How’s life?

The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age saw many developments in metalworking, social structure, food production, nutrition, and diet. At the same time, networks in Europe intensified and human impact on the environment changed in character. What influence did these transformations have on daily life? Which proxies can researchers use to study these topics?

This volume presents scientific contributions from different fields of expertise within modern archaeology in order to investigate past living conditions through aspects of the archaeological record related to production (e.g. of food and metal), well-being (e.g. diet, health), human relations (e.g. violence), and the local environment (e.g. pollution, waste disposal, and water management). It also critically addresses contemporary graphic representations of Bronze Age living conditions.

This volume compiles papers from a session with the same title organized for an international open workshop of the Graduate School 'Human Development in Landscapes', entitled 'Socio-Environmental Dynamics over the Last 12,000 Years: The Development of Landscapes IV', which took place in 2017, in Kiel, Germany. Publications detailing overarching core research on subsistence systems, societal transformations, and resilience versus rupture dynamics already exist. With this volume, we aim to provide a closer look at everyday life in past communities.

Contents:

Introduction

Part 1. Life in Action: Metal Production, Health Conditions and Dietary choices

Copper Output, Demand for Wood and Energy Expenditure - Evaluating Economic Aspects of Bronze Age Metallurgy

Johanna Brinkmann

Warriors' Lives. The Skeletal Sample from the Bronze Age Battlefield Site in the Tollense Valley, Northeastern Germany

Gundula Lidke, Ute Brinker, Annemarie Schramm, Detlef Jantzen, Thomas Terberger

Environmental Imposition or Ancient Farmers' Choice? A Study of the Presence of "Inferior" Legumes in the Bronze Age Carpathian Basin (Hungary)

Sonja Filatova, Ferenc Gyulai, Wiebke Kirleis

Part 2. The Place of Living: Routine Activities, the Management of Waste and of Natural Resources

The Fossil Plant remains of the Early Bronze Age site Rothenkirchen on Rügen. Inside Distribution Patterns as a Mirror of Housekeeping

Almuth Alsleben

Waste Disposal In The Bronze Age: Plants In Pits At Wismar-Wendorf, Northern Germany

Dragana Filipović Frank Mewis, Lars Saalow, Jens-Peter Schmidt, Wiebke Kirleis

An Overview of Olive Trees in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Mid-Late Holocene: Selective Exploitation or Established Arboriculture?

Asli Oflaz, Walter Dörfler, Mara Weinelt

On-site Palaeoecological Investigations from the Hünenburg Hillfort-Settlement Complex, with Special Reference to Non-pollen Palynomorphs

Magdalena Wieckowska-Lüth, Immo Heske

Part 3. Living the Past: The (Graphic) Representation of Past Living Conditions

Creating an Understanding of Life in and around a Bronze Age House through Science-based Artist Impressions

Yvonne F. van Amerongen

Case Study "How Was Life in Early Bronze Age Bruszczewo" - Archaeology and the View of Prehistory in Reconstruction Images

Jutta Kneisel