Penny Bickle
Biographic Data
| ID | 187449 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Penny Bickle |
| GIVEN NAMES | Penny |
| FAMILY NAME | Bickle |
| SIGNATURE | BICKLE P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2482-0268 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 111 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Kinship Trouble
What is kinship trouble? When and where did it emerge? Why does it matter and how can we overcome it? These questions guide our discussion of kinship trouble, a term meant to capture the difficulties in reconstructing ancient kin relations, but also an attempt to resolve them through interdisciplinary collaboration and ethically adequate approaches. Motivated by the importance of crossing disciplinary boundaries and the urgency of working togethe…
New Results From the Pre‐Pottery Neolithic Site of Al Uyaynah, Tabuk, in Northwestern Saudi Arabia
Al Uyaynah is a low sandstone mound on an alluvial plain, long known for its extensive surface remains of stone‐built circular and rectangular structures. Following test excavations in 2012, more detailed excavation was undertaken in 2016 within one of the largest rectangular stone structures. This demonstrates a sequence with lithic and faunal remains in the time range 7190–6900 cal BC . The lithic industry includes Amuq points, burins, sickle i…
A first toast in Kuyavia
Excavations at Sławęcinek in central Poland, have yielded evidence for the Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture, concurrent with a sweeping set of changes that occurred across much of Europe in the mid-fourth millennium BC. A set of vessels containing collared flasks, ceramic glasses and a beaker were found, demonstrating that libations of lactose-reduced dairy beverages were performed between 3500–3350 BC. One of the vessels, a funnel beaker, feature…
Moving to Stay in (a Woman’s) Place
This paper questions whether forms of female mobility and their relation to kinship were uniform throughout later European prehistory. Patrilocality has become the primary way in which sex-based differences in isotope and ancient DNA (aDNA) data are interpreted for this period, but often without discussing or differentiating this concept further. Using a meta-analysis of existing studies from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age, we argue that sch…
Funerary Practices Among Central European First Farmers in the Light of New Radiocarbon Dates
This paper examines the temporal dynamics of Linearbandkeramik (LBK) mortuary practices in south-eastern Czechia and western Slovakia, focusing on the emergence and development of funerary traditions. New radiocarbon dating of Moravian sites, including Vedrovice (with the large cemetery Široká u lesa , the settlement graves at Sídliště, and the small cluster of burials at Za dvorem ), Brno-Starý/Nový Lískovec , Těšetice-Kyjovice-Sutny , as well a…
Social and Genetic Relations in Neolithic Ireland
This paper re-evaluates recent kinship studies in Neolithic Ireland through a close analysis of biomolecular and fine-grained archaeological data. It outlines the rich possibilities these datasets offer when interwoven to enhance our understanding of diverse webs of social relationships. We synthesize a range of archaeological and scientific data to form a new model of kinship and its relationship to shifting traditions of megalith building and f…
Invisible death rites in the early Neolithic
Dans l'étude des pratiques funéraires, les objets funéraires sont traditionnellement considérés comme la principale forme de preuve. Cela n'est pas moins vrai pour le Néolithique ancien d'Europe centrale, où la culture matérielle des tombes a dominé les discussions sur tous les aspects de la mort, des inégalités de genre à la parenté, pendant des décennies. Les sépultures non meublées, souvent situées dans des contextes de peuplement et contenant…
New temporal dimensions of the Linearbandkeramik cemetery horizon in Schwetzingen (Germany)
Cemeteries of the Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik culture (LBK, 5500-4900 BC) evoke a sense of emerging permanence of place as agricultural subsistence spread westward through Central Europe. Yet assumptions about the sequence of senescence and longevity of cemetery use are based on limited data. Here, the authors challenge the view that cemetery burial was a long-lasting Neolithic practice, modelling 50 new radiocarbon dates from the cemetery …
The 'king' of Newgrange? A critical analysis of a Neolithic petrous fragment from the passage tomb chamber
Recent genomic analysis of a skull fragment from Newgrange, Ireland, revealed a rare case of incest. Together with a wider network of distantly related passage tomb interments, this has bolstered claims of a social elite in later Neolithic Ireland. Here, the authors evaluate this social evolutionary interpretation, drawing on insecurities in context and the relative rarity of engendered status or resource restrictions in the archaeological record…
Death and the settlement
Social and genetic diversity in first farmers of central Europe
The Linearbandkeramik (LBK) Neolithic communities were the first to spread farming across large parts of Europe. We report genome-wide data for 250 individuals: 178 individuals from whole-cemetery surveys of the Alföld Linearbankeramik Culture eastern LBK site of Polgár-Ferenci-hát, the western LBK site of Nitra Horné Krškany and the western LBK settlement and massacre site of Asparn-Schletz, as well as 48 LBK individuals from 16 other sites and …
Patrilocality at the Beginning of Farming? An Isotopic Approach from SE Moravia
This research combines Strontium ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) and Oxygen ( δ 18 O) isotope analysis to challenge the prevailing interpretation of patrilocal exogamic practices among eastern European Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) communities. Patrilocality has been considered the key factor influencing the mobility patterns of central Europe’s first farmers (c. 5500–4900 cal. BC), especially in the south-eastern Moravian region (Czech Republic). Focu…
Invisible death rites in the early Neolithic
Ce document a t gnr automatiquement le 16 dcembre 2025.Le texte seul est utilisable
Between Life and Death
Building on previous research, this study reports new stable dietary isotope results in conjunction with existing samples from the individuals buried at Mulhouse-Est. This was an early Neolithic cemetery located in Alsace and consisted of 24 articulated burials in addition to disarticulated remains, belonging to the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture. The main research question explored whether the diet thus reconstructed varies with burial practice…
Affinités biologiques et histoire des peuplements humains
La reconstruction des histoires de peuplements constitue une part grandissante des recherches bioanthropologiques. Si la discipline de la (paléo)génétique en est aujourd’hui la principale investigatrice, les études morphométriques retraçant l’origine d’individus archéologiques restent toujours utilisées. Différents sets de variations métriques relevés sur la boite crânienne peuvent constituer des indicateurs fiables pour reconstruire les affinité…
Radiocarbon Dating of Grass-Tempered Ceramic Reveals the Earliest Pottery From Slovakia Predates the Arrival of Farming
In the absence of wood, bone, and other organics, one possible candidate for determining the age of a site is the radiocarbon ( 14 C) dating of pottery. In central Europe during the Early Neolithic, pottery was ubiquitous and contained substantial quantities of organic temper. However, attempts at the direct dating of organic inclusions raises a lot of methodological issues, especially when several sources of carbon contribute to the resulting ra…
To Gender or not To Gender? Exploring Gender Variations through Time and Space
This article is based on an EAA session in Kiel in 2021, in which thirteen contributors provide their response to Robb and Harris's (2018) overview of studies of gender in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age, with a reply by Robb and Harris. The central premise of their 2018 article was the opposition of ‘contextual Neolithic gender’ to ‘cross-contextual Bronze Age gender’, which created uneasiness among the four co-organizers of the Kiel meeti…
Finding Difference in Emotional Communities
This paper explores notions of relationality and emotional communities to re-tell accounts of women's lives in the nineteenth centuryceand second half of the sixth millenniumbce, within the framework of posthumanist feminism. We argue that in both of these contexts women's work, spaces and material cultures have been devalued in comparison with those categorized as masculine. To counter androcentric accounts, we consider how different tasks and f…
Exploring sexual division of labour at "Nitra Horné Krškany" cemetery using stone tool use-wear analysis, physical activity markers, diet, and mobility as proxies
Sexual Inequalities in the Early Neolithic? Exploring Relationships Between Sexes/Genders at the Cemetery of Vedrovice Using Use-Wear Analysis, Diet and Mobility
Thinking Gender Differently
Gender in the European Neolithic has seen little debate, despite major scholarly interest in identity and social relationships. This article considers how gender operated in the Linearbandkeramik (LBK, c. 5500–5000 cal. bc ), the first farming culture of central Europe. A new theoretical approach is developed from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, and the feminist philosopher Braidotti, proposing that how difference and variation are concei…
Stable isotopes and dynamic diets
The Neolithic of Europe
‘Very like the Neolithic’
Neolithic cave burials
Neolithic cave burials: agency, structure and environment." Archaeological Journal, 177(2), pp. 419–420
The Cultural Project
Starting from questions about the nature of cultural diversity, this paper examines the pace and tempo of change and the relative importance of continuity and discontinuity. To unravel the cultural project of the past, we apply chronological modelling of radiocarbon dates within a Bayesian statistical framework, to interrogate the Neolithic cultural sequence in Lower Alsace, in the upper Rhine valley, in broad terms from the later sixth to the en…
Thinking Gender Differently
Gender in the European Neolithic has seen little debate, despite major scholarly interest in identity and social relationships. This article considers how gender operated in the Linearbandkeramik (LBK, c. 5500–5000 cal. bc ), the first farming culture of central Europe. A new theoretical approach is developed from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, and the feminist philosopher Braidotti, proposing that how difference and variation are concei…
Sexual Inequalities in the Early Neolithic? Exploring Relationships Between Sexes/Genders at the Cemetery of Vedrovice Using Use-Wear Analysis, Diet and Mobility
Ageing, Childhood and Social Identity in the Early Neolithic of Central Europe
In this paper, osteological and archaeological data are brought together to further our understanding of childhood in the early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik culture (LBK; c. 5500–5000 cal BC). In many characterizations of LBK society, fixed representations of sex or identities based on subsistence strategies pervade, with children rarely considered and then only as a specialized and separate topic of study. As a challenge to this view, a summary o…
To Gender or not To Gender? Exploring Gender Variations through Time and Space
This article is based on an EAA session in Kiel in 2021, in which thirteen contributors provide their response to Robb and Harris's (2018) overview of studies of gender in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age, with a reply by Robb and Harris. The central premise of their 2018 article was the opposition of ‘contextual Neolithic gender’ to ‘cross-contextual Bronze Age gender’, which created uneasiness among the four co-organizers of the Kiel meeti…
Roots of diversity in a Linearbandkeramik community
The early Neolithic in northern Central Europe ought to be the theatre in which incoming farmers meet local hunter-gatherers, with greater or lesser impact. By way of contrast, the authors use isotope analysis in a cemetery beside the Danube to describe a peaceful, well-integrated community with a common diet and largely indigenous inhabitants. Men and women may have had different mobility strategies, but the isotopes did not signal special origi…
Moving on
Stable isotope analysis is a new, not-so-secret weapon which promises much in mapping population movement on a regional and local scale. Lining up these movements with certain economic strategies, such as farming or foraging, with social strategies such as exogamy or with ethnicity and ranking constitutes forgivable temptation. Here our astute authors urge caution. Taking the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in south-west Germany as their example,…
Patrilocality at the Beginning of Farming? An Isotopic Approach from SE Moravia
This research combines Strontium ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) and Oxygen ( δ 18 O) isotope analysis to challenge the prevailing interpretation of patrilocal exogamic practices among eastern European Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) communities. Patrilocality has been considered the key factor influencing the mobility patterns of central Europe’s first farmers (c. 5500–4900 cal. BC), especially in the south-eastern Moravian region (Czech Republic). Focu…
Exploring sexual division of labour at "Nitra Horné Krškany" cemetery using stone tool use-wear analysis, physical activity markers, diet, and mobility as proxies
Social and Genetic Relations in Neolithic Ireland
This paper re-evaluates recent kinship studies in Neolithic Ireland through a close analysis of biomolecular and fine-grained archaeological data. It outlines the rich possibilities these datasets offer when interwoven to enhance our understanding of diverse webs of social relationships. We synthesize a range of archaeological and scientific data to form a new model of kinship and its relationship to shifting traditions of megalith building and f…
The 'king' of Newgrange? A critical analysis of a Neolithic petrous fragment from the passage tomb chamber
Recent genomic analysis of a skull fragment from Newgrange, Ireland, revealed a rare case of incest. Together with a wider network of distantly related passage tomb interments, this has bolstered claims of a social elite in later Neolithic Ireland. Here, the authors evaluate this social evolutionary interpretation, drawing on insecurities in context and the relative rarity of engendered status or resource restrictions in the archaeological record…
At Home in the Neolithic
In the Editorial for the special edition on Neolithic Housesholds, we introduce the history of house and household studies in European Neolithic Archaeology and outline the papers in this collection
Moving to Stay in (a Woman’s) Place
This paper questions whether forms of female mobility and their relation to kinship were uniform throughout later European prehistory. Patrilocality has become the primary way in which sex-based differences in isotope and ancient DNA (aDNA) data are interpreted for this period, but often without discussing or differentiating this concept further. Using a meta-analysis of existing studies from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age, we argue that sch…
Invisible death rites in the early Neolithic
Dans l'étude des pratiques funéraires, les objets funéraires sont traditionnellement considérés comme la principale forme de preuve. Cela n'est pas moins vrai pour le Néolithique ancien d'Europe centrale, où la culture matérielle des tombes a dominé les discussions sur tous les aspects de la mort, des inégalités de genre à la parenté, pendant des décennies. Les sépultures non meublées, souvent situées dans des contextes de peuplement et contenant…
Neolithic cave burials
Neolithic cave burials: agency, structure and environment." Archaeological Journal, 177(2), pp. 419–420
Social and genetic diversity in first farmers of central Europe
The Linearbandkeramik (LBK) Neolithic communities were the first to spread farming across large parts of Europe. We report genome-wide data for 250 individuals: 178 individuals from whole-cemetery surveys of the Alföld Linearbankeramik Culture eastern LBK site of Polgár-Ferenci-hát, the western LBK site of Nitra Horné Krškany and the western LBK settlement and massacre site of Asparn-Schletz, as well as 48 LBK individuals from 16 other sites and …
Radiocarbon Dating of Grass-Tempered Ceramic Reveals the Earliest Pottery From Slovakia Predates the Arrival of Farming
In the absence of wood, bone, and other organics, one possible candidate for determining the age of a site is the radiocarbon ( 14 C) dating of pottery. In central Europe during the Early Neolithic, pottery was ubiquitous and contained substantial quantities of organic temper. However, attempts at the direct dating of organic inclusions raises a lot of methodological issues, especially when several sources of carbon contribute to the resulting ra…
Finding Difference in Emotional Communities
This paper explores notions of relationality and emotional communities to re-tell accounts of women's lives in the nineteenth centuryceand second half of the sixth millenniumbce, within the framework of posthumanist feminism. We argue that in both of these contexts women's work, spaces and material cultures have been devalued in comparison with those categorized as masculine. To counter androcentric accounts, we consider how different tasks and f…
Stable isotopes and dynamic diets
Moving on
Stable isotope analysis is a new, not-so-secret weapon which promises much in mapping population movement on a regional and local scale. Lining up these movements with certain economic strategies, such as farming or foraging, with social strategies such as exogamy or with ethnicity and ranking constitutes forgivable temptation. Here our astute authors urge caution. Taking the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in south-west Germany as their example,…
Culture, Tradition and the Settlement Burials of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) Culture
Roots of diversity in a Linearbandkeramik community
The early Neolithic in northern Central Europe ought to be the theatre in which incoming farmers meet local hunter-gatherers, with greater or lesser impact. By way of contrast, the authors use isotope analysis in a cemetery beside the Danube to describe a peaceful, well-integrated community with a common diet and largely indigenous inhabitants. Men and women may have had different mobility strategies, but the isotopes did not signal special origi…
Community differentiation and kinship among Europe’s first farmers
Community differentiation is a fundamental topic of the social sciences, and its prehistoric origins in Europe are typically assumed to lie among the complex, densely populated societies that developed millennia after their Neolithic predecessors. Here we present the earliest, statistically significant evidence for such differentiation among the first farmers of Neolithic Europe. By using strontium isotopic data from more than 300 early Neolithic…
Ageing, Childhood and Social Identity in the Early Neolithic of Central Europe
In this paper, osteological and archaeological data are brought together to further our understanding of childhood in the early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik culture (LBK; c. 5500–5000 cal BC). In many characterizations of LBK society, fixed representations of sex or identities based on subsistence strategies pervade, with children rarely considered and then only as a specialized and separate topic of study. As a challenge to this view, a summary o…
Past Mobilities
At Home in the Neolithic
In the Editorial for the special edition on Neolithic Housesholds, we introduce the history of house and household studies in European Neolithic Archaeology and outline the papers in this collection
The Neolithic of Europe
‘Very like the Neolithic’
The Cultural Project
Starting from questions about the nature of cultural diversity, this paper examines the pace and tempo of change and the relative importance of continuity and discontinuity. To unravel the cultural project of the past, we apply chronological modelling of radiocarbon dates within a Bayesian statistical framework, to interrogate the Neolithic cultural sequence in Lower Alsace, in the upper Rhine valley, in broad terms from the later sixth to the en…
Stable isotopes and dynamic diets
Sexual Inequalities in the Early Neolithic? Exploring Relationships Between Sexes/Genders at the Cemetery of Vedrovice Using Use-Wear Analysis, Diet and Mobility
Thinking Gender Differently
Gender in the European Neolithic has seen little debate, despite major scholarly interest in identity and social relationships. This article considers how gender operated in the Linearbandkeramik (LBK, c. 5500–5000 cal. bc ), the first farming culture of central Europe. A new theoretical approach is developed from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, and the feminist philosopher Braidotti, proposing that how difference and variation are concei…
Exploring sexual division of labour at "Nitra Horné Krškany" cemetery using stone tool use-wear analysis, physical activity markers, diet, and mobility as proxies
Finding Difference in Emotional Communities
This paper explores notions of relationality and emotional communities to re-tell accounts of women's lives in the nineteenth centuryceand second half of the sixth millenniumbce, within the framework of posthumanist feminism. We argue that in both of these contexts women's work, spaces and material cultures have been devalued in comparison with those categorized as masculine. To counter androcentric accounts, we consider how different tasks and f…
Radiocarbon Dating of Grass-Tempered Ceramic Reveals the Earliest Pottery From Slovakia Predates the Arrival of Farming
In the absence of wood, bone, and other organics, one possible candidate for determining the age of a site is the radiocarbon ( 14 C) dating of pottery. In central Europe during the Early Neolithic, pottery was ubiquitous and contained substantial quantities of organic temper. However, attempts at the direct dating of organic inclusions raises a lot of methodological issues, especially when several sources of carbon contribute to the resulting ra…
To Gender or not To Gender? Exploring Gender Variations through Time and Space
This article is based on an EAA session in Kiel in 2021, in which thirteen contributors provide their response to Robb and Harris's (2018) overview of studies of gender in the European Neolithic and Bronze Age, with a reply by Robb and Harris. The central premise of their 2018 article was the opposition of ‘contextual Neolithic gender’ to ‘cross-contextual Bronze Age gender’, which created uneasiness among the four co-organizers of the Kiel meeti…
Death and the settlement
Neolithic cave burials
Neolithic cave burials: agency, structure and environment." Archaeological Journal, 177(2), pp. 419–420
Social and genetic diversity in first farmers of central Europe
The Linearbandkeramik (LBK) Neolithic communities were the first to spread farming across large parts of Europe. We report genome-wide data for 250 individuals: 178 individuals from whole-cemetery surveys of the Alföld Linearbankeramik Culture eastern LBK site of Polgár-Ferenci-hát, the western LBK site of Nitra Horné Krškany and the western LBK settlement and massacre site of Asparn-Schletz, as well as 48 LBK individuals from 16 other sites and …
Patrilocality at the Beginning of Farming? An Isotopic Approach from SE Moravia
This research combines Strontium ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) and Oxygen ( δ 18 O) isotope analysis to challenge the prevailing interpretation of patrilocal exogamic practices among eastern European Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) communities. Patrilocality has been considered the key factor influencing the mobility patterns of central Europe’s first farmers (c. 5500–4900 cal. BC), especially in the south-eastern Moravian region (Czech Republic). Focu…
Invisible death rites in the early Neolithic
Ce document a t gnr automatiquement le 16 dcembre 2025.Le texte seul est utilisable
Between Life and Death
Building on previous research, this study reports new stable dietary isotope results in conjunction with existing samples from the individuals buried at Mulhouse-Est. This was an early Neolithic cemetery located in Alsace and consisted of 24 articulated burials in addition to disarticulated remains, belonging to the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture. The main research question explored whether the diet thus reconstructed varies with burial practice…
Affinités biologiques et histoire des peuplements humains
La reconstruction des histoires de peuplements constitue une part grandissante des recherches bioanthropologiques. Si la discipline de la (paléo)génétique en est aujourd’hui la principale investigatrice, les études morphométriques retraçant l’origine d’individus archéologiques restent toujours utilisées. Différents sets de variations métriques relevés sur la boite crânienne peuvent constituer des indicateurs fiables pour reconstruire les affinité…
Moving to Stay in (a Woman’s) Place
This paper questions whether forms of female mobility and their relation to kinship were uniform throughout later European prehistory. Patrilocality has become the primary way in which sex-based differences in isotope and ancient DNA (aDNA) data are interpreted for this period, but often without discussing or differentiating this concept further. Using a meta-analysis of existing studies from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age, we argue that sch…
Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (27 works) · Archaeology (21 works) · Geography (21 works) · History (20 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (14 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · History (10 works) · Ancient history (9 works) · Art (9 works)