Books published by BAR Publishing

The genesis for this conference, and its subsequent proceedings, came from discussions held in the newly formed Archaeological Discussion group, a subgroup of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works' Objects specialty group, about the definition of an archaeological conservator and the directions in which the field was evolving.

Proceedings of the 19th Meeting of the European Association of South Asian Archaeology in Ravenna, Italy, July 2007.

This book is intended as an introduction to the archaeology of the easternmost regions of Greek settlement in the Hellenistic period, from the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BC, through to the last Greek-named kings of north-western India somewhere around the late first century BC, or even early first century AD. The 'Far East' of the Hellenistic world - a region comprising areas of what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the former-Soviet Central Asian Republics - is best known from the archaeological remains of sites such as Ai Khanoum, which attest the endurance of Greek cultural and political presence in the region in the three centuries following the conquests of Alexander the Great. The 'Hellenistic Far East' has become the standard catch-all term for a network of autonomous and semiautonomous Greek-ruled states in the region east of the Iranian Plateau, which remained in only intermittent political contact with the rest of the Hellenistic world to the west - although cultural and commercial contacts could at times be very direct. These states, their rulers and populations, feature only occasionally in Greek and Latin historical sources. The two great challenges of HFE studies lie in integrating scholarship on this region into work on the Hellenistic world as a whole in a more than superficial way; and in understanding the complex cultural and ethnic relationships between the dominant Greek elites of the region and their neighbours, both within the Greek kingdom of Bactria and in its Central Asian hinterland.

Many people have said none, but Larry Shenfield's title answers that question. He undertakes a re-evaluation of the archaeological, architectural and artistic evidence for building, and concludes that there is - as seems intrinsically likely - a Rome core to its structure.

This volume contains a selection of papers which were presented at the Fe09 Conference in June 2009. The conference was held as part of the 'Coalbrookdale 300' celebrations (Shropshire, England), commemorating the tercentenary of Abraham Darby's success with coke-smelted iron. This momentous event was a truly world-changing moment in human history; and its origins, consequences and wider impacts were the subject of debate and discussion throughout the conference.Foreword by Sir Neil Cossons

Principally through the use of landscape archaeology, this work explores the medieval landscape of west Wales, particularly the 'cwmwd' of Gwinionydd in the central Teifi valley, Ceredigion. The main focus of the study is to recreate the 'cwmwd-maenor-tref', territorial system administered by a pre-conquest Welsh aristocracy and locate native tenures along with their specific agricultural regimes. A retroactive analysis of estate structures, such as those at Llanfair and Llanllyr, establishes their medieval antecedence and they are considered alongside the monastic granges of Whitland, Strata Florida and Talley abbeys. This project draws upon techniques including field survey, remote sensing, geophysics, mapping and terrain modelling using Geographic Information Systems and Lidar data. These are complemented by excavation to target and clarify the interpretation of the survey results. The work can be viewed as a trans-disciplinary landscape analysis that has implications for future approaches to the study of rural Wales: this successful study of an apparently inscrutable rural landscape is relevant for research and curatorial disciplines alike.

This monograph although concentrating on the Southern High Plains area (USA) represents a tremendous step forward in understanding fire technology and hot rock technology and their role and relationship within hunter-gatherer societies. It not only elevates the status of hearths and hearthstones as worthy of study within hunter-gatherer research but equally important, also presents new avenues for that research.

The description of Kent contained in "Domesday Book" does not stand alone. At the time of the "Survey of the whole of England" - the survey conducted in 1086 by order of king William I - there were four ancient churches existing in Kent: Christ Church and Saint Augustine's in Canterbury, Saint Andrew's in Rochester, Saint Martin's in Dover. From the archives of three of them (all except Dover) copies of documents survive which are more or less closely related to the Survey. The aim of the present book is to bring together all the relevant written evidence, so as to enable a better understanding of it. A few documents are printed here which have not been printed before. For those which have, this book provides a more accurate text than any previous edition. For example, the transcription of the "Domesday Book" text given here includes a few words which have become undecipherable in the original, but which were still legible when a copy was made in the 1760s. That is the same copy used by Edward Hasted, whose "History of Kent" (1778-99) was the first serious attempt to reconnect the written evidence with the actual landscape. For anyone interested in the workings of the Survey, or in the topography of medieval Kent, this book will be indispensable.

A Gazetteer representing practical field observations of most of the prehistoric Standing Stones in Great Britain and some 'Other Stones' which post-date AD 1. The list also includes 34 prehistoric Standing Stones known to be extant but which the author was unable to visit, a list of Standing Stones of unknown provenance, and of interesting 'Other Stones'. The motivation for this work was the Wimblestone (Somerset, ST434585) which is an extant prehistoric Standing Stone close to the author's childhood home and which started his interest in these monuments. In September 1996 the author set out to find, visit and sketch the prehistoric Standing Stones in Great Britain and soon discovered that there was no readily available, and comprehensive list or lists of Standing Stones and their exact locations. Therefore, with numerous Standing Stones unknown to the author and others which were very difficult to find, the author decided to attempt to produce a readily usable gazetteer of as many as possible of the prehistoric Standing Stones in Great Britain (with the National Grid reference number for each) together with colour sketches, photographs, field records and relevant information gathered from various sources; deliberately excluded were stone circles, long stone rows, burial chambers and dolmens. Some Standing Stones were not visited because they were inaccessible for various reasons and these are separately listed. These and the other Standing Stones and some other stone monuments which postdate AD 1 are recorded in the gazetteers but are excluded from the analysis. Apparently unrecorded Standing Stones continue to be found, making the production of a totally comprehensive gazetteer of all the prehistoric Standing Stones in Great Britain the work of many lifetimes.

Essays in Honour of Paramount Chief Thomas Lenana Mlanga Marealle II (1915-2007)

18 papers from the 1st Red Sea Project, held at the British Museum in October 2002.

This study highlights a range of theoretical problems concerning Levantine Iron Age archaeology. Following the introduction, Chapter 2 provides the background for the study as a whole, tracing the archaeological study of the Iron Age southern Levant from the early nineteenth century to the present day. This highlights how and why archaeologists have changed their ideas about the narrative in question through time whilst also retaining a number of key ideas. Chapter 3 traces the archaeological study of 'Edomite' archaeology in the southern Levant in particular. Chapter 4 begins the critique of the key ideas and assumptions that underpin 'Edomite' archaeology by demonstrating that the individual historical sources used as evidence when discussing the 'Edomites' are not simply sources of factual information about the Iron Age. Chapter 5 takes a similarly critical approach to the methods of archaeological excavation, interpretation, and analysis used in south Levantine Iron Age archaeology. Chapter 6 completes the critique of the central ideas that form the basis of 'Edomite' archaeology by discussing the central tenets of archaeological theory concerning the relationship between material culture and identity that are required to support this idea. Chapter 7 outlines the methodology used in this study, which was designed to test whether specific ceramic types do in fact support the present interpretation of the late Iron Age southern Levant. The results of the analysis using this methodology are presented in Chapter 8. In Chapter 9 the implications of the preceding chapters are discussed and an interpretation of the evidence which does not rely on traditional problematic assumptions will be presented. Final conclusions are drawn in Chapter 10.

Limina/Limites: Archaeologies, histories, islands and borders in the Mediterranean (365-1556) 1Volume 1 of a new BAR series entitled 'Limina/Limites: Archaeologies, histories, islands and borders in the Mediterranean (365-1556)' which seeks to invite editors of proceedings of conferences and workshops, authors of individual monographs and collective studies which, regardless of their discipline, are targeted at the integration of diverse data sources and systems oriented at a global reconstruction, and geared to long-term trends and to Mediterranean-wide spatial dimensions. This first volume in the 'Limina/Limites' presents the proceedings of the conference 'Transjordan in 12-13th Centuries and the Frontiers of the Medieval Mediterranean', held in Florence between 6-8 November 2008.

This work investigates the contribution of economic activity to Chinese early urbanization, through a case study of the lithic production at the Neolithic Taosi site in Shanxi, China (c. 2500-1900BCE). The analysis is based on information collected from fieldwork experiments with replicating stone tool manufacture. Lithic production played an important role in the urbanization at Taosi, which developed into the primary political, economic and ceremonial centre in the Linfen Basin. Due to its central position in the region, a high level of social complexity, and its spatial layout with a rammed-earth enclosure, Taosi represents a milestone in the process of early urbanism in ancient China.

Archaeological excavation of about 11ha of land at Tower's Fen, Thorney, Peterborough (England), investigated part of an extensive pattern of ditched enclosures and fields associated with several waterholes and two ponds. One large pit, which may have been a waterhole, yielded Early Bronze Age pottery and is radiocarbon dated to the terminal 3rd millennium BC. Two other dates from the ponds came out at around 1500-1300 BC. The other features were probably also Middle to Late Bronze Age although the limited quantity of pottery was not datable precisely. Waterlogged material recovered from the deeper features included most of an unusual wooden tub or bucket, as well as other pieces of worked wood. The palaeo-environmental evidence from pollen, plant macro-fossils, insects and charred plant remains indicated that the land supported a mosaic of woodland, scrub, arable fields, meadow and short grazed grassland. A wide variety of trees was present, particularly wet-loving species such as willow and alder, and there was abundant evidence for coppicing. Nearby excavations at Pode Hole, and the wider picture provided by plotted cropmarks, indicate that the site formed part of an extensive prehistoric landscape. It is suggested that the Bronze Age agricultural landscape developed piecemeal and was based upon a mixed arable and pastoral economy. This contrasts with Fengate and other landscapes of this period where large-scale land divisions have been related to intensive livestock management. The sparse evidence for contemporaneous settlement is typical of many sites of this period.Written by Andrew Mudd and Ben Pears.Edited by Andy Richmond, Gary Coates, Andy Chapman and Pat ChapmanWith contributions from Maisie Taylor, Nick Branch, Barbara Silva, Christopher Green, Scott Elias, Alys Vaughan-Williams, Iñaki Valcarcel, Imogen Poole, Karen Deighton, Stuart Needham, Andy Chapman, Pat Chapman and Steve Critchley.Illustrations by Jacqueline Harding and Pat Walsh with Steven J. Allen.

Registro Arqueológico y Evolución Social Antes de la Edad del Hierro / Archaeological Record and Social Evolution before the Iron AgeA study of the prehistory of the Balearic Islands, Spain, with regard to the archaeological record of the region and its social evolution before the Iron Age.Authors: Víctor M. Guerrero Ayuso, Manuel Calvo Trias, Jaume García Rosselló and Simón Gornés Hachero

This study is primarily concerned with computer-generated reconstruction models of architecture. It offers a collection of possible methodologies for dealing with individual problems concerning visualisation aims and highlights methods of adding value to virtual models in archaeology. Several avenues of enquiry are therefore explored, such as: What use have virtual models in archaeology?; How are they perceived?; Who is the intended audience?; Which applied ethical issues exist?; How can ethical awareness lead to added value? How are these models created? There is no easy answer to any of these but this work approaches the issues through a series of projects. These are international, but exhibit a European focus, which is also mirrored by the three case studies. The three case studies were selected because of their differences but they also have two properties in common: they were all begun at approximately the same time (2001) and they all pay attention to ethical issues. Otherwise an effort was made to find projects which were produced and concerning sites in three different countries: Casa del Centenario in Pompeii (Italy), Ename (Belgium) and Avebury (U.K.). The projects are concerned with architecture from three different periods, i.e. a Roman house, a medieval settlement (with the focus on St. Lawrence's church) and a Neolithic monument complex. The projects also had different aims: while the Casa del Centenario was primarily intended as a museum application and as a visualisation tool for the restorers, in the Ename 974 project the reconstructions were to illustrate the work and interpretation in progress for the local population while the church was closed due to excavation and building research. The model of Avebury was designed for research purposes and not intended for public display. So far, no comprehensive synopsis of different approaches with a critical stance on computer-generated visualisations has ever been attempted and this work provides a detailed and stimulating overview and analysis and serves as a foundation for further research.

Pottery Workshop or Pottery Style?Recent excavations in the region of Achaea in the northern Peloponnese (Greece) have brought to light new evidence on the Thapsos-class of vases. Their identification amongst the grave goods as well as the dedications in the two important sanctuary sites of the area provide a starting point for reassessing the question of this particular ware's identity and its main production centre. After a brief introduction on the aims and scope of the study, the history of the research, the distribution of Thapsos-class ware in Achaea, its technical features and a short discussion on chronological issues, the various fabrics of the Thapsos-class ware attested in Achaea are first presented and analyzed, and then examined and discussed with particular respect to their resemblance with the Achaean Late Geometric workshops producing the impressed and fine painted wares. Next the similarities, as well as the differences, of vases of this class recovered mainly from Ithaca, Delphi and Thera but also from other areas of mainland Greece are set out. A full catalogue of the Thapsos class ware data derived so far from Achaea is submitted with photographs and drawings of almost every sherd and vase. Finally the results of a non destructive elemental ceramic analysis using micro X-RAY fluorescence spectroscopy (m-XRF) applied to various fabrics and wares from Achaean pottery of the Late Geometric period is published in the Appendix. A more fundamental aim of the present study is to bring forward new aspects for investigation concerning this ceramic group, so closely associated as it is with the foundation and life of the Greek colonies in the west.With a contribution by A. Sakalis, D. Tsiafakis and N. Tsirliganis titled 'Non destructive elemental ceramic analysis from Achaea using X-Ray fluorescence spectroscopy (m-XRF)'.

It seems that, over recent years, the term landscape has received much discussion, albeit based on the mechanics of landscape. What has been omitted is the construction of landscape in terms of aesthetics, knowledge, emotion, interpretation and application. Although landscape is 'there', we control the imagination and cognitive construction of it. Fundamentally, landscape can be defined as a series of 'spaces' that become 'places', and, within this volume (the product of a number of conference sessions run between 1997-99 by the Theoretical Archaeology Group), 17 contributors re-address the importance of space/place and suggest both may be considered as part of an archaeological assemblage. Some chapters also attempt to place rock art into a narrative, placing its historical value into a prehistoric context.

An environmental and archaeological multiproxy study of burial mounds in the Eurasian steppe zoneThis volume presents a series of archaeological and scientific studies focusing on Kurgans in Hungary and Russia. Kurgans are the burial mounds of Bronze and Copper Age societies that can be traced back to the 4th Millennium cal BC. The Kurgans of the Eurasian steppe zone preserve palaeosoils and represent a fantastic resource for investigating Holocene environmental changes. The studies presented in this volume principally focus on the Lyukas-halom and Csíp?-halom kurgans in Hungary and the Skvortsovsky and Labazovsky kurgans in Russia, though there are also several papers that explore the 'wider world' of the Kurgans. On the whole, this volume brings together papers on a multi- and interdisciplinary scale, and sheds light on the current status and state-of-art of kurgan studies.

Despite the great fascination that the collapse of past civilizations holds for the public, the process of decreasing social complexity has received surprisingly little attention from archaeologists, especially when compared to the voluminous research on increasing complexity. And most studies of the process have been oriented toward understanding complexity by seeing how it fails, not toward understanding how a different, "simpler" society emerged from a more complex society. But if there are specific motivations and particular processes for decreasing complexity - if "collapse" is a solution rather than a problem - then clearly there is much to be learned from examining the societies that develop during periods of seeming decline. This research study examines how one complex society reorganized to a relatively simple society, recognizing the simultaneously constructive and destructive aspects of the process. The study focuses on the developments during the late Roman Empire through late Antiquity, a time of decreasing social complexity in the ancient Mediterranean world beginning in the late 2nd and continuing to the mid 6th centuries AD, on the basis of a detailed archaeological study of one city and its territory, Volterra, in Tuscany, Italy.

The chronological and geographical focus of this volume is medieval northern Europe, from the 6th to the 15th centuries. The contributors examine the sometimes arbitrary social factors which resulted in people being deliberately, accidentally or temporarily categorised as 'disabled' within their society, in ways that are peculiar to the medieval period. Health and disease are not static and unchanging; they are subject to cultural construction, manipulation and definition. Medieval ideas of healthy and unhealthy, as these papers show, were not necessarily - or even usually - comparable to modern approaches. Each of the papers represented in this volume assesses social constructs of health and ill-health in different guises within the medieval period.

Central Asia is a wide subject of research in the archaeological and historical studies of the Ancient World. Scholars have usually focused on the complex and diverse questions that resulted from the analysis of the historical realities of this key region during Antiquity. The purpose of this book is to undertake an approach to the polymorphic and multiple aspects of Central Asia in Antiquity from several points of view. The starting point is the confidence in an interdisciplinary perspective as the mainway to understand the different aspects of the region in a very wide chronology: from the emergence of the cities and their relation with the nomadic populations, to the expansion of models and practices from Central Asia to the West during the campaigns and conquests led by Islam. Through subjects like warfare, gender studies and historiography, mainly from an archaeological point of view, the chapters analyze concrete sites like Mes Aynak, Uch Kulakh or Vardanzeh, but also models of interaction among the historical peoples living in Asia Central, like the Bactrians and the Persians, the Persians and Macedonians, the Greeks and the Indians, the Sassanid and the Romans, or even the Sassanid and the Steppe peoples. The result is a very clear example of the richness of starting an interdisciplinary dialogue with the intention of improving our perspectives and understandings of the complex relationships that, through Antiquity, the people living in Central Asia had developed and how scholars can, through archaeology and other related disciplines, approach the historical questions that arise in a close study of the subjects.

This publication is the volume is the proceedings of the ICAZ Archaeomalacology Working Group which took place at the 11th International Conference of the International Council for Archaeozoology (ICAZ), held in Paris, France 23rd-28th August 2010. Twenty-three papers are published with evidences of human collection and modification of shells from all over the world and over a large scale of chronology (from Prehistory to Antiquity). The papers are organized in three sub-sessions. The section "Acquisition and use of shell raw materials in prehistory" focuses on patterns of acquisition and use of shell raw materials as well as on the production sequences of shell items in time and space. Specific themes of interest include the exploitation of shells as raw materials in relation to their dietary functions, or choices made to use particular shells along with or as opposed to other raw materials.The section "Shell middens and shells as a food resource" provides a venue to explore the relationships between human groups and molluscan resources and especially encourages the combination of information derived from multiple disciplines, as well as studies that seek to contextualise shell-gathering in a wider socio-economic context. The section "Shells as indicators of palaeoenvironment, site formation and transformation" aims to investigate the potential of the archaeological shell to answer questions not directly related to subsistence or material culture and especially welcomes contributions which mobilise the study of the archaeological shell in relation to modern resource management and environmental change.

The Neolithic Çatalhöyük (c. 7400-6000 cal. BC), in the Konya Plain of Central Anatolia, was made famous by the excavations of James Mellaart in 1960s, who uncovered remains of a large, pueblo-like agglomeration of houses ('the world's first city'). Renewed excavations at the site over the past twenty years have used a range of current recovery techniques, including systematic sampling of archaeological deposits for archaeobotanical remains. The archaeobotanical recovery programme represents a unique opportunity to directly investigate the socio-economic underpinnings of an early 'town' community through the lens of crop husbandry and plant use. In this book, new archaeobotanical evidence from the early-mid Neolithic sequence of Çatalhöyük (c. 7400- 6500cal BC) is presented and used as a basis for investigations into the nature and scale of crop cultivation at the site. The results shed light on the economic and social role of agricultural production at a large long-lived Neolithic village, and its implications for issues such as settlement location, residents' mobility, crop cultivation productivity and long-term sustainability.

Held at the Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon, 8th-9th March 2012This volume comprises 15 articles - the result of presentations made at the first International Conference on Zooarchaeology which took place in Lisbon in 2012. This meeting was attended by researchers - PhD students, archaeologists, biologists and zooarchaeologists - studying animal remains from Portugal's past. The papers in this book comprise a wide range of themes and include material from various periods; the common denominator being their Lusitanian origin. The articles describe faunal remains dating from the Paleolithic to modern times and from various aspects, some purely zooarchaeological, others archaeological and combine a spectrum of methods of study, classical osteology/zooarchaeology, ancient DNA, and even written sources. The volume starts with an article about Paleolithic artefacts, followed by articles about Mesolithic Muge and Algarve and ends the prehistoric period with a discussion about Bronze age animal remains. The Roman period is also well represented as the Medieval and Modern periods, both with specific site-studies and other more wide-ranging ones that summarize work carried out in specific geographical areas. The volume finishes with an article about the situation of Zooarchaeology as a profession and scientific area of study in present-day Portugal. Here we are presented with the latest results from the younger generation of Portuguese zooarchaeologists as well as several more experienced in this field. With this small volume it is hoped to put Portuguese zooarchaeology 'onthe map'.

South American Archaeology Series No 21This book attempts to historize the construction of the dichotomy between "public" and "private" in Spanish colonial territories during the late 18th - early 19th centuries, when this opposition assumed some of the characteristics that today seem completely natural. It is usually acknowledged that these changes began at the level of everyday experiences that took place in a material world and while interacting with other people. Here we study these everyday experiences, particularly those structured around food habits within the domestic sphere in colonial non-elite domestic contexts. The first case study is the port of Buenos Aires while it was the head of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (1776-1810). Analysis of a sample of probate records each of them representing a single domestic unit. The second case study was the Nueva Colonia y Fuerte de Floridablanca, a small agricultural settlement in Patagonia (1780-1784). Here, several archaelogical lines of inquiry were followed: zooarchaeological, ceramic and glass remains and the analysis of architecture and spatial arrangement and distribution within four dwelling units excavated at the site. In every domestic context of both cases it could be observed that sociability affected the way food habits were organized in different ways, but always re-enforcing domestic group identities. It could also be assessed that none of the identified ways of organizing food habits indicate that these colonial societies were on the margins of the "novelties" that took place in other contexts. On the contrary, having full knowledge of these tendencies, each domestic unit negotiated on a daily basis the way they ate, taking their own, very individual preferences, as the main rule.

Paris Monographs in American Archaeology 36This book analyzes the places of worship used during the eighteen feasts of the Nahua solar calendar, called "veintenas", and the ceremonial paths of the participants in the ceremonies in the Aztec capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The work is based on the study of written sources of the sixteenth century, the pictographic manuscripts of pre-Hispanic times and their copies of the first colonial era, as well as archaeological data. In this way a comprehensive overview of the buildings and open spaces used during the monthly rites is presented. Each chapter is devoted to the study of a month and its ceremonies and is divided in two parts. As the first part describes the sacred spaces, the second one examines the ceremonial paths, its participants and the moments of realization. This investigation is enriched by the study of their localization in the sacred geography of the city. The conclusions obtained help to understand some of the new aspects of Aztec religious life: the symbolic significance of places of worship, the geographical distribution of the centers of supernatural power in the urban space and their usage. In this way, these data reflect the worldview of the ancient Nahuas.

Archaeology of Mounds clusters in West Africa aims to understand the dynamics that enhanced and sustained the settlement systems made of distinct but close mounds. Most of the mounds-clusters are found in low-lying and flat areas in West Africa sahel and savanna. It has been suggested that West-Africa mound-clustering resulted from patterns of residential segregation articulated on ethnicity, specialized occupation, and/or both. However, most of the archaeological research conducted so far on this kind of settlement has failed to test this hypothesis, and does not address the very issues of their processes of formation and patterns of development. The methodology adopted - single mound sampling approach - does not allow for such explorations. The comprehensive approach presented in this book is articulated on the implementation of complementary excavation strategies. This involves the test excavation of all the mounds of two of the largest mounds clusters found in the study area, and the sampling of a third one, located in a different environmental context. The fine-grained chronology obtained allows the probing of the patterns of growth and diversification of mounds clusters through time, showing the operations of a broad range of settlement location decisions. Bio-anthropological data points clearly to warfare during the scramble for land that took place during the first quarter of the second millenium AD. Depending on time-sequences, special purpose mounds - iron producers, weavers, karité-oil producers - are differentially integrated in each of the tested mounds-clusters. No single settlement strategy fits all.

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference of the UISPP Commission on Flint Mining in Pre- and Protohistoric Times (Paris 10-11 September 2012)The Union Internationale des Sciences Pré- et Protohistoriques (UISPP) commission on "Flint Mining in Pre- and Protohistoric Times" was created at the 12th meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (Cracow, Poland, 19th-24th September 2006). The aim was to perpetuate the tradition of organizing international symposia on flint, established by the Limburg Branch of the Dutch Geological Society in 1969 at Maastricht. The commission intends to maintain cooperation in archaeological research on siliceous rock mining (flint, chert, hornstone, radiolarite, jasper and obsidian), by presenting and discussing methods and results. Major fields of interest include the different stages of chaînes opératoires of manufacture, specialisation of labour and circulation of raw materials, as well as the study of flint mining sites in relation to pre- and protohistoric settlement patterns. The objective of the commission is to promote these lines of research into flint mining and its methods, thus enabling a better understanding of the various phenomena and processes taking place in pre- and protohistoric times. This volume contains the papers of the Paris conference held on 10th-11th September 2012, together with some additional papers presented at Vienna 2010 and Florianópolis 2011. A first set of contributions concerns the main topic of the conference, which was lithothèques and reference collections. A further group of papers concerns the second conference theme: workshops, from excavation to chaînes opératoires reconstruction.