Perspectives on Socio-Environmental Transformations in Ancient Europe

This open access book brings together key issues from transformative processes and events across Europe (and in some cases beyond) from 15,000 to 1 BCE. This volume covers the research output produced by the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1266 "Scales of Transformation" - the first interdisciplinary centre to diachronically investigate transformations in past societies with a summary of their individual aspects from the Late Palaeolithic to the Roman Period.

Following the introduction, the book is divided into three main sections: In "Identification of anatomies of socio-environmental transformation", the concept of scales of transformations is first explained, and the various parameters of transformational change are identified. This is followed by "Expressions of socio-environmental transformations: from climate preconditions to decision making", in which transformation processes are illustrated with individual examples. The third major part of the book deals with "Perspectives on decision making processes in socio-environmental transformations". In conclusion, the results are framed in a broad temporal framework, and patterns of socio-environmental change are presented across common time frames from the Eastern Mediterranean to Scandinavia. This book is of interest to researchers in archaeology and palaeoecology.

Johannes Müller (PhD, University of Freiburg, 1990) is a Professor and Director of the Institute for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at Kiel University, Germany. He is the founding director of the Johanna Mestorf Academy, Speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre 'Scales of Transformation: Human-environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies' and of the Excellence Cluster 'ROOTS - Social, Environmental, and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies'. He conducts research on Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, including the challenge of interlinking natural, social, life sciences, and the humanities within an anthropological approach to archaeology. He has carried out intensive fieldwork in international teams, e.g., on Trypillia mega-sites in Eastern Europa, the Late Neolithic tell site of Okoliste in Bosnia-Hercegovina, different Neolithic domestic and burial sites in Northern Germany, and Early Bronze Age sites in Greater Poland. He has also conducted ethnoarchaeological fieldwork, e.g., in India. Within the Kiel Graduate School 'Human Development in Landscapes', now the Young Academy of ROOTS, and the Scandinavian Graduate School 'Dialogues of the Past', Johannes Müller also supports international PhD projects.
Wiebke Kirleis is Professor of Environmental Archaeology/Archaeobotany at the Institute for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology at Kiel University, Germany. She is deputy speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre 'Scales of Transformation: Human-Environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies' and member of the Cluster of Excellence 'ROOTS'. As an archaeobotanist, she is interested in all kinds of plant-related human activities, be they subsistence strategies or food processing, with their socio-cultural implications, as well as the reconstruction of human-environment interactions in the past. Geographically, her research areas span from northern Europe all way to Indonesia.
Nicole Taylor is one of the Scientific Coordinators of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1266 "Scales of Transformation". An archaeologist by training, she received her doctorate as a Marie Curie Fellow in the EU project "Forging Identities: The Mobility of Culture in Bronze Age Europe". Her research has focused on the European Bronze Age, primarily in Central Europe, with foci on settlement archaeology and questions on prehistoric identities through the combination of social and isotopic analyses.