This paper examines the relationship between the presence of symmetry and the Acheulean biface within a predominantly British Lower Palaeolithic context. There has been a long-standing notion within Palaeolithic studies that Acheulean handaxes are symmetrical and become increasingly so as time progress as a reflection of increasing hominin cognitive and behavioural complexity. Specifically, the presence of symmetry within Acheulean handaxes is often seen as one of the first examples of material culture being used to mediate social relationships. However, this notion has never been satisfactorily tested against a large data set. This paper seeks to address the issue by conducting an analysis of some 2680 bifaces across a chronological and geographical span. The results from the sample presented here are that symmetrical bifaces do not appear to have a particularly strong presence in any assemblage and do not appear to increase as time progress. These results have significant implications for modern researchers assessing the cognitive and behavioural complexities of Acheulean hominins.

It is held that the study of complex societies can effectively focus on the human interactions that define communities. Given the operational primacy of architectural survey in archaeological investigations, with some prominent exceptions, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to how communities of varying scales can actually be identified using these data sets. This article weds a modified version of Yaeger and Canuto's (2000) ‘interactional approach’ to community identity with a materialist (empirical) body of method-theory known as space syntax in a discussion of community structure and systems of authority represented in the architectural structures and spaces of epicentral Teotihuacan, Mexico.

Passage tombs are the most elaborate monuments that were built during the Irish and British Neolithic, not only because of their complex monumental architecture but also because they are the only type of tomb that has carvings and such a diversity of funerary objects. This article focuses on the spatial organization of these three components of passage tombs and identifies several recurrent structures that are classified into three groups. From these spatial structures, an abstract elementary model is proposed that helps to understand the conceptual principles and the symbolic significations that guided the construction, decoration and use of the monuments.

In July 2006 archaeologists from the University of Bristol and Atkins Heritage embarked on a contemporary archaeology project with a difference. We ‘excavated’ an old (1991) Ford Transit van, used by archaeologists and later by works and maintenance teams at the Ironbridge Museum. The object: to see what can be learnt from a very particular, common and characteristic type of contemporary place; to establish what archaeologists and archaeology can contribute to understanding the way society, and specifically we as archaeologists, use and inhabit these places; and to challenge and critique archaeologies of the contemporary past. In this report we describe our excavation and situate it within a wider debate about research practice in contemporary archaeology.

Drawing on literature on social group identity, this article explores the possible meaning of the so-called lion pins from Hasanlu, Iran (c. 800 BC). The discussion raises the possibility that the Hasanlu pins served as highly visible emblems of within-group cohesion with respect to outsiders, while at the same time reinforcing hierarchies within Hasanlu society. The lion pins are examined in the light of other unusual types of pins from elsewhere in western Iran, and in the context of the specific historical conditions facing the region in the early first millennium BC. The analysis also explores the possible role of women and children in marking and reinforcing social boundaries; and the potential use of personal ornaments in attempts to clarify social roles and relations in archaeology.

Bu (Syrinx aruanus) shell arrangements are often found in ritual sites across Torres Strait. The position of such sites within Indigenous cosmologies has been ethnographically documented for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article historicizes Indigenous spiritscapes by tracking back in time the history of this particular material expression of spiritual belief in Western Torres Strait. We argue that the last c. 400 years saw major shifts in ritual engagements with seascapes in Western Torres Straits. These transformations may have been Indigenous responses to the traumatic events of early contact with European seafarers, in particular the earliest Spanish sailors of 1606.

The identification and analysis of invention is fundamental to understanding early societies. Yet invention tends to be only sporadically addressed by archaeologists, and then usually only within broader studies of innovation. Doubts concerning the ability of the archaeological record to yield data of sufficient quality to investigate invention, together with the perception that the concept leads inevitably to nineteenth-century societal narratives of technological progress, remain widespread. This paper reviews the theoretical approaches to invention in early societies with a particular focus on pyrotechnologies. It highlights the papers within this special section, which demonstrate the capacity of an integrated approach incorporating materials science, archaeology and archaeological theory to understand the processes of both invention and innovation underlying the appearance of pyrotechnologies and their relationships to early societies throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. It is argued that the importance of historical and contemporary debates on inventions, innovations and societies across the world continues to increase—and will do so with or without the active contribution of archaeologists.

Coinage occupies an unusual position in archaeological research. Thriving scholarship on numismatics and monetary history ensures that the objects themselves are well-studied, often seen as an indication of chronology and of stylistic and commercial links. Yet coins might also be analysed as artefacts, and explored as part of the symbolic world of material culture through which archaeologists understand meaning and value in past societies. Using a recently-excavated assemblage of medieval Kilwa-type coins from Songo Mnara on the East African Swahili coast, this article explores the multiple ways that value was ascribed and created through use, rejecting a simple dichotomy between substantive and formal value. Attention is given to the contexts of the coins, which enables a discussion of the relationship between power and the constitution of value, the circulation and use of coins among townspeople, and their use within ritual and commemorative activity.

In this study, we outline a maritime perspective on interaction in the Late Bronze/early Iron Age Mediterranean. In response to what has elsewhere been termed the ‘maximalist’ approach, which foregrounds direct, long-distance trading connections between distant Mediterranean regions as a key feature of Late Bronze Age exchange systems, we propose a more nuanced, ‘minimalist’ and argue that notions of contact, connectivity and mobility need to be carefully distinguished if we wish to discuss both the material and social dimensions of maritime mobility. In particular, we critique the prominently proposed, allegedly direct trade route between Sardinia and Cyprus. The network we suggest hinges on multiply connected nodes, where a variety of social actors take part in the creation and maintenance of maritime connections. By unpacking several such nodes between Sardinia and Cyprus, we demonstrate that simply asserting the dominance of Sardinian, Cypriot or Aegean mariners falls short of the complex archaeological evidence and eschews possible social interpretations. In conclusion, we submit that maritime connectivity is an inherently social activity, and that a culturally diverse prehistoric Mediterranean was connected by multiple interlocking and overlapping networks.

The concept of art has proved controversial in archaeology and anthropology. Many feel that the concept, developed to fit high art in modern Western society, is inappropriate for objects made for other uses, in other times, or in other cultures. Yet there is no widely agreed critique or alternative concept. This introduction reviews responses to this dilemma, ranging from using the concept uncritically, using the term ‘art’ simply as an archaeological convenience to refer to things such as petroglyphs and figurines, and treating art simply as material culture. It then explores the recent concepts of art as affective material culture, as socially defined networks, and as locally defined aesthetic action. Finally, it raises the possibility that art is our local category of the kind of powerful objects found in many cultures.

Ethnography of the Tallensi shows how rights of access to shrines could be granted to people in other places and how beneficiaries may take with them samples of stone used at the mother shrine. Reasons for taking the samples are considered. It is suggested that Tallensi practice offers an analogy for selection and transfer of stone in the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland.

Colour is one of the most prominent features of human experience, but has often been ignored or overlooked in archaeological research. All practising archaeologists are aware of the colour of the materials which they handle — be they stone artefacts, painted pots, prehistoric monuments (frontispiece) or historical buildings. Yet all too frequently these items are robbed of their colour when they are published as black and white photos, abstract plans or reductionist line drawings. Equally discouraging is the fact that original colours are frequently missing or faded, removed by the passage of centuries. We know, for example, that the famous marble Cycladic figurines were originally brightly painted, but few traces of colouring survive. Yet such traces are enough to alert us to the radical transformation which colour could bring to old and faded remains.

In this Viewpoint feature we have invited a range of specialists to consider the meaning of colour in early societies. The intention has been to focus on those societies where evidence of colour is not so readily apparent. Egyptian art and Palaeolithic caves have their place in this debate, but we are also interested in the selection of stones of particular colours for tools or structures, and for the use of colour in textiles; areas in which almost all early societies must have been engaged.

The meaning of colour may be approached at a variety of levels. In literate societies, or those with a rich and detailed iconographic tradition, it may be possible to explore the particular significance of different colours in myths or rituals. Such understanding is more difficult in the case of prehistoric societies, yet even here we can gain some insight into colour symbolism by careful consideration of context, or by cautious appeal to common human experience. Context may suggest that red ochre in burials equates with blood, common experience that yellow is associated with the sun, and blue with the sky or the sea. The value accorded to particular colours can also be indicated by the workmanship and finish which objects received, and the distances that materials travelled: polished jadeite from the Alps to Scotland, or lapis lazuli from Afghanistan to Mesopotamia.

As the following articles demonstrate, all societies are concerned about colour, and such concern can be traced back to at least the Upper Palaeolithic, if not before. To what extent particular colours, such as red or black, have cross-cultural significance, is an altogether more difficult question. Colour awareness and colour sensitivity must however be an integral part of any archaeological analysis concerned with the development and nature of human cognition.

The question of the supposedly pre-Greek language or languages of the Aegean, in its wider historical and cultural context, has not been systematically addressed since the decipherment of the Linear B script, other than in the philological studies of DA. Hester. Here it is argued that the time is ripe for a new synthesis between the linguistic and the cultural evidence. The language of the Minoan Linear A script, that is (it is here assumed) the Minoan language of the palaces, is here identified as making the principal contribution to the so-called ‘pre-Greek’ vocabulary of the Greek language, thus constituting not a linguistic substratum of earlier date but an adstratum, which developed during their co-existence in the Aegean during the Bronze Age. This may be seen as the linguistic component in the ‘Versailles effect’ of Minoan palatial influence within the Aegean, which reached its apogee in the Late Bronze 1 period, a view anticipated in some respects in the work of some earlier writers notably G. Glotz.

Such an approach focuses attention more clearly on the intellectual and ideological contributions of Minoan culture to the emerging Mycenaean civilization, rather than on the piecemeal acquisition of material items, without however assigning a secondary or subordinate role to the mainland communities in their own transition towards state society. One important consequence of the argument is to diminish (or even eliminate) the case for a significant chronologically pre-Greek element in the Greek language. One principal argument against the very early, probably Neolithic arrival of proto-Greek (or proto-Indo-European) speakers into mainland Greece is thereby removed. The resulting simplification in the linguistic picture of the Bronze Age Aegean proposed here carries implications also for that of western Anatolia and for the great antiquity there of the Luwian language. It opens questions also about the affinities of the presumed Anatolianancestor of the Minoan (or proto-Minoan) language.

This article examines the significance of the passage in Irish passage-tombs. An association between passages and concentric motifs in the engraved parietal art is analyzed, and interpreted in terms of the ‘tunnel experience’ often associated with altered states of consciousness as a means of access between ‘real’ and supernatural worlds. In addition, the implications of the coincidence of tunnel experiences and visions of the dead are considered.

Oceans and seas are more frequently thought to have been barriers to than enablers of movement for archaic hominins. This interpretation has been challenged by a revisionist model which suggests that bodies of water facilitated the dispersal of pre-moderns. This paper addresses the revisionist model by defining maritime dispersal as a series of cognitive and organizational problems, the capacity to solve which must have arisen during the evolution of Homo. The central question posed is: knowing the type of social and cognitive configuration necessary for strategic maritime dispersal, and knowing the social and cognitive capacities of hominin species implied in the revisionist dispersal model, how likely is it that such species possessed the capacity to undertake purposive maritime colonization? Available data suggest that the evolution of modern cognitive architecture during the Late Pleistocene correlates positively with increasing evidence for maritime dispersal in the Upper Palaeolithic, and that behavioural modernity is implicated in the appearance of strategic maritime dispersal in Homo. Consequently, it is likely that deliberate trans-oceanic seagoing is restricted to Anatomically Modern Humans, and possibly Neanderthals.

In a densely packed, streetless village such as Neolithic Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia, it is argued in this article that variations in mudbrick recipes were used to mark social identity and autonomy through the performance of building. Geoarchaeological analysis of mudbricks established that cultural modifications were used to create social differences between neighbouring houses. Although mudbricks were ultimately invisible objects, hidden behind multiple layers of plaster, the processes of mudbrick manufacture and house construction were performed in the public domain allowing opportunities for individual expression. These results are situated within a larger practice of hiding and burying meaningful objects at Çatalhöyük, where unseen objects had as much power and affect as any object on display.

This study examines a painted combat scene on a ceramic vessel of the Moche culture (ad 100–800) of the north coast of Peru. The scene portrays a series of distinctly Moche warriors fighting adversaries who feature characteristics (weaponry, ornaments and dress) that are unconventional for Moche visual culture. Correspondences in Recuay pottery and stone sculpture instead support the argument that the enemies were groups from the neighbouring inland valleys and highlands of the Pacific Andean flanks. The analysis of the imagery and its implications illuminate how societies without writing sometimes perceived and configured interaction with other groups — namely, through representations of warfare.

A series of Formative Period causeways (sacbeob) at the Maya site of Yaxuná, Yucatán, Mexico, constituted elements of an early geomantic plan that was renegotiated by the inhabitants of this centre for 1500–2000 years. This plan embodied a series of sacred metaphors including the World Tree and Milky Way. After its initial construction, this widely recognized sacred landscape was reinterpreted using the language of causeways and buildings by people with competing interests. A consideration of how the geomantic plan was differentially modified sheds light on important social transitions throughout the history of the site, as well as the role of landscape and shared memory among the ancient Yucatec Maya of Yaxuná.