Ariane Ballmer is a scientific staff member and lecturer at the University of Heidelberg where she specialises in European prehistory. Her research interests encompass Alpine Bronze Age, landscape archaeology, ritual practices and Early Iron Age fortifications. She is author of the monograph Topografie bronzezeitlicher Deponierungen: Fallstudie Alpenrheintal (Bonn 2016)
Manuel Fernández-Götz is Chancellor's Fellow in Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. His main research intterests are Iron Age societies in central and western Europe and the archaeology of identities from a theoretical perspective. This research has resulted in numerous publications relating to the Iron Age of the Iberian Peninsula, northeast Gaul and southern Germany, including Identity and Power: The transformation of Iron Age societies in northeast Gaul (2014).
Dirk Paul Mielke is a pre- and protohistorian and Ancient Near Eastern archaeologist working at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany. He has excavated in Germany, Spain, Morocco and Turkey, especially as leading member of the long-time excavations in the Hittite cities of Kuşaklı-Sarissa and Oymaağaç Höyük-Nerik. He has authored numerous fundamental articles on Hittite archaeology, archaeometry, Phoenicians in the West and fortifications.
