This thesis explores archaeological and historical data pertaining to the Christianisation of Switzerland between AD 300 and 800. Analysing published data from both urban and rural contexts, I explore three research questions: 1 – how did churches and associated buildings affect urban and rural spaces in Switzerland?; 2 – who were the ‘movers’ of the religion?; and 3 – how far did local topography and regional identities forge a Christian landscape? During the period examined, the region experienced a number of geopolitical changes: the end of Roman administration, the rise and fall of the Burgundian kingdom, and the gradual takeover by the Merovingian and later Carolingian Franks. Throughout these phases, the Church was a common institution and transformed urban, rural, and burial landscapes through the construction of cathedrals, funerary churches, chapels, and monasteries. Utilising an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis brings to light that Switzerland experienced multiple ‘Christianisations’ and that topographic factors and regional identities were intrinsic to the development of the Church.

Neanderthals in Western Europe are associated with a plethora of stone tool assemblages and their internal variation has been linked to different causal factors and behavioural interpretations. This thesis presents a new contribution to the study of Middle Palaeolithic variability by focusing specifically on the Late Middle Palaeolithic period (MIS 5d-3) and the typo-technological, spatial and temporal differences amongst bifacially worked tools. Currently, in Western Europe distinct types of Late Middle Palaeolithic bifacial tools are associated with two macro-regional entities, the Mousterian of Acheulean Tradition (MTA) and the Keilmessergruppe (KMG). These two entities, centred in Southwestern France and Germany, also link to two different research traditions which use a variety of competing terms, typologies and definitions. This study uses a new classificatory approach to overcome these epistemological issues and facilitates for the first time wider-scale comparisons, incorporating the regions located in between the MTA and KMG core areas. Bifacial tools from 14 key assemblages were analysed through an extensive attribute analysis, creating a database with primary data for 1,303 bifacial tools. This data was then incorporated with other published site information allowing for a detailed assessment of both the typo-technological characteristics of the bifacial tools and their variability. Firstly, the results indicate that genuine differences exist among Late Middle Palaeolithic bifacial tool assemblages regardless of the classificatory framework. Secondly, exploration of the data using three different scales of analysis allowed for the recognition of different variation patterns and interpretations. At a micro-scale, it is clear that a large amount of typo-technological variability exists among Late Middle Palaeolithic bifacial tools, which can mainly be attributed to differences in local conditions, such as raw material and function. At a macro-scale the MTA/KMG dichotomy was confirmed by a distinct divide between classic handaxes and backed bifacial tools west and east of the Rhine. Additionally, a third entity, the Mousterian with bifacial tools (MBT), is located in between the MTA and KMG core areas and contains a wide variety of bifacial tools, including MTA and KMG types. At a meso-scale, several previously identified regional entities were merged into the MTA and MBT, but specific spatio-temporal units do exist, e.g. bout coupé handaxes in MIS3 Britain. At both this meso-and macro-scale the observed patterns cannot be explained merely by referring to differences in local settings, but require an additional sphere of interpretation, argued here to be culture. The MTA and KMG can be seen as two distinct cultural traditions, reflecting different lines of learned behavior, as expressed by different ways of making bifacial tools. The sporadic spread of KMG elements across Western Europe is indicative of Neanderthal population dynamics and the MBT is interpreted as the results of MTA-KMG interactions in an overlap zone where foreign influences were more easily absorbed. Finally, the distinct presence and absence of certain bifacial tool types in specific regions allow to argue for the presence of a collective cultural capacity among Neanderthals.

This dissertation asks how knowledge about the past is made and transmitted, and what the role of material culture is in this process. Taking as its case study the Swiss lakedwelling collections acquired in Britain between 1850 and 1900, it uses a selection of these collections as primary sources of the material and social networks that were central to the development of archaeology as a discipline. The project not only supports the more widely held assertion that scientific knowledge is a form of cultural production (Lenoir 1998), but emphasises the material basis of such production, and the traces it leaves. In particular, it pays close attention to previously unexamined aspects of historic collections; namely the transformative practices - such as the conservation, packaging, labelling, cataloguing and illustration - by which lake-dwelling artefacts were salvaged, documented, and displayed. It uses this perspective to shed light on the social networks which motivated such practices, and develops a method of analysing the collections in dialogue with other contemporary representations, underscoring the variety of material contexts and media through which knowledge about lake-dwellings was represented and encountered. This research will hopefully reinvigorate further research into historic collections and their implications for the discipline of archaeology and the museum's own reflections on its historicity and methods of knowledge production.