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Abstract: Shellfishing was a common activity among prehistoric hunter-gatherers living in coastal areas in Iberia. Interpreting shellfish collection strategies is crucial to understand the lifeways of these coastal hunter-gatherers. Among collection strategies, the estimation of collection areas is essential for interpretation of mobility and subsistence strategies. In this paper we present a new methodological procedure to identify mollusc collection areas using a Technical Scoring Matrix (TSM). A TSM is a qualitative tool that infers the origin of one or more objects based on probability categories that can be quantified using a scoring system. First, a TSM must be built for a given area, including the range of mollusc species identified in archaeological sites, and considering the type of coastline, substrate and the littoral zone where they currently live. The scoring system is then applied to archaeological molluscs recovered from shell middens to establish collection areas. The application of a TSM to Upper Palaeolithic, Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic shell middens from northern Iberia showed that mollusc collection was focused on rocky substrates of exposed and sheltered coastlines during the Magdalenian and the Azilian, with an increase in diversification of collection areas through time, including important shellfishing activity in soft-bottom areas, such as estuaries, during the Mesolithic. From the Azilian onwards, the lower mesolittoral replaced the upper mesolittoral as the most heavily harvested zone. Higher diversification in collection areas and larger collection in the lower zones over time suggest that intensification started at least in the Magdalenian and increased in the Mesolithic, which aligns with previous interpretations based on the decrease in shell size. PubDate: 2025-07-16
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Abstract: This article examines the role of rural communities in shaping early Egyptian statehood through the evolution of funerary beliefs. Drawing on the analysis of 504 tombs from the cemetery of Adaïma (Upper Egypt, 3300–2700 BCE), we trace a growing variability in mortuary practices from the First to the Third Dynasty. By the Third Dynasty, a remarkable alignment between the heliacal rising of Sirius, the summer solstice, and the Nile inundation began to reconfigure both ritual time and space. The celestial events became instrumental in transforming materially grounded beliefs—such as the symbolic dismemberment and reassembly of the body—into immaterial religious concepts underpinning royal ideology. Through comparison with earlier necropolises and later Pyramid Texts, we demonstrate how cosmogonic myths originate from long-standing ritual patterns and how the nascent state co-opts local traditions, reframing them through the appropriation of high-status individuals and celestial legitimation to consolidate central authority. PubDate: 2025-07-09
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Abstract: Small prey such as rabbits are present in Middle Paleolithic and are abundant in the diet of Upper Paleolithic human groups in southwestern Europe, especially in the Iberian Peninsula. Several archaeological and experimental studies have attempted to relate anthropogenic modifications, in this case cut marks, to different processing and consumption activities. However, the data do not always give similar results, as the presence and quantity of cut marks is variable across time, geography, and anatomical elements. Therefore, the lack of clear answers forces us to hypothesize if these variations could be indicative of the choice of particular cooking, processing, and consumption patterns, including the aim of preserving the meat by drying or smoking. The first objective is to present an empirical methodology to resolve uncertainties about the processing and consumption patterns adopted by human groups in different temporal and geographical contexts. The second objective is to characterize the cut marks found on the bones and relate them to a cooking method. To achieve these objectives, the paper presents a complete experimental protocol. This protocol included three cooking methods (drying, smoking, roasting) that could have been used by Paleolithic human groups when processing rabbits. The results of these experiments are then analyzed in terms of time, weight loss, and the condition of the meat and marrow. Following this, the first results of the taphonomic study focusing on the cut marks identified on the experimental bones are reported. In addition, we critically review other experimental studies focusing on rabbits and compare their results with our own in order to present a comprehensive framework and discuss their archaeological implications. PubDate: 2025-07-07
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Abstract: Archaeological sites and their materials recovered through excavation represent only a fragment of their original content. Paleontologists and archaeologists alike have long recognized this and often looked to taphonomy as a worthwhile means of explaining what happens to living organisms and inorganic materials between deposition and discovery. As the introduction to this special issue on taphonomy, we begin by tracing the theoretical origins of taphonomy from the field of paleontology and examine how archaeologists have adopted taphonomy. In doing so, we critically consider how such an adoption was theoretically convenient but problematic in its framing of how archaeological assemblages “come to be.” Much of the archaeological literature has treated taphonomy as solely the “natural” effects (ecological, environmental) that reduce archaeological materials to fragments of their original form. We posit that this framing presents two issues. First, it frames taphonomy as solely a reductive process and thus fails to recognize the additive information that accompanies degradation, loss, and damage. Second, it elevates culture and behavior as the primary area of inquiry, with anything interfering with the original cultural deposition as “distortive” or “biasing.” Indeed, twentieth century debates in American archaeology tried to weigh just how distorted the archaeological record is due to both cultural (“C-transforms”) and natural (“N-transforms”) modifications. Following critical insights from taphonomists and biocultural approaches to the human body, we problematize the neat separation of nature and culture in relation to the bioarchaeological record, to highlight how the preservation of human remains is a product of environmental and culturally informed funerary practices acting often synergistically. We then discuss the contributions to the special issue on “Biocultural Taphonomies” that demonstrate how bioarchaeologists are engaging critically and creatively with taphonomy from a variety of contexts, theoretical paradigms, and techniques. In doing so, these contributions both complicate and expand taphonomy as a nexus for anthropological inquiry. PubDate: 2025-07-01
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Abstract: Archaeological research on the Shivwits Plateau, northwestern Arizona, suggests that the Ancestral Puebloan inhabitants of that area engaged in both hide processing and the heat treatment of calcareous stones. This paper proposes a connection between these two activities, arguing that (at least some of) the heated rocks were transformed into lime for use in hide preparation. We suggest that the decision to use lime was influenced by local social and environmental conditions, and arose from an intimate familiarity with the landscape and a sophisticated understanding of lime, hides, and pathogens. Once adopted, however, this practice would have provided several benefits. Specifically, experimental results show that soaking hides in a lime solution, compared to plain water, significantly reduces bacterial growth—including pathogens—by several orders of magnitude, and decreases dehairing time by more than fivefold. We argue that these health and time-saving advantages would have been particularly valuable given the logistical challenges faced by the Shivwits Plateau people in hide processing, and that the Ancestral Puebloan people, drawing on generations of Indigenous scientific knowledge, would have keenly understood them. PubDate: 2025-06-21
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Abstract: Cave sites were frequently reused throughout the Upper Palaeolithic, with many sites within south-western Europe having deep chronologies of activity. The repeated engagement with the same caves, or spaces within caves, is evident in superimpositions of cave art depictions within these sites. Whilst these palimpsests in Upper Palaeolithic cave art have been extensively studied with regard to understanding the relative chronology of art within a particular region or site, they have not been understood from an ontological perspective. Upper Palaeolithic artist’s engagement with motifs produced by their predecessors, regardless of cultural continuity, may indicate dialogical interactions occurring across time between culturally and temporally distinct groups of hunter-gatherers. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework—inspired by relationality and contemporary rock art production—for understanding these temporal interactions. Focusing on the case study of El Castillo, we argue that these engagements across time may tentatively indicate aspects of long-term continuity in the ontology of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, reflected in cave art palimpsests. PubDate: 2025-06-12
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Abstract: Tophets are Phoenician or Punic sanctuaries where cremated infants and young children were placed in urns and ritually interred. Classical and biblical authors and modern scholars have focused on purported ritual... PubDate: 2025-06-05
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Abstract: The use of clay for symbolic or ritual activities can be confidently traced back to the Palaeolithic. One of the earliest documented examples is the presence of clay-based paintings at European Upper Palaeolithic cave sites. However, references to such artworks are scarce, and almost no attention has been given to the study of their technical and graphic characteristics. The recent discovery of Cova Dones (Spain), which contains nearly a hundred clay-painted motifs, has enabled us to analyse previously unexplored aspects of this rock art. In this article, we reconstruct the chaîne opératoire of these motifs and establish a typology of their various states based on taphonomic alterations. Our aim is to compile, define, and present a series of evidence that can be identified as Palaeolithic clay paintings or associated with different phases of their chaîne opératoire based on the rich graphic record of Cova Dones. This catalogue is intended to assist archaeologists in identifying this type of evidence in other cave sites. PubDate: 2025-06-03
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Abstract: Previous palaeo-neurological work suggested that the human precuneus evolved differently in Homo sapiens, compared to Neanderthals, and that this brain region may be important for both the extended visuospatial abilities and attention necessary for Pleistocene bowhunting. Here I use Kalahari ethnographies to provide insight into bowhunting as a complex techno-behaviour with many aspects interacting in nontrivial ways, requiring a range of attention types in succession or simultaneously. As an inter-disciplinary heuristic exercise, I use genes with non-synonymous changes at high frequency in H. sapiens compared to Neanderthals and Denisovans to explore previous suggestions about the evolution of the precuneus and its role in complex, bimanual techno-behaviours—requiring both hands doing different things at the same time whilst focussing attention across a distance—such as bowhunting. The preliminary results suggest that aspects of complex attentional control and unique genetic expressions in the H. sapiens genome may have been involved in the expansion of the human precuneus. This expansion, contributing to the globularisation of the human cranium, may have started by ~ 160 ka in Africa, reaching current human ranges by ~ 100 ka. Since then, we see a noticeable increase in the complexity of H. sapiens socio-technical systems, together with continued globularisation until ~ 35 ka. Especially our ability to focus on a task or stimuli for a long time whilst ignoring distractions (sustained and executive attention) and focussing on visual information in a spatiotemporal context (i.e., visuospatial attention) may have been strongly developed in human precuneal attention. PubDate: 2025-06-02
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Abstract: The repeated use of spaces has been extensively studied for many years in Paleolithic archaeology through various disciplines and techniques. Caves and rockshelters are typically the most suitable contexts for these studies due to their characteristics. However, certain key elements make deciphering these reoccupations possible, which would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible. Among these elements, the density of archaeological materials and the presence of combustion features emerge as key to unravel occupation events at a site. This study focuses on Unit A9, a late Middle Paleolithic (MIS3) context with Mousterian featured by Discoid technology, which provides a high-resolution record of both archaeological materials and combustion features. In this study, these records have been combined with paleotopographic reconstructions, spatial studies, and archaeostratigraphy to interpret how space was managed by the Neanderthal groups that visited the cave during Unit A9. The results allow us to identify at least two separate phases of occupation of the cave, which occurred during the same seasons and with an organized management of space maintained over time. PubDate: 2025-05-29
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Abstract: The Viking Age (c. 800–c. 1050 ad) was characterised by a widespread rise in maritime mobility and interaction, as is made clear by an increasing range of evidence. However, this evidence provides limited information about the sailors and the sailing voyages that connected and transformed the Viking world. This paper presents an approach to reconstruct Viking Age maritime itineraries through the combined use of experimental and digital methods. This approach is grounded in a series of experimental voyages conducted by the author along the Norwegian coast onboard square-rigged, clinker boats built in the descendant Åfjord tradition. The experimental voyages are used to reconstruct the preferences and requirements of Viking Age sailors, helping to define practice-based criteria for evaluating which natural harbours and anchorages might have been favoured during this period. These criteria are complemented by digital reconstructions of historical topographies accounting for changes in relative sea-level since 800 ad. From this combined evaluation, a selection of four possible Viking Age havens is presented. The characteristics and locations of these havens are discussed in relation to contemporary power centres and later seafaring routes. The results suggest that Viking Age seafaring networks along the Norwegian coast may have been more decentralised than their medieval counterparts, and may have relied on relatively outlying nodes on small islands and headlands. The approach highlights the potential of critically combining experimental and digital methods and aims to promote maritime perspectives as an alternative to conventionally terrestrial academic approaches. PubDate: 2025-05-08
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Abstract: Inductive predictive modelling is a controversial tool in archaeology. Visibility, taphonomy and research history can affect the statistical reliability of an archaeological dataset to be used as a training sample for a predictive model. To overcome these biases, an ethnoarchaeological approach has been proposed. This methodology has been developed and tested on a pastoral context in the Eastern Italian Alps. The present research proposes an application to a different, more composite landscape in the Central Italian Alps, testing the reliability of the model in relation to a heterogeneous and diachronic dataset, collected through extensive fieldwork. The results show that the model has an excellent degree of accuracy in predicting past structures with a similar purpose of use as the training sample. In addition, we show that its discriminative power can be greatly improved by the use of contemporary environmental predictors. However, the use of variables non-quantifiable for the past is an issue for the full applicability of this type of model to archaeological datasets. The results also show that this methodology, regardless of predictive results, can give us a good insight into the relationship between humans and their environment. The field application of the methodology has led us to understand that ethnoarchaeology can already be considered a reliable approach to address various methodological concerns of archaeological predictive modelling, but the primary purpose of such models should be seen more as explanatory rather than predictive. PubDate: 2025-05-08
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Abstract: Ethnographic accounts of Melanesian exchange systems, such as the Kula and Hiri, have significantly influenced the development of anthropology. These accounts primarily focus on male agency framed by heroic seafaring ventures, while the agency of women and their cultural practices—key to the interconnectedness of Melanesian societies—has often been overlooked. On Papua New Guinea’s south coast details of women’s cultural practices are available in ethnography, and the remains of the pottery they made survive well in archaeological contexts. This paper reports the results of Scanning Electron Microscopy based Automated Mineralogy (SEM-AM) analyses of selected pottery sherds from two regions on the Papua New Guinea’s south coast located 80 km apart. The sherds are very similar in form and decoration, so we employed precise mineral characterisations to assign the pottery sherds to mineralogical groups and test whether they originated in the same manufacturing location and were traded along the coast. The mineralogical analyses uncovered nuances of past social entanglements, revealing that seafaring alliances and networks were maintained through kinship. We argue that in this instance, pottery-making traditions spread along the coast through the movement of women and intermarriage. PubDate: 2025-04-15
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Abstract: The origin of fire control is considered a major turning point in human evolution and remains a highly debated albeit central subject in archaeology. Studying paleo-fires is challenging because of taphonomic phenomena that alter combustion structures and hinder the identification of the oldest hearths. Moreover, hearths do not record all fire events and do not provide a chronological record of fire. In contrast, speleothems, carbonated cave deposits, can preserve evidence of ancient fires, including soot traces, and these features can be dated directly using radiometric methods. Orgnac 3, an important archaeological sequence in Western Europe, provides a case study on the origins of habitual fire use in this region during the transition between the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. This paper presents the first documented record of over 20 fire events at this ancient site. The habitual use of fire by Mid-Pleistocene hominins at the site is well documented within sooty speleothems, as opposed to relying on scattered and rare traces. The soot deposit sequence at Orgnac 3 is the strongest and best-documented evidence of repeated fire use at the site to date. The robust fire-use chronology is established using stratigraphic U-Th dating of the speleothem. The soot record at Orgnac 3, testifying to fire events during both dry and wet periods, supports the hypothesis that Mid-Pleistocene hominins could control fire around 270,000 years ago in the Rhone Valley, with the possible ability to light it, or at least maintain it over a long term. PubDate: 2025-04-11
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Abstract: The symbolic expression, due to its social and cultural potential, should make a decisive contribution to the reconstruction of Palaeolithic social systems. Paradoxically, the limitations of the traditional study methods do not facilitate the exploitation of this possibility. In this article, we have presented an initial proposal to approach the study of visual rock art from a different perspective, focused in the calculation of the resources invested in the creation of rock art. This allows us to relate it directly to the societies that produced it and the implications it may have had on them. Furthermore, the use of cutting-edge technologies in this approach enables an exhaustive reconstruction of such processes and, ultimately, an objective, quantifiable, and global replicable system to calculate the exact minimum costs and social investment in Palaeolithic art. Consequently, the degree of complexity of the actions related to artistic production and the number of resources invested in it have palaeo-ethnographic implications for the organisation systems of Palaeolithic people. That is, ultimately, we can infer these societies in terms of structural questions such as hierarchy, inequality, division of labour, or knowledge transmission. PubDate: 2025-04-04
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Abstract: This study shows and discusses an innovative approach devised for archaeological feature detection using unmanned aerial system (UAS) LiDAR and an open-source probabilistic machine learning framework. The methodology employs a Random Forest classification algorithm within CloudCompare’s 3DMASC plugin to analyse dense LiDAR point clouds. The main steps include classifier training, hyperparameter adjustment and point cloud segmentation to produce digital terrain models (DTM), digital feature models (DFM) and digital surface models (DSM). Experimenting different parameters led to the determination of the best set to be employed for the training model. Subsequent data enhancement with the Relief Visualisation Toolbox (RVT) refines the visibility of archaeological features, particularly within complex and heavily vegetated terrain. The use case selected to validate this approach is the site of Kastrí-Pandosia in Epirus (Greece), which is particularly suitable for LiDAR analysis by UAS. This approach significantly improves archaeological detection and interpretation, revealing previously inaccessible or obscured microtopographic and structural features. The results highlight the site’s defensive walls, terracing and potential anthropogenic routes, underlining the methodology’s effectiveness in detecting archaeological landscapes at multiple levels. This study emphasises the utility of accessible and open-source solutions for the identification of archaeological features, promoting cost-effective methods to improve the documentation of sites in remote or difficult locations. PubDate: 2025-04-01
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Abstract: During the Iron Age, or Talayotic period, the landscape of Mallorca was transformed by the construction of cyclopean, tower-shaped structures that served as communal gathering spaces. The scale and location of these monumental structures have led to their interpretation as places designed to see and be seen, with a range of GIS-based viewshed studies caried out in order to characterise and delineate the visual landscape of which they were an integral part. However, despite this focus on all things visible, there has been little investigation into whether this visual prominence was primarily due to the choice of location or the architectural form itself. This paper aims to explore how the combination of location and architecture contributed to the visual prominence of Talayotic structures within the landscape. By integrating Visual Neighbourhood Configurations (VNC) and viewshed analysis, the study examines the significance of site selection and whether the architecture leveraged the inherent visual properties of these locations to enhance their prominence. As the visual presence of these architecture has been central to the explanation of the Talayotic phenomenon, understanding how this was generated is key to understand the role these sites played in the Mallorcan Iron Age landscape. PubDate: 2025-03-26
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Abstract: This paper explores the nature and dynamics of economic and political borders emerging in Later Prehistory between highly centralised and exploitative societies and their much more dispersed and small-scale neighbours. While increasing evidence indicates that Early Bronze Age entities such as El Argar, Únětice or Minoan Crete reached highly complex economic and political forms around 1850–1750 BCE, the processes by which their relations and borders with adjacent, less hierarchical groups were established and maintained still remain poorly understood. To identify such economic and political borders and asymmetric interactions in archaeology, a specific methodological approach was developed which combined extensive field survey, pottery petrography, and spatial modelling of pottery production and circulation areas. Our research focuses on the middle and upper Segura River valley, a largely unexplored borderland between distinct geographic and cultural zones of the Iberian Peninsula. While El Argar expanded over the semi-arid Southeast, adjacent regions—La Mancha and the Spanish Levant—were home to smaller-scale socio-economic entities, known as La Mancha or Las Motillas and the Valencian Bronze Age cultures. At the junction of these three groups, we surveyed 61 settlements across 4800 km2 and analyzed 1643 pottery sherds, conducting the largest petrographic study of Iberian Bronze Age ceramics. Spatial modeling of the results traced pottery production and circulation, offering insights into economic exchanges, social boundaries and the articulation of borderland spaces. By mapping distinct pottery-making practices, we reveal interactions between El Argar’s core regions and its neighbours, demonstrating the potential of ceramic analysis for understanding Bronze Age border dynamics. Comparable studies in other regions are expected to lead to a better understanding of the role of borders in shaping prehistoric societies and inter-group relations. PubDate: 2025-03-16
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Abstract: Observations about handaxe techno-morphology, like their symmetry, refinement, and fine edges have long been used to reconstruct the evolution of hominin cognition, skills, and technological decision making. However, these interpretations about the cognitive and technical abilities of Acheulean hominins often rely on the most ‘beautiful’ or supposedly ‘archetypical’ looking handaxes. But how often do these finely made handaxes actually occur in assemblages and how can we identify handaxes that were more skillfully made than others' Instead of seeking to estimate the skill level of individual past knappers, a trait that is oftentimes obscured in the archaeological record, we approach the question of knapping skill from the other direction. We instead ask how much skill was required to manufacture a handaxe' We explore, not the skill level of a handaxe’s maker, but how skillfully an individual handaxe was made. We put forth a suite of novel 3D methods of handaxe analysis for calculating their 3D edge sinuosity and 3D asymmetry. Using these methods, we quantify traits that are difficult to achieve during handaxe-making, providing an estimate of the requisite amount of ability, experience, attention, and effort demanded by their manufacture. Among our large sample of handaxes from the later Acheulean of the southern Levant, we find that blank size and tool-/site-use best explain the presence of more skillfully-made handaxes. Handaxes made on larger original blanks appear to afford more volume with which to enact longer and more skillfully demanding reduction sequences. Moreover, handaxes occurring at more recurrently occupied sites demanded less skill investment and appear geared towards the more expedient fulfilment of quotidian tasks. In the later Acheulean of the southern Levant there appears to be a great diversity in how skillfully handaxes were made, likely reflecting a diversity in the goals of handaxe making. PubDate: 2025-03-12
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