The capacity to relate a signal to an arbitrary, specific and generally understood meaning—symbolism—is an integral feature of human language. Here, we explore two aspects of knapping technology at the Acheulean site of Boxgrove that may suggest symbolic communication. Tranchet tips are a difficult handaxe form to create, but are unusually prevalent at Boxgrove. We use geometric morphometrics to show that despite tranchet flaking increasing planform irregularity, handaxes with tranchet tips have more standardized 3D shapes than those without. This challenging standardization suggests tranchet tips at Boxgrove were part of a normative prescription for a particular handaxe form. Boxgrove presents some of the thinnest handaxes in the Acheulean world. To replicate such thin bifaces involves the technique of turning-the-edge. Since this technique is visually and causally opaque it may not be possible to learn through observation or even pointing, instead requiring arbitrary referents to teach naïve knappers. We use scar ordering on handaxes to show a variety of instances of turning-the-edge in different depositional units at Boxgrove, indicating it was socially transmitted to multiple knappers. The presence of societally understood norms, coupled with a technique that requires specific referents to teach its salient features, suggests symbolism was a feature of hominin communication at Boxgrove 480,000 years ago.

Panoramic accounts of long-term socio-political change tend to marginalize the role of animals. Taking a materialist stance, we re-evaluate the ways livestock shaped the emergence of the tributary mode of production out of a kinship-ordered mode of production. This explicitly Marxist analytical framework foregrounds the interplay between value, wealth, and labour, while attending to the economic specificities of livestock that make it particularly dynamic. Drawing on ethnohistorical data, we identify wealth in livestock as heritable, expandable, flexible, and convertible, while inherently unstable. We offer the first synthesis tying these qualities together and present a holistic picture of how these qualities can catalyse the class formation by promoting differential accumulation of wealth, economic growth, and direct appropriation of value from producers. These dynamics offer an animal-centric explanatory lens to view the long-term trajectory of northern Mesopotamia from the Neolithic through the Late Chalcolithic (9700-3500 BCE), where caprines, cattle, and pigs were central to the development of urbanism and states. While our analysis is specific to the social formations, species, and human-animal relations in northern Mesopotamia, the framework we present can be applied to contexts globally to better understand the animal side of political economic dynamics of early complex societies.

Worldbuilding is a concept that has been used to describe the creation of immersive landscapes in fiction and games and is deeply resonant with archaeological knowledge construction. This article argues for worldbuilding in archaeology as a creative intervention that encourages an exploration of archaeological data throughout the process of creation, interpretation and dissemination to generate past worlds, shaped through community storytelling. Through the examples of Çatalhöyük in Second Life, Other Eyes and the Avebury Papers projects, I explore a playful practice that closely interrogates reuse of archaeological data and encourages lateral thinking amongst students and other archaeological storytellers.

Rituals are sites of personal and social transformations. However, we still do not have a sophisticated theory for how these rituals were embedded and generated within specific political economies, nor how communities used ritual activities to conceptualize the cosmos. This paper develops a theoretical framework exploring pragmatism and materialism to articulate the relationship between imperial political economies and ritual activities, situating the latter in the former. This framework will then be applied to ritual activities in southern Roman Britain, exploring how ritual activities emerged within the imperial political economy. The emergence of Roman imperialism in Roman Britain materially impacted upon not only the nature and range of ritual activities, but also the cosmologies of local communities. Ritual activities are materializations of cosmological beliefs, and both were determined by the imperial political economy. It is this process by which cosmologies emerged to naturalize socially constructed relations and activities that I call ontogenesis.

All societies throughout time have shown a greater or lesser degree of superstition when facing the traumatic event of death. Roman society was no exception, especially when numerous religious currents participated in the funerary rituals, sharing their own conception and beliefs. The following lines present a brief overview of children’s death, especially premature ones, from the early Imperial to the late Imperial period, when they became more highly regarded. It is followed by the traumatic or marginal deaths of some individuals whose behaviour, illnesses or ways of dying were suspicious for their closest people: the article closes with the treatment given to certain women. All the deaths in this research aroused suspicions among their relatives or the authorities, who did not hesitate to practise rituals to calm them in the afterlife and ensure that they did not return to life as evil spirits. In this article we will focus on the practices that developed in the city of Onoba and its hinterland or influential area; a Roman colony located in the westernmost part of the province of Baetica, a port city of enormous importance for the Empire given its importance as a gateway for minerals coming from the Urium mines.

Tell settlements often provide a unique window into prehistoric lifeways due to remarkable preservation and safeguarding from modern disturbances. Vésztő-Mágor in Hungary is one such tell with stratigraphy, features and finds that reflect thousands of years of prehistoric settlement. In 2021, the Vésztő-Mágor Conservation and Exhibition Program began the work of stabilizing, documenting and preserving prehistoric deposits, features and artefacts exposed in an in situ exhibition trench at Vésztő-Mágor. In the process, an exceptionally well-preserved carbonized item was discovered embedded in a series of Middle Bronze Age house floors. We describe the object and context of discovery, and interpret it as matting inside a wattle-and-daub house. We expand our discussion to similar contexts known from Vésztő-Mágor, in the Carpathian Basin, and beyond, to highlight the technologies involving organic materials used at prehistoric tell sites and their significance for understanding lifeways at these settlements.

‘Giant’ handaxes are a widely recognized but infrequently investigated phenomenon of the Acheulean period. The scale of their distribution and the selective pressures underpinning their production are not well explored. Here, we report new data from a large-scale experimental study that identifies the point at which handaxes become too large to use with a single hand, alongside a review of known Acheulean assemblages displaying ‘giant’ handaxes. On the understanding that most ‘regularly sized’ Acheulean handaxes were gripped in one hand, if handaxes require bimanual grips, alternative explanations for their production—beyond unimanual butchery and woodworking tasks—should be sought. Our data identify clear mass, length and thickness thresholds for bimanual gripping. It is revealed that spatially and temporally diverse archaeological sites display ‘giant’ artefacts that exceed these thresholds. We suggest these atypically large handaxes would most plausibly have been utilitarian tools used for cutting, but in alternative ways to more regularly sized bifaces. This includes when worked materials were secured by another individual or structure, during digging activities, or when used as a stationary cutting ‘plane’ secured on the ground.

Forgetting, an attendant to culture change, is the stuff of history. When cultural innovations, exchange and adoption occur, previous customs, knowledge, technology and other dimensions of culture are often lost—they are forgotten. This paper considers the phenomenon of forgetting and its permutations—the passive forgetting that is more or less an accepted outcome of change, the unintentional forgetting that is accidental and undesired, and the intentional forgetting of wilful erasure—as a way of contemplating agency and culture loss/change among the Dorset Paleo-Inuit peoples of the central and eastern North American Arctic, and more broadly, in Arctic archaeology.

This paper asks how an ontological perspective on Late Nordic Bronze Age art can advance archaeological interpretation of the ornamentation on personal objects used and carried directly on human bodies. To this end, the theoretical concepts perspectivism and ontological alterity are operationalized as an alternative to epistemological approaches to art. This entails framing the art on personal objects as a set of relations with the capacity to act and affect the lives of the humans interacting with it, rather than as representations. A central point is that this art should be considered as cosmology rather than representations of cosmology. The relational effects of this art in its bodily context are presented in examples illustrating how cosmology was encountered and experienced through the use of the objects. The paper concludes that art functioned as a medium for dialogue between the metaphysical and physical realities as it made cosmology present via personal objects.

This study examines geographic origins of basketry, animal and human grave offerings (including a feline trophy head, camelid bone instruments and human trophy heads) interred as grave goods at the cemetery of Uraca in the Majes Valley, Arequipa, Peru during the Early Intermediate Period to Middle Horizon (c. 100 bce–750 ce). We aim to identify whether any of these human or non-human beings or artifacts were non-local to the Majes Valley and explore the ontologically informed meanings underlying the incorporation of geographically distant beings and things into mortuary landscapes. We report new grave good 87Sr/86Sr (n = 36) relative to published data from Uraca human trophy heads and non-trophy individuals (n = 55). Defining the local 87Sr/86Sr range as the mean ±2σ of the non-trophy and non-camelid or small home-range fauna, we compare the proportions of non-local outliers between plant, animal and human grave-offering types. The 87Sr/86Sr range of all new samples is 0.70609–0.70954, encompassing the 87Sr/86Sr variability of much of southern Peru from the coast to the highlands. Nearly half of camelids, the feline trophy, most camelid whistles and one basketry sample were non-local, suggesting that assembling beings and things from both local and distant geographies was an important aspect of making the mortuary landscape.

This article is an exploration of how Christian influences manifested in Indigenous rock art, comparing two distinct case studies: western Arnhem Land in northern Australia and the southern Andes in north-central Chile. The analysis aims to understand the intersection between Indigenous artistic traditions and the introduction of Christianity through European colonization. Our comparative analysis reveals significant regional differences. In western Arnhem Land, the scarcity of Christian imagery suggests resistance to or avoidance of religious symbols, while in north-central Chile, the prevalence of Christian symbols indicates a more profound incorporation of Christianity into Indigenous artistic practices. These findings underscore the importance of considering local contexts and historical processes when examining the impact of colonization on Indigenous art. Understanding these differences provides valuable insights into the complex interactions between Indigenous cultures and European colonizers, revealing resistance and adaptation in the face of profound social and religious changes.

During the 2016 and 2017 fieldwork seasons at the site of Qijiaping in Guanghe County, Gansu Province, China, the team of the Tao River Archaeology Project excavated a large intact kiln. The kiln is well preserved, and the first of its kind reported in an archaeological excavation in this region. Several lines of evidence demonstrate that this was a roof tile kiln used during the Song period (ad 960–1279), possibly associated with the construction and maintenance of defensive facilities during the time of Northern Song (ad 1079–1127) occupation of the region— an era of conflict with the Western Xia (ad 982–1227). Inside the flues of the kiln were many objects disposed of when the kiln was put out of commission. Among these objects is a stone phallus, an object that reflects a gendered aspect of technology and manufacturing associated with this kiln or its decommissioning and more broadly the gendered social landscape of the Tao River valley during the Northern Song occupation of the region.

This paper deals with symbolic and ontological human–animal relationships at the Early Neolithic (PPNA) site of Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey. Here a series of megalithic round stone buildings, built by hunter-gatherers, were embellished by large stone pillars with depictions of animals, particularly predators. On the basis of an analysis of the pillar iconography and of recent anthropological and archaeological insights about alterity and perceptions of nature and culture, it will be argued that human–animal relationships at Göbekli Tepe were part of an ontology marked by both immanence and hierarchy. Imagistic ritualization in evocative architectural contexts, probably directed by shamans, served to express such relations. The internal logic of this is exemplified in a model of the world of Göbekli Tepe, based on a novel approach with so-called referential relations and compositional hierarchy as ways to explore and interpret relations between beings and things.

The use of ochre in burials at the Neolithic site of Khok Phanom Di, Thailand, was a broadly inclusive practice; however, ∼18 per cent of burials did not contain powdered ochre pigment. On closer examination it was found that the majority of those without ochre were perinates. When compared to other burials in the cemetery non-ochred perinate burials were typically shallow scoop cuts, without grave goods. However, not all perinates were buried in this manner; ∼38 per cent of perinate burials contained ochre and were more similar in type and contents to the rest of the cemetery. This paper examines the differences between perinate burials with and without ochre, considering the wider bioarchaeological context. The findings show that perinates without ochre were on average smaller skeletally than those with pigment. This along with comparisons to other sites directs the focus to ‘the point of mortality’—whether the individuals were stillborn or neonatal deaths. This is explored through comparative data and a cross-cultural discussion of perinatal personhood and social acknowledgement. The interment of non-ochred individuals within the community cemetery demonstrates community inclusion but an exclusion from ‘normal’ burial rites (ochre, grave goods, etc.), demonstrating a lack of individual acknowledgement—a grey area between inclusion and exclusion.

The prehistoric rock-art record of the Altai Mountains (western Mongolia) extends from the late Palaeolithic (c. 12,000 bp) through the end of the Bronze Age (c. 2800–800 bp) and into the early centuries of the Iron Age (late first millennium bce). Within that ancient tradition, the image of the elk (Cervus elaphus sibiricus) had the longest duration of any animal imagery; but over the millennia it underwent radical change. Beginning as an image reflecting a primitive, monumental realism, it was transformed into an expression of vital naturalism in the Bronze Age. By the end of the Bronze Age, the image began to shift into a highly stylized emblem of status, clan identity, or perhaps gender, finally degenerating into a wolf-like beast. Its transformations may be correlated with regional environmental change and resulting social adaptations. This essay presents the history of the elk image in Altai rock art and seeks to understand its transformation at the interface of north and central Asia. While focused on one pictorial tradition from one geographical region, this analysis demonstrates how materials derived from the expressive record of human culture offer critical insight into the manner in which societies evolve psychologically and not just archaeologically in response to extended environmental change.

Pregnancy encompasses core socio-political issues: kinship, demography, religion, gender and more. In any society, the ontology of the pregnant body and the embryo-fetus holds core existential concerns. Is a pregnant body one or two beings? When does personhood begin? Yet pregnancy is still a marginal topic in archaeology and its onto-political consequences have scarcely been raised. It would be ludicrous to claim that pregnancy or childbirth is part of the grand narratives of prehistory. Also in scholarship centring theoretical perspectives on the body and personhood the pregnant body is absent. This article poses fundamental questions of the body-politics of pregnancy. We develop concepts from material feminism, medical ethics and philosophy to interrogate pregnancy and provide a case study to demonstrate how these concepts can work in practice from the Viking Age. The questions posed, however, are not limited to the Viking period. Our overall objective is to centre pregnancy as a philosophical and political concern in archaeology writ large. We develop new thinking and language to this end, which can be used to examine the politics of pregnancy in other periods and regions. Ultimately, we discuss the absence-making of pregnant bodies from our sources as well as from archaeological discourse.

This paper re-evaluates recent kinship studies in Neolithic Ireland through a close analysis of biomolecular and fine-grained archaeological data. It outlines the rich possibilities these datasets offer when interwoven to enhance our understanding of diverse webs of social relationships. We synthesize a range of archaeological and scientific data to form a new model of kinship and its relationship to shifting traditions of megalith building and funerary and cosmological practices. This model is put in dialogue with recently published genetic data and used to test a variety of explanations for the patterns of biological relatedness revealed using these methods. We argue that the detected genetic patterning is best interpreted as reflecting a reconfiguration of social relations after 3600 bc linked to the consolidation of emergent social and religious communities.

The archaeological settlements of the Early Neolithic Urfa region in Türkiye have garnered academic and public interest since the 1990s due to their large-scale stone architecture and rich iconography, particularly featuring phallic imagery. While mainstream narratives suggest a male-centred society in the region, feminist and queer theory approach such interpretations with a critical eye. By challenging traditional ‘male-centred society’ narratives through the lens of queer and feminist theories, this study offers a critique of existing methodologies that fail to historicize archaeological data. By recontextualizing the phallic iconography through the lens of sexuality, this study proposes a new interpretation: the phallus was not a symbol of male power, but an agent facilitating spiritual transcendence, enabling ecstatic experiences and serving as a conduit between the material and spiritual realms.

Within this paper, glocalization is presented to explain the heterogeneity of the Uruk Expansion/Phenomenon, a process which saw extensive interactions and cultural integration across Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium bce, characterized by the spread of southern Mesopotamian material culture and cultural practices. Through close examination of archaeological data from the Adhaim-Sirwan Drainage Basin, southern Iraqi Kurdistan, a region which is emerging as a focus of intense culture-contact during the Uruk Phenomenon, I contend that a glocalized perspective of this phenomenon better illuminates its regional nuances and complexities, as well as the interactions between local and Uruk communities within the Adhaim-Sirwan. By employing a glocalizing framework, this paper demonstrates that cultural interactions led to varied adaptations of the Uruk Phenomenon and illustrates the dynamic interplay between global influences and local responses. Ultimately, this paper advocates for a nuanced understanding of the Uruk Phenomenon, highlighting its regional variability and the importance of local agency in shaping cultural outcomes, thereby framing it as a distinctly glocalized process rather than an expression of globalization.

Migration is an established topic in archaeology, approached by researchers in multiple ways. We argue, however, that new ways of thinking are needed to understand migration in new ways in relation to new results coming from ancient DNA studies and other archaeometric analysis. We apply a transdisciplinary approach and engage with (critical) migration studies, critical heritage studies and archaeology to unwrap essential theoretical aspects of migration. Based on our results, we propose a conceptual/theoretical framework as our contribution to migration studies in archaeology.