Archaeological and ethnographic evidence from the Sepik coast of Papua New Guinea documents the survival in the western Pacific of a stylized symbol or motif — the so-called ‘Lapita face’ — on pottery and possibly other kinds of material items (such as wooden bowls and serving platters) for at least 3300 years. A plausible reason for the persistence of this iconography is that it has referred to ideas about the living and the dead, the human and the divine, and the individual and society that remained socially and spiritually profound and worth expressing long after the demise of Lapita as a distinct ceramic style. We detail evidence for saying that the ‘faces’ on Lapita vessels from thousands of years ago and certain stylized designs on historic and modern carved wooden bowls and platters from this coast are historically linked ways of alluding to sea turtles, creatures figuring prominently in the lore and cosmology of Pacific Islanders. Here we describe four prehistoric wares (or ‘phases’ or ‘periods’) in the Aitape ceramic sequence on the Sepik coast that, considered in series, fill the temporal gap between practices and beliefs in Lapita times and present-day realities in this part of the world.

Palaeolithic Art is generally thought to be based primarily upon the explicit conscious aspects of recognition and memory. Recent research into perception and cognition, however, has revealed a ‘hidden’ substructure of processing, known as implicit perception and memory, that functions in a different way to overt modes of cognisance but, yet, by dovetailing with consciously defined determinants helps to define how these are structured. As the making of Palaeolithic Art would have been contingent on the perceptual/recognition/visual memory system, it is therefore admirably suited to an understanding from the standpoint of implicit processes. Here I will demonstrate how the enduring features of this art can be investigated from the perspective of implicit, or covert, psychological factors and the consequences of this approach for the genesis of this art.

In October of 2002, Patricia A. Helvenston and Paul G. Bahn published a paper entitled ‘Desperately Seeking Trance Plants: Testing the “Three Stages of Trance” Model’. That paper presented a critique of the ‘Three Stages of Trance’ model as proposed by J.D. Lewis-Williams and T.A. Dowson in 1988 to account for mental imagery as perceived by people in ‘certain altered states of consciousness’ that they believed inspired Palaeolithic cave art. Helvenston & Bahn chose to publish their paper privately, but supplied the following summary of their argument. It is accompanied here by comments from a neuropsychologist (John L. Bradshaw) and a rock-art specialist (Christopher Chippindale).

Archaeologies of colonialism have have called for exploring the culturally dynamic entanglements of people and objects while acknowledging the violence that accompanied these entanglements. Heeding these calls requires attention to how the state and state power were materialized, particularly in settler colonies where state apparatuses advanced unevenly, insidiously and clumsily. Here, I explore how the (mis)understandings and (mis)apprehensions of people and places that accompanied the halting expansion of colonial frontiers were materialized. Focusing on southern Africa's Highveld and Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains, I offer anxiety as a framework for conceiving of colonialisms as epistemic encounters: processes of ‘making sense’ of new people, things and places based on material practices, empirical experience and desire. Through a narrative of the nineteenth-century Maloti-Drakensberg told with archival, archaeological and ethnographic materials, I revisit a longstanding trope of southern African archaeology and historiography: refugia from social distress. I argue that refuge can be taken as a sense-making practice rather than as reaction to stress. I close with thoughts on what an anxiety framework can offer the still-developing field of African historical archaeology.

In July 2006 archaeologists from the University of Bristol and Atkins Heritage embarked on a contemporary archaeology project with a difference. We ‘excavated’ an old (1991) Ford Transit van, used by archaeologists and later by works and maintenance teams at the Ironbridge Museum. The object: to see what can be learnt from a very particular, common and characteristic type of contemporary place; to establish what archaeologists and archaeology can contribute to understanding the way society, and specifically we as archaeologists, use and inhabit these places; and to challenge and critique archaeologies of the contemporary past. In this report we describe our excavation and situate it within a wider debate about research practice in contemporary archaeology.

The quest for the ‘when’ and ‘where’ of the world's earliest metallurgy has been dominating scholarly research on this topic for decades. This paper looks beyond the question of origins by discussing ‘how’ and ‘why’ metallurgy was invented. It looks into choices and skills involved in selection, experimentation and processing of distinctively coloured copper minerals and ores throughout c. 2000 years in the Balkans. The body of evidence is built around the currently earliest evidence for copper smelting, dated at c. 5000 bc and discovered in the Serbian Vinča culture site of Belovode. The ‘microstructure’ of a metal invention process is explored through optical and compositional analyses of a selection of copper minerals and metal production evidence: ores, slags, slagged sherds and metal droplets recovered from seven settlements in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, altogether dated between the late seventh and the late fifth millennia bc. This research suggests an independent technological trajectory of the emergence of metallurgy in the Balkans based on a unique technological meme, black and green mineral, which follows the evolution of early metallurgy from mono- to polymetallic within the fifth millennium bc.

Coinage occupies an unusual position in archaeological research. Thriving scholarship on numismatics and monetary history ensures that the objects themselves are well-studied, often seen as an indication of chronology and of stylistic and commercial links. Yet coins might also be analysed as artefacts, and explored as part of the symbolic world of material culture through which archaeologists understand meaning and value in past societies. Using a recently-excavated assemblage of medieval Kilwa-type coins from Songo Mnara on the East African Swahili coast, this article explores the multiple ways that value was ascribed and created through use, rejecting a simple dichotomy between substantive and formal value. Attention is given to the contexts of the coins, which enables a discussion of the relationship between power and the constitution of value, the circulation and use of coins among townspeople, and their use within ritual and commemorative activity.

Ethnography of the Tallensi shows how rights of access to shrines could be granted to people in other places and how beneficiaries may take with them samples of stone used at the mother shrine. Reasons for taking the samples are considered. It is suggested that Tallensi practice offers an analogy for selection and transfer of stone in the Neolithic of Britain and Ireland.

It is held that the study of complex societies can effectively focus on the human interactions that define communities. Given the operational primacy of architectural survey in archaeological investigations, with some prominent exceptions, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to how communities of varying scales can actually be identified using these data sets. This article weds a modified version of Yaeger and Canuto's (2000) ‘interactional approach’ to community identity with a materialist (empirical) body of method-theory known as space syntax in a discussion of community structure and systems of authority represented in the architectural structures and spaces of epicentral Teotihuacan, Mexico.

Early depictions of anthropomorphs in rock art provide unique insights into life during the deep past. This includes human engagements with the environment, socio-cultural practices, gender and uses of material culture. In Australia, the Dynamic Figure rock paintings of Arnhem Land are recognized as the earliest style in the region where humans are explicitly depicted. Important questions, such as the nature and significance of body adornment in rock art and society, can be explored, given the detailed nature of the human figurative art and the sheer number of scenes depicted. In this paper, we make a case for Dynamic Figure rock art having some of the earliest and most extensive depictions of complex anthropomorph scenes found anywhere in the world.

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.

A reexamination of the published data concerning PPNA Jericho is used to demonstrate that various building operations, especially the monumental buildings, were actively functioning in several social spheres, both at the inter-group and intra-group levels. At the inter-group level, the monumental buildings served as a means to establish a hold over an area with favourable resources. At the intra-group level, they functioned in founding and regulating new types of socioeconomic relations. Central themes in the changes occurring at this level include production intensification and the growing prominence of long-term delayed-return obligations within the socioeconomic system

Bu (Syrinx aruanus) shell arrangements are often found in ritual sites across Torres Strait. The position of such sites within Indigenous cosmologies has been ethnographically documented for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article historicizes Indigenous spiritscapes by tracking back in time the history of this particular material expression of spiritual belief in Western Torres Strait. We argue that the last c. 400 years saw major shifts in ritual engagements with seascapes in Western Torres Straits. These transformations may have been Indigenous responses to the traumatic events of early contact with European seafarers, in particular the earliest Spanish sailors of 1606.

The identification and analysis of invention is fundamental to understanding early societies. Yet invention tends to be only sporadically addressed by archaeologists, and then usually only within broader studies of innovation. Doubts concerning the ability of the archaeological record to yield data of sufficient quality to investigate invention, together with the perception that the concept leads inevitably to nineteenth-century societal narratives of technological progress, remain widespread. This paper reviews the theoretical approaches to invention in early societies with a particular focus on pyrotechnologies. It highlights the papers within this special section, which demonstrate the capacity of an integrated approach incorporating materials science, archaeology and archaeological theory to understand the processes of both invention and innovation underlying the appearance of pyrotechnologies and their relationships to early societies throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. It is argued that the importance of historical and contemporary debates on inventions, innovations and societies across the world continues to increase—and will do so with or without the active contribution of archaeologists.

Drawing on literature on social group identity, this article explores the possible meaning of the so-called lion pins from Hasanlu, Iran (c. 800 BC). The discussion raises the possibility that the Hasanlu pins served as highly visible emblems of within-group cohesion with respect to outsiders, while at the same time reinforcing hierarchies within Hasanlu society. The lion pins are examined in the light of other unusual types of pins from elsewhere in western Iran, and in the context of the specific historical conditions facing the region in the early first millennium BC. The analysis also explores the possible role of women and children in marking and reinforcing social boundaries; and the potential use of personal ornaments in attempts to clarify social roles and relations in archaeology.

The concept of art has proved controversial in archaeology and anthropology. Many feel that the concept, developed to fit high art in modern Western society, is inappropriate for objects made for other uses, in other times, or in other cultures. Yet there is no widely agreed critique or alternative concept. This introduction reviews responses to this dilemma, ranging from using the concept uncritically, using the term ‘art’ simply as an archaeological convenience to refer to things such as petroglyphs and figurines, and treating art simply as material culture. It then explores the recent concepts of art as affective material culture, as socially defined networks, and as locally defined aesthetic action. Finally, it raises the possibility that art is our local category of the kind of powerful objects found in many cultures.

Colour is one of the most prominent features of human experience, but has often been ignored or overlooked in archaeological research. All practising archaeologists are aware of the colour of the materials which they handle — be they stone artefacts, painted pots, prehistoric monuments (frontispiece) or historical buildings. Yet all too frequently these items are robbed of their colour when they are published as black and white photos, abstract plans or reductionist line drawings. Equally discouraging is the fact that original colours are frequently missing or faded, removed by the passage of centuries. We know, for example, that the famous marble Cycladic figurines were originally brightly painted, but few traces of colouring survive. Yet such traces are enough to alert us to the radical transformation which colour could bring to old and faded remains.

In this Viewpoint feature we have invited a range of specialists to consider the meaning of colour in early societies. The intention has been to focus on those societies where evidence of colour is not so readily apparent. Egyptian art and Palaeolithic caves have their place in this debate, but we are also interested in the selection of stones of particular colours for tools or structures, and for the use of colour in textiles; areas in which almost all early societies must have been engaged.

The meaning of colour may be approached at a variety of levels. In literate societies, or those with a rich and detailed iconographic tradition, it may be possible to explore the particular significance of different colours in myths or rituals. Such understanding is more difficult in the case of prehistoric societies, yet even here we can gain some insight into colour symbolism by careful consideration of context, or by cautious appeal to common human experience. Context may suggest that red ochre in burials equates with blood, common experience that yellow is associated with the sun, and blue with the sky or the sea. The value accorded to particular colours can also be indicated by the workmanship and finish which objects received, and the distances that materials travelled: polished jadeite from the Alps to Scotland, or lapis lazuli from Afghanistan to Mesopotamia.

As the following articles demonstrate, all societies are concerned about colour, and such concern can be traced back to at least the Upper Palaeolithic, if not before. To what extent particular colours, such as red or black, have cross-cultural significance, is an altogether more difficult question. Colour awareness and colour sensitivity must however be an integral part of any archaeological analysis concerned with the development and nature of human cognition.

We propose a new theory of human cognitive evolution, which we term Complementary Cognition. We build on evidence for individual neurocognitive specialization regarding search abilities in the modern population, and propose that our species cooperatively searches and adapts through a system of group-level cognition. This paper sets out a coherent theory to explain why Complementary Cognition evolved and the conditions responsible for its emergence. Using the framework of search, we show that Complementary Cognition can be contextualized as part of a hierarchy of systems including genetic search and cognitive search. We propose that, just as genetic search drives phenotypic adaptation and evolution, complementary cognitive search is central to understanding how our species adapts and evolves through culture. Complementary Cognition has far-reaching implications since it may help to explain the emergence of behavioural modernity and provides a new explanatory framework for why language and many aspects of cooperation evolved. We believe that Complementary Cognition underpins our species’ success and has important implications for how modern-day systems are designed.