Welcome to the second issue of the European Journal of Archaeology for 2016. Here, we present six general articles and nine book reviews. Below, I summarize and evaluate their significance to the archaeology of Europe.
António Carvalho and colleagues present the results of their multi-disciplinary work at the Middle Neolithic cave cemetery of Bom Santo in central Portugal, including isotope, aDNA, radiocarbon, provevance, stylistic, taphonomic, and palaeogeographical studies. They tentatively argue that the numerous people buried in this cave belonged to an itinerant farming society, organized into segments, where marriage outside the community was the norm. Whether or not these were the same people who built the earliest megalithic monuments in Portugal is yet to be established. Nevertheless, this is a ground-breaking study, which sets the standard for the scientific study of mortuary caves with commingled human remains.
Silviane Scharl reconsiders the spread of copper metallurgy in Central Europe, paying particular attention to the social mechanisms underpinning the transmission of this technological innovation. She argues that this was a slow integrational process: the first evidence (c. 4600–4500 bc) taking the form of artefacts imported via existing communication networks from Southeast Europe; a second stage, at the end of the fifth millennium bc, seeing an intensification of imports and local production and the related flow of technical knowhow; and a third stage, beginning in the thirty-ninth century bc, marked by the dominance of local production and regional styles reflecting the full integration of copper artefacts into technology and social relations. Scharl also emphasizes that this long-term process occurred in fits and starts — mapping, for example, a 500-year halt in the transmission of metallurgy beyond the distribution area of the Lengyel culture during the first half of the fifth millennium bc, arguably due to a low population density in north-western Transdanubia and a lack of communication networks linking south-eastern and north-western Transdanubia. In this way, Scharl makes a useful contribution to research on early metallurgy in Europe, although theorists will undoubtedly continue to have more to say about the process of innovation and its implications.
Adrian Chadwick reinterprets the long, linear banks and ditches of later prehistoric Britain, ascribing to them an agency that affected and directed the lives of people, animals, and even plants. He illustrates this ‘relational’ perspective with particular reference to later Bronze Age and Iron Age linear earthworks on the Yorkshire Wolds. He suggests that experiences of these dynamic and long-lived landforms may, for example, have contributed to the reworking of social memories, marked the tenure and division of land, channelled the movements of people and their animals, and reaffirmed or exacerbated tensions within and between communities. One of our reviewers described this article as ‘an original and very productive perspective’ that draws upon a diverse theoretical literature on material agency, Actor Network Theory, relationality, etc. which is currently in vogue. Another reviewer described it as ‘tedious post-processual rhetoric’. Do not be put off! Whether or not you like the style of this article, it does have the potential to simulate new thinking about boundary structures in European archaeology.
Angela Trentacoste reviews the zooarchaeology of livestock exploitation in Northern and Central Italy during the first millennium bc. In addition to noting a general increase in the use of sheep/goat for secondary products (e.g. lamb and wool), she identifies a correlation between an increase in pig meat and lard consumption and the development of urbanism in the northern part of the Etruscan territory (in the Po valley). Both trends indicate the development of a more intensive and specialized agricultural system. This might simply be explained as a response to demographic pressures. However, Trentacoste argues that pigs not only provided meat for the urban masses, but also sustained trade and facilitated the creation and redistribution of agricultural wealth that was mobilized in a growing range of social and ritual urban contexts. Overall, this is an innovative and important contribution to Etruscan studies and to social zooarchaeology.
Aleksandar Palavestra and Staša Babić explore the foundation of academic archaeology in Serbia. They pay particular attention to the influential figure of Miloje Vasić (1869–1956), who adapted the German tradition of Classical scholarship to the study of the Balkan past, including the Neolithic settlement of Vinča (which he notoriously misinterpreted as a Greek colony). The authors demonstrate that this transfer of disciplinary knowledge from one academic community to another introduced distortions of the original theories and methods, which were redesigned to meet the demands of local Serbian cultural and intellectual traditions and research agendas. They also point out that this process continues in European archaeology today. In so doing, they offer an interesting and sophisticated contribution to the history of archaeology.
Tim Evans offers us another chapter on the history of archaeology. He examines the location and context of archaeological investigations in England between 1938 and 1945. He dispels the notion that archaeological practice was suspended during World War II and that this period represents a discontinuity with post-war fieldwork. More specifically, he draws our attention to the nascent salvage excavation work undertaken in the south of the country ahead of wartime construction, led by an increasingly professional group of archaeologists, including a significant number of women. The challenge for historians of archaeology is now to compare and contrast in more depth this narrative to what was happening on the Continent at the same time.
In our reviews section, we begin with comments on two wide-ranging books: one on ‘skyscapes’ (which seeks to avoid the stigma of ‘archaeoastronomy’), the other a new synthesis of the archaeology of Malta up to the Roman period. We then move in chronological order, from glowing praise for a new volume celebrating Clive Gamble's influence on Palaeolithic studies, to a thoughtful review of an edited volume on the historical archaeology of capitalism. The reviews section then ends with mixed opinions on a collection of essays on the current state and future of developer-led archaeology in Britain.
If you are interested in submitting an article on any aspect of European archaeology, or have recently published a book that you would like us to review, do please get in touch with a member of our editorial team or visit us on http://www.maney.co.uk/index.php/journals/eja/.