New copper analysis technology suggests autochthonous southeastern sources. Rivalries for control of the trade network resulted in causewayed enclosures and fortified central sites. Escalating competition for the control of status sensitive prestige technology, flowing along this network, may have resulted in a more complex social organization than previously thought. The recently discovered textile fragment from an earthen long-barrow of the Neolithic in Moravia, is among the earliest well preserved cloth fragments in Europe. Results of the impending material analysis and the first AMS date of a European textile from this time period will be presented.
Soils are the primary physical contexts of archaeological deposits.
Initial OCR analyses of the Rmiz site in the Czech Republic demonstrates the utility of this procedure for archaeological studies. The definition of land-forms, resource availability, and the social visibility of material culture converge to help focus and bound archaeological interpretations of past cultural events. In terms of knowledge, skills, and resource requirements, the extraction of metals, and the production and distribution of metal artifacts was the most complex technical undertaking of prehistory. Metallurgical analysis show that the manufacturing methods, the design ideas and the metals themselves used in a single product may have very different origins. The craftsmen knew precisely what they wanted if some special requirement was not available locally, and how to obtain it over great distances if necessary.