Prehistoric Identities

Analysing the link between reproduction and women’s social status, this project explores social responses to pregnancy, birth and childrearing from the late Neolithic to the late Iron Age (c. 3000–15 BC) through case studies in central Europe.

This project focused on developping a methodology to investigate motherhood through pelvic changes in female human remains.

This interdisciplinary project explores personal relations, gender and family structures at Bronze Age communities across the Austrian and Czech border (c. 1600–800 BC).

Based on cremation cemeteries in Austria, this interdisciplinary project investigates ritual practices, gender mobility and social relations in Late Bronze Age using new bioarchaeological methods.

The early Bronze Age cemeteries Franzhausen I and II with over 2200 burials provide the data basis for this research cooperation.

The Bisamberg pilot project aims to document traces of settlement as well as antiquarian archaeological excavations on Vienna’s famous local mountain by means of geophysical prospection, and to assign the prehistoric finds to the individual sites.

CoPOWER adopts state-of-the-art archaeological and bioarchaeological approaches to investigate the transition to urban society and the rise of increasingly sophisticated social control mechanisms in Europe, c. 2000–500 BC.

Early Bronze Age communities in Central Europe buried male and female bodies differently. Bodies are placed either on the left or right body side in the grave, with the head towards the north or south, and gender-typical grave good may accompany the dead. Archaeologists compare the gendered treatment of the dead to the sex of the buried person, to make inferences about how gender was constructed in the past.

SKIN explores relatedness beyond biological links in European Copper and Bronze Age societies.