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Plastic pollution: archaeological perspective on an Anthropocene climate emergency World Archaeology Pub Date : 2024-03-04 Estelle Praet
Plastic pollution is a global phenomenon offering a vivid illustration of the scale of anthropic impacts on the environment, a key characteristic in defining the Anthropocene. Plastic pollution not...
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The Climate Heritage Paradox – how rethinking archaeological heritage can address global challenges of climate change World Archaeology Pub Date : 2024-03-01 Cornelius Holtorf
For archaeology to address adequately the global challenges of climate change, it needs to resolve the Climate Heritage Paradox which consists of two contradictions. Firstly, in contemporary societ...
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Archaeology in a fragile environment: archaeology of the lower Yangtze Shanghai region World Archaeology Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Edward Allen, Michael Storozum, Pengfei Sheng
The Shanghai region is home to millennia of archaeological cultures and a massive modern metropolois. Until recently, this regional history has remained within the overarching framework of a north-...
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Ancient Koguryŏ’s heritage around Ji’an: past and current interpretations World Archaeology Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Rainer Feldbacher
The Kingdom of Koguryŏ was one of the so-called Three Kingdoms of Korea in the 1st millennium AD. According to the Samguk Sagi (Historical Records of the Three States), it was founded on what is no...
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Materialising inequalities in past, present and future World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Sarah Semple, Rui Gomes Coelho
Published in World Archaeology (Vol. 54, No. 4, 2022)
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Reflections on archaeology and inequality. A foreword World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Randall H. McGuire
Published in World Archaeology (Vol. 54, No. 4, 2022)
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Debates and emerging issues in 2022 World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-05-17 Naomi Sykes
Published in World Archaeology (Vol. 54, No. 3, 2022)
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Islands and hominin adaptation World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-05-05 Armand Salvador B. Mijares, Yousuke Kaifu
Published in World Archaeology (Vol. 54, No. 2, 2022)
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No gentry but grave-makers: inequality beyond property accumulation at Neolithic Çatalhöyük World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-04-19 Kevin Kay, Scott Haddow, Christopher Knüsel, Camilla Mazzucato, Marco Milella, Rena Veropoulidou, Katheryn C. Twiss
ABSTRACT Archaeologists have adopted the Gini coefficient to evaluate unequal accumulations of material, supporting narratives modelled on modern inequality discourse. Proxies are defined for wealth and the household, to render 21st century-style economic tensions perceptible in the past. This ‘property paradigm’ treats material culture as a generic rather than substantive factor in unequal pasts.
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Contemporary regimes of disappearance and the unequal treatment of human remains World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Márcia Lika Hattori
ABSTRACT This paper examines the death and unequal treatment of human remains in contemporary Brazilian society. It provides an innovative approach to documenting practices such as state inaction and structural violence from an archaeology perspective and explores concepts such as contemporary regimes of disappearance, state apparatus, violence and the ‘right to memory’ in a neoliberal context. Rather
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Continuity and variability in prehistoric fishing practices by Homo sapiens in Island Southeast Asia: new ichthyofaunal data from Asitau Kuru, Timor-Leste World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-04-13 C. Boulanger, S. Hawkins, S. C. Samper Carro, R. Ono, S. O’Connor
ABSTRACT Human adaptations to marine resources were critical in the successful colonization of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and the Pacific since the Late Pleistocene. Fishing the dense biomass of ichthyofauna present in this maritime region required the cognitive capability to conceptualize fish ecology and develop methods and technologies to exploit these challenging underwater environments. This
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Illegal archaeological excavation crime in Jordanian law World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-04-05 Hamzeh Abu Issa, Naji Alwerikat
ABSTRACT This article examines the crime of archaeological excavation addressed in the article (26/a/1) of the Antiquities Law of (1988). Clarification of the pillars of such crime required the adoption of descriptive and analytical approach. It included reviewing relevant viewpoints of jurists and judicial jurisprudence. A Thorough analysis included the determination of material, moral elements of
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Materializations of variable power strategies and inequalities in Polynesia World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-03-13 Seth Quintus, Jennifer Kahn
ABSTRACT Polynesian societies have long framed discussions of chiefdoms. Often, these discussions treat Polynesia as a relatively homogenous region. Despite this, substantial variability in political forms developed in the region that came to affect the structure and nature of archaeologically attested past communities. Here we use two case studies to highlight these patterns: the Manuʻa group in West
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Archaeology and social justice in island worlds World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-03-10 Felicia Fricke, Rachel Hoerman
ABSTRACT Ongoing discussions about the problems of white supremacy and colonialism in archaeology are useful but have not, thus far, fully considered the exacerbated effects of these issues on small islands. In this opinion piece, we, two white women academics from the Global North with extensive experience working in the Dutch Caribbean and the Hawaiian Islands, observe these exacerbated effects in
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Recognising inequality: ableism in Egyptological approaches to disability and bodily differences World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Hannah Vogel, Ronika K. Power
ABSTRACT This paper employs a historiographical approach to review the allied fields of Egyptology and Egyptian Archaeology in relation to studies of disability and bodily differences in ancient Egypt. We incorporate critical disability studies and embodiment theories to consider whether ableism is prevalent across these disciplines. The focus of this study has been inverted from ‘identifying’ disability
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Unequal housing in Pompeii: using house size to measure inequality World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Samuli Simelius
ABSTRACT House size is often used as a tool to calculate wealth in ancient societies, and thus it is also a potential source for the study of inequality. The site of Pompeii, on the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, was first inhabited about 800 years before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried it 79 CE. The city provides one of the largest data sets of private architecture in the Roman world, and
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Examining frequency and directionality of Palaeolithic sea-crossing over the Korea/Tsushima Strait: a synthesis World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-24 Kazuki Morisaki, Kojiro Shiba, Donghyuk Choi
ABSTRACT Offshore landmasses in the Western Pacific were colonized during the Late Pleistocene through deliberate seafaring by modern humans. However, our knowledge of the developmental process of the Palaeolithic seafaring is still limited due to lack of reliable chronology for such seafaring. To contribute to this issue, we synthesize lines of evidence on repeated sea-crossings over the Korea/Tsushima
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The organics revolution: new narratives and how we can achieve them World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-20 P. Johnston, T. Booth, N. Carlin, L. Cramp, B. Edwards, M. G. Knight, D. Mooney, N. Overton, R. E. Stevens, J. Thomas, N. Whitehouse, S. Griffiths
ABSTRACT Organic remains from excavated sites include a wide range of materials, from distinct organisms (‘ecofacts’) to biomolecules. Biomolecules provide a variety of new research avenues, while ecofacts with longer histories of study are now being re-harnessed in unexpected ways. These resources are unlocking research potential, transcending what was previously imagined possible. However, this ‘organics
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Imperial ritual appropriation and violence?: the severed heads from Fiambalá and Copiapó during Inca times World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Francisco Garrido, Norma Ratto, Catalina Morales, Julia De Stéfano, Claudia Aranda, Leandro Luna
ABSTRACT The appropriation of local ritual practices and their expansion as part of the Inca imperial ideology is a well-documented mode of dominance in the Central Andes. However, there is still no relevant evidence on how it worked in the southern areas of the empire. We show how the Incas might have appropriated some local ritual practices that consisted of burying caches of skulls with perforations
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Wandering Islands1: towards an archaeology of garbage-based settlements World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-10 Maryam Dezhamkhooy
ABSTRACT The growing rate of global inequality, on the one hand, and hyper-consumerism, particularly among higher socio-economic classes in developed countries, on the other, have resulted in the emergence of new forms of subsistence, lifestyles and settlement types where subaltern groups and populations live and work. This paper investigates the emergence of two of these kinds of settlement in Tehran
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Early modern human migration into Sulawesi and Island adaptation in Wallacea World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Rintaro Ono, Harry Octavianus Sofian, Riczar Fuentes, Nasrullah Aziz, Marlon Ririmasse, I. Made Geria, Chiaki Katagiri, Alfred Pawlik
ABSTRACT Maritime migration and island adaptation by anatomically modern humans (AMH) are among the most significant current issues in Southeast Asian archaeology and directly related to their behavioural and technological advancement. In the center of this research hotspot are the Wallacean islands, situated between the Pleistocene landmasses of Sunda and Sahul. Two major migration routes have been
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Terminal Pleistocene emergence of maritime interaction networks across Wallacea World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-09 Sue O’Connor, Shimona Kealy, Christian Reepmeyer, Sofia C. Samper Carro, Ceri Shipton
ABSTRACT The crossing of the Wallacean islands and settlement of Sahul by modern humans over 50,000 years ago, represents the earliest successful seafaring of our species anywhere in the world. Archaeological research throughout this vast island archipelago has recovered evidence for varied patterns in island occupation, with accumulating evidence suggesting a significant change in cultural activities
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Fit for purpose: investigating adaptations in late Pleistocene lithic technology to an island environment at Buang Merabak, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Georgia Kerby, Anne Ford, Glenn R. Summerhayes, Matthew G. Leavesley, J. Michael Palin
ABSTRACT The occupation of Buang Merabak, a cave located on the island of New Ireland, by 42,000 years ago demonstrates that the colonisation of the Bismarck Archipelago occurred soon after that of Sahul. This provides the opportunity to consider the adaptation of small groups of people to a depauperate island environment. An analysis of a lithic assemblage from Buang Merabak was used to consider how
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Balancing the scales: archaeological approaches to social inequality World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-08 Jess Beck, Colin P. Quinn
ABSTRACT Archaeology lends a critical perspective to research on social inequality due to the field’s unique access to deep history, emphasis on materiality, and explicit incorporation of multiple lines of evidence. This paper offers a concise overview of archaeological approaches aimed at students and scholars in other fields. We develop a categorization of disciplinary strategies, arguing that archaeologists
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Anarchy, institutional flexibility, and containment of authority at Poverty Point (USA) World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-03 Matthew C. Sanger
ABSTRACT Monumental architecture has long been associated with the rise of the State and societal inequality, yet recent studies have shown some small and relatively egalitarian societies also built large-scale architecture. This study posits that some of these groups utilized ‘institutional flexibility’ – a strategy of creating and then dismantling hierarchical power systems during limited periods
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Collectors, class and conflict at the lower palaeolithic discovery at Stoke Newington, 1878-1884 World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-03 Mark J. White
ABSTRACT This paper uses events following the 1878 discovery of a rich Lower Palaeolithic ‘living floor’ at Stoke Newington, London, to explore the social and economic relationships and imbalances that existed within Palaeolithic archaeology in the mid to late nineteenth century. It explores in particular the role of the British working classes in amassing the extant record, the biases they might have
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Hominin adaptations in the Lesser Sunda Islands: exploring the vertebrate record to investigate fauna diversity before, during and after the Last Glacial Maximum World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Sofia C. Samper Carro
ABSTRACT This paper reviews the available vertebrate record from the Lesser Sunda Islands to explore the effect the Last Glacial Maximum had on human subsistence strategies. By focusing on vertebrate assemblages from Laili and Matja Kuru 2 in Timor Leste, Tron Bon Lei in Alor Island, and Here Sorot Entapa in Kisar, this paper investigates biodiversity and resource availability in these nearby islands
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The Acheulean is a temporally cohesive tradition World Archaeology Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Alastair Key
ABSTRACT The Acheulean has long been considered a single, unified tradition. Decades of morphometric and technological evidence supports such an understanding by demonstrating that a single fundamental Bauplan was followed for more than 1.6 million years. What remains unknown is whether sites assigned to the Acheulean represent multiple socially-independent iterations of the same technological solution
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Resilience and adaptation of agricultural practice in Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Turkey World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-10-28 Gianna Ayala, Amy Bogaard, Michael Charles, John Wainwright
ABSTRACT Andrew Sherratt’s ‘Water, soil and seasonality’, World Archaeology (1980), signposted a long-term debate surrounding early farming adaptations to riverine landscapes in western Asia and Europe. Recent research at Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia, a key case study in Sherratt’s ‘floodplain cultivation’ model, enables integrated, evidence-based assessment of the local hydrology and agroecology
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Charismatic megafauna, regional identity, and invasive species: what role does environmental archaeology play in contemporary conservation efforts? World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-10-28 Meryl Shriver-Rice, M. Jesse Schneider, Christine Pardo
ABSTRACT The popular prioritization of climate change issues over biodiversity loss in environmental archaeology and palaeoecology has been argued to be in part due to agenda-setting created by the ripple effects of widespread media coverage of climatic change. In this paper, we argue that direct scientific evidence for past human landscapes can act as a powerful tool in modern conservation efforts
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Peopling island rainforests: global trends from the Early Pleistocene to the Late Holocene World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-10-13 Dylan Gaffney
ABSTRACT This paper is a cross-comparative examination of how tropical forested islands were populated by humans. It first describes the unique ecological conditions of these environments, how they fluctuated during glacial cycles, and the challenges and affordances they provided people. The paper then explores the global archaeological record, classifying modes of colonisation that led insular tropical
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Inundated cultural landscapes: an introduction World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-09-15 James Conolly, Ingrid Ward
Published in World Archaeology (Vol. 54, No. 1, 2022)
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A synthetic model of Palaeolithic seafaring in the Ryukyu Islands, southwestern Japan World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-09-15 Yousuke Kaifu
ABSTRACT The rise of water transport technology enabled early modern humans to expand their habitable territory to insular environments. However, apart from intensive discussion for Wallacea, developmental process and regional variation of Palaeolithic seafaring remain unclear. To contribute this issue, the author presents a synthetic model for Palaeolithic seafaring in another region of the western
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Correction World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-07-11
Published in World Archaeology (Vol. 54, No. 1, 2022)
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Towards a Jōmon food database: construction, analysis and implications for Hokkaido and the Ryukyu Islands, Japan World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-06-27 Aya Komatsu, Elisabeth J. Cooper, Inger G. Alsos, Antony G. Brown
ABSTRACT One of the most entrenched binary oppositions in archaeology and anthropology has been the agriculturalist vs hunter-gatherer-fisher dichotomy fuelling a debate that this paper tackles from the bottom-up by seeking to reconstruct full past diets. The Japanese prehistoric Jōmon cultures survived without fully-developed agriculture for more than 10,000 years. Here we compile a comprehensive
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Submerged inland landscapes of the Aucilla basin, Northwest Florida, USA: populating the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene landscape World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-06-20 Jessi J. Halligan
ABSTRACT Archaeological data have demonstrated that modern Florida was occupied by at least 14,550 years ago, but evidence of Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene peoples (ca. 14,600–8,000 cal B.P.) is limited to far inland and upland settings, as more than half of Florida’s peninsula was drowned between ca. 21,000–6,000 cal B.P. Rising aquifer levels of the Late Pleistocene allowed some interior sites
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Editorial World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-06-17 Sarah Semple, Chloe Duckworth
Published in World Archaeology (Vol. 53, No. 5, 2021)
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The exceptional environmental setting of the North Plaza, Cahokia Mounds, Illinois, USA World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-06-17 Caitlin Gail Rankin
ABSTRACT Plazas are ubiquitous elements of community layout, defined as open space surrounded by or adjacent to structures. Functionally, plazas serve as public space for gatherings and ceremonial activities. At Cahokia Mounds, the largest pre-contact site in North America, the North Plaza puzzled archaeologists because of its unique location in a wetland. The construction of a mound and plaza group
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Drowning the Pompeii premise: frozen moments, single events, and the character of submerged archaeological sites World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-06-16 Ashley Lemke, John M. O’Shea
ABSTRACT The archaeology of inundated cultural landscape sites is not new and is an important component of the global record, yet these sites are distinct from shipwrecks and other site types underwater. Just as on land, underwater sites are subject to a dynamic range of formation processes, which must be analytically controlled. However, there are lingering misconceptions about underwater sites, specifically
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The altitude of the depths: use of inland water archaeology for the reconstruction of inundated cultural landscapes in Lake Titicaca World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-06-16 Christophe Delaere, Stéphane Guédron
ABSTRACT Andean societies have undergone abrupt climate changes that have affected their water resources and habitable or cultivable land. This is the case for Lake Titicaca, which has experienced fluctuations up to 20 metres during the last three millennia. Although paleoenvironmental reconstructions have provided valuable data on these lake level variations, their resolution is often not sufficient
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Re-evaluating terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene settlement patterns with Chirp subbottom data from around California’s Northern Channel Islands World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-06-16 Todd J. Braje, Jillian Maloney, Amy Gusick, Jon M. Erlandson, Shannon Klotsko
ABSTRACT California’s Northern Channel Islands contain an incredible record of terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene human occupation. Since the hunter-gatherer-fishers who created these sites relied heavily on marine resources, a critical aspect of understanding early settlement patterns is calculating distance to paleoshorelines. This has traditionally been accomplished using sea-level curves and
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Submerged Palaeolandscapes of the Southern Hemisphere (SPLOSH) – What is emerging from the Southern Hemisphere World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-06-16 Ingrid Ward, Alex Bastos, Diego Carabias, Hayley Cawthra, Helen Farr, Andrew Green, Fraser Sturt
ABSTRACT The potential of submerged palaeolandscapes to address questions about global migrations, broad-scale climate and landscape change and human response to this has, to date, been concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere has less land, more water and water barriers, higher floral and faunal endemicity and lower population but with indigenous populations that have maintained
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Island tales: culturally-filtered narratives about island creation through land submergence incorporate millennia-old memories of postglacial sea-level rise World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-06-16 Patrick Nunn, Margaret Cook
ABSTRACT In many long-enduring coastal cultures, there are stories – sometimes mythologized – about times when pieces of land became separated from mainlands by submergence, a process that created islands where none existed before. Using examples from northwest Europe and Australia, this paper argues that many such stories recall times, often millennia ago, when sea level in the aftermath of the Last
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Submerged landscape evolution of the Beagle Channel: context of the first record of underwater archaeological evidence World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-05-20 Atilio F. J. Zangrando, Juan Federico Ponce, Alejandro Montes, María del Carmen Fernández Ropero, Angélica M. Tivoli
ABSTRACT We analyze the finding of a lithic projectile point at more than 100 meters depth in the Beagle Channel (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina) in relation to submerged landscapes. On the one hand, this underwater evidence is examined as part of an inundated archaeological landscape supporting the hypothesized Pleistocene coastal dispersion in southern South America. On the other hand, the lithic projectile
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Harvesting the winds, harvesting the rain: an introduction to the issue on Inhabiting tropical worlds World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-04-28 Yijie Zhuang, Paul J. Lane
(2021). Harvesting the winds, harvesting the rain: an introduction to the issue on Inhabiting tropical worlds. World Archaeology: Vol. 53, Inhabiting Tropical Worlds, pp. 563-578.
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Subaltern assemblages. The archaeology of marginal places and identities World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-03-03 Alfredo González-Ruibal
(2021). Subaltern assemblages. The archaeology of marginal places and identities. World Archaeology: Vol. 53, The Archaeology of Marginal Places and Identities, pp. 369-383.
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‘To make the emigrant a better colonist’: transforming women in the Female Immigration Depot, Hyde Park Barracks World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-03-03 Kimberley G. Connor
ABSTRACT The immigrant’s journey is a paradigmatic example of the ‘betwixt and between’, both physically and socially ambiguous, suspended momentarily outside of normal society. For archaeologists studying nineteenth-century immigration around the British Empire, ‘institutions of immigration’ (emigrant and immigrant depots, quarantine stations, processing centres, etc.) provide access to this transitional
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Debates and emerging issues in 2021 World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-28 Armand Mijares, Matthew Spriggs
(2021). Debates and emerging issues in 2021. World Archaeology: Vol. 53, Debates and Emerging Issues in World Archaeology, pp. 173-174.
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Landscape, upland-lowland, community, and economy of the mekong river (6th-8th century CE): case studies from the Pre-Angkorian centers of Thala Borivat and Sambor World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-25 Piphal Heng
ABSTRACT Southeast Asian archaeological research often emphasizes upland-lowland dynamics in the development of premodern complex societies. This paper tracks upland-lowland dynamics in Pre-Angkorian (6th-8th century CE) Cambodia by focusing on land-use and economy along the Mekong River. Proto-urban settlements emerged throughout the Tonle Sap and Mekong Delta alluvial plains but also appeared at
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The archaeology of a marginal neighborhood in Tehran, Iran: garbage, class, and identity World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-16 Leila Papoli-Yazdi
ABSTRACT Tehran’s Archaeology of Garbage project was conducted in 2017–2018 and with the initial aim of monitoring the impacts of currency devaluation on poor people. In Districts 7 and 17, the team investigated two of the most decayed urban fabrics of Tehran as well as the garbage bags of 1004 poor marginalized families. Among these, we managed to find evidence of a forgotten social group, the ‘impoverished
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Conglomerate infrastructures: ordinary sites used for extraordinary regimes of power World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-15 Koji Lau-Ozawa
ABSTRACT Largescale programs require complex and integrated infrastructures to carry out the aims of power. In the case of the WWII mass removal and incarceration of all Japanese Americans living on the west coast of the US, scholars have focused their attention on incarceration camps and landscapes far removed from towns and cities. This article instead examines the wartime civil control stations
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Privileged or dispossessed? Intersectional marginality in a forgotten working-class neighborhood in Finland World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-15 Tuuli Matila, Marika Hyttinen, Timo Ylimaunu
ABSTRACT Nestled in a quiet part of Oulu, Finland, on an Island called Hietasaari, was a residential area called Vaakunakylä. Hietasaari was, from the 19th century onward, largely undeveloped with an oceanside beach amidst pines, small, cultivated fields and a modest number of expensive villas. Vaakunakylä was a working-class neighborhood, but city planners committed to developing the Island forced
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Fame and recognition in historic and contemporary graffiti: examples from New York City (US), Richmond Castle and Bristol (UK) World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-15 Emma Bryning, Charlie Kendall, Megan Leyland, Tyson Mitman, John Schofield
ABSTRACT Artists have been making their mark on the world for at least 70,000 years. Some of the best known examples of what is commonly referred to as cave art are from the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe, at sites which are popular tourist attractions, their visitors wondering at the motivations of those responsible. In some ways, contemporary graffiti are not so dissimilar: passers-by stopping to view
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Warrior graves reconsidered: metal, power and identity in Copper Age Italy World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-08 Andrea Dolfini
ABSTRACT The article proposes a new interpretation of Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age warrior graves grounded in the ‘Rinaldone’ burial tradition of central Italy, 4th and 3rd millennia BC. In European archaeology, warrior graves are frequently thought to signal the rise of sociopolitical inequality rooted in metal wealth. The work questions the empirical and conceptual foundations of this reading
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‘We hunt to share’: social dynamics and very large mammal butchery during the Oldowan–Acheulean transition World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-07 Gonzalo J. Linares Matás, José Yravedra
ABSTRACT The Early Pleistocene (2.58–0.78 Ma) was a period of major evolutionary changes in the hominin lineage. The progressive consolidation of bipedal locomotion, alongside increases in cranial capacity and behavioural flexibility, allowed early Homo to exploit an increasing diversity of resources and environmental settings within the changing landscapes of East Africa and beyond. These complex
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Techno-aesthetic ceramic traditions and the effective communication of power on the North Coast of Peru World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-07 Cathy Lynne Costin
ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine the relationship between technological and aesthetic shifts in Andean North Coast prestige ceramics and sociopolitical change by focusing on pottery as a form of information technology in a world without formal writing. To do so, I begin by defining two techno-aesthetic macro-traditions to emphasize the interconnections among technique and visual appearance, semantics
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Food as affirmative biopolitics at the border: liminality, eating practices, and migration in the Mediterranean World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-03 Yannis Hamilakis
ABSTRACT Based on long term archaeological ethnography on the border island of Lesvos situated on Europe’s margins, this article explores the regimes of eating and the role of food practices in the refugee camp/processing centre of Moria. Starting from the double liminality of eating and border-crossing, it outlines and juxtaposes two regimes of corporeal life. The first is the biopolitical arena of
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Centralisation and decentralisation processes and pottery production at Arslantepe (SE Anatolia) during the 4th and early 3rd millennium BCE World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-03 Pamela Fragnoli, Marcella Frangipane
ABSTRACT We explore the Late Chalcolithic 3–4 to Early Bronze Age I pottery from Arslantepe by combining compositional, technological and morpho-typological analyses. The paper investigates to what extent economic and political changes affected the organisation of production in terms of natural resources, human labour, and practices. The wheel-finished vessels show a strong continuity in the raw materials
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Naval power and textile technology: sail production in ancient Greece World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-02 Bela Dimova, Susanna Harris, Margarita Gleba
ABSTRACT Sails and textile technology played a key role in enabling mobility and thus shaping historical phenomena such as migration, trade, the acquisition and maintenance of imperial power in the ancient Mediterranean. Yet sails are nearly absent from analyses of ancient fleets, even in extensively studied cases like that of Classical Athens. This paper examines the demand and production of sailcloth
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Trickle down innovation? Creativity and innovation at the margins World Archaeology Pub Date : 2022-02-02 Catherine J. Frieman, James Lewis
ABSTRACT This paper explores the entanglement of the innovation discourse with discourses of power. Innovation is a frequent topic of archaeological research, but its implications for how we understand flows of power between individuals, groups, and regions has seen little attention. Here, we argue that our innovation narratives often blindly reproduce hierarchical relations which place dynamic cores