Originally presented as the twelfth McDonald Lecture, the following seeks to contribute to the field of cognitive archaeology by exploring how both process and agency contributed to the creation of enduring symbols in a Classic Maya kingdom. Through the examination of material remains from excavated contexts at the site of Copán, Honduras, it is proposed that the religious ideology of its rulers can be shown to have undergone four transformations. These can be framed as local responses to larger, regional processes, wherein human agency was critical in adapting to changing historical and economic circumstances. The proposed transformations were: 1) the establishment of a new charter; 2) the deification of the most powerful royal ancestor; 3) a retreat to shared religious values and social ideals; 4) an attempt to create a transcendent ideology.

This article focuses on the early coinage of the Akhaian cities of South Italy — Sybaris, Kroton, Metapontion, Kaulonia, Poseidonia — against the backdrop of colonization. Minting an early and distinctive series of coins, these centres were issuing coinage well before their ‘mother-cities’, a phenomenon that has never been fully appreciated. With its origins in a colonial context, the Akhaian coinage of Magna Graecia not only differs from that of the early coin-minting states of the Greek mainland, it offers a case study that challenges long-held assumptions and potentially contributes to a better understanding of the origins of coinage. It does so by suggesting that coinage is much more than a symbol of authority and represents considerably more than just an abstract notion of sovereignty or hegemony. The images or emblems that the Akhaians of South Italy chose for their coins are those current in the contemporary cultural landscape of the historic Akhaians, but at the same time actively recall the world of the heroic Akhaians of the Bronze Age by referring to prehistoric measures of value. More than his, the vicissitudes of colonial and indigenous history in parts of South Italy in the Archaic period were not merely reflected in coinage, the coins themselves were central to the processes of transformation. By boldly minting — constructing — their identity on coinage, the Akhaians of South Italy chose money in order to create relations of dominance and to produce social orders that had not existed before.

Recent years have seen increasing interest in the experience of prehistoric monuments. This article explores the possibility that the construction and experience of early Neolithic chambered cairns in South Wales was grounded in principles of asymmetry and sidedness. This was reflected in their landscape setting, architecture, and was actively drawn on through time in patterns of structured deposition. Ultimately, we conclude that the differences between symmetry and asymmetry may have played an integral role in the conception of place in the British Neolithic.

Shamanic referents in Upper Palaeolithic cave art indicate its pivotal role in the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic transition. Etic models of shamanism derived from cross-cultural research help articulate the shamanic paradigm in cave art and explicate the role of shamanism in this transition. Shamanism is found cross-culturally in hunter-gatherer societies, constituting an ecological and psychosociobiological adaptation that reflects the ritual and cosmology of early modern humans. Shamanism played a role in cognitive and social evolution through production of analogical thought processes, visual symbolism and group-bonding rituals. Universals of shamanism are derived from innate modules, particularly the hominid ‘mimetic controller’ and music and dance. These induced altered states of consciousness, which produce physiological, cognitive, personal and social integration through integrative brain-processing. Shamanic altered states of consciousness have the cross-modal integration characteristic of the emergent features of Palaeolithic thought and facilitated adaptations to the ecological and social changes of the Upper Palaeolithic. Cross-modular integration of innate modules for inferring mental states (mind), and social relations (self/others), and understanding the natural world (classificatory schemas) produced the fundamental forms of trope (metaphor) that underlay analogical representation. These integrations also explain animism (mental and social modules applied to natural domains); totemism (natural module applied to social domain); and guardian spirit relations (natural module applied to self and mental domains).

An extraordinary engraved bird track was located in the Weaber Range of the Keep River region of Northern Territory, Australia, in July 2000. This engraved track is dissimilar to most other examples in Australian rock-art, differing in shape, size and detail from the thousands of engraved, painted or beeswax depictions of bird tracks known from sites across the continent. Importantly, it also differs in technique from other engraved tracks in the Keep River region, having been rubbed and abraded to a smooth finish. We explore three approaches to the engraved track's significance, that it: a) depicts the track of an extinct bird species; b) relates to Aboriginal beliefs regarding Dreaming Beings; and c) is a powerful aesthetic achievement that reflects rare observation of emu tracks. We conclude that the Weaber bird track engraving most probably represents a relatively recent visual expression of ancient Aboriginal thoughts that have been transmitted through the centuries via story-telling and rock-art. This discussion highlights problems of assigning identification and meaning to ancient art but also suggests that aspects of history may be passed across generations for much longer than is commonly realized.

The recent growth of landscape perspectives has stimulated fresh approaches to the ways in which prehistoric communities attached significance to what we classify as topography or geology. Using evidence from North Wales and the Derbyshire Peak District, we argue here that the use of caves during the Neolithic and Bronze Age reflects a significant blurring of the distinction that archaeologists often draw between monuments and natural features.

Archaeology, defined as the study of material culture, extends from the first preserved human artefacts up to the present day, and in recent years the ‘Archaeology of the Present’ has become a particular focus of research. On one hand are the conservationists seeking to preserve significant materials and structures of recent decades in the face of redevelopment and abandonment. On the other are those inspired by social theory who see in the contemporary world the opportunity to explore aspects of material culture in new and revealing ways, and perhaps above all the central question of the extent to which material culture — be it in the form of objects or buildings — actively defines the human experience. Victor Buchli's An Archaeology of Socialism takes as its subject a twentieth-century building — the Narkofim Communal House in Moscow — and seeks to understand it in terms of domestic life and changing policies of the Soviet state during the 70 or so years since its construction. Thus Buchli's study not only concerns the meaning of material culture in a modern context, but focuses specifically on the household — or more accurately on a series of households within a single Russian apartment block. A particular interest attaches to the way in which the building was planned to encourage communal living, during a pre-Stalinist phase when the State sought to intervene directly in domestic life through architectural design and the manipulation of material culture. Subsequent political changes brought a revision of modes of living within the Narkofim apartment block, as the residents adjusted and responded to changing political and social pressures and demands. The significance of Buchli's study goes far beyond the confines of Soviet-era Moscow or indeed the archaeology of the modern world. He questions the role and potential danger of social and archaeological theory of the totalizing kind: a natural response perhaps to the experience of the Narkofim Communal House as an exercise in Soviet social engineering. He poses fascinating questions about the relation between individual households and the state ideology, and he emphasizes the role of material culture studies in reaching an understanding of these processes. In the brief essay that opens this Review Feature, Victor Buchli outlines the principal aims and conclusions of An Archaeology of Socialism. The diversity of issues that the book generates is revealed in the series of reviews which follows, touching in particular upon the ways in which routines of daily life — archaeologically visible, perhaps, through the analysis of domestic space — relate to structures of authority in society as a whole.