Since its development in 1949, radiocarbon dating has increasingly been used in prehistoric research in order to get a better grip on the chronology of sites, cultures and environmental changes. Refinement of the dating, sampling and calibration methods has continuously created new and challenging perspectives for absolute dating. In these proceedings the focus lies on the contribution of carbon-14 dates in current Mesolithic research in North-West Europe. Altogether 40 papers dealing with radiocarbon dates from 15 different countries are presented. Major themes are the typo-technological evolution of lithic and bone industries, changes in settlement patterns, burial practices, demography and subsistence, human impact on the Mesolithic environment and the neolithisation process. Some papers also deal with more methodological aspects of carbon-14 dating (e.g. calculation of various reservoir effects, the use of cumulative calibrated probability distributions), and related techniques (e.g. stable isotope analysis for palaeodiet reconstruction).

The Later Prehistory of North-West Europe provides a unique, up-to-date, and easily accessible synthesis of the later prehistoric archaeology of north-west Europe, transcending political and language barriers that can hinder understanding. By surveying changes in social forms, landscape organization, monument types, and ritual practices over six millennia, the volume reassesses the prehistory of north-west Europe from the late Mesolithic to the end of the pre-Roman Iron Age. It explores how far common patterns of social development are apparent across north-west Europe, and whether there were periods when local differences were emphasized instead. In relation to this, it also examines changes through time in the main axes of contact between the various regions of continental Europe, Britain, and Ireland. Key to the volume's broad scope is its focus on the vast mass of new evidence provided by recent development-led excavations. The authors collate data that has been gathered on thousands of sites across Britain, Ireland, northern France, the Low Countries, western Germany, and Denmark, using sources including unpublished 'grey literature' reports. The results challenge many aspects of previous narratives of later prehistory, allowing the volume to present a distinctively fresh perspective.

The prehistories of Britain and Ireland are inescapably entwined with continental European narratives. The central aim here is to explore ‘cross-channel’ relationships throughout later prehistory, investigating the archaeological links (material, social, cultural) between the areas we now call Britain and Ireland, and continental Europe, from the Mesolithic through to the end of the Iron Age. Since the separation from the European mainland of Ireland (c. 16,000 BC) and Britain (c. 6000 BC), their island nature has been seen as central to many aspects of life within them, helping to define their senses of identity, and forming a crucial part of their neighbourly relationship with continental Europe and with each other. However, it is important to remember that the surrounding seaways have often served to connect as well as to separate these islands from the continent. In approaching the subject of ‘continental connections’ in the long-term, and by bringing a variety of different archaeological perspectives (associated with different periods) to bear on it, this volume provides a new a new synthesis of the ebbs and flows of the cross-channel relationship over the course of 15,000 years of later prehistory, enabling fresh understandings and new insights to emerge about the intimately linked trajectories of change in both regions.

It is difficult to capture one’s life in a few words, a few photographs or even a book. The papers in the present volume will hopefully reflect a part of Clive Bonsall’s scientific interests during a career that has started some 45 years ago. Their diversity is impressive: from radiocarbon dating, environmental changes, human-environment interactions, funerary behaviour, to paleogenetics and stable isotopes, reconstruction of ancient diets and obsidian sourcing, most of them in close connection to the hunter-gatherer and first farmer communities of Europe. His studies stretched over a large geographical area, focusing recently mainly around the Balkans and the neighbouring regions. He has conducted fieldwork in Britain, Scotland, Romania and Slovenia, edited 9 books and published over 160 papers, book-chapters, notes, as well as book and paper reviews. His main publications include: “The Mesolithic in Europe” (1989), “The Human Use of Caves” (1997), “The Iron Gates in Prehistory” (2008), “Submerged Prehistory” (2011) and “Not Just for Show: The Archaeology of Beads, Beadwork and Personal Ornaments” (2017). His substantial work in southeastern Europe is reflected by his long-standing collaboration and friendship with many Romanian and Bulgarian archaeologists, and has received due recognition: Clive Bonsall is an Honorary Member of both the “Vasile Pârvan” Institute of Archaeology in Bucharest and the National Institute of Archaeology with Museum in Sofia. His contribution to the archaeology of the Iron Gates has earned him the recognition of the Serbian archaeologists working in the area. His many other research interests and personal collaborations are also reflected in the present volume. We are grateful to all our contributors: colleagues and friends, new and old, former students and collaborators whose archaeological interests met Clive’s if only briefly. We were happy to see that so many of us were able to mobilize in such a short time. We would like to thank all those who answered our call and at a time when every minute of our professional lives is carefully planned in advance, helped us put together this volume in less than a year. They have endured and complied with our constant deadline reminders and requests, checked and re-checked their manuscripts in record times, gracefully complying with the comments and suggestions from the reviewers, and were most patient with our editorial work. Each paper was submitted to a double reviewing. We would like to also thank our colleagues from various disciplines who accepted to anonymously review the contributions. Their hard and serious work significantly improved the overall content of the volume. The outcome has exceeded our most optimistic expectation: a volume that geographically covers almost the entire European continent, from Britain to Russia and Greece and touches on most important issues of hunter-gather adaptions through time. A volume brought together by chronological landmarks (the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene) and geographical areas but also by common approaches to issues such as human-animal interactions, exploitation and use of raw materials, and subsistence strategies. We chose to organize the papers on three main sections, while within the respective theme they follow in chronological succession. The archaeology of the Iron Gates opens the volume, given Clive Bonsall’s substantial contribution to the local early prehistory. The eight contributions cover a large range of subjects, from physical anthropology (Andrei Soficaru), re-interpretation of earlier excavations and the subsequent collections (Adina Boroneanț), stone artefacts (Dragana Antonović, Vidan Dimić, Andrej Starović and Dušan Borić) to the study of faunal remains and subsequent paleo-dietary issues (Adrian Bălășescu, Adina Boroneanț and Valentin Radu; Dragana Filipović, Jelena Jovanović and Dragana Rančić; Ivana Živaljević, Vesna Dimitrijević and Sofija Stefanović), and osseous industries (Monica Mărgărit and Adina Boroneanț; Selena Vitezović). These studies illustrate the still immense research potential of the Iron Gates region despite the fact that most of the sites have been flooded many decades ago. During the editing of the volume it became obvious that while some of the contributions focused on the evidence from a certain site, others were more of a regional synthesis. This latter section begins with a most interesting paper bringing together world history and underwater archaeology (Jonathan Benjamin and Geoff Bailey). The following nine articles deal with subjects such as social inequalities seen through the study of burial practices (Judith M. Grünberg), lifeways, adaptations and subsistence strategies of the early prehistoric communities (Agathe Reingruber; Mihael Budja; Annie Brown and Haskel Greenfield; Kenneth Ritchie), raw materials acquisition and exploitation (Tomasz Płonka, Maria Gurova, Eva David), exploitation, management and trade of “exotic” goods (Vassil Nikolov). The nine papers focusing on individual sites present case studies that illustrate the nature of the current research, the rich opportunities offered by the growing range of scientific techniques and their applications to existing collections. This series of papers starts at Zemunica Cave on the coast of the Eastern Adriatic (Siniša Radović and Ankica Oros Sršen), explores the Mesolithic occupations at Malga Rondenetto (Paolo Biagi, Elisabetta Starnini and Renato Nisbet) and Grotta dell’Edera (Barbara Voytek) in Italy, the Mesolithic ornamented weapons of Motala in Sweden (Lars Larsson and Fredrik Molin), ending this Mesolithic journey among the shell middens on the western coast of Scotland (Catriona Pickard). The transition to the Neolithic happens among the beaver tools at Zamojste 2 in Russia (Olga Lozovskaya, Charlotte Leduc and Louis Chaix). The Neolithic Age finds us further south into Bulgaria, exploring the pitfields of Sarnevo (Krum Bacvarov and John Gorczyk) and the gold of Varna (Tanya Dzhanfezova), while during the Bronze Age roe deer hunting is resurrected at Paks-Gyapa in Hungary (László Bartosiewicz and Erika Gál). The volume presents altogether new results in recent research and new information resulted from the study of old collections. We also hope it points out directions for future research. It is with great joy that we present Clive Bonsall this volume, as a token of both our appreciation and friendship, for his contributions to the Early Prehistory of Europe in general, and of Southeastern Europe in special. The Editors

Dedicated to Martin Bell (University of Reading), this book outlines how wetland and inland environments can be related and investigated using multi-method approaches. Papers fall under three themes: coastal and intertidal archaeology; mobility and human-environment relationships; heritage resource management, nature conservation and rewilding.

Microfossils are an abundant component of the sedimentary rock record. Their analysis can reveal not only the environments in which the rocks were deposited, but also their age. When combined, the spatial and temporal distribution patterns of microfossils offer enormous utility for archaeological and forensic investigations. Their presence can act as a geological ‘fingerprint’ and the tiniest fragment of material, such as a broken Iron Age potsherd, can contain a microfossil signature that reveals the geographical source of the materials under investigation. This book explores how microfossils are employed as tools to interpret human society and habitation throughout history. Examples include microfossil evidence associated with Palaeolithic human occupation at Boxgrove in Sussex, alongside investigations into human-induced landscape change during the Holocene. Further examples include the use of microfossils to provenance the source materials of Iron Age ceramics, Roman mosaics and Minoan pottery, in addition to their application to help solve modern murder cases, highlighting the diverse applications of microfossils to improving our understanding of human history.

The subject of climate change could hardly be more timely. In Climate and Cultural Change in Prehistoric Europe and the Near East, an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine climate change through the lens of new archaeological and paleo-environmental data over the course of more than 10,000 years from the Near East to Europe. Key climatic and other events are contextualized with cultural changes and transitions for which the authors discuss when, how, and if, changes in climate and environment caused people to adapt, move or perish. More than this publication of crucial archaeological and paleo-environmental data, however, the volume seeks to understand the social, political and economic significance of climate change as it was manifested in various ways around the Old World. Contrary to perceptions of threatening global warming in our popular media, and in contrast to grim images of collapse presented in some archaeological discussions of past climate change, this book rejects outright societal collapse as a likely outcome. Yet this does not keep the authors from considering climate change as a potential factor in explaining culture change by adopting a critical stance with regard to the long-standing practice of equating synchronicity with causality, and explicitly considering alternative explanations.