombs and hypogea), fragmented and scattered human bones mixed with other kinds of material culture began to appear in many features. This is the case for Ditch 5 at Marroquíes, which offers an excellent opportunity to explore this ritual behaviour. Based on a multi-proxy approach, three main conclusions can be drawn: 1) the skeletal elements present show deliberate selection of particular categories of bones; 2) depositional episodes included the remains of people who died at different points in time and were subject to different taphonomic processes, and 3) mobility patterns indicate that all individuals, with one possible exception, were local. The movement and manipulations of body parts may reflect the active role of people after death as social and symbolic elements that retain agency and capacity for action.

In this article, I explore how digital data collection in the context of the Berkeley-Abiquiú Collaborative Archaeology (BACA) project works, some of the affordances of this new-ish technology, and how they articulate with analogue art practices to achieve the goals of engaged research. Thinking with affordances helps me reflect critically on what digital data recording offers our research goals. In this case, the most important aspect of using digital data recording is how it changes our relationship to time. New orientations of research time created by such technology is an opportunity to engage creatively with how archaeology can represent complexity, produce embodied experience, and share senses of place through both digital and analogue practices. As archaeologists trying to think trans-humanistically, we need to reflect critically on digital technologies to produce engaged research. This is always a shifting target. New uses reveal new possibilities, and vice versa. But newness is not what makes an impact, a difference, or changes the way we do research together; what makes a difference is the result, effects, and affects of these affordances.

Much research has been carried out on identifying gendered iconography on statue-menhirs. This paper seeks to develop this perspective by considering the broader body concepts. Body concepts are of interest to archaeologists because they are closely connected to issues of sex, gender, and age. By investigating stone sculptures, however, we are looking at an ideological view of the body that was produced by reducing the stone from its natural form into a statue-menhir. The presence of bodily features on the statue-menhirs suggests that it was important to construct a body, and that certain aspects of the body were chosen to be represented, either through the size and shape of the stone or iconography, while others were neglected. We propose this is a significant means by which stones were made into bodies and gendered beings. To investigate body concepts, we pose two questions: how was a statue-menhir body made, and how was it gendered? By following the reduction sequence of the stone as the technique of production, we investigate which bodily features were important in constructing a body and in gendering it. We do this through analysing and comparing three regional examples of anthropomorphic statue-menhirs: (1) The Lunigiana groups A and B in northwestern Tuscany and eastern-most Liguria, (2) the Atesino group in Trentino-Alto Adige, and (3) the Sion Type A in the Swiss Valais and the Aosta Style I in northern Italy. Although there is a shared statue-menhir tradition in the three regions and beyond, the observations in this paper suggest that the bodily gender categories were negotiated regionally.

The well-known Zvejnieki cemetery, with 330 burials, is one of the largest hunter-gatherer cemeteries in northern Europe, overshadowing the more than 115 other Stone Age burials from over ten sites in Latvia. This article is a first overview of these other burials, summarizing their research history, characteristics, and assemblages. The authors discuss the problematic chronology of Latvian Stone Age burials and place them in a wider regional context. Most of the burials are hunter-gatherer burials, and a few are Corded Ware graves. This overview broadens our understanding of Latvian Stone Age burials and brings to light the diversity of hunter-fisher-gatherer mortuary practices in the eastern Baltic region.

The post-medieval castle is often neglected in English archaeology, with most analyses focusing on whether the castle was built for status or defence, a debate which has become known as ‘the Battle for Bodiam’. However, in the English Civil War between 1642 and 1651, many castles were fortified either for King Charles I or his rebellious Parliament. Although the fortification of castles during this period is often attributed to acts of desperation and a lack of more suitable defences, an examination of the Royalist occupation of Sandal Castle in West Yorkshire demonstrates how this view is simplistic. The decision to fortify Sandal can be directly linked to the Battle of Wakefield in 1460, when Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the father of King Edward IV and Richard III, was killed outside its walls. This episode heavily influenced subsequent events, culminating in the occupation of the castle at the outbreak of the English Civil War. The importance of the past during this later conflict is reinforced by the faunal and artefactual assemblages, and the locations in which they were found (and consumed). The complexity of the social discourse at Sandal challenges current approaches in castle studies and highlights the need for a biographical approach which sees the interpretation and interaction of the castle through time and space as far more important than the motivations behind its initial construction. Such a way of proceeding complements existing methodologies but also relies on material culture and history to create a subtler interpretation of these complex buildings.

Using cross-cultural ethnographic and archaeological analogy, this paper offers a new interpretation for a specific societal attribute represented on the Iron Age stelae of Daunia, arguing that the designs on the forearms of the female stelae do not represent gloves but are instead tattoos. By questioning a single, long-held, belief about the stelae, it is hoped to highlight a very important principle of method: the need to identify and investigate the socio-cultural context of an image or artefact. For too long the Daunian stelae have been looked at through Hellenized eyes. Unlike other Italic societies of this period, the Daunians appear to have remained reasonably unaffected by Greek and wider Mediterranean influence, suggesting the Iron Age inhabitants of the region retained a strong ethnic identity. With limited evidence of their social and religious life deriving from other sources, any hope of understanding these people properly relies on a correct reading of their stelae, which can only be achieved by firmly placing these monuments within an Adriatic milieu.

The multidisciplinary research described here shows how archaeologists can help reconstruct past seismic episodes and understand the subsequent relief operation, rehabilitation, and reconstruction processes. In October 1522, a major earthquake and landslide struck the then capital of the Azores, Vila Franca do Campo, 1500 km from the European mainland. Damage was extensive, destroying key monuments, affecting most of the inhabited area, and leaving few survivors among the early colonists. The results from twenty-six archaeological trenches, geological and geoarchaeological investigations, and documentary analysis are reviewed here. Distinctive archaeological deposits are identified and explained, using the high density of artefacts and the erosional contact between the landslide and the pre-1522 palaeosol to reconstruct the episode in detail.

Research into the Iron Age of Anatolia has seldom paid sufficient attention to settlement patterns and the social organization of space. The Anabasis by Xenophon records the observations of a Greek outsider who travelled across eastern Anatolia and along the Black Sea coast in 400 bce, a time that was relatively early in the colonial process in this area. Xenophon's observations are used to establish a basic model for settlement in the Black Sea coastal region of Anatolia, which is then tested against the results of recent archaeological surveys and related research on the Sinop promontory. A fuller and richer model of indigenous Iron Age settlement and colonial engagement on the Sinop promontory is developed and considered in light of recent research on colonization in the western Mediterranean and northern Black Sea regions.

Investigating three Bronze-Age cemeteries in a small area near the rock carvings of Norrköping, Östergötland, Sweden, this paper suggests that the social and economic structure of the area was not necessarily homogeneous, although this is the traditional view. Variations in the burial practices are analysed: burial construction, grave goods present, and treatment of cremated bones. An elite is suggested as having existed at settlements using the cemeteries at Klinga and Fiskeby, those using Ringeby were less organised or controlled. A speculative interpretation is offered: that Ringeby served as a subsistence area for the ‘central place’ of rock-carving activity, and lacked the benefits of trade and bronze supplies.