The engraved slate plaques were part of an extensive and variable class of ritual objects in Late Neolithic and Copper Age Iberia, with Classic plaques being the most numerous and standardized type. Classic plaques have a top and base separated by a horizontal line or bands, and base registers of repeating design elements (triangles, checkerboard, etc.). Associated with burials, they have been interpreted as genealogical records, with their base design referencing a clan or other social unit and their number of registers denoting the generational distance of the deceased from an important ancestor. The authors evaluate the genealogical hypothesis using a larger dataset than available when originally proposed, employing statistical analyses to examine the relationship between the number of registers and find locations, and between design elements and tomb size. Tomb size is viewed as a measure of collective labour, and hence a proxy of the status of the individuals in the tomb. These analyses show significant patterning between the number of registers and the plaques’ geographic distribution, and between specific design elements and tomb size, suggesting that the genealogical hypothesis remains a plausible explanation for the Classic plaques.

This article presents the results of AMS radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analysis, and FRUITS dietary modelling to investigate dietary variability among sixty individuals buried at Varna in the mid-fifth millennium bc. The principal pattern was the isotopic clustering of some forty-three per cent of the population, which suggests a ‘Varna core diet’, with the remainder showing a wider variety of isotopic profiles. While there is a slight trend for heightened meat and fish consumption among male individuals compared to female and undetermined individuals, the authors found no clear correlation between dietary variation and the well-attested differentiation in material culture in the graves. Three children had isotopic profile and estimated diets unmatched by any of the adults in the sample. Two scenarios, dubbed ‘regional’ and ‘local’, are presented to explain such dietary variability at Varna.

The Tyrolean ice mummy known as Ötzi presents some of the earliest direct evidence of tattooing in the human past. Despite decades of study, it remains unclear how the Iceman's tattoos were created and what tools and methods were used. Popular discussions of the Iceman describe his tattoos as having been made by incision, first cutting the skin and then rubbing in pigment from the surface. The authors review the scholarly literature on the Iceman's tattoos and summarize ethnographic, historic, and anthropological research on global patterns of tattooing to contextualize the Iceman's marks within pre-electric tattooing traditions. The results of recent experimental tattooing studies are then compared to the physical signature of the Iceman's marks to evaluate existing claims and provide informed hypotheses as to how those tattoos were created.

Connections between northern Iberia and western France around the Bay of Biscay during the Chalcolithic, Early Bronze Age, and Middle Bronze Age are addressed in this article through a multivariate cluster analysis of a dataset of 1273 metal finds, comprising 4554 metal artefacts grouped into five multiregional clusters with distinctive distributions, chronologies, content, and contexts. Changes in distribution and chronology show that metalwork from faraway regions was deposited in similar ways, reflecting changing patterns of interregional connectivity. Changes in context and content suggest social transformations. The clustering method known as Latent Class Analysis is presented here in the hope that it will be applicable to other datasets elsewhere in the world.

Inspired by the biographical approach to the study of material culture, a radiocarbon dating programme was undertaken to explore the chronology and temporality of the megalithic monuments in south-eastern Iberia. Instead of one or two dates per tomb, the normal way of approaching this complex issue, we carried out a complete radiocarbon dating series of single tombs based on human remains. We focused our attention on four tholos-type tombs in the cemetery of El Barranquete (Almería, Spain). According to the new radiocarbon series modelled in a Bayesian framework, four main conclusions can be drawn: that the cemetery shows a very long period of funerary activity, which began in the late fourth millennium and ended in the last centuries of the second millennium cal bc; that continuity of ritual practices attained an unexpected importance during the Bronze Age; that interments, which fall into cultural periods that would be unthinkable if only the typological properties of the grave goods were considered, occurred; and that each tomb had a complex and very different biography.

Green objects of personal adornment were quite common among Neolithic and Copper Age groups in Western Europe, and variscite was one of the minerals that was most often used for such a purpose. This article presents the results of a series of archaeological campaigns designed to study the mines of Aliste and the ornament production loci of Quiruelas de Vidriales (both in the province of Zamora, Spain). We discovered that initially, during the fourth millennium cal BC, variscite from Aliste was seldom used and the ornaments’ production was dispersed, but that there was a significant shift during the third millennium cal BC: ornament production intensified and became concentrated in the production sites of Quiruelas. We relate this transformation to the socioeconomic processes that developed in the Iberian Peninsula and the growth of supra-regional socio-technical artefact exchange networks.

This paper focusses on a set of anthropomorphic figurines. It suggests that realistic human proportion and canonical body posture were pursued in the carving of these objects as a means of expressing ideology, in a context of diversified forms of manipulation of bodies in funerary practices. It is argued that, against a background of predominantly schematic art, the more realistic and canonical anthropomorphic representation of the human body was used to communicate a set of ideological statements in a more controlled and immediate way, in a period of ontological and cosmological transition.

This paper focuses on how the human body, and the dead body in particular, was used to create social categories and identities in prehistoric Cyprus. Specifically, it explores how a particular condition, such as death, was integrated into social processes, and how the treatment of dead bodies both created and reinforced social categories and identities. The material the paper focuses on is the mortuary evidence from Chalcolithic Cyprus (3800–2300 BC). In particular, it argues that the extensive, intentional manipulation of dead bodies and human remains visible in Cypriot Chalcolithic cemeteries was aimed at integrating the individual to communal, collective wholes on the occasion of death and during the time period that followed.

Excavations at the small Chalcolithic site of Politiko-Kokkinorotsos in central Cyprus show that it was occupied around 2880–2670 cal BC. Fallow deer (Dama mesopotamica) form the major component of the substantial faunal assemblage. The structure of the animal population suggests a seasonal hunting site, an interpretation consistent with the lack of formal architecture and the range of stone tools. In this study, independent odontochronological analyses of deer and caprine are used to test and confirm the model of seasonal culling in spring and summer based on more general indicators. The results suggest a pattern of varied, specialized site-types and activities in different parts of the island and in different ecological zones, and add considerably to our understanding of cultural systems on the island in the early third millennium BC.

Because of its great potential to provide data on contacts and overseas trade, ivory has aroused a great deal of interest since the very start of research into Iberian late prehistory. Research recently undertaken by the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid in collaboration with a number of other institutions has provided valuable contributions to the study of ivory in the Iberian Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. One of the archaeological sites that is contributing the most data for analysing ivory from the Copper Age in southern Iberia is Valencina de la Concepción (Seville), which is currently the focus of several debates on the development of social complexity. This article contributes to this line of research by providing new, unpublished evidence and by examining the significance of ivory craftsmanship in commercial, social, and ideological terms. It also assesses in greater detail the prominent part played by luxury ivory items as an expression of social status and power.

For over a century prehistorians have approached the engraved stone plaques of the Iberian late Neolithic and Copper Age (3000–2500 BC) from a monolithic and idealist perspective, viewing the plaques as representations of the Mother Goddess. Most have not addressed the plaques' variability, their method of manufacture, the organization of their production, or their biographies. This article presents new interpretations of the Iberian plaques based on the first comprehensive on-line catalogue of the plaques – the Engraved Stone Plaque Registry and Inquiry Tool (ESPRIT) (Lillios 2004) – which holds records for over 1100 plaques, each unique, from over 200 sites in Portugal and Spain. Analyses of the plaques' raw material, style, chaîne opératoire, and distribution over space suggest that different plaque types had different functions and meanings, which shifted over time. Two plaque types: the Classic plaques and the Biomorphic Simple plaques are considered in this article. In their diverse forms, the Iberian plaques appear to have been durable records of regional and local group identities and could have contributed toward legitimating and perpetuating an ideology of inherited social difference in the Iberian late Neolithic and Copper Age.