This book explores the cost, expressed in labour, of constructing fortifications during the Late Bronze Age in Greece (ca. 1600 – 1050 BCE). The underlying question for this study is whether the cost of large scale constructions, built with large, unwieldy blocks, may have overstretched the (economic) capabilities of communities, leading to their collapse.

In order to determine the labour costs, the building process is deconstructed and for each sub-process, the costs are determined. The co...

This work deals with topics related to mobility, contacts and transmission of knowledge. The study of these topics regarding the past can promote an understanding of the social implications of migration, communication and learning today through long-term perspectives of change. This volume focuses on these topics in the Mesolithic by analysing a specialised lithic concept known previously from Scandinavia and Northern Germany. The implementation of the Handle Core Pressure Concept (HCPC) is b...

This book explores how Western European psychotherapists, interviewed between 2016 and 2019, understand spirituality and how they address spiritual matters in clinical sessions.

By studying a purposive sample of 15 Clinicians from Spain, England, Switzerland, Greece, Norway and Denmark, it was found that these shared similar views about spirituality, understood as dynamic, fluid and independent from religion. The interviewed psychotherapists showed great variation in their psychotherapy trai...

'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree', 'Like father like son', 'Chip off the old block'. All these idioms seem to suggest that offspring resemble their parents and this also applies to criminal behaviour. This dissertation investigates mechanisms that might explain why children with criminal parents have a higher risk of committing crime. Several explanations for this intergenerational transmission have been contrasted, such as social learning (imitation of behaviour), official bias agai...

There is little evidence of the routes connecting Amerindian communities in the Caribbean prior to and just after 1492. Uncovering possible canoe routes between these communities can help to explain the structure, capabilities, and limitations of the physical links in their social and material networks. This book evaluates how routes connecting islands indicate the structure of past inter-island networks, by using computer modeling.Computer modeling and least-cost pathway analysis is a popula...

This book deals with the question how communities across Europe during the later 3rd millennium BC adopt and transform the Bell Beaker phenomenon differently. By looking at these processes of change from the perspective of settlements and settlement material culture, an interpretation is given to the development of this phenomenon that is alternative to the currently prevailing migration models.

Instead, the author uses social theories on the spread of innovations, the development and functio...

In Bronze Age Europe, an enormous amount of metalwork was buried in the ground and never retrieved. Patterns in the archaeological finds show that this was a deliberate practice: people systematically deposited valuable metal objects in specific places in the landscape, even in non-metalliferous regions. Although this practice seems strange and puzzling from our modern perspective, these patterns demonstrate that it was not simply a matter of irrational human behaviour. Instead, there were su...

Before the introduction of Roman temples in the Low Countries, there used to be ‘open air cult places’ in the Iron Age. That is at least the assumption based on descriptions given by classical writers and several structures typified as sanctuaries that were excavated in France.

Several of these French sanctuaries portray long usage, modifications, disarticulated human remains, and depositions of animal bones and Iron Age weaponry. However, the regularly encountered rectangular structures...

This work deals with topics related to mobility, contacts and transmission of knowledge. The study of these topics regarding the past can promote an understanding of the social implications of migration, communication and learning today through long-term perspectives of change. This volume focuses on these topics in the Mesolithic by analysing a specialised lithic concept known previously from Scandinavia and Northern Germany. The implementation of the Handle Core Pressure Concept (HCPC) is b...

The aim of the thesis was to provide a framework for the identification and analysis of individual craftspeople in bifacial flint production. Flint production flakes from replications of South Scandinavian Late Neolithic daggers and Early Bronze Age sickles were the focus of the study, in contrast to research so far, mostly relying on finished and often exceptional pieces.

To identify technical traditions within technological systems and/or personal approaches to production, it is necessary t...