Prestigious burials furnished with tools used in metalworking appear from the Eneolithic to the Early Middle Ages. The social status of the deceased has become a subject of a long-running discussion, one that typically ends with a statement on the prominent standing of individuals mastering the processing of metal in ancient societies. This notion is inspired by the ideas of V.G. Childe, and modern attempts to connect the Marxist–Leninist approach with the completely opposing phenomenologist approach result in a vicious circle. Obvious burials of rulers and children with forging tools document that an interpretation seeking highly respected craftsmen in ‘smiths’ burials' is flawed. The author sees the origin of the habit of equipping burials with forging tools in ritual metallurgy: the attributes of buried leaders who, through the use of forging tools, secured the prosperity of their community during rituals, became themselves symbols of elite standing. As in the case of burial furnishings, the performance of ritual metallurgy also depended on the organization of society, thus resulting in differences in the chrono-geographical distribution of burials with forging tools: in the period in which burials furnished with forging tools decline in the Mediterranean, their number peaks in central Europe; their occurrence ends in Viking Age Scandinavia.

In Ireland the supernatural sí (loosely translated as ‘fairies’) were strongly associated with thousands of archaeological monuments and natural places in the landscape, and many prehistoric artefacts were regarded as material culture of the sí. Such artefacts assumed an important role in popular religious practices, folk medicine and magic, most frequently to invoke cures for farm animals, but also to protect the homestead. Though little discussed in archaeological literature, the interpretation of prehistoric artefacts as potent objects from the supernatural world, and their ability actively to influence the well-being of livestock and the household, illustrates the rich and complex lives many archaeological artefacts assumed several thousand years after their initial manufacture, use and discard. The folk use of such artefacts as active agencies contrasts with the contemporaneous antiquarian collection and display of archaeological material as relics of ancient cultures.

This essay argues for the diversity and promise of posthuman approaches in archaeology by dispelling blanket critiques, by differentiating between distinct lines of post-anthropocentric thought and by pointing to parallels between Posthumanism and collaborative Indigenous archaeologies. It begins by arguing that symmetrical archaeology is but one part of the diverse body of thought labelled ‘posthuman’. Next, it explores broader posthuman engagements with political issues relevant for collaborative Indigenous archaeologies, particularly concerns regarding under-represented groups in the field. Finally, it identifies flat ontologies as key components of posthuman approaches, clarifying what this term means for different lines of post-anthropocentric thought and briefly considering how the concept of flatness compares with Indigenous metaphysics.

As a raw material, ivory has been used to manufacture a wide range of objects, normally associated with sumptuous material culture. In this article we explore the role played by ivory and ivory artefacts among early complex societies, and particularly its importance in the definition of identities among emergent elites. To this end, we make a thorough examination of the evidence from Copper Age Iberia, focusing on the mega-site of Valencina, in southern Spain. This site has provided what to date is the largest assemblage of prehistoric ivory in western Europe, with an estimated total of 8.8 kg, including finely crafted artefacts of unrivalled beauty and sophistication. Our study looks carefully at the technological, morphological and contextual dimensions of Copper Age ivory. As a result, we contend that the broad morphological variability together with the technological uniformity of this assemblage suggest that, while belonging to a common technological tradition, objects were deliberately crafted as unique and unrepeatable so that they could be used to create and maintain socio-cultural idiosyncrasies and ideological legitimation.

The Chimú state of northern coastal Peru (ad 900–1480) developed massive irrigation-based agricultural systems supplied by intricate networks of canals drawing water from river sources in coastal valleys under their political control. Further intervalley canal systems, some up to 50 miles in length, were constructed to shunt water between river valleys to augment intravalley supplies. A high degree of civil engineering skill was necessary to construct and maintain such complex systems; knowledge of surveying and of open channel flow hydraulics was paramount. Some of the technology used by the Chimú has been investigated: surveying instruments and calculating tools have been unearthed and analyzed to provide some understanding of the technical base used for canal design. Details of the hydraulics knowledge-base have been extracted from computer simulation of the functioning of ancient Chimú canal designs. This article assembles known pieces of information related to Chimú civil engineering practice and attempts to provide a plausible methodology that could have been implemented by the Chimú to survey the precise canal bed slopes necessary for proper hydraulic functioning of large canal systems through rugged Andean foothill and mountain areas.

An approach to interpreting possible steps in language evolution is offered here from systemic functional linguistic (SFL) theory. SFL models language at three levels from sounds to wordings to complex patterns of social discourse. Typological studies in this framework have shown striking commonalities at each level across languages, that are not yet adequately accounted for by existing models of language phylogenesis. Four conditions are suggested for developing explanatory models that may account for these linguistic phenomena. These include (a) a mechanism for reproducing complex cultural behaviours intergenerationally over extended time, (b) a sequence by which articulated wordings could evolve from non-linguistic primate communication, (c) extension of the functions of wording from enacting interpersonal interactions to representing speakers' experience, and (d) the emergence of complex patterns of discourse for delicately negotiating social relations, and for construing experience in genres such as narrative. These conditions are explored, and some possible steps in language evolution are suggested, that may be correlated with both linguistic research and archaeological models of cultural phases in human evolution. The aims of the article are to offer some useful tools to the field of language evolution, at the same time as indicating potential interpretations of existing work, using insights from SFL research.

In October 1900, Edwin and William Kiel were killed outside of Nevada's oldest standing structure in North Las Vegas. Since their death, the Kiel brothers have been analysed by bioarchaeologists and forensic experts. Their ranch, now a historic site, remains the property of the city of North Las Vegas and is a contested space which has seen little development. In this article, we discuss the post-mortem social lives of the brothers within the context of debates about the ranch and the brother's bones which remain separated. How the brothers have taken on various symbolic forms after death and how their bones have not yet been returned to the site are examined. We document the ways the brothers have been used rhetorically as tools by the living as they have debated the future of the ranch. We argue that the brother's bones, even in their absence, are effective tools in ongoing political debates. This article provides an example of how absent bodies, or bodies out of place, can serve as secondary agents. Additionally, the study provides bioarchaeologists with a narrative of how the dead are more than tools but may unexpectedly alter human behaviour.

This article seeks to gain an understanding of distinctive changes in certain artefacts produced in Corinth in the late eighth and seventh centuries BC. The focus is the development of figurative imagery on miniature ceramic vessels (many of them perfume jars) which travelled from Corinth particularly to sanctuaries and cemeteries in the wider Greek world. Connections, conceptual and material, are traced through the manufacture and iconography of some 2000 pots, through changing lifestyles, with juxtapositions of contemporary poetry from other parts of the Greek world. Aspects of embodiment are foregrounded in a discussion of stylization and drawing, the character of monstrosity (appearing in ceramic decoration), experiences of risk in battle, discipline and control. Techniques of the self (leading through the floral to wider lifestyles) also feature in this context, together with perfume, and the consumption or deposition of the pots in circumstances of contact with death and divinity. The argument is made that the articulation of an ideological field lay at the core of the changes of the early city states such as Corinth. The article is offered as a contribution to a contextual and interpretive archaeology. It attempts to develop concepts for dealing with power relations in an understanding of material culture production which foregrounds human agency and embodied experience.

The Neolithic tombs of northern Europe have often been presented as built in the image of the hous e of the dead. We wish to discuss here the different terms of this proposition in the light of recent discoveries concerning the domestic habitat in western France, whence we draw most of the architectural examples — both funerary and domestic.

The art of Neolithic Britain and Ireland consists of a variety of curvilinear and geometric motifs pecked into stone (in open-air rock art or passage tombs) or carved into portable artefacts of chalk, stone or antler. Because of its abstract nature the art has proved problematic for archaeologists. Initially archaeologists assumed the art was representational; now most scholars have abandoned this view, and simply approach the art stylistically. Here I argue that stylistic analysis is insufficient to understand this art: instead the process of making provides a fuller understanding of this art. It is argued that the practice of assemblage is a key aspect of the process of making.

Drawing on recent theories of materiality and non-human agency, this article examines the aftermath of a compelling episode in American history, the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857. In particular, I focus on certain ‘extensions’ of the massacre victims, as they encounter and become entangled with other material traces and embodied remembrances over the course of the twentieth century. An initial illustration of this process is drawn from the life history of an Arkansas native whose movements to and from his homeland have entangled him in the vast assemblage brought together by the events at Mountain Meadows. I then turn to the rupture in this assemblage that was triggered in 1999 by the exposure of human bones at the massacre site. Materiality theory highlights the ways in which some objects (or their parts) persist and remain inalienable, while others circulate with varying degrees of freedom. Patterns of persistence and circulation are analysed here by focusing on two kinds of objects with intimate ties to the massacre victims: the bodies of the 17 surviving children, and six buttons made of glass and metal.

Distinctions between the concepts of ‘invention’ and ‘innovation’ are often confusing and ambiguous. Rarely, if ever, is invention the result of a lightening-strike ‘aha’ moment. Rather, invention tends to be the application of clever innovation from one aspect of life to another, shaped through personal observations and/or experiences. The ‘invention’ of metallurgy, for example, did not simply spring from the earth one morning, but rather evolved from observations of and experiences in other pyrotechnological processes. Past scholars have speculated on the invention of various early pyrotechnological activities, such as glass making and glaze production. What has not been fully explored, however, are the aspects of cross-craft interactions linking these and other pyrotechnologies. An example of this is the limited research exploring the technological connections between the advent and development of glass technologies and developments in metallurgical and other vitreous technologies. In this paper, these connections will be explored from pyrotechnological and craft technique perspectives. Ideas concerning connections between glass and non-ferrous metallurgy and glazing are discussed.

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.

Although archaeologists have become increasingly interested in disaster, collapse and regeneration, there has been insufficient attention paid to the social and psychological impact of disasters. Disasters can stimulate far-reaching religious changes. This article is a case study of the fall of the Middle Sicán polity of northern Peru (ad 900–1100) that draws on both archaeology and oral tradition. Middle Sicán cosmology was centred on the Sicán Deity, which did not survive the polity's collapse. The god's demise and the revitalization movement that followed the Middle Sicán can only be understood by considering both how many of the people of the region conceptualized their world and the disasters that occurred.

Technology has been a central theme in archaeological discussion. Different approaches have been developed in order to understand and better explain the processes that lead to the production of objects and things. The anthropology of technology has been one such effort, with its focus on technological style and the chaîne opératoire. In this paper we argue that, despite their many contributions, these approaches tend to isolate the process of production, as well as to see it as the imposition of culture over nature. Instead, we propose a relational approach to technology, one that considers the multiple participants in the social actions involved, stressing the affective qualities of the different entities participating in the process of making. We focus this discussion on the production process of rock art in North Central Chile by Diaguita communities (c. ad 1000–c. 1540), arguing that making petroglyphs was a central activity that aimed at the balancing of the world and its participants, creating a mediating space that facilitated connectedness between the multiple members of the Diaguita world, humans and other-than-humans.

In archaeology, a Posthumanism has arisen from the ashes of post-modernism and declared that Marxism is dead in archaeology. Archaeological advocates of the posthumanist theory of Symmetrical Archaeology cherry-pick ideas to dismiss Marxism out of hand without considering the depth and nuances of different Marxist theories. They misrepresent the relational dialectic as oppositional thinking and ignore the fundamental dualism of their own polemic. They equate humans and things by arguing that they share a common ontology. A relational Marxism resolves the dualistic nature of their polemic and shows that things, animals and people may be studied relationally while still recognizing ontological differences. Marxism lives.

Social complexity is synonymous with inequality, a political form whose origin is associated with a reduction in residential mobility, the intensification of production, craft specialization, long-distance exchange, public architecture, the proliferation of prestige goods and ceremonial feasts. Archaeological evidence of these processes, however, is insufficient without the identification of practices related to prehistoric leadership. In the early Andean area, this social distinction was deposited in emblems or insignias of authority, objects of visual prestige whose value resided in myths and divinities. Similar arrangements of material culture, around the first millennium before Christ, appear contextually related with the first village-based communities in Northern Chile.

Monumental sanctuaries in Central Italy, more specifically South Etruria, appear suddenly in the middle of the first millennium bc. Ancient Greek and Roman authors wrote about the Etruscans, and the Etruscans themselves produced a mass of material evidence which they buried in their tombs, and which drew on Classical elements including mythology. As a result of the wealth and breadth of archaeological material, this society provides much, so far unexplored, scope for cognitive investigation. Here my concern is why sanctuaries emerged in the late sixth century, and why the highly codified temple architecture of South Etruria took the form that it did.