D Hofmann
Biographic Data
| ID | 28471 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D Hofmann |
| GIVEN NAMES | D |
| FAMILY NAME | Hofmann |
| SIGNATURE | HOFMANN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bergen |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3538-844X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 210 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Gamifying the Past
This article is a proof-of-concept that archaeologists can now disseminate archaeological topics to the public easily and cheaply through video games in teaching situations or in museum or heritage communication. We argue that small but realistic, interactive, and immersive closed- or open-world 3D video games about cultural heritage with unscripted (but guardrailed) oral conversation can now be created by beginners with free software such as Unr…
A Framework for Archaeological Involvement with Human Genetic Data for European Prehistory
A concern with ethics and commitments to ethical conduct and standards has increasingly been raised within archaeology, recently also concerning aDNA data. We suggest that codes, whether for working with ancient DNA or other archaeological practices, need to be multi-faceted, or layered, to reflect the different situational contexts of research. We further argue for a more reflexive text addressing “issues of attention” or “concerns.” We address …
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…
Ethnicity in European archaeology
The concept of ethnicity has been largely omitted from recent interpretational models in European prehistoric archaeology. However, eagerness to avoid the problems associated with its past uses has left us with difficulties in talking about important aspects of collective identities in the past. This has become particularly clear as increasing attention has turned to understanding processes of migration and their underlying social dynamics. Here,…
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…
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 …
The Blurry Third Millennium. “Neolithisation” in a Norwegian Context
In this article, we critically review recurrent tropes, implicit frameworks, and unexplained concepts in current research on the process of “Neolithisation” in the western part of southern Norway. Two models are on offer, as also seen elsewhere in the European research: either 1) the transition to agriculture is rapid and substantially carried by migrants, or 2) the Late Neolithic transition builds on a long history of local adaptation. After out…
The Milky Way
In the light of discussions surrounding the social changes attributed to the arrival of the Corded Ware culture in central Europe, here we investigate the economic strategies of one of the cultural complexes of the immediately preceding Late Neolithic. The Cham culture of southern Bavaria is characterised by a variety of economic choices but problems remain in synthesising and combining archaeozoological and archaeobotanical evidence. Using lipid…
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…
Muddying the Waters
This paper explores the current narratives of migration for the start and spread of the Neolithic with a particular focus on the role that the new ancient DNA data have provided. While the genetic data are important and instructive, here it is argued that archaeologists should also consider other strands of evidence. More nuanced appreciations of migration as a long-term process can be created by exploring modern mobility studies alongside consid…
Titelseiten
Conspicuous burials in a Neolithic enclosure at Riedling (Bavaria, Germany) – A selection of individuals
Forum
The kind of liberal and open-minded society on which most academics rely to freely conduct their research is increasingly under threat, even within democratic societies of long standing. The issues related to populist approaches/uses of archaeology are highlighted, in different European countries. The Italian cases debated by A. Vanzetti is analyzed by proposing a general model of (archaeological) communication and discussing some particular situ…
Linearbandkeramik Site Excavation
Between Worlds. The Enclosed Settlement of the Münchshöfen Culture at Riedling (Lower Bavaria)
Our study presents a late Neolithic enclosed settlement from Lower Bavaria. This site arouses interest not only regionally but also on a Central European level, as several phenomena emerged during this period along the Danube in Lower Bavaria that are strongly linked to the Carpathian Basin and other parts of Central Europe. In our present report, we focus on one phenomenon of the many at Riedling, the so-called structured deposits. These find as…
Világok között. A Münchshöfen-kultúra árokkal körülvett települése Riedling (Alsó-Bajorország) mellett
Tanulmányunkban egy alsó-bajorországi, árokkal körülkerített
Not going anywhere? Migration as a social practice in the early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik
Linearbandkeramik Site Excavation
Seeking the Holy Grail
The strengths of formal Bayesian chronological modelling are restated, combining as it does knowledge of the archaeology with the radiocarbon dating of carefully chosen samples of known taphonomy in association with diagnostic material culture. The risks of dating bone samples are reviewed, along with a brief history of the development of approaches to the radiocarbon dating of bone. In reply to Strien (2017), selected topics concerned with the e…
Commentary
Present pasts in the archaeology of genetics, identity, and migration in Europe
In this essay, we interrogate how aDNA analyses have been blended with the study of migrations in European prehistory. Genetic research into ancient populations has given archaeologists and geneticists a new and rich data-set that sparks media coverage and public fascination. Yet far right wing and racist political activists also report on and repeat the results of archaeogenetic studies because it bolsters their image of 'Fortress Europe' under …
Seeking the Holy Grail
The strengths of formal Bayesian chronological modelling are restated, combining as it does knowledge of the archaeology with the radiocarbon dating of carefully chosen samples of known taphonomy in association with diagnostic material culture. The risks of dating bone samples are reviewed, along with a brief history of the development of approaches to the radiocarbon dating of bone. In reply to Strien (2017), selected topics concerned with the e…
No time out
Endstation Friedhof? Bestattung und materielle Kultur im Wandel
Der vorliegende Band ist das Ergebnis einer Ringvorlesung, die im Wintersemester 2015/2016 an der Universität Hamburg abgehalten wurde1, um ein erstes interdisziplinäres Forum zum Themenbereich Tod, Bestattung, Trauerund Erinnerung zu bieten
Present pasts in the archaeology of genetics, identity, and migration in Europe
In this essay, we interrogate how aDNA analyses have been blended with the study of migrations in European prehistory. Genetic research into ancient populations has given archaeologists and geneticists a new and rich data-set that sparks media coverage and public fascination. Yet far right wing and racist political activists also report on and repeat the results of archaeogenetic studies because it bolsters their image of 'Fortress Europe' under …
What Have Genetics Ever Done for Us? The Implications of aDNA Data for Interpreting Identity in Early Neolithic Central Europe
This paper is concerned with the impact of ancient DNA data on our models of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in central Europe. Beginning with a brief overview of how genetic data have been received by archaeologists working in this area, it outlines the potential and remaining problems of this kind of evidence. As a migration around the beginning of the Neolithic now seems certain, new research foci are then suggested. One is renewed attenti…
Between the Vinča and Linearbandkeramik Worlds
New insights into the Early Neolithic economy and management of animals in Southern and Central Europe revealed using lipid residue analyses of pottery vessels
Analyses of organic residues preserved in ceramic potsherds enable the identification of foodstuffs processed in archaeological vessels. Differences in the isotopic composition of fatty acids allow differentiation of non-ruminant and ruminant fats, as well as adipose and dairy fats. This paper investigates the trends in milk use in areas where sheep and goats are dominant in the faunal assemblage and in some sites from the Linearbandkeramik cultu…
The Life and Times of the House
The settlement record of the Neolithic of the northern Alpine foreland is used to address the question of what difference having high-resolution chronology — in this case principally provided by dendrochronology — makes to the kinds of narrative we seek to write about the Neolithic. In a search for detailed histories, three kinds of scale are examined. The longer-term development of cultural patterns and boundaries is found to correlate very impr…
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…
Forum
The kind of liberal and open-minded society on which most academics rely to freely conduct their research is increasingly under threat, even within democratic societies of long standing. The issues related to populist approaches/uses of archaeology are highlighted, in different European countries. The Italian cases debated by A. Vanzetti is analyzed by proposing a general model of (archaeological) communication and discussing some particular situ…
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,…
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…
The Blurry Third Millennium. “Neolithisation” in a Norwegian Context
In this article, we critically review recurrent tropes, implicit frameworks, and unexplained concepts in current research on the process of “Neolithisation” in the western part of southern Norway. Two models are on offer, as also seen elsewhere in the European research: either 1) the transition to agriculture is rapid and substantially carried by migrants, or 2) the Late Neolithic transition builds on a long history of local adaptation. After out…
A Framework for Archaeological Involvement with Human Genetic Data for European Prehistory
A concern with ethics and commitments to ethical conduct and standards has increasingly been raised within archaeology, recently also concerning aDNA data. We suggest that codes, whether for working with ancient DNA or other archaeological practices, need to be multi-faceted, or layered, to reflect the different situational contexts of research. We further argue for a more reflexive text addressing “issues of attention” or “concerns.” We address …
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…
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 …
The Milky Way
In the light of discussions surrounding the social changes attributed to the arrival of the Corded Ware culture in central Europe, here we investigate the economic strategies of one of the cultural complexes of the immediately preceding Late Neolithic. The Cham culture of southern Bavaria is characterised by a variety of economic choices but problems remain in synthesising and combining archaeozoological and archaeobotanical evidence. Using lipid…
Conspicuous burials in a Neolithic enclosure at Riedling (Bavaria, Germany) – A selection of individuals
Commentary
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…
New insights into the Early Neolithic economy and management of animals in Southern and Central Europe revealed using lipid residue analyses of pottery vessels
Analyses of organic residues preserved in ceramic potsherds enable the identification of foodstuffs processed in archaeological vessels. Differences in the isotopic composition of fatty acids allow differentiation of non-ruminant and ruminant fats, as well as adipose and dairy fats. This paper investigates the trends in milk use in areas where sheep and goats are dominant in the faunal assemblage and in some sites from the Linearbandkeramik cultu…
What Have Genetics Ever Done for Us? The Implications of aDNA Data for Interpreting Identity in Early Neolithic Central Europe
This paper is concerned with the impact of ancient DNA data on our models of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in central Europe. Beginning with a brief overview of how genetic data have been received by archaeologists working in this area, it outlines the potential and remaining problems of this kind of evidence. As a migration around the beginning of the Neolithic now seems certain, new research foci are then suggested. One is renewed attenti…
The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe
The Decline of the Neolithic and the Rise of Bronze Age Society
The Neolithic in Mediterranean Europe
The Mediterranean region represented a significant zone for the transmission of the Neolithic and its farming economy.This essay reviews the different mechanisms and geographic constraints that influenced the movement of farming and cultural trends, and assesses the current interpretative models as well as traditional approaches in the context of recent archaeological discoveries and publication.Neolithic evidence across southern Europe, from the…
The Neolithization of Mediterranean Europe
Stable Isotopes and Neolithic Subsistence
Subsistence Practices in Western and Northern Europe
Early agriculture in north-west Europe was highly diverse. Sometimes it spread rapidly, at other times it scarcely advanced at all, and in southern Scandinavia it retreated after its initial advance. Linearbandkeramik (LBK) farmers occupied small clearings on loess soils, concentrating on cattle and cereals and hardly exploiting the surrounding forest at all. After more than a millennium agriculture spread into southern Scandinavia; after an init…
Mortuary Practices, Bodies, and Persons in Northern Europe
Widespread exploitation of the honeybee by early Neolithic farmers
Cyrille Billard , Françoise Bostyn , Caroline Hamon & Katia Meunier . L’habitat du néolithique ancien de Colombelles ‘Le Lazzaro’ (Calvados). 2014. (Mémoires de la Société Préhistorique Française 58).…
Cyrille Billard , Françoise Bostyn , Caroline Hamon & Katia Meunier . L’habitat du néolithique ancien de Colombelles ‘Le Lazzaro’ (Calvados). 2014. (Mémoires de la Société Préhistorique Française 58). 408 pages, numerous colour and b&w illustrations. Paris: Société Préhistorique Française; 978-2913745575 paperback €40. - Volume 89 Issue 346
Rezension über Theorie in der Archäologie
Artikel / Articles Ole Christian Aslaksen Travellers of the Bronze Age Robert Schumann, Jutta Leskovar, Maria Marschler Corrigenda zu den vermeintlichen Kindergräbern mit reicher Ausstattung aus Mitterkirchen Reinhard Jung, Marco Pacciarelli, Barbara Zach, Marlies Klee, Ursula Thanheiser Punta di Zambrone (Calabria) â a Bronze Age Harbour Site. First Preliminary Report on the Recent Bronze Age (2011â 2012 Campaigns) Ilaria Matarese, Anita Crispin…
Keep on walk
Migration played a central role throughout the LBK culture. After summarising the motivations for migration in the earliest LBK, the article outlines how some of these factors remained relevant in later phases. Beyond continued westand eastward expansion, at regional and site levels migration to better one’s social position provided an alternative to patrilineal land inheritance. The main change between the earliest and later phases is the role o…
Between the Vinča and Linearbandkeramik Worlds
The Life and Times of the House
The settlement record of the Neolithic of the northern Alpine foreland is used to address the question of what difference having high-resolution chronology — in this case principally provided by dendrochronology — makes to the kinds of narrative we seek to write about the Neolithic. In a search for detailed histories, three kinds of scale are examined. The longer-term development of cultural patterns and boundaries is found to correlate very impr…
No time out
Endstation Friedhof? Bestattung und materielle Kultur im Wandel
Der vorliegende Band ist das Ergebnis einer Ringvorlesung, die im Wintersemester 2015/2016 an der Universität Hamburg abgehalten wurde1, um ein erstes interdisziplinäres Forum zum Themenbereich Tod, Bestattung, Trauerund Erinnerung zu bieten
Gesamtausgabe
Der vorliegende Band sieht sich als nötige Ergänzung zur Diskussion um die ‚Auflösung‘ von Bestattungsnormen in Deutschland und beleuchtet diesen Prozess aus einer vergleichenden Perspektive. Dabei kommen historische, theologische, ethnologische und volkskundliche Ansätze zum Tragen
Seeking the Holy Grail
The strengths of formal Bayesian chronological modelling are restated, combining as it does knowledge of the archaeology with the radiocarbon dating of carefully chosen samples of known taphonomy in association with diagnostic material culture. The risks of dating bone samples are reviewed, along with a brief history of the development of approaches to the radiocarbon dating of bone. In reply to Strien (2017), selected topics concerned with the e…
Linearbandkeramik Site Excavation
Seeking the Holy Grail
The strengths of formal Bayesian chronological modelling are restated, combining as it does knowledge of the archaeology with the radiocarbon dating of carefully chosen samples of known taphonomy in association with diagnostic material culture. The risks of dating bone samples are reviewed, along with a brief history of the development of approaches to the radiocarbon dating of bone. In reply to Strien (2017), selected topics concerned with the e…
Archaeology (34 works) · History (31 works) · Geography (29 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (28 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (21 works) · History (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Art (14 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · Biology (10 works)