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• There is an error in the caption of Fig. 1 in the paper of Wilczyński et al. (2020). • The canid hemimandibles in this figure are not from Dolní Vĕstonice II and Pavlov ISE. • These jaws were found at the Gravettian Předmostí site (Czech Republic) • We address further issues with the methodology and conclusion of this paper. Two canid morphotypes have been proposed for the middle Upper Palaeolithic site of Předmostí (Moravia, Czech Republic): Pleistocene wolf and Palaeolithic dog (Germonpré et al., 2012, 2015; Galeta et al., 2020). In Wilczyński et al. (2020), faunal assemblages from other Upper Palaeolithic Moravian sites were analyzed and those results used to project a similar, which we interpret as flawed, result for Předmostí: that only wild canids were present. We address issues with their methodology and argue that their conclusion, that dogs were not present at any of those studied sites, is based on cursory taphonomic analysis. Further, their projection of these results to Předmostí, an assemblage they did not study, is unsubstantiated, but does highlight the current dearth of taphonomic information that could aid the study of dog domestication. We also point out an important error in their Fig. 1, where the hemimandibles intended to show the natural variability in large canids from Dolní Vĕstonice II and Pavlov I SE, are in fact canid specimens from Předmostí. Since several of these canid specimens have been published by Germonpré et al. (2015), we find it imperative to address this error to ensure these data are correctly referenced in future works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• No evidence is supportable for domesticated dogs at three important Pavlovian sites. • The high frequency of wolf remains at Pavlovian sites argues against the presence of dogs. • There is also no evidence of domesticated dog even in succeeding Late Gravettian sites. In the current volume of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Germonpré et al. comment on our article "Friend or foe? Large canid remains from Pavlovian sites and their archaeozoological context" (Wilczyński et al. 2020). The authors say there are inaccuracies or errors in our paper, in an attempt to refute our rejection of the hypothesis of wolf domestication at the Předmostí site and, in broader sense, by the Pavlovian community. Here we counter allegations and in so doing clarify our arguments against wolf domestication during mid-Upper Paleolithic in Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The Gini index is used to measure differentiation in house size as a proxy to interpret inequality across a large environmental lidar dataset that documented a palimpsest of Maya archaeological settlement and landscapes. • We identify consistent patterns and Gini coefficients across the Maya lowlands, with notably lower values in peripheral areas, including coastal zones and the Western lowlands. • Despite the narrow lidar transects, the results of this study align with regional and site-based approaches across the Maya area. The emergence and expansion of inequality have been topics of household archaeology for decades. Traditionally, this question has been informed by ethnographic, ethnohistoric and/or comparative studies. Within sites and regions, comparative physical, spatial, and architectural studies of households offer an important baseline of information about status, wealth, and well-being, especially in the Maya lowlands where households are accessible in the archaeological record. Between sites, more research is necessary to assess how these physical measurements of household remains compare. This paper investigates the intersection of landscape, household, and community based on a multi-scalar analysis of households using the Gini index across southeastern Mexico, in the context of a broader study of land use, land management, and settlement patterns. Notably, this paper represents a region-wide analysis of nearly continuous LiDAR data within and outside of previously documented prehispanic Maya settlements. While we conclude that the Gini index is useful for establishing a comparative understanding of settlement, we also recognize that the index is a starting point to identify other ways to study how household to community-level social and economic variability intersects with diverse ecological patterns. Highlighting the opportunities and limitations with applying measures like the Gini index across culturally, temporally, and geographically heterogeneous areas, we illustrate how systematic studies of settlement can be coupled to broader studies of landscape archaeology to interpret changing patterns of land management and settlement across the Maya lowlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A gap between dung uses in ethnographic resources and the archaeological record was identified in many parts of the world, pointing to possible deficits in awareness and preservation. • A multi-proxy workflow for fast screening for dung in the field laboratory and more refined post-excavation analysis is suggested. • Dung was, and still is a pivotal resource in human adaptation, especially in semi-arid and arid environments. • Accumulating evidence for the use of dung prior to animal domestication and its importance as a multi-functional resource, calls for reconsidering its definition as a secondary product. Animal dung is still considered a secondary by-product of domestication, even though a growing body of evidence is showing that humans recognized its properties as fuel and fertilizer and utilized dung prior to—and alongside—the process of animal domestication. In this paper, we review the advancements made in dung identification over the last decades and suggest a multi-proxy workflow for fast screening for dung in the field laboratory and more refined post-excavation analysis. In addition, we provide a global synthesis of evidence for dung used as a resource, both from ethnographic and archaeological records. We review the use of animal dung as fuel, fertilizer, construction material, and medication, alongside its symbolic role in different societies around the globe. Finally, the use of animal dung as a proxy for human-animal interaction is discussed, and possible avenues for future research are proposed. Understanding how humans used dung can help answer a range of questions related to animal domestication, subsistence practices, technological advancements, and human decisions regarding resource allocation, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of social inequality is one of, if not the, most important research question in anthropological archaeology. Social inequality within different types of households is relational, between individuals as well as within communities, multidimensional, multi-scalar, and is measured in degrees instead of merely being present or absent. In exploring how archaeologists develop narratives of inequality we need to keep in mind that field archaeologists do not find inequality, as if it was hidden beneath the ground or cultural ruins, so much as we create arguments for inequality based on material variability. Engaging with Jeanne Arnold's (1993) paper Labor and the Rise of Complex Hunter-Gatherers, in this brief essay I explore how archaeologists are often quick to use the label inequality but fail to consider if this was meaningful to people in the past. At times we draw upon methods such as Gini indexes but without any sense of what we are measuring, and we often fail to consider how household social inequality might be connected to food storage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Manipulation of the ancient Tigris for irrigation, flood control and navigation. • Use of large reed barrages to control fluctuating water table of ancient Tigris. • Centralized water management due to its importance for the economy. This paper offers the first detailed investigation of water management in pre-classical antiquity based on primary sources. The importance of water management for ancient societies can hardly be overstated, as many of the earliest civilizations emerged in large river valleys (Nile, Euphrates and Tigris, Indus, Yellow and Yangtze river). More importantly many of those early civilizations occupied the reach of the river, which was located in the arid/semi-arid zone, by which rivers vital sources of water, in particular for irrigation. Many studies on ancient water management have focused on irrigation, often failing to recognize the full extent to which rivers were managed and utilized. The water management scheme of late 3rd millennium Southern Mesopotamia, described in this paper, was designed to not only serve irrigation, but equally navigation and flood control. It combined the manipulation of water levels with the diligent observation and maneuvering of water masses of the ancient Tigris, by which the otherwise conflicting demands of irrigation, navigation and flood control could be reconciled. The written sources used in this study allowed to describe this water control system in great detail and is a testimony to remarkable ancient hydraulic engineering as early as the 3rd Millennium BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Preservation of meat is difficult to be demonstrated in the archaeological record. • This paper attempts to refine methods for recognizing meat preservation. • Mobile hunter-gatherers preserve and store meat. • The study makes a contribution to the archaeological visibility of meat storage. Even though pivotal for understanding many aspects of human behaviour, preservation and storage of animal resources has not received great attention from archaeologists. One could argue that the main problem lies in the difficulties of demonstrating meat storage archaeologically due to the lack of direct evidence. This paper represents an attempt to refine zooarchaeological methods for the recognition of meat preservation and storage at prehistoric sites. Drawing on the faunal assemblage from Kharaneh IV, an Early/Middle Epipalaeolithic aggregation site in eastern Jordan, this study demonstrates that a combination of taphonomic and contextual analyses alongside ethnographic information may indeed lead archaeologists to insights not directly available from the archaeological record. The empirical evidence presented here contributes to the archaeological visibility of meat preservation and storage, providing a clearer concept of the nature of these practices in pre-agricultural societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Evidence for domestic dogs in the PPNA in eastern Badia region of Jordan. • Dogs were living alongside people in substantial numbers. • Impact of hunting with dogs considered. • Long lineage of sight-hounds probably had a long history. Abstract Current evidence suggests domestications of the dog were incipient developments in many areas of the world. In southwest Asia this process took place in the Late Epipalaeolithic Natufian (∼14,500–11,600 cal BP) with the earliest evidence originating from the Mediterranean zone of the southern Levant. This paper presents new data for the importance of early domestic dogs to human groups in the region beyond this 'core' area where the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene environment is usually thought of as less favourable for human occupation. By the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A it is demonstrated that dogs were living alongside humans in significant numbers. Most discussions of early domestic dogs assume that these animals would have facilitated the hunting of larger prey following the innate behavioural traits of their wolf ancestors. This paper suggests that the benefits of hunting with dogs could also extend to the capture of smaller prey. An increase in the hunting of such animals, as part of the broad-spectrum revolution, was not necessarily a response limited to resource reduction in the Late Pleistocene and factors such as new hunting methods need consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Wet-rice cultivation in Ifugao emerged soon after the arrival of the Spanish in the northern Philippines. • Resistance to Iberian colonialism is investigated through Habitus and agency. • Prestige economy is argued to be resistant to assimilation to the political and economic systems. Abstract Environmental practice in Ifugao, Philippines is considered to have anchored the successful resistance against Spanish conquest in the highlands of the Philippine Cordillera. The social practice associated with wet-rice production in the region is argued to promote community solidarity and cohesion, past and present. By looking at the wet-rice cultivation and its associated rituals, this paper contends that habitus played a major role in the perpetuation and preservation of Ifugao culture during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines. Recent dating of the Ifugao rice terraces suggests that the agricultural marvels were constructed as late as ca. 400 years ago. Previously thought to be at least 2000 years old, the recent findings of the Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP) show that landscape modification for terraced wet-rice cultivation started at ca. 1650 CE. The archaeological record implies that economic intensification and political consolidation occurred in Ifugao soon after the appearance of the Spanish empire in the northern Philippines (ca. 1575 CE). The foremost indication of this shift was the adoption of wet-rice agriculture in the highlands, zones that served as refuge for local populations. I argue that the subsistence shift was precipitated by political pressures and was then followed by political and economic consolidation. The imperial resistance was expressed through wet-rice agriculture; it also facilitated political integration. Using paleoethnobotanical, faunal, and artifactual datasets, this paper documents the process that allowed the Ifugao to resist conquest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Environmental archaeologies contribute critical theories and methods to the archaeological study of empires past. • Imperialism is a political condition predicated on human-environment interactions. • Environmental practices articulate people's relationships to imperial authority. Abstract This paper promotes an explicit study of archaeologies of empire and environment, and advances theories and methods in environmental archaeology that demonstrate that environmental practices articulate people's relationships to imperial authority. While many studies of empire take for granted that centralized organization and surplus production lead to political control and social inequity, in the papers assembled for this special issue, the very relationship between human-environment interactions and political power becomes the object of study. In this introduction, we review established archaeological approaches to empire, explain how environmental frameworks productively recast our understandings of imperialism, and proffer a number of avenues for continued research on the subject, including those provided by the articles in this issue. We present three overarching themes for the study of empire and environment—scale, legacy, and resilience and resistance—and discuss their implementation with the papers that follow. Ultimately, we argue that imperialism entails the management of heterogeneous peoples and environments, and therefore, archaeologies of empire require the integrated study of humans, landscapes, and biota. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • This paper provides an overview of recent data on the agroforestry, agricultural and water management practices of the inhabitants of Tikal, one of the foremost cities of the ancient Maya realm. • In addition, the paper places these data in a contextual framework using resilience and panarchy theories. Abstract Over the time span of more than a millennium, the ancient Maya polity of Tikal went through periods of growth, reorganization and adaptive cycles of various connected scales. Recent data show that following the reorganization of the Late Preclassic period, Tikal experienced an extended period of technological innovation and population growth that eventually stretched the carrying capacity of the available landscape. A hydraulic system was constructed that provided water for the community during the dry seasons: a powerful development in an area without a permanent water source. Agriculture was intensified using a combination of root crop agriculture, irrigated fields, arboriculture, household gardens, short fallow cropping systems and bajo margin cultivation. The net product of these diverse production activities helped to underwrite an enormous amassing of economic and political capital during the Late Classic period. Ultimately, in the mid-9th century CE, expansive growth combined with multiple system disturbances led to a collapse of the city's social structure followed by abandonment of the site. The application of resilience theory as a conceptual framework is useful in helping to interpret the complex web of the underlying social and ecological domains that contributed to Tikal's demise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper uses a 'braided knowledge' approach to explore Aboriginal ancestral narratives, geomorphological interpretations and archaeological evidence relating to the Murray River (Rinta) in South Australia's Riverland region. • Commonalities between Aboriginal and Western knowledge systems are outlined through a number of key threads relating to the geographic directionality of peopling in the region, river dynamism (particularly in relation to the deglacial transformations from 15 ka) and more. • Differences between knowledge systems are also explored and include descriptions of 'Indigenous frameworks' which embed multiple levels of meaning, as well as Aboriginal interpretations of the subsurface. This paper uses a 'braided knowledge' approach to explore Aboriginal ancestral narratives, geomorphological interpretations and archaeological evidence relating to the Murray River (Rinta) in South Australia's Riverland region. The 'knowledge carriers' of ancestral narratives are honoured and complexities regarding the ways in which their wisdom was recorded by Europeans are considered. Commonalities between Aboriginal and Western knowledge systems are outlined through a number of key threads relating to the geographic directionality of peopling in the region, river dynamism (particularly in relation to the deglacial transformations from 15 ka) and more. Differences between knowledge systems are also explored and include descriptions of 'Indigenous frameworks' which embed multiple levels of meaning, as well as Aboriginal interpretations of the subsurface. The paper shows that through a collaborative exchange of ideas, together with the conscious positioning of Aboriginal knowledges, normally disparate systems may be explored to amplify our understandings of Indigenous riverscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Reconstruction of cremation burials to identify shared traits and local variations. • Relationship between ochre staining and upper body elements consistent across sites. • Body treatment varied widely, with potential defleshing as seen via sporadic cut marks. As global archaeological studies of cremation increasingly integrate detailed methodology alongside mortuary theory, case studies from sedentary, agricultural societies – most commonly from Europe and North America - still dominate. This paper examines the earliest known cremation tradition from Africa, associated with a period termed the Pastoral Neolithic c. 3300–1200 BP, at the sites of Njoro River Cave, Keringet Cave, and Noomparrua Nkosesia in Kenya. These burial sites contained remains of multiple cremated individuals in settings of caves and subterranean cavities. Using bioarchaeological and contextual analyses, this paper presents site-specific chaînes opératoires to explore variability in funerary processes. Shared traits including the rocky, secluded environments and patterning of ochre staining demonstrate the potential maintenance and transmission of fundamental aspects of cremation ritual knowledge by different mobile communities throughout the Pastoral Neolithic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestication has particular salience in archaeology, and numerous recent theoretical papers describe this process as a set of evolutionary, ongoing, social, and material relationships between humans and select other species. In contrast, analytical papers on the domestication of dogs nearly always involve a search for their origins as marked by changes in genes and morphologies. This article explores this contrast through the examination of dog remains from the Iron Age Ust’-Polui site in the western Siberian Arctic. Many of the numerous dogs represented at this site were killed and probably consumed when young, likely as part of sacrifices. Others at the site were intentionally buried. Ust’-Polui also contains abundant evidence of advanced dog sledding, including probable harness parts and portions of several complex sleds. Sacrificing and otherwise killing dogs is a domestication practice, as these activities are a form of selective breeding. Domestication of dogs at Ust’-Polui and elsewhere is more than selective breeding, as it is enabled and dependent upon specific landscapes, built things, and other species. At Ust’-Polui these at a minimum included a rich local environment, sleds and harness swivels, and freshwater fish, all of which intertwined in making the particular domestic relationships at the site possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores the networks of technological knowledge that influenced changes in the iron production practices of western Uganda in the second half of the second millennium AD. Temporal and spatial variability in technological processes were observed within the research area, in terms of the style and construction of the furnaces, the use of a manganese-rich flux, and the configuration of tuyères. These shifts were considered in relation to the social dimensions of iron production, specifically the protection of technical knowledge. Informed by ethnographic data from the study area, variations were noted in the participation in, or exclusion from, iron production activity on the basis of gender and clan affiliation. This stands in contrast to ethno-historic accounts that speak of a strongly regulated production environment. This paper considers that an uncritical emphasis on conservatism provides an inadequate framework for addressing long-term change in iron production technologies. It suggests that constellations of knowledge in western Uganda fostered the potential for innovation and experimentation, resulting in dynamic technological practice. This paper urges a more nuanced discussion of how complex metallurgical technologies transform and move within cultural and physical landscapes, with ramifications for how we conceptualize the emergence and adoption of early technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ritual similarity networks of the Classic Maya exhibit multiscalar structural patterning with some communities delineated by dense connections and others that are less integrated. • Relational connections within Classic Maya moral communities vary according to the mode of ceremonial practice, revealing interesting divisions between more and less collective forms of ritual action. Ritual plays an important integrative function in the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human society. The shared experience of ritual establishes strong bonds between individuals that defines their membership in certain social groups. However, rituals are not timeless traditions, nor do they simply restore social equilibrium. Rather, rituals are active and ongoing social processes that unite and divide across multiple social categories. This paper applies archaeological network methods to analyze the multiscalar structure of ritual traditions across Classic Maya (ca. 300–900 CE) society using hieroglyphic inscriptions from dated and provenienced monuments cataloged in the Maya Hieroglyphic Database (Looper and Macri 1991–2024). For the Classic Maya, public ritual and performance were highly charged political events where meaning and power could be negotiated, creating opportunities for identity formation and community integration. Such contexts helped establish strong moral bonds in Classic Maya society. However, we know relatively little about the specific forms and content of these ritual practices. In this study we construct ritual similarity networks from hieroglyphic inscriptions to analyze the structure and organization of these moral communities as well as the ritual relations that bound them together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Summed probability distribution modelling of house and conflict data from the Columbia Plateau of North America. • Gini coefficient of modelling of grave goods as an indicator of wealth inequality. • Application of anarchist theory to ethnographic and archaeological data. • Ethnographic and archaeological records can be seen as complimentary accounts of historic processes. • Identifying future areas of inquiry that are needed within the Columbia Plateau. The Columbia-Fraser Plateau of Northwestern North America was inhabited by complex hunter-gatherer populations throughout the Late Holocene. Archaeological studies have typically characterized these peoples as having corporate households and wealth inequality. Ethnographic accounts emphasize the societies of this region as egalitarian communities and pacifist. In this paper we compare radiocarbon dates for semi-subterranean houses with legacy data for skeletal remains with trauma, mesa-top and island habitations, and storage caves to identify patterns in semi-sedentary settlement and conflict. Additionally, analysis of wealth inequality is conducted using legacy data of burials from throughout the Columbia Plateau. The radiocarbon dataset and legacy data can be reconciled with ethnographic patterns using an anarchist theoretical framework, to provide a potential explanation of the historical changes in socio-economic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Space syntax and GIS analyses shed light on how sociopolitical interactions were arranged. • Historical communities in Chiang Saen practiced heterarchical social and spatial form. • The co-occurrence of hierarchical and heterarchical forms of governance existed in Chiang Saen. Social hierarchy is the most prominent framework scholars use to examine settlement structure and development in Southeast Asia's pre- and post-state eras. The concept of social heterarchy, an unfixed ranked and diversified form of social structure, is an alternative approach to examining the sociopolitical organization of early settlements in the region. However, applications of heterarchy are limited in archaeological research on the sociopolitical organization and social landscape in Southeast Asian state societies. This paper incorporates space syntax and GIS angular and viewshed analyses to understand how sociopolitical interactions were arranged through the spatial configurations of the historical Buddhist temples in Chiang Saen, Thailand. This paper explores the complex interactions between various historical Chiang Saen social and religious groups through their temple spaces across time. Temple spatial characteristics indicate heterarchical forms of organization—evidenced by the hybrid and nonhierarchical temple spatial patterns characterized by open accessibility and integrated and symmetrical organization of spaces—co-existed with hierarchical relationships from the 13th to 17th century. The approach discussed here provides a better understanding of the multiscale relationships and interactions among sociopolitical groups in the historical communities in Chiang Saen, enabling a broader view that can embrace the co-occurrence of hierarchical and heterarchical forms of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Comprehensive remote sensing survey of the monumental funerary landscapes of SE Mauritania. • Characterisation of three newly documented prehistoric tumulus fields. • A size-based classification system for simple stone tumuli in the Sahara is presented. • First application of Gini coefficients to the study of prehistoric funerary landscapes. • Discussion of socio-economic dynamics in the pre-Islamic Sahara-Sahel ecotone. The archaeological record of southeastern Mauritania has considerable potential to contribute to longstanding anthropological debates in world prehistory, such as early cereal domestication or the emergence and organization of complex societies, although research remains limited. The archaeological study of funerary rites offers invaluable insights into cultural attitudes towards the dead and the socio-economic dynamics of the living. The materiality of remembrance is a political statement, rooted on the ability of different social agents to mobilize labor pools and networks of obligations within a given cultural framework. As such, understanding the spatial distribution and size variability in burial monuments within funerary landscapes provides insights into the social energetics of ancestor memorialization. To that end, this paper first presents a size-based classification system for pre-Islamic conical tumulus cairns in the highlands of southeastern Mauritania, West Africa, that has much wider applicability within prehistoric Saharan archaeology. Through the first application of Gini coefficients to the study of funerary landscapes, the paper then analyses the spatial distribution and degree of monument size variability within large, spatially bounded clusters ("tumulus fields") in Dhar Tichitt in order to contextualize the socio-economic dynamics of labor mobilization at three previously undocumented tumulus fields in the western Tagant Plateau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human history of southern Africa’s drylands is a history of discontinuities. This paper identifies several instances where different kinds of discontinuity seem apparent and different kinds of approaches have been, or could be, taken to address them over the past 25,000 years (the approximate time-frame of the Later Stone Age). Fundamental to all the cases examined is a basic feature of southern Africa’s geography, the distinction between summer-, winter-, and year-round-rainfall regimes that cuts across the sub-continent’s arid and semi-arid zones. Drawing where possible on emerging genetic and linguistic, as well as archaeological, data the paper then discusses a series of spatial and/or temporal hiatuses in the region’s cultural history from the Last Glacial Maximum to the introduction of domestic livestock. It concludes by considering two further discontinuities that underlie almost all studies of Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers and herders in southern Africa, regardless of environmental location: the relatively limited degree to which an archaeological record exists for the groups whose ethnographies are most heavily consulted, and the even more troubling disconnect arising from the extension across the whole of southern Africa of ethnographic analogies drawn from a very few populations living in its dryland biomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of unarticulated human remains with anthropic marks in archaeological contexts normally involves solving two issues: a general one associated with the analysis and description of the anthropic manipulation marks, and another with regard to the interpretation of their purpose. In this paper we present new evidence of anthropophagic behaviour amongst hunter-gatherer groups of the Mediterranean Mesolithic. A total of 30 human remains with anthropic manipulation marks have been found in the Mesolithic layers of Coves de Santa Maira (Castell de Castells, Alicante, Spain), dating from ca. 10.2–9 cal ky BP. We describe the different marks identified on both human and faunal remains at the site (lithic, tooth, percussion and fire marks on bone cortex). As well as describing these marks, and considering that both human and faunal remains at the site present similar depositional and taphonomic features, this paper also contextualizes them within the archaeological context and subsistence patterns described for Mesolithic groups in the region. We cannot entirely rule out the possibility that these practices may be the result of periodic food stress suffered by the human populations. These anthropophagic events at the site coincide with a cultural change at the regional Epipalaeolithic-Mesolithic transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Two waves of population loss are identified contemporary with Black Death pandemic. • Transformations occurred in politics, religion, identities, economy, and environment. • New commercial goods and material culture suggest arrival of Mande diaspora. • Merchant diasporas expanded in cooperation with local communities after pandemic. Merchant diasporas have significantly influenced local and interregional processes in world history, but archaeology is only starting to understand the diversity of political, economic, social and religious contexts within which they developed. Recent research has suggested that the second plague pandemic (Black Death) likely affected West Africa. However, little is known regarding the diversity of local and regional impacts and responses. We argue that documented population losses likely caused by plague resulted in disruptions to commercial networks and stimulated merchant diasporas from neighboring Mali into Burkina Faso and further south. Drawing on an expanded corpus of data and new stratigraphic and Bayesian analyses of AMS dates from the site of Kirikongo (western Burkina Faso), this paper identifies two waves of likely plague-related depopulation in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries AD and explores the resulting social, economic, religious and environmental transformations. Notably, local communities worked cooperatively with recently arrived Mande merchant diasporas from the Empire of Mali to reconstruct regional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• How visual statistics of the world explain the cognitive apprehension of materiality A positive interaction between cognition and a materialised human world • Examination of theoretical and interpretive implications of ETA analysis of the visual response to prehistoric pottery • Cognitive and physiological results as proof for coevolution between cognitive processes, materialities and social complexity • A positive interaction between cognition and a materialised human world • The human visual cognition system actively internalizes the observed, showing a perceptual coupling The paper examines how materializations of human practices relate to human cognition and to socio-cultural contexts. By combining evidence on the relationship between material culture and perceptual behaviour, we aim to understand the interactions between the mind, objects, and the world. The research is based on data regarding the visual perception of prehistoric pottery that was analyzed using Eye-Tracking techniques in a way that has not been applied previously to archaeological material culture. The datasets come from Galicia (NW Iberian Peninsula) and range from the Middle Neolithic until the end of the Iron Age (6000–200 BP). They belong to very different contexts that comprise a long-term history through diverse socio-cultural formations. A rigorous methodology makes it possible to unveil cross- and intra-cultural patterns of visual response to materiality, while avoiding presentism and subjective bias. The results provide new insights into the agency of material culture, which contribute to our understanding of the relationship between the mind and the material world, and account for the transitive engagement between the way of thinking, seeing, and making things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Swahili non-elites developed integrative strategies toward centers of power. • Imported ceramics reflect non-elite integration within economic networks. • In response, elites competed with one another to accumulate clients. • Bottom-up integrative strategies structured sociopolitical development on the Swahili Coast. Ceramic trends on Unguja Island in Zanzibar, Tanzania provide insights into non-elite political strategies on the East African Swahili Coast. Synthesizing imported ceramic data from two seasons of systematic field survey across rural Unguja with historical, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence from coastal East Africa, this paper argues that an integrative orientation toward power characterized bottom-up action on the Swahili Coast over the second millennium CE. While theories of bottom-up action have emphasized commoner autonomy and resistance to clientage, debt, and social inequality, evidence from the Swahili Coast attests to efforts by non-elites to seek entrance into cycles of reciprocal obligation as a means for recognition and social mobility—a specifically non-egalitarian orientation toward power. In response, elites competed with one another to accumulate wealth-in-people, resulting in a competitive patron-client system that prevented political consolidation. Elucidating these dynamics contributes to an understanding of how non-elite political strategies have shaped sociopolitical systems globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Elite and non-elite members of a complex hunter-gatherer society were found to have eaten nearly identical diets. • Similarity in elite and non-elite diets was consistent over a period of major sociopolitical change. • Male and female diets were significantly different at an inland site but not on the coast, possibility indicating a higher degree of male mobility. • Elites likely chose non-subsistence venues for status signaling, such as ownership of canoes and trade in prestige goods. How different were the lives of elites and commoners in early complex societies? This paper examines this question using data from three fisher-hunter-gatherer sites in southern California. Using shell bead counts from burials as proxies for social status and previously published human stable isotope values as indicators of dietary practices, we examine the relationship between diet and status across a period of major sociopolitical change. Our results found no significant relationships between the quantity of beads and stable isotope values, indicating that differential access to foods was not a significant way in which status was manifested in these communities. Instead, we suggest that activities including ownership of sea-going canoes, access to imported goods, and the provisioning of community feasts were likely venues for elite status signaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Despite its crucial economic importance, storage remains a surprisingly rare topic in Maya archaeology. • Evidence for storage architecture among the modern, colonial era, and ancient Mayas can help build a middle-range theory for studying this topic. • Architectural, artifactual, and geoarchaeological data can help archaeologists recognize distinct types of above-ground storage architecture, such as kitchens, storerooms, storehouses, and warehouses. • Classic Maya royal courts relied on ancillary, centralized, and administrative storage facilities. • Storage is a necessary and productive angle for studying ancient Maya household and political economies. The storage of abundant foodstuffs or items is a central element of all economies, but strangely remains a rare topic in the field of ancient Maya anthropological archaeology. This paper aims to fill this lacuna by proposing a middle-range theory of ancient Maya storage architecture. This theoretical framework is built on extensive empirical data derived from ethnographical, ethnohistorical, and archaeological literatures. This middle-range model is then applied to the Later Classic (700–900 CE) regal palace of La Corona, Guatemala where five distinct, yet complementary storage contexts are identified on archaeological and geoarchaeological grounds. The storerooms, storehouses, and warehouse found in this royal household were used to store distinct foodstuffs, commodities, administrative tools, taxes and tribute, ceremonial paraphernalia, and prestige items. These complementary architectural contexts are arranged along a pragmatic operational chain, where they occupy ineluctable positions. In this paper, I show that placing storage at the center of ancient Maya economic inquiry – be it for household or political economies – is not only possible, but necessary and productive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transitional moments in prehistory are of broad interest in archaeology. Immediately following the Last Glacial Maximum, two technological shifts occurred in SW Europe: in France, at ∼18,000 uncal. BP, an industry characterized by large Solutrean projectiles was replaced by the well-defined Badegoulian industry; a thousand years later in Vasco-Cantabrian Spain, Solutrean technologies were gradually replaced by Magdalenian antler point ( sagaie ) and lithic inset composite weapons. The Solutrean–Magdalenian transition remains ill-defined in Vasco-Cantabria, where very few “transitional” assemblages dating to the c. 17–16,000 uncal. BP interval have been identified, leaving questions as to how the changes occurred and what kinds of relationships existed between French and Spanish groups during this period. Urtiaga cave (Guipúzcoa) Level F (17,050 ± 140 uncal. BP) contributes a new Initial Magdalenian archaeological sample to the discussion of Last Glacial behavioral change during a technological transition. This paper synthesizes the results of a detailed lithic analysis with findings from previous studies of fauna and osseous industry from Urtiaga Level F. Then, the analysis explores Initial Magdalenian organizational behaviors through a series of lithic procurement/mobility models that show dynamic land use in eastern Vasco-Cantabria. Finally, Urtiaga Level F was compared to four other Initial Magdalenian occupations in the region, demonstrating that lithic maintenance—in manufacture, use, and rejuvenation—was a significant factor in how Initial Magdalenian groups organized their landscape-level behavioral strategies. The archaeological assemblages from Urtiaga cave are important contributions to archaeological questions surrounding the Solutrean–Magdalenian transition, providing further evidence for in situ technological change in Vasco-Cantabria. Additionally, the economic analyses discussed in this paper provide new attributes that archaeologists can use to identify Initial Magdalenian sites on the landscape. This study develops a methodological procedure that is broadly applicable to archaeological studies related to prehistoric cultural transitions and to those studies that apply data from collections recovered during the early 20th century to modern interpretive frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of biface technology in the Lower Palaeolithic arguably marked a fundamental change in how early hominins dealt with their world. It is suggested to reflect changes not just in tool form and innovative shaping, but also in planning depth, landscape use and social structures. This paper examines in detail the chronology of the first Acheulian industries in north-west Europe with the earliest sites from c. 700 ka through to later sites at c. 400 ka. It asks whether evidence from these sites can further our understanding of how the Acheulian and the bifacial technology emerged in this region, but more critically whether it was the underlying behavioural changes that enabled the more sustained occupation of northern latitudes. In particular the paper assesses whether cultural signatures can be identified and whether this reflects changes in group dynamics and social structures that could be a fundamental aspect of surviving in more seasonal, cooler climates. To achieve this, the industries are examined in their chronological and biogeographical framework and compared over time and with the south European sites. The study discusses the influencing factors on variability such as raw material, site function, palaeogeography and questions regarding the background conditions for the introduction of the bifacial technology in Europe. The flexibility in behaviour makes the identification of cultural traditions across Europe difficult due to the situational responses of the early hominins. The large geographical area, the long time period, the fragmented record and a chronology, that still needs improvement, all mean that only glimpses of traditions can be identified, usually at a very local level. However, due to the more extreme climatic cycles of northern Europe, compared to southern Europe, it seems inevitable that populations colonized repeatedly from south to north as climate warmed and retreated or populations became locally extinct as climate cooled. Although there are broad similarities in technology, attempts to identify cultural links have been hampered by the greater variety of raw materials in the south compared to the generally better quality siliceous raw materials in the north. Broad patterns over time might be discernible, with perhaps a refinement through time, but there are also many exceptions to this observation. What seems clearer are other technological innovations from 600 to 500 ka that seem part of an Acheulian package and might reflect other changes in human cultures and societies. It is suggested that these developments were a critical part of more sustained occupation of northern latitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the globally significant topic of gendered participation and socio-technical improvisation in technological systems hard set within deeply symbolic practices. The general belief in the anthropology of sub-Saharan Africa is that metallurgy (male domain) and pottery (female domain) are gendered technologies, regulated by strong taboos that exclude women from participating in male practices, and vice versa. This has promoted the untested generalisation that, in conformity with these gender dichotomies, taboos mandated that transformational stages of metallurgy such as smelting were always carried on outside settlements, without the participation of women. These ideas were empirically tested through a stylistic, petrographic and geochemical study of metallurgical crucibles from Mapungubwe, which at this site resemble pottery. It emerged that pottery and crucibles are one and the same. Since pottery was made by women, and men worked metal, the conclusion in this paper is that metallurgy was neither hermetically sealed nor accessible exclusively to men. Furthermore, depending on context, primary metal production was also practised within settlements. This demonstrates considerable fluidity and improvisation, with women and men participating in each other’s technological domains, although such participation may have been staggered so that they undertook different tasks of the same process, at potentially different times and in different spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Variability in and significance of hunter-gatherer aggregation sites are reviewed. • The Cadfael archaeological site is a Dorset aggregation in the Canadian Arctic. • The aggregation site contains stone longhouses as well as ritual features. • Change over time at the site results from interaction between Dorset and Inuit. Most hunter-gatherer lifeways revolve around periodic large gatherings – aggregations – that serve as social, ritual, and economic anchors for their annual cycles. However, in archaeological contexts they are often difficult to recognize. This paper describes and interprets a particularly large and well-preserved example of a warm season aggregation site dating to the Late Dorset period in the eastern North American Arctic. This site extends for over 750 m along coastal beach ridges and contains four boulder-outlined "longhouses" of up to 38 m in length as well as hundreds of other features used for storage, cooking, and ritual activities. In addition to interpreting the range of activities occurring on the site, this paper discusses the clear evidence for change over time in the ways its inhabitants interacted with the built environment, and with each other. Because these changes took place mainly during the 13th century CE, they likely represent a reaction to the arrival in this region of ancestral Inuit, who migrated from Alaska during this period and ultimately replaced Dorset populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the significance and relevance of concepts presented by Lewis Binford in “The Archaeology of Place” (1982) in studying the process of human colonization in Patagonia. Models and observational techniques inspired by and presented in that seminal paper have been instrumental in the discussion of the mobility of the first inhabitants of southern Patagonia. The result is a flexible ecological model of a slow process of human expansion into the southern end of the continent, and the recognition of at least three early occupational nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The pollen indicators of farming in Central European Plain c.a. 5050–4800 BCE excludes depopulation after the LBK collapse. • Rondels as the ceremonial centers played a leading role in building a new network social ties after the LBK collapse. • The pollen and radiocarbon data indicate that some rondelles had solid construction and could functioned nearly 300 years. Rondels are the oldest monumental ceremonial objects in Europe. They appeared some 200 years after the demise of the Linear Pottery culture (c. 4800 BCE). They have given a new shape to the resurgent 'Danubian Neolithic World'. However, despite intensive research, it is still unclear (1) how the transition process took place after the fall of the LBK; (2) how long rondels were function; and (3) under what circumstances they were abandoned. In this paper, we present a new approach to this problem based on an analysis of the biography of a single object based on the integration of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data. We assume that the high-resolution pollen analysis of lake sediments provides critical data on the dynamics of population change (hiatuses, sharp declines and increases in population size) and how the environment is affected (felling of specific tree species, fires, cultivation of particular crops, grazing intensity). They provide a better understanding of the sequence of settlement and construction changes as well as alterations in material culture available in the archaeological record. The subject of the analysis is a site in the Lower Oder Valley (north-west Poland), at the furthest northern periphery of the 'Danubian World'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Case study of war in the ancient Maya kingdom of Piedras Negras. • Settlement location, fortifications, weapons, human remains, and epigraphy. • Chronological changes in violence across the first millennium A.D. • War and processes of polity formation and collapse. • Evidence for total war and attacks on community. Through a case study of the Classic period (A.D. 350–900) kingdom of Piedras Negras, this paper addresses a number of debates in the archaeology of war among the ancient Maya. These findings have broader comparative use in ongoing attempts to understand war in the precolonial Americas, including the frequency of war, its role in processes of polity formation and collapse, the involvement of non-elites in combat, and the cause and effect of captive-taking. This paper provides the first synthesis of a number of datasets pertaining to war and violence in the region of Piedras Negras while presenting new settlement data gleaned from recent lidar survey of the area. Focus is especially on tracing the material, iconographic, and epigraphic evidence for war in diachronic perspective. Material evidence includes the spatial distribution of settlement, presence of fortifications, weaponry, and human skeletal remains demonstrating evidence of traumatic injury. Additional data are drawn from epigraphy and iconography. As with all archaeological contexts, there are crucial gaps in the record. Nevertheless, by combining these datasets it is possible to reconstruct a history of warfare within this precolonial indigenous polity of the first millennium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the critical questions related to population aggregation and the development of urbanism centers on how and why people came together to form and maintain large settlements, overcoming challenges of feeding, organizing, and governing large populations. As one key component of life in large communities, storage practices represent a crucial building block and one of, if not the, most important economic and social foundations for population aggregation and urbanism in all areas of the world. Archaeologists have assumed that small-scale urbanism required enhanced social, economic, and political complexity, often reflected in non-residential storage practices. Focusing on the Near Eastern Bronze Age, this paper offers a detailed assessment of residential storage practices at Numayra, a fortified settlement inhabited from c. 2850-2550 Cal. BC during the southern Levantine Early Bronze Age III. The southern Levantine Early Bronze Age was a small-scale urban society that emerged with population aggregation, some civic administration, and varying degrees of political and economic inequality. Drawing upon detailed evidence for residential storage at the site, we evaluate arguments for social, political and economic inequality at the site and more broadly in the region. This paper examines residential storage practices at Numayra, where 192 storage features and well-preserved artifactual materials suggest that people might have used storage practices simultaneously as both leveling and competitive mechanisms. Numayra's storage evidence demonstrates that the ways in which people stored and shared food and other storable goods changed over the course of the settlement's history, providing a nuanced and localized micro-history of storage behaviors in a small, fortified community. This research contributes a detailed understanding of the dynamic relationship between population aggregation and socioeconomic inequality, and explores how we can understand the pathways to and mechanics of population aggregation and urban lifeways at any scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Introduction to the special issue "alcohol, rituals, and politics in the ancient world". • Review of the intellectual history of alcohol studies in anthropology. • The impacts of alcoholic beverages in shaping the course of human history. • Recent advancements in archaeological methods for identifying prehistoric alcohol use. This special issue brings together recently developed theories and methodologies for understanding alcoholic beverages in the ancient world. While alcohol has continued to be a relatively overlooked research topic within anthropology/archaeology, the papers assembled for this special issue center the relationship between alcohol, rituals, and politics through novel archaeological fieldwork, analytical techniques, and theoretical concepts. In this introduction, we review established theoretical approaches to alcohol and drinking, explain the deep history of alcohol in human societies, and introduce papers in this special issue. We argue that alcohol production and consumption can be studied as a set of unique social phenomena that construct social identity, formulate political power, and precipitate historical transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Archaeological interpretations are interwoven with analogical reasoning. This paper presents a large volume of ethnographic data on traditional pig husbandry in modern Iberia and discusses their zooarchaeological importance. Europe-based ethnoarchaeological studies on traditional pig husbandry (e.g., in Sardinia/Corsica and Greece) have only recently made their appearance and have been proved environmentally and geographically more relevant than similar studies carried out in Asia. This paper presents archaeologically relevant data on a great variety of themes such as pig morphology, adaptation in and exploitation of environment, herd size and composition, the relations between wild and domestic populations, castration, breeding, genetic diversity, slaughtering practices, age-at-death, home range, control and movements, diet, weight, agricultural damage and products. The results show that traditional systems of animal husbandry do survive in Europe and their study widens and improves our interpretative framework. This Iberian-based study showed that domestic pig morphology is the combined result of the breeder’s selection and the pig’s adaptation to a given environment and husbandry system. Moreover, scale is a crucial factor significantly affecting all other aspects of a husbandry system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Human body manipulation and secondary burials are widespread funerary practices in many areas of the world. The archaeology of the Pampas and North-Eastern Patagonia, Argentina, is no exception. In this paper, archaeological case studies from the lower basin of the Colorado River during the Final Late Holocene (ca. 1000–250years BP) are presented and discussed. Secondary burials were recovered that indicated an intentional manipulation of bodies. Evidences of cut marks and the coloring of bone surfaces were recorded. The bundles were composed of individuals of both sexes and diverse age categories. The Pampean region and North-Eastern Patagonia witnessed significant hunter–gatherer population dynamics during the last 1000years BP. Climatic, ecologic, demographic, and economic explanations have been proposed as the background to these changes. In this paper, it is argued that accompanying these factors, as part of a broader socio-cultural scenario, were significant social interaction networks and processes of social complementarity between groups. In this context, it is proposed that the complexity observed in relation to the handling of bodies is part of a worldview in which the body was seen as material culture – as a symbol – that played an important role for the community in group identity maintenance in a cultural context undergoing significant organizational changes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Least Cost Path modeling can be applied to maritime movement events. • Geospatial migration models need to be calibrated to specific times and places. • Migration models must be situated in both landscape and migration theory. • We assess possible Late Pleistocene maritime movement routes on the Northwest Coast. We present a theoretical framework for applying Geographic Information System least-cost path modeling to initial migration into the Americas. When integrated with theory, geospatial models can serve as a powerful tool for exploring how ancient humans may have moved through marine environments. We show how a strong theoretical foundation can be used to conduct Maritime Least Cost Path analysis to better understand where, when, and how migration and movement events may have taken place in the deep past. This paper examines possible peopling events along the Pacific Coast of North America during the Late Pleistocene. We ask what the role of modeling is in the search for early sites in the Americas and how models can most effectively be employed by looking at two case studies of migration into Prince Rupert Harbor and the Dundas Islands in British Columbia, Canada around 16,000 cal. yr BP. Our analysis created paths of least resistance for moving through landscapes based on different environmental, physiological, and cultural factors of boat-based travel. We examine the predicted paths created by our model to determine what they say about possible routes of maritime migration and consider the implications for understanding constraints and human agency in migration events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Assyrian conquests and colonization created a new bureaucratic organization in the provinces. • Colonization involved settlement of imperial personnel with new habits and needs. • Deported potters navigated their craft in order to fit the imperial demands. • Navigating across cultures, deportees produced material culture that preserved their identity. • Deportees gave relevance for their lives in a new world through daily practice of material culture. Practiced by most ancient empires, forced movement of populations distinguished by ethnicity, class, religion or profession had far-reaching political, economic and cultural consequences on indigenous societies. Assyria's expansion westward in the late eighth – early seventh centuries BCE not only enhanced forced population transfers from and into its conquered regions; it was a regular feature of its policy. Recent studies have emphasized the role of archaeology in illustrating diverse imperial strategies practiced by the Assyrians. By following the archaeological footprints of the massive movement of people and products across the imperial space, I will emphasize the agency of deported craftsmen in the empire-building act and its implications for the economy and social composition of local communities. The Iron Age II remains at Tel Dan are the focus of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Changes in hinterland demographics do not explain the timing and pattern of mining activity. • The start of mining is highly correlated with the appearance of jade axes in northwest Europe. • The start of mining in Great Britain is highly correlated with changes in open ground pollen taxa. The extent to which non-agricultural production in prehistory had cost-benefit motivations has long been a subject of discussion. This paper addresses the topic by looking at the evidence for Neolithic quarrying and mining in Britain and continental northwest Europe and asks whether changing production through time was influenced by changing demand. Radiocarbon dating of mine and quarry sites is used to define periods of use. These are then correlated with a likely first-order source of demand, the size of the regional populations around the mines, inferred from a radiocarbon-based population proxy. There are significant differences between the population and mine-date distributions. Analysis of pollen data using the REVEALS method to reconstruct changing regional land cover patterns shows that in Britain activity at the mines and quarries is strongly correlated with evidence for forest clearance by incoming Neolithic populations, suggesting that mine and quarry production were a response to the demand that this created. The evidence for such a correlation between mining and clearance in continental northwest Europe is much weaker. Here the start of large-scale mining may be a response to the arrival by long-distance exchange of high-quality prestige jade axes from a source in the Italian Alps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• History of initial human exploration of Central Western Patagonia. • Importance of human pulses of occupation of Central Western Patagonia. • Ethnographic information is used for understanding exploration and colonization. • Oldest human remains in Patagonia. Identifying the process of initial exploration of any given area is complex in the sense that it lies in the boundary between the absence and presence of reliable anthropogenic evidence. However, how can we be certain that the data are in fact the result of exploration and not the result from a low-density archaeological record or other process that might be mimicking this process? This paper presents selected ethnographical data to shed light on regional data that are key to understanding the process of exploration. Information on the human dispersal into new lands and on the management of knowledge is presented in the frame of hunter-gatherer territorial organization, mobility, technology and the use of resources, and then discussed in the context of the archaeological record of Central Western Patagonia. It is suggested that although low in visibility, exploration is identifiable in the regional archaeological record. Hunter-gatherers of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition occupied the Andean fringe, moving out of some eastern occupational node and sacrificing the security of the motherland in exchange for extending territorial reaches. The study provides solid grounds for discussing a case of exploration with broader implications for the understanding of the archaeological correlates of exploration of new lands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The evidences of the first Neolithic settlements in the Iberian Peninsula are partial. • Only open-air excavations of wide areas allow the recognition of early Neolithic settlements. • The basic organizational unit of these early Neolithic groups would be the household. • Early Neolithic farm-type settlements would comprise one or more domestic units. Abstract In this paper, we analyze the data related to the households of the first farmers in the Iberian Peninsula during the early Neolithic and discuss the theoretical and archaeological constraints on their recognition. Information is limited by different factors, such as the traditional excavation exclusively of caves and the difficulties in preserving the archaeological record at open-air sites. Most of these sites present diverse types of structures, from production-consumption, storage or waste areas, to different types of possible dwellings. We argue that the most common type of settlement within these groups were farms, which would constitute basic units of productive and social organization. Lastly, we highlight the research approach involving the open-air excavation at settlements large enough to allow the identification of domestic units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Child labor has been called an archaeological "enigma" because its expression varies with age, gender, social organization, and economy. There are negative connotations in Western societies, especially given the abuses of the industrial revolution, and for hunter-gatherers it seems to contradict the notion of original affluent societies. Yet the adoption of tasks marks progress toward adulthood. There is no reason to assume that children were not willing participants, or that labor is onerous. Child labor is an expected and natural element of growing up. This paper examines foraging behavior with a specific focus on the collection of mollusks at the Main Street Kronprindsens Gade (KPG) site, St. Thomas, USVI (circa cal. 400 CE). It is argued that an abundance of small, rocky intertidal and shallow seagrass inhabiting mollusks reflects foraging by children. General characteristics of these food items and the behaviors they represent are proposed as a model for identifying one aspect of labor by children. The association of mollusk collecting with children also helps to explain what would appear to be non-optimal foraging by adults, and the social relations of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Intensive surface collection can produce size estimates for cremation cemeteries. • A size estimate and error range for the living is produced using several parameters. • Population catchments are modelled based on cemetery size and regional survey data. Abstract Disposal of the dead is a multi-step process usually involving several people and multiple locations over time. Understanding the size and internal composition of a cemetery generated by this process is important for estimating the social and chronological patterning of the people buried there. When we know the number of dead in a cemetery, the length of time the cemetery was in use, and the life expectancy of the population, we can also help establish the size and composition of the living community who used it. This paper provides both local and regional spatial perspectives for a mortuary population by combining surface collection and excavation to describe activity areas and population size at a Bronze Age cemetery in Eastern Hungary. While prehistoric features and activity areas are difficult to identify using surface collection alone, we find that the combination of surface collection and excavation data in a GIS permits us to estimate the size of the cemetery, propose plausible models of activity areas within it, and generate new hypotheses about the regional community that produced it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Pucarani is a major hillfort in the Peruvian Titicaca Basin with massive walls. • Although walls were built in a short time, the labor was feasible for the population. • Wall construction required coordination but not strong central leadership. • Evidence suggests social organization into several large groups. • Large-scale defensive architecture can shed light on monumentality in general. Abstract This paper highlights the relevance of defensive architecture to archaeological discussions of monumentality, collective action, and political leadership. Recently, archaeologists have argued that some early religious monuments were built without permanent central leadership, raising important questions about the nature of collective action and the integration of large populations in communal tasks. We suggest that large-scale defensive architecture, when viewed as a form of monumentality, can contribute to these discussions. Evidence is presented from an archaeological investigation at Pucarani, a major hillfort settlement in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Peru dating to the Late Intermediate Period (or LIP, CE 1100–1450). In this time span after the collapse of the Tiwanaku state but before the rise of the Inca empire, the basin was dominated by large hillfort towns (Arkush, 2011). Pucarani is the single largest hillfort documented to date in Arkush's multi-year investigations of 49 such sites in the northwestern Titicaca Basin, and its defensive walls are the largest by far. What kind of political leadership and social organization produced this impressive site? Our investigations of surface architecture and artifacts in the residential zone suggest social organization in several large corporate groups. Evidence for social differentiation and formal hierarchy is limited. Pucarani's walls, though they were built in a short time frame and were quite visually imposing, required a labor input that was manageable for the large resident population. Defensive wall construction required planning and coordination, but was accomplished in heterogenous styles, possibly by multiple work groups. The evidence from Pucarani speaks to the capacity of LIP communities with loosely centralized leadership to organize and accomplish large-scale endeavors in the face of threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Traditional compound adhesive production and hafting require complex steps and processes. • Euphorbia latex may have been used as effective base for prehistoric hafting adhesives. • Certain aspects of composite tool making are more sophisticated than previously realized. Abstract Combining individual components into a single implement—i.e., hafting—conferred prehistoric populations more efficient toolkits, including projectile weapons. Hafting with the aid of adhesives is considered to have particularly given composite tools better reliability. The innovation of compound adhesives is specifically considered cognitively more demanding than simpler forms of fixative paste. As a result, the antiquity and nature of such adhesives has attracted much archaeological research attention. However, with few ethnographic instances studied worldwide, the complexity of prehistoric compound adhesive technologies remains largely inferential. This paper describes the multicomponent adhesive production and hafting of obsidian scrapers by traditional hideworkers in southern Ethiopia. Documentation of the compound adhesive preparation and hafting processes has implications for the interpretation of various aspects of archaeological hafting adhesives, including those related to the cognitive requirements involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Ritual economy was used to understand bloodletting in Maya caves. • The ancient Maya used obsidian blades for bloodletting rituals. • Caves are locations for the performance of ancient Maya ritual. • Technological and use-wear analyses of obsidian blades from Actun Uayazba Kab, Belize. • Some obsidian blades from Actun Uayazba Kab were used for bloodletting. • Bloodletting was a means to generate political, economic, and ideological power and maintain status by ancient Maya elites. Abstract Ancient Maya material culture can be investigated from the perspective of ritual economy as a means to interpret the dynamic interrelationships between economic processes and the use of objects in ritual activities. Such interrelationships include access to raw materials, control of production and consumption, and the legitimate use of objects in various activities, including rites and performances, as constituted through a culture's worldview. This paper presents an exploration of the relationship between obsidian blades and bloodletting in Maya ritual contexts from the perspective of ritual economy, highlighting the use of blades in Actun Uayazba Kab (Handprint Cave) in Western Belize. The roles of producers, consumers, practitioners, and observers are examined in terms of gender, status, and power by tracing the functional and ideological characteristics of obsidian blades, as both objects used to let blood and as symbols of bloodletting, based on evidence derived from microscopic use-wear analysis and iconography. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric information is employed to assist in contextualizing ancient Maya ritual activity in caves and to provide a cultural lens to reconstruct how bloodletting was connected to resource production and consumption, the creation and maintenance of identity, and the allocation of power among Maya participants through ritual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Elaborate palace compound on Cerro Baúl in southern Peru was locus of ritual event. • Death of elite woman accompanied by ritual feasting and abandonment. • Deposits have food refuse of camelids and fishes as well as remains of ritual animals. • Significant expenditure of labor and material resources is evidenced. • Spatial arrangement and distribution of local and exotic goods was intentional. Abstract Ritual was an effective power building strategy in many archaic states and early empires. In this paper we describe the ritual abandonment of a palace residence at the Wari site of Cerro Baúl in southern Peru. This exclusive ritual event brought provincial and local elites together and included a funerary internment, feasting, and the intentional creation of numerous and varied offerings throughout the structure. We document the patterning and contents of these deposits including food animals, non-consumable and exotic animals, lithics, and broken ceramic vessels. We posit that lavish offerings such as the one we document here were sponsored by the state and communicated institutional facts to participants. Elements of these rituals may have been repeated across the Wari Empire and been integral to Wari institutions. As such, the study of ritual depositions and other patterned practices may be one means by which the presence of Wari elites or control by the Wari polity may be assessed through material remains. The features of ritual deposits may shed light on the strategies elites used to exert power over their subjects. This methodology may have broad application in the study of expansive polities in the Andes and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Warrior statues, statue-menhirs and carved rocks are contextualized in their respective social entanglements. • Bronze and Iron Age material images are analyzed from an enactive approach. • Material and conceptual dependences between carved rocks, statue-menhirs and warrior stone are analyzed. • The temporal depth of northwestern Iberian landscape is showed. • Different types of 'armed' landscapes are defined. Abstract The presence of petroglyphs, statue-menhirs and warrior statues in northwestern Iberia in Late Prehistory (2250/2150 BC-AD 100) prompted the emergence of semiotic ideologies which created armed landscapes. This paper contextualizes these iconographies and suggests relationships amongst them. By comparing them we may gain a greater understanding not only of the type of personages and ways of being-in-the-world they contributed to producing in their respective contexts, but also of their persistence over time and of the long-term connections between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]