Yes / The biographical approach has been applied to many studies of European prehistoric metal­ working which frequently discuss the potential for recycling metalwork through melting to create new objects, drawing influence from the many ‘founders hoards’ known from across Europe. An agglomerate of half ­molten bronze objects from Switzerland suggests that such recycling practices occurred there, although previous archaeometallurgical analysis has indicated that such practices were temporally limited. This article focuses on an alternative form of recycling — the direct conversion of one object into another through cutting and reshaping — observed on several razors from Late Bronze Age (LBA) lake ­dwelling contexts in Switzerland. Atypical decorative motifs on these razors identify them as having been cut from arm­ or leg­ring jewellery pieces. It is suggested that these ‘ring­razors’ were valued as individualized objects and created as personal mnemonic devices. / Swiss National Science Foundation

Yes / Lakeshore and wetland settlements of the Circum-Alpine region are well known for their excellent preservation of organic remains and their potential for accurate dating through dendrochronology. This settlement tradition spans from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age, though several hiatuses in lake-dwelling construction are observed. Traditional models for the abandonment of lake settlements rely upon climatically deterministic models, linking declining climatic conditions to increasing lake-levels, which would have impacted upon settlements and forced the inhabitants to relocate. Recent studies of Neolithic lake-dwellings have indicated that social factors also influenced the development of these settlements, while the ‘social biography’ of settlements has been an area of increasing interest in terrestrial settlements. A review of selected Late Bronze Age (LBA) lake settlement illustrates the development sequence seen at many lake-dwellings from across the Circum-Alpine region. The proposal of a biographical model linking cultural influences to the development sequence observed in LBA lake-dwellings, and to the choice to abandon areas and relocate villages, offers further insights into the development of enigmatic settlements. / Swiss National Science Foundation

No / Over 150 years of research in the Circum-Alpine region have produced a vast amount of data on the lakeshore and wetland settlements found throughout the area. Particularly in the northern region, dendrochronological studies have provided highly accurate sequences of occupation, which have correlated, in turn, to palaeoclimatic reconstructions in the area. The result has been the general conclusion that the lake-dwelling tradition was governed by climatic factors, with communities abandoning the lakeshore during periods of inclement conditions, and returning when the climate was more favourable. Such a cyclical pattern occurred from the 4th millennium BC to 800 BC, at which time the lakeshores were abandoned and never extensively re-occupied. Was this final break with a long-lasting tradition solely the result of climatic fluctuation, or were cultural factors a more decisive influence for the decline of lake-dwelling occupation? Studies of material culture have shown that some of the Late Bronze Age lake-dwellings in the northern Alpine region were significant centres for the production and exchange of bronzework and manufactured products, linking northern Europe to the southern Alpine forelands and beyond. However, during the early Iron Age the former lake-dwelling region does not show such high levels of incorporation to long-distance exchange systems. Combining the evidence of material culture studies with occupation patterns and burial practices, this volume proposes an alternative to the climatically-driven models of lake-dwelling abandonment. This is not to say that climate change did not influence those communities, but that it was only one factor among many. More significantly, it was a combination of social choice to abandon the shore, and subsequent cultural developments that inhibited the full scale reoccupation of the lakes. / Swiss National Science Foundation

Yes / The lake-dwellings of the Circum-Alpine region have long been a rich source of detailed information about daily life in Bronze Age Europe, but their location made them vulnerable to changes in climate and lake level. At several Late Bronze Age examples, skulls of children were found at the edge of the lake settlement, close to the encircling palisade. Several of the children had suffered violent deaths, through blows to the head from axes or blunt instruments. They do not appear to have been human sacrifices, but the skulls may nonetheless have been offerings to the gods by communities faced with the threat of environmental change. / Swiss National Science Foundation

Yes / Irton Moor was excavated by Derek Simpson in 1973 but remained unpublished at the time of his death in 2006. Material from the excavation including a skeletal report and some publication drawings were located in DDAS’s archives and brought back to Bradford for archiving. Sufficient work had been done by DDAS to bring the report to publication though clearly the archive had suffered over the years. Irton Moor represents a small structured round cairn of the Early Bronze Age producing evidence for long-term occupation of the site from the Early Neolithic though this occupation does not appear to have been continuous. The cairn was used for Food Vessel and Collared Urn-associated cremations.

No / After more than 3500 years of occupation in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, the many lake-dwellings’ around the Circum-Alpine region ‘suddenly’ came to an end. Throughout that period alternating phases of occupation and abandonment illustrate how resilient lacustrine populations were against change: cultural/environmental factors might have forced them to relocate temporarily, but they always returned to the lakes. So why were the lake-dwellings finally abandoned and what exactly happened towards the end of the Late Bronze Age that made the lake-dwellers change their way of life so drastically? The new research presented here draws upon the results of a four-year-long project dedicated to shedding light on this intriguing conundrum. Placing a particular emphasis upon the Bronze Age, a multidisciplinary team of researchers has studied the lake-dwelling phenomenon inside out, leaving no stones unturned, enabling identification of all possible interactive socio-economic and environmental factors that can be subsequently tested against each other to prove (or disprove) their validity. By re-fitting the various pieces of the jigsaw a plausible, but also rather unexpected, picture emerges.

No / In 1834 in a tumulus at Gristhorpe, North Yorkshire, UK, an intact coffin fashioned from the hollowed-out trunk of an oak tree was found to contain a well-preserved skeleton stained black from the oak tannins, wrapped in an animal skin and buried with a range of grave artefacts, including a bronze dagger, flints and a bark vessel. The remains were deposited in the Rotunda Museum at Scarborough, where closure due to refurbishment in 2005–2008 provided an opportunity for the scientific investigation of the skeletal remains and artefacts using a wide range of techniques. Dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating has established the age of the skeleton as 2140–1940 BC at 95% confidence, in the Early Bronze Age. As part of this project, Raman spectra of several mysterious small spherical objects discovered in the coffin underneath the skeleton and initially believed to be ‘mistletoe berries’ associated with ancient burial customs have been recorded non-destructively. The interpretation of the Raman spectral data, microscopic analysis and comparison with modern specimens has led to the conclusion that the small spheres are phosphatic urinary stones, which reflect the archaeological dietary evidence and stable isotope analysis of bone collagen of Gristhorpe Man.

Yes / Bell Beaker pottery spread across western and central Europe beginning around 2750 BCE before disappearing between 2200-1800 BCE. The mechanism of its expansion is a topic of long-standing debate, with support for both cultural diffusion and human migration. We present new genome-wide ancient DNA data from 170 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 100 Beaker-associated individuals. In contrast to the Corded Ware Complex, which has previously been identified as arriving in central Europe following migration from the east, we observe limited genetic affinity between Iberian and central European Beaker Complex-associated individuals, and thus exclude migration as a significant mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, human migration did have an important role in the further dissemination of the Beaker Complex, which we document most clearly in Britain using data from 80 newly reported individuals dating to 3900-1200 BCE. British Neolithic farmers were genetically similar to contemporary populations in continental Europe and in particular to Neolithic Iberians, suggesting that a portion of the farmer ancestry in Britain came from the Mediterranean rather than the Danubian route of farming expansion. Beginning with the Beaker period, and continuing through the Bronze Age, all British individuals harboured high proportions of Steppe ancestry and were genetically closely related to Beaker-associated individuals from the Lower Rhine area. We use these observations to show that the spread of the Beaker Complex to Britain was mediated by migration from the continent that replaced >90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the process that brought Steppe ancestry into central and northern Europe 400 years earlier.

Yes / Establishing the age at which prehistoric individuals move away from their childhood residential location holds crucial information about the socio dynamics and mobility patterns in ancient societies. We present a novel combination of strontium isotope analyses performed on the over 3000 year old “Skrydstrup Woman” from Denmark, for whom we compiled a highly detailed month-scale model of her migration timeline. When combined with physical anthropological analyses this timeline can be related to the chronological age at which the residential location changed. We conducted a series of high-resolution strontium isotope analyses of hard and soft human tissues and combined these with anthropological investigations including CT-scanning and 3D visualizations. The Skrydstrup Woman lived during a pan-European period characterized by technical innovation and great social transformations stimulated by long-distance connections; consequently she represents an important part of both Danish and European prehistory. Our multidisciplinary study involves complementary biochemical, biomolecular and microscopy analyses of her scalp hair. Our results reveal that the Skrydstrup Woman was between 17–18 years old when she died, and that she moved from her place of origin -outside present day Denmark- to the Skrydstrup area in Denmark 47 to 42 months before she died. Hence, she was between 13 to 14 years old when she migrated to and resided in the area around Skrydstrup for the rest of her life. From an archaeological standpoint, this one-time and one-way movement of an elite female during the possible “age of marriageability” might suggest that she migrated with the aim of establishing an alliance between chiefdoms. Consequently, this detailed multidisciplinary investigation provides a novel tool to reconstruct high resolution chronology of individual mobility with the perspective of studying complex patterns of social and economic interaction in prehistory. / Carlsberg Foundation through the project entitled "Tales of Bronze Age Women" CF-15 0878 to KMF (http://www. carlsbergfondet.dk/en).

Yes / A series of massive geophysical anomalies, located south of the Durrington Walls henge monument, were identified during fluxgate gradiometer survey undertaken by the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project (SHLP). Initially interpreted as dewponds, these data have been re-evaluated, along with information on similar features revealed by archaeological contractors undertaking survey and excavation to the north of the Durrington Walls henge. Analysis of the available data identified a total of 20 comparable features, which align within a series of arcs adjacent to Durrington Walls. Further geophysical survey, supported by mechanical coring, was undertaken on several geophysical anomalies to assess their nature, and to provide dating and environmental evidence. The results of fieldwork demonstrate that some of these features, at least, were massive, circular pits with a surface diameter of 20m or more and a depth of at least 5m. Struck flint and bone were recovered from primary silts and radiocarbon dating indicates a Late Neolithic date for the lower silts of one pit. The degree of similarity across the 20 features identified suggests that they could have formed part of a circuit of large pits around Durrington Walls, and this may also have incorporated the recently discovered Larkhill causewayed enclosure. The diameter of the circuit of pits exceeds 2km and there is some evidence that an intermittent, inner post alignment may have existed within the circuit of pits. One pit may provide evidence for a recut; suggesting that some of these features could have been maintained through to the Middle Bronze Age. Together, these features represent a unique group of features related to the henge at Durrington Walls, executed at a scale not previously recorded. / The University of Bradford Research Development Fund and the University of St Andrews funded this open access publication. / Supplementary data can be found at https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue55/4/supp-text.html