Early human societies and their interactions with the natural world have been extensively explored in palaeoenvironmental studies across Central and Western Europe. Yet, despite an extensive body of scholarship, there is little consideration of the environmental impacts of proto-historic urbanisation. Typically palaeoenvironmental studies of Bronze and Iron Age societies discuss human impact in...

After the beginning of metal processing at the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, further knowledge of ore mining and smelting had spread from the Near East to central Europe. In the copper ore deposits of Schwaz, in the central part of the Alps, the oldest traces of copper mining derive from the early to middle Bronze Ages. Investigation of a middle to late Bronze Age (1410–920 c...

Neutron diffraction has been utilised as a noninvasive diagnostic tool to gain insight into the ancient metallurgic and manufacturing techniques employed for the production of three bronze age axes from archaic to late bronze age (20th to 13th Century BC). The analysed bronze artefacts are from the “Terramare” and other bronze age settlements near Modena, Italy. Neutron diffraction provides the...

The site of Kul Tepe is located near the city of Hadishahr, in Eastern Azerbaijan Province. It is an ancient multi-period mound, having an extension of about 6 hectares and rising 19 meters above the surrounding land. The second season of archeological excavations at the site, carried out in 2013, aimed at clarifying its chronology and its settlement organization. In the meantime it aimed at el...

Archaeological excavations in Romuald's Cave (Lim Channel, Istria, Croatia) have yielded evidence of human activity stretching back to the Middle Palaeolithic. This paper reports on recent Bronze Age/Early Iron Age discoveries uncovered during excavations as part of the Croatian National Science Foundation funded project: "Archaeological Investigations into the Late Pleistocene and Early Holoce...

Radiocarbon (carbon-14) data from the Aegean Bronze Age 1700-1400 B.C. show that the Santorini (Thera) eruption must have occurred in the late 17th century B.C. By using carbon-14 dates from the surrounding region, cultural phases, and Bayesian statistical analysis, we established a chronology for the initial Aegean Late Bronze Age cultural phases (Late Minoan IA, IB, and II). This chronology c...