On 10 December 2025, Dr Bert Wiegel from Marie Leidorf Publishers delivered the freshly printed Volume 48 of the NIhK journal ‘Siedlungs- und Küstenforschung im südlichen Nordseegebiet’ (SKN) to Wilhelmshaven. The books were received by the editor, Prof. Dr Hauke Jöns, and the librarian, Tatjana Herr. The first author's copies were immediately handed over to the Stone Age researchers Dr Anja Behrens and Dr Moritz Mennenga, who were present and have published a joint essay in the volume. The book is dedicated to the investigation of two questions that have been controversially discussed for decades in research on the settlement history of north-western Germany. The first essay deals with the Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture of the Elbe-Weser triangle, which is traditionally considered to have been a contact zone between the northern, western and Altmark groups of the Funnel Beaker Culture. The information now compiled as part of a new research project forms the basis for testing this thesis. 

The other two essays in the volume are devoted to the well-known Roman imperial archaeological site of Bentumersiel on the River Ems, which is considered by researchers to be of great importance for the reconstruction of Roman-Germanic contacts, especially in the first decades after the birth of Christ, due to the Roman military artefacts found there. The detailed descriptions and cultural-historical classifications of selected objects, as well as their stratigraphic classification, now available, make an important contribution to the further discussion of Roman-Germanic contacts in north-western Germany.