This book describes various scenarios of the transition from the wandering way of life to sedentarism in Southeastern Europe – the key region between Anatolia and the Aegean to Central Europe – where these fundamental changes first appeared in Europe. One important aim of this book is to demonstrate the richness and complexity of the transition of humans from hunting and gathering to agriculture and animal husbandry in Southeast Europe, the first region to be affected by this phenomenon, and to...

The fortified Late Urnfield Culture “central place” Stillfried an der March (1000–800 BC) owes its significance to its outstanding location on a loess plateau above the River Morava at the crossroads of two major trade routes. In order to explore the organisation of such a political, economic and religious centre, the defining group of finds, the truncated cone-shaped pits, were subjected to a comparative investigation. The systematic examination of the total of 94 pits, which were excavated...

For the first time, this book presents the entire results of the long-term excavations at the Early Neolithic tell site Gălăbnik in the Struma/Strymon Valley in Western Bulgaria. At the tell, a total of ten building horizons of the Gălăbnik group of the Protostarčevo culture and the classical Starčevo culture were documented. After the description and classification of the features and finds, the position of the tell settlement within the Neolithic of the Central Balkans is investigated and...

Excavations in the 1930s and 1950s positioned the tell-settlement Bubanj near Niš (Serbia) as a key site in the prehistoric Balkans. This publication presents the results of the recent excavations in the eastern plateau (2008–2014) and guides the reader through important data on the life of prehistoric communities in the Central Balkans and the Morava Region during the Eneolithic and the Bronze Age. The well-known ‘Bubanj-Hum Group’ of the central Balkans is embedded in a broad cultural...

Corpus "Fontes epigraphici religionum Celticarum antiquarum" edits religious inscriptions with a probably Celtic background from the Roman provinces offering an in-depth epigraphic, linguistic, historical and iconographic analysis. Fasciculus 1 of the present volume collects the Norican evidence and contains a methodological section on the analysis of divine names, exhaustive interdisciplinary commentaries on invocations and cults attested, and a separate part with the iconographic analysis of...

The burial ground on the Obere Holzwiese (Thunau am Kamp) consists of 215 burials and is therefore by far the largest uncovered burial site of Carolingian times in Lower Austria north of the Danube. After it was archaeologically investigated from 1987 to 1993, the presentation of the burial ground as a whole and its scientific analysis take place in this volume. Furthermore investigations concerning archaeobotanics, material analyses, metallography, textiles and leather contributed essentially...

The burial ground on the Obere Holzwiese (Thunau am Kamp) consists of 215 burials and is therefore by far the largest uncovered burial site of Carolingian times in Lower Austria north of the Danube. After it was archaeologically investigated from 1987 to 1993, the presentation of the burial ground as a whole and its scientific analysis take place in this volume. Furthermore investigations concerning archaeobotanics, material analyses, metallography, textiles and leather contributed essentially...

When the first archaeological activities were carried out by the Imperial Academy of Sciences (now the Austrian Academy of Sciences) some 150 years ago, prehistoric archaeology was still on its way to becoming an independent scientific discipline. The great antiquity of the history of mankind had just been confirmed by Darwin and the latest findings of geology raised a number of new questions. The answers would be provided by prehistoric research. For this reason Ferdinand von Hochstetter...

This volume is the result of a conference, which was held from June 14 to 15, 2012 at the event centre Schüttkasten in Klement, Lower Austria. The conference was attended by around 40 researchers from eight countries: Austria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary and Germany. The thematic focus of the conference contributions was the nature of contacts and relations between the settlement areas of the La Tène culture, which are associated with the Celtic tribes of...

Archaeological science is starting to focus on the relationship between humans and their environment. At the 17th international symposium “Grundprobleme der frühgeschichtlichen Entwicklung im mittleren Donauraum” archaeologists, archaeobotanists and zooarchaeologists addressed questions concerning climate and environment in Early History. The contributions in this proceedings volume highlight the importance of a close interdisciplinary cooperation between the disciplines of archaeology,...

This book presents the results of an excavation at the prehistoric settlement of Pointe de Caille, on the Atlantic coast in the south of the island of Saint Lucia, carried out by the University of Vienna. The archaeological excavations in this settlement are the most extensive ever undertaken in the Lesser Antilles. They resulted in the discovery of a more than 800-year habitation of an area, from, according to carbon 14 analyses, the 6th/7th centuries to the 13th/14th centuries AD that was...