Looking ahead to the next annual EAA meeting to be held in Belfast in a couple of months (from when I write this) or a couple of weeks (from when you read it), I want to remind any students or supervisors reading about the EAA student prize. Student members (undergraduate, masters or doctoral) who present their original research at the EAA are eligible to enter into the student award competition with the text of their presentation. I would especially invite supervisors to encourage any students presenting in Belfast to apply. Emails will be circulated with the award criteria and submission rules well before the conference.
In this issue of the EJA we feature a discussion forum and four research articles as well as seven reviews. The forum addresses the knotty problem of understanding the texture of and variations in gender and gendered practices in prehistory, while the research articles take us from Neolithic Central Europe to the Islamic period Mediterranean to broader questions of the landscapes we study and the potential of archaeological research to contribute to contemporary challenges.
This issue starts with a multi-authored forum led by Gaydarska that focusses on the question of how we should and can understand gender, gendered relations, and gendered practices in prehistory, primarily the European Neolithic. This forum emerges from an EAA annual meeting session organized by the EAA's gender archaeology community AGE and uses a recent paper by Robb and Harris as its jumping off point. Contributors explore case studies from around Europe, respond to specific models or ideas from the original paper, and further contribute to the vibrant field of gender archaeology. The concluding reflection by Robb and Harris is particularly welcome for its insight and collegiality.
In the first research article, Gašpar and colleagues look at the evidence for ritual practices at a Bell Beaker period timber monument in Brodek u Prostějova (Czechia). They specifically analyse the ceramic sherds from the site and identify a number of features, such as clay composition, decorative schema, and incrustation type, which indicate vessels to have been brought to the site from a number of different areas. Based on this pattern of ceramic circulation, as well as a contextual discussion of the other materials deposited at Brodek, they suggest that the site was used by multiple communities who came to together for social and ceremonial gatherings.
Shifting southeast and much more recently in time, Harding and colleagues conduct a detailed ichthyological analysis of fish bones from amphorae excavated as part of a seventh-eighth century ad shipwreck assemblage from the eastern Mediterranean. They argue that their data point to a previously unknown fish-salting industry in the region of the Sea of Galilee in the Islamic period and another around the Nile. As the authors rightly point out, their research highlights the value of environmental and zooarchaeological research on shipwreck assemblages, since these give insight into past peoples’ daily practices and diet, in addition to their economic and trade relations.
The final two research articles in this issue are broader discussions of the contributions of data from various landscapes (and seascapes) both to archaeological model-building and to more contemporary questions around climate change and sustainability. Ombashi and Løvschal present a review of archaeological studies of prehistoric heathlands. These anthropogenic landscapes, they argue, are rich sources of both palaeoenvironmental and social information. However, the patchy and diverse history of heathland research leaves us with an incomplete understanding of heathland landscapes and the human-non-human relations that formed them. They conclude with a call to arms for future healthland studies that should extend across geopolitical borders and disciplinary divisions.
Velentza also reviews archaeological practice, in this case maritime archaeology, with an eye to future contributions from the field. Specifically, she explores the affordances of maritime archaeological research to contribute to contemporary work on climate change, sustainability, and resilience. She bases her assessment on the archive of human practices and human-environment interactions preserved in the maritime record, and flags several ongoing and recent archaeological projects in the field with contemporary impacts. Her review is explicitly inspired by the urgency of responding to a rapidly intensifying climate crisis, and she rightly makes that case that archaeologists as well as climate scientists, sociologists, and policy-makers can play a role in building a better future.
The seven reviews included in this issue are characteristically diverse. Jones describes in glowing terms the massive achievements of a new monograph on the megalithic art at the famous chamber tomb at Knowth, Ireland. Bánnfy is more critical of an edited volume on health and disease in the Lengyel Culture, highlighting an unfortunate lack of up to date archaeological perspectives. Monographs on British later prehistoric harbours or safe havens and Bronze Age human-animal relations in Crete come in for strong praise, while comments are more mixed for a monograph arguing for Phoenician activities in the Aegean. Reeve offers a detailed review of the recent Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge, UK) exhibition “Islanders: The making of the Mediterranean”. Finally, Kiddey presents a nuanced and largely positive assessment of an edited volume centred on contemporary archaeologies of forced and illicit migration.
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://multimediafluids.uam.elogim.com/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.
