Historical phenomena often have prehistoric precedents; with this paper we investigate the potential for archaeometallurgical analyses and networked data processing to elucidate the progenitors of the Southwest Silk Road in Mainland Southeast Asia and southern China. We present original microstructural, elemental and lead isotope data for 40 archaeological copper-base metal samples, mostly from the UNESCO-listed site of Halin, and lead isotope data for 24 geological copper-mineral samples, also from Myanmar. We combined these data with existing datasets (N = 98 total) and compared them to the 1000+ sample late prehistoric archaeometallurgical database available from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Yunnan. Lead isotope data, contextualized for alloy, find location and date, were interpreted manually for intra-site, inter-site and inter-regional consistency, which hint at significant multi-scalar connectivity from the late second millennium bc. To test this interpretation statistically, the archaeological lead isotope data were then processed using regionally adapted production-derived consistency parameters. Complex networks analysis using the Leiden community detection algorithm established groups of artefacts sharing lead isotopic consistency. Introducing the geographic component allowed for the identification of communities of sites with consistent assemblages. The four major communities were consistent with the manually interpreted exchange networks and suggest southern sections of the Southwest Silk Road were active in the late second millennium bc.

In this article we put forward an alternative account of the famous wristguards, or bracers, of the European Early Bronze Age. Combining new materialism with empirical microwear analysis, we study 15 examples from Britain in detail and suggest a different way of conceptualizing these objects. Rather than demanding they have a singular function, we treat these objects as ‘multiplicities’ and as always in process. This, in turn, has significant implications for the important archaeological concepts of typology and object biography and our understandings of material culture more widely.

The influence of Egyptian unification and expansion on the southern Levant at the end fourth millennium bc has been the source of a protracted debate. In this article, a novel approach to the study of Egyptian–Levantine relations considers how food preferences, mediated by knowledge transmission and local cultural logic, provide an effective interpretive scheme for understanding the nature of relations between neighbouring societies. To this end, zooarchaeology can reveal how food preferences become enmeshed into the transformation of identity. Zooarchaeological analysis from the Early Bronze I (EB I) village of Horvat 'Illin Tahtit, Israel, finds a clear overrepresentation of cattle forelimb parts relative to hindlimb parts. The results of a correspondence analysis of faunal data from late fourth-/early third-millennium assemblages in the Levant and Egypt shows that this pattern of forelimb overrepresentation is most common in Late EB I when the intensity of Egyptian–Levantine relations peaked. I suggest that while Egyptians clearly accorded high status to cattle forelimbs, their Levantine contemporaries, who did not have materially inscribed social rankings, defined cattle forelimbs according to a cultural logic unrelated to status.

Palaeolithic representations can be approached from different perspectives. Studying the creative processes, we can glimpse the decisions that the Palaeolithic artists made and the actions they carried out to materialize an idea. Additionally, the combined study of both graphic and functional actions performed on an object provides a comprehensive approach and understanding of the evidence: in the first place, it allows us to hypothesize about the presence or absence of symbolic purpose of the representations; secondly, it makes the potential choice of eliminating such symbolism discernible for us. The monographic study of a Magdalenian pebble from Coímbre Cave (Asturias, Spain) engraved between 15,680 and 14,230 cal. bp shows that a mistake was made during the engraving process; subsequently an attempt was made to eliminate the representations, and finally the pebble was used as a hammerstone. This paper provides argumentation to reconstruct a complex biography of an object of Palaeolithic portable art, discussing intentional loss of symbolic value of both the decoration and the object and the latter's reuse (as raw material) for an economic or domestic purpose.

Prompted by numerous endeavours to link a variety of brain illnesses/conditions with the introduction of palaeoart, especially rock art, the author reviews these proposals in the light of the causes of these psychiatric conditions. Several of these proposals are linked to the assumption that palaeoart was introduced through shamanism. It is demonstrated that there is no simplistic link between shamanism and brain disorders, although it is possible that some of the relevant susceptibility alleles might be involved in some shamanic experiences. Similarly, no connection between rock art and shamanism has been credibly demonstrated. Moreover, the time frame applied in all these hypotheses is fallacious for several reasons. These notions are all based on the belief that palaeoart was introduced by ‘anatomically modern humans’ and on the replacement hypothesis. Finally, the assumption that neuropathologies and shamanism preceded the advent of palaeoart is also suspect. These numerous speculations derive from neglect of the relevant empirical factors, be they archaeological or neurological.

One of my favourite photos of my son is him as an over-tired, dishevelled and very disgruntled five-year-old. He stands, holding out two globs of unidentifiable rusted metal, and looks at the camera (at me), with an accusing, penetrating glare (Fig. 1). As a distracted, overextended parent trying to run an archaeological field project (the Rising Sun Hotel in New Orleans), I had sent him to play in the dirt—the back dirt of our discard pile. I thought that's where he couldn't get into any trouble. I didn't imagine that it would get me into trouble. He was mad because we had overlooked these obvious artefacts (he had already grasped the subtle nature/culture distinction of the archaeological sorting process). We had disregarded them. We had attempted to make them unworthy of notice. What my son, in his innocence, was enunciating is the intentionality of ignoring something—and with intentionality, there is always a potential politics. That is what I would like to focus on here: how can we approach Beiläufigkeit—the incidental and taken-for-granted—as indexical of politics?