<p>One of the most discussed archaeological subjects is the neolitisation, and the start of a neolithic lifestyle which is characterized by several significant events. The traditional view has been that settled people were cultivating and breeding, but this picture has been questioned and changed in later years. The development is principally based on two models; that already neolithic people immigrated and took over, or that the new lifestyle gradually developed out of the existing cultures. Southern Scandinavia was characterized by a settlement pattern with permanent settlements which were complemented by temporary special settlements, but in time more domestic settlements originated. On the British Isles the settlements didn´t consist of permanent agricultural settlements but instead did the people here move freely between several short term settlements.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

It is now widely assumed that many artefacts found in the prehistoric archaeological record were not casually discarded as unwanted material but were deposited in features and contexts with structure and meaning. This appears to include saddle and rotary querns for they are often found whole and apparently still usable or, conversely, deliberately broken. Analysis of the structured deposition of querns in the south-west of England shows that they were deposited in features on both domestic and non-domestic sites. Furthermore, the location and state of the querns, together with the artefacts found in association with them, indicates that they were deposited with different levels and layers of meaning, even within the same type of feature. The deposition of querns appears to have pervaded all aspects of prehistoric life and death suggesting that they played a role above, but nevertheless related to, their prime task of milling. An exploration of the object biography of querns demonstrates the importance of what are often considered to be mundane tools to subsistence communities. Each quern has its own unique life history, its meaning and value determined by the reasons that gave cause for its manufacture, the material from which it was made, the use(s) to which it was put and who used it. However, all querns share points of commonality, related to their function as milling tools, their role as transformers of raw material(s) into usable products (s), their association with women and the production of food, and the movement of the upper stone. Through these, symbolical links can be made between querns and agricultural, human and building life cycles, gender relations and the turning of the heavens. The reason for a quern’s deposition in the archaeological record may have drawn upon one or more unique or common values.

The research contained in these papers embodies both results from direct archaeological investigation and also the development of techniques (geophysical, chronological and geoarchaeological) in order to understand long-term settlements and their associated landscapes in Orkney and Shetland. Central to this research has been the study of soil management strategies of arable plots surrounding settlements from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. It is argued that this arable system provides higher yields in marginal locations. The ability to enhance yield in good years and to store surplus can mitigate against shortage. Control and storage of this surplus is seen as one catalyst for the economic power of elite groups over their underlying or 'client' population. The emergence of a social elite in the Iron Age, building brochs and other substantial roundhouses of near broch proportions, is seen as being linked to the control of resources. Evidence at the site of Old Scatness indicated that there was a continuity of wealth and power from the Middle Iron Age through the Pictish period, before the appearance of the Vikings produced a break in the archaeological record. The Viking period saw a break in building traditions, the introduction of new artefacts and changes in farming and fishing strategies. Each of the papers represents a contribution that builds on these themes.

The graduation Thesis is focused on Breclav region at the time of the Linear Pottery Culture. The paper includes a brief introduction to the problems of development LBK in Moravia and surrounding areas, as well as the development process of Breclav region during the Stone Age. The result of this paper is a Catalogue of sites, on which the settlement of Linear Pottery Culture was recorded. Particular interest has been devoted to the area of Bavory, at house No. 114, where was an archaeological research in 1987 conducted by J. Peska. From the found of ceramic and other material LBK was made an Analysis including drawing documentation. Key words: Linear Pottery Culture, Neolithic, Breclav Region, Bavory, South Moravia

Au cours de la première moitié de l’Holocène les conditions climatiques, eustatiques et anthropiques connaissent de nombreuses et importantes modifications. Parmi celles-ci, les données. Parmi celles-ci, les données régionales relatives au quart nord-ouest du bassin méditerranéen révèlent plusieurs variations pluriscalaires et significatives des conditions d’humidité ainsi que des températures. Parallèlement, la hausse du niveau marin enregistre des vitesses très élevées et la région de l’arc Liguro-Provençal voit l’installation des premières communautés agro-pastorales de la culture « Impressa », en l’occurrence dès le début du 6ème millénaire cal. BCE. Afin de qualifier la réponse de la végétation alluviale côtière, entre la fin du 8ème et le 5ème millénaire, face à l’évolution de ces conditions, l’analyse pollinique à haute résolution de deux séquences sédimentaires alluviales (bassin du Loup et de la Cagne) à été réalisée. Grâce à une approche pluridisciplinaire (carpologie, ostracologie, sédimentologie…) et méthodologique inédite (analyse du transport pollinique fluviatile) les résultats montrent une évolution précise des écosystèmes végétaux côtiers et alluviaux. Au sein de cette évolution, la remontée du niveau marin joue un rôle fondamental comme en témoigne l’expansion littorale des aulnaies marécageuses. Le forçage climatique joue également un rôle important. Les étés plus humides du 6ème millénaire participe à la diffusion du sapin à basse altitude, alors que l’augmentation de la fréquence des sécheresses estivales enregistrées à partir du 5ème millénaire favorise le développement d’une végétation sclérophylle à bruyère arborescente. La néolithisation de la région participe également au façonnage des paysages littoraux. La récurrence du type pollinique Cerealia (gr. Hordeum) dès les premières décennies du 6ème millénaire atteste de l’importance des plaines alluviales côtières dans l’économie de production des premiers groupes néolithiques. / This study investigates the impact of climate and sea level changes and the anthropogenic perturbations on the alluvial vegetation in the Mediterranean French coastal plains during the early to mid Holocene. Between 7000 and 3700 BCE, the combination of different type of regional proxy records reveal significant changes in the humid conditions and temperatures. These records also reveal rapid sea level changes and the first Neolithic settlement (5800 caL. BCE) in Southeastern France (« Impressed ware culture »). High resolution pollen data from two cores sampled in the alluvial plains of the Cagne and the Loup Rivers enable to study the vegetation responses to these changes. Thisstudy employed a pluridisciplinary approach (carpology, study of ostracods, sedimentology…) and developed a new ethodology for the assessment of the fluvial pollen transport. The results reveal a significant connection between the vegetation structure from the coastal area and the sea level changes. This relationship explains the alder expansion in the swamp area. Moreover the results also reveal the effects of the humid summer conditions on the vegetation dynamics and explain the spruce expansion during the sixth millennium BCE as well as the expansion of the sclerophyllous vegetationduring the fifth millennium BCE. The impact of the Neolithic agriculture on the alluvial land cover started with the first ecades of the sixth millennium BCE. Thanks to the frequencies of the pollen grains of cereals (Hordeum gr.) and the pollen vidence of forest decline between 6000 and 3700 BCE, the results show the significance of the Mediterranean coastal area in the Neolithic economy.

Heaps of fire-cracked stone is an archaeological site category frequently found in Sweden. The heaps were constructed by piling a massive amount of deposited fire-cracked stones and occasionally they contain artefacts, for example, grindstones, ceramics or bones from both humans and animals. The heaps are sometimes also constructed with complex inner stone patterns in forms of e.g. circles and spirals. The heaps have been found all over Sweden, but the largest concentration is associated with the county of Uppland, north of Stockholm in eastern Sweden. In general, the structures have been linked chronologically to the Bronze Age (1800 B.C.–500 B.C.), although the heaps might be one of the least understood features of Scandinavian prehistory, as a result of their complex and varying content and spatial location. The remains are thoroughly debated, and the interpretation of them varies, ranging from graves to household indications, from sacral to profane, from piles of waste to markers of claimed land. The interpretations of the fire cracked stone heaps have mainly been made by comparing the contents of the heaps with finds from the surrounding archaeological landscape.                  In this study, the heaps will be analysed by using a landscape perspective by which they will be examined in relation to dynamic high-resolution shoreline reconstructions, vegetation and local topography. By examining the heaps by applying a high-resolution landscape model, suggests that their placement patterns are strongly connected to past shorelines. The analysis has in turn resulted in a non-prejudicial dating method for the heaps. The shoreline model was in the next step tested by a comparison to 118 published 14C-dates associated with fire-cracked stone heaps by using Kernel Density Estimations (KDE). The main result of the study is that the high-resolution shoreline model, in combination with KDE, provides an effective dating method for heaps of fire-cracked stone, which in the extension suggests an alternative motive for the construction of the heaps.

Despite the potential of a biocultural methodology, osteology and archaeology are often approached separately in some parts of Central Europe. This osteoarchaeological thesis presents a rare comparative study of populations occupying modern-day Slovakia, Moravia, and Bohemia from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age (EBA). By examining skeletal indicators of health and lifestyle, it aims to contribute to bioarchaeological research within the study region. It also provides new insights into a series of important sites where no osteological evaluation of skeletal remains have previously been performed. Human remains from thirty-four sites in Slovakia, Moravia and Bohemia, 152 adults and 136 subadults, were analysed. Demographic, pathological and metric data were recorded and evaluated, and compared with previously published data for contemporaneous populations in order to create a more comprehensive representation of the populations in the area. The results suggest several differences between the Neolithic and the following periods, mostly as regards health status. Higher dietary and environmental stress was indicated in the Neolithic period, as suggested by lower mortality peak (especially of females and subadults) and about 5cm shorter stature, and generally worse health status of Neolithic population when compared to the Chalcolithic and EBA individuals. The Neolithic is also the only period where females were more numerous than males. Such a trend is quite common in the Neolithic of the study region. This may be a result of increased migration of Neolithic females, as raids for wives are suggested to have been practiced. As indicated by both the osteological and archaeological record, one of the sites examined, Svodín, could have been a site of contemporary elites and their family members. Chalcolithic populations revealed differences in cranial shape, being mesocephalic (medium-headed) or brachycephalic (short-headed), whereas both the Neolithic and the EBA populations were dolichocephalic (long-headed). Differences in male and female cranial features suggest a possible mixing of indigenous and incoming populations. Such results may contribute to the ongoing discussion about the ‘foreignness‘ of Chalcolithic Bell Beaker people in the area. Traumatic lesions suggest that males were more physically active than females in all three periods, including violent encounters. Even though violence was recorded in all three periods, especially in the western part of the region, and the intensity and brutality of the assaults appears to increase in the Chalcolithic and culminating in the EBA. In addition, poorer health status of EBA children was recorded, possibly related to more marked social differentiation in the period. In general, poorer health was implied for the prehistoric populations of today’s Slovakia. The results of this study can serve as the basis for future research and contribute to a more comprehensive image of lifestyle and development of prehistoric populations in the study area.

In this thesis I explore how physical and socio-cultural factors interact to shape domestic architecture by analysing the form, layout, and construction of houses from Sicily dating from the Neolithic to the end of the Hellenistic period. This time range encompasses two primary domestic building traditions: single-spaced round houses that dominate from the Neolithic through to the end of the Late Bronze Age, and large, multiple-spaced rectilinear structures that characterise the Archaic period onwards. As such the domestic architecture of Sicily provides the opportunity to study not only two distinct ways of building, but also the dynamics within them and the changes that occurred as one evolved into the other during the Early Iron Age: a period of transition that is often studied in isolation or only in relation to the earlier or later context, rather than as an integral part of this island’s history. A critical analysis of building techniques and materials in the context of available resources and their material properties alongside local environmental conditions reveals correlations between the choice of materials, construction techniques, and topographical and climatic conditions, as well as the form taken by the building as a whole. Comparative analyses were also carried out of house size, form, and degree of subdivision within and between the building traditions. The picture presented shows an increase in total size and subdivision (despite the relatively stable size range of individual spaces within the houses) from the Neolithic to the Hellenistic period and implies a developing desire for options to separate people and activities. Finally, close diagrammatic studies of the layout and spatial organisation of the houses bring to light the structuring of these domestic spaces: the use of architectural features and artefacts to provide a sense of division in single-spaced buildings; greater layers of access and control of movement incorporated into the larger, rectilinear houses with their multiple spaces; and the arrangement of these to allow for the lighting of interior rooms. Combined with the results above, these reveal patterns in the development of building traditions on Sicily and how they relate to, encompass, and entangle the dynamic socio-cultural and physical parameters that make up the wider landscapes they are a part of: notions of identity and its formation and transmission, social structure and stratification, topography and climate, and material structural properties. Altogether this allows for the development of a deeper and more holistic understanding of the relationship between building and living, of how physical and socio-cultural parameters integrate and influence the construction of houses, and how these all come together in the building traditions that are both shaped by us and shape us.

Cette étude du matériel céramique provenant de la région située entre les 2e et 3e cataractes du Nil est anthropologique. Elle consiste dans un premier temps à établir un outil de classification permettant le diagnostic des sites dans lesquels la poterie a été mise au jour. Ce travail préliminaire conduit ensuite à aborder le corpus selon trois axes. Le premier est chronologique et aboutit à la construction de la séquence de l'occupation de Haute Nubie, et ce en trois étapes, céramique, culturelle et périodique. Le deuxième axe est territorial et remplit deux objectifs : d'abord déterminer les frontières des faciès et des cultures de la vallée du Nil moyen ; ensuite appréhender les dynamiques à l'échelle de l'Afrique du nord-est – qu'il s'agisse de diffusions d'objets et d'idées, de migrations de populations ou d'échanges marchands. La dernière partie est consacrée à l'approfondissement de quelques faits sociaux : d'abord l'imbrication du stockage, de la sédentarité et de la hiérarchie, ensuite le dépôt de mobilier dans les tombes, et enfin deux systèmes de croyances, en lien avec le monde animal et l'univers minéral. / This study of the pottery which was discovered in the region situated between the 2nd and the 3rd cataracts of the Nile is an anthropological study. First, it consists in building a classification tool which would help to diagnose the sites where the pottery was unearthed. This preliminary work leads to approach the corpus in three ways. First, the sequence of the occupation of Upper Nubia is built, in three stages: ceramics, cultures and periods. The second area of research is territorial and has two aims: to determine the boundaries of the facies and the cultures of the Middle Nile Valley, and to comprehend the dynamics across the Northeastern Africa – circulation of objects and ideas, migrations of populations, marketable exchanges. The last part is devoted to the study of some social facts: first, the interweaving of storage, sedentarity and hierarchy, then the deposition of artefacts in graves, and finally two systems of beliefs, in connection with the animal and the mineral world.

Les industries laminaire du Néolithique précéramique sont caractérisées par deux systèmes de débitage laminaire : le système unipolaire et le système bipolaire. Cette étude s’intéresse aux débitages laminaires unipolaires et leur évolution. L’analyse du matériel provenant de quatre sites syriens a permis de redéfinir les débitages unipolaires et de les classer en deux systèmes distincts : le débitage strictement unipolaire et le débitage à gestion unipolaire. Cette distinction est basée sur les principes d’exploitation, les modalités et les techniques de taille des deux systèmes, ainsi que sur des expérimentations de taille originales. Il en ressort aussi que les débitages unipolaire sont des systèmes techniques qui relèvent à la fois de connaissance et de savoir-faire et non pas des systèmes expédients. Le matériel du site PPNA de Wadi Tumbaq 3 en Syrie centrale relève d’une évolution des débitages laminaires différente de celle connue pour les trois autres sites néolithiques du Moyen-Euphrate : Tell Aber 3, Cheikh Hassan et Mureybet. L’évolution des débitages laminaires établie à partir des industries lithiques datées et bien analysées, et généralisée pour l’ensemble du Levant, n’est ainsi caractéristique que de certaines régions du territoire. / Two main debitage systems are known in the northern Levant during the aceramic Neolithic: unidirectional and bidirectional debitage. This study focuses on unidirectional debitages and their evolution. Material analysis from four sites in Syria allowed redefining unidirectional debitage and distinguishing between two different systems: strictly unidirectional debitage and optional unidirectional debitage. These two systems are distinguished on the basis of reconstituted knapping techniques and strategies, as well as experimental knapping. The technical complexity characterizing unidirectional debitage indicates highly-skilled knappers and not expedient knapping. Ananlysis of the material from Wadi Tumbaq 3 (PPNA) in central Syria indicates for these knapping techniques a different model of evolution from that known at Tell Aber 3, Cheikh Hassan and Mureybet in the middle Euphrates valley. Therefore, it appears that the pattern of evolution reconstructed on the basis of well analyzed and dated lithic industries, untill now applied to the whole of Levant, is only a regional phenomenon.