Rethinking migrations in late prehistoric Eurasia

REVIEW BY MS Migrations are back. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, large-scale population movements were frequently the go-to explanation for the appearance in the archaeological record of new ways of doing things – be it novel building styles, burials, or household goods. This was an era when it was believed that ‘pots equal people’, with shifts in material culture serving as a proxy for shifts in populations. In the second half of the 20th century, though, the penchant for citing migration or invasion as the explanation for such changes fell out of vogue. While migration never truly disappeared from the archaeological narrative, in many cases it was sidelined by an increased