Abstract A well-preserved late Hellenistic workshop in the agora of Kos provides a rare opportunity to examine pigment production embedded in a multicrafting setting. Excavations of a room in the eastern stoa have revealed fire-structures, Egyptian blue pellets, a range of mineral earth pigments, litharge rods, lead slag, tools and other production debris, demonstrating both pigment manufacture and lead metallurgy within a single workshop space. This archaeological evidence points to an alternative mode of Egyptian blue production, one that departs from procedures described in ancient literary sources and those inferred from other archaeologically known workshops.
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.
