This study presents an overview of the development of gender archaeologies in local academies across Europe, from the initial efforts in Norway in the early 1970s, to the founding of the multinational Archaeology and Gender in Europe (AGE) working group in 2009. In addition, the study seeks to show the scope of gender archaeology once contributions from different traditions in different languages are included, and to provide comparative historiographies for those European countries where gender archaeology is now a major strand of research. We hope that innovative approaches to the study of gender in the past will emerge in the future thanks to fruitful encounters between regional trends and developments.

Recent anatomical analyses of a human maxilla found in 1927 in the Vestibule at Kent's Cavern, Devon, UK, have been interpreted as confirming its taxonomic status as Homo sapiens, while Bayesian modelling of dated fauna apparently ‘associated’ with it has been interpreted as suggesting a calendar age for the maxilla of around 44,200–41,500 years BP, rendering it the earliest fossil evidence for modern human presence in Northern Europe. In this paper, we examine fully the circumstances of the maxilla's discovery, data not previously considered. Based mostly on archival and limited published materials, as well as knowledge of the cave's stratigraphy, we provide a detailed examination of the context of the maxilla and associated finds. We urge caution over using a small selected sample of fauna from an old and poorly executed excavation in Kent's Cavern to provide a radiocarbon stratigraphy and age for a human fossil that cannot be dated directly, and we suggest that the recent dating should be rejected. We place our evaluation in the wider context of the dating of European early anatomically modern humans.

This study presents the first 87Sr/ 86Sr isotope results obtained on Neolithic humans from Southern France. These analyses aimed at exploring patterns of mobility in the Languedoc and Garonne areas, at sites dated to the Middle Neolithic (c. 4500–3500 cal BC). Strontium isotope analysis of tooth enamel and bone are a useful geochemical tracer to investigate the origin and residential mobility of ancient people. Strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/ 86Sr) of material from five sites located in two geographic areas were measured. Results obtained do not support our hypothesis of mobility for a number of individuals considered as outsiders in a previous study. On the other hand, the difference recorded between teeth and bone suggests mobility of other individuals between childhood and the last years of adult life. This preliminary study highlights the importance of combining multi-isotope analysis to discuss human subsistence economy and mobility.

This article seeks to clarify the reason for the flourishing of daggers during the first millennia of metal use in Europe. Flint daggers, usually characterized as direct copies of contemporary metal blades, circulated widely from around 4000 cal BC to 1500 cal BC in different parts of Europe. Among the best studied and most well-known flint dagger varieties are the early second millennium cal BC fishtail-handled varieties made in southern Scandinavia which are universally described as skeuomorphs of Central European metal-hilted daggers. In this paper, their putative skeuomorphism is re-evaluated through a close technological and contextual analysis, and a new way of conceiving of the relationship between fishtail flint daggers and metal-hilted daggers is proposed. Like most of the other widely circulating flint dagger types in Neolithic Europe, fishtail and metal-hilted daggers are produced through the application of specialized/standardized production processes and demonstrate a desire to cultivate special and perhaps circumscribed technologies on the part of the people who made and used them. This shared technological background is identified as the root of the ‘dagger idea’ which emerges in Europe at this period. Daggers, in any material, are identified as ‘boundary objects’ – things which bridge social boundaries, allowing people with different backgrounds to recognize similar values and ways of life in each other's cultures and which, consequently, facilitate communication and exchange, in this case of metal and of the technological concepts which were part of its adoption.

Scandinavian rock art may in general be regarded as idealized depictions of a social world, not a direct description of concrete social matters. Even so, rock art does convey important social information that calls for more thorough comment. This study concerns almost 1700 ship depictions from western Sweden that include human representations. The average ship is depicted with a crew of six to thirteen individuals and these craft may have represented prevailing ideals about the crewing of ships. The large ship images with numerous crews in clearly defined positions may be depictions of war canoes, staged for special maritime events. The study shows that the visual proportions of the rock-art ships are similar to those of the prehistoric war canoe from Hjortspring, Denmark. It is argued that the praxis of pecking ships into the rocks could have served to manifest the agency of the maritime social world and, to some extent, to make this ideology more dominant.

Boosted by a proliferation in metal-detected finds, categories of personal adornment now constitute a vital archaeological source for interpreting Viking-age cultural interaction in the North Sea region. Previous research in England has explored the potential of this metalwork in relation to the formation of ‘Anglo-Scandinavian’ identity, but without due consideration of a wider spectrum of cultural influences. This article redresses the balance by shifting attention to twenty-eight belt fittings derived from richly embellished baldrics, equestrian equipment, and waist belts manufactured on the Frankish continent during the period of Carolingian hegemony in the later eighth and ninth centuries AD. The metalwork is classified and then contextualized in order to track import mechanisms and to assess the impact of Carolingian culture on the northern peripheries of the Frankish empire. The main conclusion is that the adoption, adaptation, and strategic manipulation of Carolingian/northern Frankish identity formed an embedded component of cultural dynamics in Viking-age England, scrutiny of which sheds new light on patterns of interconnectivity linking peoples of the North Sea world.