In archaeological considerations of Iron Age and Romano-British landscapes, trackways are usually interpreted in purely normative terms, merely as means of getting from one settlement to another, or as functional features to assist with the herding of animals. In these somewhat static expositions, the role of trackways as places in themselves, and their long-term importance in constructions of social identity and memory, are often overlooked, as are the complex relationships between people and animals within the landscape. Recent theoretical ideas concerning relational agency and identity, materiality and movement have much to offer in terms of our archaeological understandings of these features. This paper explores the interpretative potential of such approaches using case studies of Iron Age and Romano-British trackways from Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Integrating theories of identity, embodiment, materiality, relationality and practice highlights the sedentarism of previous explanations, and allows for much more nuanced accounts of highly dynamic, mobile meshworks, where agency resided in complex constraints and affordances between people, animals and the materiality of the lived-in landscape.

One of the aspects of the relationship between rock art and shamanism, which has been supposed to be of a universal nature, inspired by trance experience, concerns the intentional integration of the images with rock. Rock surface therefore has been interpreted, in numerous shamanic rock-art contexts, as a veil beyond which the otherworld could be encountered. Such an idea was originally proposed in southern Africa, then within Upper Palaeolithic cave art and also other rock-art traditions in diverse parts of the world. This paper for the first time discusses the relevance of this observation from the perspective of unquestionable shamanic culture in Siberia. It shows that the idea of the otherworld to be found on the other side of the rock actually is a widespread motif of shamanic beliefs in Siberia, and that variants of this belief provide a new mode of insight into understanding the semantics of Siberian rock art. Siberian data therefore support previous hypotheses of the shamanic nature of associating rock images with rock surface.

Recent archaeological research in the Southern Jequetepeque Valley, Peru, has revealed that the coastal massif of Cerro Cañoncillo was venerated as a powerful huaca (sacred entity) from the Late Formative into the Late Horizon Period. The main objective of the article is to argue that some of the major religious structures of the Late Formative site of Jatanca (500–100 bc) and the Moche ceremonial center of Huaca Colorada (ad 650–850) were built as direct simulators of the distinctive cerro in question. However, a comparison of the larger archaeological landscape of these two neighbouring centres permits a reconstruction of the changing political context and religious significance of the Cerro Cañoncillo cult, allowing us to move beyond generic generalizations of Andean religious architecture as mimetic mountains. An important goal of the article is to demonstrate that attention to the vagaries of ecology and place are essential for the interpretation of historical differences in past religious ideologies. Ultimately, an exploration of the changing mimetic faculty of monumental architecture at Cerro Cañoncillo will permit a critical reappraisal of the storied concept of the ‘ceremonial centre’ that should be of comparative value to archaeologists working in other regions of the world.

This article focuses on the social group, asking how approaches to the representation of the group (in forms such as rock-art, images painted on pottery and three-dimensional caches of figurines) can help us understand the nature of collective experience in the past. Current research has concentrated on individuals (and their experiences) in past societies, while group dynamics have been neglected. Attention should be re-directed to the wide range of emotional experiences that we know affected individuals, particularly as part of their interactions with others, during rituals and other collective events in the past. Investigation of figurative representations over a sustained period provides one means of reconstructing the repetitive, stereotyped emotions, local rules, ‘non-rational’ propensities, moral sentiments, and shared emotions that shaped group life in past societies.

Augustus' propaganda founded the ruler's power on a series of references to the sky: Caesar's comet, which helped to establish the divine nature of kingship, the completion of the calendar's reform celebrated in the Campus Martius' meridian, and Augustus' association with Capricorn, the zodiacal sign of the winter solstice. Various forms of proof derived from texts, works of art and numismatics show the key role of such a ‘power from the stars’. We present here new archaeological and archaeoastronomical evidence coming from Augusta Praetoria Salassorum (modern Aosta), founded around 25 bc after the victory of Augustus' army on the Salassi. An emergency excavation along the Aosta's Roman walls has brought to light, on a corner of one of the towers, an in situ block which carries several reliefs — including a plough and a spade — apparently related to the town's foundation ritual. As a consequence, we carried out a complete analysis of the original urban plan of Aosta and of its relationship with the sky and the landscape, taking into account the complex natural horizon of the Alps in which Aosta's valley is nested. The results show that the town was oriented in such a way as to pinpoint Augustus' ‘cognitive’ relationship with the ‘cosmic’ signs of renewal.

It is proposed here that the archaeological evidence for the emergence of ‘modern behaviour’ (160,000–40,000 bp) can best be explained as the rise of cognitive variation within populations through social mechanisms for integrating ‘different minds’, rather than by the development of a single ‘modern human mind’. Autism and the autistic spectrum within human populations are used as an example of ‘different minds’ which when integrated within society can confer various selective benefits. It is proposed that social mechanisms for incorporating autistic difference are visible in the archaeological record and that these develop sporadically from 160,000 years bp in association with evidence for their consequences in terms of technological innovations, improved efficiency in technological and natural spheres and innovative thinking. Whilst other explanations for the emergence of modern human behaviour may also contribute to observed changes, it is argued that the incorporation of cognitive differences played a significant role in the technological, social and symbolic expression of ‘modern’ behaviour.

This paper explores the complex story of a particular style of rock art in western Arnhem Land known as ‘Painted Hands’. Using new evidence from recent fieldwork, we present a definition for their style, distribution and place in the stylistic chronologies of this region. We argue these motifs played an important cultural role in Aboriginal society during the period of European settlement in the region. We explore the complex messages embedded in the design features of the Painted Hands, arguing that they are more than simply hand stencils or markers of individuality. We suggest that these figures represent stylized and intensely encoded motifs with the power to communicate a high level of personal, clan and ceremonial identity at a time when all aspects of Aboriginal cultural identity were under threat.

A phenomenon noted in early sedentary and semi-sedentary settlements in the southern Levant is the use of groundstone tools as ‘building material’ incorporated into structure walls. It is argued in this article that these artefacts should not be perceived merely as construction material, but rather they should be seen as having a symbolic purpose owing to the social and economic significance that groundstone tools acquired during the transition to agriculture and the growing importance of food processing. This assumed symbolic purpose may also originate from ritual contexts in which these artefacts processed foodstuffs and other substances, thereby becoming ‘positive’ symbols of prosperity and success. Such symbolic content may result from their economic significance interlaced with their association with specific persona and familial and personal heritage. It is suggested that the qualities of the tools lent an element of potency to these artefacts and probably led to their inclusion in structure walls. The linkage between persona, space and positive potency may have granted status or protection to the structures and also may have assisted in marking ownership of the property.

Together, the concepts of heterarchy and collective action offer potential explanations for how early state societies may have established high degrees of civic coordination and sophisticated craft industries in the absence of exclusionary political strategies or dominant centralized political hierarchies. The Indus civilization (c. 2600–1900 bc) appears to have been heterarchical, which raises critical questions about how its infrastructure facilitated collective action. Digital re-visitation of early excavation reports provides a powerful means of re-examining the nuances of the resulting datasets and the old interpretations offered to explain them. In an early report on excavations at Mohenjo-daro, the Indus civilization's largest city, Ernest Mackay described a pair of small non-residential structures at a major street intersection as a ‘hostel’ and ‘office’ for the ‘city fathers’. In this article, Mackay's interpretation that these structures had a public orientation is tested using a geographical information systems approach (GIS) and 3D models derived from plans and descriptions in his report. In addition to supporting aspects of Mackay's interpretation, the resulting analysis indicates that Mohenjo-daro's architecture changed through time, increasingly favouring smaller houses and public structures. Close examination of these small public structures also suggests that they may at times have been part of a single complex.

Posthumanist or new materialist tools, positions and conversations contain some useful ideas for archaeologists to think with, but others that I find deeply problematic. In this opinion piece, I organize my thoughts around three posthumanist ‘turns’ to objects and materials, relations and assemblages, and non-human animacy. I appreciate how some strands of Posthumanism can help us think more creatively and thoughtfully about relations between humans and non-humans, but I argue against non-anthropocentrism, flat ontology and symmetrical archaeology. Animacy and perspectivism can help remedy colonialist and late-stage capitalist destructive forces, but archaeologists should take care not simply to appropriate, patronize, or re-colonize non-western thinkers. Ultimately, I argue, we should not need continental philosophy to remind us to care about one other, all living creatures and the well-being of our shared planet. What is needed today are ethics, not convoluted turns toward objects.

This article presents a study of the deposition of jewellery on bodies in the third-millennium bc Mesopotamian ‘Royal Cemetery’ at Ur. Four assemblages of adornments are identified and evaluated in relation to burial type, gender, age, privilege, and behavioural role. Aspects of the social and ritual identities of the dead are then interpreted through adornment. While the historic definition of the interred community and the precise nature of their practices are open to speculation, this study begins to clarify dynamics of group and individual identity at this site of human sacrifice.

This paper explores how people within Neolithic villages were connected to co-resident multi-family households, and considers the potential material footprint of multi-family households within Neolithic villages. Drawing upon data from Çatalhöyük, I suggest that Neolithic communities were organized around multiple competing and cooperating Houses, similar to House Societies, where house members resided in clusters of abutting buildings, all largely the same size and with similar internal organization. These space were deeply connected to telling the generative narratives of the House as a historical and genealogical social unit, including the lives and actions of the ancestors, and in some cases embedding them physically within the fabric of the building. Çatalhöyük multi-family House members decorated some important rooms with display elaboration that focused on the past, the future and the family, while the dead from the households, who in many ways were still alive and part of the ancestral House, lived beneath the floor. This study underlines that researchers need to consider social scales beyond the single-family household and consider how the multi-family House existed as an organizational foundation within Neolithic villages.

The character and development of complex societies has been one of the major interests of Amazonian archaeology. This article presents an ontological interpretation to explain the socio-political organization and importance of ritual in the Santarém area, Lower Amazon, Brazil, during the late pre-colonial period (ad 1000–1600), drawing from the contributions of Viveiros de Castro on Amazonian ontologies and Pierre Clastres on the constitution of power in the South American tropical lowlands. This approach affords new insights into the spatial organization of large habitation sites, the settlement patterns of nearby smaller sites and the pragmatic role of ritual objects. The data point to demographic growth, elaborate spatial organization and the existence of independent villages, probably resulting from fissions. The distribution of objects used in ritual contexts suggests a network employing a mytho-cosmological iconography that emphasizes bodily metamorphosis, indicating a predatory ontology related to Amerindian perspectivism and the presence of institutionalized shamanism. The text argues for the existence of distinct cosmopolitical strategies used to maintain the egalitarian order and that the flows of knowledge, sacred artefacts and religious specialists within the wider social sphere structured regional relations.

Çatalhöyük and other Near Eastern Neolithic ‘megasites’ are commonly interpreted as exceptional because of their large size and early dates. In this paper, we question exceptional claims about the size and social organization of megasites like Çatalhöyük by comparing them to pueblos in the American Southwest. We argue that Çatalhöyük and other Near Eastern Neolithic megasites are better understood as large villages whose size, layout and social organization compare readily to many of the late prehispanic and historic-period pueblos in the American Southwest. We suggest that four factors contribute to disparate interpretations of structurally similar sites in the Near East and American Southwest: 1) surface architectural visibility; 2) different regional intellectual traditions that emphasize ‘micro’ versus ‘macro’ scale social organization; 3) a tendency toward overestimation in archaeological population estimates, especially when the ‘biggest’ or the ‘earliest’ sites are involved; and 4) perceptions of continuity with later time periods.

Post-mortem manipulations of the body were common at Mesolithic–Neolithic sites along the Danube River. During assessment of disarticulated human remains from Lepenski Vir, an unusual set of incisions (notches) were observed on the diaphysis of a human left radius along with a few cut-marks. Very few studies have attempted to distinguish clearly the characteristics of these modifications. All incisions were examined using a Scanning Electron Microscope and a Focus Variation Microscope that generated measurable three-dimensional digital models. Our results indicate that, on the basis of their micro-morphometric features, qualitative and quantitative distinctions can be made between cut-marks and notches, a methodology which can be applied to other engraved bones. Cut-marks, accidentally produced during flesh removal, were more irregular, longer, narrower and shallower than the notches. The notches, produced by a ‘nick and slice’ motion (pressure was applied to the bone, then the tool was pulled in one direction), were deliberately engraved. This engraved human bone is a rare example within a Prehistoric European context, possibly a form of notation, marking or counting a series of (important) events.

The contents of a pit located in the centre of a large communal structure at Asiab in the central Zagros mountains provides rare evidence for ritual food practices during the Early Neolithic (~9660–9300 cal. bc). This pit contained the skulls of at least 19 wild boars carefully placed inside and subsequently sealed. Antler from red deer and the skull of a brown bear were also concealed within the pit. The boars included both male and female animals varying in age and some of the larger canines were deliberately removed. Such a unique collection of remains is unlikely to be the result of day-to-day activities; instead, this represents a group of ritually interred bones. This new evidence strengthens views that activities reinforcing social cohesion were important as human society was approaching a juncture leading towards agricultural subsistence strategies.

Depictions of wounded or dying eland, juxtaposed with images of human or therianthropic figures ‘dying’ in trance or symbolically ‘wounded’, are discussed in the context of ‘sympathetic control’ expressed in southern African rock art. It is suggested that the development of concepts of control included the use of skin costumes in hunting contexts and in ritual, linked to concepts associated with trance.

This article presents an experiment in time series analysis, specifically the Rayleigh Test, applied to the ancient Egyptian calendars of lucky and unlucky days recorded in papyri P. Cairo 86637, P. BM 10474 and P. Sallier IV. The Rayleigh Test is used to determine whether the lucky and unlucky days are distributed randomly within the year, or whether they exhibit periodicity. The results of the analysis show beyond doubt that some of the lucky days were distributed according to a lunar calendar. The cycles of the moon thus played an important role in the religious thinking of the Egyptians. Other periods found using the Rayleigh Test are connected to the civil calendar, the mythological symbolism of the twelfth hour of the day and possibly the period of variation of the star Algol.