This edited text represents the collected proceedings of a session at the European Association of Archaeologists conference in 2012, as well as a conference held in Oslo in the same year. According to the editors (p. 2), the volume is intended to explore the viability of cross-cultural study, as well as the potential benefits of using historical and anthropological analogies in archaeological research. Although the historical importance of migration and colonisation has been debated in past decades, the recent emergence of the unprecedented refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe provides a timely reminder of the very real need to understand and interpret these processes as they have been present since prehistoric periods (pp. 2–5).
The main body of the text comprises 14 contributions from specialist scholars from a variety of fields and who share a common interest in applying comparative approaches to archaeological evidence. It is divided into three thematic sections, the first of which features four chapters offering various perspectives on colonisation. These range from the study of Early Mesolithic social networks in Finland (Kriiska et al.) to the development of the Greek colony of Akrai, Sicily, prior to, during and following the Second Punic War (Chowaniec), the Roman colonisation of Sardinia (Nervi), and an ethnographic study of food-producers and hunter-gatherers in Siberia (Grøn). While the contributions by Chowaniec and Nervi apply a diachronic approach to colonisation, Kriiska et al. employ a more data-driven analysis of archaeological material from central and south-eastern Finland to study how social networks were formed and maintained through trade. Grøn, in contrast, uses ethnographic observations as a comparative medium for studying the ‘Neolithisation’ of prehistoric Europe. These two studies in particular provide useful insights into the construction and maintenance of social networks, along with the potential for cultural fusion and accommodation as a byproduct of colonisation. The studies conducted by Nervi and Grøn also highlight social tension and violence as potential products of interaction between colonists and the populations of settled landscapes, especially when pre-existing social institutions or structures are threatened.
The second section contains five studies of maritime interaction. Those by Glørstad and Melheim and Kristiansen focus on the political and social structures in Bronze and Viking Age Scandinavia. While Kristiansen's contribution comprises an empirical examination of archaeological evidence across periods, Glørstad and Melheim take a more theoretical approach, discussing models of ancient Athenian sea power and their parallels with maritime power structures in Scandinavia. They argue that the emergence of these structures may reflect a reaction to broadly similar geopolitical conditions. More group-specific models of maritime power and violence are considered by Price, who draws analogies between ninth-century Viking raiding fleets and pirate groups operating during the so-called Golden Age of Piracy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in order to highlight the importance of the Viking ship, and its crew, as a political and economic entity in its own right. Martial ideologies are also considered in Horn's examination of weapon depositions in Neolithic and Bronze Age Scandinavia. Drawing on analogies from the Viking Age, Horn argues that weapons were deposited during rituals associated with raiding and cosmological conceptualisations of maritime zones. In a departure from prehistoric Scandinavia, Naum discusses the concept of translocality in relation to the Hanse diaspora, examining how German-speaking migrants sought to maintain a symbolic ‘presence’ in more than one location through contact and expressions of cultural affiliation with home communities at the same time as constructing advantageous social and economic networks in new surroundings. While this section of the volume would have perhaps benefited from a more varied range of contributions, the authors provide valuable insights into the importance of maritime zones as arenas where unique political forms and structures could develop independently of terrestrial society, as well as their liminal role in linking and dividing societies.
The third section of the volume consists of four varied studies that examine processes of cultural integration. In their theoretical consideration of ore prospection on the Scandinavian peninsula in the third millennium BC, Melheim and Prescott consider how these groups may have conceptualised and moved through landscapes. The discussion provides a novel insight into the role that individuals can play in the establishment of social networks and knowledge exchange between immigrant groups and local populations, while encouraging further travel and exploration among home communities. In another contribution, Hadley explores the roles that children may have played as agents of social change in Viking Age England, arguing that the process of socialisation allowed children to bridge cultural boundaries between groups. The remaining two studies (Kneisel; Rowlands and Ling) focus on the transmission of ideologies and ideas over long distances. Kneisel argues that the tradition of ‘face-urn’ burials in Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Europe can be linked to the long-distance exchange of goods, reflecting a transferral of ideas that accompanied the movement of people and objects. Rowlands and Ling's contribution brings the discussion back to Bronze Age Scandinavia, where they argue that the development of ‘comparative advantage’, which allowed groups to participate in long-distance exchange, fed into the creation of a maritime civilisational cosmology. Taken together, these contributions provide a more detailed understanding of cultural integration between and within societies, ascribing influence to both individual and collective action as a means of facilitating the exchange of knowledge and technology.
The volume concludes with a discussion by Matthew Spriggs, who draws together elements of discussion from the different contributions in order to identify parallels with the expansion of the Lapita Culture in the Pacific. Spriggs highlights the potential for comparative data to act as a ‘lens’ (a term used by Price, this volume) through which to study the past. Crucially, he demonstrates that comparative approaches allow scholars not only to interpret their own data, but to reflect on what their work has to offer to the study of other cultures.
In sum, this volume represents a cohesive and interesting collection of work. In drawing on theoretical concepts that can be traced across space and time, each individual contribution has the potential to inform the readership of others. If a negative point is to be highlighted, it is perhaps the relatively limited scope of the contributions, which are almost entirely concerned with aspects of European archaeology. Nevertheless, the collected works represent a valuable and thought-provoking addition to the current corpus of comparative literature on this topic, providing a number of case studies that can be examined and discussed in wider contexts.
