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The aim of this paper is threefold: to perform a (meta)discursive archaeology of the concepts post-truth and fake news, to critically reflect on the change in the application of these concepts between the various domains of discourse such as public intellectual field or academic research and mainstream media, and finally to show how the concept of post-truth is now used against the very intellectual milieu it originates from. Whereas the first objective deals with the historical reconceptualization process, the second shows—drawing on the case of social networks—how the concept of fake news infects topics of public relevance, while the third demonstrates how ubiquitous the critique of the left and postmodern intellectual tradition is. This paper combines Foucault's and Agamben's approaches to reconstruct the changes and evolution of the concept and the knowledge that defines it. It considers various sources in which this discourse exists regardless of their ideological background—from intellectual discussions on its formation and critiques of the phenomenon it stands for, to journalistic materials which constitute the body of post-truth and fake news discourse today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions on colonialism are pervasive in western scholarship but are hardly ever applied to the archeology of China. The present paper shows how concepts of colonialism and migration research can be successfully applied to understand Han imperial expansion into southwest China and how the Chinese material can in turn contribute to developing theories and methods of colonialism research further. Taking the Shamaoshan cemetery as a case study, the present paper combines archeological, textual, environmental, and isotope data to gain insights into strategies and processes of Han imperial expansion into southwest China. The insights gained here show that the long-accepted story-line of simple "Sinicization" and political control is far from accurate. Instead, it took over a century of cross-cultural exchange with immigrants and locals adopting each other's customs to varying degrees. While in the beginning the Han seem to have taken a top-down approach to "civilizing" the region through their elites, the present study suggests that in the end it was the lower levels of society that intermingled most intensively and helped integrate migrants and locals successfully. Moving away from the exclusive focus on exceptional graves and large sites, the present study thus shows the great value of approaching small, poorly equipped graves with new methods, combining isotope research with a nuanced analysis of burial remains. Evaluated together with the evidence from the well-known exceptional graves, lesser-known settlement material, and historical accounts, the Shamaoshan case study has made it clear that various types of contact, colonial and otherwise, play out quite differently within different social groups and historical situations. This study thus proposes a multisource, multimethod approach that moves away from a narrative dominated by the history-writing elite segments of the colonizing force to a multivoiced account integrating local and outside perceptions at various social levels, an approach that might successfully be applied in other parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are important gaps in the historical and archaeological evidence that have, so far, precluded us from reliably assessing the role of the goat in the English Middle Ages. This, in part, is the direct consequence of the absence of a methodology allowing the confident identification of sheep and goat bones. On the other hand, the fact that the goat has always been perceived as rare has led us to think that medieval goats did not deserve much attention. Thanks to a recently developed new morphometric approach, which allows taxonomic identifications to be based on more objective criteria and results to be scrutinised, we are provided with a new tool to re-assess the role that this species played in English medieval husbandry. This paper presents the results of the application of this new methodology on three archaeological medieval sheep/goat assemblages. Previous research suggested that the goat was not abundant in medieval England, but has also raised the possibility that this may be a consequence of an under-estimation by zooarchaeologists, due to identification difficulties. The basic outcome of our paper is to provide, for the first time, unambiguous evidence that the goat was genuinely uncommon. In the medieval archaeological record, sheep remains are overwhelmingly better represented than goat remains—all three case studies confirmed the pattern. Although these examples cannot be taken to represent the situation everywhere in the country, they provide clear-cut indication that the zoorchaeological interpretation of caprine remains from English medieval sites has so far been largely reliable. The three sites offer the opportunity to investigate different dimensions of the problem and to discuss the role of the goat in different contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNA analyses of skeletal fragments from a site in Germany provide evidence that humans, rather than Neanderthals, were responsible for a particular stone-tool industry called the Lincombian–Ranisian–Jerzmanowician.Homo sapiens associated with a 45,000-year-old type of stone tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the achievements and challenges of archaeological research on Viking Age northern Europe and explores potential avenues for future research. We identify the reemergence of comparative and cross-cultural perspectives along with a turn toward studying mobility and maritime expansion, fueled by the introduction of biomolecular and isotopic data. The study of identity has seen a shift from a focus on collective beliefs and ritual to issues of personal identity and presentation, with a corresponding shift in attention to individual burials and the "animated objects." Network ontologies have brought new perspectives on the emergence of sea trade and urban nodes and to the significance of outfield production and resources. Field archaeology has seen an emphasis on elite manors, feasting halls, and monuments, as well as military sites and thing assembly places, using new data from remote sensing, geophysical surveys, geoarchaeology, and metal detectors. Concerns over current climate change have placed the study of environment as a key priority, in particular in the ecologically vulnerable North Atlantic settlements. Discussing future directions, we call for alignment between societal/economic and individual/cultural perspectives, and for more ethically grounded research. We point to diaspora theory and intersectionality as frameworks with the potential to integrate genomics, identity, and society, and to ecology as a framework for integrating landscape, mobility, and political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of African Archaeological Review is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The extraction of information from Dutch archaeological grey literature has recently been investigated by the AGNES project. AGNES aims to disclose relevant information by means of a web search engine, to enable researchers to search through excavation reports. In this paper, we focus on the multi-labelling of archaeological excavation reports with time periods and site types, and provide a manually labelled reference set to this end. We propose a series of approaches, pre-processing methods, and various modifications of the training set to address the often low quality of both texts and labels. We find that despite those issues, our proposed methods lead to promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the archaeology of one family's tolerance to the stressors associated with the settlement of a new place. Artifacts associated with the maintenance of clothing suggest that a British family newly arrived at the Swan River colony in the southwest of Australia had the ability to remain composed during a period of reduced resources and psychological strain. The family's ability to resist stress was probably the result of the social knowledge gained during previous experiences with internal migration in the British Isles during a time of high social dislocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inequality is an intrinsic element of contemporary societies, with high income disparity impacting everything from life expectancy to violent crime. While inequality in today's society is complex and multifaceted, the prominence and persistence of inequality that existed throughout human history raise important questions about its broader impacts in the past. In this paper, we discuss the concept of quality of life (QOL) for archaeology and introduce methods for studying multiple dimensions of wealth and well-being in past societies. Using previously published burial data from the ancient Maya site of Altar de Sacrificios, we illustrate this approach employing notions of personhood that treat individuals embedded in complex socio-material relations. These data enable diachronic analyses in the degree and kinds of inequality that characterized this Maya community over a span of nearly 2000 years. We further discuss how these techniques can apply to other units of archaeological analysis and comparative case studies. Tracing the disparities in material wealth, social well-being, and health through time enables a more detailed analysis of the specific contexts and historical processes that gave rise to varying degrees of inequality in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work re-approaches the origins of "the Celts" by detailing the character of their society and the nature of social change in Europe across 700–300 BC. A new approach integrates regional burial archaeology with contemporary classical texts to further refine our social understanding of the European Iron Age. Those known to us as "Celts" were matrifocal Early Iron Age groups in central Gaul who engaged in social traditions out of the central European salt trade and became heavily involved in Mediterranean politics. The paper focuses on evidence from the Hallstatt–La Tène transition to solve a 150-year-old problem: how the Early Iron Age "Celts" became the early La Tène "Galatai," who engaged in the Celtic migrations and the sacking of Rome at 387 BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeology in Guyane takes place within a neocolonial framework. While still generally a public pursuit, archaeological projects rarely deploy explicit strategies for involving communities in research. Archéo La Caroline: Lavi Nou Gangan is an ongoing initiative centered on the first and only university-based archeological investigation of a village for enslaved Africans in Guyane. The project actively engages multiple, overlapping stakeholders—Afro-Guianese, Indigenous, and French—in addition to local and international teams of researchers. This paper discusses efforts to engage the broader Afro-Guianese community through structured site visits to Habitation La Caroline, thereby laying the foundation for future community-based archaeology projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Behavioural modernity’ isn’t what it used to be. Once conceived as an integrated package of traits demarcated by a clear archaeological signal in a specific time and place, it is now disparate, archaeologically equivocal, and temporally and spatially spread. In this paper we trace behavioural modernity’s empirical and theoretical developments over the last three decades, as surprising discoveries in the material record, as well the reappraisal of old evidence, drove increasingly sophisticated demographic, social and cultural models of behavioural modernity. We argue, however, that some approaches to identifying and categorizing modernity have not kept up with this new picture. This is due to what we term ‘Rubicon expectations’: classificatory and interpretive practices which look for or assume clear demarcations in behavioural and cultural processes. We develop a philosophical account of ‘investigative disintegration’ to capture how our understanding of behavioural modernity has changed, and how Rubicon-based practices have become inadequate. Disintegration, in the form we analyse, occurs when scientists’ conception of a phenomenon shifts sufficiently to reshape an investigation’s epistemic structure. For behavioural modernity, the explanatory weight which once lay on identifying ‘switch-points’ in the innate suite of hominin cognitive capacities, lies now in understanding the social and demographic environments that were capable of sustaining and nourishing more complex material cultures. Finally, we argue that the phenomenon itself has not disintegrated to the point that we are left with no interesting explanandum: for all its mosaic, disparate nature, there are still good reasons for behavioural modernity to retain its central place in investigation of our species' origins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that there was a Copper Age between the Neolithic and Bronze Age was inspired by the discovery of the use of native copper in prehistoric North America. Its currency in European prehistory owes much to the 1861 observations by William Wilde that copper tools preceded the use of bronze in Ireland, though Wilde did not postulate a Copper Age per se. Acceptance of the existence of a Copper Age was a long process, not least as it seemed to contradict the premises of the Three Age System and was conflated with arguments for the local development of copper metallurgy, but the 1876 and 1880 international prehistoric archaeology congresses were key moments in its recognition. By the mid 1880s its validity was widely accepted in Europe. In contemporary dating schemes, the definition of the Copper Age varies according to regional and national traditions. This paper touches on the debate concerning the use of technological stages as chronological periods and examines the history of alternative conceptualisations of the early periods of metallurgy in Europe, including those that posit socio-economic phases of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obsidian tools are ubiquitous at archaeological sites throughout the pre-Hispanic period (ca. 1500 B.C.–A.D. 1521) in central Mexico. However, the method of high-magnification use-wear analysis has been underutilized for functional interpretations of obsidian tools in the region, especially compared to lithic studies in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, Oceania, and North America. In order to establish a reliable foundation for future archaeological investigations of obsidian tool functions, I performed approximately 300 experiments with 145 obsidian tool specimens controlling for two obsidian sources, two activity durations, and 29 different materials that were accessible to pre-Hispanic residents of central Mexico. This paper synthesizes results from prior experimental obsidian use-wear studies with the results from my experiments and discusses their broader impacts for use-wear analysts working in all regions as well as specific implications for future use-wear projects in central Mexico. This paper also presents high-quality images of use-wear characteristics and their patterns linked to specific materials in order to stimulate student training and comparisons between studies. Results indicate that the start times for initial use-wear patterns resulting from slicing meat, fish, maize, and soft plants, respectively, can be revised down to 5 min of tool use. There are distinct use-wear patterns for maguey heart scraping and maguey leaf scraping, which are new and crucial findings for archaeologists interested in ancient practices of pulque and fiber production. Finally, human and animal blood residues can be observed microscopically on obsidian tool surfaces and removed for presumptive testing using Hemastix® strips. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yanghai cemetery (~ 1260–48 BC) belongs to the Subeixi culture (1200 BC–100 AD), which is one of the most important prehistorical archeological cultures in Xinjiang, China. Plant macroremains like seeds/fruits, wood, and stems were discovered in the Yanghai cemetery. Altogether 25 species of plant were found, including three cereals, one type of fruit tree, two medicinal plants, one plant for decoration, and five types of wood for fire drilling, as well as some other plants. The date range of the samples discussed in this paper is around 900–200 BC. It is suggested that the Yanghai people once lived in a relatively humid area like an oasis with local water resources. They lived mainly pastorally and cultivated common millet, naked barley, and wheat as a supplement. However, the evidence of viticulture indicates that they led a sedentary life rather than being mobile pastoralists. It is notable that Cannabis was used not only for medicine but also for shamanistic use. Since there is still a lack of a systemic summary of these archaeobotanical studies at the Yanghai cemetery, an overview is given in the present paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interest about the extent of the polychromy of ancient artefacts has increased in the last 10 years, increasing our knowledge on classical art, still often perceived as perfectly white. As a consequence, the development of methodologies allowing the detection and interpretation of the traces of colour remaining on the surfaces of archaeological artefacts has gained momentum. This paper presents the results of a multi-disciplinary research carried out about the painting materials used in producing selected marble statues excavated from the archaeological site of Hierapolis of Phrygia (Turkey), integrating the art-historical approach and the archaeometric data. The artefacts discussed in this paper were excavated in the archaeological site of Hierapolis in the course of several years by the Italian archaeological mission (MAIER). The objects include the reliefs and decorative statuary of the Severan Theatre and the statues excavated from the North Agora of the archaeological site, which are currently preserved in the museum of Hierapolis-Pamukkale. The analytical protocol, based on non-invasive imaging techniques (ultraviolet fluorescence images—UVf and visible induced luminescence—VIL), was performed directly outdoor, in the archaeological site. Few microsamples were selected, collected and subjected to laboratory analyses (XRD, FT-IR, SEM-EDS and HPLC-DAD). The integrated protocol allowed for the identification of the colouring materials used in producing the polychromies under study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predictive modelling has proved its effectiveness for landscape analysis at inter-site scales, searching for the hidden rules guiding the most probable placement of settlements. In this paper, we suggest using similar spatial models at smaller intra-site scales, to discover apparent rules in the placement of activity areas within a settlement. In so doing, the most probable placement of social activities can be predicted in terms of the statistical properties of the precise locations where artefacts and ecofacts have been observed. As predictive tools in an intra-site scale, we advocate in this paper the use of spatial interpolation techniques. Through their application to a concrete case study from Bronze Age Central Italy, the advantages and limitations of this approach are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several case studies of microanalysis of objects of cultural heritage are reviewed. These objects, including paintings, metal artefacts, paper and archaeological glass, present a variety of research questions. In all cases, their analysis was complex due to the different problems raised by each material and the interpretation of the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A renewed adoption of relational perspectives by archaeologists working in eastern North America has created an opportunity to move beyond categorical approaches, those reliant on the top-down implementation of essentialist models or "types." Instead, emerging approaches, concerned with highlighting the agential power of relationships between individuals, communities, and institutions, and, more generally, with simply moving beyond categories, are allowing archaeologists to move from the bottom-up, focusing instead on the relationships that underlie, and indeed constitute, social, political, and economic phenomena. In this paper, I synthesize recent archaeological work from across eastern North America in which archaeologists have productively moved beyond a reliance on categorical perspectives. I explicitly focus on the potential for relational perspectives to recalibrate our social and temporal referents in crafting archaeological narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the ramifications of "The Umbrella Man" - a brief mystery that was of interest to historians and theorists examining the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 - on the practice of modern archaeology and some of the basic tenets upon which it relies. The paper focuses on certain materials, analytical methods, and research themes associated with the study of nineteenth-century sites in the Midwest, contextualized to varying degrees by the presence of a written record left behind by the makers and users of the material world as it existed in the region during the 1800s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shielings are the historically known form of transhumance in Scandinavia, where livestock were moved from the farmstead to sites in the outlands for summer grazing. Pollen analysis has provided a valuable insight into the history of shielings. This paper presents a vegetation reconstruction and archaeological survey from the shieling Kårebolssätern in northern Värmland, western Sweden, a renovated shieling that is still operating today. The first evidence of human activities in the area near Kårebolssätern are Hordeum- and Cannabis-type pollen grains occurring from ca. 100 bc. Further signs of human impact are charcoal and sporadic occurrences of apophyte pollen from ca. ad 250 and pollen indicating opening of the canopy ca. ad 570, probably a result of modification of the forest for grazing. A decrease in land use is seen between ad 1000 and 1250, possibly in response to a shift in emphasis towards large scale commodity production in the outlands. Emphasis on bloomery iron production and pitfall hunting may have caused a shift from agrarian shieling activity. The clearest changes in the pollen assemblage indicating grazing and cultivation occur from the mid-thirteenth century, coinciding with wetter climate at the beginning of the Little Ice Age. The earliest occurrences of anthropochores in the record predate those of other shieling sites in Sweden. The pollen analysis reveals evidence of land use that predates the results of the archaeological survey. The study highlights how pollen analysis can reveal vegetation changes where early archaeological remains are obscure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of African Archaeological Review is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we review the goals, methods, and results of our modelling of the shoreline history and archaeological survey of the inundated portions of a freshwater lake system within the Lake Ontario watershed of south-central Ontario, Canada. We first review the character of the regional archaeological record and highlight the likelihood that the relatively few documented sites in this region before 6000 cal BP is due to landscape inundation from shoreline transgression. The first part of our analytical work focuses on the derivation of paleoshoreline models to identified now flooded, but formerly inhabitable landscapes. The second phase of our work reports on the shallow water survey of high potential areas. We documented over 1000 artifacts in a set of targeted surveys, including the presence of material diagnostic of the early Holocene, which is underrepresented in the terrestrial record. The results of our work emphasize the importance of evaluating the potential for cultural landscape inundation in freshwater lake systems and, when so identified, how underwater surveys contribute to regional studies of hunter-gatherer settlement and land use patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential for Assemblage Theory to contribute to current approaches in network thinking in Archaeology. I argue that Assemblage Theory offers improved explanatory models for understanding relationality and how social networks aggregate, change, and disassemble over time at multiple scales. In recent years, network approaches in Archaeology have encouraged the study of complex assemblages. To complement these studies, I argue for the productivity of broadening traditional definitions of assemblage to one that does not discriminate between assemblages of itinerant objects in dispersed networks and those situated within a self-contained site. Following Assemblage Theory, I therefore suggest that assemblage is best defined as a cluster of emergent, relational phenomena and that materials, human actants, forces, and other matter need not be confined to any one geographically delineated space in order to constitute an assemblage. To evaluate the possibilities for Assemblage Theory applications, I examine the movements of walrus ivory objects across the North Atlantic and continental Europe, ca. 800–1550 CE. A reconstruction of the extended network involved in these itinerant materials reveals patterns of material movements informed by economic behavior and political change. The application of Assemblage Theory to this model offers a valuable theoretical foundation to address the interconnected agency and relationality of network entities and components. This approach allows for greater complexity and specificity in identifying and explaining the material networks which generated economic change between medieval Europe and Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an approach how to create FAIR data for prehistoric mining archaeology, based on the CIDOC CRM ontology and semantic web standards. The interdisciplinary Research Centre HiMAT (History of mining activities in the Tyrol and adjacent areas, University of Innsbruck) investigates mining history from prehistoric to modern times with an interdisciplinary approach. One of the projects carried out at the research centre is the multinational DACH project "Prehistoric copper production in the eastern and central Alps". For a specific geographical region of the project, the data transformation to open and re-usable data is investigated in a separate Open Research Data pilot project. The methodological approach will use the FAIR principles to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable. Every archaeological investigation in Austria has to be documented according to the requirements of the Austrian Federal Monuments Office. This documentation is deposited in the CERN-based EU supported research data repository ZENODO. For each deposited file, metadata are created through the application of the conceptual metadata schema CIDOC CRM, an ISO standard for Cultural Heritage Information, which was adopted by ARIADNE, the European Union Research Infrastructure for archaeological resources. Concepts specific to mining archaeology research are organized with the DARIAH Back Bone Thesaurus, a model for sustainable interoperable thesauri maintenance, developed in the European Union Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities. Metadata are created through the extraction of information from the documentation and the transformation to a knowledge graph using semantic web standards. To facilitate usage, graph data are exported to hierarchical and tabular formats representing sites and objects with their geographic locations, temporal and typological assignments and links to the research activities and documents. Metadata are deposited together with the documentation into the repository. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to respect the good practices in archaeology disseminated by the MASA Consortium (Archaeologists and Archaeological Sites Memories), the Laboratoire Archéologie et Territoires (Tours, France) wished to evaluate the progress of ArSol database (Soil Archives), its field data management database, with regard to the FAIR principles or the Five-Star Linked Open Data. The work undertaken to achieve compliance with these precepts has shown that it is also necessary to ensure the relevance and reliability of the published data. For data to be reusable, it seems essential to ensure traceability. Various tools' set-up for the ArSol database makes it possible to ensure this traceability from the field recording, through its exploitation, to the publication of the results of the excavation. The traceability of data, to ensure their quality in terms of reliability and relevance, is an aspect that is fortunately already taken into account in the ArSol database and that complements satisfactorily the FAIR principles requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, fishing economies of prehistoric populations of coastal South China have been inadequately studied. This paper presents the results from the first systematic study that documents a subsistence economy from the Neolithic settlement site of Guye (5900–5400 cal BP) in the Pearl River Delta region of Southern China using an ichthyoarchaeological analysis. The analysis yielded a large number of fish remains, including at least 18 kinds of freshwater- and brackish water/inshore–associated fish taxa. They were likely caught by nets, traps, spears, and angling. The characteristics of this long-term fishing-reliant subsistence pattern help to elucidate the mechanisms of the sustainability and complexity of fishing-hunting-gathering communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contact goniometer is a commonly used tool in archaeological analysis, despite suffering from a number of shortcomings due to the physical interaction between the measuring implement, the object being measured, and the individual taking the measurements. However, lacking a simple and efficient alternative, researchers in a variety of fields continue to use the contact goniometer to this day. In this paper, we present a new goniometric method that we call the virtual goniometer, which takes angle measurements on a 3D model of an object. The virtual goniometer allows for rapid data collection, and for the measurement of many angles that cannot be physically accessed by a manual goniometer. Using fracture angle measurements on bone fragments, we compare the intra-observer variability of the manual and virtual goniometers, and find that the virtual goniometer is far more consistent and reliable. Furthermore, the virtual goniometer allows for precise replication of angle measurements, even among multiple users, which is important for reproducibility of goniometric-based research. The virtual goniometer is available as a plug-in in the open source mesh processing packages Meshlab and Blender, making it easily accessible to researchers exploring the potential for goniometry to improve archaeological methods and address anthropological questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of the Dolmen of Menga suggests that the stone tomb’s Neolithic builders had an understanding of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rock art in Dakhleh, despite being known for more than a century, has been thoroughly investigated only since the late 1980s, and remains far from being well known especially outside of Egypt. At the same time, the consecutive seasons of fieldwork conducted by the Petroglylph Unit (part of the international Dakhleh Oasis Project) have produced a great number of findings and substantially enhanced our knowledge of the petroglyphs of this area. Here, rather than focusing on interpretive aspects of the research, I wish to discuss the threats endangering the petroglyphs in the Oasis. Dakhleh has developed very intensively in the last 100 years. It is, however, the twenty-first century which seems to pose some serious threats to archaeological heritage. Hence, in this paper I wish to report on what has been done so far to document rock art in the Oasis, and try to establish the priorities for potential future work. The agricultural and infrastructural development in the area, and the uncertain political climate in the country, heavily influence the state of rock art preservation and the possibilities of research. The need for documentation and preservation of rock art is larger than ever before, because many changes in the local landscape cannot be stopped. The time is pressing, because more and more rock art is disappearing due to the reasons discussed in this paper. Threats to Egyptian rock art in general will form a background for considerations concerning petroglyphs from the Western Desert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on southern Ethiopia, along the outer rim of the Rift Valley and not far from the Kenyan border, in an area forming part of a larger region known as a cradle of humankind. However, it also hosts a diverse Holocene rock art heritage, which is still underestimated and underdocumented. Paintings and engravings are widespread in the region, both in rock shelters and open-air sites, often located in remote areas currently inhabited by communities belonging to different ethnic groups. The aim of this paper is to present the first results of a new project in the area around Yabelo, within the broader framework of rock art research in East Africa, integrating archaeological research, preservation and heritage management with a relevant involvement of local communities. The outstanding cultural importance of these contexts offers new prospects for both scholarly research and sustainable development. The recording and study of the artworks is underway, using digital technologies that guarantee a high standard of accuracy of the documentation and non-invasive recording methods. This provides important insights for reconstructing cultural dynamics in the area between the final Pleistocene and onset of the Holocene. Moreover, the focus on rock art makes it possible to enhance local knowledge, increasing the awareness of local communities, with a significant impact on the preservation of this fragile heritage and the development of local, sustainable tourism projects. Differently from other archaeological features, rock art can have a more immediate attractiveness for contemporary observers, in terms of the apparent immediacy of the images and their emotional impact, raising awareness of cultural heritage and fostering major involvement in its preservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of agricultural origins has been revolutionized by genomic science. Whole genome sequencing of plant domesticates opens a door to multiple new approaches by which the timing, nature, and geography of human selective pressures on the evolution of domesticated species might be detected. These new scientific pathways greatly enhance understandings of domestication as an evolutionary process, but they also renew long-standing questions for archaeologists about whether and how to perceive human agency in the ancient past of human–plant interspecies relations. Due to its importance as a global commercial crop, the apple (Malus x domestica Borkh.) was the tenth plant genome to be successfully sequenced in 2010. The genomic record of the apple reveals a deep history of human–plant co-evolution by unconscious selection, domestication through hybridization, and a phylogeographic origin in Central Asia. The first two of these insights document a domesticate that has evolved from protracted and unconscious processes, but the third—the identification of the progenitor Malus sieversii (Ledeb.) M. Roem. in Central Asia, and the necessary corollary that its hybridization arose along the 'Silk Road'—invites further discussion about the roles of human agency and intentionality in the initial stages of plant domestication. This paper presents a review of apple domestication studies in archaeology and genetics and considers the problematic of Central Asia and the Silk Road in the current paradigm shift of agricultural origins research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerations of materiality and object-oriented approaches have greatly influenced the development of archaeological theory in recent years. Yet, Palaeolithic archaeology has been slow in incorporating this emerging body of scholarship and exploring its bearing on the human deep past. This paper probes into the potential of materiality theory to clarify the material dynamics of the Plio-Pleistocene and seeks to re-articulate the debate on the evolution of our species with materiality discourses in archaeology and the humanities more broadly. We argue that the signature temporalities and geospatial scales of observation provided by the Palaeolithic record offer unique opportunities to examine the active role of material things, objects, artefacts and technologies in the emergence, stabilisation and transformation of hominin lifeworlds and the accretion of long-term trajectories of material culture change. We map three axes of human–thing relations—ecological, technical and evolutionary—and deploy a range of case studies from the literature to show that a critical re-assessment of material agency not only discloses novel insights and questions, but can also refine what we already know about the human deep past. Our exploration underscores the benefits of de-centring human behaviour and intentionality and demonstrates that materiality lends itself as a productive nexus of exchange and mutual inspiration for diverging schools and research interests in Palaeolithic archaeology. An integrated object-oriented perspective calls attention to the human condition as a product of millennial-scale human–thing co-adaptation, in the course of which hominins, artefacts and technologies continuously influenced and co-created each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Francis Buckley was extraordinary; an officer responsible for arming grenades, excavating trenches, surveying, sketch-mapping, and military intelligence, his actions were a roll-call of the First World War's bloodiest battles. The psychological toll was significant. War remade the man and created the archaeologist. Under fire, Buckley recorded prehistoric lithics on the Somme, a rich archaeological landscape, and a deadly battlefield. After the war, "tramping" the Yorkshire moors, Buckley applied military skills to excavate and record a key, but still understudied lithic collection. This paper explores Francis Buckley's war, its implications for the history of archaeological thought, and reasserts his under-acknowledged legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smell is a language, communicative and interpretive. Firmly embedded in the physical, social, emotional, and semantic context, odor emanates as existential expression that is integral and idiosyncratic to human culture, behaviors, and practices. Advances in scientific techniques allows for odor to be used as primary source evidence. Focusing on a ground-breaking technique, headspace sampling provides direct access to ancient odor molecules for analysis. This paper explores how empirical information permits entry into previously unexplored sensorial sociocultural avenues that enable deeper, richer models of archaeological interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the issue of documenting and communicating the reliability of evidence interpretation in archaeology and, in general, in heritage science. It is proposed to express reliability with fuzzy logic, and model it using an extension of CIDOC CRM classes and properties. This proposed extension is compared with other CRM extensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The high mountains of the Mediterranean are often considered as refuges of ancient traditions, particularly of pastoralism and brigandage. Is this image true? This paper reports the first systematic archaeological research on Aspromonte, Southern Calabria. Archaeological, cartographic and air photo evidence suggests that people used the high mountains in all periods from the Neolithic onwards. However, early usage was low-intensity and probably for special purposes such as iron-smelting, charcoal-burning and logging; only in the Classical Greek period was there sustained effort at inhabiting higher areas. The real development of the mountains came in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the 1920s onwards, there were large-scale, state-fostered projects for economic exploitation of forests, political control of territory, and creation of a recreational landscape. These endeavors tied into modernist ideas of the state, as well as period concepts such as Alpinism and healthy outdoor recreation for city dwellers. Ironically, as soon as these modern efforts made the high mountains accessible, they were assigned a chronotope, and were reimagined as the exemplification of an ancient way of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I briefly introduce work on ancient-DNA (aDNA) and give some examples of the impact this work has had on responses to questions in archaeology. Next, I spell out David Reich's reasons for his optimism about the contribution aDNA research makes to archaeology. I then use Robert Chapman and Alison Wylie's framework to offer an alternative to Reich's view of relations between aDNA research and archaeology. Finally, I develop Steven Mithen's point about the different questions archaeologists and geneticists ask, arguing that different disciplinary perspectives color researchers' perceptions of "the most important questions" or the "central topics" in a field. I conclude that evidence from aDNA research cannot solve archaeological disputes without closer, mutually respectful collaboration between aDNA researchers and archaeologists. Ancient DNA data, like radiocarbon data, is not a silver bullet for problems in archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pits are virtually omnipresent in the archaeological record. In Prehistoric Europe, pits occasionally form large concentrations known as 'pit sites', where they are the most visible, sometimes the sole, remnants of past human activity. How can we interpret the social roles played by places comprising hundreds or even thousands of pits? A critical point of contention in these debates is how certain we are that all or most pits on a site indeed acted as grain storage pits for most of their use-lives. However, it is not easy to distinguish between pits used for storage and pits destined for other purposes. This paper represents an attempt to circumvent, to an extent, this problem. We will do so by turning our attention away from the problem of accuracy and by focusing on external consistency instead. We gather up-to-date experimental, ethnographic and historical data about the challenges that the storage of grain poses and how pits can help people to overcome them. Then, we discuss their advantages and disadvantages relative to other methods: why would anybody use airtight pits instead of, for instance, weather-proofed raised granaries? Next, we examine the social and economic contexts in which storage pits are an effective solution as opposed to those in which their performance is suboptimal. The conclusions drawn serve as a background against which to evaluate the external consistency of current interpretations concerning three selected case studies in Prehistoric Western Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magdalenian communities exploited mostly local and regional good-quality lithic raw materials. In south-eastern Poland, being the easternmost fringe of the Magdalenian range, Turonian grey flint had a particular importance. Outcrops of this raw material occur both at the west and at the east sides the Vistula River Gorge. The varieties from the eastern area (called here “eastern Turonian flint” or ETF) are common among inventories of the Magdalenian sites situated to west of the Vistula river. This fact points toward the frequent penetration of the ETF outcrop area by those societies. However, no Magdalenian sites were known directly from the ETF deposit area, and this gap in knowledge restricted further understanding of the character and diversity of Magdalenian activity there. Therefore, in this paper, we present the results of searching for Magdalenian sites within the ETF outcrop zone. Applied methodology included study of the archive archaeological materials, followed by detail survey and excavation of the selected site—Stare Baraki 1. This site documents a short stay or multiple stays of Magdalenian people, who were focused on Turonian flint knapping. Lithic inventory records collecting of several local flint varieties at the distance up to around 20 km from the site, followed by almost all stages of flint working. The material from Stare Baraki is the first known and currently the only trace of the Magdalenian people inside the zone of Turonian flint deposits on the right bank of the Vistula river. The study in Stare Baraki delivered new data for the reconstruction of territory exploitation strategies used in the easternmost Magdalenian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many palaeontologists and sources of palaeontological data refer to 'drill holes' or 'small round holes' in shells, produced by invertebrate borers and sources of palaeoecological data. But such terminology may eventually be overlooked or forgotten; it is better that the authors also resort to ichnotaxonomy and refer these structures to their ichnogenus, Oichnus Bromley. This will support stabilization of the ichnotaxonomic record and improve communication. Ichnologists already follow this terminology; palaeobiologists (and some archaeologists) now need to develop a similar habit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The materialization of memory is one way in which the past becomes a powerful agent for negotiating the present. Today in Botswana, archaeological sites have become sites of memory where ancestors have been invoked for healing in response to the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. This paper concentrates on one site, Khubu la Dintša, where a local community practiced an ancestral healing ceremony, phekolo, as a way to restore spiritual balance. Told through a set of narratives that integrate ethnographic interviews with one of the former church elders, Russia, the article chronicles the trajectory of the church, the perceived power and active role of the ancestors in this ceremony, and the complex web of morality and practicality in which alternative narratives emerge during a time of social disruption and later fall apart. This paper complements the others in this issue by focusing on how memory, place, time, and material culture are recursively engaged: a process that includes formal and accepted to marginal and even ephemeral viewpoints and holds lessons for how we as archaeologists approach and curate the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miscalibration, the failure to accurately evaluate one's own work relative to others' evaluation, is a common concern in social systems of knowledge creation where participants act as both creators and evaluators. Theories of social norming hold that individual's self-evaluation miscalibration diminishes over multiple iterations of creator-evaluator interactions and shared understanding emerges. This paper explores intersubjectivity and the longitudinal dynamics of miscalibration between creators' and evaluators' assessments in IT-enabled social knowledge creation and refinement systems. Using Latent Growth Modeling, we investigated dynamics of creator's assessments of their own knowledge artifacts compared to peer evaluators' to determine whether miscalibration attenuates over multiple interactions. Contrary to theory, we found that creator's self-assessment miscalibration does not attenuate over repeated interactions. Moreover, depending on the degree of difference, we found self-assessment miscalibration to amplify over time with knowledge artifact creators' diverging farther from their peers' collective opinion. Deeper analysis found no significant evidence of the influence of bias and controversy on miscalibration. Therefore, relying on social norming to correct miscalibration in knowledge creation environments (e.g., social media interactions) may not function as expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the authors' insights on the argument of L. Premo to their paper concerning biocultural evolution. They mention that dismissal of Premo to archeological evidence that they presented to their paper indicates the unfamiliarity of Premo with published studies that support their argument. They comment on the simple model used by Premo in examining the relationships of resource density, length of stay at residential camps, and interaction rates of two forager bands.

The article provides an overview of the history of African Archaeological Review (AAR) on its 40th anniversary. The article offers information on the origins and success of AAR; the recent passing of the founding editor-in-chief; and the upcoming publications marking the journal's 40th anniversary. Additionally, the authors explore thematic and demographic trends in AAR publications over the past 40 years.

This paper serves as an introduction to this special edition of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology on the theme of archaeology, memory and oral history. Recent approaches to oral history and memory destabilise existing grand narratives and confront some of the epistemological assumptions underpinning scientific archaeology. Here we discuss recent approaches to memory and explore their impact on historical archaeology, including the challenges that forms of oral and social memory present to a field traditionally defined by the relationship between material culture and text. We then review a number of themes addressed by the articles in this volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeology is a domain of work where photographs play a relevant role: here they are used in different phases of the archaeological work for many purposes, some of which are common to other domains or to home usage (e.g., archiving). We focus our attention on one of the initial phases of the archaeological process, namely excavation, since the related activities use photographs in a very particular way and under the constraints of a very demanding physical setting. Moreover, in this phase the use of digitized photographs is recent, and in their adoption they are interestingly combined with photographs printed on paper. This paper presents the results of a study performed at an archaeological site in the south of Italy: it reports the observed collocated collaborative practices surrounding photographs and discusses these practices to identify some functionalities of a supportive technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces several papers presented at the History and Archaeology of Materials Symposium, which was held at the Materials Science and Technology 2005 conference.