The large-scale accumulation of goods is a widely recognized, but little studied, feature of early urbanization in Mesopotamia. Current research links the mobilization of goods in early cities to the expansion of cross-regional trade routes. A related aspect of urban growth is the virtual disappearance of intramural burials from the archaeological record. This contrasts with earlier phases where burials were incorporated into the routines of domestic life. Adapting Max Weber's insights regarding the origins of modern capitalist accumulation in changing forms of religious practice, this paper will trace the changing moral context of economic behaviour by examining long-term patterns of burial in the transition from village to urban life. The momentous social changes that accompanied the urban revolution transformed relationships between the living, the dead and the world of goods. Trajectories of accumulation reinforced by the provisioning of the deceased were reversed at the onset of urbanization, as the dead were expelled from the context of the living. The flow of commodities was now regulated by emerging forms of religious institution that fostered a culture of capital accumulation in rapidly developing urban centres.

Present in the Trans-Pecos rock art of west Texas are many motifs intelligible within hunter-gatherer ontological frameworks. These motifs—including human figures missing heads and limbs, figures with disproportionately large eyes, polymelia and pilo-erection—are concerned with somatic transformations and distortions experienced in altered states of consciousness. Ethnographic analogies also demonstrate that other Trans-Pecos features—smearing, rubbing and chipping of pigment and incorporation of natural inequalities of the rock surfaces into images—are evidence of kinetic experiences or embodied processes, including the important interaction with the ‘veil’ that separates one tier of the cosmos from others. By exploring the related concepts of embodiment, somatic transformation and process within non-Western ontologies, I offer a unified but multi-component explanation for the meanings and motivations behind several Trans-Pecos rock-art motifs. I also address the consumption of rock art in west Texas—how it was viewed and used by the original artists and subsequent viewers to shape, maintain and challenge ideologies and identities.

This study approaches the material world of the Neo-Assyrian period in Mesopotamia from the theoretical and methodological standpoint of the field of sensory archaeology. Analysis of relevant royal inscriptions, administrative tablets, bas-reliefs and artefacts excavated from the palaces in the Assyrian capital cities of Nimrud, Khorsabad and Nineveh demonstrates that the Assyrian kings and their courtly advisors participated in activities of biopolitics. The study identifies several phenomena and features of the Assyrian world, including palaces that served as sensorial envelopes, commensal feasts, travelling processions, water-control projects and libation rituals that the Neo-Assyrian royal authority deployed in attempts to control sensory experiences. At the same time, the study reconstructs the sensory experiences of Assyrian bodies as they passed through royally curated structures and landscapes.

This article supplements current dialogue on the archaeology of slavery, offering an Indian Ocean counterpoint to a topic that has largely focused on the Atlantic world. It also delves into the essentially uncharted domain of the archaeology of indentured labour. New plural societies, characterized by cultural hybridity, were created around the world as a consequence of labour diasporas in the late historic period. What do these societies look like during the process of nation building and after independence? Can we study this development through archaeology? Focusing on Mauritius, this paper discusses the complexities of the island, and how it can be representative of similar newly formed plural societies in the Indian Ocean. During French and British imperial rule, the island served as an important trading post for a range of European imperial powers. These varied groups initiated the movement and settlement of African, Indian and Chinese transplanted communities. By exploring the dynamic nature of inter-group interaction on Mauritius, this paper emphasizes the nuanced nature of how different peoples arrived and made the island their home. Mauritius played a vital role in the transportation of forced and free labour, both within and beyond this oceanic world, and offers an important viewpoint from which to survey the ways in which historical archaeology can improve our understanding of the broader archaeo-historical processes of which these diasporas were an integral feature. The paper focuses on the outcomes of settlement, as viewed through the complex practices that underpin local food culture, the use and development of language and the way materials are employed for the expression of identity. The article also traces the roots of contemporary cultural retention for indentured labourers to administrative decisions made by the British, and ultimately explores how heritage and language can provide a powerful lens on mechanisms of cultural expression. In addition to illustrating the nuanced and multifaceted nature of group interaction on Mauritius itself, this article raises an issue of broader relevance—the need for historical archaeologists to give greater consideration to the Indian Ocean, rather than focusing on the Atlantic world. This would allow us to achieve a more informed understanding of European slave trading and associated systems of labour migration within a more global framework.

Previous discussions of the origins of writing in the Ancient Near East have not incorporated the neuroscience of literacy, which suggests that when southern Mesopotamians wrote marks on clay in the late fourth millennium, they inadvertently reorganized their neural activity, a factor in manipulating the writing system to reflect language, yielding literacy through a combination of neurofunctional change and increased script fidelity to language. Such a development appears to take place only with a sufficient demand for writing and reading, such as that posed by a state-level bureaucracy; the use of a material with suitable characteristics; and the production of marks that are conventionalized, handwritten, simple and non-numerical. From the perspective of Material Engagement Theory (MET), writing and reading represent the interactivity of bodies, materiality and brains: movements of hands, arms and eyes; clay and the implements used to mark it and form characters; and vision, motor planning, object recognition and language. Literacy is a cognitive change that emerges from and depends upon the nexus of interactivity of the components.

A community is an active assemblage of human and non-human elements bound together by interactions. Archaeologies of communities shed light on sets of overlapping and geographically emplaced assemblages of individuals, practices, spaces, buildings, objects, animals and landscapes. This article presents an archaeology of communities based a remarkably well preserved Late Formative (ad 1–500) patio group at Khonkho Wankane, Bolivia. Excavation data provide a high-resolution chronology and document two varieties of assemblages: (1) those that played a greater role in biologically and socially reproducing the community, such as daily food and tool production; and (2) those that played a greater role in its transformation, such as gatherings, work parties and construction projects. In the patio group, intimate meetings took place in small, private spaces where incense was burned. Larger gatherings took place in an outdoor space where painted Kalasasaya small jars and bowls were active elements in interactions between residents and visitors. These events most likely involved work parties that contributed to the physical and social construction of the community. Assemblages at multiple scales built a diverse Late Formative community, which played a principal role in regional interaction networks. Within a few generations of residents leaving their homes in Khonkho, local and regional interactions generated the emergence of a state at Tiwanaku.

Post-mortem manipulations of the body were common at Mesolithic–Neolithic sites along the Danube River. During assessment of disarticulated human remains from Lepenski Vir, an unusual set of incisions (notches) were observed on the diaphysis of a human left radius along with a few cut-marks. Very few studies have attempted to distinguish clearly the characteristics of these modifications. All incisions were examined using a Scanning Electron Microscope and a Focus Variation Microscope that generated measurable three-dimensional digital models. Our results indicate that, on the basis of their micro-morphometric features, qualitative and quantitative distinctions can be made between cut-marks and notches, a methodology which can be applied to other engraved bones. Cut-marks, accidentally produced during flesh removal, were more irregular, longer, narrower and shallower than the notches. The notches, produced by a ‘nick and slice’ motion (pressure was applied to the bone, then the tool was pulled in one direction), were deliberately engraved. This engraved human bone is a rare example within a Prehistoric European context, possibly a form of notation, marking or counting a series of (important) events.

The formation of a state on Crete at the beginning of the second millennium bc has usually been considered under the secondary state paradigm. Most explanations rely on the role of conspicuous consumption and emulation mechanisms at a time when Cretan elites were exposed to the developed stratified systems of the east Mediterranean. A careful review of the data, especially those derived from funerary contexts, struggles to identify such dynamics but reveals a varied range of identities being negotiated and redefined simultaneously at the local and regional level. Informed by ethnographic parallels, an alternative model for Crete is proposed in which change is understood as a social phenomenon that involved a wide proportion of the population and brought broad benefits that sustained the adoption and development of the transformed systems. Crete is presented as a rich archaeological example that may also help in rethinking similar processes in other parts of the Mediterranean and further afield.