I'm writing this editorial from a dig house kitchen – my first time back in the field since February 2020. To me, this feels like a clear inflection point – we're learning how to do archaeology safely and care for each other, even though the world remains unsettled. It's also a beautiful way to start 2022, giving me some hope that maybe things are on the upswing. In this issue of the European Journal of Archaeology, we feature five articles and eight book reviews. The articles range from Scandinavian rock art to the Roman hinterlands and the reviews cover books as diverse as an edited volume on Neolithic Aegean figurines and a collection of retrospective essays on Finland's first woman professor of archaeology. This issue also includes two further reviews in our special ‘Reviewing the Classics’ section.
Iverson and colleagues start this issue with their discussion of two cupmarked stones recovered from a megalithic tomb on Bornholm. They present clear and precise archaeological evidence that the stones were found in secure contexts dating to the early third millennium bc, that is, the Scandinavian Middle Neolithic. They use this early date to connect southern Scandinavia and other Atlantic regions which developed a tradition of megalithic art and cupmarking dated to the fourth and third millennia. To me, this is a striking example of a single (well excavated and recorded) new find opening numerous avenues for future research.
Continuing with the theme of Scandinavian rock art, Skoglund and colleagues investigate the narrativity of Bronze Age Swedish rock art. They use the case study of images of spear use and apply a narratological approach, drawing on a range of disciplines from literary studies to psychology. They propose that ‘mini-narratives’ may be present in the rock art and that this is a productive alternative avenue for rock art interpretation. Although I remain uncertain of the universality of mini-narratives in Bronze Age rock art, the authors illustrate the importance of applying diverse perspectives to our materials in order to enhance our interpretations.
Shifting forward in time, Boschetti and colleagues present a detailed scientific analysis of third – fifth century ad glass beads from a villa in Tuscany. They identify four different raw materials among the small bead assemblage and argue that this represents the extensive exchange networks and broadly international economy engaged with by the occupants of the villa during Later Antiquity and the early Medieval period. This is yet another example of how ornaments—long analysed primarily through a typological lens—can offer us unique insight into the daily life and complex worlds of past people.
Our final two papers take longue durée approaches to the archaeology of northern England and central Italy, respectively. Griffiths and colleagues study the shifting patterns of land division and tenure in Yorkshire and the north-east Midlands from the second millennium bc to the end of the first millennium ad. They construct a Bayesian model of radiocarbon dates, largely drawn from commercial excavations, in order to explore long-term trends and continuities and land division and argue that site-specific models can be complemented and contextualized through this sort of long-term and spatially extensive approach.
In a similar manner, Attema and colleagues present the background and research framework of the newly launched Roman Hinterland Project, a synthetic project designed to integrate the many data sources informing us about the Roman region from protohistory to the early Medieval period. They argue that this sort of big data approach offers new insights into local, regional, and supra-regional patterns of interaction and trade as well as shifting patterns of connection over time. Personally, I find this attempt to create a research framework that re-contextualizes ancient urban centres extremely exciting.
Our reviews section this issue is characteristically diverse. Nanoglou offers a critical but positive review of a new book on the Neolithic and Chalcolithic figurines from Uğurlu Höyük, while Earle thoughtfully critiques a monograph on birds in Bronze Age Scandinavia. An edited volume on later prehistoric caves comes in for strong praise, as does a collection looking at the classical Mediterranean through the lens of globalization. Rajala praises and contextualizes a new essay collection exploring the life and work of Ella Kivikosken, the first woman appointed professor of archaeology in Finland. In the “Reviewing the Classics” section, Catapoti considers the ongoing importance of Renfrew's Emergence of Civilisations to Aegean archaeology and Sterling revisits Battle-Baptiste's Black Feminist Archaeology, arguing that its significance resonates beyond the North American historical archaeology context it nominally addresses.
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
The Reviews team is also actively to increase the pool of potential book reviewers. If you would like to be considered to review for EJA, please e-mail Marta and Maria at ejareviews@e-a-a.org and ejaassistreviews@e-a-a.org with a brief list of your topics of interest and a short CV attached. Advanced postgraduate students as well as those who have completed their PhD are able to review for EJA. Proposals to review specific books are considered, provided that they are relevant to the EJA's mission.
