Ancient Europe

INTRODUCTION (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

Almost everyone has seen a picture of Stonehenge, the famous circle of large upright stones in southern England. Yet very few people know that it was built in several stages over a period of more than a thousand years, starting nearly five thousand years ago. Most are unaware that it is surrounded by dozens of […]

HUMANS AND ENVIRONMENTS (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

Even if humans had never evolved, Europe would look different compared with the same area ten thousand years ago. In about 9500 b.c. this peninsula of the Eurasian continent still was recovering from the last great manifestations of the glaciations that had been occurring for about 2 million years (the Pleistocene period, followed after 9500 […]

THE ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF EUROPEAN PREHISTORY (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PREHISTORY In the seventeenth century, when increasing numbers of early flint tools were coming to light, the conception of human antiquity still did not extend beyond written memory, and so hand axes, like megalithic monuments, were attributed to Celts or pre-Roman peoples such as the Gauls. A topic by the French polymath […]

THE NATURE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

While historians use written records, such as diaries, journals, and account books, to reconstruct the past, prehistoric archaeologists rely primarily on material remains. Examples of such remains include pottery fragments, house foundations, and bones from butchered animals. The methodological challenge facing all archaeologists is to determine how these material remains can be used to reconstruct […]

TOLLUND MAN (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

One of the best-known of a series of bog bodies from the Early Iron Age (500 b.c.-a.d. 1) in northern Europe is the Tollund Man. The well-preserved body was discovered during peat cutting on 8 May 1950 in Tollund Mose, near Bjxlskov Dal in central Jutland, the western part of present-day Denmark. The peat cutters […]

SURVEY AND EXCAVATION (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

THE EXCAVATION In contrast to the survey’s broad outlook, the excavation focuses on the individual site. This line of fieldwork allows the archaeologist to plumb the depths of a given site in greater detail. As one digs down through the layers at a site, there is the opportunity to document the stratigraphy of the site. […]

SALTBACK VIG (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

The Saltbck Vig Project was a regional archaeological investigation of the beginnings of agriculture in prehistoric southern Scandinavia around 3950 b.c. The chronological focus of the project was the Late Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic, approximately 5000-3300 b.c. The multistage project included intensive field walking of all accessible fields within defined survey zones. Guided by […]

DATING AND CHRONOLOGY (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

The nineteenth century saw profound changes in the advance of knowledge in several important areas. Geology and biology had both come to realize that vast spans of time were needed to explain the observed fossil changes and rock formations. Geologists had introduced the idea of strata occurring in the order in which they had been […]

ARCHAEOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENT (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

Clark’s excavations at Star Carr from 1949 to 1951 revealed a dump of timber at the edge of a substantial lake, associated with an exceptionally large number of artifacts made from deer bone and antler. Clark collaborated with specialists on animal bones and plant remains to reconstruct the environmental setting of the site and to […]

SETTLEMENT PATTERNS AND LANDSCAPES (DISCOVERING BARBARIAN EUROPE)

The archaeology of settlements has grown progressively in its scope and methodology over the long history of the discipline, so that the modern study possesses a wide range of topics and approaches. The general public is still naturally fascinated by images and reconstructions of monumental, non-domestic sites, such as burial mounds, temples, and fortified centers, […]

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