This book presents an overview of the results of the last fifteen years of commercial archaeology in the Netherlands, focusing on the Late Neolithic, the Early Bronze Age, and the Middle Bronze Age A (between c. 2850–1500 cal bc). The research was conducted by Leiden University within the programme Oogst voor Malta (‘Valetta Harvest’). This is a programme aimed at filling gaps in the archaeological heritage management cycle in the Netherlands: numerous excavations have been carried out and many ‘grey literature’ reports have been written, but until now very little benefit has emerged in terms either of new heritage management strategies or of the creation of scientific knowledge. The programme was funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture and executed by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. As part of this programme, a monograph series is currently being prepared, focusing on different themes or specific regions for which a gap in scientific knowledge existed fifteen years ago, but can possibly be filled now. The major benefit of this book is not only the provision of an overview for the specialist in the Netherlands. Because it is written in English, it is also a must-have for foreign specialists if they wish to delve into this part of Dutch prehistory or use their data for Europe-wide comparisons.
The book is structured in nine chapters. Chapters 1–6 introduce the book (Ch. 1), present the ‘Research Questions’ (Ch. 2), the state of knowledge (Ch. 3, ‘The Status Questionis Anno 2001’), the ‘Methodology and Sources’ (Ch. 4), the ‘Analysis of Databases’ (Ch. 5), and a methodical discourse on the reconstruction of prehistoric houses from excavation plans (Ch. 6, ‘Criteria for House Reconstructions’). A large part of the book is reserved for Chapter 7, which focuses on the specific site reports (fifty-one). These are primarily sites found within the framework of commercial archaeology, but Fokkens and his co-authors took the liberty of including other recently published sites such as Mienakker (Kleijne et al., Reference Kleijne, Brinkkemper, Lauwerier, Smit and Theunissen2013) or older, still unpublished, excavations from their own archives, such as the sites of Oldeboorn and Steenendam. Chapters 8 and 9 present us with the conclusions drawn from their overview and analyses. Specifically, Chapter 8 (‘Towards New Knowledge’) focuses on the scientific knowledge generated by the project, while Chapter 9 (‘Towards a New Research Agenda for Archaeology’) deals with the questions and strategies that future commercial archaeology should invest in.
In the first several chapters, the authors set the scene. Chapter 1 presents a clear and concise overview of the state of Dutch archaeology and the problem that this book is helping to solve. In Chapter 2, four research questions are presented (‘Was New Knowledge Generated in the Last Fifteen Years?’; ‘Farmsteads and Settlements’; ‘The Settlement System’; ‘Variation in the Cultural Landscape’) and an overview is provided on how the team will answer each of them separately.
Chapter 3 becomes a bit more complicated, when the authors attempt to assess the state of knowledge until 2001, not always succeeding in keeping themselves to this chosen point in time. When, for instance, they discuss ‘Metal production and consumption’, the authors jump to our present-day understanding, citing more recent research and analyses. Moreover, some inconsistencies arise in Figure 3.13, with blue and red dots marking discoveries before and after 2001 respectively, with, for instance, a red dot for the site of Aartswoud, which was excavated in the 1970s. This does not affect the general impression conveyed by the book: a lot has happened since 2001.
Chapters 4 and 5 provide us with a description of the methodology and sources, and a presentation and first analysis of the sites gathered in the programme's databases. It starts on a technical level and may be difficult to grasp for people who do not know Dutch heritage management database systems, but the authors’ objective is achieved via a selection of forty-four important sites, with an additional seven older, but recently published, excavations. There follows a short but thorough description of the different excavation methods, landscape settings, site contexts, and research intensities that helped shape this dataset.
As a further methodological contribution, Chapter 6 focuses on the recognition and reconstruction of excavated house plans. Fokkens’ views are very clear on this and stem from his work on later prehistoric (Later Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman) agricultural settlements in the sandy regions of Oss (Fokkens & Jansen, Reference Fokkens, Jansen, Fokkens and Jansen2002: 10). It has proven in the past to be problematic to identify and study prehistoric houses in the Netherlands. Arnoldussen (Reference Arnoldussen2008) devised an intricate method for the identification of Middle Bronze Age B house plans in the Dutch riverine area. Based on these ideas and experiences, Fokkens and colleagues are able to outline evidence for central posts (either deeply dug in combination with gable roofs or less deep with saddle roofs) and a two-aisled inner structure for houses throughout the Late Neolithic, the Early Bronze Age, and the Middle Bronze Age A.
In Chapter 7, the fifty-one sites are reported. Here all the sites are presented in a uniform fashion, describing the research history of each site and focusing on both finds and features when discussing excavation results. This structure significantly aides the readability and comparability of the results. However, a standard presentation of radiocarbon dates (laboratory code, uncalibrated determination, calibrated date, sample material, context), and a critical assessment of scale information for illustrated finds would have been useful—such as when comparing the radiocarbon dates in Figures 7.28, 7.135 and 7.216 or the lack of any scale details for Figures 7.152 and 7.195 and for the flint blade of Figure 7.81, or the combined scalebar and scale caption for Figure 7.92. Aside from these minor details, the book is a very informative overview for people who do not work on the topic routinely and foreign researchers searching for specific information about sites previously only accessible in Dutch.
The academically most interesting part of the book is Chapter 8, where the authors discuss the evidence and the ‘new scientific knowledge’ it offers for our understanding of the Late Neolithic, the Early Bronze Age, and the Middle Bronze Age A in the Netherlands. This discussion focuses on the topics of ‘Chronology and Periodisation’, ‘Communication Networks and Archaeological Landscapes’, ‘Settlement “Systems”’ (i.e. structure and organisation), ‘The Subsistence Basis’, ‘“Ritual” Practices’, and ‘Social Structures’. These topics will be dealt with separately below.
The discussion of ‘Chronology and Periodisation’ shows a move away from the typological works presented in the 1970s (works that everyone in Dutch archaeology is still used to) towards a more realistic view in which radiocarbon calibration wiggles lead to a more chaotic but arguably more accurate picture. ‘Communication Networks’ are mainly treated according to a geographical approach without really delving deep into the dataset itself. This is a pity as these networks do condense in the archaeological record through specific elements and aspects of material culture. Reconstructing prehistoric communication networks is an important step in understanding the adoption and development of supra-regional phenomena, specifically in this particular timeframe (cf. Furholt, Reference Furholt, Hansen and Müller2011).
The discussion on ‘Settlement “Systems”’, including settlement sizes and houses, mainly focuses on settlement organisation and aspects of house recognition. The former still mainly follows earlier models of wetland/upland relations, while also noting that there seems to be a continuous variability throughout the period, not an intensification or trend towards a more agriculture-based system. Of the house plans that were proposed in the original site reports, none survived the authors’ scrutiny because of their lack of structure. Personally, I doubt the necessity of a well-defined and identifiable structure, as Late Neolithic unstructured (or, better, ‘irregular’) rectangular or square houses do exist elsewhere (such as at the well-known site of Hunte 1 in Lower Saxony, Germany (Kossian, Reference Kossian2007: 73–113), where floors, hearths, and (unstructured) wall posts were uncovered). In any case, this matter remains unresolved for now and only a combination of new, detailed excavations, integrated statistical analyses of features, find distributions, and taphonomy (e.g. Nobles, Reference Nobles2016), aided by experimental reconstructions, can hope to shed light on this issue.
The analysis of ‘The Subsistence Basis’ remains rather descriptive, stating the continued importance of hunting and fishing practices next to the evidence for farming on a relatively large scale. Also here some more insight into landscape opportunities and seasonality in relation to settlement organisation might have been possible. The discussion of evidence for ‘“Ritual” Practices’, such as metal and pottery vessel depositions, is hampered by a lack of evidence. Still, it is good to have an up-to-date overview, which allows future excavations to record these depositional practices in more detail when they are discovered. In a discussion of ‘Social Structure’ and hierarchies, Fokkens and colleagues defend the standpoint that the ‘settlement evidence has not been able to corroborate the grand narratives of chiefly elites that supposedly reined [sic recte reigned] in Bronze Age and Late Neolithic Europe’ (p. 301). This is clearly opposed to the widely shared views concerning social organisation among most scholars of Late Neolithic and Bronze Age societies and it provides a stimulating topic for future research.
The final Chapter 9 focuses on the agenda for the future. A nice aspect of this Dutch system is that it is now possible indirectly to influence commercial archaeology from an academic perspective, using research questions. The main difficulty has always been how to operationalise these research questions ‘in the field’. Many of the past questions were too vague and all-encompassing or too specific in their character. In this chapter, Fokkens and colleagues give a helping hand by making some very clear indications where the future of archaeological research into the Late Neolithic, the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Bronze Age A should go: less typology but more technology; better prediction of sites with a low density of finds and the excavation of gullies; the use of better sampling strategies for knowledge about subsistence economy; and a careful analysis of features belonging to possible house plans or depositional practices. Supporting their arguments with examples, best-practices, recent findings, and practical methods, the hope is that this will be a useful tool for future fieldwork.
This overview of the Late Neolithic and the Early to Middle Bronze Age in the Netherlands stands out for its comprehensiveness, attention to detail, and clear argumentation for future directions. There are, however, some points which could have been improved. While some aspects have already been mentioned, some more general remarks are appropriate here. Presenting the data in a more uniform manner could have made some of the conclusions clearer for readers who are not well attuned to Dutch traditions in colouring maps, drawing pottery (single sherd reconstructions or whole vessels?), or the nature of excavations in general (features and section drawings). Another related issue is the various palaeogeographic reconstructions used throughout the book. The book starts with Zagwijn's maps from the 1980s, but later refers to the more recent work of Vos and De Vries without explicitly stating this anywhere or explaining the differences between these coloured maps. In addition, the long captions that correspond to the maps of Chapter 5 stand out. It would have been better to use legends for the symbols instead of describing the details in captions. In particular, the difference between light blue triangles, dark blue triangles, and dark blue stars is difficult to distinguish.
To conclude, I can say that this book is a very valuable addition to our understanding of Late Neolithic and Bronze Age communities in the Netherlands. It has proven a worthwhile effort to have this dataset collected and compared. I hope that it inspires future archaeological research and can also be a stepping stone towards more international collaboration on a period that reveals so much interplay between, on the one hand, the ‘farming, fishing, fowling, and hunting’ traditions and, on the other hand, the supra-regional Corded Ware and Bell Beaker phenomena, particularly in a time when the latter, through aDNA research, seem to take over our scientific debates (see Furholt, Reference Furholt2017).
Finally, this book tries to tackle one of the major problems in archaeology: commercial archaeology has become a much formalised, almost bureaucratic, administrative enterprise. In contrast, answering a research question, using specific methods, studying specific processes on an archaeological site, or even within a feature, requires flexibility and a clarity of mind that is often not written down in guidebooks. Now, this is the closest thing to a comprehensive guidebook that one is going to get to study future archaeological sites from this timeframe.
