Kerstin P. Hofmann studied Archaeology at the Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel and at the University of Cologne. After completing her PhD in 2006 on Thanatoarchaeology and Bronze and Early Iron Age cremation burials in the Elbe-Weser-Triangle, Germany, she held a foreign exchange scholarship from the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), Department Rome. From February 2009 to October 2012 she worked as coordinator of the Cross Sectional Group V “Space and Collective Identities” within the framework of the Excellence Cluster Topoi at the German Archaeological Institute, Berlin Head Office. Now she is junior research group leader of the key topic group “identities: space and knowledge related identification” within the research group B-4 “Space – Identity – Locality”.

In this context she is conducting research on ancient discourses of identity and their study and presentation within Archaeology. The research is carried out by means of case studies (including death rituals in southeast Sicily under the influence of Greek colonies; hogbacks, i.e. stone monuments in Great Britain dating from the Viking age, which are considered as testimonies of acculturated migrants; the Bronze Age tomb Anderlingenin Northern Germany as example for heritage management and identity discourses on a regional level). Her further interests lie in the fields of burial archaeology, material culture studies, cultural change and temporality.

Marcela-Rodica Boroffka, born in 1969, studied at the Faculty of History of the University Bucharest, specializing in prehistoric archaeology. She finished her studies in 1992 with a thesis on the Mycenaean influence on the region of Lower Danube.

From 1992 until 1995 she was engaged at the National Museum of the History of Romania, Bucharest. From 1996 onwards she took part in several rescue excavations in Brandenburg, Germany. Since 1998 she was participant in several research projects of the Eurasia Department of the German Archaeological Institute, in countries of the former Soviet Union, Iran and Pakistan. In 2008 she has been engaged in Group A-II of the Topoi Excellence Cluster, studying kurgans (burial mounds) of the Iron Age (Scythian) in Kazakhstan. She is occupied with the documentation in the field, graphic processing of the data, preparations for publication and the administration of scientific samples.

Ines Beilke-Voigt is a habilitated prehistorian and outside lecturer at the Chair of Primeval and Early History at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research interests include cultic and sacrificial activities, funeral systems, ethnology, customs/symbolism and rock art. Since 2006, as a Heisenberg fellow of the DFG, she has been researching “Cultural-Comparative Examinations of Burial Rituals for Children in German, Provincial Roman and Italian Space” (www.Das-Kind-in-der-Roemerzeit.de). In Topoi, she contributes to the work in Group A-I-11 with her research on Burgwall Lossow (www.Burgwall-Lossow.de).