This article considers the long-debated and thorny issue of the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in Britain. The apparently polarised debate that has dominated this discussion is, we suggest, unhelpful, and rather than positing either total colonisation from abroad, or simple indigenous continuity, we propose a model where both incomers and autochthons had their part to play. To explore this further we trace continuities across the divide in practices of hunting and gathering, and place these alongside the demonstrable evidence for change.

Burial is a highly symbolic activity through which concepts of the world are reflected in the representation and treatment of human remains. While mortuary studies in archaeology and anthropology have had a long history, our understanding of Neolithic societies through such analyses is lacking. This article has attempted to broaden our understandings of one such society, focusing upon the megalithic tomb tradition in Ireland, through an integrated study of the burial practices taking place at several sites located on the Burren, County Clare. The Parknabinnia chambered tomb, Poulnabrone portal tomb, and Poulawack Linkardstown-type cairn are located within three kilometres of each other and date to contemporary periods. Several questions are explored through the use of archaeological evidence, osteological analysis, and taphonomy to allow for a broader appreciation of social practices in the past – most notably burial practices. What types of burial practices were taking place; how do the sites compare to each other; and how do they fit within the overall scheme of Neolithic practices we have come to understand?

We describe the Bronze Age ceramic economy of the Benta Valley in Hungary. In the Bronze Age, long-distance trade in metals, metal objects, and other specialty items became central to expansive prestige goods exchange through Europe. Was that exchange in wealth, however, linked to broader developments of an integrated market system? The beginnings of market systems in prehistory are poorly understood. We suggest a means to investigate marketing by studying the changing ceramic economy of a region, rather than at a single site. Analysis of the ceramic inventory collected as part of the Benta Valley Project strongly suggests that, although ceramic production was quite sophisticated and probably specialized, exchange was highly localized (mostly within 10 km) and conducted through personalized community networks. Our ceramic study used three progressively finer-scaled analyses: inventorying ceramic forms and decoration to evaluate consumption patterns, petrographic analysis to describe manufacturing sequences, and instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) to describe exchange. We conclude that, based on present evidence, market systems had not developed in Hungary during the Bronze Age.

A pair of animal heads of the Faardal type is central in our reinterpretation of the Late Bronze Age Vestby hoard from eastern Norway. After a period of use and circulation, the heads were mounted on bodies belonging to a different animal species. We argue that the making of the animal figurines and the other high-quality objects of the hoard can only be properly understood against the backdrop of Scandinavian Bronze Age cosmology. This line of thought extends to the presence of a tin bead necklace, which we interpret as a lunar calendar. By combining a ‘body perspective’ – including understandings of body techniques, operational sequences and the ‘sociality’ of objects – with a ‘symbolist perspective’ – including symbol systems, cosmology and intentionality – we put the head back onto the body, so to speak. We also scrutinize the premises for earlier interpretations of the objects' ‘life stories’ and reinterpret their trajectories. This influences the understanding of the act of hoarding, and finally leads to a discussion of how hoarding was also somehow related to the ‘birth’ of the artefacts.

John Evans was a key actor in the establishment of high human antiquity in 1859, and his pioneering role in launching the study of ancient stone implements is still celebrated today. However, scholars have overlooked the fact that Evans actually forged this contribution by shifting practices and preoccupations from coins to flint, from one well-established antiquarian domain in which he excelled, to another, new and as yet untested, domain. While providing relevant information on Evans' numismatics, this article shows how these transfers bear successively on the documentation of stone implements (terminology, descriptions, illustrations), their authentication (with regards to frauds and experimentation) and indeed their interpretation (the identification and explanation of their formal variability). Besides serving as an instructive historical case in ‘trans-disciplinarity’, the recognition of this initial numismatic imprint on the study of stone tools also has several consequences for current practices and interpretations in Palaeolithic archaeology.