I want to take this opportunity to welcome the newest member of the editorial team, our new Reviews Editor Dr. Monika Baumanova. Monika is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for African Studies of the University of West Bohemia, Czechia. She has considerable and varied archaeological experience, and studies (among other things) African urban traditions, the built environment, and medieval topics more broadly. We're thrilled she has joined our productive and collaborative editorial team; and, of course, we remind readers that if they are interested in reviewing for EJA they should get in touch!
In this issue of the EJA, we feature six research articles and four reviews. The articles touch on a range of places and periods, with a strong emphasis on craft and identity. We are particularly pleased that this issue includes an article that started life as the presentation at EAA Budapest that won the society's 2022 student award. The reviews are even more diverse, addressing the capacity of archaeology and heritage to contribute to mental well-being, a pair of monographs presenting archaeological research into Early Neolithic Italy, social research into and among small and micro-museums, and Greek terracotta.
Latorre-Ruiz launches this issue with a detailed statistical model of nearly 5000 metal artefacts from 1500 Middle Bronze Age assemblages around the Bay of Biscay. He uses Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to catalogue and model the deposition practices that led to these finds, and models them over time to identify clusters of shared practices. Latorre-Ruiz argues that these clusters represent shifting patterns of connectivity and shared practice around the Bay of Biscay region over the course of the Middle Bronze Age. He advocates for the wider application of LCA and other multivariate clustering techniques, reproducible methods to synthesize and investigate larger archaeological datasets.
Remaining in the Bronze Age, Molloy and colleagues apply a series of analyses, from 3D modelling to use-wear and composition studies, to the well-known Dupljaja chariot model and a second fragmentary piece. From these, they develop a discussion of Bronze Age chariot design, gendered practices, and the cosmological role of these types of models. They compellingly argue that the models give insight into both local cultural conformations, especially with regard to the ritual sphere, as well as wider, supra-regional aspects of Bronze Age society, including technology, connectivity, wheeled vehicles, and cosmology.
Shifting over to Central Europe, Seregély and colleagues present a regional discussion of settlement practices from Bronze to Iron Ages in the northern Franconian low mountain range. Although the region might not seem to favour long-term habitation, being peripheral to more densely occupied areas and having less access to water than other areas, they showed it to be home to a long-lasting, rural way of life. The excavation of two settlement sites in this region yielded radiocarbon dates attesting to their occupation throughout the second and first millennia, with only a single period of abandonment. The intensiveness of this occupation is visible in the wider landscape, which was extensively cleared and modified to the point that earlier features were largely destroyed or eroded.
Cuello del Pozo brings us south to explore the various evidence for the timing and tempo of the first peopling of the Canary Islands during the first millennium bc. She contrasts traditional archaeological narratives with radiocarbon sequences and new genetic data to draw out and compare two main hypotheses about the settlers’ origin: either North African or Mediterranean. Building on interdisciplinary theories of island environments, settlement, and occupation, Cuello del Pozo argues that existing narratives, including those driven by scientific analysis, are too simple, and we must be craftier in how we interpret our data and work across variable datasets. This article won the 2022 EAA student award and we are very pleased to publish it.
Jumping forward in time, McGraw and Mjærum analyse a blacksmith's workshop from the Norwegian Viking town of Kaupang and detail the technical scope of Viking metalworking at this site and more widely. They identify activities and debris associated with both ferrous and non-ferrous metalworking and explore the wide suite of skills it would have been necessary for a blacksmith at this time to develop to achieve this sort of proficiency at multi-crafting. They further connect this to literary and mythological accounts of smiths in order to address the status, significance, and value of such specialized artisans in the Viking world. This article provides a wonderful example of how one site or assemblage can shed light on much wider practices and traditions.
In the final research article in this issue, Duray looks at how nineteenth and early twentieth century Aegean archaeology employed and contributed to racial narratives. She looks specifically at the discovery and interpretation of the well-known fresco of the Cupbearer from Knossos and explores the ways the central figure's features and cranium morphology were interpreted through racial typologies, as well as how the fresco itself became part of the deeply racialized story of ‘European civilization’ articulated by archaeologists and other scholars after its discovery. Importantly, Duray connects this crucial piece of historiography to contemporary practices of genetic typology that apply antiquated, often subtly raced, ‘ethnic’ terminology to population clusters identified through aDNA analysis.
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 Monika 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.
