Presenting Counterpoints to the Dominant Terrestrial Narrative of European Prehistory.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koch, John T., author.

Contributor:

Fauvelle, Mikael.

Cunliffe, Barry W.

Ling, Johan, 1968-

Series:

Maritime Encounters Series

Maritime Encounters Series ; v.1

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Maritime anthropology.

Coastal archaeology.

Ocean and civilization.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Havertown : Oxbow Books, Limited, 2025.

Summary:

"Challenges the terrestrial focus of European prehistory, emphasizing the significance of seascapes, maritime networks, and coastal societies in shaping prehistoric Europe. For many years now, the main thrust of European prehistory has followed a fundamentally terrestrial plot line. This terrestrial paradigm has undervalued the story of Europe as a peninsula between the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic, and likewise downplayed that of many navigable rivers that reach deeply inland and the large lakes important for travel and subsistence. In vast areas of Europe the survival of incoming groups depended on coping and interacting with a seascape as much as a landscape. From the late Mesolithic onwards, in regions such as Scandinavia, the British Isles and the Mediterranean, most occupation was coastal; seas or rivers provided the most important infrastructure for transport, exchange and communication. Know-how about seascapes, boatbuilding, navigation and maritime networks had a profound impact on social organisation, ritual monuments and iconography, and the spread of materials and ideas, enabled by the adaptation of languages to these new environments. Given these facts the time is long overdue to critique the dominant terrestrial paradigm of European prehistory. This book is the first in the multi-author series Maritime Encounters, outputs of the major six-year (2022-2028) international research initiative funded by Sweden's central bank. Our programme is based on a maritime perspective, a counterpoint to prevailing land-based vantages on Europe's prehistory. In the Maritime Encounters project a highly international cross-disciplinary team has embarked on a diverse range of research goals to provide a more detailed and nuanced story of how prehistoric societies realised major and minor sea crossings, organised long-distance exchange, and adapted to ways of life by the sea in prehistory." -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

List of illustrations

List of tables

Contributors

Introduction

Chapter 1 - A millennium of war - violent encounters during the 4th and 3rd millennia BC in the western Baltic Sea

Chapter 2 - Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Atlantic connections, c. 2500-800 BC

Chapter 3 - Using direct and indirect evidence of boats and boatbuilding for understanding the nature of seafaring in Atlantic Europe c. 5000-500 BC

Chapter 4 - Larger boats, longer voyages, and powerful leaders: comparing Maritime Modes of Production in Scandinavia and California

Chapter 5 - The Maritime Mode of Production in relation to self-sufficiency, reciprocity, and comparative advantages

Chapter 6 - The origins of secret societies and their contribution to the rise of social complexity

Chapter 7 - Maritime memoria: navigating Bronze Age rock art

Chapter 8 - Archaeology and science: the impact of lead isotope analyses on the archaeological discourse of metal trade for the Scandinavian and British communities in the 3rd-1st millennia BC

Chapter 9 - Late Bronze Age copper mining in southern Iberia: preliminary results of fieldwork at Las Minillas (Granja de Torrehermosa, Badajoz, Spain)

Chapter 10 - What genetics can say about Iron Age and Bronze Age Britain

Chapter 11 - Cross-disciplinary considerations: 'hedge', 'hull', 'fool', and the triumph of linguistic palaeontology

Chapter 12 - Convergence in situ: the formation of the Indo-European branches and the Bronze-Iron transition

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

979-88-88572-12-2

979-88-88571-85-9

OCLC:

1507697842