Pile dwellings have been explored over a vast region for a number of
decades now. This has led to the development of different ways, methods,
and even schools of under-water and peat-bog excavation practices and
data analysis techniques under the influence of different research
traditions in individual countries. On the one hand, these and other
factors can limit our understanding of the past, whilst on the other
hand they can also open up further avenues of interpretation.
By collecting the papers presented at the 2016 session of the EAA in
Vilnius, this book aims to take this diversity as an opportunity. The
geographical scope extends from the Baltic to Russia, Belarus, Albania,
North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Germany, Austria and
Switzerland to France.
The volume thus provides a current insight into international research
into life in and around a vast array of prehistoric waterscapes.
Extensive multidisciplinary research carried out in recent years has
provided new data with regard to the anthropogenic influence on the
landscapes around Neolithic and Bronze Age pile dwellings, which allows
us to characterize in more detail the lifestyles of the settlements'
inhabitants, the peculiarities of the ecological niche and the
interaction between humans and their environment. The volume also
contains various case studies that demonstrate the importance of
scientific analyses for the study of settlements between land and
water.
Overall, the volume presents an important new body of data and
international perspectives on the settlement of European waterscapes.
