The construction of a new metro line through the heart of Amsterdam in 2003-2018 – the North/South Line – gave us access to a unique archaeological site: the riverbed of the Amstel. Almost 700,000 archaeological finds were made there, all of which are linked with the history of Amsterdam between 1300 and 2000. In 2018, a photographic catalogue of 13,000 finds entitled Stuff was published, telling the visual story of the objects and materials that have been used in Amsterdam over the centu...

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 ...

De vuistbijlen van Tjerk Vermaning binnenstebuiten gekeerd. Wie zit(ten) achter deze en andere grootschalige vervalsingen?

Tjerk Vermaning en zijn omstreden vuistbijlen staan nog altijd in de belangstelling. En dat ruim 50 jaar na zijn eerste spraakmakende ontdekking: een mammoetjagerskampement bij Hoogersmilde (Dr.) dat uit de Neanderthalertijd zou stammen, zo’n 60.000 jaar geleden. De hernieuwde focus op Tjerk Vermaning begon enkele jaren geleden met de roman ‘Tjerk’ en in 2018/2019 w...

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 ...