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The materiality of ritual performance is a growing focus for archaeologists. In Europe, collective ritual performance is expected to be highly structured and to leave behind a loud archaeological signature. In Australia and Papua New Guinea, ritual is highly structured; however, material signatures for performance are not always apparent, with ritual frequently bound up in the surrounding natural and cultural landscape. One way of assessing long-term ritual in this context is by using archaeology to historicize ethno-historical and ethnographic accounts. Examples of this in the Torres Strait region, islands between Papua New Guinea and mainland Australia, suggest that ritual activities were materially inscribed at kod sites (ceremonial men's meeting places) through distribution of clan fireplaces, mounds of stone/bone and shell. This paper examines the structure of Torres Strait ritual for a site ethnographically reputed to be the ancestral kod of the Mabuyag Islanders. Intra-site partitioning of ritual performance is interpreted using ethnography, rock art and the divergent distribution of surface and sub-surface materials (including microscopic analysis of dugong bone and lithic material) across the site. Finally, it discusses the materiality of ritual at a boundary zone between mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea and the extent to which archaeology provides evidence for Islander negotiation through ceremony of external incursions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to investigate body-related beliefs and practices in relation to society in Middle Bronze Age Transylvania (central Romania between c. 1900 and 1450 bc), known as the area of the Wietenberg Culture. The low number of human remains and their treatment (through cremation and fragmentation of inhumed bodies) has been interpreted by some authors as a willingness to do away with the physical body. In contrast to this opinion, I try here to show that quite the opposite was the case. The body not only stood at the centre of a variety of rituals (funerary and otherwise), but it also constituted a powerful means for maintaining social order, providing people with an understanding of their place in the world, as well as renegotiating positions and meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]