Éditorial

Abstract

Welcome to the final issue of the European Journal of Archaeology (EJA) for 2019. In this issue, we present six articles and eight book reviews. Below, we summarize their contributions to our understandings of European archaeology. Drawing on the theoretical perspective of new mobility studies and the growing body of data derived from human isotope studies, Samantha Reiter and Karin Frei present a model of the mobility of single individuals (as opposed to groups), with particular reference to archaeological examples from later prehistoric Europe. Their model distinguishes among four mobility patterns: 1) non-migratory, characterised by individuals who were born, lived and died in the same geological area; 2) point-to-point migratory, exemplified by individuals who moved from one geological area to another; 3) back-and-forth, in which the mobile individual returned to their starting point; and 4) repeated mobility, comprising either cyclical or non-cyclical movements over an individual’s lifespan between two (or more) areas. The authors acknowledge that this is a simple model, but it does have the advantage over more sophisticated theoretical accounts of being grounded in the specificities of the archaeological data, which will no doubt add to its complexity in due course. Dušan Boric ́ and colleagues offer a new perspective on the Mesolithic and earliest Neolithic in the Dinaric Alps of Montenegro, together with new data from the Odmut rock shelter and from Vrucá and Vrbicǩa caves. Instead of taking at face value the scarcity of Mesolithic sites in this interior region of the Balkans, compared to the eastern Adriatic coast, the authors emphasize the limitations of the existing archaeological data plus the economic diversity and connectivity of Mesolithic groups in this area, as well as their cultural continuity into the early sixth millennium BC, when novel elements from Neolithic cultural repertoires were first adopted. The unresolved question of demographic continuity seems like an obvious focus for future aDNA analysis. Using an empirically based multi-proxy approach, Marta Cintas-Peña and Leonardo García Sanjuán assess the development of gender inequalities in Neolithic Iberia. They quantified, for a sample of 515 buried individuals from 21 sites, six bioarchaeological variables linked to individuals’ living conditions and seven mortuary variables linked to the social management of death. These data do not provide incontrovertible evidence of gender inequalities in Iberian Neolithic society, although a number of indicators do point to increasing differentiation of social roles, with, for example, women associated with ceramic vessels more than men in the Late Neolithic, and men becoming increasingly associated with violent hunting and warfare. It is consequently inadvisable to speculate here on the origins of patriarchy. European Journal of Archaeology 22 (4) 2019, 451–453