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• 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]

• 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]

• 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]

• 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]

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]

• 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]

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]

• 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: 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]

• 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]

• 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]

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 • 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]

Abstract: Understanding of European prehistoric storage practices tends to focus on the long-term and large-scale storage of cereals from the Neolithic onwards. In addition, storage is often associated with the development of sedentism and social complexity. Through the use of anthropological and ethnographic data this paper demonstrates that storage by both hunter–gatherers and farmers is more complex. New storage categories, such as closed and open caches, and portable storage, are suggested as ways of understanding whether similar storage practices were used during European prehistory. We learn that although direct evidence for storage is difficult to find in the archaeological record, a combination of ethnographic data and indirect evidence demonstrates that storage, especially this use of small-scale storage, was practiced in prehistory. In the conclusion, this paper demonstrates that storage during the Mesolithic (11,300–6000 BP) would have played a vital role in the lifeways of hunter–gatherers and that for the Neolithic (6000–4500 BP) the use of small-scale storage of a variety of foods would have been equally important as the storage of grain. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We discuss the ritual deposition of whetstones on native-type farmsteads in the northern-most parts of the Gallo-Roman Province of Gallia Belgica. The phenomenon occurs mainly in the lower river Scheldt valley (Belgian East and West Flanders and the southwestern Netherlands), where these whetstones, as well as other objects, are most often found in the domestic environment of timber-framed stable-houses. We show that the stone tools were buried deliberately in a specific structural component of the house, and that there was no intention of reclaiming them afterwards. By burying these whetstones, native Gallo-Roman-period farmers removed them from their primary, functional use, but at the same time initiated a new trajectory in their cultural biography. They received a ritual, apotropaic function in the course of the domestic life cycle of the house and its inhabitants, connected to the seasonal rhythm of the annual harvest cycle. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion of structured (building) deposits in archaeology and, more generally speaking, to the various aspects of the cultural biography of houses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Money, finance, and debt are interdependent parts of historically contingent economies. • Money, finance, and debt are socially enacted and socially transformative. • An archaeology of money explores how it is embedded in social relations. • An archaeology of finance traces strategies for shifting resources and risk in time. • An archaeology of debt recognizes it as a fundamental component of human societies and economies. • Archaeologists study money, finance, and debt from under-represented times and places. • An archaeology of money, finance, and debt defies narratives of smooth and uncontested progress. This paper establishes the parameters for an archaeological study of money, debt, and finance as interrelated aspects of human economies. We begin with economic anthropology's roots in the works of Mauss, Malinowski, and Polanyi before proceeding to the individual topics of money, debt, and finance and the ways in which they overlap in theory and practice. Archaeological research into these topics is of particular value because it expands our view of the social and political dynamics of economies beyond production, distribution, and consumption. The insights of economic anthropology and other social sciences can push archaeologists to look beyond material instruments to the effects of money, finance, and debt in the material world. When archaeologists recognize money, finance, and debt as socially enacted and socially transformative (just as they do for production, exchange, and consumption), they are able to study the origins of these fundamental components of human economies as well as their long, contentious, and dynamic histories. This paper showcases the contributions of the other papers assembled as part of a virtual special issue and calls on all archaeologists to examine economies of the past in new ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iron Age martial ritual sites constitute some of the richest archaeological evidence that violence and mass behavior not only became increasingly a part of the political reality in the Iron Age, but that it subsequently began to permeate the religious sphere. Of particular interest are the post-conflict ritual sanctuaries of Northern Gaul and the war bogs of Scandinavia, both of which display the remains of violent conflicts with exceptional amounts of (often mutilated) weapon paraphernalia and/or human remains. The purpose of this paper is to examine the linkage between these two traditions in the period 200 BC–AD 200. It is based on a new compilation of 80 sites with post-conflict ritual practices from this period. We suggest that the significant latitude in the combination of different martial practices and elements points both to local customs and to supra-regional links. This pattern is explained by the existence of a partly shared symbolic reservoir of symbols and practices. Dependent on differing ritual governance structures, different patterns come about in the archaeological record. In this respect, post-conflict sites represent largely self-organized settings associated with large-scale conflicts, assembled groups, and high-arousal group behavior. They thus differ from governing structures at community or family group level. This approach gives post-conflict rituals a new and more central role in the development and upholding of ritual traditions across Iron Age Northern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies concepts from the fields of historical ecology and human niche construction theory to interpret archaeological and palaeoecological data from the Brazilian state of Acre, southwest Amazonia, where modern deforestation has revealed hundreds of pre-Columbian monumental earthworks called ‘geoglyphs’, largely built between ca. 2000–650 cal. BP (calibrated years before present). Our main objective was to move away from the debate which currently dominates Amazonian archaeology over large- vs. small-scale pre-Columbian environmental impacts, and instead offer a more nuanced interpretation of human-environment interactions in our specific study area. Despite the difficulties presented by working with an incomplete regional archaeological dataset, interpreting our findings in light of these theoretical frameworks allowed us to re-think landscape history and ask new questions about a possible relationship between anthropogenic forests, symbolic capital and monument building in our particular study area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lumps of mineral pigments are the more widespread archaeological remains found at Mousterian sites that may have been used by Neanderthals for symbolic activities. The characterisation of their chemical composition is essential to identify behavioural consistencies in their selection, transformation, and use, reconstruct changes through time in Neanderthals cultural practices, and discuss the emergence of symbolic cultures. In the Dordogne department of France, hundreds of black lumps, often bearing traces of intentional modification, were recovered at Middle (MP) and Upper Palaeolithic (UP) sites. In this paper we apply particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) to a representative sample of black lumps recovered at three MP and four UP sites as well as eight geological outcrops from this region with the aim of using major, minor, and trace elements content to identify potential sources and explore intra- and inter-site variability in the use of black colouring matter. Results suggest that MP and UP communities systematically searched for and surveyed Mn-rich formations to collect Mn-rich lumps. Differences in composition indicate that archaeological lumps were collected at a number of different outcrops, not sampled in the present study. A higher compositional variability is observed at UP compared to MP sites with single cultural layers. This suggests that UP modern humans may have, in some cases, exploited a wider range of Mn-rich sources than Mousterian Neanderthals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the study of the extractive metallurgical technology that was employed in four colonial mining-metallurgical sites in the high plateau (Puna) of Jujuy, Argentina, dedicated to silver exploitation during the 17th and 18th centuries. In these archaeological sites, we have identified the presence of reverberatory furnaces. We explore the development of this technology and show the results of the study of the furnaces found in the Puna of Jujuy, their functions and performance, based on our fieldwork and on the results of archaeometric analyses of smelting slag and vitrified clay samples. The excellent conservation of most of the furnaces makes them not only a great source of information for the study of colonial metallurgy in this region, but also a contribution to our understanding of mining and extractive metallurgy in the Andes, of the circulation of workers and technical knowledge and of the changes generated by the Spanish conquest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding how human societies interacted with environmental changes is a major goal of archaeology and other socio-natural sciences. In this paper, we assess the human-environment interactions in the Pampa del Tamarugal (PDT) basin of the Atacama Desert over the last 13,000 years. By relying on a socio-environmental model that integrates ecosystem services with adaptive strategies, we review past climate changes, shifting environmental conditions, and the continuities and discontinuities in the nature and intensity of the human occupation of the PDT. As a result we highlight the importance of certain key resources such as water, an essential factor in the long-term trajectory of eco-historical change. Without water the outcome of human societies becomes hazardous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on previous research at smaller scales, in this paper we assemble paleoecological data and archaeological time-series for deserts located in three latitudinal bands along the South American Arid Diagonal (16°–41°S, ∼1,236,000 km 2 of area). Diverse proxies suggest the existence of arid and extremely arid conditions in large parts of these deserts. Working with a database composed of 914 archaeological dates falling between the first human presence in each region and 3000 years BP, which produce a minimum number of 578 occupational events, we identify a series of patterns at a macro-regional scale: a robust increase in the temporal signal at the beginning of the mid-Holocene (8000–7600 years BP) followed by two troughs (7600–7200, 6800–6400 years BP) during this period. The spatial scope of the data presented provides an opportunity for disentangling processes of spatial re-localization from actual changes in population size. We present a demographic hypothesis at a macro-regional scale, which suggests the existence of mid-Holocene population bottleneck(s). This hypothesis would account not only for the mid-Holocene troughs, but also for the posterior record of an intense and relatively rapid population growth (release) observed in many regions of the arid diagonal. These mid-Holocene events provide the context for independent trajectories of economic intensification based on different sets of resources -marine foods, camelids, and also probably wetland resources-, some of which lead to domestication processes. These cases occur in association with a tendency towards reduced residential mobility in regions that may have acted as refugia during arid periods of the mid-Holocene. The analysis produces testable expectations for future research at different scales and for different research domains, including human DNA and morphometric evidence. We consider that these issues have a fecund comparative potential, since the analysis of the socio-demographic meaning of archaeological discontinuities in different continents shares a similar conceptual structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The archaeology of climate change must. • Improve chronological controls on archaeological and environmental data; • Downscale climate data to local and microlocal effects in high-resolution studies; • Generate multi-proxy archaeological data analyses, avoiding single variable reporting in favor of multiple sources of precisely dated archaeological evidence; • Engage with up-to-date high-quality theory on social vulnerability and human responses to climate and environmental change; • Specify the threats, magnitude, and predictability of climate impacts in the context of traditional environmental knowledge; and. • Look at change before, during and after the climate impact. In 2004, the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology published Julie Field's "Environmental and climatic considerations: a hypothesis for conflict and the emergence of social complexity in Fijian prehistory", where she combined climate and environmental data to investigate the relationship between social patterns of change in the context of variability. Field tackled a complex issue: how societies respond to climate and environmental change that could cause unpredictable impacts on subsistence and settlement systems. Much progress has been made towards the understanding of human adaptations or responses to climate change since that paper was published. Here I reflect on the issues put forth by Field and consider how archaeology can engage with other interdisciplinary sciences and contribute to the understanding of human responses to environmental change. Two topics are emphasized: climate and environmental change, and social behavior in the context of that change. When attempting to identify how climate change affects a society, it is necessary to downscale climate to the specific location in consideration (space) during the time-period during which the relevant society lived (time) and in the context of their past experiences of climate (traditional knowledge). We face an unprecedented climate crisis and archaeology can contribute to the identification of solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Marra Australian Aboriginal philosophies guide archaeological research. • Stone artefacts are embedded within Marra relational philosophies and politics. • Stone 'raw materials' are potent ancestral substances. • Access to powerful Marra ancestral quarries changed through time. • Lithic analyses of Marra stone artefacts reveal changing social worlds. In archaeology, investigations into the social and cultural contexts of stone artefacts have largely focused on their typological styles, manufacturing technologies, functions, geographic distributions and the significance of the quarries they come from. Yet what is oftentimes overlooked is the deeper contemporary understandings by Indigenous groups of the stone artefacts recovered from excavations. In this paper, we analyse an assemblage of 9,642 excavated stone artefacts from the rockshelter site of Walanjiwurru 1 in Marra Country in northern Australia, in light of the cosmological significance of regional stone sources to local Aboriginal groups. Each recovered stone artefact, and the quarries of their raw materials, is laden with meanings that help reveal how Marra Aboriginal people socially and cosmologically engaged with their landscape. By combining archaeological and Marra cultural perspectives, we argue that subtle variations in the range of stones and their relational characteristics signal changing political engagements with ancestral places over the past 2300 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The first detailed recording of a large rock art site from Australia's Kimberley region. • Harris Matrices following digital enhancement of a Kimberley rockshelter wall. • The incidence of superimpositions as re-engagements with rock art through time. • Targetted battering of rock art following the Gwion period. • Regional ethnographic evidence for the likely reasons why the rock art was battered. Patterns of superposition in rock art are often used to systematically construct style sequences. However, once on the rock, images can affect subsequent engagements with the art, the rock surface, the site, and its surrounding landscape, and this recursiveness can be studied through the superimpositions (significantly overlaid markings) on a rock face. This is an opportunity for archaeologists to investigate the culture of engagement not just at the moment of the art's initial creation, but subsequently also. In this paper we show how a long sequence of art styles that together span c. 17,000 years or more was not haphazardly arranged at the key site of Pundawar Manbur, in the Kimberley region of northwest Australia, but rather was constituted of many meaningful overlaps whose particularities reveal much about the culture of art and site engagement over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simulations of spatial interaction in archaeology have been successful in predicting the emergence of central sites, and political and economic hierarchies that match observed long-term settlement patterns. It still remains unclear, however, to what degree such models can effectively allow for uncertainty in the archaeological record, especially when it comes to incomplete and unevenly distributed settlement data, and how best they might incorporate artefact-scale evidence. This paper aims to address these issues, while attempting to tackle widely debated aspects of socio-political organisation and cultural interaction in the prehistoric Cretan landscape at the period immediately before and after the foundation of the first palace of Phaistos, one of the less well documented Bronze Age phases. We employ a simulation of spatial interaction inspired by approaches first developed in urban geography and combine this with regression-based predictive modelling to address the uncertainty introduced by missing settlements. We use evidence from artefact analysis partly to calibrate and partly to validate our model. We conclude that such an approach can contribute to more convincing archaeological theories about socio-political organisation, cultural affinity and regional identity by providing new evidence even in the presence of very fragmented data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reconstruction of complex political formations in tropical and subtropical environments has long been challenged by the ephemeral nature of archaeological deposits and the detectability of a settlement hierarchy. This paper presents findings from systematic archaeological surveys in the Lake Dian basin in southwest China to evaluate processes of political differentiation during the Bronze Age (ca. BC 900–100) and identified with the protohistoric kingdom of Dian. We discuss the problems of interpreting political consolidation based on mono-centers and ranked site size distributions. Our approach considers the contingent forms that ‘built’ landscapes can take in the humid subtropics in an effort to understand the variable relationship between politics and spatial scale. Combining traditional survey as well as subsurface methods suited for intensively worked paddy landscapes, we discuss the emergence and timing of multiple nucleated settlements as indicative of peer polity dynamics in the basin and examine the formation histories of large shell mound sites to highlight physical modifications that embedded central places during the Bronze Age period. We show that the boundary between on-site and off-site, living and non-living spaces is not solely determined by the availability of prime land but also by spatial conventions with discrete cultural and historical ramifications. By contextualizing macroscale views on complexity with an understanding of local scales of landscape transformation, we provide an alternative to models of pristine state formation based in temperate alluvial environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I utilized the house society concept to not only interpret how Neolithic Wansan people in Taiwan might have organized themselves, but also to understand the differences among the inhabitants of the houses. I approach this by analyzing the distribution of archaeological features and artifacts (i.e. postholes, burials, ceramic and lithic artifacts). The results of this analysis demonstrate that the residential houses in the Wansan Society were not only places where the people lived and interacted with one another, but they were also places where the living intertwined with the dead through situating the deceased members around the residential houses. Furthermore, the correlation between the presence of possible ancestor symbols and the variations of artifacts among houses suggests that the social differentiation of the Wansan Society was likely related to the people’s ability to claim their association with the ancestors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Boardgames pervasive in Iron Age southern Africa. • Boardgames played a vital role in education, skills development and relaxation. • Boardgames were played across class, age, and gender categories. • Meanings and names of boardgames in southern Africa different to that of other regions of the Indian Ocean. What games did the inhabitants of ancient southern Africa play to enrich their lives during the Iron Age (500–1900 CE)? We address this question by drawing from archaeological fingerprints of board games (tsoro / mufuvha) documented at farmer and forager sites in different parts of southern Africa. The typology of games and their spatial locations in the archaeology were compared with historical and contemporary gaming in selected African communities to map continuity and change in social significance temporally and spatially. Within limitations imposed by a lack of well-resolved chronologies for the material remains of board games, the comparison provided a platform to make inferences about how and why the games were played in the everyday life of Iron Age communities. Based on the strong correlation between the ethnographic and archaeological data, the conclusion of the paper is that board games were played for edutainment, skills development, gambling, and social engineering. However, this is tentative and opens possibilities for further research into the role of indigenous games in the development of ancient southern African communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Speth and Spielmann's 1983 article on protein metabolism was a seminal contribution. • The article has influenced archaeological interpretations of hunter-gatherer behavior. • We have new insights into the evolution of diet, land use, and human health. John Speth and Katherine Spielmann's 1983 article "Energy Source, Protein Metabolism, and Hunter-Gatherer Subsistence Strategies" has provoked substantial research and debate during the past four decades. Their study has led to new insights concerning hunting and fishing, plant foraging and management, land tenure, and human health. In so doing, it has helped us challenge a number of orthodoxies in anthropological archaeology. In this paper I re-introduce the original article and then follow with a discussion of archaeological cases that reflect some of its wider impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates Binford’s concept of “organization of technology” in the context of lithic microwear analysis. A theoretical approach to technological organization will alleviate the current focus of use-wear analyses upon reconstruction of individual activities. Use-wear traces must be recognized as palimpsests, rather than traces from separate episodes, to address changes in cultural systems. When conventional methods of use-wear analysis are combined with spatial analysis of “living floors” (e.g., French “Paleo-ethnology”) the data tend to orient toward spatial goals, making it difficult to evaluate organizational aspects of lithic utilization. An alternative strategy based on Binford’s organizational approach is proposed. Microwear analysis on artifacts from the Paleoindian Mill Iron site in Montana, and case studies from Japanese prehistory, examine methods to evaluate lithic organization from use-wear data. These include curation versus expediency, local versus nonlocal dichotomy of raw materials, “multiple stage surface alteration,” “multiple stage edge rounding,” and accumulation of use-wear traces upon stone surface. The organizational approach to microwear also addresses the gap between wear patterns observed experimentally versus those observed on archaeological tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of increasingly hierarchical societies in Northeast Thailand has been discussed in the past but the motivating factors for this transformation remain elusive. This paper presents an examination of data from the Bronze and Iron Ages of Northeast Thailand with special reference to sites surrounded by channels and embankments. There continues to be considerable debate over the function of these channels, with defense, flood control, aquaculture, symbolism, and water storage for agricultural purposes all being presented as potential objectives. The author argues that the channels were constructed under the direction of emergent elites and were utilized as water storage devices. It is demonstrated that the channels retain sufficient water to irrigate rice fields during times of environmental stress to feed the estimated prehistoric populations of these sites. The author goes on to argue that the channels were instrumental in the elite's establishment of enduring hierarchies in the region and that they were used to leverage the populace to produce a surplus to support the elite's retinue and served to entrench hierarchical order through the Iron Age and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] This paper highlights mortuary sites as loci for understanding social complexity. [•] It reassesses the chronocultural sequence űToloy-Tellem-DogonƇ in Mali. [•] We demonstrate an evolution of architecture of coiled clay tombs over 1800years. [•] Pottery shows progressive integration of foreign elements during the 1st mill. AD. [•] Chemical analysis of glass beads indicate Asian workshops and long distance trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Maya archaeology has focused on small-scale analysis and description. • Advances in remote sensing enable quantitative modeling of settlement patterns. • Ancient settlement shows ranked landform preference. • Urbanization led to crowding of landforms that were otherwise avoided. Settlement research in the Maya lowlands has struggled to reconcile its goals to model a tropical forest civilization in ecological terms with the logistical constraints imposed by the forest itself. In this paper, we argue that the methodological challenges facing settlement research in this tropical lowland setting limited researchers' confidence in the representativeness of their data, nudging the discipline toward community-scale analysis and away from quantitative macro-scale settlement pattern research. As a result, many basic facts of human geography have remained unsettled. These challenges can now be overcome thanks to advances in remote sensing. Here, we use lidar-derived settlement and topographic data from the Corona-Achiotal region of northwestern Guatemala to develop a settlement suitability model that reveals patterns in the distribution of archaeological remains vis-à-vis landforms. Applying this model to a much larger published settlement dataset, we demonstrate how it is not only widely applicable in the interior Maya Lowlands, but also capable of identifying historical contingencies in the distribution of settlement, namely the crowding of less-suitable areas of the landscape, linked to urban densification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Inca polity deployed a variety of strategies in the establishment of imperial relations with the local communities of the southern provinces. These strategies included the translation of symbols materialized in architectural structures. In this sense, the ceremonial platforms denominated ushnus were spaces with particular significance and high hierarchy. In this paper, we analyze and compare two different platforms located in two sites from the Argentine Northwest, Province of Catamarca. The first archaeological site, El Shincal de Quimivil, has been considered an Inca provincial capital and the second, Hualfín Inca, an important administrative centre. The results show interesting differences between them, such as architectural forms and the archaeological record. These differences reflect not only the way in which the State operated in different territories and the nature of the relationship with local groups, but also the nuances of the historical process involving the Inca establishment in this region of the Argentinean Northwest. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents strontium and oxygen isotopic measurements on archaeological human teeth from the ancient Maya city of Tikal, Guatemala, that illuminate the role that migration played in the history of the state. Stable strontium isotope ratios of human teeth parallel the bedrock geology of the location where foods were grown, while stable oxygen isotope ratios reflect the sources of water imbibed, and track geographic variation in the isotopic composition of rain water. Because tooth enamel forms during childhood and is not remodeled during life, we can identify foreign-born individuals at Tikal by their outlying strontium and oxygen isotope ratios. These data indicate that approximately 11–16% of the sampled Tikal skeletons spent their childhood at distant sites. Most of the migrant burials date from the Early Classic period and are high status contexts. Several royal burials demonstrate long distance movement of both males and females, and shed light on the identification of epigraphically-known individuals. Yet, both Early and Late Classic migrants are found in lower status domestic burials. Interaction with distant peers was important in the rise of the Tikal polity, however, immigration from all social tiers contributed to the city’s rapid population growth. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Research on mortuary practices has attracted a wide following for the role it can play in determination of individual social identity and population social structure. One aspect of mortuary practices that is rarely addressed, except where physical remnants are recovered, is the form of burial containers. Archaeothanatology is a taphonomically based methodology applied to infer the form of such containers when no material evidence remains. This paper shows how the archaeothanatological approach can be applied post hoc, with 133 adult burials from the prehistoric site of Ban Non Wat analyzed. Temporal changes in container form were expected as subsistence, technology, and social organization transformed over 1850years. The deceased were predominantly loosely wrapped in non-durable material or placed in wide coffins, although individuals were buried in other contexts, with a peak in variety towards the end of the Bronze Age and early Iron Age. In combination with evidence from other sites in the area, our results identify a reduction in the variety of container forms used within sites in the mid to late Iron Age. We have shown the value of archaeothanatology as a contributor to research on mortuary practices, in particular having shown that it may be usefully applied post-excavation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper explores the differential rates of diachronic change developed by diverse features of portable art in southern Tierra del Fuego. It is argued that decorative designs and techniques, which simultaneously constitute each decorated artefact, had asynchronic rates of change throughout the archaeological sequence. Results indicate that: (I) decorated harpoon points (1) had a broader and more complex design repertoire which entailed a higher labour investment and showed a faster rate of change than beads, due to a greater individual input in their decoration, (2) were richly decorated in spite of their high risk of loss/fracture, yet their decoration was concentrated in the early period of the archaeological sequence and then decreased in time due: a) to such loss/fracture risk, which jeopardised the labour invested in their decoration, (b) to a relative decrease in pinniped hunting which might have reduced the socio-economic and symbolic value of harpoons; (II) decorated beads (1) had a simpler and more standardised design repetoire which entailed a lower labour investment and showed a slower rate of change than harpoons, due to a stricter process of teaching/learning or imitation during their production and a collective way of ornamentation during their display, (2) increased with time and have been decorated during the three periods of the archaeological sequence due to: (a) their lower risk of loss/fracture, which did not endanger the labour invested in their decoration, (b) their social function as a shared form of ornamentation; (III) decorative techniques had a slower rate of change than decorative designs throughout the archaeological sequence due to their differential instrinsic variability potentials. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: More than providing simply nutritive value, food in human societies can be endowed with great social weight. Aspects of any given food system inform, and are informed by, a variety of social, economic, religious, historical, ecological, cultural, and political processes. Moreover, food systems are often intentionally designed and executed to communicate key aspects of a consumer’s identity including class or social status. The manipulation of food systems on the part of socio-political elites or high status individuals is but one example of this phenomenon, the appearance of which is a correlate of increased socio-political hierarchy. As food can come to be used by elites as a socio-political tool in stratified societies, the temptation to use archeologically recognizable differences in foodways as a means of understanding the origin, nature, and functioning of processes of stratification is strong. The obvious difficulty lies in developing theoretically informed methods that reckon food system differences in ways that enable scholars to identify those foods that may have been particularly imbued with social meaning. In this paper, we propose a metric for the identification of elite foods (or, indeed, socially valued foods) using the types of data typically available to archeologists. Based on these proposed criteria, we attempt to unravel the complex and politically charged food system of the stratified societies of the pre-Columbian Greater Antilles with an eye towards refining our understanding of the development and maintenance of prestige and institutionalized power therein. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the extant evidence regarding gender reconstructions and relations for the Neolithic of the southern Levant of southwest Asia. Data from human skeletal remains, mortuary contexts, architecture, and figurative art provide the empirical bases for a broad assessment of gender in the realms of productive labor, social organization, and ideology. Overall, little evidence is found to support that Neolithic societies in this region were organized hierarchically in terms of gender. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Building on insights from previous Darwinian studies of technology, this paper explores the potential of evolutionary models to explain diversity and change in bloomery ironmaking recipes. Bloomery, or direct process ironmaking, involves the solid state reduction of iron oxide to metal and was the predominant means of producing iron in the pre-industrial world. The most archaeologically accessible record of bloomery practice is slag, an essential by-product of the smelting process. Ironmaking recipes can be characterized by their slag chemistry using a combination of multivariate statistics, ternary phase diagrams, and oxide ratios. Models derived from evolutionary theory are used to explain the shape, structure, and trajectories of ironmaking lineages identified from patterns of slag chemistry in terms of invention, selection, and socially mediated constraint processes. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by its application to slag excavated at Llwyn Du, a late medieval bloomery in northwest Wales. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Recent research has characterized the procurement of lithic raw materials for flaked stone technology as embedded in food procurement activities, and constrained by logistical factors such as mass, time, and energy. Many have assumed that these variables reflect the need for humans to both move themselves to resources, and carry materials with them. This paper explores the implication of these ideas through the development of particular research project in the Maritime Peninsula, in the Northeast of North America. Through this research process, I explore the complex interplay among raw materials, bulk procurement, water transportation, and regional patterning of archaeological lithic assemblages. I initially consider the role of embedded procurement as a structuring mechanism for the relationship between lithic raw-material diversity and catchment, but through a exploration of intersite and inter-feature variability, I consider the role of bulk procurement in this patterning. I conclude that canoes may significantly influence hunter–gatherer lithic procurement, in terms of the extraction of resources, and their reduction and use. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Mounting archaeological evidence suggests that floodplain resources, not maize (Zea mays) agriculture, were instrumental in the emergence of Early Formative (ca. 1500–900 uncal BC) complexity across Mesoamerica’s isthmian lowlands. The lion’s share of these data derives from the Pacific side of the isthmus; discussions of the Early Formative Olmec along Mexico’s southern Gulf lowlands have not kept pace. This paper presents settlement and subsistence data that highlight the role of floodplain resources in the development of Gulf Olmec politico-economic complexity. These data support a non-agricultural alternative to traditional models of Gulf Olmec emergence at San Lorenzo, the premier Early Formative Gulf lowlands center. Increased productivity of maize toward the end of the Early Formative period challenged San Lorenzo’s extant politico-economic basis, bringing about a short-term, hyper-acceleration of elite competitive displays. Ultimately, the adoption of maize agriculture generated a reorganized Middle Formative period (ca. 900–400uncal BC) landscape in and around San Lorenzo. This agrarian adjustment saw occupation move out of the floodplain and into the upland areas, a process sometimes characterized as a cataclysmic system collapse in the Coatzacoalcos basin. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Hegemonic dominance relationships and the limited intentional material expressions of imperial power they usually encompass pose an interesting and well-known problem for the archaeology of early empires. One way of approaching domination in the archaeological record is through the synthetic analysis of different modes of imperial-local interaction at overlapping socio-political levels and spheres of culture. In this paper, four material culture categories are considered with the aim of characterizing Hittite imperial relationships in Late Bronze Age Anatolia and northern Syria. They include pottery traditions and their degree of susceptibility for central influence, diachronic settlement developments, the distribution of imperial administrative technology, and an ideological discourse carried out through landscape monuments. From the spatial and chronological signatures of these overlapping networks of interaction, a more nuanced understanding of the process of empire is beginning to emerge. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The study of hunter–gatherer mobility patterns is of vital importance to our understanding of the paleolithic archeological record. Such patterns necessarily comprise many interacting locales, and it is at the landscape scale that we should attempt to understand the relationship between ethnographic and archeological data. This paper derives, quantifies and tests a series of basic predictions about the effects of group size, occupation duration and habitat quality on mobility strategies using a substantial ethnographic dataset. The results demonstrate that habitat quality is the best determinant of move distances among hunter–gatherers, but that occupation duration also has an effect among those foragers who rely principally on hunting. It is suggested that three roughly concentric zones, the limit of scatter, the foraging radius, and the logistic radius, are predicted by group size and occupation duration, habitat quality, and proportions of hunting and logistical mobility, respectively. The relevance of these conclusions to more generic ecological theory is discussed in the context of evolutionary forces acting on hunter–gatherer mobility in prehistory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Archaeologists generally agree that Paleoindian residential groups moved regularly over extremely large ranges. However, on the Great Plains, this argument depends substantially on datasets derived largely or entirely from projectile points rather than from systematic analysis of a wide range of artifacts. This paper argues that projectile points differ from most Paleoindian tools in ways that make such datasets unlikely to be reliable sources of information on range sizes. Furthermore, evidence from Paleoindian tool caches and the condition of discarded points suggest strongly that the raw material used to produce projectile points at least sometimes moved across the Plains independently of material used to make most other kinds of flaked stone tools. This, in turn, implies that not all stone used during Paleoindian times was procured by visits of whole residential groups to raw material sources, raising serious questions about the validity of widespread views of Paleoindian mobility. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• We review the state of research on human-environment interaction in Holocene China. • We demonstrate the benefits of a multidisciplinary, regionally focused approach. • We conclude datasets must be local and specific, and integrate data on multiple scales. • China is large, well-documented, and critical for understanding social-natural systems. This paper reviews recent archaeological research on human-environment interaction in the Holocene, taking continental China as its geographic focus. As China is large, geographically diverse, and exceptionally archaeologically and historically well-documented, research here provides critical insight into the functioning of social-natural systems. Based on a broad review of the field as well as recent advances and discoveries, the authors reflect on research themes including climate change and adaptive systems theory, spatial and temporal scale, anthropogenic environmental change, risk management and resilience, and integration of subdisciplines. These converge on three overarching conclusions. First, datasets relevant to climate change and ancient human-environment interaction must be as local and specific as possible, as the timing of environmental change differs locally, and the human response is highly dependent on local social and technological conditions. Second, the field still needs more robust theoretical frameworks for analyzing complex social-natural systems, and especially for integrating data on multiple scales. Third, for this work to contribute meaningfully to contemporary climate change research, effective communication of research findings to the public and to scientists in other disciplines should be incorporated into publication plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The concept of liminality has become ubiquitous in archaeology, with considerable interpretative consequences. • Applications of the concept are frequently inconsistent with theoretical definitions and archaeological evidence. • Liminality has encouraged the interpretation of the decomposing dead in Prepalatial Crete as dangerous and pollutant. • 'Losing liminality' affords the interpretative space for the consideration of new perspectives and osteological data. Over fifty years after the publication of Arnold van Gennep's (1909) Les Rites de passage , anthropologist Victor Turner (1967) adapted and expanded upon van Gennep's theory of transition, formulating the now ubiquitous concept of 'liminality'. From education to performance studies, geography to psychology, there are few disciplines which have yet to embrace the 'liminal' in interpretative discussion, defined by Turner as a precarious, interstructural position in social dynamics, frequently associated with pollution and taboo. Another fifty years since Turner's development of the concept, this paper argues that the popularity of liminality in archaeology has led to its interpretative depreciation, now so far removed from its theoretical origins that it has become an unhelpful synonym for all that is unfamiliar or anomalous, rather than the transitory process of becoming Turner proposed. Through the discussion of the Prepalatial tombs of Crete, it is illustrated that the uncritical invocation of the 'liminal' hinders the investigation of other interpretative lines of inquiry: questions of marginality, exceptionality, and the impact of our own unfamiliarity with bodily decomposition on our perception of the past. By highlighting the continued influence of the liminal – despite contradictory archaeological data – on our understanding of prehistoric practices and beliefs, it is argued that liminality cannot continue to be accepted either as a universally applicable concept or convenient metaphor, but must instead be recognised and critically evaluated as a fundamentally theoretical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Rock art is one of the most salient features of Neolithic societies in eastern Spain and an explicit form of landscape history. This paper summarizes current debates of Mediterranean rock art chronology and interpretation and explores the contextual differences in two areas of Neolithic settlement with rock art: the Canyoles Valley (Valencia) and the Alcoi Basin (Alicante). Large-scale survey of the Canyoles Valley resulted in a clearer understanding of agricultural land use during the Neolithic that contrasts with evidence from the Alcoi Basin. By analyzing Neolithic rock art in its archaeological context, we discuss the significance and limitations of rock art analysis for understanding and characterizing landscape histories and the transition to agriculture in the region. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]