The development of the Neolithic way of life in the western Mediterranean during the sixth millennium cal. BC is the consequence of the spread of populations from the Near East after successive stages of cultural remodelling. Despite the clear contribution of the Near Eastern and Aegean Neolithic to the economic and technical changes that happened to the west, little is known here about their symbolic legacies, because of the scarcity of representations and ritual evidences associated to the earliest western Neolithic contexts. Excavations at the rock shelter of Pendimoun (southeastern France) yielded the first anthropomorphic stone sculpture from the western Mediterranean Neolithic (early sixth millennium cal. BC). Using both carving and painting techniques, it represents a realistic-looking human face and is a unique example within the western Mediterranean and European frameworks. After describing the shaping and colouring details of the mask, the authors here deal with its possible social significances and cultural connections.

There is a growing recognition that ancient cultures actively reworked their own pasts (and thus their futures) by reusing and modifying relics and ruined buildings. In the Maya area, architectural ruins of the Pre-Columbian past are often considered as isolated from major centres or as subsumed by new architectural constructions. In contrast, this article examines recent survey and excavations from the North-central sector of Tayasal, Guatemala, where I document the ways in which common peoples from a Terminal Classic (c. ad 800–900/950) neighbourhood lived amongst the ruins of a Late Preclassic monumental past (c. 300 bc–ad 300). Conceptions of such ruins are explored through both (1) a long-term, structural pattern of temple-pyramids seen as metaphors of mountains, and (2) the lens of everyday practices, in which the social lives of common people and ruins become entangled through quotidian activities. Taken together, the article highlights the dynamism of enduring structural patterns. These patterns both challenge dualistic divides of wilderness and urban settings and reveal ancient Maya urban landscapes as places of mixed temporalities.

Few subjects have excited the imagination of archaeologists working in ancient complex societies as have monumentality and urban planning. Yet the two topics are rarely explicitly theorized in a sustained integrated investigation within a single study, despite the fact that monumental architecture is often considered a primary basis for identifying the presence of urban planning. This article makes the related methodological arguments that both phenomena benefit from a more full consideration of one another, and that the meaningful aspect of monumentality and urban symbology needs to be considered in conjunction with the formal aspect of monuments and urban layouts. These positions are then implemented in a study of the Syro-Anatolian city-state system that existed in the ancient Near East during the early first millennium bc. The capital cities of these polities were characterized by a program of monumentality that brought royalty, city walls, gates and monumental sculpture into an unmistakable constellation of associations. The consistency of this pattern of monumentality and urban form suggests that at least a degree of urban planning existed.

The interlocking of the maritime basin network that took place with the development of the Maritime Silk Roads by the late first millennium bc led to major cultural transfers. This research investigates Southeast Asia's cultural integration and takes into consideration what I call a South China Sea network culture, a result of long-established and extensive connectivity of its populations. The assumption is that this cultural matrix also laid the ground for socio-political practices hypothesized to be at the core of identity building and cultural transfers. These issues are investigated through the technological analysis of hybrid ornament industries in a recently excavated early city-port of the South China Sea which developed with the Maritime Silk Roads that thrived from the fourth to the first centuries bc. This enclosed cosmopolitan settlement hosting populations from various Asian horizons was structured by socio-professional quarters. This node concentrated various craft centres where artisans of different origins made culturally hybrid products with what were then the most advanced technologies. The chronological sequence allows characterization of the evolution of these industries along with the socio-political strategies which they may have served and how otherness was handled in the construction of social identity.

This article explores the implications of adopting Karen Barad's agential realist approach in archaeology. We argue that the location of Barad's work in quantum physics and feminism means it is uniquely placed to inform the ontological turn currently gaining favour for understanding the materiality of bodies. We outline Barad's approach using a comparative reading of Sofaer's book The Body as Material Culture and Barad's Meeting the Universe Halfway. To illustrate, we think through Barad's key concepts of ‘phenomenon’, ‘intra-action’ and ‘apparatus’ in relation to specific archaeological bodies; New Zealand Maori chevron amulets, Argentinean La Candelaria body-pots, Pacific Northwest Coast stone artefacts and Nuu-chah-nulth ceremonial objects. Barad's theory transforms the way we understand and think these object bodies. In particular, her relational ontology, which contrasts with a conventional binary separation of matter and meaning, produces difference in a new way; a difference which facilitates analyses conceptually unthinkable in conventional representationalist terms.

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.

This article offers new understanding to commoner ritual in central Mexico before the rise of the Aztec Empire through an examination of domestic ritual and everyday practice in Early to Middle Postclassic (AD 900–1350) households in Xaltocan. It also seeks to better understand the ways in which elites negotiate and reinvent ritual traditions to gain and maintain power. In this study, I integrate multiple lines of evidence including ethnohistory, household archaeology and burials to understand the organization, practice and meaning of ritual among commoners before the rise of the Aztec Empire. I argue that pre-Aztec commoner ritual worked to foster solidarity, social continuity and collective memory and was intimately concerned with the protection of household members and the maintenance of household and universal equilibrium. While some of the symbolism and rituals documented in pre-Aztec domestic contexts appear similar to those depicted in Aztec contexts, I argue that state rituals held different meanings as Aztec elites adopted and transformed widely-held commoner rituals and symbols to craft an ideology that promoted their own political agenda. Ultimately, domestic- and state-level ritual should be seen as part of an ever-changing, but necessarily intertwined, historical and political process.

Chronological and stylistic studies of Roman wall paintings and mosaics were based for a long time only on optical direct analysis and current analogue or digital photographic reproduction. The aims of fresco research today remain the same as in the past — i.e. pigment types and sources, painting subjects and styles, application methods, and the relationship between paintings and the function of their locations. Modern technologies, however, have now been developed which can finally improve our knowledge about ancient decorative taste and workshops. New methodologies such as highly accurate colour reproduction of paintings and mosaics, digital reconstruction of fragmentary decorations, or chemical analyses of pigments or plasters are increasingly being used to fill important research gaps. Some of these techniques are illustrated in this article as solutions to obstacles in the archaeological documentation of an unpublished first-century ad painting (Late Flavian period) on the Caelian Hill in Rome. With relation to Fourth Style decorations, the problematic question as to whether there was an intentional ratio between the component parts of the fresco is also discussed, linking for the first time the Vitruvian architectural concept of Commodulatio (meaning ‘with symmetry/proportion’) to wall paintings.

The aim of this article is to investigate the sight, sound, smell and touch of different cloth types in the Late Ertebølle of southern Scandinavia and to argue that such an approach provides stimulating new insights into an area of material culture that has previously been studied by archaeologists in a highly empirical manner. The archaeological evidence drawn together in this article points to this as a time when furs and skin products were of prime importance and plant fibres were the basis for knotted nets, looped cloth and basketry. In the archaeological literature these cloth types are usually treated separately and described according to the species of raw materials, such as pine marten fur, or the technology of their production, such as couched button-hole stitch. Using an experiment where participants are asked to handle modern cloth types and answer structured questionnaires, it is possible to create a sensory description of these cloth types. These descriptive results are then used to reconsider aspects of cloth and clothing in the Late Ertebølle of southern Scandinavia. By moving from the standard technological description to a sensory description, the Mesolithic cloth types investigated in this article are placed within a sensory and phenomenological theoretical framework. The presentation of these results seeks to provide a new description of these materials and allow archaeologists to revaluate the culturally-embedded nature of cloth and clothing at that time.

The world's first cities emerged on the plains of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria) in the fourth millennium bc. Attempts to understand this settlement process have assumed revolutionary social change, the disappearance of kinship as a structuring principle, and the appearance of a rational bureaucracy. Most assume cities and state-level social organization were deliberate functional adaptations to meet the goals of elite members of society, or society as a whole. This study proposes an alternative model. By reviewing indigenous terminology from later historical periods, it proposes that urbanism evolved in the context of a metaphorical extension of the household that represented a creative transformation of a familiar structure. The first cities were unintended consequences of this transformation, which may seem ‘revolutionary’ to archaeologists but did not to their inhabitants. This alternative model calls into question the applicability of terms like ‘urbanism’ and ‘the state’ for early Mesopotamian society.

The debate regarding the status of the Blombos ochre engravings and shell beads for gauging the timeline of when cognitive abilities and symbolic intent appeared has been controversial. This is mainly due to the fact that what is referred to as symbolic is often too loosely defined and is therefore attributed to artefacts in an indiscriminate way. Recent evidence from various concurrent sites in southern Africa, including Blombos, provide the opportunity for a more nuanced analysis of the probable level of symbolic intent and how this relates to neuro-cognitive precursors. In what follows, it will be shown that, although some of the southern African artefacts do indeed demonstrate particular kinds of ‘symbolic’ intent, others need to be approached with caution. Data from the visual brain is presented that provides crucial evidence as to the appropriate level of intent suggested by the engravings and shell beads from the southern Africa context.

Ochre is found at many Middle Stone Age sites and its use is often associated with enhanced mental abilities and symbolism, but the links between the visible uses of ochre and cognition have not been clearly defined. By establishing the technology and processes involved in using ochre, one can determine the skill, knowledge and cognitive abilities required to execute those activities. This is done here by constructing thought-and-action and inferential cognitive sequences for the various ochre activities performed at Sibudu, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Powder production alone is not an indicator of complex cognitive processes, although some planning, foresight and knowledge of materials is required. Some ochre powder was used in the creation of hafting adhesives which is a cognitively demanding process requiring attention-switching, response inhibition, analogical reasoning and abstract thought. The direct transfer of ochre powder from an ochre piece to a soft material through grinding and rubbing requires some complex thought and action procedures — analogical reasoning and the ability to multi-task and switch attention between activities. Scoring a piece of ochre with a sharp tool does not necessitate enhanced executive functioning. However, some engravings demonstrate intentionality and an awareness of space and symmetry that may imply abstract thought.

The 1000-year Neolithic occupation of An Son in southern Vietnam consists of ceramics that belong to a tradition that was potentially ancestral to those in many other regions of mainland Southeast Asia. The forms, dimensions, modes of decoration and fabrics of the An Son ceramics throughout the site's occupation have been studied in detail. The morphological dimensions were analysed with coefficient of variation (CV) calculations and the fabrics were characterized using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDX), in conjunction with statistical applications such as principal components analysis (PCA), cluster analysis and canonical variate analysis (CVA). The results suggest that a coherent method of manufacture and a mental template was applied in the manufacture of each major rim form that existed throughout the occupation of An Son. These vessel forms had a continuous evolution with evidence for conservatism in the shape and raw materials, while innovation and variation was observed in the decorative variables. The established mental templates indicate that the organization of ceramic production at An Son was linked to tradition and function in the community.

The mathematical number of the golden ratio has long fascinated mathematicians, archaeologists, biologists, architects, engineers, historians, musicians and scholars. Until now, though, there have been only assertions about whether the ancient Greeks employed this ratio in their architecture. To determine whether evidence may have been overlooked, I examined the measurements of 15 temples, 18 monumental tombs, 8 sarcophagi and 58 grave stelae from the fifth century BC to the second century AD. The result is clear: the golden ratio was totally absent from Greek architecture of the classical fifth century BC, and only very rarely employed in the third and the second centuries BC. Consequently, four rare and therefore valuable examples of golden-ratio proportions were identified through this research in a tower, an altar, a tomb and a grave stele. This is the first time that clear evidence has been presented for golden-ratio application in constructions of ancient Greece.

Taking the social agency of dead bodies as its main theme, this introduction discusses the articles in this special section on the bioarchaeology of post-mortem agency and discusses theoretical concerns relevant to the (bio)archaeological analysis of agency. In particular, the argument that only biological living persons have social agency or impact the direction of social processes, or the decisions of others is challenged. The challenges of defining and archaeologically detecting such agency of past humans as well as socially alive entities such as ghosts, corpses, relics and totem heads are discussed. A review of the ways investigations of the agency of the dead might unify bioarchaeologists and further integrate social archaeology into future research is also presented. It is argued that a holistic anthropological approach to humans and their ability to impact their surroundings is not complete if the symbolic and material effects of the dead are not considered.

Elaborate urban gardens and parks played key roles in social competition, imperial and primordial symbolism, and public amenity access. Comparative data from 19 societies or cultural traditions indicate the varied content, activities, and contexts of elaborate (and sometimes ordinary) urban gardens and parks in pre-modern states and empires. Despite sparse economic characterizations, investments in them often represented a horizontal grandeur rivalling palatial and monumental construction. Investments in and access to urban parks and gardens are intimately related to the political economy and governance.

The study of clay tokens in the Ancient Near East has focused, for the most part, on their role as antecedents to the cuneiform script. Starting with Pierre Amiet and Maurice Lambert in the 1960s the theory was put forward that tokens, or calculi, represent an early cognitive attempt at recording. This theory was taken up by Denise Schmandt-Besserat who studied a large diachronic corpus of Near Eastern tokens. Since then little has been written except in response to Schmandt-Besserat's writings. Most discussions of tokens have generally focused on the time period between the eighth and fourth millennium bc with the assumption that token use drops off as writing gains ground in administrative contexts. Now excavations in southeastern Turkey at the site of Ziyaret Tepe — the Neo-Assyrian provincial capital Tušhan — have uncovered a corpus of tokens dating to the first millennium bc. This is a significant new contribution to the documented material. These tokens are found in association with a range of other artefacts of administrative culture — tablets, dockets, sealings and weights — in a manner which indicates that they had cognitive value concurrent with the cuneiform writing system and suggests that tokens were an important tool in Neo-Assyrian imperial administration.

This study argues that people and things, through their interactions with each other, embody different agential capacities and that scholars should evaluate how they are variably effective at structuring the actions of others and at shaping society. This is attempted here through a study of dismembered body parts that, as I argue, remained socially and politically active even in their dismembered state. As such, we can begin to analyse them as embodying a categorically different kind of agency — post-mortem or secondary agency — while remaining cautious of overzealous attempts to claim that everyone and everything has agency of equivalence. Definitions of agency are examined and its definition within this article is explicitly formulated, drawing especially on ideas from Gell (1998), Robb (2004), Sewell (2005) and Latour (2005). Through a case study from the Peruvian Andes in which approximately 240 individuals were dismembered, I suggest that the primary agency once embodied in those living persons was transformed into secondary agency (Gell 1998) as the person-cum-corpse was remade into smaller body parts. These body parts and their placement in a ritually significant locale, had profound effects on the living, particularly as it related to the ways that those dead-body objects extended social relations and social hierarchies, making them more durable.

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.