Many animal species exploited by humans play important roles beyond simply consumption. While disentangling the diverse roles of animals and animal resources from the archaeological record can be difficult, it is especially important for establishing holistic perspectives of past lifeways and economies. Recent zooarchaeological investigations at the Mound Key site in southwestern Florida have identified

In this article, we examine existing data on Southern Jê burial caves (SJBCs) in the Southern Brazilian Highlands to discuss their spatiality, chronology, symbolic aspects, and relation to mound and enclosure complexes (MECs), another Southern Jê burial practice. Through map creation and temporal analysis, we explore chronological and hierarchical hypotheses previously used to explain the dynamic relationship

Cultural interaction has been shown to be important in the (re)organization of social relationships in pre-contact North America and an important causal factor in Mississippian origins throughout the U.S. Southeast and Midwest. Indeed, recent research has documented the significance of migration and other forms of far-flung interactions in the spread of Mississippian lifeways. The Mississippian period

Despite a long tradition of characterizing the Bell Beaker-associated human groups as mobile herders, there has been limited evidence for their economy and diet, both key defining factors for human lifeways. Bone nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen stable isotopes from a collective burial in Sardinia provide the first data on the diet of Mediterranean Bell Beaker groups, crucial as there is the presence of

This paper reports on the results of archaeological excavations at the cemetery sector of the Middle Horizon (AD 650–1000) Wari site of Pataraya, located in the middle Nasca valley of southern Peru, and biochemical analyses of human skeletal remains recovered during those excavations. The findings reported here demonstrate that the sharp differences in cultural practice between Pataraya’s occupants

For a number of years, researchers have associated Late Bronze Age (LBA) (2100 – 1300 BCE) settlements in the Trans-Ural steppe with nomadic pastoralism. This would have involved entire populations making periodic movements between pastures. To test this claim, I have synthesized eight lines of data from more than 40 archaeological sites. The analysis of settlement architecture, material culture accumulation

Beyond military conquest, the successful consolidation of Tawantinsuyu likely depended on the exercise of soft power and ideological cooptation. The widespread distribution of Inca pottery suggests it played a key role in the imperial agenda. Archaeological evidence from across the Empire indicates that provincial potters were mobilized to generate the distinctive vessels associated with the state

Social zooarchaeology stresses that animals’ role in social and political life is not limited to the merely “economic”. Recent studies of cattle and caprines’ role in the development of inequality, hierarchy, and political authority in Southwest Asia have begun to productively incorporate the “symbolic” or “social” value of animals. Taking an action-oriented anthropological approach to theorizing value

Archaeologists have traditionally conceptualized culture areas and associated ethnic group boundaries as reflecting significant degrees of dissimilarity between “core” and “peripheral” cultural types. This dissimilarity is typically thought to correlate with gradual geographic isolation. However, an alternative model has been presented that underscores the importance of inter-group interaction to ethnic

The Classic Maya (250–900 CE) lowlands of Mesoamerica were home to dozens of interconnected polities whose elites shared an intellectual and material culture. They also sustained common sociopolitical institutions like divine kingship, which relied in part on ritual performance to legitimate dynastic rule. This article suggests that exogamous marriage was an important context for maintaining this shared

At ∼160 ka, near the end of our African speciation, archaeologists identify a change from sporadic to habitual use of red ochre, interpreted as ‘blood-red colorant’ for decorating performers’ bodies during group rituals, with habitual ritual considered pre-requisite to symbolic culture’s ‘shared fictions’ (Dapschauskas et al. 2022). This article considers the proposed motivations for such behaviour

The Early Mycenaean era in mainland southern Greece is characterized by radical social transformations. The changes observed in the mortuary sphere include the introduction of new practices that stressed group identity alongside traditional modes of burial. Our hypothesis is that these mortuary choices should be seen as a social strategy for redefining kinship relations.

The Machile River and its surrounding tributaries in Western Zambia formed a significant locus of Iron Age life in Zambia and served as a conduit for the localized movements of people, things, and ideas in south-central Africa over much of the last two millennia. Within this dynamic corridor, the early 2nd-millennium CE Kanono site represents a short-lived but well defined Middle/Late Iron Age farming

The article has two informative levels: (a) describes the construction, distribution and use of tandyr cores as a traditional product of the bread-baking culture in southern Kyrgyzstan; compares these processes with the well-documented phenomenon of tandyrs in the Middle East and (b) tries to define the implications for potential archaeological research of tandyrs in this area, where (despite their

This paper explores how technology can be used to discern socio-cultural variations and how technological analyses can contribute to a better understanding of the origins and aftermaths of fundamental socio-political changes in prehistoric societies. To study pottery technology, we carried out petrographic analysis on ceramics from six Late Neolithic (ca. 5000–4500 BCE) and Early Copper Age (ca. 4500–4000

Several prehistoric societies did not develop robust hierarchical systems even after centuries of population clustering and advancements in constructing structural earthworks and crafting materials like ceramics and alloys. What social dynamics characterized these non-state complex societies and how did they influence technological production? Here we analyze population clustering and hierarchical

In this paper we adopt a new perspective on the chronology and settlement strategies of the last Mesolithic societies of the Ebro basin. For this purpose, we applied concepts from population biology (carrying capacity) and redefined the catchment area of the sites using GIS analysis tools. We concluded that the last hunter-gatherer groups lived below their means, so that physical and cultural reproduction

Political aspects of imperial architecture are usually evaluated in terms of the symbolism of specific buildings as opposed to overall site planning and layout. This reflects a shortcoming in our understanding of imperial tactics, as provincial site layouts were likely politically calculated. Here we present an architectural study of the Inka provincial capital of Turi, a well-preserved local population

This paper investigates temple-building traditions using concepts of space and place, exploring various perspectives of temple placemaking in archaeological, textual and ethnographic data. The study first looks at temple-building practices in Mesopotamia and South Asia, before exploring the nature of temple-building traditions in the 2nd and 1st millennium BCE southern Levant. From Mesopotamia, a unique

This article addresses Postclassic Maya population recovery in the aftermath of the collapse of Terminal Classic period political centers by 1100 CE in northern Yucatan, Mexico. While much has been written about the collapse of northern lowland Classic period Maya civilization by the eleventh century CE, we focus here on longer-term outcomes from a demographic perspective, during the Postclassic period

We investigate archaeological evidence for the early production of (or commonly named ‘baler’) shell knives recovered from Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene deposits in Boodie Cave, Barrow Island. The site is in the Country of Thalanyji people in northwestern Western Australia. The oldest shell knife fragments were recovered from units dated to 46.2–42.6 ka, making this one of the oldest shell tool

The Serranía de la Lindosa in the Colombian Amazon hosts one of the most spectacular global rock art traditions. Painted in vibrant ochre pigments, the artwork depicts abstract and figurative designs – including a high diversity of animal motifs – and holds key information for understanding how Amazonians made sense of their world. We compare a zooarchaeological assemblage with painted depictions of

The environmental impacts of human societies are generally assumed to correlate with factors such as population size, whether they are industrialized, and the intensity of their landscape modifications (e.g., agriculture, urban development). As a result, small-scale communities with subsistence economies are often not the focus of long-term studies of environmental impact. However, comparing human-environment

Understanding early animal domestication is complicated by disagreement over what, in cultural terms, differentiates domestic (closely managed? privately owned?) from wild and by the difficulty of distinguishing these categories zooarchaeologically. We describe recent feral populations of goats, sheep, cattle and pigs in Greece, comprising descendants of animals escaped or released from controlled

Applications of SNA to interpret archaeological evidence have been increasing dramatically, as has an interest in identifying communities and neighborhoods. Social Network Analysis (SNA) can be a lens and a tool to explore neighborhoods and communities with archaeological datasets from a range of temporal periods and regions. The spatial distribution of material culture facilitates the creation of

Early agricultural practices are often viewed as such a radical transformation that they not only structured and drove the long-term development of subsistence economies, but also required a dramatic reorganization of how community-wide economic relations were reckoned and enacted. This article examines how data derived from loci of economic production can inform us about the structure of economic

The emergence of open, disturbed grazing landscapes across Early Bronze Age Northern Europe coincided with a boom in the building of monumental barrows, often placed in linear arrangements. The co-emergence of landscape and monument forms suggests an intimate link between cosmology, communities and pasture, which has not featured prominently in prehistoric narratives. We propose and explore a framework

This study employs canonical methods and theory from urban economics and economic geography to analyze the urban structure of the ancient city of Teotihuacan. We present evidence that Teotihuacan’s overall configuration, which includes spatial patterning in land use, demography, and social class, reveals density gradients that are consistent with the assumptions of urban . In general, spatial equilibrium

Animal dung is still considered a secondary by-product of domestication, even though a growing body of evidence is showing that humans recognized its properties as fuel and fertilizer and utilized dung prior to—and alongside—the process of animal domestication. In this paper, we review the advancements made in dung identification over the last decades and suggest a multi-proxy workflow for fast screening

Research on regional depopulation is often framed around identifying external causal factors and subsequent effects on adjacent societies. This has been the case for studies of the depopulation of the St. Lawrence River Valley (SLRV) of northeastern North America. During the sixteenth century CE, an estimated 8,000–10,000 St. Lawrence Iroquoians (SLI) left the valley in response to climatic and social

Ceramic traditions are constantly evolving, but the pace of change is variable and not all stages of the are affected in the same way, depending on the causes of borrowing, abandonment, or innovation. Few ethnoarchaeological studies in Africa have focused on a detailed understanding of these dynamics, which are important for the interpretation of past societies. Our study was conducted from 2012 to

The emergence of social inequality is one of, if not the, most important research question in anthropological archaeology. Social inequality within different types of households is relational, between individuals as well as within communities, multidimensional, multi-scalar, and is measured in degrees instead of merely being present or absent. In exploring how archaeologists develop narratives of inequality

The Columbia-Fraser Plateau of Northwestern North America was inhabited by complex hunter-gatherer populations throughout the Late Holocene. Archaeological studies have typically characterized these peoples as having corporate households and wealth inequality. Ethnographic accounts emphasize the societies of this region as egalitarian communities and pacifist. In this paper we compare radiocarbon dates

An important facet in the study of complex societies involves documenting how the extraction of resources to support political structures (the political economy) impacted the subsistence economy of everyday life. Caprine production was a central feature of ancient Mesopotamian subsistence, while ancient texts reveal that wool was centrally important to the region’s political economies. It has long

The Iamal-Nenets region of Siberia is one of many Arctic areas where women’s sewing skills were and are crucial to daily existence. Our article explores archaeological needles and needle cases that were made and used by ancestors of the current Indigenous peoples of this region. We frame our examination of these materials through a discussion of women’s sewing bags, which are a symbolic representation

Adopting a building and village biography approach combining archaeology and ethnography, we critically reevaluate the historical argument that Neolithic villages were occupied by many thousands of people. Focusing on the settlement at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, where it has been argued that 3,500 and 10,000 people lived in the village, we argue that this is a significant overestimate of the number of people

Mobility is considered to play an important role in the way people use their habitual space. Highly mobile societies present a particular challenge to archaeologists as a direct relation is assumed between the duration of occupation and the intensity of its archaeological signature. Here, we present a cross-cultural, ethnoarchaeological study carried out among three contemporary societies that, while

Three trace elements in human bones permit the delineation of temporal and social variability among medieval to early modern Danes in what they ate (strontium, Sr) and whether they lived in an urban or non-urban setting (lead, Pb; copper, Cu). The chemical composition of bones from 332 children (5 to 12 years old) buried in 51 Danish cemeteries was estimated through Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass

The Archaic period has not been as widely studied in Mesoamerica as it has been in other parts of the Americas. This problem stems from intractable issues such as low archaeological visibility and high post-depositional disturbance. And, while existing Archaic data from northern Belize indicates that foraging groups practiced diverse adaptations, little theoretical effort has been dedicated toward

This study explores traditional adhesives using an ethnobiological approach within a multisocioecological context in Zambia. Through semi-structured interviews, videotaped demonstrations, and herbarium collections, we investigated the traditional adhesives people know and use, the flexibility of production processes, resource usage, and knowledge transmission in adhesive production. Our findings reveal

This study is an interdisciplinary approach to a veiled metaphoric design expressed in the present-day spatial layout of ecologically-derived patronyms of Mapuche lineages and families positioned in public ceremonial plazas. The perspective combines ethnoarchaeological, cognitive, iconographic, oral tradition, allegoric metaphor, and historical approaches to the organization and meaning of this design

Ritual plays an important integrative function in the creation, maintenance, and transformation of human society. The shared experience of ritual establishes strong bonds between individuals that defines their membership in certain social groups. However, rituals are not timeless traditions, nor do they simply restore social equilibrium. Rather, rituals are active and ongoing social processes that

[Display omitted]

Despite the importance of trees in the lives of hunter-gatherers, the economic, cultural, and spiritual roles of trees have been seldom explored empirically or theoretically. What research exists on the topic has mostly focused on economic aspects, especially firewood management, consumption of edible tree products, and tool manufacture. Here, we summarize data collected from 104 ethnographies on hunter-gatherers

For Indigenous people across the globe, being connected to traditional lands and histories continues to be of paramount importance. To document this connection on one river system in the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America, we compiled archaeological evidence from 14 settlements occupied between 3,000 years ago and the early 20th century. We demonstrate how households and lineages persisted inter-generationally

The paper examines how materializations of human practices relate to human cognition and to socio-cultural contexts. By combining evidence on the relationship between material culture and perceptual behaviour, we aim to understand the interactions between the mind, objects, and the world. The research is based on data regarding the visual perception of prehistoric pottery that was analyzed using Eye-Tracking

Merchant diasporas have significantly influenced local and interregional processes in world history, but archaeology is only starting to understand the diversity of political, economic, social and religious contexts within which they developed. Recent research has suggested that the second plague pandemic (Black Death) likely affected West Africa. However, little is known regarding the diversity of

Social complexity in coastal and terrestrial environments both emerge as forms of subsistence intensification on previous foraging patterns but take different trajectories because of differences in the spatial and temporal structure and density of harvestable biomass between the two ecozones. Norms and values surrounding standards of living motivate households to intensify production above what is

Carcass butchery is a culturally mediated behavior that reflects the technological, social, economic, and ecological factors that influence human diet and foodways. Butchery behavior can thus reveal a great deal about the lives of past peoples. Actualism provides a critical link between the dynamics of carcass butchery and the static remains of the archaeological record. This study provides an overview

How different were the lives of elites and commoners in early complex societies? This paper examines this question using data from three fisher-hunter-gatherer sites in southern California. Using shell bead counts from burials as proxies for social status and previously published human stable isotope values as indicators of dietary practices, we examine the relationship between diet and status across

Ceramic trends on Unguja Island in Zanzibar, Tanzania provide insights into non-elite political strategies on the East African Swahili Coast. Synthesizing imported ceramic data from two seasons of systematic field survey across rural Unguja with historical, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence from coastal East Africa, this paper argues that an integrative orientation toward power characterized

Abstract not available

Network analysis has become increasingly common within archaeological practice, yet little consensus exists as to what networks based on material culture actually reveal about ancient social life. One common approach to archaeological network inference relies on constructing similarity networks based on shared material types or stylistic categories between archaeological sites or contexts. Many studies

Rondels are the oldest monumental ceremonial objects in Europe. They appeared some 200 years after the demise of the Linear Pottery culture (c. 4800 BCE). They have given a new shape to the resurgent 'Danubian Neolithic World'. However, despite intensive research, it is still unclear (1) how the transition process took place after the fall of the LBK; (2) how long rondels were function; and (3) under

To practice music archaeology is to enter into a dialogue between the humanities and the sciences, social and otherwise. Music archaeology is part of the humanistic study of past sounded behaviour, ritual practice, and soundscapes, as well as a global history of discursive representations about humans' capacity for music. It is also the scientific inquiry of sound technology through time, of materials

The emergence and expansion of inequality have been topics of household archaeology for decades. Traditionally, this question has been informed by ethnographic, ethnohistoric and/or comparative studies. Within sites and regions, comparative physical, spatial, and architectural studies of households offer an important baseline of information about status, wealth, and well-being, especially in the Maya