Venue: M21, Faculty of Arts or online

Daniela Hofmann is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Bergen, Norway, where she specializes in the European Neolithic (mid-6th to mid-3rd millennium BCE). She completed her undergraduate and PhD studies at Cardiff University (2006), and prior to her Bergen appointment held positions at Cardiff University, the University of Oxford, and Hamburg University.

Hofmann's research combines close material analysis with theoretical approaches and scientific techniques to investigate identity, boundary marking, and culture change across multiple scales. Her recent work particularly emphasizes migration and social inequality in prehistoric contexts, tracing how local-level material culture impacts larger-scale, long-term processes. She employs diverse evidence including aDNA and isotope data, mortuary and ritual practices, human representations, artefact patterning, and domestic and monumental architecture.

Her current research includes leading interdisciplinary projects on Neolithic migration narratives around the North Sea (co-directed with Rune Iversen and Vicki Cummings, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark), and investigating culture change and hierarchy through the Bavarian Münchshöfen enclosure site of Riedling (DFG-funded). She also co-led a Centre for Advanced Study project in Oslo on archaeological migration narratives and the introduction of farming in southern Norway.

Abstract

So-called structured deposits are an important part of Neolithic ritual activity. However, their study typically runs into problems of definition, as well as debates surrounding interpretation. As a result, deposits are well studied in some research traditions and time periods (e.g. Neolithic Britain or southern Scandinavia, the Bronze Age), but much less well known in others. In this lecture, I use the case studies of the Linearbandkeramik and the Younger Neolithic of Bavaria to argue that deposition played a central role in how societies negotiated their place in the world, but also in political action.