This paper presents a bottom-up perspective on the socioeconomic landscape of Mycenaean Pylos, based on the hitherto untapped potential of legacy survey data. Since the mid-20th century, intensive surface surveys have transformed our understanding of entire regions of the Mediterranean, yet interpretations relying primarily on site-size hierarchies impose a narrow view on the datasets, rendering peripheral sites into passive members of centralized political formations. Using functional analysis of Late Bronze Age ceramics (LH I–LH IIIB2, ca. 1600–1180 BC) collected by the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project (PRAP), this study compares assemblages from both large secondary centers and smaller rural sites within the palatial territory. The results show that communities differed not only in size but also in social status, economic practices, and access to goods, revealing a degree of local agency within the Pylian territory. While similar bottom-up approaches have been applied in other Mediterranean contexts, this study brings such perspectives into the discussion of Mycenaean states, underscoring the value of re-examining legacy survey data to explore regional patterns of social and economic organization.
Neolithization is one of a handful of major social and economic processes that affected the entire Mediterranean, even if in quite different ways across different periods and regions. Everywhere, however, its impact was substantial, affecting also other parts of Europe and West Asia. It is therefore with good reason that the study of Neolithization has a long and distinguished track-record going back, at least, to the work of Childe, who first characterized Neolithization as a revolution (Childe 1925: 15). He would eventually go on to describe it more fully (Childe 1942: 48) as an ‘economic and scientific revolution’, even using the term ‘revolutionaries’ to refer to the people involved—whom we would now call ‘social actors’ (Gamble 2007: 10-26). In Childe’s understanding, migration and agriculture were the cornerstones of the Neolithic revolution, and these two phenomena have remained central to academic debates about Neolithization to this day.
The use of anthropomorphic ossuaries, so-called ‘canopic urns’, is a burial custom documented during the seventh and sixth centuries BC in the territory of the Etruscan city-state of Clevsi/Clusium, modern Chiusi (Tuscany, Central Italy). This particular type of ossuary represents a human body and serves as an ideal portrait of the deceased after the destructive act of cremation. The necropolis of Tolle, located in the western part of this territory, has yielded 136 of these canopic urns, which is the largest collection on record from undisturbed contexts. In this study, we present an integrated analysis of the canopic urns, a wide range of associated archaeological data and osteological data of cremated human and faunal remains. Our aim was to test the correspondence between gender attributions on the basis of the iconography of the urns, grave goods and the biological profile of the deceased, according particular emphasis to the relationship between sex and gender. The resulting 95.6% correspondence is not only remarkably high but also allows us to describe funerary behaviour, gendered roles and identities in this Etruscan community. Online Supplementary MaterialsSupplement 1Supplement 2
Excavations at Žukovica Cave (Korčula Island, Croatia) have yielded evidence of Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic occupations. A layer dated to 6400–5900 cal BC contained commingled lithics, potsherds, wild and domesticated animal bones, mollusk shells, personal ornaments and human remains attributable to the latest hunter-gatherers and the earliest farmers in the region. We argue that people who practiced these different subsistence strategies occasionally came into contact and that the people buried at Žukovica led lives fed by hunting, gathering and fishing but that also featured certain cultural behaviors adopted from newly arrived farmers.
This study proposes a formal geospatial approach to the contexts of fortified hilltop settlements that characterised the Iberian Peninsula during Iron Age (IA) II (fourth to first centuries BC), focusing on an area that encompasses Alto Alentejo in what is today Portugal and western Extremadura in Spain. Although the settlements here represent the most distinctive archaeological sites of this period, they remain poorly understood. The physical inaccessibility of hillforts has limited archaeological studies, while a reliance on Classical sources and ideological narratives of indigenous resistance to Rome promoted by the Iberian dictatorships in the 20th century have led to generic assumptions about the role of IA hillforts in these regions of the Iberian Peninsula. The study highlights their often overlooked diversity, with the goal of challenging generalised interpretations and resolving discrepancies in legacy data. By analysing a selection of hillforts through geospatial modelling, several locational factors can be quantified and used as proxies to associate cultural criteria with each hillfort. This makes it possible to bring out the heterogeneity of the hillforts and to identify two regional patterns in their locational characteristics. Online Supplementary MaterialSupplement 1Supplement 2
Numerous studies on the Late Bronze Age to Iron Age (IA) transition in the southern Levant have underscored how IA I (1190–980 BC) society displays evidence of both cultural continuity and discontinuity. This article investigates the role of cult in this process of transition, utilizing evidence revealed at Tel Abel Beth Maacah in the northern Hula Valley. Employing a methodology based on spatial analysis of artifacts, the article aims to establish the nature of cultic practices at the site, and comparison is made to contemporary IA I sites in the region to contextualize processes of continuity and change. A major break within cultic traditions during IA I is identified: groups were no longer beholden to the Bronze Age temple tradition of using demarcated spaces devoted exclusively to cult. Rather, a new type of space emerged, within which both cultic and quotidian activities were conducted. These spaces were neither standardized in their plans nor did they function like the region’s Bronze Age temples. Within them, familiar practices and symbols were utilized, but in new ways. This process is hypothesized to reflect new local authorities coalescing their status and power. The integration of cult into daily activities resulted in forms of democratization and inclusivity previously unknown in the region, serving as a link to developments in cultic practices of IA II.
This paper investigates the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the northern Adriatic by testing theoretical models of Neolithization through a review of the available radiocarbon evidence. While our understanding of the spread of farming in Europe has improved significantly in recent years, especially due to an increasing body of ancient DNA evidence, this does not seem to be the case for the northern Adriatic. Here, not only is there a lack of ancient genetic material, but significant changes in landscape configuration caused by postglacial sea-level rise have affected archaeological visibility. Unresolved aspects of the transition include the scarcity of Late Mesolithic sites, the debated role of hunter-gatherers, and the swift establishment of a fully developed farming economy. In this paper, chronological data obtained from radiocarbon dating is used to argue for a ‘spectrum of possibilities’, with different dynamics in different subregions and different lines of evidence supporting distinct mechanisms of Neolithization, often with an equifinal outcome. It is shown that the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the northern Adriatic occurred over the entirety of the sixth millennium BC, but also that different readings of the data suggest leapfrog colonization and frontier mobility occurring in different areas, or even in a single subregion. Online Supplementary MaterialSupplement 1
The Iron Age tumuli around ancient Gordion provide a unique window into coalescing processes of craft specialization, elite self-definition, monumentality, and intercommunity social interactions in central Anatolia between ca. 850 and 525 BC. This paper examines the use of timber in the construction of tomb chambers at Gordion through the lenses of social value and social capital and a quantitative comparison of tomb chamber dimensions. It finds a close relationship between monumental architecture, tumulus construction, and the creation of an elite, aristocratic class based on the accumulation of social capital, enacted through the acquisition and display of timber during the ninth century bc, the Early Phrygian period. The transportation of timber from beyond the immediate hinterland, the skillful crafting employed for tomb chamber construction, the element of enchantment imparted by the scale and concentration of timber as used in a chamber, and the transformative processes of the funerary rite all establish that timber was a socially valued good at Iron Age Gordion. Groups burying in tumuli appear to have competed for its acquisition and use in mortuary architecture, evident in the close correlation between tumulus size, chamber size, and maximum timber size, in particular during the ninth century BC when compared with the roughly 300-year-long period of inhumation-tumulus construction that followed. Access to and competition over this socially valued good were important processes in the development of new elite ideologies, which included attempts at the establishment of hereditary aristocratic status, a valuation of social capital. As a specialized craft tied to this social and ideological change, carpentry appears to have operated within an aristocratic mode of production; that is, it was shaped by an ethos of distinction and legitimation. Supplementary Materials can be found appended to the online version of this article.
Northwest Africa has long been portrayed as passive and peripheral within broader narratives of exchange, mobility and transformation in later Mediterranean prehistory. Drawing on archaeological, radiocarbon and genetic data, this paper reconsiders the region between ca. 3800 and 500 bc as an active and dynamic crossroads bridging the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Sahara. It traces long-term changes in the social landscape, settlement patterns, material culture, architecture and agricultural practices. From the emergence of large open-air farming settlements during the Final Neolithic (ca. 3800–2900 BC) to northwest Africa’s integration into Atlantic Beaker exchange networks in the Copper Age (ca. 2900–2200 BC), the study challenges older diffusionist models by highlighting local agency and innovation. The Bronze Age (ca. 2200–800 BC) is shown to be characterised by a mosaic of burial traditions, metal use and mobility, while the Mauretanian 1 period (ca. 800–500 BC) witnessed sustained interactions with Phoenician communities. Yet rather than a narrative of cultural imposition, the evidence points to selective adaptation and hybridisation, revealing how local communities actively shaped the region’s socioeconomic and cultural dynamics. Supplementary Materials can be found appended to the online version of this article.
Seafarers are subject to a distinctive set of circumstances that differentiate their lived experiences from those of populations living and working ashore. In the ancient Mediterranean, there is evidence that the particular hazards of life at sea led to the development of distinctive ritual practices and cultural narratives. Textual sources and the material evidence of stone anchors in port sanctuaries have been used by scholars to trace such practices and to propose the existence of transcultural rituals for the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age. Such studies provide a solid foundation for further research, but questions remain about the extent to which discursive and material practices were interwoven and how these rituals were situationally embedded and related to other practices across local and transregional non-seafaring milieus. The present study analyses this assemblage of maritime ritual practices as a socio-material network comprised of people, things, and narratives, using New Practice Theory. The strong influence of New Materialism on New Practice Theory allows us to integrate the discursive written and visual sources with the bodily practices identifiable in the archaeological record in a more-than-human network.
The identification of Roman libraries has long been the subject of debate, with architectural models, written sources and the archaeological record offering seemingly incompatible perspectives. Mamoli, however, has proposed a solution that deploys computational techniques for studying shape grammar to develop library grammar. This is a computational methodology that identifies minimal units of architectural meaning and the ways they may combine to determine if a built space has enough syntactic coherence to be defined securely as a library. In this paper, we use both traditional architectural analysis and the toolkit provided by shape grammar to analyse two Late Antique domestic spaces that have been identified as libraries: Room 7 in the so-called Theodosian Palace of Stobi (North Macedonia), the provincial capital of the province of Macedonia Salutaris; and Room 10 in the villa of Fuente Álamo (Puente Genil, Spain), a Roman site located along a road that connected the coastal cities of the Mediterranean and Corduba, the provincial capital of Baetica. These paired case studies demonstrate the utility of shape grammar as a method for identifying functional spaces in archaeological contexts.
The Iron Age tumuli around ancient Gordion provide a unique window into coalescing processes of craft specialization, elite self-definition, monumentality, and intercommunity social interactions in central Anatolia between ca. 850 and 525 Bc. This paper examines the use of timber in the construction of tomb chambers at Gordion through the lenses of social value and social capital and a quantitative comparison of tomb chamber dimensions. It finds a close relationship between monumental architecture, tumulus construction, and the creation of an elite, aristocratic class based on the accumulation of social capital, enacted through the acquisition and display of timber during the ninth century Bc, the Early Phrygian period. The transportation of timber from beyond the immediate hinterland, the skillful crafting employed for tomb chamber construction, the element of enchantment imparted by the scale and concentration of timber as used in a chamber, and the transformative processes of the funerary rite all establish that timber was a socially valued good at Iron Age Gordion. Groups burying in tumuli appear to have competed for its acquisition and use in mortuary architecture, evident in the close correlation between tumulus size, chamber size, and maximum timber size, in particular during the ninth century Bc when compared with the roughly 300-year-long period of inhumation-tumulus construction that followed. Access to and competition over this socially valued good were important processes in the development of new elite ideologies, which included attempts at the establishment of hereditary aristocratic status, a valuation of social capital. As a specialized craft tied to this social and ideological change, carpentry appears to have operated within an aristocratic mode of production; that is, it was shaped by an ethos of distinction and legitimation.
The use of anthropomorphic ossuaries, so-called 'canopic urns', is a burial custom documented during the seventh and sixth centuries Bc in the territory of the Etruscan city-state of Clevsi/Clusium, modern Chiusi (Tuscany, Central Italy). This particular type of ossuary represents a human body and serves as an ideal portrait of the deceased after the destructive act of cremation. The necropolis of Tolle, located in the western part of this territory, has yielded 136 of these canopic urns, which is the largest collection on record from undisturbed contexts. In this study, we present an integrated analysis of the canopic urns, a wide range of associated archaeological data and osteological data of cremated human and faunal remains. Our aim was to test the correspondence between gender attributions on the basis of the iconography of the urns, grave goods and the biological profile of the deceased, according particular emphasis to the relationship between sex and gender. The resulting 95.6% correspondence is not only remarkably high but also allows us to describe funerary behaviour, gendered roles and identities in this Etruscan community.
Northwest Africa has long been portrayed as passive and peripheral within broader narratives of exchange, mobility and transformation in later Mediterranean prehistory. Drawing on archaeological, radiocarbon and genetic data, this paper reconsiders the region between ca. 3800 and 500 BC as an active and dynamic crossroads bridging the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Sahara. It traces long-term changes in the social landscape, settlement patterns, material culture, architecture and agricultural practices. From the emergence of large open-air farming settlements during the Final Neolithic (ca. 3800-2900 BC) to northwest Africas' integration into Atlantic Beaker exchange networks in the Copper Age (ca. 2900-2200 BC), the study challenges older diffusionist models by highlighting local agency and innovation. The Bronze Age (ca. 2200-800 BC) is shown to be characterised by a mosaic of burial traditions, metal use and mobility, while the Mauretanian 1 period (ca. 800-500 BC) witnessed sustained interactions with Phoenician communities. Yet rather than a narrative of cultural imposition, the evidence points to selective adaptation and hybridisation, revealing how local communities actively shaped the regions' socioeconomic and cultural dynamics.
Cemeteries are a primary source of evidence for the late prehistoric and early historical periods in Sicily. An abundance of tomb goods is available for study from modern republications of 'legacy data', especially for the southeast of the island, which was a focal point of Greek colonization in the central Mediterranean. This area also contains an unusual concentration ofFinal Bronze andIron Age sites, which permits an extended view of indigenous cultural development over six centuries or more. Adopting an empirical approach, the article compares dress items, tools, weapons and pottery from four key sites- Pantalica, Cassibile, Monte Finocchito and Monte Casasia-which were major centres of indigenous population at various times between ca. 1200 and ca. 550 Bc. Several trends and patterns are identified that enhance our understanding of continuity and change, interaction and ritual practices in relation to cultural identity over a period that also encompassed Greek and Phoenician colonization. Comparisons between burials at Finocchito, Syracuse and mainland Greece from the eighth and seventh centuries Bc highlight bilateral and asymmetrical aspects of cultural interaction between indigenous people and Greek settlers in Sicily.
This paper investigates the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the northern Adriatic by testing theoretical models of Neolithization through a review ofthe available radiocarbon evidence. While our understanding of the spread of farming in Europe has improved significantly in recent years, especially due to an increasing body of ancient DNA evidence, this does not seem to be the case for the northern Adriatic. Here, not only is there a lack of ancient genetic material, but significant changes in landscape configuration caused by postglacial sea-level rise have affected archaeological visibility. Unresolved aspects of the transition include the scarcity of Late Mesolithic sites, the debated role of hunter-gatherers, and the swift establishment of a fully developed farming economy. In this paper, chronological data obtained from radiocarbon dating is used to argue for a s'pectrum ofpossibilities', with different dynamics in different subregions and different lines of evidence supporting distinct mechanisms of Neolithization, often with an equifinal outcome. It is shown that the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the northern Adriatic occurred over the entirety of the sixth millennium Bc, but also that different readings of the data suggest leapfrog colonization and frontier mobility occurring in different areas, or even in a single subregion.
Anthropomorphic figurines from a variety of ancient cultures are described in academic and public-facing discourse as being s'teatopygous'. Such figurines are interpreted as displaying s'teatopygia', an accumulation of fatty tissue in the hips, thighs, and/or buttocks. This terminology, first introduced in British travel writing to describe the bodies of peoples, and particularly women, from southern Africa, became embedded with racist, misogynistic, and fatphobic connotations. 'Steatopygia' and its related word forms entered archaeological discourse in 1896 with Petrie and Quibells' report on their excavations at the sites of Naqada and Ballas in Upper Egypt. This article examines how Petrie and Quibell deployed the language of s'teatopygia'to characterize the Predynastic figurines from their excavations in support of their racializing theories about the early history of Upper Egypt. Petrie and Quibells' treatment of the anthropomorphic figurines from Naqada and Ballas offers new insight into Petries' previously noted role in entrenching racially focused lines of interpretation into the fields of ancient archaeology and art history. After 1896, s'teatopygia' became a standard taxonomic category in the study of prehistoric, Predynastic, and Neolithic figurines from across the wider Mediterranean region. This article examines how Petrie and other scholars, including Evans, constructed these racialized and gendered interpretations, which pathologize Black, female, and fat bodies, leading to modern scholarship that perpetuates outdated and harmful ideas while disregarding the objects' individual archaeological and cultural contexts. After showing how this language has obstructed more productive lines of research, the paper offers ways of approaching this terminology and the future study of ancient figurines.
Seafarers are subject to a distinctive set of circumstances that differentiate their lived experiences from those of populations living and working ashore. In the ancient Mediterranean, there is evidence that the particular hazards of life at sea led to the development of distinctive ritual practices and cultural narratives. Textual sources and the material evidence of stone anchors in port sanctuaries have been used by scholars to trace such practices and to propose the existence of transcultural rituals for the eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age. Such studies provide a solid foundation for further research, but questions remain about the extent to which discursive and material practices were interwoven and how these rituals were situationally embedded and related to other practices across local and transregional non-seafaring milieus. The present study analyses this assemblage of maritime ritual practices as a socio-material network comprised of people, things, and narratives, using the discursive written and visual sources with the bodily practices identifiable in the archaeological record in a more-than-human network.
Excavations at & Zcaron;ukovica Cave (Kor & ccaron;ula Island, Croatia) have yielded evidence of Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic occupations. A layer dated to 6400-5900 cal Bc contained commingled lithics, potsherds, wild and domesticated animal bones, mollusk shells, personal ornaments and human remains attributable to the latest hunter-gatherers and the earliest farmers in the region. We argue that people who practiced these different subsistence strategies occasionally came into contact and that the people buried at & Zcaron;ukovica led lives fed by hunting, gathering and fishing but that also featured certain cultural behaviors adopted from newly arrived farmers.
This paper reviews current trends in research on small islands in Greece and argues for the value of comparative approaches to their study. A number of projects have taken place on small islands in Greece in recent years, and a natural next step is to view these case studies side by side, in order to make comparisons between archipelagoes. Such comparative analyses represent an important opportunity to develop a broader archaeology of small islands as types of Mediterranean microecologies that also have global relevance. Here, I outline such a framework based on examples from Greece. In particular, spatial analyses of island size, marginality, and connectivity in relation to local and regional networks suggest a robust (though not determinative) role for biogeographic approaches in the analysis and interpretation of small-island histories. At the same time, we can identify certain types of small-island behaviors that extend well beyond settlement and occupation-including food production, seasonal use, mineral extraction, maritime movement, military action, and ritual activity-across several archipelagoes. We might expect similar patterns elsewhere in the Mediterranean (and beyond).
