Welcome to the first issue of the European Journal of Archaeology (EJA) for 2018. Here, we present six new articles, followed by ten book reviews. Below, we summarize and comment on these contributions.
We begin with a discussion paper, in which Leo Klein responds critically to two articles published in Nature that claim to have revealed genetically the mass migration of steppe people of the archaeologically-defined Yamnaya (Pit-Grave) culture into central and northern Europe during the Early Bronze Age. The authors of the original papers―Wolfgang Haak, Morten Allentoft, and colleagues―clarify and defend their position, but Klein maintains his doubts, particularly in relation to the implications of the new claim for the origins of the Indo-European languages of Europe. This debate highlights some of the current tensions surrounding trans-disciplinary interpretations of preliminary ancient DNA data, especially when they are headlined in prominent scientific journals.
Continuing on in time, Nicola Ialongo draws upon the fashionable economic theory of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ to propose a new explanatory model of settlement and population growth in Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age nuragic Sardinia. He argues that unsustainable agricultural settlement expansion led to a crisis in nuragic society around 1100 bc, marked by the abandonment of several nuraghi (stone-built towers). Recovery from this was later achieved by a radical renegotiation of social and political relationships (characterised by the dissolution of traditional kinship ties in favour of stable forms of social inequality), which underpinned a new and sustainable phase of development from around 950 bc. This is visible archaeologically in the concentration of the population into fewer but larger villages and the establishment of monumental sanctuaries. Ialongo's model is well-formulated, but one might question whether or not the scenario of crisis and recovery is equally applicable to all parts of Sardinia.
Lin Meicin and Ran Zhang take the EJA into new territory by tracing the biography of a Chinese Qingbai porcelain jar, currently housed in the Treasury of San Marco in Venice, back to southern China via Eurasian land and sea routes of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, echoing the travels and tales of Marco Polo. More generally, they also shed new light on the Dehua ceramic industry and on Indian Ocean trade connecting China and the West. It is, perhaps, inevitable that analogies will be drawn with the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative currently advocated by Chinese premier Xi Jinping, although on-going archaeological research is revealing an even more complex historical picture.
Deborah Harlan re-evaluates the contribution of the English antiquarian, Thomas Bateman, to mid-nineteenth-century debates about ethnology, craniology, and relative chronology, including the reception of the Three Age System in Britain, all of which were fundamental to the development of the discipline of archaeology and of the notion of prehistory. Based on a close reading of a set of unpublished archival sources, Harlan sheds new light on the involvement of Bateman in the publication of Crania Britannica―the first publication of British national skull types from prehistory to the Anglo-Saxon period. This discussion now deserves to be contextualized in relation to similar accounts of race history that were being debated right across Europe at this time.
Richard Hingley's timely and wide-ranging article brings together insights from Roman frontier studies on the one hand, and contemporary mobility and border studies on the other hand, to comment on the current political tensions in Europe surrounding the European Union's stated goals of integration and the dissolution of borders and recent national responses to large-scale movements of people. A pertinent archaeological heritage case-study is provided by UNESCO's international ‘Frontiers of the Roman World Heritage Site’. Hingley's position is to emphasize the status of frontiers and border zones as places of cultural complexity and creative encounter, both in the past and in the present, and to challenge the increasingly stringent treatment of modern migrants. This is a welcome contribution to the EJA, one of whose founding principles was ‘to seek to promote open debate amongst archaeologists committed to an idea of Europe in which there is more communication across national frontiers’.
Shifting away from this political and institutional level of analysis, Kornelia Kajda and colleagues consider public perceptions and expectations of archaeology and cultural heritage, based upon the results of a public opinion survey undertaken across Europe. 4516 people participated in the survey, which was commissioned by the NEARCH (‘New Scenarios for a Community-involved Archaeology’) project. In line with previous national surveys, this latest study confirms that most European citizens view archaeology and heritage positively, particularly for their scientific and cultural educational value. However, the survey also reveals that there is a significant public expectation that archaeology and cultural heritage disseminate their information better to diverse audiences, that their practices become more inclusive, and that they broaden their concerns to engage with present and future social, political, economic, and environmental problems. Let us take this as a warning if we expect to continue to be publically funded.
In our reviews section, we begin with a thoughtful commentary on a new volume which confirms the validity and value of ethnozooarchaeology. There follow three favourable responses to books on human-sea relations, memory, and geoarchaeology. Next comes praise for what is described as a ‘milestone’ in prehistoric figurine studies. Gratitude is expressed for the long-awaited publication of the special Italian Neolithic ritual cave of Grotta Scaloria. Important new data on the Iberian Copper Age are presented in two well-received monographs on the outstanding sites of Montelirio in Spain and Zambujal in Portugal. Moving on to 2200 bc, Anthony Harding questions the claim, considered in the proceedings of a conference, that a climatic event around that time was responsible for major cultural changes―even collapse―in the Old World. We then end with a recommendation for a book dedicated to understanding Kaiser Wilhelm II's interest in archaeology.
If you are interested in submitting an article on any aspect of European archaeology, or have recently published a book that you would like us to review, do please get in touch with a member of our editorial team or visit us on https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-journal-of-archaeology
