If you make your way through the Gotlandic landscape today, you can still see agricultural remains originating from cultivation that took place two-three thousand years ago. The once cultivated land displays itself as systems of conjoined plots surrounded by baulks. The concern of this paper is the social implications this kind of agriculture had during the Pre-Roman Iron Age (500 BC-AD). This was a time when the practice was conventional and field systems were part of people’s surroundings. How did an established, yet changeable landscape structure affect people, and what values, apart from strictly nutritional, did cultivation offer them?
Analysis of the osteological and archaeological material discovered at the Early Bronze Age settlement of Kretuonas 1C suggests that the settlement’s hunted game and reared animals were slaughtered within the settlement, not far from the dwellings. We analyse the butchering technology of the Early Bronze Age based on Kretuonas 1C’s osteological material. The tools used for butchering and the macroscopic analysis of the slaughtered artiodactyls’ axial skeleton and long bones enabled an assessment of split bone in the butchering area, as well as of chop and cut marks acquired during the butchering process.
The Funnel Beaker or Tricterbecher (TRB) occupation at Bronocice, southeastern Poland (Małopolska) was based on a mixed farming economy, the cultivation of cereals and the keeping of domesticated animals. A zooarchaeological analysis and interpretation of the faunal assemblage from three phases of Funnel Beaker occupation (3800-3100 BC) revealed significant trends and patterns in animal husbandry practices reflective of increasing social complexity and specialization. In comparison with other sites in southeastern Poland the faunal data from Bronocice stands out as unique among Funnel Beaker sites with the exception of Zawarża.
This article reviews current scientific evidence of food resources exploited in the Lithuanian Stone and Bronze Ages and presents the new direct, biochemical stable isotope evidence. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses were performed on 75 Stone and Bronze Age animal bone samples and 23 human bone samples. We discuss how the obtained values relate to diet and other evidence of diet, compare the obtained values with regional stable isotope data, and consider sociocultural implications.
The purpose of this article is to show the process by which Roma elite members actually construct political and cultural boundaries and at the same time propose a deterritorialised version of a Nation across state borders. As a result, the nation-building project and the process of ethnicisation promoted by Roma activists and members of the elite can be understood as a process of challenging borders and setting up boundaries. On the one hand, state borders may represent the barrier to surmount in order to accomplish an alliance based on a supposed ethnic category. On the other hand, the analysis of Roma identity and political strategies reveals the different forms of boundaries that may exist and how they may in fact be created and manipulated.