Bronze Age Settlements In The Low Countries

The Low Countries around the deltas of the river Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt have a long tradition in large scale archaeological research. This book brings together research from thirteen of the largest Bronze Age settlements described by their original excavators. These contributions are preceded by two introductory chapters written by the editors, providing a full overview of the state of Dutch Bronze Age settlement research, the key sites and the explanatory models current within it. Standards have been developed for the analysis of Bronze Age house plans and settlement sites and new models for the reading of the settled landscape. The rich data of the Low Countries also incorporate burial areas and deposition places. The findings presented can be seen to reflect the situation over a large area of lands bordering the North Sea.

This publication contains the six main appendices to the PhD thesis "A Living Landscape: Bronze Age settlement sites in the Dutch river area (c. 2000-800 BC)" by Stijn Arnoldussen which was published by Sidestone Press in 2008. That study comprises an analysis of the nature (i.e. the constituent components) and dynamics (i.e. diachronic approaches to settlement dynamics) of the settlement sites. It aims to integrate and synthesize interpretations of Bronze Age settlements based on a number of large-scale excavations. The discussion of the archaeological and geological research on these sites, as well as more detailed source criticism and long-term overviews of the occupation histories of six (c. 30 km2) macro-regions around them, could for sake of conciseness not be incorporated into the main stud's text. However, such discussions contain critical information necessary to interpret the results and to evaluate their representativeness, and this information is now made available in this separate publication. While these texts are primarily appendices to the thesis, they can be read separately by those who are particularly interested in the the excavations at Zijderveld, Rumpt - Eigenblok, Wijk bij Duurstede, Meteren - De Bogen, Lienden - Kesteren or Dodewaard, which have been published in Dutch. In addition, the appendices provide a recent overview of the palaeogeographical development and occupation history of six large macro-regions in the Dutch river area. This information may be of relevance to those studying other sites within these macro-regions for the period under study (c. 2000-800 BC). Stijn Arnoldussen studied the prehistory of northwestern Europe at Leiden University and won the 'W. A. van Es' award for the best Dutch archaeological MA thesis. From 2003 to 2007 he was involved in a research project that focused on the Bronze Age cultural landscape in the Dutch river area. The present book is a result of this project. Stijn Arnoldussen is also co-editor of the book 'Bronze Age settlements in the Low Countries' (Oxbow Books, 2008). He is presently employed as a senior researcher with the Dutch National Service for Archaeology, Cultural Landscape and Built Heritage (RACM) and starting November 2008, he will be employed as a lecturer in later prehistory at the University of Groningen.

This study examines Middle–Late Bronze Age (c. 1750–600 BC) domestic settlement patterns in Ireland. The results reveal a distinct rise in the visibility, and a rapid adaption, of domestic architecture, which seems to have occurred earlier in Ireland than elsewhere in western and northern Europe.

The Oxford Handbook of the European Bronze Age is a wide-ranging survey of a crucial period in prehistory during which many social, economic, and technological changes took place. Written by expert specialists in the field, the book provides coverage both of the themes that characterize the period, and of the specific developments that took place in the various countries of Europe. After an introduction and a discussion of chronology, successive chapters deal with settlement studies, burial analysis, hoards and hoarding, monumentality, rock art, cosmology, gender, and trade, as well as a series of articles on specific technologies and crafts (such as transport, metals, glass, salt, textiles, and weighing). The second half of the book covers each country in turn. From Ireland to Russia, Scandinavia to Sicily, every area is considered, and up to date information on important recent finds is discussed in detail. The book is the first to consider the whole of the European Bronze Age in both geographical and thematic terms, and will be the standard book on the subject for the foreseeable future.

Europe is dotted with tens of thousands of prehistoric barrows. In spite of their ubiquity, little is known on the role they had in pre- and protohistoric landscapes. In 2010, an international group of archaeologists came together at the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists in The Hague to discuss and review current research on this topic. This book presents the proceedings of that session. The focus is on the prehistory of Scandinavia and the Low Countries, but also includes an excursion to huge prehistoric mounds in the southeast of North America. One contribution presents new evidence on how the immediate environment of Neolithic Funnel Beaker (TRB) culture megaliths was ordered, another one discusses the role of remarkable single and double post alignments around Bronze and Iron Age burial mounds. Zooming out, several chapters deal with the place of barrows in the broader landscape. The significance of humanly-managed heath in relation to barrow groups is discussed, and one contribution emphasizes how barrow orderings not only reflect spatial organization, but are also important as conceptual anchors structuring prehistoric perception. Other authors, dealing with Early Neolithic persistent places and with Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age urnfields, argue that we should also look beyond monumentality in order to understand long-term use of "ritual landscapes". The book contains an important contribution by the well-known Swedish archaeologist Tore Artelius on how Bronze Age barrows were structurally re-used by pre-Christian Vikings. This is his last article, written briefly before his death. This book is dedicated to his memory. This publication is part of the Ancestral Mounds Research Project of the University of Leiden.

This two volume monograph about the region of Thy in the early Bronze Age provides a high resolution archaeological and ecological model of the organisation of landscape, settlements and households during the period 1500-1100 BC. Bordering the North Sea to the west, and the calmer waters of the Limfjord to the east, the region of Thy in Denmark experienced four centuries of intense economic and demographic expansion. By combining results from environmental and economic research (pollen and palaeo-botanical analyses) with intensive field surveys and excavations of farmsteads with exceptional preservation, it has been possible to open a window to the changes that transformed Bronze Age society and its environment during a few centuries of exceptional expansion and wealth consumption. The results from this interdisciplinary venture made it possible to link together the histories of local farmsteads with the wider regional and global history of the Bronze Age in North-western Europe during this period. Here is much to feed on for students and researchers of the Bronze Age alike.

Today, half the Netherlands is below sea level. Because of this, water-management is of key importance when it comes to maintaining present-day habitation of the Dutch low-lands. In prehistory, however, large parts of the Dutch landscape were highly dynamic due to ongoing fluvial sedimentation. Vast deltaic areas with ceaseless river activity formed the backdrop against which prehistoric occupation took place. Although such landscapes may seem inhospitable, the often excellently preserved archaeological evidence indicates that people lived in these lowlands throughout prehistory. This book describes why Bronze Age farmers were keen to settle here and how these prehistoric communities structured the landscape around their house-sites at various scales. Using a vast body of evidence from several large-scale excavations in the Dutch river area, the author reconstructs the changes in the cultural landscape over time. Starting from the Middle Neolithic, changing preferences for settlement site locations and changes in domestic architecture are traced in detail to the Iron Age. However, for proper understanding of the cultural landscape, not only settlements but also graves and patterns of object deposition - and their landscape characteristics - are discussed. By using evidence from over 50 major excavations, yielding over 300 house plans, this book contains by far the richest data-set on Dutch Bronze Age settlements. Most of these results have not previously been published in English, making this book of over 500 pages a true academic treasure for an international audience. The in-depth presentation of Bronze Age settlement sites, as well as the critical discussion of models and premises current in later prehistoric settlement archaeology, have an important relevance stretching beyond the Dutch lowland areas on which it is based. The wealth of high-quality Dutch data is presented as a synthesized (yet well-annotated) narrative, that rises above mere site interpretation, even more so due to its landscape-scale focus. Therefore this book is a must-have for those interested in later prehistoric cultural landscapes and settlement archaeology.

A fully illustrated study of Iron Age round-houses, which explores not just their architectural aspects but more importantly their role in the social, economic and ritual structure of their communities, and their significance as symbols of Iron Age society in the face of Romanization.