This volume represents a bold attempt by the editors to bring scholars from distinct research orientations together, to discuss the interplay between the geographic and social dimensions of different kinds of interaction networks.

Within the humanities, networks afford an umbrella of approaches to the study of social relations and their patterning, both through qualitative and quantitative applications, with two main perspectives standing out: those centered on space and those concerned with ...

For the first time seasonality is placed at the centre of the study of rural settlement. Using a Europe-wide approach, it provides a primer of examples, of techniques and of ideas for the identification and understanding of seasonal settlement. As such, it marks an important new step in the interpretation of the use of the countryside by historic communities linked to the annual passage of the year. The particular studies are introduced by an opening essay which draws wider conclusions about ...

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 ...

This pioneering study charts the one-way traffic of cultural and historical objects during five centuries of European colonialism. It presents abundant examples of disappeared colonial objects and systematises these into war booty, confiscations by missionaries and contestable acquisitions by private persons and other categories. Former colonies consider this as a historical injustice that has not been undone.Former colonial powers have kept most of the objects in their custody. In the 1970s ...

This work is an intensive study of the Neolithic deposition of copper objects from Neuenkirchen in North-East Germany. This unique ensemble represents one of the very rare hoard finds from the early Early Neolithic, and is the first of its kind for nearly 100 years, matched only by the famous younger hoard find from Bygholm (Denmark).

The beginning of neolithization at the end of the fifth millennium is not only characterised by a change in the subsistence strategy, but also by the developmen...

Bei einer Ausgrabung im havelländischen Lietzow in Brandenburg wurden jungsteinzeitliche Siedlungsbefunde entdeckt. Sie gehören zu zwei Hofstellen der jüngeren Linienbandkeramik, die um 5100-5000 v. u. Z. datiert. Die in der äußersten Peripherie des damaligen bäuerlichen Siedlungsgebiets gelegene Siedlung Lietzow 10 bestand über ungefähr zwei Generationen. Die von dichtem Eichen-Kiefernwald umgebene Siedlung lag wie eine kleine Insel auf einer Grundmoränenplatte, die mit relativ fruc...

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-...

This book sketches the first archaeological history of the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq and adjacent landscapes over a period of c. 12,000 years, from the earliest signs of human presence until the mid-first millennium BCE, based on data gathered between 2013 and 2023 by the Sirwan Regional Project (SRP).

The central research objective of the SRP is to move beyond traditional historical topoi and their predominantly external and state-centric perspectives that hav...

Early Settlers of the Insular Caribbean: Dearchaizing the Archaic offers a comprehensive coverage of the most recent advances in interdisciplinary research on the early human settling of the Caribbean islands. It covers the time span of the so-called Archaic Age and focuses on the Middle to Late Holocene period which - depending on specific case studies discussed in this volume - could range between 6000 BC and AD 1000. A similar approach to the early settlers of the Caribbean islands has nev...