Volume 8, Issue 1

This article seeks to contribute to recent scholarship on ritual performances in caves, sensory archaeology and ritual journeys, and to stimulate fresh questions and debate about society, ritual, and mobility in the Iberian Iron Age. It uses an updated methodology for recording and interpreting – more contextually, holistically, and systematically – the multisensory affordances of caves and their landscapes on embodied human movements, experiences, and perceptions. It applies this approach to two caves situated in the territory thought by archaeologists to have been controlled by the Iberian Iron Age oppidum of Edeta/Tossal de Sant Miquel in the Valencia province: both interpreted as the destination for “pilgrimages” and related ritual performances, especially during the fifth to third centuries BC. In particular, the study presents a thick and multifaceted interpretative scenario of ritual flows to, through, and from these underground places, divided analytically into successive experiential stages. It concludes by questioning the current model of Iberian Iron Age ritual as an elite-dominated process and instead emphasises variability in multisensory ritual decision-making, practices and experiences over space, time, and culture.

To the best of our knowledge, such a detailed study on polychrome wooden shawabtis of King Tutankhamun (18th Dynasty in ancient Egypt) has not been reported in the literature, so the purpose of our study is to noninvasively identify the polychrome layers and previously applied materials for a number of wooden shawabtis that belong to King Tutankhamun through a protocol based on imaging techniques integrated with single-spot spectroscopic techniques. In the first step, imaging techniques (visible, ultraviolet induced visible luminescence, ultraviolet reflected, visible-induced infrared luminescence, infrared reflected, and infrared false color) and optical microscopy were applied to gather information and provide evidence on the distribution of original and previously applied materials on the polychrome surfaces. In the second step of our work, we analyzed the selected areas with single-spot analyses (handheld X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and visible reflectance spectroscopy) and X-ray diffraction analysis. The materials of the previous restoration interventions were studied by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The application of a protocol based on imaging techniques integrated with data obtained from single-spot spectroscopic techniques allowed the characterization of a remarkable number of polychrome layers and some previous restoration materials and mapping of their distribution on the original surface, which provides not only essential data for the follow-up treatment and conservation works but also offers important information for the study of polychrome wooden shawabtis of other periods in ancient Egypt.

In the summer of 2021, a video on TikTok was heavily reposted across a variety of social media platforms (attracting conventional media attention too). Unusually (for TikTok), it was about the trade in human remains. Thus, we were presented with the opportunity to watch how knowledge of the trade exploded into broader public consciousness on a comparatively newer platform. In this article, we scrape TikTok for reactions to that moment. In our previous research on the human remains trade on Instagram, we used a particular suite of digital humanities methods to understand how Instagram was being used by participants in the trade. Here, we employ those same methods to develop a case study for contrast. The original individual, whose TikTok account is used to promote his bricks-and-mortar business buying and selling human remains, has, as a result of this attention, gained an even greater number of followers and views, making the video a “success.” Nevertheless, several users engaged in long discussions in the comments concerning the ethics of what this individual is doing. A number of users created videos to criticize his activities, discussing the moral, ethical, and legal issues surrounding the trade in human remains, which in many ways makes the “success” of this video one of fostering opposition and a wider understanding of the ethical and moral issues around this trade.

Starting with a brief review of different theories about the residential and defensive uses of Sardinian nuraghi (monumental stone towers), the author assesses their ritual significance and functions from the standpoint of architecture and design, similarities to other cult buildings, and associated features and finds. Evidence for cult activities in certain towers has grown in recent years and is widely accepted for the Iron Age (circa 950–700 BC) and later. By contrast, ritual practices are not often recognized for the much longer period of tower construction and usage in the Bronze Age (circa 1700–950 BC). This is attributable partly to the now dominant hypothesis of a transformation in the function and status of nuraghi in the Iron Age and an assumed separation between sacred and secular buildings in the nuragic period. The author challenges this perspective while discussing the contribution of ritual to the social, economic, and political uses of nuraghi in the Bronze Age.

Metal detection (MD) has traditionally been viewed as a limited geophysical survey method for the identification of metal objects below the surface. However, this pilot study examines techniques utilizing the “ground balance” function, common to most modern metal detectors, to identify subsurface magnetic anomalies. The results of surveys have yielded inconclusive results on the use of metal detectors for feature identification. However, the results of this study suggest a high potential for more efficient and more productive archaeological reconnaissance surveys. The ground balance function, when combined with systematic sampling and geographic information systems interpolation methods, yields low-resolution subsoil magnetic susceptibility maps. Compared to other geophysical methods, such as gradiometry or electrical resistivity, the depth range of MD is limited. However, this technique, in upland contexts with shallow subsoils or sites with high potential for recent ground disturbing activities, can reveal subtle changes in the subsurface that traditional MD techniques would miss. Further studies are recommended to explore the many situations in which a metal detector can provide an informative alternative, though not a replacement, for other geophysical survey methods. This pilot study was funded by the National Geographic Society’s Early Career Grant program.

The article examines a blocked-out capital discovered in Berenike on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea. The artefact was reused in a Late Antique installation just outside the courtyard wall of the main city sanctuary, the Isis Temple. Its distinctive, highly simplified form is typical of Ptolemaic influence in the area. This article places the fragment in its archaeological context, accompanied by a detailed architectural description and analysis of the phenomena of blocked-out capitals. The authors demonstrate that the capital under discussion does not represent an unfinished stonework, but rather an intentional stylization. Its simplification is most likely inspired by the form of Corinthian capital that was common in Egypt between the second and third century AD. The discovery of this capital implies that there were buildings with classical architectural traits in Berenike, a theory that has previously not been supported by the excavated remains.

The paper examines the physical and contextual situation of a series of nine rock hewn pressing installations forming a complex of a winery workshop (ca. 5 decares) which was unearthed during excavations executed at the Roman site of Ambar village. Matching the Upper Mesopotamia and fed by a fair distance permanent water source – the Ambarçay Stream in close proximity, the site lies over limestone bedrock convenient for processing in a hard ground, right nearby a moderate size quarry besides two spring spouts. The site’s scale and function is cross-questioned through the instrumentality of original data and interrelatedness of a couple of archaeo-environmental features as well as through a selection of comparative evidence and proxy figures addressed in the ancient and historical accounts. Appearingly; topography, surrounding agricultural land and hydrology were three driving agents of the positioning and planning of the complex which looks spacious for household usage but rather demonstrates itself as an atelier of inhabitants (belike run at the institutional level) that expanded into post 3rd century. When also confined to the economic convergence of the value of wine recorded in the ancient and pre-modern sources, total relative capacity of one-time pressing operation generates an idea over figures that could suffice to more than a latifundium or a resident population.

The evolution of maize as an organism, its spread as an agricultural crop, and the evolution of Native American maize-based agricultural systems are topics of research throughout the Western Hemisphere. Maize was adopted in Northern Iroquoia, comprising portions of present-day New York, Ontario, and Québec by 300 BC. By the fourteenth-century AD, maize accounted for >50 to >70% of ancestral Iroquoian diets. Was this major commitment to maize agriculture a gradual incremental evolution, or was there a rapid increase in commitment to maize-based agriculture around AD 1000 as traditional archaeological narratives suggest? Summed probability distributions of direct radiocarbon dates on maize macrobotanical remains and cooking residues containing maize phytoliths combined with maize macrobotanical maize densities at sites and previously published stable isotope values on human bone collagen used with Bayesian dietary mixing models and cooking residues show an initial increase in maize use at AD 1200–1250 and a subsequent increase at AD 1400–1450. These results indicate maize history in Northern Iroquoia followed an exponential growth curve, consistent with Rindos’ (1984) model of agricultural evolution.

Different funerary behaviors are recorded in the Iberian Peninsula during Late Prehistory. Cremation is not the most common practice and the association between human cremains and fauna is even scarcer. We present two Chalcolithic pits (pits 16 and 40) from the Perdigões ditched enclosures, Reguengos de Monsaraz, Portugal. Humans were accompanied by animals and other votive materials such as arrowheads, ivory anthropomorphic figurines, and marble idols. Differences between the two contexts are discussed regarding the selection of faunal anatomical parts, the abundance of species, and the manipulation of remains. The results obtained were compared to previously published data from anthropological analysis. Burning damage intensity is different among pits and between humans and fauna. Hence, this suggests that the latter also resulted from diverse practices, including the possible selection of animal body portions for cremation and/or the deposition of selected burned bones or even related to patterns existing in the contexts of the provenance of the cremated materials before the cremation events.

Pyrotechnology has always been a core topic in the archaeological debate concerning phases of deep cultural transformations, such as the Chalcolithic period in the Near East (c. 6000–3500 BC). However, previous studies on pyrotechnological installations, such as pottery kilns, pertaining to this period, have often been mainly descriptive, with a limited use of archaeometric investigations. This work presents a multi-method investigation of a Chalcolithic kiln recently discovered in the Bora Plain (part of the larger Peshdar Plain, in Iraqi Kurdistan), which combines stratigraphic analysis, pyrotechnological, micromorphological, and micro-remains analyses. Since this kiln represents the first Chalcolithic architectural feature excavated in the Bora Plain, this work offers precious insights into the pyrotechnology of the period, which is still relatively poorly understood, through the reconstruction of the kiln’s use and abandonment processes. The analytical outputs can be used to compare with other Near East kilns from the Chalcolithic and later periods.

The spread of the Bell Beaker phenomenon across Europe is still strongly debated today. Small-scale technological studies investigating its integration in local contexts remain rare, even though these are crucial to observing disruptions in traditions. In this article, we studied the ceramic technology of Final Neolithic, Bell Beaker period, and Early Bronze Age settlements of the Upper Rhône valley in Switzerland (3300–1600 BCE). We reconstructed and compared their pottery traditions to those from the contemporaneous megalithic necropolis of Sion ‘Petit-Chasseur’, a major funerary and ritual site located in the centre of the valley. Our findings showed that the Bell Beaker period saw an abundance of simultaneous technical changes, mirroring disruptions identified by other fields, and confirmed that this cultural phenomenon did not blend seamlessly with the local context. More importantly, they revealed the role played by human mobility, with the arrival of potters shortly after 2500 BCE.

The Neolithisation process altered human dependence on wild food sources, and dominant models of the Neolithic transition in Scandinavia still focus on cultural divisions. This study emphasises the evidence of creolization processes, in particular the exploitation of Atlantic Bluefin tuna ( Thunnus thynnus ) among Neolithic fisher-farmers north and east of the Skagerrak Sea in Scandinavia (4000–2350 cal BCE). The site Jortveit in Southern Norway, where Bluefin tuna was caught with toggling harpoons, is used as a point of departure. In order to understand this phenomenon, the first empirical review of prehistoric toggling harpoons in Central and Eastern Europe is presented. Toggling harpoons first appeared in the late Vinĉa Culture, then in the Gumelniţa, Cucuteni-Trypillia, and Sredny Stog cultural complexes further east, and finally in Central Europe and Scandinavia during the time of the Funnel Beaker Culture. Considering the accumulated evidence of long distance contact from Eastern to Central Europe and Scandinavia in the early fourth millennium BCE, it is argued that toggling harpoon technology was distributed through trade networks. Its appearance around the Skagerrak Sea in the Neolithic reflects fisher-farmers using a creolized fishing technology, inspired by Eneolithic societies.

This article presents the results of the archaeological, bioanthropological, and historical analysis of an atypical human bone deposit found at the medieval Islamic desert site of Khirbat al-Dusaq in southern present-day Jordan. This site has yielded several human remains deposits, most of which appear to be either ordinary or reorganised burials with a clearly identifiable sepulchral function. However, one particular deposit (labelled “Structure no 1 (Pièce 5)”) displays several atypical features which complicate its interpretation. As such, radiocarbon dating of this particular deposit indicates a chronological range extending from the second half of the seventeenth century CE to the end of the eighteenth century CE. In addition, the human bones contained within this deposit tend to show unusual osteological characteristics, such as possible cut marks resembling peri-mortem lesions inflicted upon the deceased by third parties armed with sharp objects. The precise historical contextualisation of this deposit enables us to discuss different scenarios that could explain the circumstances of its inception. In this sense, the spectrum of possible explanatory interpretations ranges from the conjecture that the remains under study represent one or several victims of an inter-tribal conflict, a brigandage or retaliation attack, a crushed popular uprising, or even individuals who died during one of the violent raids perpetrated by local Bedouin tribes against the Mecca pilgrimage caravans during the Ottoman period.

The Petit-Chasseur megalithic necropolis is a key archaeological context for analyzing the social and ideological changes at the end of the Neolithic in the Alpine region of Central Europe. The link between the funerary monuments and settlement sites was established by means of ceramic archaeometric analysis. Domestic pottery from settlement sites were thoroughly characterized using multiple spectroscopic and microscopic techniques. Twelve ceramic fabrics were identified along with three types of clay substrate: illitic, muscovitic, and kaolinitic. Reconstructed paste preparation recipes largely involved the tempering of the raw clays with crushed rocks or coarse sediments. Types of raw material were not picked up randomly but were selected or avoided due to their particular compositional properties and attest to the exploitation of glacial, gravitational, eolian, and fluvial deposits. Compositional correspondence between ceramic grave goods and domestic pottery allowed identification of a link between the megalithic tombs and settlement sites, thus providing new data contributing to the investigation of the social dimension of monumental burials. Ceramic grave goods were revealed to be intertwined with the social instability affecting the 3rd millennium BC communities of the Upper Rhône Valley.

Archaeology and archaeological work are tightly linked to contemporary societal challenges. Archaeology has much to contribute to the understanding, contextualising and working out of global challenges from migration to environmental change. In parallel to how archaeology impacts society, the society, societal changes, and challenges impact archaeology and its public mission of preserving and interpreting the physical and curating the informational archaeological record. Similarly, they impact archaeological practices, that is how archaeology is done in practice. This article draws attention to the need to comprehend what the increasing diversity and multiplicity of links between archaeological practices, knowledge work, and contemporary societal challenges implies for the understanding of how archaeology is achieved and archaeological knowledge is produced. The discussion is based on input collected from 50 members of the COST Action Archaeological Practices and Knowledge Work in the Digital Environment (www.arkwork.eu) who shared their views on how archaeology can contribute to solving contemporary societal challenges and what societal changes and challenges are likely to affect the field of archaeology during the next 5 years. In addition to a continuing need to increase the understanding of archaeological practices and their implications, distilling the outcomes of the state of the art into shared, validated, and actionable lessons learned applicable for societal benefit remains another major challenge.

In several graves from the Mesolithic sites of Skateholm, South Sweden, animal teeth were found. Some of these teeth were used as beads in clothing. The strontium isotope analysis of 11 animal teeth is reported and discussed in comparison with human values from burials at the sites and baseline values from South Sweden. Roughly half of the animal teeth are nonlocal and from different places of origin. The beads themselves appear to carry symbolic information that may be related to the physical or social attributes of the wearer. This study involved a detailed investigation of the use-wear around the perforation and its relation to the local and nonlocal origin of the teeth.

Present-day global warming has great consequences, both for individuals and on a larger scale for society as a whole. However, environmental changes also affected everyday life in the past. The purpose of this article is to apply perspectives developed in studies of how contemporary societies adapt to shore-level changes and to use this insight in a study of the way Mesolithic populations handled a situation of large land uplift. More specifically, the author discusses four common adaptation strategies devised to cope with changing sea level, both on a site level and on a regional scale – to accommodate, relocate, protect, or not respond to the changing environment. In the Oslo Fjord in Norway, the shorelines moved from approximately 200–40 m above the present-day sea level in the period 9300–3900 cal BC, caused by the strong post-glacial rebound. Along the shores lived populations that based much of their life on the local marine resources. Building on information from the large habitation area Havsjødalen and a statistical analysis of 529 critically selected sites in the region, the author concludes that single sites were systematically accommodated or relocated when the distance to the shores receded. However, sea level changes caused more dramatic regional landscape transformation and a less bountiful environment c . 5000 cal BC, with a period of maladaptation and a subsequent population collapse as a result. Like modern societies facing human-caused climate changes, the Mesolithic population had difficulties in handling the need for large-scale shifts in their society.

The layer B is one of the lower layers of the long stratigraphic sequence of the Kamyana Mohyla 1 site. The layer B received eight new AMS radiocarbon dates that clarified its chronology: 7950–7300 calibrated years BC. They are in a reasonable correspondence with the dates for lower and upper layers. The lithic assemblage belongs to Kukrek cultural aspect. It is characterized by pencil-like conical cores, Kukrek inserts, Kukrek burins and Dęby burins, nongeometric microliths (oblique points). The assemblage finds close parallels in the sites of Kukrek, Ihren VIII, Melnychna Krucha SU4 and Domchi-Kaia. They can be united into Kukrek sensu stricto cultural unit. The overlying layer C yielded somewhat different complex that finds parallels in the materials of the so-called “Kukrek cultural tradition.” Due to clear stratigraphic position of these units in the Kamyana Mohyla 1 sequence, we are able to differentiate Kukrek sensu stricto and “Kukrek cultural tradition” and suggest their respective chronological positions.

The unique rock art complex of Kamyana Mohyla in South-Eastern Ukraine is known due to its numerous cave art engraved elements and settlements, which show how important is this site in the general picture of European prehistory as regards the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age periods of the region. However, the assemblages from this site include also a collection of portable rock art artifacts called “churingas.” Important elements of this assemblage are thought to belong to the Mesolithic. These specimens illustrate different aspects of the artist’s worldview and are capable of revealing a lot of additional data on the technological and cultural aspects of their creation. However, their study is complicate because of a very abstract imaging, lack of systematic approach to the artifact classification and absence of a well-defined stratigraphic context from which they have been recovered. Likely, current state of archaeological record and modern technologies introduces the new opportunity to rediscover, reconsider and reshape this collection.

This article focuses on the Mesolithic occupation of mountain environments in Europe. The montane Mesolithic is a important aspect of the Mesolithic as a whole, but neither its significance nor its potential is fully recognised. Evidence also suggests that we have not communicated this to the wider interdisciplinary community of mountain researchers – a field sometimes known as montology – which is dominated by models of human behaviour in mountains drawn from agricultural examples. Leading publications in the latter field have suggested that human use of mountains can be understood as structured by three key themes: resources, valuable minerals and precious stones, and the cultural importance of mountains. These themes are used to review the Mesolithic record.

The term “pigmy flint” was coined in 1895 and frequently used to describe small flint implements, many of them microliths, in British and Irish archaeology during the earliest decades of the 20th century. It was briefly adopted in France over a decade later to describe the same tools, translated as “silex pygmée”, the simultaneous emergence of the French term “microlithique” saw the latter become more widely used, however. The Anglicised “microlith” was not commonly incorporated into British archaeological terminology until the mid-1920s. The international interplay in nomenclature and the changing nature of the terminology that was used to describe such “very small implements of flint” are mirrored by the different attitudes of early archaeologists to these tools. They were dismissed by some and marvelled at by others. Moreover, the definitions that surround these terms are embedded within the problematised acceptance of the “Mesolithic” as a distinct chronological entity. The recognition of morphologically similar “pigmies” across the world sparked questions of migration, function, and chronology – in its broadest culture-historical sense – thus shaping the way in which this microlithic technology and its association with the Mesolithic came to be understood by early archaeologists in Western Europe.

This article gives an overview of the survey campaigns and excavations undertaken within an area of the sound Storstrømmen in southeast Denmark from 2014 to 2017. Before the construction of a new bridge over the sound, geophysical data from the bridge corridor and other areas affected by the development project were used to give a representation of the moraine till as a proxy for the submerged prehistoric topography, with the topographical interpretation serving as a base for appointing areas with high potential for finding well-preserved Mesolithic sites. Several new Mesolithic sites were found during test excavations. The sites are preserved at different depths in the channel and range in date over the entire Danish Mesolithic period. All sites are located along former waterfronts, and the majority showed good preservation for organic material. Four of the discovered sites have been subject to excavations. The sites are located at different elevations and have between them the potential of contributing to the understanding of the human response to the dramatic topographic and environmental change that took place in Storstrømmen during the Atlantic period as a consequence of the rising sea level.

Mesolithic geometric ornamentation is a part of the complex worldview of the latest hunter-gatherer societies. Questions about the functional role of the ornament in utilitarian objects – knives, daggers, arrowheads, etc. – do not have an unambiguous answer. Despite a variability of ornamental motives used, there are some stable connections between certain types of ornaments with some categories of bone tools. On the materials of the Late and Final Mesolithic layers of the wetland site Zamostje 2 (Volga-Oka region), we will consider some examples with the zigzag motif, the most numerous and heterogeneous type of ornament, as well as rarely presented motives of “ladders” and “lines with dots or eyelashes.” The number of samples (120) is sufficient to draw some preliminary conclusions about the context of their application. So, the zigzag is observed on different types of tools, but its connection with sharp-piercing objects is most clearly manifested. The type of relief zigzag is inextricably related to slotted sickle-shaped tools. Zigzag is often the only decorative element on an item and is expressed by a simple or double line; less often it is included in complex compositions. Both types of zigzags and methods of application (fine engraving, scraping, relief carving, etc.) were not regulated and obviously performed different functions depending on the compositional characteristics and the raw material’s type. Compositions of “ladders” located at an angle to each other are also associated with projectile weapons. Lines “with eyelashes” appear to have been a part of the standard dagger decoration.

In a world of smart desktop approaches, it can be instructive to return to the roots of the discussion of whether it is possible to model the behaviour of small-scale human cultures based on environmental parameters. Present-day modellers appear to have forgotten this debate, which played such an important role in the anthropology of the early twentieth century. The question was never settled. Around the 1960s, a group of theoretical archaeological modellers decided that it was possible to model the landscape behaviour of hunter-gatherers based solely on the environmental data and thereby ignore social anthropological information supporting the opposing view. This was the beginning of a tradition of archaeological modelling that ignored differences in cultural landscape behaviour in similar environments and over time, the information provided by the developing discipline of landscape ecology, and with that the documented environmental complexity and its inherent small-scale dynamics. It is difficult to detect any scientific rationale behind this conscious archaeological isolation from relevant data provided by other disciplines, and the demand for cheap and fast management methods rather than science-based arguments appears the more likely driver. This presentation traces the history of this cultural “nature versus nurture” debate and discusses its implications.

Human skeletal remains are routinely used to examine cultural and biological aspects of past populations. Yet, archaeological specimens are frequently fragmented/incomplete and so excluded from analyses. This leads to decreased sample sizes and to potentially biased results. Digital methods are now frequently used to restore/estimate the original morphology of fragmented/incomplete specimens. Such methods include 3D digitisation and Geometric Morphometrics (GM). The latter is also a solidly established method now to examine morphology. In this study, we use GM-based methods to estimate the original morphology of incomplete Mesolithic and Chalcolithic mandibles originating from present Portugal and perform ensuing morphological analyses. Because mandibular morphology is known to relate to population history and diet, we hypothesised the two samples would differ. Thirty-seven specimens (12 complete and 25 incomplete) were CT-scanned and landmarked. Originally complete specimens were used as reference to estimate the location of absent anatomical landmarks in incomplete specimens. As predicted, our results show shape differences between the two samples which are likely due to the compounded effect of contrasting population histories and diets.

Lacking well-dated fifth millennium Mesolithic evidence and based on a consensus that late Mesolithic Britain was isolated from the continent, discussion of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition has focused on the centuries around 4000 BC. This discourse has over-simplified complex neolithisation processes. New, high-quality evidence from 460,000 lithics found at Bexhill, Sussex, SE England, helps to redress this. Here, well-dated Mesolithic microliths (5500–4300 BC) may demonstrate continental links with neolithised communities. Alongside other sites, this offers exciting opportunities to contribute to debates on an isolated late Mesolithic during the transition. As a result, this work also provides additional explanations of new evidence proposing European influences on British Neolithic DNA. Instead of an isolated island, with this lithic evidence, we propose that the late Mesolithic Britain was culturally connected to the neolithised continent in the fifth millennium. Therefore, the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition of Britain was a longer, more complex, and nuanced process than previously thought.

This article discusses the multiscale nature of modelling in archaeology and its relationship with higher-level spatial analysis. The application and purpose of modelling in archaeology is as varied as the multidisciplinary field itself. With the increasing integration of geographical information systems (GIS) and other digital methods into the archaeological workflow, both new opportunities and potential pitfalls present themselves. The struggle of balancing informal inferences of human behaviour in a formal system, such as GIS, has been the subject of much discussion, as well as the questioning of whether some modelling tasks would be better suited for implementation outside the GIS environment. Higher-level spatial analysis is dependent on a number of lower-level models, each building on the other, inheriting both information and uncertainties. These nuances can be difficult to demonstrate clearly once they have been incorporated into another model, potentially obscured further when restricted by the “geographical space” that is central to GIS. Rather than forcing informal models into a formal environment, an alternative would be to opt instead for the visualization of these within the more flexible “variable space,” where the data are front and centre, and spatial and temporal concepts can function as a means of explaining patterns in the model. This article discusses aspects of the challenges and opportunities involved in these types of analysis and provides examples of alternate approaches that could be considered non-spatial.

In the 1990s, a research project was developed to identify, in the mountainous areas of the Northwest (NW) of Portugal, the existence of an occupation model associated with the last hunter–gatherer prehistoric communities in the region. Therefore, a set of consistent and detailed field surveys took place in the mountains of NW Portugal, leading to the discovery of the archaeological site named “Rock Shelter 1 of Cerdeira Valley,” a granite rock shelter situated in Cabreira mountain. The campaigns of excavations undertaken permitted the identification of two combustion structures, from which charcoal samples provided two C-14 dates, as well as a significant stone tool assemblage (around 30,000 pieces), that established the prehistoric occupation of “Rock Shelter 1 of Cerdeira Valley” between the Late Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic. This archaeological site and its body of evidences are being analysed within the context of an ongoing PhD project developed by one of the authors (P. Xavier), through two mutually related lines of research. The first one relates to the complete technological and typological study of the lithic assembly, identifying the objectives of the stone tool production, i.e. lithic production systems and related châines opératoires ; and the second concerns itself with the classification and characterisation of different raw materials exploited by the prehistoric communities and, wherever possible, to make some additional considerations about raw material procurement. The goals of this article are the presentation of the methodologies adopted in the study of raw materials and the results obtained from the techno-typological study.

The coastal settlement in Middle Mesolithic (MM) Southeast Norway is generally described as a dynamic system of small, short-lived sites and large sites that were visited repeatedly over a long time. It has been suggested that in this period – compared to the preceding Early Mesolithic (EM) – an increased attraction towards the large archipelagos along the Norwegian coast, and their broad spectrum of both marine and terrestrial food sources, took place. This has, however, been debated. An important background for the discussion is the documented population influx and the abrupt shift in tool technology around 8300 cal BCE. The question remains whether this great social and technological upheaval was followed by a transformation or break in the environmental knowledge and changes in the ways of living, such as new human–environment relations, settlement systems, and mobility patterns. We propose that the continuous process of enculturation of the land and environment would have played a decisive role in the societal development. In this article, we therefore investigate details of site construction and mobility patterns, as well as the marking of the land by the establishment of settlement sites and exploitation of lithic raw materials on a larger scale. We concentrate our investigation on the on-site activity, site location, lithic raw material economy, and technological organisation, which brings renewed opportunities for discussing enculturation processes in the period. Our results document a diverse settlement pattern, as well as diachronic variation, suggesting an internal duality within the sociocultural development process in the area. The article presents the new results from the InterCity Vestfold project, situated by the Oslofjord west coast. Our data comprise a total of eight excavated and 69 surveyed sites from 4 municipalities. A strong isostatic land uplift caused continuous and rapid changes in the shoreline configuration and its nearby environments, in the Oslofjord area throughout the Mesolithic. To enable the discussion of human–environment relations, we therefore present a new relative sea level (RSL) curve, supplying detailed data on the shoreline development in the project area.

Mesolithic populations from coastal areas are known as hunter-gatherer-fishers. This way of life is visible in the landscape owing to the presence of large accumulations of shells named shell middens. These anthropogenic refuse heaps are composed of high proportions of marine resources, yet studies dedicated to marine components are relatively recent. Efforts have been made to record marine molluscs, but other minorities are still invisible as a result of the small sizes of archaeological remains. Crustaceans are one of these minorities and this article will focus on one of them: crabs. Why are these decapods persistently ignored by most of archaeologists? Is this due to the scant presence of their remains in Mesolithic shell middens? An overview of published data on crabs is presented here for the Mesolithic period on the European Atlantic façade. The proportions of shell middens comprising these crustaceans is evaluated, as well as quantities and identified species. We endeavour to identify the potential impact of excavation methods and sampling on our knowledge of this marine resource. We present the methods developed to extract data from small archaeological crab remains and show how, from a fragment of a crab finger extremity, we can identify the species and estimate the original size of crabs. This methodological challenge has a major impact on our knowledge of past maritime populations.

The region Kleinwalsertal (Vorarlberg, Austria) represents one of the numerous little-known archaeological areas of the Austrian Alps. Here, over 90 sites were found since the 1980s, including surficial flint scatters as well as excavated sites, mainly attributable to the Mesolithic. Because of its high number of archaeological sites, the Kleinwalsertal is a singular micro-region in the context of the Mesolithic of Western Austria. It is the intention of this article to examine the archaeological landscape Kleinwalsertal and the usage of this habitat during the Boreal and Older Atlantic (11500–7000 BP). To obtain a most complete picture, the sites and their material culture were studied via various methodological approaches. The synthesis of the data aims to answer questions regarding the actual function of the sites as well as landscape usage and mobility patterns throughout the Mesolithic in the study area and its adjacent regions. In addition, the position of the Kleinwalsertal between the Mesolithic traditions of Southern Germany, Switzerland, and Northern Italy is examined. Contacts between these regions are known, yet little is clear about the chronological framework and the ways in which these “borderlands” were occupied. To contribute to international research on this issue, basic and comparable data on the Mesolithic of western Austria are generated. They indicate that the Kleinwalsertal was part of a human network with far-reaching connections, embodying influences from the north, south, and south-west. Thus, it becomes evident that during the Mesolithic there were indeed no mountains high enough to hamper human mobility and possibly contacts.

In this article we investigate the importance of freshwater fishing during the Mesolithic in France, in inland sites where fishing was always associated with big game hunting. We present a review of Mesolithic sites that have yielded freshwater fish remains and focus on a case study from an occupation dated to the eighth millennium BC at Les Cabônes rock shelter, located near the Doubs River, that yielded over 9,300 fish remains. Cyprinid (including bream, roach, and minnow) remains are predominant; other taxa, such as salmonids (probably trout), grayling, burbot, perch, and eel, are represented by only a few remains each. Although small fish (about 15 cm) constitute the majority of the catch, we provide evidence that their accumulation in the shelter is mostly of human origin. These catches constituted a source of food throughout the year, particularly during the lean season. According to the ecological preferences of the fish species identified, it is highly unlikely that they were caught in a single location. The animals were probably caught with passive fishing equipment in shallow banks or side channels where large numbers of specimens could be captured. Fishing appears to have been optimised to maximise yield-to-effort ratios, together with other wetland resources. Finally, we question the presumed causal links between site micro-setting, site occupation, and increased dependence on aquatic resources and reduced group mobility.

This article examines the relationship between the archaeology of the Mesolithic and the broader archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers. Bibliographic reviews of articles presented at past MESO conferences and recent high-ranking Mesolithic research publications are compared to content reviews of contributions towards previous Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies conferences. The results of these are presented as evidence to suggest that, whilst Mesolithic archaeologists consume the results of the broader field of hunter-gatherer research, we do not contribute to this field as much as might be expected. We argue that this lack of engagement impoverishes both Mesolithic archaeology and hunter-gatherer studies and that closer collaboration between these fields would open up new avenues for interdisciplinary research with the capacity to address the challenges of hunter-gatherer societies living around the world today.

It is well known that many Mesolithic and Early Neolithic sites were uncovered during the past century in the Iron Gates region of the North-Central Balkans. The application of diverse analyses on the bioarchaeological remains and artefacts raised many questions, but also offered new ideas about the Mesolithic–Neolithic transitional period in the Middle and Lower course of the Danube. Communities in the Iron Gates consumed fish and exploited the riverbank in prehistory. The stable isotope analyses are implying that these human groups fed on aquatic resources in some periods more than others. Fish remains were also found in settlements, and based on fish-related imagery on sculpted boulders and other artefacts, the bond between the people, river, and the ecosystem was compelling. The idea of this article is to present the possible ways of fish processing at Lepenski Vir using chipped stone tools. Three integrated methodologies, with high levels of interpretation, were applied: use-wear, residue, and archaeozoological analyses. Use-wear and residue analyses were performed on both archaeological and experimental chipped stone tools. The results are considered together with the traces of butchery observed on archaeological samples of fish bones, creating a more coherent picture of the everyday habits of the Iron Gates populations.

In archaeological hunter-gatherer research, animals are primarily seen as food. Alternatively, they are proposed to serve as symbols and devices for social structuring of human societies. A growing body of literature in humanities and social sciences now looks into the role of animals as social and sentient co-beings. It is becoming increasingly clear that the roles of animals as other-than-food providers are severely overlooked in Mesolithic research. This article considers hide as a vital resource in northern hunter-gatherer societies. Hide processing and manufacture in ethnographic records from the circumpolar region and experimental investigations are presented, followed by an analytical review of archaeological data from mid-Holocene coastal habitation sites in Norway. The results show that hide work was a central activity, and that various stages of hide processing may have taken place at different sites. It is suggested that hide procurement and processing would have required close planning and scheduling. Based on ethnographic accounts it is suggested that the different processing stages, combining raw materials and animal qualities into man-made objects, are articulations of human-animal social entanglements. Identifying practices related to hide processing in the archaeological record and viewing them as expressions of human-animal relationships, can contribute to fuller insight into Stone Age hunter-gatherer societies.

What determines the choice of a particular lithic solution from among the set of knowledge and skills that are part of the cultural background of a group? The Early Mesolithic of the SW Iberian Peninsula shows a high diversity of lithic solutions considering the various aspects of the manufacturing process. At each site, the group selects the most adequate solution to respond efficiently to the needs. Contemporary sites may document quite different lithic components; there are no recurring patterns. Macrolithic and microlithic technologies were adopted, depending on the site, but the selection of one rather than another seems to be independent of the function of the site. Then, what does dictate the choice? A number of factors come to mind such as environmental contingencies, purpose, ability, and ethnicity. This Early Mesolithic defining trait diverges from the pattern observed for the final Upper Palaeolithic, where the same constellation of tools is systematically represented in the archaeological record, as well as flint, even in regions where flint as a natural resource is absent. Macrolithic technologies directed towards the massive production of cutting edges and heavy-duty tools produced from medium coarse-grained rocks co-exist, in SW Iberian Early Mesolithic, with microlithic technologies focused on the production of small bladelets made from good quality chert types and transformed into tiny armatures. Although contemporaneous, each lithic solution has its own geographical identity. How should we study these distinctive productions while at the same time respecting their diversity? No analytical template is sufficiently comprehensible to enable us to understand the multitude of “memories” that lithics carry. However, some approaches can help us to overcome the impasse by letting us read the hidden histories that lie behind lithic artefacts.

The presence of scattered prehistoric human bones in caves and sinkholes is common in many regions of Iberia. These are usually interpreted as erratic elements coming from burial contexts, usually collective associations. These burial contexts are very frequent in karst areas of the Iberian Peninsula since the Early Neolithic, mostly in the Late Neolithic, and Copper Age, while findings from earlier chronologies are much more unusual. In this work, we present partial remains of a human skull from the Mesolithic period, recovered from a cave in the Strait of Gibraltar area. Although there is no conclusive evidence pointing to a dismantled burial context, this constitutes an isolated find, where its final location appears to be consistent with gravitational fall followed by water transportation.

The use of weapons, and therefore of arrowheads, contributed to structuring the technical, economic, social and cultural domains. In the technical sphere, emblematic projectile armatures are often considered to be loaded with cultural values and to embody the expression of human group identity. The study of their variability, in time and space, can shed light on mechanisms of mutation and innovation stemming from adaptative strategies and cultural choices. During the seventh and sixth millennia, the renewal of arrowheads corresponds to major changes in lithic equipment. Between the Late Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic, we observe a diversification of arrowhead shapes and the evolution of represented types. These observations enhance interpretative scenarios, especially questions concerning the transfer of know-how, techno-economic renewal and neolithisation. This article proposes to study these changes at the sequence of the Baume de Montclus site, a key site in Southern France. The selected sequence covers 1.5 millennia of occupation, roughly from 6500 to 5000 cal. BCE, with a corpus of geometric bitruncations of about 650 pieces. The combined study of microwear and technological and typological data leads to a comprehensive interpretation of manufacturing processes, hafting methods and function. These analyses provide valuable information on the diversity of arrowheads, the identification of specific technical traditions and the characterisation of techno-functional ruptures throughout this sequence. These results will subsequently be integrated into a wider, regional and extra-regional context, with a particular focus on the emergence of blade and trapeze complexes (BTC) and the neolithisation of the western Mediterranean basin.

The earliest Holocene occupation of Orkney is still poorly understood. This pilot study explores the use of multi-factorial landscape and land-cover reconstruction to form a baseline physical environment for the assessment of Mesolithic movement and potential site suitability. A geographic information systems (GIS) approach to landscape reconstruction through proxy use allows for an analogue of Mesolithic land cover and extent to be generated and used to predict the potential for Mesolithic site/material remains. The integration of agent-based modelling introduces a novel investigation of pathways in the landscape, divined not with a fixed destination but with a programmed least-cost movement behaviour to extrude “natural corridors” of movement from the study area. Utilising the base physical characteristics of the natural environment, without introducing complex sociopolitical or economic drivers for movement promotes the use of a complex physical environment as a necessary consideration as baseline for all studies of mobility and movement. This approach also intends to present a platform to develop more universal or widely applicable models capable of providing a relevant baseline landscape for the rapid assessment and investigation of the archaeological potential of an area. Developing or understanding the role of a robust landscape permits the appropriate assessment of project utility, scale, and layering and integration of more complex input factors.

Count Vega del Sella’s research marked the beginning of the long tradition of Mesolithic studies in Asturias (North Spain). Another pioneer, L. Sierra, explored a number of caves in Cantabria with Mesolithic shell-middens, but no specific research line was developed on this kind of deposit in the province. The early excavation at Santimamiñe Cave recorded the Basque Country’s first shell-midden, which was thought to belong to a different facies from the deposits in Asturias ( Asturian shell-middens ). Nevertheless, no line of research into the Mesolithic was developed in that area either. The first research on the Mesolithic in North Iberia did not take place in isolation from European Prehistoric studies at the time. In fact, the historiographical context was characterized by the existence of cordial relationships between the pioneers in this region and several foreign archaeologists. This feedback between Spanish and foreign archaeologists sometimes had a significant impact. In contrast, the relationships between Spanish authors were less intense. This situation and the recurring lack of information on the Mesolithic in Cantabria and the Basque Country did not encourage debate on the existence of different Mesolithic facies in northern Iberia. So for decades the Asturian and the eastern Mesolithic recorded in Cantabria and the Basque Country were regarded as independent objects of study. This indicates the relevance of the scientific relationships and other factors in the perception of the Mesolithic that took shape in the first decades of the twentieth century and which has been perpetuated until the present time.

The “transition” period from the end of the Second Mesolithic to the Early Neolithic is a singular phase in the prehistory of Western Europe. The first signs of neolithisation will be observed in the Northern French Alps between 5500 and 5350 cal. BC, after having experienced an arrhythmic progression from the Mediterranean sphere. The presence of numerous imprecisions in the North Alpine chronocultural sequence makes it difficult to understand the rhythms and mechanisms of its implantation. The subject is all the more complex in that there seems to be a temporal and geographical proximity between the last indigenous hunter-gatherer-collector groups and the arrival of the first agropastoralists in the regions, which could have led to the acculturation of one or the other community. Some sites thus provide assemblages presenting industries described as “mixed sets,” where characteristic materials of the Second Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic are jointly revealed. Generally judged unreliable, they are considered to be the result of asynchronous mixtures of occupations. The study of lithic industries from recent excavations at La Grande Rivoire rockshelter offers a new perspective on this particular neolithisation context. This site of the Vercors massif is especially promising in this matter, displaying almost uninterrupted occupations from the First Mesolithic to the Protohistoric periods and having revealed a significant number of material productions. Oriented mainly on the observation of possible behavioural changes within the reduction sequences, the first results of this study already allow us to note the presence of a certain evolutionary sequence of lithic industries.

In contrast to large-scale prehistoric migrations, associated with massive population shifts and changes in material culture, movements of small human groups or single individuals are barely visible but no less important. In publications of the 1960s–2000s, specificity of craniological, odontological, and metrical characteristics as well as stable isotope values of some individuals distinguishing the Late Mesolithic cemetery of Vasylivka II among other Mesolithic and Neolithic burial sites in the Dnipro River basin was explained by some gene flows. However, archaeologists could not develop these views since the original excavation report of 1953 and all grave goods from Vasylivka II were considered lost. Another old field document, where pendants of the pharyngeal teeth of fish, and the shells of spiral, probably Mediterranean, molluscs found there were mentioned, allowed the recent suggestion of the author of the current article that several individuals from the Danube Iron Gates region were interred in the cemetery. Previous arguments along with new evidence are presented here to develop this hypothesis. Re-found personal ornaments from one burial, the only available grave goods from Vasylivka II, are published here for the first time. The established regularity that most relatively young men and women from the graveyard have conditional “Danubian” δ 13 C values in the range from −20 to −21‰ assumes the mutual exchange of marriage partners born in the Iron Gates and the Dnipro Rapids. A waterborne route is discussed as a more probable mode of communication between these regions.

The excavation of Crno Vrilo site (Zadar, Dalmatia, Croatia), carried out by B. Marijanović, has unearthed the vestiges of an Early Neolithic village dating back to ca. 5800–5600 cal BC. The lithic assemblage, with more than 4000 pieces, represents the biggest Impressed Ware assemblage of littoral Croatia. Lithic production at Crno Vrilo is characterised by the pressure Blade flaking on high-quality exogenous cherts (Gargano, southern Italy) reflecting important socio-economic and technical aspects that are specific to the Neolithic. The presence of some débitage elements such as flakes, debris, cortical and technological pieces indicates that standard pressure flaking occured at the site, while the presence of large Blades (with widths exceeding 20 mm) suggests production by lever pressure, a technique that required specialized knowledge and equipment. This article questions whether the lever pressure technique was used in the production of large Blades and examines the status of these Blades in the Crno Vrilo lithic assemblage by examining their technological and functional aspects.

In this work, we present the preliminary data we have obtained in the Neolithic flint quarry of Pozarrate, currently under archaeological works. We want to put forward an update about the sedimentary fillings of one of the crescent-shaped dump quarries (6000–5600 BP). It is located at the Sierra de Araico-Cucho (Treviño, northern Spain). In this region, Tertiary carbonated terrains which host important silicifications called Treviño flint (Tarriño, A. (2006). El sílex en la cuenca vasco-cantábrica y Pirineo Navarro. Caracterización y su aprovechamiento en la Prehistoria . Monografía 21, Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira. Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura) are outcropped. The procurement of these silicifications by prehistoric populations was motivated by the good quality of this raw material for knapping. Currently, it constitutes one of the few Neolithic known flint mines of the Iberian Peninsula, understood as places of exploitation of flint with landscape modifications. Some instruments related to prehistoric quarry works have been recovered, such as picks, maces, and hammers made of flint, dolerite, and deer antler. Studies on Pozarrate material remains have been conducted in an interdisciplinary way, in order to have a better understanding of the prehistoric mining processes. Several methodologies are being used in the study of the lithic industries, including flint characterization, procurement, typological, typometrical, technological, and functional approaches. We have obtained the initial data about extraction, selection, management, and use processes of the flint and dolerite assemblages. Deer antler remains have recently undergone a restoration process and preliminary data have been offered. Moreover, an experimental approach has been applied to clarify specific archaeological issues and technical solutions for quarrying using dolerite maces.

The introduction and spread of the Neolithic “way of life” in Europe was a process that took several millennia, followed by different rhythms and displayed singularities in each geographic area. It was therefore a very complex phenomenon that, despite highly significant advances in research in recent decades, is yet to be fully understood. To deepen our understanding of the very early stages of the introduction of herding and agriculture throughout the Old Continent, the 1st Conference on the Early Neolithic of Europe was organised in Barcelona on 6–8 November 2019. The conference was a great success with more than 200 participants, creating a stimulating arena to discuss and debate, exclusively, the transition to the Neolithic in Europe. This special issue brings together 52 of the contributions presented in Barcelona, offering an interesting overview of the current state of research across Europe, from the Anatolia to the Algarve, highlighting the geographical, chronological and socioeconomic diversity of the transformation processes involved in the Neolithisation of Europe and providing useful starting points for future research.

In the Editorial for the Special Issue What is New in the Neolithic? dedicated to Lech Czerniak in honour of his 70th birthday, we outline the articles in this collection.

Over 20 years ago, an inspiring text by Lech Czerniak ( The Neolithic – What’s That?) on understanding the concept of the Neolithic was published. For the present author, the Lech Czerniak’s discourse on the Neolithic was for many years and, to a large extent still is, a conceptual basis for understanding and presenting this issue. This contribution is an examination of the current relevance of Lech Czerniak’s theses. Furthermore, starting from this basis, a subjective attempt will be made to put the topic in some order, since a lack of clarity as to what the Neolithic is and what is not hampers and complicates research activities. Particularly, perhaps a fundamental issue will be assessed whether the concept of Neolithic in any measure reflects the past reality or reflects only our perceptions of that past. Conclusions resulted of the argumentation assume that there were indeed different and real Neolithics in the past. However, these Neolithics had a common denominator, in the form of “new” socio-organizational, ideological, mental, and consequently also meaning structures. They were a prerequisite for the existence of the Neolithic formation. Situations that can be labelled as the Neolithic are reflected archaeologically by the predominance of elements of the “Neolithic package” within a given sector of the cultural system.

Intermarine Area Archaeology refers to research programmes focusing on the prehistory of the Baltic-Pontic Intermarine Area, i.e. lands extending between the Baltic and Black seas. This article outlines the development stages and current state of Intermarine Area Archaeology in Poland, being one of the several important research studies into the prehistory of the continent in the Eneolithic, Bronze, and Early Iron Ages. The authors concentrate on the southern portion of the Intermarine Area that covers the Black Sea catchment area. When describing the current state of the Polish conceptual and research contribution to Intermarine Area Archaeology, space shall be given to the programme offer, formation of international research teams, and research specializations.

Over several decades, we have written extensively about the household as a fundamental organizational unit of the Neolithic society. Starting from our definition of the household cluster at Brześć Kujawski 3 and the detailed analysis of household activities at House 56 at Brześć Kujawski 4, we continue to consider the household as the locus of decision-making and resource allocation even as our thinking has evolved over the intervening years. At the same time, Neolithic households functioned within local concentrations of settlement in which they interacted with other such units. We characterize such local social entities as “hamlets,” adapting the definition used by the anthropologist Frank Cancian to refer to institutionalized alliances of domestic groups in which affiliation is demonstrated through residential proximity. We have studied two such hamlets of the Brześć Kujawski Group: the Osłonki-Miechowice-Konary hamlet and the Smętowo hamlet consisting of Brześć Kujawski and Pikutkowo. We characterize these hamlets to show how they extend our original conception of household-based societies to develop a robust understanding of local Neolithic communities.

The excavations of Late Lengyel settlement in Racot 18 near Kościan are the most important archaeological achievements of Lech Czerniak in the first period of his outstanding academic career. This large settlement was made of numerous trapezoidal houses and several internal, external, and loam pits associated with them. The work at Racot 18 led to the discovery of a large assemblage of animal bones in an excellent state of preservation. The article examines the characteristics of the sheep and goat-based economy at the settlement of Racot 18. A comprehensive analysis of the caprine bones involved contextually driven faunal studies comprising taphonomy, separating sheep and goats, and kill-off patterns. The work implies a complex system of sheep and goat exploitation that includes the use of specialised harvesting strategies and the exploitation of different food resources, including meat and marrow and secondary products, most likely milk and wool. The significance of this work for recognizing the characteristics of Late Danubian agriculture in the Polish lowlands is also discussed.

The article presents the history of research and the latest archaeological discoveries of the Greater Poland Neolithic in the Middle Warta River catchment. I propose focusing on new areas of research that have potential but have not yet been conducted. It focuses on two social groups, the Funnel Beaker culture (FBC) and the Brześć Kujawski culture (BKC). The unsatisfactory level of knowledge about the development of these cultural communities in the region may be supplemented by recently conducted research. The discovery and excavation of the first megalithic tombs in Greater Poland, conducted with the help of LiDAR, was of great importance. Following this, more such cemeteries have been located. The re-analysis of previously excavated materials from the site in Kotowo determined that the early phase of FCB occurred around 3700 BC. A fruitful area for future study is the acquisition of unique BKC settlement evidence obtained from the site in Kąkolewo. Another important area that can supplement current understandings of cultural relations in this area is understanding the environmental background, which is to be served by the proposed palaeoenvironmental research, particularly near the cemetery in Sobota. Considering this new information will allow for a proper estimation of the role of Greater Poland in the transmission of cultural patterns that created the image of the Central European Plain in 4500–3500 BC.

The article attempts to apply visibility analyses to megalithic tombs of the Funnel Beaker Culture in the Pyrzyce Plain in north-western Poland. The analyses were carried out on 23 megalithic monuments in order to answer the questions whether the sites chosen by the builders of the Funnel Beaker Culture for the construction of their monumental megalithic tombs were optimal in terms of visibility and whether there is evidence that the megalithic cemeteries may have been constructed with the aim of establishing visual contact with each other and between settlements. Visibility analyses were carried out on a hypothetical landscape model that did not include flora such as forests, grasses or other obstacles in the terrain other than relief, in order to simulate an “open” landscape type. The estimation of parameters such as the visibility and discernibility of megalithic tombs proved that the builders of the Funnel Beaker Culture may indeed have chosen terrain-exposed sites for megaliths. However, other sites have been found that seem to be much more optimal in terms of visibility and terrain exposure than the present ones. Visibility analyses of megalithic cemeteries among themselves did not reveal significant “chains” of visual connections, even though they were located in exposed landscape areas. Investigations of the visual connections between megalithic cemeteries and known settlements of the Funnel Beaker Culture suggested possible visual contacts. The results of these analyses might suggest that a visual connection between cemeteries and settlements could be crucial for the megalithic builders, while it could be almost completely irrelevant between cemeteries.

The disposal of cultural material at Çatalhöyük, Turkey (7100–5950 cal BCE) has created substantial midden deposits between buildings and within abandoned houses. These consist of a variety of materials, including environmental remains such as eggshell, mollusks, seeds, phytoliths, charcoal, fecal material, along with artefacts including pottery, figurines, beads, and lithics. Animal bone and human bone also form a significant component. Understanding the taphonomy of these deposits and their formation processes is essential in order to interpret the activities represented. Here we present a taphonomic analysis of middens from the TP Area of the site (Late Neolithic, Final Phase), in terms of natural and cultural alterations to bone, through a combination of zooarchaeological analysis, with micromorphological analysis of associated sedimentary contexts. Comparisons with studies of the earlier middens enable us to account for post-depositional processes, and the implications they have for interpreting past activities and waste management practices. Integrating sediment micromorphological analysis enables refinement of the taphonomic interpretations from the analysis of faunal remains and highlights the advantages of a multi-proxy approach.

For some time, there has been more information about the Neolithic settlement on the left bank of the middle Dunajec in the Wiśnicz Foothills. In addition to the intense traces of Linear Pottery Culture, there are clear traces of the continuation of the settlement here at the fifth millennium BC and the beginning of the fourth, which represent groups of the Lengyel-Polgar cycle. These discoveries confirm the high qualities of this part of the Polish Carpathians for early agricultural colonization. Also, the selection for the settlement of the highest landscape zone and hilltops is very characteristic and tells a lot about the specificity of this mountain group for prehistoric settlement, also in the context of the old approaches to the existence of trans-Carpathian passages in the Neolithic.

The aim of the article is to characterize the well-recognized early Neolithic settlement region of Targowisko in SE Poland. It is located in southern Poland, on the northern outskirts of Western Carpathians, 30 km to the east of Krakow. It functioned throughout the development of the entire Linienbandkeramik and the subsequent Malice culture, in the period from 5300 to 4500 BC. The analysis of the settlement and internal colonization processes of the region showed their dynamic nature and the relative instability of the particular microregions, typically the increased mobility of small groups of people undertaking risky colonization actions in the Targowisko area. The region also offers a rare opportunity to trace the nature of socio-cultural change on a microscale. Impulses from various cultural environments contributed to the formation of the MC, which proves its heterogeneous character and the complicated course of its genesis.

An introduction to the Special Issue on Digital Methods and Typology, which briefly presents the topic covered in the volume, together with the hosted papers.

In this article, the author would like to raise the attention on some structural problems at the bottom of past and present approaches within lithic studies, specifically the classificatory enterprises, thus contributing to the theoretical discussions around it. As a stepping stone towards the future resolution of these issues embedded in the current typological classification methods and in the technological approach, a proposal is made that from one side suggests uniforming and regularising the formal representation of lithic analyses in a more systematic and less erratic way and from the other side praises a more inclusive approach and better integration of typological analysis within current lithic studies.

Terms of “Neolithic cultures” are still used to describe spatial and temporal differences in pottery styles across central Europe. These terms date back to research periods when absolute dating methods were lacking and typological classification was used to establish chronologies. Those terms are charged with problematic, biasing notions of social configurations: cultural homogeneity, spatial boundedness, and immobility. In this article, we present an alternative approach to pottery classification by using ceramics from dendrochronologically and C14-dated sites of the 40th–38th c. BC located in the northern Alpine Foreland. The newly developed methodology uses a computational unsupervised classification based on profile shape and additional nominal characteristics using t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding and Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise for cluster analyses. Its role in our project was to provide a quantitative, algorithm-based approach to classify large datasets of pottery while simultaneously account for a large number of variables. This enabled us to find similarity structures that would escape human cognitive capacities on which typological classification is based on. It formed one pilar of a mixed method research approach combining qualitative and quantitative methods of pottery classification. Our results show that the premises of cultural homogeneity are untenable but can be methodologically overcome by using the proposed classification approaches.

Today, it is widely accepted that typology is a biased and inconsistent attempt to classify archaeological material based on the similarity of a predefined set of features. In this respect, machine learning (ML) works similar to typology. ML approaches are often deployed because it is thought that they reduce biases. However, biases are introduced into the process at many points, e.g., feature selection. In a project applying ML to Scandinavian rock art data, it was noticed that the algorithm struggles with classifying certain motifs correctly. This contribution discusses the consistency in applying biases by ML in contrast to the inconsistency of human classification. It is argued that it is necessary to bring machines and humans into a meaningful dialogue attempting to understand why apparent “misclassifications” happen. This is important to inform us about the classification output, our biases, and the rock art data, which are in themself inconsistent, ambiguous, and biased because they are the outcomes of human creativity. The human inconsistency is a necessary component because in rock art not everything that looks similar has a similar meaning.

In Chinese mortuary research, too much reliance on traditional qualitative typological analysis renders quantitative attributes of mortuary practice data ignored. Examining the Taosi cemetery one of the famous cemeteries of Neolithic China (2300–1900 BC), this study discusses the advantages and disadvantages of typology and digital methods. Extant qualitative research has classified the Taosi burials into six vertical categories, representing a pyramidal social hierarchy. However, this approach solely relied on the labor expenditure principle, whose outcome was highly subjective and difficult to verify. This study applies a multivariant analysis. Factor analysis is used to investigate the correlations within the mortuary data. The statistical factor scores quantify the differences between the combination of burial objects in different tombs and allow clarification by cluster analysis to investigate their different social meanings. The results reveal two-axial divisions in the Taosi cemetery: vertical stratification based on hierarchy and horizontal differentiation based on social categories/identities. Compared with the simplistic typological description, such a quantitative method reveals the characteristics of each category more clearly, clarifies the classification criteria, and extracts more detailed information about the society and its mortuary practices.

The quantifiable and reproducible representation of variability in material culture has continued to play a key role in the elucidation of shifting patterns of production organization in prehistoric archaeology. The study of standardization of ceramics has traditionally illuminated on how agents shift means of production to a common goal. However, while geometric morphometric (GMM) approaches to standardization quantification overcome issues of reproducibility faced in traditional literature, the lack of widespread radiocarbon dating in Japan requires adherence to traditional methods of temporal control. This study seeks to extrapolate ceramic standardization in a quantifiable means, while also maintaining temporal control utilizing traditional methods. In a pilot case study of the agricultural transition period of the Yayoi period of the Japanese peninsula (∼900/800 BC–300 BC), results of mortuary vessels show that while a previous model based on visually determined traditional methods assumed that ceramic manufacture was centralized in the Hakata Bay subregion of the northern Kyushu island region; utilizing GMM analysis to extrapolate variable standardization is able to identify a decline in morphological variation, despite increases in population density and potential variability between migrant and indigenous production patterns. These results further illuminate the strong correlation between production intensity and its effect on standardization practices in material culture production, as seen in modern ethnoarchaeological literature.

Formal analysis of pottery is a commonplace for most archaeologists regardless of the area or period of study. The typological study of utilitarian earthenware is complex and has often been neglected in pottery studies devoted to the analytical characterization of vessels. Certainly, a low degree of variability and standardization can jeopardize a definition of vessel typologies with some sense of universality. Despite this, a global approach dealing with the function or technology of the vessels should also include typological aspects, since they are relevant at the microscale levels and have significance in determining technical choice or distribution. In the last decade, we have analysed and quantified a vast amount of medieval greyware pottery assemblages. The generation of datasets of morphometric variables and their investigation via principal component analysis, among other statistical approaches and graphical representations, has led us to the identification of regional typologies with chronological meaning among these coarse, plain, and highly functional vessels fired under reducing conditions. Clusters resulting from a combined study including up to four diameters, wall thickness, absolute, preserved or reconstructed height, and vector profile measurement allowed us to determine the degree of breakage and to consider this variable in the typological definition.