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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]

Techno-stylistic studies in ceramic analysis have largely focused on characterising production groups, based on the similarity of various objects and how they were made. The demographics of potters and the division of labour often remain enigmatic in current chaîne opératoire research. A growing number of biometric studies have demonstrated the potential of fingerprints preserved on ceramic surfaces for classifying the age and sex of potters. In this paper, we use a recently introduced identification matrix to model labour divisions based on 52 fingerprints preserved on a diverse range of objects from the Late Bronze Age II stratum at Tel Burna. The sample includes objects from the recently exposed cultic enclosure. Based on broad ethnographic considerations, women were the principal potters in Canaanite society. Our study tests this hypothesis with regards to who made pottery for cultic use. We identify patterns in age categories and a sexual division of labour for the manufacture of select objects and vessel types. The results lead us to discuss possible effects of imperialism on labour organisation. We provide the first compelling insights into the social relations of pottery production at a time when Egypt exercised hegemony over the city-states of the Southern Levant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Structural analysis allows comparison across body treatments. • Distinction measures allow comparative analysis of mortuary programs. • Symbolically detached measures highlight different aspects of mortuary complexity. • Differences in horizontal structure do not necessarily materialize vertically. • Variation includes cultural preferences and differential access to exotics. Archaeologists in the Carpathian Basin are increasingly focused on social variability across the Bronze Age landscape. However, when it comes to mortuary variability, the difference in body treatments (cremation and inhumation) between populations impairs our ability to carry out regional comparisons and appreciate the range of community social organizations. In this paper, we compare mortuary assemblages from three Bronze Age culture areas on the Great Hungarian Plain. In our coarse quantitative framework, we characterize the intensity of funerary distinction as a proxy for complexity and identify structural variation across mortuary programs. We identify both horizontal and vertical differences in funerary assemblages and note horizontal differences that do not necessarily materialize vertically. The results also show that societies can represent varying values across the different measures, underlying the necessity of working with analytical frameworks which approach the question of complexity in a non-linear manner. We believe that the method offered here can be a useful addition to the toolkit of mortuary archaeologists who work in areas and/or time periods with various body treatment practices. [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 • Locational characteristics and spatial trends of Bronze Age settlement in a region of east Crete. • A point process modelling approach for analysing archaeological survey data is presented. • A preference for agriculturally favourable areas is noted across different periods. • Results from sensitivity analysis show strong robustness in regional trends. Abstract This paper builds spatial models of Bronze Age settlement using published survey datasets from the Mirabello region in east Crete. Methodologically, we examine how point process modelling can account for uncertainties in legacy survey datasets, and thereafter can highlight patterns of both cultural change and continuity in Mirabello settlement. Comparison of fitted models over different chronological periods gives an insight, we argue, into the kinds of settlement and subsistence choices that lay behind settlement patterns, holding constant the broadly similar environmental constraints faced by inhabitants throughout the Bronze Age. Overall, the results suggest prehistoric preference for, and exploitation of, agriculturally favourable parts of the landscape, although contrasting emphases in different periods do emerge despite this unsurprising overall preference. Many of the analytical results prove robust to a sensitivity analysis which addresses commonplace uncertainties associated with settlement survey data. The results also dovetail well with previous archaeological interpretations of changing settlement and Bronze Age life in the Mirabello region. Survey datasets are also relatively common in other archaeological settings worldwide and we advocate for more widespread application of similarly formalised methods to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussion of the animal economy in Mesopotamia has been subject to a persistent, pastoral bias. Most general treatments assume that the Early Bronze Age (ca. 3000–2000 BCE) animal economy was dominated by the herding of sheep and goats. An examination of the abundant written evidence would support such a contention. Zooarchaeological evidence from northern Mesopotamia, however, clearly demonstrates that pigs played a major role in the diet, despite their virtual absence in the written record. In this paper, we attempt to lay bare and correct for the pastoral bias by reviewing the relatively meager written evidence for pig husbandry and by examining the zooarchaeological evidence for pigs from two angles. First, we use relative abundance data from sites across northern Mesopotamia to demonstrate the ubiquity of pigs and to identify regional- and site-level patterning in pig consumption. Second, we use a series of proxy techniques to reconstruct pig husbandry practices at three sites: Tell ‘Atij, Tell al-Raqa’i, and Tell Leilan. Ultimately, we argue that this “other” animal economy emerged to fill a niche opened up by the twin processes of urbanization and institutional expansion. For households struggling to deal with the impacts of these wide-ranging transformations, pigs offered an alternative means of subsistence and perhaps a way of maintaining some degree of autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we model patterns of expansion and contraction of settlement in Bronze Age Messenia (ca. 3100–1050 BCE) using the ideal free distribution (IFD). We rank potential settlement locations on the landscape using environmental and cultural variables, including watershed size, which is a proxy for fresh water availability, net primary productivity, and the distance to the location of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos, a central site of political importance throughout most of the Bronze Age. The settlement chronology for the region is derived from an existing database of survey data and conforms to the predictions of the IFD. The highest-ranked habitats were settled first and the population expanded to lower-ranked habitats as population density increased. The data also conforms to the IFD prediction that important political centers should follow the same pattern, expanding from higher- to lower-ranked habitats. This model helps to provide an understanding of the effects of the unique environmental and cultural landscape of the region on settlement prior to the rise of the major Mycenaean centers in mainland Greece. The application of the IFD to a sociopolitically complex case demonstrates its broad potential for understanding historical trajectories in settlement patterns throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Zooarchaeological evidence from the collapse of the Hittite empire and its aftermath does not align well with conventional understandings of the reorganization that accompanies societal collapse. • Results from the Hittite capital demonstrate a surprising degree of continuity in the organization of the animal economy post-collapse. • Results from a rural center show that daily life outside the administrative heart of the empire was heavily affected by the political dissolution of the Hittite state. This paper analyzes zooarchaeological evidence from the Late Bronze Age collapse of the Hittite empire in central Turkey (ca. 1200 BCE), placing it in dialogue with broader discussions of societal collapse and its aftermath. Zooarchaeological data from the Hittite capital, Hattuşa, and from a nearby rural center, Çadır Höyük, are used to reconstruct day-to-day economic life in the Hittite heartland and to analyze local responses to the disintegration of the Hittite political superstructure. This work allows for the assessment of two common collapse narratives. The first assumes that the state is an integrated whole, characterized by massive scale systemic inter-dependence, so that when one aspect of the state's organizational structure (e.g., its political system) fails, its other organizational structures (e.g., its economic systems) must follow. The second assumes that rural settlements tend to be considerably less affected by societal collapse than major centers. Drawing on several lines of zooarchaeological evidence, the results of this analysis show that, while changes in central Anatolian lifeways did occur following the collapse of the Hittite empire, the nature of these changes does not always follow the trajectories assumed in conventional narratives of societal collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New approaches to deposition analysis were developed to study a large data set of prehistoric settlement discard. • The archaeological context was studied as a compressed, synoptic record of the lifecycle of things. • Phases of the cultural biography of Bronze Age houses were identified including their use, intentional cremation, the burial of remains (burnt settlement refuse) and closing deposits. • Houses are explained as the central (albeit non-human) actors of hybrid actor-networks. • The actor's role of the houses was strengthened by their ontological status as living beings. This paper deals with the application of deposition analysis to an unusual type of features in the Late Bronze Age settlements in Central Europe. These are long narrow trenches (referred to as 'long pits' in this text) with characteristic standard form and alignment, as well as find contents, including high amounts of secondary-burned pottery fragments. In the context of prehistoric research, these features represent a relatively new phenomenon that has attracted attention in the last two decades due to new excavations in Bohemia and Bavaria. Based on the finds from Březnice (Czechia), the authors conclude that the long pits were connected with the closing rituals following the abandonment and burial of dwellings. Although no houses were directly documented on this site, their presence must be assumed, and their cultural biography can be reconstructed from the depositional characteristics of the accompanying finds. In order to fully understand the processes of deposition, the authors find it useful to focus not only on human agency but also on the relationships between the things themselves. This way, houses are understood as the central element of a hybrid actor-network. Their role may have been strengthened by their ontological status of living beings. [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]

This study concerns ritual feasting at the site of Yanshi Shangcheng, an Erligang (early Shang) urban center in the middle Yellow River valley of northern China. The related rituals of divination, sacrifice, and feasting are often framed as elite practices in this region. Quantitative analysis of ceramics and contextual analysis of archaeological finds from an elite palace and a potters’ neighborhood are applied to the question of whether Yanshi elites held a monopoly on ritual feasting. Dominant statistical findings support a picture of exclusionary elite feasting that contrasts with potters’ simpler foodways. However, “statistical outliers” and strong contextual evidence demonstrate that Yanshi potters were also conducting ritual feasts. Using a feasting typology that includes a range of feasting types from large-scale elite feasting to small-scale community feasts and symbolic feasting, this paper argues that Yanshi elites conducted large-scale feasting while Yanshi potters practiced community-based and household feasts that were empowering to their group. A trend in augmenting social power of artisans can be seen through time at Yanshi and also through the Shang dynasty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists studying multi-component cemeteries have argued that the societies who reused cemeteries were motivated by connecting to the past. However, often overlooked are the potential roles of mortuary events and sites as key social and political venues for creating, contesting, and unmaking relationships and identities for the later community independent of a connection to the past. In this paper, I explore the social and political roles that mortuary rituals at the Mound of the Hostages, Tara, Ireland played during the Middle Neolithic (3350–2800 BC) and Early Bronze Age (2300–1700 BC). Tara’s emergence as a regional mortuary center occurred only several hundred years after its initial reuse by Early Bronze Age peoples. Just as importantly, the burial activity that marked Tara as special in the Early Bronze Age was very brief, revealing that the regional centralization at Tara was ultimately unsuccessful. The analysis of cemetery formation at Tara is only possible due to the development of a fine-grained site specific chronology. These results have broad implications for how we understand cemetery formation, the reuse of mortuary monuments, and the dynamics of social complexity in prehistoric societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Site size hierarchy is an archaeological pattern commonly used to identify regional political hierarchy in state-level and stateless middle-range societies. Although a number of archaeologists have acknowledged that several processes can produce site size hierarchy, many scholars in North America and Eurasia continue to assume that this settlement pattern is solely generated by single process—hierarchical, politically centralized societies. This assumption, I believe, limits our ability to build an accurate database of societies with emergent inequality. In this paper, I review the processes potentially responsible for producing site size hierarchy, and draw on ethnohistoric case studies from the Great Lakes region and Papua New Guinea to illustrate these processes. I then assess the possible mechanisms that created site size hierarchy for a prehistoric case in Middle Bronze Age Hungary (1750–1400 BC)—an area where the signature is almost universally assumed to index regional political hierarchy. However, I reveal that the Hungarian case study instead points to several other processes—including aggregation, dispersal and community fission—that lie behind this pattern. These examples suggest that site size hierarchies, when interpreted uncritically as social hierarchies, may overestimate the degree of political centralization in prehistoric societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Overgeneralized use of 'settlement' causes false equivalencies and mischaracterizations. • Ontological flexibility requires explicit definitions for clarity in applied use. • Umm an-Nar period settlement studies in SE Arabia obscure social complexity. • Call to consider interplay between settled and mobile lifeways in settlement theory. The settlement—a place on a landscape where a human group lives and interacts—has become such a fundamental social and material concept in archaeology that it is rarely explicitly defined. The breadth of meaning built into the term allows it to transcend regional, temporal, and contextual differences in site form, size, and composition. However, just as this combination of versatility and implied meaning makes settlement applicable to archaeological studies worldwide, it also creates conditions in which the term's social significance may be overlooked or where it may be misapplied in ways that lead to false equivalencies and mischaracterizations. Through a literary review of research on Umm an-Nar period (UaN; ca. 2700–2000 BCE) sites of the Oman Peninsula, this paper examines the ways in which broad (mis)applications of the term 'settlement' can deeply impact scholarly understanding of an ancient society. Inconsistencies in UaN settlement identification—born of regional variations in the archaeological record, coarse temporal clarity, and the history of scholarship in southeast Arabia—are shown to have significant ramifications for how UaN society is analyzed, interpreted, and characterized in archaeological literature. It is argued that settlement-focused archaeological studies would universally benefit from explicit definition(s) of the term and greater precision in its application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Unprecedentedly large archaeological datasets on the Southern Levant. • Revealing drastic changes in burial practices throughout the millennia. • Original methodology for a quantitative study of archaeological data and phenomena. The southern Levant is probably the most excavated and surveyed part of the world. While many past studies have attempted to use this wealth of information, they usually focused on certain phenomena and, moreover, the data was not systematically quantified. This study presents a new, quantitative, approach to the data. We rely on two datasets: (1) the published results of salvage excavations, carried out mainly in small sites; (2) the excavations published in the New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land , which includes mainly central sites. These databases not only cover both large-scale excavations of major sites and salvage excavations in the countryside, but also enable a quantitative analysis which has a potential to transform our understanding of past social and demographic phenomena. To exemplify this potential, we study the proportion of burials within the different sub-sets of the databases. This broad overview reveals some drastic changes over time, including periods from which very few burials were identified (Early Bronze Age II-III, Iron Age, Middle Ages), and others in which burials comprised around half of the finds (Intermediate Bronze Age, Roman period). The paper analyzes these phenomena and highlights the potential of the data to illuminate other questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Origins of royal libation ritual and performance of kingship. • Contextual analysis of libation assemblage. • Emergence of bronze ritual assemblages. • Libation ritual as techniques for engaging with the sacred and ancestral. Building on a diverse array of previous discoveries, this paper investigates the intersection of alcohol consumption, ritual performance, and political representations in early China. It traces the emergence and elaboration of a libation assemblage in coastal Neolithic mound centers to its incorporation into Bronze Age high culture, whereas it became an important medium for religious communication in Zhou bronze inscriptions and ritual texts. As the ritual process bound the living with the ancestral and supernatural realms, the deep continuities in these ritual practices and associated assemblage reveal an emerging notion of kingship in the political evolution of early China that took alcohol and alcohol-related rituals as its primary representation of political and ritual authority. This close connection between libation and power becomes the defining attribute of Bronze Age material culture in early China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Ancient Egypt provides insights on local responses to political and social changes. • Changes were not all gradual and were part of interacting, dynamic, multiscalar adaptive cycles. • Inhabitants at Tell el-Dabˁa reacted and (re-)adapted via short- and long-term strategies. • Strategies include fostering community, negotiating cultural elements, and developing networks. Ancient Egypt is considered as one of the world's longest enduring civilisations, yet few studies have explored its history for insights on community resilience in response to institutional and social change. Instead of focussing on the collapse of the central Egyptian administration, this paper centres its analysis on a 'community' in the northeast of Egypt at ancient Avaris, modern Tell el-Dabˁa. Using resilience theory as metaphor, it provides an overview of developments at the site, observing periods of relative stability punctuated by those of accelerated change. It addresses how different social groups transformed in light of social and political developments by (re-)negotiating cultural elements as well as their local, regional, and supra-regional ties, and whether and how these may be interpreted as short- and long-term strategies of 'survival'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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: Recent research suggests that contemporary human social groups are structured according to principles of fission and fusion that are also observed in some of our primate relatives, raising the possibility that such social systems have been a feature of hominin society throughout prehistory. The current paper examines the possibility of identifying archaeological signatures of multi-level social structures through the examination of site size distributions. Data on the sizes of Irish Bronze Age stone circles and predictions for the size of aggregations they could accommodate are compared with simulations parameterized using data on modern human groups. The results suggest that the presence of hierarchically inclusive, multi-level social structures provides a better explanation for the data than more traditional archaeological accounts based on the rank-size rule and related inferences concerning the emergence of political elites. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper examines Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer adaptive strategies in the Baikal region of Siberia based on diverse data (radiocarbon, mortuary, geochemical, genetic, human osteological, and zooarchaeological) accumulated over the last 10–15years. The new model emphasizes the cyclical nature of the long-term changes and recognizes similarities between the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age cultures. The overall impression seems to be that change in the region was rapid rather than gradual. A number of interesting correlations between various cultural and environmental variables have been identified. During the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic–Bronze Age, the spatial distributions of mortuary sites, open landscape, and good fisheries are all correlated and both intervals are coeval with periods of environmental stability. For the Early Neolithic two additional sets of correlated variables have been identified: (1) the uneven distribution of fish resources, uneven distribution of the human population, and cultural heterogeneity; and (2) poorer overall community health, more extensive male travel and heavier workloads, and higher reliance on fishing. For the Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age, the sets of correlated variables are somewhat different: (1) more even distribution of terrestrial game resources (herbivores), more even distribution of the human population, and cultural homogeneity; and (2) better overall community health, less travel and lighter workloads, more equitable distribution of labor between males and females, and higher reliance on game hunting. Viewed together, these patterns emphasize the much more dynamic pattern of hunter-gatherer cultural variability, temporally and spatially, compared to what was known before. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates the social structure of an Early Bronze Age society whose members were buried at the necropolis of Mokrin (Serbia, Southeastern Europe), by comparative analysis of musculo-skeletal markers (MSM) of activity and social status as induced on the basis of grave contents. The main objective of the analysis is to determine whether quantitative and qualitative differences in activity are related to social status. Besides using an overall measure of activity, we attempted to isolate different qualitative aspects (facets) of activity through factor analysis of MSM scores. No correlation between social status and overall labor intensity was found. However, there are clues that social status and a single facet of activity are related. Positive correlation between vertical status and the intensity of use of upper arm and shoulder muscles was found among male individuals, while negative correlation between the aforementioned variables was found among the females. The general conclusion based on the results of this study is that there is no simple correlation between the overall labor intensity and social status. [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: Khirigsuurs are the largest and most common archaeological monuments of the Mongolian Steppe in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, a critical time for the spread of nomadic pastoralism and the emergence of a new social order during the Bronze Age in Inner Asia. Using data from a full coverage regional survey of the Lower Egiin Gol valley, this paper presents a system for studying the defining ground level features of Khirigsuurs to discover structural categories, organize sites, compare Khirigsuur monuments across regions and explore activities that may have gone on around the Khirigsuurs themselves as they were built and used. The primary methods used are a study of monumental scale and a typology of additive parts from which complex and comparable types emerge. Elaborate Khirigsuurs illustrate the use of Khirigsuurs as small monuments, stages for group activities, and are the persistent backdrop for social transformations during the spread of nomadic pastoralism. I suggest that the Khirigsuurs of the Lower Egiin Gol are monuments constructed with relatively regular frequency, by a consistently sized group, and used for group oriented activities rather than the memorialization of an elite. This is consistent with something one might see as part of a regular yearly nomadic round. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Integration of bioarchaeological, palaeoenvironmental and landscape data. • BA agriculture, orchard produce, fishing, shell gathering culturally dictated. • Long history of viticulture in east Crete; wide usage of its products beyond the elite. • Olive expansion in east Crete related to ovicaprine management. • Large-scale olive management in east Crete a Neolithic phenomenon. This paper examines agriculture, farming and dietary resources in east Crete, and re-evaluates the role of grape and olive in its prehistoric economy, these being key in debates on the emergence of social complexity. To do so bioarchaeological, paleoenvironmental and landscape survey data from the Bronze Age town at Palaikastro and its territory are combined. The results indicate a highly compartmentalised landscape, including intensive crop cultivation and extensive animal herding with careful monitoring to maintain productivity. A heightened specialisation in ovicaprine management at Palaikastro and east Crete seems to be delineated. Marine resources were regularly exploited from easily accessible coastal areas. Other activities included viticulture since the Early Minoan period, with the possible involvement of several houses in wine-making. A final important activity in the area was large-scale olive tree management since the Final Neolithic period and through to the Late Bronze Age, that seems to be entangled with ovicaprine herding and grazing. Thus, the demand for olive oil production does not seem to have been the driving force behind the intensification of the tree management, at least initially, but a corollary of its use in other aspects of the local economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We analyze the settlement locations in terms of their exposure to winter winds. • The assumption is that people choose to live in calm, protected spots. • The aim is to provide comparative cases to apply to other ancient groups. • The test societies represent a spectrum of strategies from the flexible adaptation to niche construction examples. The paper analyzes the settlement locations of three archaeological societies of the Northern Hemisphere above 48°N in terms of their exposure to winter winds. To explain settlement decision-making, we apply computational models to three archaeological societies to test whether residence location and architecture were chosen concerning the best heat preservation strategy. We conclude that the test societies represent a spectrum of strategies from the flexible adaptation to the combination of adaptation and niche construction. The flexible adaptation implied seasonal movements from the most to the least wind-exposed locations, while the niche construction combined with choosing the least-exposed location helped maintain the warmth while maintaining access to vital resources. This conclusion provides a possibility to explain the formation of social complexity in early complex societies due to cooperation rather than as a result of social conflict or aggrandizing behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• - Vallone Inferno, located in the Madonie Mountains, hosted MN and LCA/EBA pastoral communities. • - Obsidian is recognized as an intentionally selected raw material by microwear analysis. • - The LCA/EBA communities of the hinterland reached the northernmost mountain pastures. • - The vertical mobility of the LCA/EBA communities is contextualized in their paleo-environmental framework. • - Since the LCA/EBA transition, the mobility of pastoral groups favored the spread of cultural elements. This paper discusses the Middle Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age phases of the occupation of a rock shelter at Vallone Inferno (Scillato, Palermo) in Sicily. Vallone Inferno is a key site for studying the early establishment and development of pastoralism in the prehistoric mountainous environments of Sicily. Seasonal use of the site as a shelter is documented for the earliest pastoral communities that exploited the Madonie mountain range. The results of the analysis of pottery and lithic assemblages contribute to the definition of two chronocultural frameworks that were linked by the same economic subsistence base. The special role of obsidian emerges, while the mobility patterns of human groups are contextualized by the combination of archaeological and paleoenvironmental data with a focus on the 4.2 ka cal BP aridification climatic event broadly coincident with the final part of the local Copper Age and beginning of the Early Bronze Age. Moreover, since the transition between the Late Copper Age and the Early Bronze Age, mobility of pastoral groups is inferred to be one of the most important factors for the spread of cultural elements on the island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]