Being the editor of a society-owned journal can sometimes be a challenging balancing act; now is one of those times. As editor, you are assumed to be the mouthpiece of the organization and its values, which is a simple position when those values are being upheld throughout the organization. For the EAA, these values include that ‘archaeological activity at all levels is responsible, transparent and open’, that ‘[a]rchaeological research and practice … seeks to promote social justice and social cohesion’, and that archaeologists view ‘diversity as a valuable resource’ (EAA, 2024: points 1, 3, and 6; emphasis original). This last point is vital because

But how does an editor square the circle when an organization’s values appear to move away from those stated—and from the editor’s own? This is a question that has beset me since the events of last summer’s conference and the subsequent per rollam vote. The Executive Board of the EAA appear to have taken some heed of the results of the per rollam vote (EAA, 2026a and 2026b), but there continue to be questions over the depth of commitment to change that is required within the organization (as raised by the open letter from Save EAA, 2026). I am, therefore, increasingly put in mind of the suffragette slogan: deeds, not words. And while words are important to me as a journal editor, I also feel that deeds are needed to back them up to show good faith in the motivations behind those words. Let us all hope that the necessary deeds are enacted in the nearest future, for the sake of both the reputation of the society and this journal, both of which I feel are worth championing.

Turning now to the past, this issue opens with an examination of subsistence strategies in the Solutrean in Cantabria. Rodrigo Portero and team take a multifactorial approach to their analysis of the exploitation of large mammals across twelve sites. Their evidence points to immature and young adult red deer having been targeted as the main prey and source of calorific energy, with more hunting taking place seasonally during spring and summer. By including environmental and geographical factors, the authors also demonstrate that calorific energy was more important than abundance when selecting prey.

Moving north and into the Neolithic, Jenni Lucenius and team present petrographic analysis of forty-two figurines from Åland. Their provenance data show that figurines from Åland were circulating around the northern Baltic during the Middle Neolithic, which adds to our understanding of the critical role and position of Åland in this period. The team delve further into their data to suggest that portability was a key feature of these figurines and, furthermore, that the use of specifically-chosen grog and temper was being used to form cultural and symbolic links across time and space, which reflects the transitional geography of Åland.

We stay with symbolism and the importance of trade routes in the next article, in which Christina Souyoudzoglou-Haywood explores two ornaments with solar motifs from Mycenean Kefalonia. Through a sensitive engagement with technological, morphological, and iconographic analyses, Souyoudzoglou-Haywood argues that we need to view these objects not simply as imported objects reflecting imported ideologies. Instead, she argues that these ornaments are representative of new ways of thinking about cosmology and the sun in a process that draws on both collective memory and increasingly long-distance trade during the period.

Moving into the Late Iron Age and back to Scandinavia, Lars Gustavson undertakes a fresh analysis of Raknehaugen, which is the largest such mound in the region. Rather than starting from the assumption that this must be a prehistoric burial mound, Gustavson pulls together recent LiDAR analysis, dendrochronological data, and a relational landscape approach to posit a radical reinterpretation of this mound: not a prehistoric burial mound, but a mound created communally in response to a cataclysmic event in the sixth century ad. This interpretation forces us away from comparative, visual assumptions towards holistic approaches that recognize the landscape as active and agentive.

In our next article, Rana Özbal and team present the results of isotopic and aDNA analyses from human remains found at two Byzantine sites in western Anatolia: Kadıkalesi Anaia and Barcın Höyük. They demonstrate that there are differences in mobility and diet between coastal and inland communities in the region. While both populations relied primarily on terrestrial resources, there was a greater degree of differentiation in the consumption of animal protein at the coastal site of Kadıkalesi Anaia, whereas the population of rural, inland Barcın Höyük had a more homogeneous diet and were predominantly from the local area.

Our final article brings us to medieval England, where Ben Jervis explores ceramic networks and urban assemblages. Drawing on Deleuze’s concept of the ‘virtual’ and DeLanda’s concept of a ‘meshwork’, Jervis investigates how we might view goods, such as ceramics, as generative components of urban life. This allows Jervis to propose a multi-scalar understanding of urban economies that emphasizes difference, as well as the manner in which pottery could be viewed as a constitutive element of urban life in medieval England.

This issue also features two book reviews on timely topics. In the first, Susana Pacheco reviews Gender Trouble and Current Archaeological Debates edited by Uroš Matić, Bisserka Gaydarska, Laura Coltofean, and Marta Díaz-Guardamino. Pacheco finds the volume to be successful in its recentring of gender in archaeological thought, and in its challenge to readers to acknowledge, and make explicit, gender biases in all arenas of archaeology. In the second, Chemi Shiff presents a review of Archaeology as a Weapon by Marie-Louise Windblah, which employs the concept of crypto-colonialism to examine case studies from Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, and Greece. Shiff praises the volume for not only demonstrating the nationalistic uses of archaeology in these contexts, but also for showing how these processes can have real-life consequences for the communities living in these areas.

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 at: https://multimediafluids.uam.elogim.com/core/journals/european-journal-of-archaeology.

The Reviews team is also actively looking to increase the pool of potential book reviewers. If you would like to be considered to review for EJA, please email Monika Baumanova and Maria Relaki 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.

Note from the publisher: The Editor-in-chief and the Deputy Editor have resigned their positions since the writing of this editorial.