This volume presents a detailed spatial analysis of the sites of Keinsmerbrug, Mienakker, and Zeewijk. These Late Neolithic settlement sites define the westernmost edge of the Corded Ware Culture (c. 2900-2300 cal BC). The people took part in a broad spectrum of activities: hunting, gathering, fishing, agriculture, animal husbandry, and artisan crafts. They maintained their regional traditions while dwelling on the edge of this Neolithic cultural group. The study depicts Neolithic households as highly mobile with sedentary and seasonal settlements. The patterns that emerge from the in-depth spatial analysis of material distributions indicate the presence of spatially bound locations for specific activities. This structuring of space further supports the identification of various dwelling structures. Neolithic monumentality is, for the first time, identified within the Dutch coastal wetlands. The biographical perspective underlines the ephemeral nature of the divide between the place of the living and the place of the ancestors.
Excavations in North Uist dating from 1974-1984 identified two cists with human remains in kerbed cairns, many bowl pits dug into the blown sand, two late Neolithic structures and a ritual complex.
Considering that Orkney is a group of relatively small islands lying off the northeast coast of the Scottish mainland, its wealth of Neolithic archaeology is truly extraordinary. An assortment of houses, chambered cairns, stone circles, standing stones and passage graves provides an unusually comprehensive range of archaeological and architectural contexts. Yet, in the early 1990s, there was a noticeable imbalance between 4th and 3rd millennium cal BC evidence, with house structures, and ‘villages’ being well represented in the latter but minimally in the former. As elsewhere in the British Isles, the archaeological visibility of the 4th millennium cal BC in Orkney tends to be dominated by the monumental presence of chambered cairns or tombs. In the 1970s Claude Lévi-Strauss conceived of a form of social organization based upon the ‘house’ – sociétés à maisons – in order to provide a classification for social groups that appeared not to conform to established anthropological kinship structures. In this approach, the anchor point is the ‘house’, understood as a conceptual resource that is a consequence of a strategy of constructing and legitimizing identities under ever shifting social conditions. Drawing on the results of an extensive program of fieldwork in the Bay of Firth, Mainland Orkney, the text explores the idea that the physical appearance of the house is a potent resource for materializing the dichotomous alliance and descent principles apparent in the archaeological evidence for the early and later Neolithic of Orkney. It argues that some of the insights made by Lévi-Strauss in his basic formulation of sociétés à maisons are extremely relevant to interpreting the archaeological evidence and providing the parameters for a ‘social’ narrative of the material changes occurring in Orkney between the 4th and 2nd millennia cal BC. The major excavations undertaken during the Cuween-Wideford Landscape Project provided an unprecedented depth and variety of evidence for Neolithic occupation, bridging the gap between domestic and ceremonial architecture and form, exploring the transition from wood to stone and relationships between the living and the dead and the role of material culture. The results are described and discussed in detail here, enabling tracing of the development and fragmentation of sociétés à maisons over a 1500 year period of Northern Isles prehistory.
The Irish Neolithic has been dominated by the study of megalithic tombs, but the defining element of Irish settlement evidence is the rectangular timber Early Neolithic house, the numbers of which have more than quadrupled in the last ten years. The substantial Early Neolithic timber house was a short-lived architectural phenomenon of as little as 90 years, perhaps like short-lived Early Neolithic long barrows and causewayed enclosures. This book explores the wealth of evidence for settlement and houses throughout the Irish Neolithic, in relation to Britain and continental Europe. More importantly it incorporates the wealth of new, and often unpublished, evidence from developer-led archaeological excavations and large grey-literature resources. The settlement evidence scattered across the landscape, and found as a result of developer-funded work, provides the social context for the more famous stone monuments that have traditionally shaped our views of the Neolithic in Ireland. It provides the first comprehensive review of the Neolithic settlement of Ireland, which enables a more holistic and meaningful understanding of the Irish Neolithic.
This book provides unique insights into Late Neolithic life, its organization and its economy, made possible by an altogether exceptional collection of recent archaeological findings in South Scandinavia from longhouses with sunken floors dating from this period. Through analysis and interpretation of these comprehensive materials, Danish archaeologist John Simonsen presents brand new findings essential for many wider interpretations of this crucial and fascinating transitional period from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age (c. 2350- c. 1600 BC). The basic materials presented and discussed in Daily Life at the Turn of the Neolithic were mainly found during new archaeological excavations in the central part of the Limfjord region of Denmark, but, in terms of the wider perspectives and considerations, often relate to the entire region and in several respects also to South Scandinavia - and beyond.
This volume covers the Prehistory of Ukraine from the Lower Palaeolithic through to the end of the Neolithic periods. This is the first comprehensive synthesis of Ukrainian Prehistory from earliest times through until the Neolithic Period undertaken by researchers who are currently investigating the Prehistory of Ukraine. At present there are no other English language books on this subject that provide a current synthesis for these periods. The chapters in this volume provide up-to-date overviews of all aspects of prehistoric culture development in Ukraine and present details of the key sites and finds for the periods studied. The book includes the most recent research from all areas of prehistory up to the Neolithic period, and, in addition, areas such as recent radiocarbon dating and its implications for culture chronology are considered; as is a consideration of aDNA and the new insights into culture history this area of research affords; alongside recent macrofossil studies of plant use, and anthropological and stable isotope studies of diet, which all combine to allow greater insights into the nature of human subsistence and cultural developments across the Palaeolithic to Neolithic periods in Ukraine. It is anticipated that this book will be an invaluable resource for students of prehistory throughout Europe in providing an English-language text that is written by researchers who are active in their respective fields and who possess an intimate knowledge of Ukrainian prehistory.
The Neolithic Cemetery at Tell el-Kerkh is the second volume of the final reports on the excavations at Tell el-Kerkh, northwest Syria, focusing on the discovery of a Pottery Neolithic cemetery dating between c. 6400 and 6100 BC, one of the oldest outdoor communal cemeteries in West Asia.
This book by the famous Soviet archaeologist Leonid Khlobystin, describes discoveries that led to a 6,000 year culture history for the Russian High Arctic.
Originally published in 1946, this book presents in what can arguably be described as an unusual way, a slice of Scottish social life by applying to prehistory the principles of Marxism as practised by Soviet scholars of Russian prehistory. Using archaeological evidence, the author distinguishes 6 stages – from the earliest definable groups of immigrants to the Iron Age. There are 10 appendices, devoted to the typology and classification of tombs, pottery, implements and fortifications.
