Presenting Counterpoints to the Dominant Terrestrial Narrative of European Prehistory
Koch, John T. ; Fauvelle, Mikael LU
; Cunliffe, Barry
and Ling, Johan
(2025)
In Maritime Encounters
1.
- Abstract
- Challenges the terrestrial focus of European prehistory, emphasizing the significance of seascapes, maritime networks, and coastal societies in shaping prehistoric Europe.
For many years now, the main thrust of European prehistory has followed a fundamentally terrestrial plot line. This terrestrial paradigm has undervalued the story of Europe as a peninsula between the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic, and likewise downplayed that of many navigable rivers that reach deeply inland and the large lakes important for travel and subsistence. In vast areas of Europe the survival of incoming groups depended on coping and interacting with a seascape as much as a landscape. From the late Mesolithic onwards, in regions such as... (More) - Challenges the terrestrial focus of European prehistory, emphasizing the significance of seascapes, maritime networks, and coastal societies in shaping prehistoric Europe.
For many years now, the main thrust of European prehistory has followed a fundamentally terrestrial plot line. This terrestrial paradigm has undervalued the story of Europe as a peninsula between the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic, and likewise downplayed that of many navigable rivers that reach deeply inland and the large lakes important for travel and subsistence. In vast areas of Europe the survival of incoming groups depended on coping and interacting with a seascape as much as a landscape. From the late Mesolithic onwards, in regions such as Scandinavia, the British Isles and the Mediterranean, most occupation was coastal; seas or rivers provided the most important infrastructure for transport, exchange and communication. Know-how about seascapes, boatbuilding, navigation and maritime networks had a profound impact on social organisation, ritual monuments and iconography, and the spread of materials and ideas, enabled by the adaptation of languages to these new environments. Given these facts the time is long overdue to critique the dominant terrestrial paradigm of European prehistory. This book is the first in the multi-author series Maritime Encounters, outputs of the major six-year (2022–2028) international research initiative funded by Sweden’s central bank. Our programme is based on a maritime perspective, a counterpoint to prevailing land-based vantages on Europe’s prehistory. In the Maritime Encounters project a highly international cross-disciplinary team has embarked on a diverse range of research goals to provide a more detailed and nuanced story of how prehistoric societies realised major and minor sea crossings, organised long-distance exchange, and adapted to ways of life by the sea in prehistory. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/fbd6bfb6-a79a-43a6-9ac8-64f2aef77e78
- editor
- Koch, John T.
; Fauvelle, Mikael
LU
; Cunliffe, Barry
and Ling, Johan
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025
- type
- Book/Report
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Bronze Age, Neolithic, Maritime archaeology, European prehistory
- in
- Maritime Encounters
- volume
- 1
- pages
- 240 pages
- publisher
- Oxbow Books
- ISBN
- 979-8-88857-185-9
- 979-8-88857-184-2
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- fbd6bfb6-a79a-43a6-9ac8-64f2aef77e78
- date added to LUP
- 2025-04-16 16:36:03
- date last changed
- 2025-05-13 03:28:06
@book{fbd6bfb6-a79a-43a6-9ac8-64f2aef77e78,
abstract = {{<b>Challenges the terrestrial focus of European prehistory, emphasizing the significance of seascapes, maritime networks, and coastal societies in shaping prehistoric Europe.</b><br/><br/>For many years now, the main thrust of European prehistory has followed a fundamentally terrestrial plot line. This terrestrial paradigm has undervalued the story of Europe as a peninsula between the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic, and likewise downplayed that of many navigable rivers that reach deeply inland and the large lakes important for travel and subsistence. In vast areas of Europe the survival of incoming groups depended on coping and interacting with a seascape as much as a landscape. From the late Mesolithic onwards, in regions such as Scandinavia, the British Isles and the Mediterranean, most occupation was coastal; seas or rivers provided the most important infrastructure for transport, exchange and communication. Know-how about seascapes, boatbuilding, navigation and maritime networks had a profound impact on social organisation, ritual monuments and iconography, and the spread of materials and ideas, enabled by the adaptation of languages to these new environments. Given these facts the time is long overdue to critique the dominant terrestrial paradigm of European prehistory. This book is the first in the multi-author series Maritime Encounters, outputs of the major six-year (2022–2028) international research initiative funded by Sweden’s central bank. Our programme is based on a maritime perspective, a counterpoint to prevailing land-based vantages on Europe’s prehistory. In the Maritime Encounters project a highly international cross-disciplinary team has embarked on a diverse range of research goals to provide a more detailed and nuanced story of how prehistoric societies realised major and minor sea crossings, organised long-distance exchange, and adapted to ways of life by the sea in prehistory.}},
editor = {{Koch, John T. and Fauvelle, Mikael and Cunliffe, Barry and Ling, Johan}},
isbn = {{979-8-88857-185-9}},
keywords = {{Bronze Age; Neolithic; Maritime archaeology; European prehistory}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Book Editor}},
publisher = {{Oxbow Books}},
series = {{Maritime Encounters}},
title = {{Presenting Counterpoints to the Dominant Terrestrial Narrative of European Prehistory}},
url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/217305425/Koch_et_al_2025_-_Presenting_Counterpoints_ME1.pdf}},
volume = {{1}},
year = {{2025}},
}