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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Albert-Ludwigs-Universität zu Freiburg i. Br., 1978. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-184).

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No / Swiss National Science Foundation

Yes / 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. / Swiss National Science Foundation

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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.

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