While terrestrial archaeology has engaged with contemporary philosophy, maritime archaeology has remained in comparative disciplinary – or subdisciplinary – isolation. However, the issues that humans face in the Anthropocene – from global warming to global pandemics – call for transdisciplinary cooperation, and for thinking together beyond the confines of the human-centered philosophical tradition. Growing areas such as the “blue humanities” and “oceanic thinking” draw directl...

This study aims to understand the materiality of Saba’s ideological landscape during its pre-emancipation colonial period. This is accomplished by understanding the dialectics, or inseparable relationships, between Saba’s geography, locally-situated ideologies of class, race, and gender in Saba’s social environment, and the processes behind these ideological relations that contributed to the material things that are found across Saba’s social landscape.

This provides insights into ar...

This book is intended to be a groundwork of how to theorise prehistory and archaeology and how to make connectivities between the past and the present. It is divided into four parts. The first part is epistemological. It explains why there must be theoretical investments if past ways of human life are to be understood and explained. This insight is specified to a ladder-model (sensu Hawkes) with conceptual scaffoldings on each step. Stepwise, sets of concepts are introduced. This constitutes ...

Around 3000 BCE, a turning point occurred in Europe: Long-existing regional societies entered into a process of transformation. The result is a world in which new global communication networks brought different regions closer together. From 3200/3100 BCE, the Globular Amphora phenomenon (GA) was the trailblazer in Eastern and Central Europe. Due to a focus on pastoral subsistence, in comparison to more agrarian economic systems, new ritual practices formed in light of a more flexible form of ...

Since the eighteenth century, many if not most ancient and medieval manuscripts or other text-bearing or associated objects have been procured through imperial expropriation or through the antiquities market with little or no evidence of findspot or place of original deposition and with no assurance of legal provenance or authenticity. The consequences of these questionable acquisition practices for scholarship and for our understanding of the past are the focus of much enquiry.

Recent high-...

How did people organize their settlements in later prehistoric societies? How do architecture, spatial organization, land divisions, and landscape use relate to different modes of social organization? The papers in this book contribute to a greater understanding of the complexity and dynamics of settlement and landscape organization in the Nordic countries from the Late Bronze Age to the Renaissance.

Among the topics addressed is the notion of the wandering settlements as the standard settle...

Across Western Asia, the astonishing increase in the availability of durable ceramic containers in the seventh millennium BCE had significant societal repercussions – so much so that vital social, economic, and symbolic activities became dependent upon the availability of pottery containers. These early ceramic containers, however, established themselves alongside flourishing pre-existing container traditions, with vessels made in a wide range of materials including clay, bitumen, basketry,...