There are long-standing debates on the social organisation and interactions of the first farmers of west-central Europe (the Linear Pottery culture/LBK, c. 5500–5000 BCE). Here we focus on a specific type of ceramic ware, Limburg pottery, whose morpho-stylistic features and bone temper stand in stark contrast to typical LBK pottery. Despite this, most Limburg vessels are found in LBK settlements. Researchers have proposed a variety of interpretations, ranging from pottery made by hunter-gatherers, to special-purpose vessels made by early farmers. This article provides a high-resolution reconstruction of the production sequences, using Limburg pottery from the Aisne Valley (Picardy, France), to address the identity of its producers, their learning networks and distribution channels, and the social practices associated with these artefacts. While Limburg pottery from the Aisne Valley forms a coherent stylistic group, it comprises two technical traditions, with one group of producers only making Limburg vessels, and the other usually making LBK vessels but occasionally producing Limburg vessels. Both groups display similar patterns of use, including dairy processing. Limburg vessels were therefore not marginal in LBK contexts, but functionally embedded in food practices rooted in farming lifeways. We hence propose a new model for interpreting the emergence and development of Limburg pottery, emphasising its role as ‘boundary objects’ within LBK communities and with communities outside of the LBK area. Ultimately, this socio-cognitive approach to pottery offers a deeper understanding of the social processes that shaped the cultural landscape of western Europe in the second half of the 6th millennium.

This report presents 50 AMS radiocarbon dates from wood charcoal samples extracted from newly uncovered Neolithic settlement layers at the archaeological site of Amzabegovo (Sveti Nikole, North Macedonia). It constitutes the largest radiocarbon dataset from a Neolithic site in North Macedonia. The calibrated dates span 6391–5635 cal BC (95.4%), falling within the Early and Middle Neolithic. With an inferred occupation onset potentially as early as 6391–6236 cal BC (95.4%), Amzabegovo provides the earliest securely dated Neolithic settlement layers in the Ovče Pole catchment area and serves as an important chronological reference point for Early Neolithic expansion in the Vardar River basin. The consideration of the radiocarbon dates from the American excavations led by Marija Gimbutas in 1969–1970 highlights both the possibilities and the limitations of juxtaposing the old and new datasets. Future analyses of the archaeological stratigraphy and material from Amzabegovo hold the potential to offer insights into the Neolithic period in the southern Balkans and beyond, with the new radiocarbon dates significantly enhancing our understanding of the region’s chronological developments.

Recent advances in ancient DNA and isotope analysis have enabled archaeologists to detect migration events in the distant past. Yet, novel approaches evaluating the cultural impact of these migrations are lacking. As a result, archaeologists continue to debate problematic culture-historical scenarios in which migrants rapidly supplant passive indigenous communities. This study outlines a bottom-up, quantitative approach to prehistoric migrations. This approach uses Bayesian chronological modelling to investigate whether migrating and indigenous communities co-existed. In addition, a novel probabilistic comparison of ceramic technology traces whether cultural knowledge is exchanged between potters in these communities. This approach is applied to the emergence of Corded Ware communities in the Netherlands during the 3rd millennium BC. The outcomes demonstrate that this process was not a rapid replacement of indigenous groups by migrants, as sometimes stated. Instead, migrants likely co-existed with indigenous communities for centuries, learned ceramic production from them, and incorporated this knowledge into the production of characteristic Corded Ware ceramics. Furthermore, the outcomes suggest this scenario was likely commonplace for prehistoric migration in the 3rd and 4th millennia BC. As such, this study provides new approaches and insights which enable archaeologists to shed light on prehistoric migration, talk back to archaeogenetics on an equal footing, and contribute to broader societal debates on migration.

We present here the extraordinary find of an Early Neolithic mass deposition of headless human bodies at the LBK settlement site of Vráble-Veľké Lehemby. While various scientific analyses are under way, we present the archaeological context of this find and preliminary osteological and taphonomic observations. We discuss these in the light of a patterned and meaningful depositional complexity in Vráble, which embeds into a larger corpus of human remains in ditches surrounding LBK settlements in central Europe. Furthermore, we discuss the significance of the find for the overall discourse on the crisis at the end of the LBK period with regard to the role of violence and the nature of Early Neolithic cosmologies.

Neolithic developments in central Europe cannot be adequately described through narratives of large-scale sweeping migrations and uniform sociocultural transformations. With such accounts, diversity and hybridisation are commonly relegated to the frontiers, whereas the inner landscapes are portrayed as homogeneously transformed. This paper highlights the biases that sustain this broad-brush image and, drawing on regional case studies, presents the increasing evidence that challenges it. Inhabitants of persistent enclaves maintained distinctive material representations, subsistence strategies, and hypothetically retained specific biological ancestry long after the surrounding regions had adopted the trajectories emphasised in conventional Neolithic schemes. Building on these observations, the paper introduces the concept of inner peripheries: regions situated among the canonical core zones, yet only loosely integrated into their networks. Shaped by specific environmental constraints and social processes, these inner peripheries constituted a structurally important component of broader Neolithic dynamics in central Europe and should not be sidelined. The concept provides a framework for understanding how alternative pathways of development coexisted with more conventional narratives and thus offers a necessary corrective to prevailing interpretative models.

Substantial pits of Mesolithic date are being recognised with ever greater frequency in lowland Britain and adjacent regions of continental Europe. Often without associated artefactual or faunal assemblages, but containing complex fill sequences, the purpose of these pits has proved difficult to establish. Here, we present the results of excavation on what is to date the largest cluster of substantial Mesolithic pits discovered in the British Isles, at Linmere, Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire. An important assemblage of faunal material was recovered from the pits. This, the morphology of the features, their landscape setting adjacent to a spring-fed stream system, and analogy with other large pit systems, are used to support an argument that these were pit-fall traps used in the hunting of the largest herbivores of the time: aurochs (wild cattle). Aggregation and feasting are implied by the character of this activity. Recuts in the partially silted pits, often containing deposits of animal bone, are linked to notions of spiritual reciprocity and commemoration. The creation and subsequent engagement with these pits is seen as tied into the construction and maintenance of social relations at scale (though gathering and consumption), along with matters of place-making, and relationship work with animals and spirits/meta-persons.