Welcome to the first issue of the European Journal of Archaeology (EJA) for 2017―the first to be produced in conjunction with our new publisher, Cambridge University Press. In this issue, we celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the EJA with two specially-commissioned discussion articles: one revisiting the question of what ‘European archaeology’ is, the other re-evaluating the most highly cited article in the journal's history. These are followed by four regular articles, spanning prehistoric and historic archaeology, from the British Isles to western Anatolia. This broad coverage is then further expanded by ten book reviews.
Nine authors, led by Staša Babić and John Robb, discuss what European archaeology is and what it should be. These questions, which originally informed the establishment of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) and of its academic Journal of European Archaeology (JEA) (as it was then known), remain as relevant today as they did over two decades ago, albeit within a significantly changed political context. Back in 1993, the editorial introduction to the first issue of the JEA held up ‘the events in Europe since 1989’ (i.e. the fall of the Iron Curtain) as its political reference point and celebrated ‘an awakening and freshening of archaeological debate about archaeological methods, interpretations, issues, and theories' as well as ‘a commitment to a new idea of Europe where there is more communication across national frontiers’, including ‘dialogue with non-European perceptions of European archaeology’ and ‘debate about the role archaeology plays in society, how it should be organised in a changing Europe, and the ethics of archaeological practices’ (EAA, 1993: 1–2). It also encouraged ‘younger academics to submit articles’ (p. 1). (I was one of them, although sadly I no longer fit that category.) Over the last twenty volumes (25 including the JEA), and combined with successive Annual Meetings of the EAA, I think we can justifiably congratulate ourselves on fulfilling these aims. Nevertheless, as Babić and Robb's collection of commentaries highlights, there are now even more questions than answers regarding what to make of ‘European archaeology’. What are the global political implications of including and excluding archaeologies and archaeologists from its definition? Should archaeologists still play the political game of identifying a common European heritage? To what extent do nation, race, and religion still dominate the construction of archaeological narratives in and around Europe? What do we gain from associating as European archaeologists? And where is all this introspection taking us?
Eight other authors have taken up Deputy Editor Catherine Frieman's challenge of re-visiting Paul Treherne's (Reference Treherne1995) stimulating article, ‘The Warrior's Beauty: The Masculine Body and Self-Identity in Bronze Age Europe’, twenty-one years on from its publication in the JEA. Their commentaries highlight the continued importance of interpretative debates concerning gendered identities and ideological representations of warriors in Bronze Age Europe, as well as wider archaeological discussions of the body, materiality, and social relations and dynamics. But, as Sophie Bergerbrandt concludes, we cannot simply go on accepting Treherne's now classic interpretation as the norm. For Sandra Montón-Subías, this means branding Treherne's work as ‘a masculinist study on masculinity’, while for Joanna Sofaer it means challenging Treherne's assertion of a coherent warrior lifestyle in Bronze Age Europe.
Turning to our regular articles, we begin with Chris Proctor, Katerina Douka, Janet Proctor, and Tom Higham's response to Mark White and Paul Pettitt's (Reference White and Pettitt2012) article published in the EJA. The latter cast doubt on the archaeological evidence from the Upper Palaeolithic cave site of Kent's Cavern in England and in particular on Higham and colleagues’ early dating of the so-called ‘KC4’ fragment of human jaw found there―making it the oldest modern human fossil known from north-west Europe. In the present article, Proctor et al. return to the archival data and also present the results of new AMS determinations. They acknowledge that some post-depositional movement did take place in the cave, but ultimately reiterate their early chronological estimate. However, given the lingering doubts, probably the only way forward now is to directly date a very small sample of the maxilla.
Christèle Ballut, Josette Renard, William G. Cavanagh, and Raphaël Orgeolet present their case for having identified a rare pottery firing structure in a domestic context at the Middle Neolithic settlement of Kouphovouno in southern Greece. Micromorphological analysis of thin sections of samples taken from a deposit composed of alternating layers of burnt red aggregates and white carbonate, together with excavation data, and a reconstruction based on ethnographic and experimental research have led the authors to suggest the presence of an open-air, covered, clamp kiln capable of producing pottery. Although our peer reviewers remained cautious as to this interpretation, their consensus was that this study should be published for the purposes of wider scrutiny and comparison.
Christopher Roosevelt and Christina Luke present some of the results of their systematic archaeological survey around Lake Marmora in western Anatolia. In particular, they claim to have discovered the remains of a mid-second millennium BC kingdom in central western Anatolia―the Seha River Land of later Hittite texts―centred on the large settlement site and citadel of Kaymakçɩ, and surrounded by a thriving hinterland marked by other fortified hilltop sites and lowland settlements. Although dating of the sites in question remains problematic, the authors’ excavations at Kaymakçɩ should provide a useful chronological reference point.
Drawing on current archaeological theories of entanglement, networks, and multiple scales, Ben Jervis seeks to breathe new life into old debates about medieval imported ceramics. He uses the example of Continental pottery imported into the Channel ports of southern England to argue that, rather than simply carrying cultural identity, this distinctive category of material culture gained diverse meanings and mediated different forms of community and identity as people interacted with it in different social contexts.
The first of our book reviews takes the discussion of material culture theory one step further, by thoughtfully weighing up the pros and cons of a Binghamton University-sponsored volume which seeks to react against symmetrical archaeology and defend anthropocentrism. This emphasis on human actors continues on into the second book to be reviewed, stemming from a European Science Foundation-funded project on the development and spread of agriculture around the world. Next, Howard Williams offers praise for a new book on burnt human remains, while persuasively calling for an even broader archaeology of cremation. The following reviews then take us on a fascinating journey across a wide expanse of contemporary European archaeology: from the Neolithic of southeast Europe to the archaeology of the Cold War on both sides of the Atlantic.
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.
