Abstract This study explores how violence has influenced the acquisition of human remains for museum collections. A total of n =365 individuals with detailed documentation curated at the Department of Anthropology, Natural History Museum Vienna (DA-NHMW) are analysed to detect and utilize specific patterns, also with the aim to make predictions about the context of violence they were acquired from. This is done by comparing historical records with skeletal markers to identify patterns linking violence in historical and osteological data. The presented research enhances the ability of the bioarchaeological community to identify violence in museum collections, especially those from countries with limited colonial activity, such as Austria. The findings will also inform ethical guidelines for museum practice at the DA-NHMW and assist curators in recognizing questionable contexts when curating human remains. Ultimately, this work will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of violence in museum collections and support ethical stewardship.
Abstract Although grave goods have been a major concern in archaeology since its inception, the question of what objects buried with the dead actually do—in both ritual and emotional terms—has remained relatively opaque and understudied. This paper addresses the issue directly, illuminating the ways graves goods served to unstitch the dead from the ‘objective’ quotidian life of the ‘self’ and enter into ‘subjective’ communities of the dead; how objects buried in graves can simultaneously belong to the dead and the living, playing an importantly paradoxical role in navigating journeys between the needs and identities of the living, dying and the dead and the role of grave goods in addressing and transforming the anxieties caused by death and the creation of positive psychological emotional benefits, community cohesion and solidarity. To develop these ideas, I draw attention to the similarities between the concept of ‘transitional objects’, which serve to bridge subjectivity and objectivity (inner and outer worlds), and grave goods, both of which can be understood in terms of ritual processes and ritualized acts.
Abstract I present here a path for thinking differently about the archaeology of urbanization, one that is explicitly rooted in social zooarchaeology. I argue first that studies of early urbanism have failed to take into account the multispecies nature of cities. In order to develop a framework for thinking about the role of animals in urbanization, I draw on the concept of affordances. I argue that explicit engagement with animal affordances offers a means of developing a new methodological toolkit for social zooarchaeological research. I focus in particular on behavioural affordances to explain how the sociality of herds underpins the world’s first cities. A case study based on zooarchaeological analysis conducted at the site of Hamoukar in northern Mesopotamia illustrates the potential of a multispecies approach to the world’s first cities. My goal is to reinvigorate archaeological studies of urbanism and urbanization by opening up space for thinking differently about the social foundations upon which cities were built.
Abstract Fossil remains of a large pantherine have been discovered from Pilandok Cave on Palawan Island, Philippines. A total of nine specimens are attributed to the tiger ( Panthera tigris ; harimau/halimaw ) and these derive from an archaeological midden layer that dates to the Last Glacial Maximum. These rare finds add to the limited Late Pleistocene fossil inventory of the tiger in the archipelago. Taphonomic analysis of tiger bone surface modifications show evidence for human butchery, which are interpreted as cut marks for obtaining tiger pelt or paws. Three deer bone specimens show marks of large carnivore ravaging and these gnawing marks are attributed to the tiger. The Pilandok Cave evidence supports the hypothesis that the Sunda tiger once resided on Palawan during the Late Pleistocene. The evidence also demonstrates a specific treatment and use of tiger body parts, a practice that is potentially related to conceptions of power and personhood attributable to a formidable being such as the harimau . During this period, tigers were once part of the plurispecies social world that humans co-inhabited.
Gold mask burials constitute a remarkable cultural phenomenon linking diverse landscapes between the northern Aegean and the central Balkans. Their primary manifestation includes full-face masks and gold foils used to cover the body, accompanied by an ostentatious, largely standardized set of grave goods dating to the second half of the sixth century bce. The roots of this practice lie in earlier centuries, with modest gold sheets placed over the mouth. During the Late Archaic period, full masks and mouthpieces appeared in parallel, reflecting shared ritual traditions. This study traces the practice beyond the historical territory of the Macedonian kingdom, arguing against direct links to Macedonian ethnicity. By examining shared ceramic technology and settlement patterns, the paper suggests that the spread of this funerary custom was driven by medium- to large-scale mobility. This model favours fluid cultural interactions over the 'heroic' narratives of large-scale invasions or political expansions previously presumed to have occurred across these culturally diverse landscapes.
This study explores the reception and adaptation of Roman and Roman-inspired materials in South Asia and Southeast Asia during the early historic period. Drawing on a database of over 300 objects, it compares materials such as glass vessels, beads, engraved gems, and coin adaptations. While South Asia shows greater diversity and quantity of Roman imports, Southeast Asia demonstrates selective appropriation and creative transformation, often filtered through South Asia, particularly peninsular India. Southeast Asia favoured high-quality imports and innovative hybrid adaptations blending Mediterranean and Indic elements. In contrast, South Asian adaptations tended either to evoke Roman originals more closely using easily accessible raw materials such as in the case of terracotta bullae, or, when made from more valuable raw materials, often to diverge more substantially from the Roman prototypes. This pattern is further complicated by the emergence of Sri Lanka as a key crossroads in Indian Ocean networks after the fourth century ce. The study highlights regional differences in integrating Roman materials, revealing unique cultural priorities and engagement with global trade networks.
This paper investigates the lived experiences of individuals confined within two major European psychiatric institutions, Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Portugal and the Cadillac-sur-Garonne psychiatric hospital in France, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using a people-centred approach, we integrate spatial analysis, archival research, material culture and oral testimony to examine how these institutions worked as spaces of social segregation and emotional discipline. Rather than viewing psychiatric hospitals just as sites of medical care, we critically assess their roles in reinforcing sanist, classist and gendered systems of control. Internment partly erased legal, social and personal identities, to an extent attempting to render patients 'non-persons'. We want to change the current perspective about the dimensions of institutional life by highlighting the dehumanization, mortality rate and emotional experiences of the individual inside these institutions. We support an archaeology that acknowledges the structural violence of such institutions and the resilience of those who lived within them, seeking to restore voice and dignity to marginalized histories.
This article discusses the accessibility of sensory experience in archaeological research by proposing an approach that articulates the role imagination plays in the investigation of empirical data from the distant past. Building on interdisciplinary work in sensory studies, this article argues that sensory experiences are both culturally constructed and biologically mediated, emphasizing how the dynamic interplay between perception and materiality reveals the values embedded in ancient sensory-based desires. The author concludes by applying the theoretical and methodological approaches discussed throughout to a case study on ancient Egyptian head cones, demonstrating how archaeology can uncover the complex and consequential nature of ancient sensory experience. Sensory archaeology may advance not only by developing new ways to answer questions, but by reconsidering how we ask them.
This paper explores the dynamics of power and legitimacy between the late Roman Empire and the societies beyond its northern and eastern frontiers, arguing that shared understandings of political authority, developed through centuries of interaction, facilitated the establishment of post-Roman kingdoms. Unlike the more formalized relationships with client kingdoms along the empire's eastern and north African frontiers, interactions along the northern and eastern European borders were more fluid. The paper posits that gift-giving, particularly of imperial brooches and gold medallions, was central to establishing political relationships between the Roman emperor and rulers beyond the frontier. These gifts created networks of obligation, with recipients potentially owing peace, tribute, or military service. A newly identified imperial brooch from Ureki in Georgia suggests a wider geographical reach of these networks. However, by the fifth century, rulers beyond the frontier began to imitate Roman symbols of power, commissioning their own versions from local craftworkers. By doing so, they cut themselves loose from earlier ties of obligation. The paper concludes that this long history of interaction and mimesis of Roman power structures enabled populations beyond the Roman frontier to understand and ultimately emulate Roman imperial power.
Stylistic variation has been a central concern in the study of prehistoric pottery in central Europe. In this paper, we approach stylistic variation from a visual cognition perspective, focusing on the effects that stylistic attributes of vessels have on patterns of attention. A free-viewing eye-tracking experiment was conducted using pottery vessels from central Germany spanning from 5500 to 1 bce. Our results show that, among modern observers, decorative patterns and motifs primarily guide visual attention over attributes like shape or luminance. Attentional patterns were associated with variation in decorations: vessels with spiralled or punctured motifs (Early-Middle Neolithic) tended to attract more attention, whereas the undecorated (Younger Neolithic), less decorated, burnished or linear motifs (Bronze Age), or standardized and symmetrical patterns (Late Iron Age) of later styles, were less visually engaging. Considering the archaeological context of pottery stylistic changes in central Germany, a provisional explanation is that increased standardization and specialization and the general displacement of interest towards other crafts reduced the importance of pottery for visually communicating important socio-cultural cues, producing fewer captivating designs. This study does not claim equivalence between modern and past populations, but demonstrates the potential of eye-tracking techniques for investigating visual-cognitive responses to stylistic change.
Although bronze bells from the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046-256 bce) have been widely studied, their roles within their ontological contexts remain underexplored. This article integrates archaeological evidence, textual records and posthumanist theories to reconsider how the capacities of ancestors and bells were configured and how the personhood of living and deceased elites was embodied in the Zhou worlds. Focusing on the tomb (M190) of Lord Qiu of Zeng (r. c. 675-650/650-625 bce), the study examines how the Zhou ontologies instantiated in this specific case. Qiu's inscribed bell set was originally commissioned to emulate ancestral de and invoke their numinous power against the competing Chu state. However, the haphazard deposition of the bells and the deliberate disintegration of their rack in his tomb suggest a subsequent derealization of their capacities following the rapprochement between Zeng and Chu. In this funerary context, Qiu's personhood was re-embodied alongside the reconfiguration of the capacities of ancestors, bells and burial goods, demonstrating how the relationship between the living, deceased, ancestors and ritual media shifted in response to changing historical circumstances.
In this paper, we reconsider the relationship between continuity and change in archaeology by arguing that material continuities do not necessarily imply conservatism or resistance to change but function as precondition for transformation. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's notion of thought as a 'play of forms', we conceptualize architecture as an active medium of sense-making, through which societies reframe novelty within familiar epistemic traditions. We examine two case studies: proliferation of compound coresidential enclosures (CCE) in the Central Andes and adoption of the vihara in Angkorian Cambodia. Though often interpreted as ruptures or external impositions, both forms drew upon existing religious and political traditions, making new social projects legible. Over time, these architectures reorganized social relations and became central to emerging formations: Andean ayllus and Khmer Theravada Buddhism. By reframing continuity as a resource for sense-making rather than conservatism, we argue that transformation emerges through creative reworking of tradition, situating thought-in-action at the core of historical change.
Archaeological zoontologies have tended to focus on animals with whom people of the past were regularly entangled, either in their everyday lives as companion and work animals or at least seasonally as favoured prey. In contrast, I focus on an archaeological case study representing a more 'eventful' form of human-animal relations: encounters between Indigenous peoples and manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostis) in precolonial Florida, USA. I review archaeological evidence that manatees were uncommon in precolonial Florida, probably only occasionally migrating north from the warmer waters of the Caribbean, thus limiting encounters with people to as little as one or two every few hundred years. I then consider both the potential transformative and stabilizing effects of such infrequent encounters for precolonial Native Americans and-to the extent possible-for manatees. Haraway famously emphasized that 'becoming is always becoming with', but for people and manatees in precolonial Florida, becoming may have been becoming with or without.
This paper explores the importance and implications of a multivocal and ethnographic approach to archaeological praxis and interpretation of artefacts. Drawing from post-colonial and archaeological disenfranchisement perspectives, an attempt has been made to review the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and other agencies' strategies and their resultant hegemonic dominance over archaeological sites and narratives, thus marginalizing local and indigenous narratives and knowledge systems. Focusing on certain Jain heritage sites of Purulia, biased conservation and preservation strategies have been observed along with the collection of neighbouring local community narratives which revealed a sense of apathy towards archaeological authorities along with a sense of pride towards the material revealing the disenfranchisement of material heritage. The paper thus explicates the importance of the inclusion of multivocality and ethnographic methodologies into the archaeological praxis, allowing for the inclusion of minority narratives and recognizing the importance of multiple ontologies and epistemes.
This study presents an analysis of funerary practices at the site of Valdelasilla (Illescas, Toledo, Spain). The methodology integrates the morphological study of burial structures, anthropological analyses, a consideration of grave goods and the radiocarbon dating of human bone. The chronological data indicate funerary activity at the site from the Late Neolithic to the Chalcolithic period. Bayesian modelling confirms the establishment of a planned cemetery by the end of the fifth millennium cal. bc, featuring small burial chambers organized around a larger tomb enclosed by a ditch. The burial chambers, which were constructed from wood, clay and small stones, created distinct spaces for the deceased. This embryonic form of monumentalization, the funerary practices observed and the early chronology link Valdelasilla to other peninsular cemeteries associated with the emergence of megalithism, now identified for the first time on the plateau. The location of the necropolis offers new insights into the role of inland regions in the emergence of Iberian and European megalithism.
There has been much discussion of various lines of evidence-genetic, bioarchaeological, and cultural-phylogenetic-that indicate patrilineal and patrilocal kinship systems predominated in Neolithic to Bronze Age Europe. These patterns were unique to this time and place, however, and evidence from prior periods and from other regions outside of Europe suggest a broader diversity in kinship systems that was replaced over time. Moreover, practices such as cousin marriage might have emerged in distinct regions, influenced by subsistence strategies and particular lifeways. In considering this diversity, we propose that the patrilineal/patrilocal developments observed in Europe during the Neolithic and Bronze Age were a distinctive prehistoric process among livestock herders and agriculturalists who dispersed into this region. Patrilineal kinship spread with these dispersals, as it now appears that matriliny was practised at Neolithic & Ccedil;atalh & ouml;y & uuml;k and in Iron Age Britain, for example. In this context, we can argue for different kinship systems in continental Europe before, during and after the Neolithic.
This article aims to analyse the formation of the Brze & sacute;& cacute; Kujawski culture (4350-4000 bce) through the lens of ethnogenesis, which refers to the creation of a new ethnic identity. The authors employ the concept of the ethnographic landscape to describe the material and contextual environment in which this process occurred. By conducting a comparative analysis of two central settlements, Os & lstrok;onki 1 and Brze & sacute;& cacute; Kujawski 4, located 8 km apart, the authors explore the formation of new communities. The proximity of these villages, facilitating everyday interactions, is assumed to provide insights into the similarities and differences characterizing the ethnogenesis process. Similarities arise from bonds that enhance security, while differences persist as expressions of past heritage. This approach aims to deepen the understanding of changes in the Polish Lowlands' ethnographic landscape and uncover processes of creating new social networks driven by interregional migrations, copper exchange and the assimilation of hunter-gatherer groups.
Biological determinism continues to shape how kinship is defined, from research to repatriation proceedings. This privileging of biological relatedness reflects and reinforces dominant 'Western' frameworks of kinship, often sidelining culturally-specific, Indigenous, and community-centered understandings of family and social belonging. Advances in archaeogenomic technologies today offer unprecedented insight into past human societies, and these advances have the potential to forge new, multivocal, and inclusive approaches to kinship. However, the application of ancient DNA risks reproducing power imbalances and epistemic hierarchies when genetic connections are assumed to be the primary or sole measure of social ties. This paper examines the conceptual and ethical implications of privileging DNA as a measure of kinship, emphasizing how such practices can obscure complex social realities, undermine self-determination, and reify narrow and essentialist understandings of identity. We call for critical reflection about the agents and motivations of archaeogenomics research, on the role of genetics in defining relationships and urge that multiple knowledge systems be considered in studies of kinship, both past and present.
Houses and unilineal descent groups have been treated as different types of social phenomena in socio-cultural anthropology, and as borrowed for analysis of households and settlements in archaeology. This paper contends that houses and lineages, especially those configured by Crow-Omaha kinship terminologies, are better considered as perspectival variants, reflecting differences that are fundamentally synchronic versus diachronic. Crow-Omaha systems and house societies exhibit signal similarities, occupying an intermediate status between kin-based and class-based formations, and evidently derive in an evolutionary sense from prior 'Iroquois' or 'Dravidian' forms. Setting out the terms in which kinship systems should be considered if they are to serve as useful explanatory analogues for archaeological analysis, the paper then proceeds to examine Levi-Strauss's original inspiration for the 'house', i.e. societies of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. It is no coincidence, the present paper contends, that Kwakwaka'wakw, the archetypal house society is situated adjacent to a Crow-matrilineal series of communities that share a great deal in common with it culturally, as a result of centuries of exchange. In short, the house needs to re-attend to kinship structures, as descent groups need to be reconnected with exchange structures and alliance processes earlier elaborated by Levi-Strauss.
In recent years, palaeogenomics has significantly advanced our understanding of human population history and evolution. Emerging studies now employ ancient genomic data to explore biological relatedness in archaeological contexts, with a growing number of studies on the topic. These investigations probe, for instance, the role of biological kinship in burial organization and mortuary practices, shedding new light on the complexities of ancient and historical human societies. Our review surveys a few examples of these studies, scrutinizing the methods and interpretations of DNA-based kinship research. We discuss the overlap between biological relatedness and other forms of kinship, acknowledging the complexity of human relationships across time and cultures. Emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration, we advocate for integrating theoretical frameworks from sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, and Indigenous studies into palaeogenomics for a more thorough understanding of kinship in past societies. Additionally, we offer guidance throughout for newcomers venturing into using ancient DNA to study relatedness, reviewing key methodological aspects involved in biological relatedness inference and addressing common misconceptions, potential pitfalls, and methodological limitations.
