While many studies of inequality focus on the role that specialized craft production plays in the emergence of elite identities, variations in non-specialized crafts can also provide insights into political trajectories as they may reflect diverse choices made by multiple social segments whose socio-political roles are in transition. This article examines non-specialized potting during a time of increasing inequality in the first-millennium ad community of Kirikongo, Burkina Faso. In exploring production at the house level, ceramic analyses demonstrate increasing investment in potting throughout the community and increasing variance between house traditions coinciding with the co-option of ritual and political power by the community's founding house. While these transformations suggest the expression of newly significant house identities, potting is used primarily to express differentiation rather than elite power as, in contrast to other lines of evidence, the pottery from lower-ranked houses is higher in quality and diversity. These expressions of emerging elite and non-elite house identities at Kirikongo, and potential tensions between them, may have spurred inventions and adoptions of technologies and stylistic elements contributing to the divergence of regional potting traditions.

Houses are rich resources for understanding prehistoric social structure. However, conventional working methods often handle houses as stable entities that reflect the nature of households and other social units. Social groups may be inadvertently rendered static in the process. A biographical understanding, in which the on-going transformation of built space is part of different kinds of human collaboration, allows us to explore the dynamic qualities of past communities. I examine detailed life-histories of four contemporary houses at Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, using the site's fine stratigraphy to interrogate how furnishings, elaborations and rhythms of burial varied through each building's use-life. These trace shifting practice and performance in relation to built space. Çatalhöyük buildings’ social roles changed dramatically over their lives. The spatial dynamics observed suggest that commensal groups were less stable and less bound to specific houses than in more conventional views of the site, and interacted in unpredictable ways with larger forms of social collaboration. Ultimately, this suggests a more dynamic approach to both houses and social units in the Near East and the archaeology of houses generally.

Our research at the large LBK settlement site of Vráble, southwest Slovakia, revealed dynamics of social integration and antagonisms unfolding in an agglomerated, early farming community. During its lifespan from 5250 to 4950 bc, it constantly grew until around 5050 bc it was inhabited by about 70 contemporaneous longhouses. We found that Vráble consisted of markedly autonomous farmstead units that were held together by village-wide social institutions including sharing and communality. Nevertheless, from the beginning, a contradiction between particular farmstead and collective village and neighbourhood interests existed and rose. Towards the end of the village's existence, around 5075 bc an elaborate enclosure was constructed around one of the three neigbourhoods, actively blocking contact with the others. Along this enclosure, human bodies were deposited, showing a social categorization that we interpret as relating to social inequality. This rising level of conflict and emerging social inequality was, we argue, not sustainable under the conditions of early farming societies and led to the village's abandonment at 4950 bc.

Mortuary practices of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Near East have been identified with skull cult and ancestor worship, as a means of creating and eliminating social boundaries. Artificial cranial modification is recognized as related to these practices, but its incidence is under-recognized and the precise nature of its significance is rarely discussed. In this study a skull, not previously reported as artificially modified, was reassessed by radiography to provide further insight on this subject. The cranial modification identified must have occurred in childhood but did not dramatically alter the cranium. We therefore argue that the post-mortem treatment of artificially modified skulls should be viewed in the context of ritual practices that were of significance during life, not just after death.

The multiscalar analysis of pottery traditions in south central Africa opens a new perspective on the study of ancient polities. Focusing on an area of central Africa known for the existence of great kingdoms, I show how past political entities have left lingering traces in the cultural landscape and, more specifically, in the pottery traditions. As ceramics are one of the major tools in the archaeological arsenal, the way they can be related to political structures is of interest to archaeologists around the world. Analysing the chaîne opératoire of living pottery traditions, at an individual and regional level, I characterize the geographic extent of a series of technical behaviours. These technical domains fit with other aspects of society such as languages or matrimonial strategies, but also with economic and political aspects such as salt making and distribution networks and past political entities. They are the materialization of resilient social spaces created by ancient political entities.

This article investigates the degree and nature of ‘imposed form’ in Middle Palaeolithic scrapers, the most common category of stone tool produced by Neanderthals. Novice flintknappers unfamiliar with Middle Palaeolithic tool forms were found to consistently employ two rules in manufacturing scrapers: the striking platform and any adjacent blunt edges were left intact to facilitate prehension, and the longest edge with the most acute spine-plane angle was retouched. Scrapers from three major Middle Palaeolithic sites adhered to these rules in over 90 per cent of cases, but significant divergence from these rules was found in a sample from Skhul cave (Israel) level B1, associated with early anatomically modern Homo sapiens. It is concluded that Middle Palaeolithic scraper manufacture was structured by the need to create a suitable working edge, and to locate that edge to maximize ease and comfort during manufacture and use. The overall shape of the resulting tools was thus not an expression of ‘imposed form’ in the conventional sense. The discovery of violations of these rules in the Skhul B1 collection provides evidence of increased use of imposed form, as well as potentially significant behavioural differences between early anatomically modern Homo sapiens and contemporary Neanderthals.

The Dynamic figures are a distinctive component in the earlier rock-art of western Arnhem Land, north Australia. They include therianthropic (hybrid human–animal) images. Recent vision experience ethnographically known in the region, and the wider pattern of Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) in hunter-gatherer societies, are consistent with elements of the Dynamics. One key feature is the use of dots and dashes in the Dynamic images, explicable as a depiction of some intangible power, of a character comparable with that in the ‘clever men's knowledge’ of modern Arnhem Land. Tropical Australia thereby is added to the number of regions where a visionary element is identified in rock-art; the specific circumstances in Arnhem Land, permitting the use together of formal and of informed methods, provide unusually strong evidence.

Theoretical approaches to the agency of inanimate objects have gained traction in bioarchaeological conceptualizations of the dead body and its capacity to shape human action and emotion. In the late prehispanic Andes (ad 1000–1532), new forms of burial involving above-ground funerary structures emplaced ancestral bodies on the landscape and facilitated their incorporation into the unfolding affairs of political and social life. Architectural data from the funerary complex of Yuraq Qaqa in the central Colca Valley suggest that the sequential construction of funerary chambers played a vital role in the elaboration of ancestral agency and its extension into past and future time. Applying a morphogenetic approach to the long-term development of the site, this study demonstrates how the agency of the dead body emerges in relation to other forms of materiality and operates across multiple temporal scales inclusive of, but not limited to, the interval of human–corpse interaction.

Interactions with the bodies of hunted animals often follow prescriptions pertaining to social relationships among human and non-human persons. Despite this, deposits of archaeological food remains are seldom considered in terms of deliberate placement, instead serving primarily as reflections of preparation and consumption activities. The residues of feasts, in particular, are often highlighted as indexes of special consumption events, although such salient occasions might also be expected to highlight ritualized depositional practices as well. This study reconsiders the archaeological residues of feasts through the vantage of a fauna-filled pit in late Pre-Columbian Florida. Most of the contents of the feature correlate with a large feast, but the structure of the deposit and inclusion of specific elements reflects scrupulous emplacement. Drawing on North American relational ontologies, we explore the idea that this pit feature was created as a deliberate bundle, the result of an intentional act of interment that was concerned with positioning its contents in ways that manifested and shaped various relationships.

The Neopalatial period of Middle to Late Bronze Age Crete is marked by a dramatic increase in the depiction of non-human animals. In contrast to the domesticates listed in the Linear A documents, the animals which appear on frescoes and seals are largely wild or supernatural, or in non-domestic scenes (particularly bull-leaping). This article seeks to explore the quantitative differences between the types of animals displayed on different media, and ask why non-domestic animals appear in such significant proportions. Arthur Evans and subsequent scholars have explained this phenomenon as an expression of interest in the natural world. Instead of this modernist view, it will be argued here that it is by trying to approach these depictions as expressing specifically Bronze Age human-animal relations that the role of such animals in Cretan society can be understood. From a relational perspective, the animals depicted can be seen as active participants in prestige activities such as hunting or bull-leaping rather than the passive motifs of artistic naturalists. This perspective might also provide a more illuminating answer to the question: why depict animals?

Human sacrifice in ancient Mesoamerica was strongly linked with ritual behaviour and mythical beliefs. Yet it is rarely possible to explain the mythical associations of archaeological deposits derived from human sacrifice. In this article, we integrate archaeological, taphonomic and isotopic analysis to reconstruct the ritual behaviour that resulted in the formation of a partially cremated primary burial at the Lowland Maya city of Tikal. Taphonomic reconstruction reveals details about the form of death and combustion of two males, while isotopic studies hint at their probable geographic origin. To explain this ritual, we assess the relevance of widespread Mesoamerican mythical beliefs about the origin of the sun and the moon, and discuss the theoretical and methodological issues involved in this comparison. The burial's association with an E-Group compound makes it significant for the interpretation of these specialized architectural arrangements in southern Mesoamerica. It also pertains to a critical period in Tikal's history, marked by intensified cultural and political interaction with the highland Mexican city of Teotihuacan, manifest in this burial by the presence of imported green obsidian spear points. We propose that this unique context resulted from a sacrificial reenactment of the mythological birth of the sun and the moon.

This article outlines the results of phenomenological research on the significance of landscape features, in particular ridges and coombe (dry valley) systems, in relation to the locations of Bronze Age round barrows and late Bronze Age/early Iron Age crossridge and spur dykes constructed along a chalk ridge in central southern England. It considers the locations of these monuments in a holistic manner and argues that together the round barrows, and then subsequently the dykes, network or draw together very different aspects of the topography in narratives about life and death. The round barrows differentially reference the significance of these places metaphorically through a combination of their specific locations. By contrast, the monumental courses of the dykes physically impose themselves on, or objectify the significance of, the same landscape features, but in a radically different manner indicating both continuity and difference in the historical significance of place.

Archaeological discoveries of dead individuals, usually in the form of burials, have frequently captured the imaginations of public and professional audiences alike. In addition to the allure of exotic artefacts and seemingly bizarre funeral rites, burials offer rich possibilities for investigating myriad aspects of past social, cultural and even individual life. This discussion focuses on one of the more renowned archaeological excavations of an ancient cemetery, the Royal Cemetery of Ur. Consideration of who was and who was not buried in the cemetery suggests that cemetery burial was the prerogative of those people who were closely attached to ‘public’ institutions. This leads to a number of observations on Sumerian treatment of the dead and attitudes toward death, as these can be approached from archaeological and textual sources.

To what extent do we need structuralist cognitive settlement models such as the Central Cattle Pattern and the Zimbabwe Pattern for future research and understanding of Iron Age social life in southern Africa? How will alternative approaches enable us to progress beyond the present status of knowledge? While the three last decades of debate have underpinned key aspects of archaeological inquiry, notably questions of social change, gender dynamics, analytical scale and the use of ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological insights, the sometimes entrenched nature of the debate has in other respects hindered development of new approaches and restrained the range of themes and topics scholars engage with. In this article, we identify the issues of analytical scale and recursiveness as key to the development of future approaches and present an alternative framework through empirically grounded discussion of three central Iron Age themes: ceramics and the microscale, the spatiality of metal production and the temporality of stonewalled architecture.

In China, a number of signs from some Late Neolithic contexts suggest that recoding activities were well developed before Chinese writing became widespread during the Shang period. Archaeological and palaeographic evidence indicates that mature writing is likely to have evolved from these earlier signing systems as a result of the increasing social and political complexity of the societies of the Late Neolithic. This article analyses three Late Neolithic signing systems that may have led to the mature Chinese writing of the Shang oracle bone inscriptions, and argues that non-linguistic visual signing played a role in the emergence of writing systems.

The physical nature of cave walls and its impact on Upper Palaeolithic image making and viewing has frequently been invoked in explanations about the function of cave art. The morphological features (convexities, concavities, cracks and ridges) are frequently incorporated into the representations of prey animals that dominate the art, and several studies have attempted to document the relationship between the cave wall and the art in a quantitative manner. One of the effects of such incorporation is that undulating walls will distort the appearance of images as viewers change their viewing position. Was this distortion deliberate or accidental? Until now, the phenomenon has not been investigated quantitatively. We address this here, analysing 54 Late Upper Palaeolithic animal images deriving from three Cantabrian caves, Covalanas, El Pendo and El Castillo. We introduce a novel use for photogrammetry and 3D modelling through documenting the morphology of these caves’ walls and establishing the specific relationship between the walls and the art created on them. Our observations suggest that Palaeolithic artists deliberately placed images on very specific topographies. The restricted nature of these choice decisions and the fact that the resulting distortions could have been avoided but were not suggest that the interaction between viewer, art and wall was integral to the way cave art functioned.

The concealed shoe is, possibly by design, shrouded in mystery. All that is known for certain on this subject is that a large number of shoes, usually old and damaged, were concealed in various, unconventional locations within buildings throughout England, and that this practice was particularly popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Other than these few facts, all other information on the subject is speculation. With no contemporaneous written sources on the practice of concealing shoes, this article will utilize the archaeological evidence in order to ascertain the motivations behind the act of concealment. An analysis of two case studies of concealed shoe caches from North Yorkshire, with a particular focus on their locations and conditions, will hopefully prove invaluable in the investigation into this unusual practice, together with an examination of the relevant folk beliefs and superstitions of the period. It will also be questioned where the concealed shoe stands in relation to our everyday classificatory systems. As a marginal, mutable object, the concealed shoe boasts a highly complex biography, calling into question the pertinence of such categories as valuable/rubbish, and particular attention will be given to the shoes’ numerous recontextualizations, from practical footwear, to apotropaic device, to archaeological artefact; transitions which I have dubbed ‘ritual recycling’.

This article discusses contact, social relationships, and social organization between sites at the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in the Euphrates valley; all of which are of high importance for reconstructing and modelling social organization in consolidated agricultural villages. Our analysis has succeeded in identifying a complex range of overlapping levels and types of social interaction that occurred simultaneously and operated at different scales including the household, the community and inter-regional communities. This complex mixture of interacting spheres, together with the identification of cultural-social boundaries, enables us to understand and explain inter-site variation in material culture and mortuary practices. Moreover, they reflect the growing social complexity of large farming communities at the end of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic and the role played by settlement as the social unit through which these communities became more distinctive and self-consciously different.