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Research on prehistoric lakeside settlements began more than 150 years ago in Switzerland. Today, comparable settlements all over Europe belong to the best-known archaeological sites of the continent. The special conditions of the lake dwelling sites under water or waterlogged conditions in lakes and bogs led to an excellent preservation of organic materials, and settlement structures from long ago are discovered in an extraordinarily good state of preservation. Substantially preserved wooden architecture, overwhelming amounts of pottery, numerous organic implements made of wood, bark, antler and bone, textile as well as extensive plant and faunal remains made the pile dwellings welcome archaeological sources. From the 1980s onwards, high-precision dating of wooden structures by dendrochronology or a combination of dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating allowed reconstructing the architectural evolution of buildings and settlements in many cases. Precisely-dated archaeological layers help to follow the stylistic evolution of pottery and tools. The investigation of botanical and animal remains from these layers provides detailed insights into the economic conditions and long-distance relations of ancient societies. Prehistoric lakeside settlements show an extraordinarily vivid picture of the past, a glimpse into everyday life as well as reactions to and coping with climate-induced years of crisis.

The “Network in Eastern European Neolithic and Wetland Archaeology for the improvement of field techniques and dating methods” (NEENAWA) was an Institutional Partnership between archaeological institutions in North Macedonia, Russia, Ukraine and Switzerland, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The project focused on the enhancement of scientific infrastructure and training of students and professionals dealing with Neolithic settlements near lakes, rivers and marshes. The aim of this book is to document the activities performed during and arising from this project between 2015 and 2020. Activity and experience reports as well as scientific case studies keep record of the various actions and events that took place in the partner countries. They also witness to the scientific and structural development of wetland and underwater archaeology in Eastern Europe.

The Ploča-Mikjov Grad site is located on the Lake of Ohrid, in the Bay of Bones near Gradište, in the vicinity of the village of Peštani., Археолошкиот локалитет „Плоча - Миќов Град“ се наоѓа на Охридското Езеро, во Заливот на Коските кај Градиште, во близина на селото Пештани.

The prehistoric lake dwellings of Switzerland, Germany, and Austria have been known for more than 150 years. Of these, 111 were awarded UNESCO World Cultural Heritage status in 2011. Mainly dating from the Neolithic (including the Chalcolithic or Copper Age) and the Bronze Age, lacustrine settlements represent an early phase of sedentarisation in the northern foothills of the Alps. Despite much significant research on the material culture, settlement dynamics, economy, and ecology, the focus has hitherto almost exclusively been on the classic sites situated on the larger northern pre-Alpine lakes in the so-called Three Lakes region of western Switzerland and on the Lakes of Geneva, Zurich, and Constance. The international and interdisciplinary research project ’Beyond lake villages: studying Neolithic environmental changes and human impact on small lakes in Switzerland, Germany and Austria’ was launched in 2015 and is jointly funded by the Swiss (SNF), German (DFG), and Austrian (FWF) National Science Foundations. Research teams in prehistoric archaeology and palaeoecology from the universities of Bern, Basel, Vienna, and Innsbruck as well as the cultural heritage management authorities of the German State of Baden-Württemberg and the Swiss Cantons of Bern and Solothurn are concentrating their efforts on three Neolithic settlement areas on the Swiss Plateau, the German Westallgäu, and the Austrian Salzkammergut. Research is focused on small, deep lakes and their immediate surroundings, with the aim of obtaining new highresolution data on the natural environment and human impact on the landscape. Our ongoing palaeoecological investigations have confirmed that small, deep lakes such as Burgäschisee and Moossee in Switzerland preserve laminated annual sediments that have enormous potential for generating high-resolution, diachronic data on vegetation, palaeoclimate, and human impact. Through the integration of wetland archaeology and palaeoecology, we hope to generate new data and models that will help to understand the variability of human impact on landscapes, especially the environmental interactions of Neolithic societies in the circum-Alpine region. The overall aim of the project is to gain a better understanding of large-scale processes of adaptation and anthropogenic impact over time.

Pile dwellings have been explored over a vast region for a number of decades now. This has led to the development of different ways, methods, and even schools of underwater and peat-bog excavation practices and data analysis techniques under the influence of different research traditions in individual countries. On the one hand, these and other factors can limit our understanding of the past, whilst on the other hand they can also open up further avenues of interpretation. By collecting the papers presented at the 2016 session of the EAA in Vilnius, this book aims to take this diversity as an opportunity. The geographical scope extends from the Baltic to Russia, Belarus, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Germany, Austria and Switzerland to France. The volume thus provides a current insight into international research into life in and around a vast array of prehistoric waterscapes. Extensive multidisciplinary research carried out in recent years has provided new data with regard to the anthropogenic influence on the landscapes around Neolithic and Bronze Age pile dwellings, which allows us to characterise in more detail the lifestyles of the settlements’ inhabitants, the peculiarities of the ecological niche and the interaction between humans and their environment. The volume also contains various case studies that demonstrate the importance of scientific analyses for the study of settlements between land and water. Overall, the volume presents an important new body of data and international perspectives on the settlement of European waterscapes.