Two new sites, identified during a survey of the Tajuña River Valley, central Iberia, show evidence of both flint extraction and working, specifically for the production of long blades. These are an important addition to the limited number of such sites known in Eurasia.

In Iberia, ditched enclosures appeared during the Copper Age (late fourth to third millennium bc). These sites are linked by their circular organization, communal labour investment, and complex temporality, but vary markedly in their distribution, function, and scale. Though archaeological attention has focused on ‘mega-sites’, an assessment of small-scale enclosures in marginal environments is key to understanding the social dynamics that facilitated their emergence. Here, the authors present results from Los Melgarejos (Getafe, Spain), the first Iberian Chalcolithic enclosure (3 ha) to be extensively documented, with all structures and seven per cent of the enclosure ditches excavated. Bioarchaeology, mortuary archaeology, isotope analyses (δ13Cco, δ13Cap, δ15N), and radiocarbon dating are employed to compare lived experiences of diet, stress, trauma, and funerary ritual at small- and large-scale enclosures. Comparisons with the mega-site of Marroquíes reveal similarities in lived experience and ritual practice, as well as regional differences in dietary isotopes, highlighting the utility of multiscalar comparisons for understanding prehistoric lifeways.

The engraved slate plaques were part of an extensive and variable class of ritual objects in Late Neolithic and Copper Age Iberia, with Classic plaques being the most numerous and standardized type. Classic plaques have a top and base separated by a horizontal line or bands, and base registers of repeating design elements (triangles, checkerboard, etc.). Associated with burials, they have been interpreted as genealogical records, with their base design referencing a clan or other social unit and their number of registers denoting the generational distance of the deceased from an important ancestor. The authors evaluate the genealogical hypothesis using a larger dataset than available when originally proposed, employing statistical analyses to examine the relationship between the number of registers and find locations, and between design elements and tomb size. Tomb size is viewed as a measure of collective labour, and hence a proxy of the status of the individuals in the tomb. These analyses show significant patterning between the number of registers and the plaques’ geographic distribution, and between specific design elements and tomb size, suggesting that the genealogical hypothesis remains a plausible explanation for the Classic plaques.

Antequera in southern Spain is widely recognised as an outstanding example of the European megalithic phenomenon. One of its most remarkable features is the evident relationship between conspicuous natural formations and human-built monuments. Here, the authors report the results of their investigation of a tomb newly discovered at the site of Piedras Blancas at the foot of La Peña de los Enamorados, a limestone massif that dominates the Antequera plain. Excavation and multidisciplinary study, including geological, architectural and archaeoastronomical investigations, have revealed a complex funerary monument that is part natural, part built, part hypogeum, part megalith. The results emphasise the centrality of La Peña in the Neolithic worldview and encourage wider investigation of prehistoric place-making.

The Old Copper Complex (OCC) refers to the production of heavy copper-tool technology by Archaic Native American societies in the Lake Superior region. To better define the timing of the OCC, we evaluated 53 (eight new and 45 published) radiocarbon (14C) dates associated with copper artifacts and mines. We compared these dates to six lake sediment-based chronologies of copper mining and annealing in the Michigan Copper District. 14C dates grouped by archaeological context show that cremation remains, and wood and cordage embedded in copper artifacts have ages that overlap with the timing of high lead (Pb) concentrations in lake sediment. In contrast, dates in stratigraphic association and from mines are younger than those from embedded and cremation materials, suggesting that the former groups reflect the timing of processes that occurred post-abandonment. The comparatively young dates obtained from copper mines therefore likely reflect abandonment and infill of the mines rather than active use. Excluding three anomalously young samples, the ages of embedded organic material associated with 15 OCC copper artifacts range from 8500 to 3580 cal BP, confirming that the OCC is among the oldest known metalworking societies in the world.

The main goal of our research project was to date the Early and Middle Copper Age (4500/4450–3800 cal BC) of the Great Hungarian Plain more precisely. In our project, we took samples for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating from both settlement features and burials, and the data were analyzed using Bayesian modeling. We examined the Early and Middle Copper Age finds of the Great Hungarian Plain on several levels (site, microregional, and regional levels) using a bottom-up approach. The AMS measurements were supplemented by statistics-based pottery analysis in order to make our understanding of the relationship between the Tiszapolgár and Bodrogkeresztúr cultures more detailed. As a result, we can see a significant, 130 (68.2%) 230 years overlap between the two types of find assemblages, which contradicts to the earlier accepted chronological sequences created by the traditional culture-historical approach. According to the stylistic analyzes, the two ceramic styles are not clearly distinguishable.

Anthropomorphic stone stelae of monumental dimensions dated to the 4th and 3rd millennia BC have been found in southern Europe between the Atlantic Ocean and the Caucasus. They are understood as symbolic human representations the size of which arises out of a new self-awareness of humankind in the world. Anthropomorphic stelae are one of many innovations appearing during this epoch. Other innovations are copper metallurgy and tools, in particular weapons and jewellery, as well as the wheel, the wagon, and the plough drawn by animals. These innovations are depicted on stelae; what is more, the stele itself is an innovation in which the other changes are bundled. Comparable stylistic features of stelae in different areas demonstrate far-reaching contacts. Often the origin of anthropomorphic stelae is seen in the Russian steppes, with the archaeogenetically proven migration from east to west being the cause for the building of stelae in central and western Europe. However, the oldest known stelae apparently originate in western Europe. The impulses behind the dissemination of innovations must have emanated from continuous exchange relations, but the migration in the 3rd millennium bce did not bring with it the idea itself of anthropomorphic stelae. Nowadays the question about the function of stelae is usually answered with the representation of ancestors. When anthropomorphic stones keep the memory of common roots alive, they serve the building of identity.

In the last few decades, the discovery of large ditched enclosures in Iberia has revealed the diversity and complexity of deposition and manipulation of human bone remains. Alongside traditional ritual burials (mainly megalithic tombs and hypogea), fragmented and scattered human bones mixed with other kinds of material culture began to appear in many features. This is the case for Ditch 5 at Marroquíes, which offers an excellent opportunity to explore this ritual behaviour. Based on a multi-proxy approach, three main conclusions can be drawn: 1) the skeletal elements present show deliberate selection of particular categories of bones; 2) depositional episodes included the remains of people who died at different points in time and were subject to different taphonomic processes, and 3) mobility patterns indicate that all individuals, with one possible exception, were local. The movement and manipulations of body parts may reflect the active role of people after death as social and symbolic elements that retain agency and capacity for action.

In this article, we investigate the chronology of a large parallel-walled mudbrick structure at the site of Pachamta in Rajasthan, India. Pachamta is larger than the contemporaneous Harappan site of Kalibangan and part of a society collectively known as the Ahar Culture. Recent excavations at Pachamta provided an opportunity to elaborate on the available dates for this society and to investigate the chronology of an enigmatic parallel-walled structure. The chronology and function of such prominent structures remains murky, although scholars have suggested that these buildings served as public storage because they resemble the granary at Harappa. Through excavation, our team collected data for assessing the Pachamta parallel-walled structure including construction methods, process of abandonment, and associated dates. The thirteen 14C assays from the site and an associated phase and sequence model performed in OxCal 4.3 demonstrate that the building was constructed, used, and abandoned in a relatively brief period. If parallel-walled structures are storage buildings, then expansion of the building may indicate prosperity or surplus, while abandonment may indicate an end to abundance or a shift in resource management. Carefully dating the structure allows us to investigate the timing of social processes including political and economic shifts within the settlement.

Settlements incorporating large-scale human aggregations are a well-documented but poorly understood phenomenon across late prehistoric Europe. The authors’ research examines the origins and trajectory of such aggregations through isotope analysis of human skeletal remains from the mega-site of Marroquíes in Jaén, Spain. The results indicate that eight per cent of 115 sampled individuals are of non-local origin. These individuals received mortuary treatments indistinguishable from those of locals, suggesting their incorporation into pre-existing social networks in both life and death. This research contributes to our understanding of the extent and patterning of human mobility, which underlies the emergence of late prehistoric mega-sites in Europe.

The Varna I cemetery, on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, is one of the most remarkable sites in European prehistory, with the world’s earliest large-scale assemblage of gold artifacts. Modeling of the first series of 14 accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dates yielded a duration of occupation at the site of ca. 150 years, ~4600–4450 cal BC. However, there were insufficient paired human–animal dates for a full consideration of the question of the marine reservoir effect. Here, a fuller set of 71 dates from 53 graves is presented. We identify a small reservoir effect in a number of individuals based on 14C, as well as carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes. We test the effect of this by building a series of different Bayesian models. Our favored model, including a correction for some of the human determinations, shows activity at the cemetery starting at 4596–4516 cal BC and ending 4427–4341 cal BC (at 95.4% probability). The overall span of activity covers ~120–260 years (93.6% prob.). The modeling shows that Varna I falls toward the beginning of the Bulgarian Late Copper Age.

Inspired by the biographical approach to the study of material culture, a radiocarbon dating programme was undertaken to explore the chronology and temporality of the megalithic monuments in south-eastern Iberia. Instead of one or two dates per tomb, the normal way of approaching this complex issue, we carried out a complete radiocarbon dating series of single tombs based on human remains. We focused our attention on four tholos-type tombs in the cemetery of El Barranquete (Almería, Spain). According to the new radiocarbon series modelled in a Bayesian framework, four main conclusions can be drawn: that the cemetery shows a very long period of funerary activity, which began in the late fourth millennium and ended in the last centuries of the second millennium cal bc; that continuity of ritual practices attained an unexpected importance during the Bronze Age; that interments, which fall into cultural periods that would be unthinkable if only the typological properties of the grave goods were considered, occurred; and that each tomb had a complex and very different biography.

This paper reports the first radiocarbon (14C) dates obtained for the Eneolithic/Bronze Age site of Bubanj, Serbia. Despite featuring prominently in the existing typo-chronological schemes for southeastern Europe, the history of research and recent large-scale destruction of the site had prevented so far the acquisition of samples from secure archaeological contexts. We fill this documentary gap by presenting 10 new 14C dates, covering the late 5th, 4th, and 3rd millennia cal BC. These dates are compared to the existing documentation from the literature, in order to assess the placement of Bubanj within its wider archaeological context.

For over a century prehistorians have approached the engraved stone plaques of the Iberian late Neolithic and Copper Age (3000–2500 BC) from a monolithic and idealist perspective, viewing the plaques as representations of the Mother Goddess. Most have not addressed the plaques' variability, their method of manufacture, the organization of their production, or their biographies. This article presents new interpretations of the Iberian plaques based on the first comprehensive on-line catalogue of the plaques – the Engraved Stone Plaque Registry and Inquiry Tool (ESPRIT) (Lillios 2004) – which holds records for over 1100 plaques, each unique, from over 200 sites in Portugal and Spain. Analyses of the plaques' raw material, style, chaîne opératoire, and distribution over space suggest that different plaque types had different functions and meanings, which shifted over time. Two plaque types: the Classic plaques and the Biomorphic Simple plaques are considered in this article. In their diverse forms, the Iberian plaques appear to have been durable records of regional and local group identities and could have contributed toward legitimating and perpetuating an ideology of inherited social difference in the Iberian late Neolithic and Copper Age.

Malta's Neolithic megalithic ‘temples’, unique in the Mediterranean, provide a striking challenge to the archaeological imagination. Most explanations have employed a simple functionalism: the temples resulted from Malta's insularity. Such explanations lack the theoretical grounding provided by studies of agency and meaning, and they do not sufficiently account for Malta's pattern of integration into and differentiation from a central Mediterranean regional culture. I argue that: (a) contextual evidence suggests that the temples created settings for rites emphasizing local origins and identity; (b) even in periods of greatest cultural difference, the Maltese had contacts with nearby societies, and Maltese travellers probably recognized cultural differences in important ritual practices; and (c) when ritual practitioners began reinterpreting a common heritage of meanings to create the temple rites, they also created a new island identity based on these rites. In effect, after two millennia of cultural similarity to their neighbours, the Neolithic Maltese created a cultural island, perhaps in reaction to changes in the constitution of society sweeping Europe in the fourth millennium BC. The result was an island of cultural difference similar in scale and, perhaps, origin to many other archaeologically unique settings such as Val Camonica, the Morbihan, Stonehenge, and Chaco Canyon.

Much research has been carried out on identifying gendered iconography on statue-menhirs. This paper seeks to develop this perspective by considering the broader body concepts. Body concepts are of interest to archaeologists because they are closely connected to issues of sex, gender, and age. By investigating stone sculptures, however, we are looking at an ideological view of the body that was produced by reducing the stone from its natural form into a statue-menhir. The presence of bodily features on the statue-menhirs suggests that it was important to construct a body, and that certain aspects of the body were chosen to be represented, either through the size and shape of the stone or iconography, while others were neglected. We propose this is a significant means by which stones were made into bodies and gendered beings. To investigate body concepts, we pose two questions: how was a statue-menhir body made, and how was it gendered? By following the reduction sequence of the stone as the technique of production, we investigate which bodily features were important in constructing a body and in gendering it. We do this through analysing and comparing three regional examples of anthropomorphic statue-menhirs: (1) The Lunigiana groups A and B in northwestern Tuscany and eastern-most Liguria, (2) the Atesino group in Trentino-Alto Adige, and (3) the Sion Type A in the Swiss Valais and the Aosta Style I in northern Italy. Although there is a shared statue-menhir tradition in the three regions and beyond, the observations in this paper suggest that the bodily gender categories were negotiated regionally.

This paper considers the shift from the practice of collective burials to individual (or double) burials in western Europe at the end of the Neolithic/Copper Age, around 2500–2000 BC, through the lens of a particular mortuary site—the artificial cave of Bolores (Torres Vedras, Portugal). It suggests that the practices involved in making and using collective burials played an important role in this transformation towards increasing social differentiation. It explores how a focus on materiality at different scales, both temporal and spatial, might contribute new insights into geographically widespread and relatively co-synchronous social change.

This study seeks to discuss the origins and early spread of metal technology in the central Mediterranean region. Neolithic and Copper Age evidence of metal-working and metal-using is first reviewed. It is claimed in particular that copper tools were first used, and probably also made, south of the Alps in the late Neolithic, and that complex polymetallic metallurgy developed in the early Copper Age after a short-lived intensification phase in the final Neolithic. In the second section, current models explaining the emergence of metallurgy in this region are then discussed, and a new proposal is put forward. This claims that metal technology, coming from eastern Europe, was imported into the whole of the east-central alpine region in the third quarter of the fifth millennium BC. Thence, it would have swiftly spread throughout northern Italy, central Italy, and Sardinia, and would have reached Corsica, southern Italy, and Sicily somewhat later. Finally, it is argued that the Copper Age metalworking communities dwelling in the western part of the central Mediterranean, and especially those located in west-central Italy, would have played a key role in transmitting knowledge of extractive metallurgy further west in the late fourth millennium BC.

Because of its great potential to provide data on contacts and overseas trade, ivory has aroused a great deal of interest since the very start of research into Iberian late prehistory. Research recently undertaken by the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid in collaboration with a number of other institutions has provided valuable contributions to the study of ivory in the Iberian Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. One of the archaeological sites that is contributing the most data for analysing ivory from the Copper Age in southern Iberia is Valencina de la Concepción (Seville), which is currently the focus of several debates on the development of social complexity. This article contributes to this line of research by providing new, unpublished evidence and by examining the significance of ivory craftsmanship in commercial, social, and ideological terms. It also assesses in greater detail the prominent part played by luxury ivory items as an expression of social status and power.