Pile dwellings have been explored over a vast region for a number of decades now. This has led to the development of different ways, methods, and even schools of under-water and peat-bog excavation practices and data analysis techniques under the influence of different research traditions in individual countries. On the one hand, these and other factors can limit our understanding of the past, whilst on the other hand they can also open up further avenues of interpretation.

By collecting the ...

This book is a presentation of the basic concept of social, environmental and cultural connectivity in past societies, as embodied in a diversity of disciplines in the Cluster of Excellence ROOTS. Thus, rather pragmatically driven ideas of socio-environmental connectivities are described, which form the basis of the Cluster of Excellence in its research.

A discussion of the fluidness of the term ‘connectivity’ and the applicability of the concept opens the arena for diverse interpretatio...

This book discusses the lithic technology of the neighboring sites of Ruien and Kerkhove (Belgium). The Final-Palaeolithic occupation of Ruien took place during the harsh climatic conditions of the Younger Dryas. The Early and Middle Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Kerkhove on the other hand lived in the temperate and forested environments of the subsequent Early Holocene period. The aim of this work is more precisely to gain a better understanding of how the practice of flintknapping evolve...

Mobilität ist für Formen des sozialen Zusammenlebens grundlegend. Doch welche Rolle spielte räumliche Mobilität in der Vergangenheit? Aus prähistorischen Zeitabschnitten wie etwa dem Neolithikum ist dazu noch immer wenig bekannt. Das gilt auch für die Siedlungsräume des nördlichen Alpenvorlandes. Deren Feuchtbodensiedlungen mit den hervorragend erhaltenen Resten in Seen und Mooren gehören seit 2011 zum UNESCO Welterbe und bieten eine einzigartige Forschungsgrundlage. Die dendrochron...

The ancient glass industry changed dramatically towards the end of the first millennium. The Roman glassmaking tradition of mineral soda glass was increasingly supplanted by the use of plant ash as the main fluxing agent at the turn of the ninth century CE. Defining primary production groups of plant ash glass has been a challenge due to the high variability of raw materials and the smaller scale of production. Islamic Glass in the Making advocates a large-scale archaeometric approach to the ...

Broomcorn/common/proso millet (Panicum miliaceum) is a cereal crop that originated in East Asia and was transferred westward to Europe, where it was introduced in the mid-2nd millennium BCE, at the height of the Bronze Age. Archaeobotanists from the Collaborative Research Centre 1266, supported by many colleagues, conducted a large-scale programme of radiocarbon dating of millet grains from prehistoric Europe. They discovered that the spread of this crop on the continent happened quickly, ext...

Pile dwellings have been explored over a vast region for a number of decades now. This has led to the development of different ways, methods, and even schools of under-water and peat-bog excavation practices and data analysis techniques under the influence of different research traditions in individual countries. On the one hand, these and other factors can limit our understanding of the past, whilst on the other hand they can also open up further avenues of interpretation.

By collecting the ...

The Caribbean region faces particular environmental challenges as a result of colonial land use, pressures from tourism and globalisation, as well as climate change. No less affected are its heritage resources, which include natural and cultural elements crucial to economic survival and local identity. This research explores the relationship between land, law and heritage in order to better understand the regulatory failures that undermine heritage protection in the English-speaking Caribbean.

Using a spatial justice lens to examine the legal framework of eight islands in the Lesser Antilles, the analysis posits that domestic heritage laws are ineffective, because they ignore the relevance of local places or landscapes to the formation of heritage. Relying instead on ideas of land as abstract property rights, heritage is presented as a mere visual embellishment that can deteriorate into an unsightly and costly burden for the landowner or State, rather than the outcome of dynamic and locally unique interactions between people and place...