For a long time, assessments and evaluations of the western Anatolian Early Bronze Age (EBA) have only been based on the excavation results of Tarsus, Karataş-Semayük, Beycesultan, Demircihüyük, and Troy. However, excavations and surface surveys carried out in the last two decades have increased our knowledge enormously. In particular, the excavations of Liman Tepe, Küllüoba, and Seyitömer have made an immense contribution to the establishment of a reliable West Anatolian EBA chronology. The surface surveys have also made it possible to define better the borders of the cultural areas and pottery zones of the region. Based on these new data, new theories are presented here on the cultural and socio-political development of the region, as well as on regional and inter-regional relationships during the EBA.

The Neolithic court tombs of Ireland display variation in the ways that their component parts – concave courts, linear galleries and individual cells – were combined and arranged. This variation has been interpreted in the past in terms of both the diffusion of ideas and the design requirements of their builders. In this article it is suggested that the analysis of these formalized components points to central themes of the social and ritual discourse that accompanied the tombs' construction and use, the symbolism of the tombs expressing alleged lineage relationships between the living community, its ancestors and the land. It is suggested that these communities were based on one or more corporate descent groups, in some cases combining with other social units to appropriate and exploit territory, the relationships between them being symbolized and idealized in the spatial layout of the tombs' orthostatic structures.

Although commentators have discussed myriad themes presented in the rich and extensive oeuvre of Childe, one of the topics that has been, in my view, seriously neglected is the topic of settlement types. In this article, I seek to make good this omission, starting from a consideration of The Danube in Prehistory. The basis of Childe's ideas on settlement types in the Neolithic and Copper Age of eastern Europe was a binary classification into ‘tells’ and ‘flat sites’ that, in turn, reflected a division between permanent and shifting cultivation and greater and lesser cultural complexity. However, the introduction into this debate of questions of trade, surplus production, and Neolithic ‘self-sufficiency’, as well as metallurgy and ritual, meant that the initial binary classification left a series of contradictions that Childe struggled to transcend in the last decade of his life.

This article considers Childe's career in Scotland, where he was Abercromby Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh University 1927–1946, and assesses his impact on Scottish archaeology and the Scottish archaeological community. Matters discussed include his development of teaching programmes and resources within the university, and his association with the Edinburgh League of Prehistorians. His excavation and fieldwork at Skara Brae and elsewhere, and his publications during this span, are considered. Childe's collaborations with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and the National Museum, especially during the Second World War, are reviewed. The archaeological achievements of some of his Edinburgh students are briefly summarized.

Using the case study of the Council of Europe's European Cultural Routes Project, this article examines if and how far supra-national rhetorics of cultural openness, inclusivity, and diversity become reality in terms of actual cultural heritage projects. Against this background, it conducts a critical examination of what is considered one of the flagships of European supranational cultural heritage projects, the Council of Europe's Santiago de Compostela Pilgrim Routes. It focuses on the specific implementation of the Council of Europe's supra-national message of cultural heritage in this project and in its accompanying guidebook. By placing the project in its historical context and comparing it to later additions to the European Cultural Routes Project, this article reflects on the development of a pan-European cultural identity paradigm over the last two decades.

Scandinavian rock art may in general be regarded as idealized depictions of a social world, not a direct description of concrete social matters. Even so, rock art does convey important social information that calls for more thorough comment. This study concerns almost 1700 ship depictions from western Sweden that include human representations. The average ship is depicted with a crew of six to thirteen individuals and these craft may have represented prevailing ideals about the crewing of ships. The large ship images with numerous crews in clearly defined positions may be depictions of war canoes, staged for special maritime events. The study shows that the visual proportions of the rock-art ships are similar to those of the prehistoric war canoe from Hjortspring, Denmark. It is argued that the praxis of pecking ships into the rocks could have served to manifest the agency of the maritime social world and, to some extent, to make this ideology more dominant.

This article presents six original letters from V. Gordon Childe and the draft replies by the archaeologist Ferenc László, written between 1923 and 1925. László worked at the Szekler (Székely) National Museum of Sf. Gheorghe and was known for his methodical excavations of the late Neolithic (Chalcolithic) painted pottery settlement of Ariuşd (Erősd). The correspondence provides new data on Childe's interest in the archaeology of Transylvania, especially as regards the existence in the area of prehistoric cultures with painted pottery, on which limited published information was available to him. In this article it will be shown that correspondence was one of the main methods Childe used to gather documentation for his book The Dawn of European Civilization.