This book had its origins in a symposium held at the University of Edinburgh from 30 March to 2 April 2000, which was attended by archaeologists with a shared interest in the prehistory of the small but distinctive region of Southeast Europe known as the Iron Gates. In the broad sense the area refers to the section of the Danube valley where the river forms the modern political border between Serbia and Romania, and this definition is adopted for the present volume. First and foremost the volume is intended to illustrate the immense research potential of the Iron Gates region. A second objective is to provide case studies that illustrate the nature of current research and the rich possibilities offered by the growing range of scientific techniques available to archaeologists and their application to existing archaeological collections. Contents: 1) Lithic technology and settlement systems of the Final Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic in the Iron Gates (Dusan Mihailovic); 2) The development of the ground stone industry in the Serbian part of the Iron Gates (Dragana Antonovic); 3) Sturgeon fishing along the Middle and Lower Danube (Laszlo Bartosiewicz, Clive Bonsall & Vasile Sisu); 4) The Mesolithic-Neolithic in the Derdap as evidenced by non-metric anatomical variants (Mirjana Roksandic); 5) Demography of the Derdap Mesolithic-Neolithic transition (Mary Jackes, Mirjana Roksandic & Christopher Meiklejohn); 6) Approaches to Starcevo culture chronology (Joni L. Manson); 7) Faunal assemblages from the Early Neolithic of the central Balkans: methodological issues in the reconstruction of subsistence and land Use (Haskel Greenfield); 8) Lepenski Vir animal bones: what was left in the houses? (Vesna Dimitrijevic); 9) New-born infant burials underneath house floors at Lepenski Vir: in pursuit of contextual meanings (Sofija Stefanovic & Dusan Boric); 10) DNA-based sex identification of the infant remains from Lepenski Vir (Biljana Culjkovic, Sofija Stefanovic & Stanka Romac); 11) Dating burials and architecture at Lepenski Vir (Clive Bonsall, Ivana Radovanovic, Mirjana Roksandic, Gordon Cook, Thomas Higham & Catriona Pickard); 12) Reanalysis of the vertebrate fauna from Hajducka Vodenica in the Danubian Iron Gates: subsistence and taphonomy from the Early Neolithic and Mesolithic (Haskel Greenfield); 13) Velesnica and the Lepenski Vir culture (Rastko Vasic); 14) The human osteological material from Velesnica (Mirjana Roksandic); 15) The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Trieste Karst (north-eastern Italy) as seen from the excavations at the Edera Cave (Paolo Biagi, Elisabetta Starnini & Barbara Voytek).

Based on the extensive excavation in the 1960s and 1970s, before flooding by artificial lakes, explores the Lepenski Vir culture, which lived in the Iron Gates Gorge of the Danube about 7,000 years ago. Investigates their origin; their geographical and chronological framework; and their role in ushering in the neolithic age, the early stages of which exhibit some Lepenski Vir traits. Discusses the environment now and then, settlements and architecture, burial rites, portable artifacts, periodization and chronology, and the European framework. Translated (from Serbian) and extensively revised from a 1993 U. of Belgrade Ph. D. dissertation. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $48.50. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean offers new insights into the material and social practices of many different Mediterranean peoples during the Bronze and Iron Ages, presenting in particular those features that both connect and distinguish them. Contributors discuss in depth a range of topics that motivate and structure Mediterranean archaeology today, including insularity and connectivity; mobility, migration, and colonization; hybridization and cultural encounters; materiality, memory, and identity; community and household; life and death; and ritual and ideology. The volume's broad coverage of different approaches and contemporary archaeological practices will help practitioners of Mediterranean archaeology to move the subject forward in new and dynamic ways. Together, the essays in this volume shed new light on the people, ideas, and materials that make up the world of Mediterranean archaeology today, beyond the borders that separate Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Prehistoric Europe: Theory and Practice provides a comprehensive introduction to the range of critical contemporary thinking in the study of European prehistory. Presents essays by some of the most dynamic researchers and leading European scholars in the field today Ranges from the Neolithic period to the early stages of the Iron Age, and from Ireland and Scandinavia to the Urals and the Iberian Peninsula

The current paradigm-changing ancient DNA revolution is offering unparalleled insights into central problems within archaeology relating to the movement of populations and individuals, patterns of descent, relationships and aspects of identity – at many scales and of many different kinds. The impact of recent ancient DNA results can be seen particularly clearly in studies of the European Neolithic, the subject of contributions presented in this volume. We now have new evidence for the movement and mixture of people at the start of the Neolithic, as farming spread from the east, and at its end, when the first metals as well as novel styles of pottery and burial practices arrived in the Chalcolithic. In addition, there has been a wealth of new data to inform complex questions of identities and relationships. The terms of archaeological debate for this period have been permanently altered, leaving us with many issues. This volume stems from the online day conference of the Neolithic Studies Group held in November 2021, which aimed to bring geneticists and archaeologists together in the same forum, and to enable critical but constructive inter-disciplinary debate about key themes arising from the application of advanced ancient DNA analysis to the study of the European Neolithic. The resulting papers gathered here are by both geneticists and archaeologists. Individually, they form a series of significant, up-to-date, period and regional syntheses of various manifestations of the Neolithic across the Near East and Europe, including particularly Britain and Ireland. Together, they offer wide-ranging reflections on the progress of ancient DNA studies, and on their future reach and character.

The volume offers a comprehensive introduction to the archaeology of the southern Levant (modern day Israel, Palestine and Jordan) from the Paleolithic period to the Islamic era, presenting the past with chronological changes from hunter-gatherers to empires. Written by an international team of scholars in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, and bioanthropology, the volume presents central debates around a range of archaeological issues, including gender, ritual, the creation of alphabets and early writing, biblical periods, archaeometallurgy, looting, and maritime trade. Collectively, the essays also engage diverse theoretical approaches to demonstrate the multi-vocal nature of studying the past. Significantly, The Social Archaeology of the Levant updates and contextualizes major shifts in archaeological interpretation.

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.