Fernando Coimbra holds a PhD from the University of Salamanca and Post-doctoral research in rock art in the Geosciences Centre (University of Coimbra). His studies of rock art inspired a further interest in horses and their role in society, especially in protohistory. In 2013 he coordinated an international congress about the horse and the bull in prehistory and in history. He is a visiting professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar, in Portugal. Dragoş Gheorghiu is an historical anthropologist and archaeologist whose studies focus on the process of cognition and imagination, material culture, ancient technologies and iconography. Much of his research focuses on Chalcolithic societies in south-eastern Europe, from the spatial organisation of settlements to the material culture of everyday life. He addressed the domestication of the horse in the technological context of the period. Zuzana Golec Mírová is an archaeologist, currently working at the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Archaeology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. She has been dealing with the issue of horses in prehistory since her bachelor studies. In 2019, she published a monograph about horses in the Bronze and Iron Ages in Moravia (Czech Republic).

• Contributors Foreword Umberto Albarella1. Representations of Equidae in European Upper Palaeolithic art Ingmar M. Braun2. Navigating a way through: the horses of Cueva de la Pileta, Andalucía, Spain George H. Nash3. Equids in prehistoric subsistence practices: a review of the Portuguese Palaeolithic to Bronze Age record Catarina Guinot and Nelson J. Almeida4. The Chalcolithic stone horse heads insignia from the 5th millennium BC Danube-Pontic region Dragoş Gheorghiu5. Horses during the European Bronze Age and Iron Age: archaeology, iconography, and mythology Fernando Coimbra6. The horse in the art of the Koban culture Nadezhda Kotova and Sergey Makhortykh7. Reflection of the horse in material culture in Moravia (Czech Republic) in the Urnfields and Hallstatt Period Zuzana Golec Mírová8. The horse sacrifices in the royal Hellenistic necropolis of the Getae in their capital “Dausdava-Helis” (Sboryanovo National Reserve, north-east Bulgaria): an overview of studies Diana Gergova9. About heroes and horses: horseman iconography in representative sumptuous tombs (4th–3rd centuries BC) Sorin Cleşiu10. As prestigious as Marengo: the art of horsemanship riding in Geometric Argive pottery and burials Camila Diogo De Souza11. Height and weight of horses in Portugal between the late medieval and the early modern periods: an approach based on written sources Afonso Soares de Sousa and João Nisa12. Conclusions: from prey to centaur Dragoş Gheorghiu, Zuzana Golec Mírová, and Fernando Coimbra