Abstract The Carpathian area is rich in salt sources, including north of the mountains in Poland and Ukraine; in the foothills in Muntenia, Moldavia, and Bukovina; and in many parts of Transylvania, including the Maramureş. The best-known sources are those in Little Poland, at Wieliczka and Bochnia, where excavation has produced pottery believed to be connected with the boiling of brine (briquetage). The most important archaeological evidence, however, comes from Transylvania and Moldavia, where a series of sites have produced wattle fences and other constructions on or near salt wells. This chapter describes the nature of these sites and concentrates especially on a number of places where a unique technology was utilized involving large wooden troughs, perforated in the base, the perforations filled with pegs that were themselves pierced. These pegs could be manipulated to control the flow of water onto rock salt below. Experimental work has shown that this technology was highly efficient, with significant quantities of salt able to be produced with relatively little effort. The quantities involved suggest that such sites must have served to produce salt intended for export to saltless areas in the surrounding territories, rather than simply supplying local domestic needs.

Across prehistoric Europe several techniques were used to produce salt, including solar evaporation and the briquetage method. Here, the authors focus on a third technique used in Romania and western Ukraine. Building on excavations at Băile Figa and a series of wooden troughs found there, the authors conduct experiments to elucidate how these objects may have been used in salt production: to drip water onto rock salt surfaces to break them up; or to filter and/or concentrate brine by decanting and/or heating. The results demonstrate the troughs are ineffective at concentrating brine, but highly efficient at breaking up rock salt and cleaning the brine of insoluble impurities.

"Contrasts of the Nordic Bronze Age. Essays in honour of Christopher Prescott." Archaeological Journal, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

The debate over possible connections between Bronze Age Greece and the rest of the European continent, to which Jan Bouzek made major contributions throughout his career, is reviewed in the light of new con tributions and finds. Particularly important is recent work on the north Italian site of Frattesina. Other categories of evidence are considered in turn. In the light of these advances, it is possible to imagine a much more interconnected Bronze Age world than was possible 40 years ago.

Many sites in prehistoric Europe consist of densely occupied settlements, sometimes with potentially large populations. The question is whether or not these show incipient urbanism ("proto-urbanism"). This article looks at four cultural phenomena where this might be claimed: the mega-sites of the Trypillia culture in Ukraine and Moldova, the palatial centres of Bronze Age Crete and mainland Greece, tells in Hungary, and Late Bronze Age forts in various parts of Europe. While some of these certainly show complex social organization and (in the case of Aegean palace sites) administrative and religious elements, in temperate Europe there is little or nothing on which to base an assertion that the sites were urban in nature.

In August 1998 the German archaeological world was stunned when two amateur archaeologists found decorated gold-sheet ornaments on a hill in Bavaria north of Munich, near a farm named Bernstorf, in the commune of Kranzberg. A Bronze Age fortified enclosure was known there, local amateurs having excavated it earlier in the 1990s; later, permission was granted for gravel extraction, trees were cleared and it was in this disturbed area that the gold appeared. The authorities were quickly alerted. Both the Staatssammlung in Munich (Bavarian State Archaeological Museum) and the Bayerisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (BLfD, Bavarian State Office for Monument Care) took part in inspections and, subsequently, excavations. More gold, including a ‘diadem’, appeared and, in late September 1998, perforated lumps of amber. Then in November 2000, on the edge of an area under excavation by the BLfD, came the sensational discovery of two incised pieces of amber hailed as Mycenaean.

Connectivity in the ancient world has become a subject of such consuming interest in recent years that new publications on various aspects of the issue, pertaining to some area or period, appear with great regularity. Just in later European prehistory we have Continental connections: exploring cross-channel relationships (Anderson-Whymark et al. 2015), Exchange networks and local transformations (Alberti & Sabatini 2013) and Enclosed space—open society (Jaeger et al. 2012), to name but a few. One can hardly believe otherwise than that every part of the later prehistoric world was intimately involved, not only with its immediate neighbours but also with other areas near and far. Allied to this is the matter of colonialism and ‘post-colonial’ archaeology, with questions of hybridity, importation, local imitation and acculturation or adaptation; all these are things that loom large in these volumes and many others (e.g. Stockhammer 2012). The question of ‘-isations’, such as ‘Romanisation’, has been a concern of archaeologists for many years; here it is ‘-isations’ of the prehistoric Aegean world that are the focus of attention.

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The above paper by Ling and Stos-Gale raises interesting questions about the extent and effects of trans-continental trade and travel in the Bronze Age. Of course, there is nothing new in the suggestion that Scandinavia was closely linked to the eastern Mediterranean in this period: Kristian Kristiansen, and before him Jan Bouzek, Klavs Randsborg and Peter Schauer have been saying just that for many years (e.g. Bouzek 1966; Randsborg 1967; Schauer 1985; Kristiansen 1994). What is new is the two-fold suggestion that metal was travelling from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, as shown by metal analysis, and that this is reflected in the rock art by what are presented here as depictions of oxhide ingots.

In this paper methods for identifying inequality, and therefore elites, in the archaeological record are considered, especially the use of Gini coefficients. While this method has not so far been applied to Bronze Age situations, its use in other periods is well attested. For the Bronze Age, it is possible to recognise a number of elite identities, notably that of the warrior. This identity developed over the course of the period, reflecting changes in the type of warfare practised. Other identities are recognisable, but determining whether they are elite or not is a problematical issue.