This article is a statement about prehistory as a construct, how that construct has been built up, and what weaknesses it still demonstrates. In particular, I follow David Clarke’s lead in suggesting that having a proper analytical archaeology is the essential prerequisite for interpretation. Drawing on insights from Mary Douglas, Margaret Masterson, Mary Midgley, and Alison Wylie, I argue that interpretive fashion and what are termed ‘pre-theoretical commitments’ present the major dangers in building inferences to the best explanation (IBE). I have used several examples, focusing on the Palaeolithic period in Europe, to show how background assumptions alter perceptions of significance among professional and amateur practitioners as well as the lay public. In brief worked examples I argue specifically for the possibility of alternative explanations in cases where ‘care’ or ‘compassion’ has been claimed as identifiable from burial evidence. The article contains observations on the problematic of behavioural uniformitarianism, the metaphysics of deep time and human evolution, and the importance of direct material engagement.
The study of infrastructure is becoming a common focus in research across the social sciences. In this endeavor, archaeologists are uniquely situated to assess how societies in the past created, and relied on, infrastructure over time, and the different ways it facilitated or impeded communication, movement, and social interaction through an understanding of the material record. However, most archaeological engagements with the study of infrastructure occur through case studies that closely mirror the modern contexts in which contemporary social scientists study infrastructure: within state-organized sociopolitical contexts or urban places. We use this article as an opportunity to review the literature on infrastructure, contextualize how it has been adopted in archaeology, and then advocate for expanding the study of infrastructure to non-urban small-scale societies. In doing so, we reassociate the notion of infrastructure with connective and cooperative human projects that unfold within and between places situated across social landscapes. This perspective requires one to divorce infrastructure from modernity and early urban projects and to recenter it within the material nature of human interaction. It is our goal to offer themes and perspectives drawn from contemporary notions of infrastructure to better understand the diverse forms and functions of built and natural environments apart from early urban places in the ancient Americas.
This paper argues that the Pleistocene record of humans in Australia is much more puzzling than the literature acknowledges. We begin with population estimates, and the claim that pre-LGM populations were small (under 200,000, perhaps even under 100,000); a claim based on the number and character of sites. We argue (i) the inference from archaeological traces of low population numbers is risky because the proxies are demonstrably unreliable; (ii) if pre-LGM numbers were indeed under 200,000, that requires special explanation, and no obvious one is available; (iii) the Pleistocene record suggests that those foragers used their lands in ways not well represented ethnographically, and in ways not currently well understood; (iv) the LGM record itself is mysterious. Previous readings of paleo-environmental data predict an intense crisis in forager lives, but there is little signal of such a crisis.
This paper examines the temporal dynamics of Linearbandkeramik (LBK) mortuary practices in south-eastern Czechia and western Slovakia, focusing on the emergence and development of funerary traditions. New radiocarbon dating of Moravian sites, including Vedrovice (with the large cemetery Široká u lesa, the settlement graves at Sídliště, and the small cluster of burials at Za dvorem), Brno-Starý/Nový Lískovec, Těšetice-Kyjovice-Sutny, as well as the Slovakian cemeteries of Nitra-Horné Krškany and Nitra-Mlynárce are presented and modelled. Our findings reveal that LBK mortuary practices were largely contemporaneous, beginning with the establishment of cemeteries, closely followed by settlement graves, and culminating in secondary deposition of bones and the transition to later Neolithic mortuary practices. The chronological framework aligns with existing models, indicating continuous LBK funerary practices in the timespan 5315–5035 cal BC, which underscores the influence of cultural exchange and migration from the Balkan–Anatolian area. Additionally, we identified temporal trends among individuals’ lifeways and mortuary treatments, as well as significant patterns concerning the foundational burials of non-adults in settlement graves. This revised chronology provides a more reliable basis for future interpretative work based on accurate chronological attributions.
The earliest systematic depictions of vegetal motifs in prehistoric art appear on painted pottery vessels of the Halafian culture of northern Mesopotamia, c. 6200–5500 BC. The motifs are varied, representing flowers, shrubs, branches and trees. The first part of our analysis deals with four major questions. What was chosen to be depicted? How common were the vegetal motifs? What was the distribution of these motifs? And why were vegetal motifs introduced in this particular era? The second part of the analysis deals with the Halafian skills of symmetry and precise division of space. The depictions of flower petals in the geometric sequence of the numbers 4, 8, 16 and 32, as well as 64 flowers in another type of arrangement, point to arithmetical knowledge. We argue that in the early village communities of the Near East the ability to make precise divisions was relevant to various needs, such as equal sharing of crops from fields that were collectively cultivated by a number of families, or the whole village.
Ingombe Ilede is located just north of the Zambezi River, and has often been seen as a trading station connected to Central Africa, the Zimbabwe Plateau and the Indian Ocean. Discussion of the richly appointed burials in its Central Cemetery has been hindered by uncertainty over their ages. In this article, we report four new radiocarbon dates from Ingombe Ilede and six new dates from sites in northern Zimbabwe that are relevant to a wider understanding of Ingombe Ilede and its connections. These ten dates are all on organic fiber cores within copper and bronze jewelry, for which we also report chemical compositions, lead isotope ratios, and (for bronzes) tin isotopic ratios. We show that the richer burials in the Central Cemetery were interred no earlier than the mid fifteenth century. By this time copper from the Central African Copperbelt, 500–700 km north of the Zambezi, had been transported into northern Zimbabwe for at least two centuries, as had tin from the Bushveld Large Igneous Province (BLIP) 900–1000 km south of the Zambezi. The rich burials at Ingombe Ilede represent a late phase of a longstanding trade in copper from the Copperbelt to the Zimbabwean plateau.
This paper represents an effort to ‘unpack’ the Neolithic as an umbrella concept for the pivotal developments in world prehistory that include the origins of agriculture and the emergence of village life—both within the Eurasian context in which the concept was originally framed and outside of it. It begins with a brief history of the term, focusing in particular on V. Gordon Childe’s Neolithic Revolution. The paper next considers recent research for the roll-out of the multi-faceted components of Childe’s concept in Southwest Asia, with a particular focus on sedentism, resource management, domestication, agriculture, and the social/ideological underpinnings of village life. After a brief review of similar developments in China, Japan, Eastern North America, Mesoamerica, and the Pacific Northwest, the continued relevance of the term Neolithic is considered. Rather than proposing a new term (while recognizing the difficult connotations of a term grounded in a distinctly Europeanist perspective of the 19th and early twentieth century), a ‘rebranding’ of the Neolithic is proposed in a flexible and open-ended way that sets general parameters for discussion and comparison.
We propose that trace levels of gold found in early Chinese bronze objects derived from the added tin, and that tin minerals in north-east China, probably from placer deposits containing gold and cassiterite (SnO2), were the sources of tin throughout the Chinese Bronze Age. We investigate compositional data from over 300 unprovenanced ritual bronzes attributed to the Shang and Zhou dynasties and 138 bronzes unearthed in Anhui, Henan, Sichuan and Shaanxi from the Shang dynasty (c. 1500–1046 BC) to the Warring States period (475–221 BC). We consider that early bronze has low concentrations of gold because gold had been intentionally removed from cassiterite prior to smelting. We suggest that this time- and labour-intensive practice was generally highly developed during the Chinese Bronze Age, and perhaps any bronze age. Recognising that tin and gold can be found in the same metalliferous provinces, and that there was demand for both metals but not necessarily from the same groups of people, we propose a mechanism based on a symbiotic relationship between gold and tin that was maintained until placer deposits became exhausted and primary gold ores were mined in the first millennium AD. With evidence of early tin smelting and increases in the numbers of settlements, we propose that north-east China, with its rich deposits of tin and gold, is an increasingly viable candidate for the source of tin throughout the Chinese Bronze Age.
In 2012, the 400-hectare Shimao site (2200–1700 cal BC) in the North Loess Plateau was recognised as a late Neolithic stone fortification. Subsequently, radiocarbon dates from Shimao and neighbouring sites including Dakou, Xinhua and Zhukaigou became available. Given the lack of a comprehensive analysis of the chronological sequence in the region, this study conducts a thorough review of all published radiocarbon dates from the North Loess Plateau spanning 2800 to 1500 BC to reevaluate the current chronology and patterns of human occupation shifts. These dates were subjected to quality control measures, followed by calibration and Bayesian modelling using OxCal v 4.4.4. The analysis reveals a trend of human occupation shifting southward in the region; however, the radiocarbon sequence does not exhibit a clear pattern that aligns with the notion of distinct ‘cultural period’ transitions suggested by the conventional typo-chronological framework. In light of this, an alternative chronological framework is introduced, emphasising the timing of regional concentration and change of human occupation, to offer another possible interpretation for the transition. This revised framework highlights a dynamic transition that involves integration, reconfiguration and transformation among settlement groups within the region, allowing a coverage of multiple ‘cultural groups’ in various sub-regions during a single period.
The world at 18,000 BP, published by Gamble and Soffer (The world at 18,000 BP. Vol. 2: low latitude, Unwin Hyman, 1990), represents the first, and so far the only, attempt at characterising and discussing the impact of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) on human societies on a global scale. At the time, they highlighted that research and data on the LGM in southern latitudes and the tropics in particular were scant. Since 1990, however, many sites dated to the LGM and located in tropical latitudes have been published. Many paradigms have changed regarding the peopling of the Americas, which allows the archaeology of this continent to be integrated into global scale studies of the LGM. The development of Pleistocene archaeology in tropical contexts, in parallel with methodological advances in cultural, geosciences and palaeoenvironmental studies have strongly reshaped what we know of the antiquity of human occupation in tropical regions and specific human–environment interactions. This article provides for the first time a pan-tropical perspective on the impact of the LGM on human groups living within the tropical latitudes, drawing from case studies in Southeast Asia, Africa and South America, specifically regions which have up until now never been discussed together. To this end, we focus on six different tropical regions between 30 and 10 ka. We present the archaeological and paleoenvironmental data available in these areas, along with proposed relationships for variations in these two records. Finally, we discuss at the regional scale the presence or absence of human changes (site density and techno-cultural change or continuity) before, during and immediately after the LGM.
Recent in-depth studies of social relations in hunter-gatherer societies have uncovered the emergence of complex societal structures independent of agriculture. Examining alternative models of the development of social complexity that happened without a full Neolithic Package offers valuable insights into the causes of this process across diverse cultures. This article adopts actor-network theory to propose that increased diversification within the Eneolithic hunter-fisher-gatherer society of Eastern Fennoscandia was influenced by intricate mineral deposits in that region. Our focal point is a complex mining center that surfaced on the western shore of Lake Onega in the period 3500–2500 cal BC. This center constituted a network of mines, diverse processing sites, and water transport routes facilitating product distribution from Northern Finland to Central Russia. Concurrently, the proliferation of social complexity and the expansion of interregional exchange drove the intensification of mining activities. Metatuff deposits on the western shore of Lake Onega played a pivotal role by enabling local communities to craft wood-chopping tools. These tools served a dual purpose as exchange items and essential tools for boat construction, fostering a robust trade network of water routes across the region. This strategic resource empowered the local population to assert dominance in regional exchange practices, elevating demand for other products sourced from minerals coexisting with metatuff, such as asbestos and copper. As a result, the integration of material objects, specifically metatuff tools and Asbestos Ware, catalyzed the growth of social complexity in several spheres: craft specialization, cultural diversity, and the geographical complexity of the hunter-fisher-gatherer society.
This paper examines the use of silver as a form of pre-coinage money in the Southern Levant from the Middle Bronze Age to the end of the Iron Age ( 2000–600 BC). Drawing on evidence from unearthed hoards, it also explores how silver gradually emerged as a preferred medium of exchange, beginning with its introduction in Mesopotamia and Syria in the EBA, in Anatolia during the MBA, in the Southern Levant during MB III, in Egypt, Cyprus and the Northern Levant during the Late Bronze Age (LBA) II, and finally in the Aegean during Iron Age II. The Southern Levant saw significant use of silver during the final stages of the Middle Bronze Age, with the first silver-currency hoards appearing at Shiloh and Gezer ( 1650/1600–1600/1550 BC), predating other regions. Although silver was temporarily replaced by gold in the Late Bronze Age, it re-emerged as the dominant form of money by the Late Bronze Age IIB, 1300 BC, a status it retained until the end of the Iron Age ( 600 BC), despite occasional shortages. The distribution and context of silver hoards suggest evolving socio-economic patterns, where silver was initially restricted to elite transactions but later became more widely used in both domestic and public spheres. This study emphasizes that while silver became the leading form of money in the Southern Levant, other regions used different metals, such as gold, copper and bronze, at various times. The adoption of silver in the Levant likely reflects broader political and economic ties with Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia.
How and why communities on Cyprus connected with the broader eastern Mediterranean in the third millennium BC has been much debated. In particular, the nature of the so-called Philia horizon, with its clear affinities with Anatolian assemblages, has been the topic of widely divergent perspectives on what happened and what role people on the island played. Using a constructed boundary perspective, I will reconsider the manner in which communities on Cyprus connected to adjacent lands in the third millennium BC during the Late Chalcolithic (2900–2500 BC) and the Philia (2500–2200 BC) periods. The aim is to demonstrate the selective nature of Anatolian assemblages and practices taken up in Cyprus in these periods, and how they are appropriated in local cultural practices that diverge considerably from those known on the mainland. This perspective leads to a marked shift in our ability to understand how Cyprus became increasingly connected to the broader eastern Mediterranean in the third millennium BC.
A large number of Neolithic cemeteries in the central plain of China have been excavated and the results published, and many display some internal consistency in the orientation of burials within the same cemetery. This consistency sometimes extends beyond the individual cemetery, to an entire geographical region or culture, as is the case for the Yangshao culture ((sic)) (4700-2800 BC). This raises the question of what influenced the choice of grave orientation. Early Chinese written records document cosmological and astronomical beliefs dating back to the second millennium BC. Archaeological analysis enables us to explore whether similar ideas existed in the Neolithic period. A detailed study of graves, landscape, and celestial phenomena was used to explore the beliefs behind the orientation of burials at the cemeteries of Xipo and Qingliangsi. We conclude that it was not the precise direction of sunset at the time of death that determined the orientation of the grave, nor the importance of particular astronomical phenomena known to have been important in later times (e.g. the Milky Way or the star Antares), but rather the direction in which sunsets are most commonly seen throughout the year. The concept of 'the west' and the direction of the sunset were perhaps considered inseparable at that time. It is suggested that in the cosmology of the Late Neolithic period, the sun was perceived to play a key role throughout the year in the worlds of the living and the dead, by maintaining the harmony of sky, Earth and human.
Taiwan is a useful case study for the evaluation of well-established ideas in prehistory, in this case, concerning the relationship between technological advancement and social change. Continuity and conservatism are key concepts to understand the prehistory of the island of Taiwan, even in the context of metal use and the introduction of iron production technology. In this paper, we revise extant evidence and conceptualizations of metal use and contextualize, in archaeological and analytical terms, the metallurgy of iron in Taiwan and the broader region, using new stratigraphic records. The paper presents a discussion of iron production and use in Taiwan to prompt a new discussion on the technical issues around iron technology itself; revisits significant debates in the discipline on the role of technology and social change; and questions the definition of chronocultural periods based on diagnostic material culture.
Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and Crohn's disease (CD) are interconnected through shared pathophysiological processes. Our goal was to identify the key molecules and pathways involved in their coexistence. We conducted a comprehensive quantitative bioinformatic analysis utilizing publicly accessible RNA sequencing datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, specifically the datasets GSE186582 for Crohn's Disease (CD) and GSE164760 for Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH). Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified using the R packages "edgeR" and "limma." Functional characterization of these DEGs was performed through gene ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses. Protein–protein interaction networks of the DEGs were constructed using STRING and visualized with Cytoscape, with key hub genes identified via the cytoHubba plugin. To validate these hub genes, we employed independent datasets, GSE20881 for CD and GSE63067 for NASH. In total, 104 common DEGs were identified, with 62 being downregulated and 42 upregulated. Both CD and NASH showed enhanced amino acid production and metabolism. Notably, ten hub genes—GLUL, COL3A1, CTH, PDGFRA, GOT1, PECAM1, FCER1G, NOTCH2, PC, and ASPA—emerged as central players. ROC analysis pinpointed GLUL as a significant hub gene, displaying an area under the curve of > 0.8 for both CD and NASH; this was further validated by RT-qPCR. Additionally, the transcription factors SRF and YY1, predicted by this hub gene, showed marked differential expression in both NASH and CD. Collectively, our findings shed light on a potential shared pathogenesis between NASH and CD, with the hub gene GLUL offering promising diagnostic and therapeutic insights.
Traditional exchange systems of the western Pacific figure prominently in anthropological scholarship. In contrast, those of the east have been historically considered inconsequential, but recent scholarship (reviewed here) demonstrates this is not the case. Although less visible given the lack of metallurgy, ceramics, and distinctive geologies, exchange was pivotal to East Polynesian societies, from initial colonisation in the tenth to eleventh centuries AD through to Western contact, at both inter- and intra-archipelago scales. Social reciprocity (including gifting), risk management, and prestige rivalry (a form of costly signalling) stand out as important forces that shaped exchange practices across central East Polynesia (CEP). They manifest in multiple spheres of interaction that varied in size, content, directionality, intensity, and duration. Stone adzes—working tools, symbols of chiefly power and wealth, and objects of ritual efficacy—were prominent and enduring components of CEP exchange. Nonetheless, novel technologies are revealing other exchange valuables (e.g., bark-cloth and ornamental land snails) as well. Accumulating evidence points to the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries AD as a transformational period in CEP history, one where exchange played a crucial role. Key developments include a regional-scale interaction sphere emanating from the Marquesas Islands, the appearance of a distinctive ancestral East Polynesian adornment complex (AEPA), and regional dispersal of the highly productive South American sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). By the sixteenth century, prestige exchange is well established in many archipelagos, feeding into wealth economies and complementing staple finance systems. Infra-community scale exchange also continues and, where tractable, informs on varied social practices, including emergent territoriality. Over time, the scale of many (but not all) CEP networks contract, and long-distance inter-archipelago exchange diminishes as cost–benefit ratios decline, and sociopolitical integration and territoriality take precedence. Current proxies undoubtedly under-estimate the diversity of CEP exchange goods and identifying the presence and provenances of valued flora, fauna, and attendant crafts is an important area for future studies.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Late Chalcolithic period in the southern Levant (c. 4500–3900 cal BC), a period marking notable societal transformations and developments in economy, craft and cult, was the appearance of ivory objects. Ivory, originating from the tusks of elephants and hippopotamuses, suddenly appeared in this period in low quantities and only at a few sites, restricted mainly to the northern Negev, Judean Desert and the central Mediterranean coastal plain. The current paper discusses the Late Chalcolithic ivory objects found in the southern Levant and suggests that we should not merely view these finds as artistic objects charged with symbolic value, but rather, we should acknowledge the role of the specific raw material from which they were made, for its social and economic values based on the likely non-local origin of the ivory and the inherent difficulty in its acquisition. These factors bestowed the ivory items with special significance and prestige value that differentiated them from other more common bone tools. Moreover, we suggest that although these findings reflect contacts, albeit limited between the southern Levant and Predynastic Egypt.
Longbohe is a newly discovered copper mining, smelting and production site located strategically beside the Red River on the China–Vietnam border in Southeast Yunnan, China. Recent excavations have dated it from the second half of the second millennium to the end of the first millennium BC, making it the earliest copper mining and processing site in Upland Southwest China and Southeast Asia. The metallurgical production tradition in Upland Southwest China and Southeast Asia is recognized and detailed with reference to the chaîne opératoire revealed at the Longbohe site. The location of Longbohe provides evidence for a route along which metallurgy was introduced from Southwest China into Southeast Asia. Current evidence further suggests that metallurgy probably arrived on the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau along the eastern Qinghai–Tibet Plateau corridors, and then entered Southeast Asia along south-flowing rivers. The Longbohe site is thus a most significant find in the southward dissemination of metallurgical technological systems into Southwest China and Southeast Asia in the later second millennium BC.
This paper explores the strategies implemented by hunter-gatherer groups in Southern Patagonia during the Late Holocene in relation to the circulation of goods and information. Previous archaeological investigations have revealed important changes in human mobility and land-use patterns during this period, associated with increasingly dry environmental conditions. In this context, we undertake a broad spatial scale analysis of the circulation of goods and information through the integrated examination of two lines of evidence: rock art and lithic raw materials. Specifically, we consider the distribution of engravings and black obsidian artefacts assigned to the Late Holocene. The former can offer certain insights into the circulation of information, and the latter are indicative of the circulation of goods. Our analysis suggests that during this period different strategies were developed by hunter-gatherer groups to face the changing environment. Several implications concerning social interaction and the movement of people during this period in Southern Patagonia are discussed.
