Helene Agerskov Rose

The rapidly expanding availability of palaeogenomic data provides new opportunities for archaeological chronology, yet genetic evidence is rarely incorporated independently within Bayesian chronological models. Here, we develop an approach for modelling cultural and genetic transitions separately, allowing their temporal relationship to be evaluated explicitly. We apply this framework to the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Denmark using 494 radiocarbon dates from 130 archaeological sites integrated with archaeological, isotopic and palaeogenomic evidence. Consistent with previous research, the preferred model places the rapid establishment of Neolithic cultural practices across Denmark around 4000 BC. The model further indicates that Mesolithic lifeways persisted for several generations, while European farmer ancestry appears 223-515 years after the introduction of Neolithic cultural practices in western Denmark and 324-474 years after in eastern Denmark (68.3% probability). Dietary patterns also differ significantly by genetic ancestry after accounting for chronology, while strontium isotope variation suggests possible differences in landscape use between hunter-gatherer and farming communities. The introduction of Neolithic practices, persistence of Mesolithic lifeways and population turnover therefore represent overlapping rather than synchronous processes. More broadly, the study demonstrates how palaeogenomic evidence can provide independent chronological information within Bayesian models, offering a transferable approach for disentangling cultural and population change by modelling these processes separately and evaluating their temporal relationship.

Describing and interpreting spatiotemporal patterns in human culture has been a central focus of anthropology and archaeology for over a century. Recent ethnographic studies have highlighted the complexity of the processes generating these patterns, including isolation-by-distance, homophily, and common descent. However, investigating these processes in prehistoric archaeology remains challenging. Here we make use of a new interdisciplinary database and a combined dataset of ancient DNA (aDNA) genomic sequences to analyse the relationship between spatiotemporal patterns in cultural and genomic variation, by testing whether broadly defined clusters of genomic affinities correspond to spatiotemporal changes in burial rites, while controlling for other factors, using a Gaussian process model. We use data from the Big Interdisciplinary Archaeological Database (BIAD), linking mortuary information from ∼4,200 individuals with genetic ancestry and mobility data inferred from over 1,300 human genomes, from Western Eurasia ∼10,000-2000 BP. By integrating and modelling these diverse datasets, we aim to provide a detailed understanding of how genomic history intersects with cultural evolution, offering new insights into the dynamics behind these complex processes, and the extent to which genes and culture are transmitted in parallel. In the case of burial orientation, we found that cultural affiliation was the main factor accounting for variation with little to no role for ancestry, while for body position the picture was more mixed but cultural affiliation also played an important role.

In 2021, the PR7 timber trackway across the raised bog at Diepholz, Lower Saxony, was re-examined. It can now be dated securely by Bayesian modelling to the second half of the 25th century BCE, obviously contemporary with smaller camps in the microregion. The necessity to construct a trackway seems to coincide with a shift to wetter conditions in the northern Lake Dümmer lowland region and towards more diverse settlement pattern. The comparison of our results with trackways and environmental developments in the Campemoor south of the Dümmer indicates temporal differences in the reaction of local ecosystems to general climatic changes as well as in the trackway construction. In spite of that, on a macro level construction peaks of trackways in the northern European plain are identified, which should be analysed further in respect to environmental and societal changes.

Chronological frameworks based on artefact typologies are essential for interpreting the archaeological record, but they inadvertently treat transitions between phases as abrupt events and disregard the temporality of transformation processes within and between individual phases. This study presents an absolute chronological investigation of a dynamic material culture from Early Iron Age urnfields in Denmark. The chronological framework of Early Iron Age in Southern Scandinavia is largely unconstrained by absolute dating, primarily due to it coinciding with the so-called ‘Hallstatt calibration plateau’ (c.750 to 400 cal BC), and it is difficult to correlate it with Central European chronologies due to a lack of imported artefacts. This study applies recent methodological advances in radiocarbon dating and Bayesian chronological modelling, specifically a statistical model for wood-age offsets in cremated bone and presents the first large-scale radiocarbon investigation of regional material culture from Early Iron Age in Southern Jutland, Denmark. Dated material is primarily cremated bone from 111 cremation burials from three urnfields. The study presents absolute date ranges for 16 types of pottery and 15 types of metalwork, which include most of the recognised metalwork types from the period. This provides new insights into gradual change in material culture, when certain artefact types were in production and primary use, how quickly types were taken up and later abandoned, and distinguishing periods of faster and slower change. The study also provides the first absolute chronology for the period, enabling correlation with chronologies from other regions. Urnfields were introduced at the Bronze-Iron Age transformation, which is often assumed to have occurred c.530-500 BC. We demonstrate that this transformation took place in the 7^th century BC, however, which revives the discussion of whether the final Bronze Age period VI should be interpreted as a transitional phase to the Iron Age.

This study presents the first extensive radiocarbon dating programme of Bronze Age material from northern Germany, and it combines radiocarbon dates, relative typo-chronological date ranges, and stratigraphic data within a Bayesian chronological framework. We estimate the cemetery complex at Mang de Bargen (Bornhöved, distr. Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein) to be in use for more than two millennia, which is exceptionally long in northern Germany and in a wider European context. The site provides a unique insight into the dynamic nature of burial monuments and associated burial practices, from the Late Neolithic and into the Pre-Roman Iron Age (c. 2500–50 bc). The barrow building tradition lasted around a millennium (c. 2350 –1300 bc), with several barrows in concurrent use. The barrows were persistently re-used as burial ground, both within ‘living memory’ of the primary graves, but also long after. The burial intensity varied over the cemetery’s use-life, with distinct peaks in the Late Neolithic, when the first barrows were erected; in the Older Bronze Age when more barrows were erected; in the Younger Bronze Age, when secondary cremation graves were added to existing barrows; and finally in the Pre-Roman Iron Age, with the addition of an urnfield. The funerary rituals vary considerably over the period: from inhumation to cremation, and from primary and secondary graves in barrows to flat graves. Cremation was introduced in the 14th century bc but inhumation and cremation were used in parallel for around a century before the former ritual was abandoned c. 1300 bc. The study provides absolute chronological distributions of the grave types present at Mang de Bargen and shows them to be comparable to other sites at a regional and over-regional scale, successfully demonstrating how new types were quickly adopted across large parts of north-western Europe.

This article presents a series of recommendations for the publication of archaeological data, to improve their usability. These 12 recommendations were formulated by archaeological data experts who mined thousands of publications for different data types (including funerary practices, accelerator mass spectrometry dating, stable isotopes, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany and pathologies) during the initial construction of the Big Interdisciplinary Archaeological Database (BIAD). We also include data harmonisation vocabularies utilised for the integration of data from different recording systems. The case studies we cite to illustrate the recommendations are grounded in examples from the published literature and are presented in a problem/solution format. Though practically oriented towards the facilitation of efficient databasing, these recommendations – which we refer to as the BIAD Standards – are broadly applicable by those who want to extract scientific data from archaeological information, those who work with a specific region or theoretical focus and journal editors and manuscript authors. We anticipate that the use of the BIAD Standards will increase the usability, visibility, interoperability and longevity of published data and also increase the citations of those publications from which data were mined. The Standards will also help frame a unified foundation to support the continued integration of the natural sciences with archaeological research in the future.

Chronological frameworks based on artefact typologies are essential for interpreting the archaeological record, but they inadvertently treat transitions between phases as abrupt events and disregard the temporality of transformation processes within and between individual phases. This study presents an absolute chronological investigation of a dynamic material culture from Early Iron Age urnfields in Denmark. The chronological framework of Early Iron Age in Southern Scandinavia is largely unconstrained by absolute dating, primarily due to it coinciding with the so-called ‘Hallstatt calibration plateau’ (c.750 to 400 cal BC), and it is difficult to correlate it with Central European chronologies due to a lack of imported artefacts. This study applies recent methodological advances in radiocarbon dating and Bayesian chronological modelling, specifically a statistical model for wood-age offsets in cremated bone and presents the first large-scale radiocarbon investigation of regional material culture from Early Iron Age in Southern Jutland, Denmark. Dated material is primarily cremated bone from 111 cremation burials from three urnfields. The study presents absolute date ranges for 16 types of pottery and 15 types of metalwork, which include most of the recognised metalwork types from the period. This provides new insights into gradual change in material culture, when certain artefact types were in production and primary use, how quickly types were taken up and later abandoned, and distinguishing periods of faster and slower change. The study also provides the first absolute chronology for the period, enabling correlation with chronologies from other regions. Urnfields were introduced at the Bronze-Iron Age transformation, which is often assumed to have occurred c.530-500 BC. We demonstrate that this transformation took place in the 7^th century BC, however, which revives the discussion of whether the final Bronze Age period VI should be interpreted as a transitional phase to the Iron Age.

This study is first attempt to refine Early Iron Age absolute chronology, specifically the timing of the Hallstatt C-D transition in southern Germany, using Bayesian chronological modelling of radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates. The Hallstatt period (c.800–450 BC) marks the transition from prehistory to proto-history in Central Europe. The relative chronological framework for Hallstatt burials developed by the mid-twentieth century is still used today, but absolute dating is limited by the scarcity of dendrochronological dates and the perception that ¹⁴C dating in the Hallstatt period (HaC-HaD) is futile, due to the calibration plateau between c.750 and 400 cal BC. We present new AMS ¹⁴C dates on 16 HaC-HaD burials from a stratified sequence at Dietfurt an der Altmühl ‘Tennisplatz’ (Bavaria, Germany). This sequence is situated entirely on the ‘Hallstatt plateau’, but by combining ¹⁴C dating with osteological, stratigraphic, and typological information, we demonstrate that the plateau is no longer the ‘catastrophe’ for archaeological chronology once envisaged. Taking into account dendrochronological dating elsewhere, we show that at Dietfurt, the HaC-HaD transition almost certainly occurred before 650 cal BC, and most likely between 685 and 655 cal BC (68.3% probability), several decades earlier than usually assumed. We confirm the accuracy and robustness of this estimate by sensitivity testing. We suggest that it is now possible, and essential, to exploit the increased precision offered by AMS measurement and the IntCal20 ¹⁴C calibration curve to re-evaluate absolute chronologies in Early Iron Age Europe and equivalent periods in other regions.

Experimental studies have shown that significant carbon exchange occurs between bone-apatite and the pyre atmosphere during cremation, which can cause a calendar date offset between the radiocarbon (14C) event and the date of cremation. There are limited empirical data available to assess the magnitude of such wood-age offsets, but the aim of this paper is to test if they can be modeled statistically. We present new 14C dates on modern bone cremated in realistic open-air experiments and on archaeological samples of cremated bone and associated organic material. Experimental results demonstrate a wide range of carbon exchange with a mean of 58.6 ± 14.8%. Archaeological results indicate that the wood-age offsets have an approximately exponential distribution. We test whether the default Charcoal Outlier_Model in OxCal v4.3, developed to reduce the impact of wood-age offsets in dates of charcoal, is appropriate for cremated bone, but find that it slightly underestimates apparent offsets. To counter the intrinsic age of both pyre fuel and unburned bio-apatite, we instead propose a bespoke Cremation Outlier_Model, which combines an exponential distribution of calendar age offsets with a minimum offset, and provides better estimates of the actual dates of cremations.