Douglass Bailey's volume fills the huge gap that existed for a comprehensive synthesis, in English, of the archaeology of the Balkans between 6,500 and 2,000 BC; much research on the prehistory of Eastern Europe was inaccessible to a western audience before now, because of linguistic barriers. Bailey argues against traditional interpretations of the period, which focus on the origins of agriculture and animal breeding. He demonstrates that this was a period when monumental social and material changes occurred in the lives of the people in this region, with new technologies and ways of displaying identity. Balkan Prehistory will be required reading for everyone studying the Neolithic, Copper and early Bronze Ages of Eastern Europe.

Based on the extensive excavation in the 1960s and 1970s, before flooding by artificial lakes, explores the Lepenski Vir culture, which lived in the Iron Gates Gorge of the Danube about 7,000 years ago. Investigates their origin; their geographical and chronological framework; and their role in ushering in the neolithic age, the early stages of which exhibit some Lepenski Vir traits. Discusses the environment now and then, settlements and architecture, burial rites, portable artifacts, periodization and chronology, and the European framework. Translated (from Serbian) and extensively revised from a 1993 U. of Belgrade Ph. D. dissertation. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $48.50. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

An international conference held in Poland in 1992 investigated the condition of the later Mesolithic communities in the Baltic region and on the genesis of the Neolithic. The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition has traditionally been studied using evidence from western Europe, but this conference focused upon the previously poorly known evidence from the former Eastern Bloc countries of the Baltic and adjacent areas. Because the material is not generally available in English, the publication of papers from the conference makes available the missing evidence for this crucial period of European prehistory.

Landscape archaeology, a recent theoretical discovery in the west, has long been practised by eastern european scholars. This stimulating collection of papers ranges over the whole of central and eastern Europe and from the Neolithic to the early Medieval periods.