It is now generally accepted that there are no human societies which are truly egalitarian; this also true of bonobos and chimpanzees, among whom rank is inherited. If it were true of the common ancestor of Homo and Pan, there would have been (inherited) social inequality throughout our hominin ancestry. The problem is how to find it. It is also accepted that artefacts play an active and important role in our social lives; thus, socially defined differences may be reflected among the very simplest of artefacts. A case study of flaked stone from southwestern Egypt, dating to about 7000–8000 years ago, suggests that social differences can, indeed, be identified within very simple artefacts — in this case, plain, unmodified stone flakes. Using unmodified stone flakes, I explore the possibility of identifying not merely social difference but, specifically, inherited social difference in the Upper Palaeolithic of Europe and among early African hominins more than 2,000,000 years ago.

Detailed information gleaned from the approximately 800-year-old proto-Taíno petroglyph boulders at the Jacaná ball-court in south-central Puerto Rico highlights their research potential, particularly when based on detailed field observations and placed within an ethno-historic context.

At issue in this article is the soundness of archaeological inferences which proceed stepwise from data about the material culture of Middle Stone Age humans, via assumptions about their symbolic behaviour, to the conclusion that they had modern language. Taking as paradigmatic the inference that the humans who inhabited Blombos Cave in South Africa some 75,000 years ago had fully syntactical language, the article argues that the inferential step from symbolic behaviour to modern language lacks the required warrant. This step, it is shown, is not underpinned by an adequate bridge theory of the putative links between symbolic behaviour and modern language. The bridge theories invoked to date to shore up the Blombos inference are flawed, for instance, in that they incorporate untenable assumptions about language, including an incorrect view of the expressive power of relatively simple linguistic means.

This article investigates the shaping of place through memory and emotion. In particular it explores how, by engaging with particular kinds of materials, people texture locales in ways which help to structure future actions. By examining the manner in which deceased human bodies were engaged with at the British Neolithic site of Hambledon Hill, this article argues that we can trace the creation of these mnemonic and emotional geographies and so add to our understanding of how and why traditions of practice, including the deposition of human bone, were maintained through time.

Passage tombs are the most elaborate monuments that were built during the Irish and British Neolithic, not only because of their complex monumental architecture but also because they are the only type of tomb that has carvings and such a diversity of funerary objects. This article focuses on the spatial organization of these three components of passage tombs and identifies several recurrent structures that are classified into three groups. From these spatial structures, an abstract elementary model is proposed that helps to understand the conceptual principles and the symbolic significations that guided the construction, decoration and use of the monuments.

This article evaluates defensive works at the ancient hilltop centre of Yayno, Pomabamba, north highlands, Peru. Survey, mapping and sampling excavations show that its primaryoccupation dates to cal. AD 400–800, by groups of the Recuay tradition. At the centre of a network articulating small nearby farming villages, Yayno features an impressive series of natural and built defensive strategies. These worked in concert to protect the community from outsiders and keep internal groups physically segregated. The fortifications are discussed in relation to local political organization and a martial aesthetic in northern Peru during the period. Recuay elite identity and monumentalism arose out of local corporate traditions of hilltop dwelling and defence. Although such traditions are now largely absent in contemporary patterns of settlement, an archaeology of warfare at Yayno has repercussions for local understandings of the past.