Beginning with Alexander Marshack's interpretation of engraved lines as lunar calendrical notations, a number of highly controversial claims have been made concerning the possible astronomical significance of Upper Palaeolithic images. These claims range from lunar notations, to solstice observances in caves, to constellation representations. Given the rare nature of artefacts and images that lend themselves to such interpretations, these claims are generally difficult to evaluate on the basis of archaeological data alone. However, comparative ethnology can provide at least a way of assessing the plausibility of such astronomical claims. If the premise is accepted that at least some of the Upper Palaeolithic groups were complex hunter-gatherers, then astronomical observances, or the lack of them, among ethnographic complex hunter-gatherers can help indicate whether astronomical observations were likely to have taken place among Upper Palaeolithic complex hunter-gatherers. A survey of the literature shows that detailed solstice observances were common among complex hunter-gatherers, often associated with the keeping of calendars and the scheduling of major ceremonies. Moreover, aggrandizers in complex hunter-gatherer societies often form ‘secret societies’ in which esoteric astronomical knowledge is developed. The existence of calendrical notations and secluded meeting places for secret-society members are suggested to be at least plausible interpretations for a number of Upper Palaeolithic caves and images.

Individuals with ‘extraordinary’ or ‘different’ minds have been suggested to be central to invention and the spread of new ideas in prehistory, shaping modern human behaviour and conferring an evolutionary advantage at population level. In this article the potential for neuropsychiatric conditions such as autistic spectrum disorders to provide this difference is explored, and the ability of the archaeological record to provide evidence of human behaviour is discussed. Specific reference is made to recent advances in the genetics of these conditions, which suggest that neuropsychiatric disorders represent a non-advantageous, pathological extreme of the human mind and are likely a by-product rather than a cause of human cognitive evolution.

The expansion of copper-base metallurgy in the mainland of Eurasia began in the Near East and ended in Southeast Asia. The recognition of this Southeast Asian metallurgical province followed in the wake of French colonial occupation of Cambodia and Laos in the nineteenth century. Subsequently, most research has concentrated in Thailand, beginning in the 1960s. A sound chronology is the prerequisite to identifying both the origins of the Bronze Age, and the social impact that metallurgy may have had on society. This article presents the revolutionary results of excavations at the site of Ban Non Wat in northeast Thailand within the broader cultural context of Southeast Asian prehistory, concluding that the adoption of copper-base metallurgy from the eleventh century BC coincided with the rise of wealthy social aggrandizers.

This article presents a comparative analysis of archaeological sites in northwest Iberia focusing on Neolithic spatial concepts and their materialization in different architectures from this period. The recently excavated site of Montenegro in Galicia is analysed to determine how the construction of circular enclosures reproduces the organizational model of space identified in monumental architectures elsewhere. The origin of these constructions, their functionality and their relation with other archaeological phenomena are explored to show how they are all different versions of the same concept. Finally the authors discuss what they consider their key point that the prevalence of circular design may be recognized behind the diverse materialities as an essential instrument of Neolithic societies which began to tame the world.

In this article, I discuss the ways in which animals act as ontological subjects — as other-than-human persons and as agents in myth and ritual. First I outline how humans conceive of and behave with animals and their remains in indigenous cosmologies using ethnographic and ethnohistoric examples from the Arctic, Subarctic and Amazonia. I then explore the archaeological evidence for indigenous ontologies along the coasts of Chukotka and Alaska, arguing that prehistoric hunters interacted with animals as agential persons, engaging in social practices intended to facilitate hunting success and avoid offending prey. Two forms of ritual activities are discussed: the use of hunting amulets and the caching of animal bones and antlers. I conclude that focusing on shamanism in the study of hunter-gatherer belief obscures the roles of hunters and their wives. Their thoughts and actions established and maintained relationships with prey animals and may be more productively conceptualized as dynamic social behaviours embedded within the context of daily life than as privileged ritual acts.

This article discusses the identity of the people buried in the Great Death Pit PG 1237, a mass grave of the Royal Cemetery of Ur, and the ways they died and entered the shaft. Admittedly, the evidence required to positively solve the many taphonomic and osteological questions involved does not exist, because of the way the site was excavated and published in the early twentieth century. Nonetheless, the original excavators’ skill and unquestioned care in mapping and recording still prepares the ground for new alternative interpretations. As the ‘Rams Caught in a Thicket’ (two statuettes found in the mass grave) may have been the front parts of lyres, and almost all the dead might have entered the shaft impersonating musicians, singers and dancers, the paramount importance of music in the funerals of Sumerian elites is emphasized. New radiographic evidence recently suggested that some of the buried persons were killed violently, refuting the traditional theory of a voluntary mass suicide by poison. The bodies of the victims might have been formally prepared and serially brought to the pit in burial groups. Stratigraphy and spatial distribution reveal consistent depositional patterns dictated by specific rituals, as already proposed on the basis of more limited evidence by other authors. Formal arrangement and ritualism, in turn, support Woolley's identification of the graves as sacred constructions and thus reaffirms their royal character. The article ends by considering the historical meaning of the nature of these impressive funerals at the verge of the political unification of Mesopotamia by the house of Sargon.

Coso Range rock drawings are a central subject and focus for debates positing alternative meanings and agents responsible for animal depictions in Great Basin prehistoric rock art. We present new evidence offering a middle ground between the divergent views of the ‘hunting religion, increase rites and overkill’ and the ‘shaman, visions and rain-making’ models. We argue that rock-art images, in general, possess multivocality and manifest imbricated conceptual metaphors operating on a variety of scales simultaneously. We recognize that Coso pictures, in one sense, metaphorically represent increase and renewal, human and animal fertility, and game animal magnification. Evidence for that perspective is presented including Coso bighorn with up-raised tails, ‘spirit arrows’, animals giving birth, those that appear pregnant, and an abundance of animals evidencing vitality and movement. Ritually adept shamans also appear to have often been the religious specialists or agents responsible for Coso rock art and the sources for fashioning these images were frequently visionary experiences.