Small, ceramic figurines used in household settings in Central Mexico during the first millennium bc were emphatically stylistic. Attributes cooperated to direct the viewer's attention to the style of the figurine, to how the figurine was made, and to the choices of makers and users from a range of alternative ways of making. This article draws on studies of modern fashion to develop a social interpretation of these patterns based on two collections of figurines, one from the Basin of Mexico and the other from Tlaxcala. The history of Formative figurine fashions is considered at multiple scales.

An extraordinary engraved bird track was located in the Weaber Range of the Keep River region of Northern Territory, Australia, in July 2000. This engraved track is dissimilar to most other examples in Australian rock-art, differing in shape, size and detail from the thousands of engraved, painted or beeswax depictions of bird tracks known from sites across the continent. Importantly, it also differs in technique from other engraved tracks in the Keep River region, having been rubbed and abraded to a smooth finish. We explore three approaches to the engraved track's significance, that it: a) depicts the track of an extinct bird species; b) relates to Aboriginal beliefs regarding Dreaming Beings; and c) is a powerful aesthetic achievement that reflects rare observation of emu tracks. We conclude that the Weaber bird track engraving most probably represents a relatively recent visual expression of ancient Aboriginal thoughts that have been transmitted through the centuries via story-telling and rock-art. This discussion highlights problems of assigning identification and meaning to ancient art but also suggests that aspects of history may be passed across generations for much longer than is commonly realized.

Engraving sites are rare in mainland and Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) where painted art dominates the prehistoric artistic record. Here we report two new engraving sites from the Tutuala region of Timor-Leste comprising mostly humanoid forms carved into speleothem columns in rock-shelters. Engraved face motifs have previously been reported from Lene Hara Cave in this same region, and one was dated to the Pleistocene–Holocene transition using the Uranium–Thorium method. We discuss the engravings in relation to changes in technology and material culture that took place in the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene archaeological records in this region of Timor as well as neighbouring islands. We suggest that the engravings may have been produced as markers of territorial and social identity within the context of population expansion and greater inter-group contacts at this time.

In this article we explore a pair of distinctive and associated Second World War monuments on Slapton Sands in the South Hams district of Devon, UK. The Slapton Sands Evacuation Memorial was erected in 1945 by the US armed forces to commemorate the sacrifice of local people who evacuated their homes ahead of battle training in preparation for D-Day. Meanwhile, the Torcross Tank Memorial was built in 1984 under the initiative of a local man to commemorate those US servicemen who lost their lives during the battle training in the Exercise Tiger tragedy. The historical context, form, materiality, biography and location of each monument are appraised and their relationship with each other is discussed. The article argues that from the 1940s to the present day, the monuments have evolved as sacrificial sites and serve to both commemorate the events they describe and define the identities of local people through their reuse of places and material culture.

This paper addresses the tension between élite-sponsored rituals in the context of state expansion and the persistence of rituals involving hallucinogens among communities that met with state colonists. It focuses on the consumption of hallucinogens inducing altered states of consciousness during the Peruvian Middle Horizon (ad 600–1000), a period characterized by the expansion of the Wari state, known for large state-sanctioned feasts during which élites distributed corn beer and reaffirmed their power. This paper presents new evidence for the ingestion of hallucinogens from the site of Ak'awillay in the Cusco region, focusing on paraphernalia and ritual spaces recovered in large horizontal excavations. Results indicate that the people of Ak'awillay were able to maintain practices that were fundamentally different from those of Wari élites and retained access to low-altitude areas lying outside Wari control for the procurement of hallucinogens and esoteric knowledge. The paper concludes that at least some people at Ak'awillay operated outside the Wari state, thereby maintaining local power over the religious realm despite Wari presence in the region.

Architecture has been one of the key features in studying the first millennium bc in the Balearic Islands. The primary goal of this research is to analyse how monumental communal architecture enabled the construction of enduring social spaces and how the role of these spaces within the community can be understood through the relations that conform across the landscape. To do so we will focus on the Late Bronze Age (1100–850 bc) and the Talayotic period (c. 850–650 bc), the first moment when cyclopean dry-stone architecture is used in communal spaces, such as talayots or stepped turriforms, making them stand out across the landscape. To understand how these architectures are connected, we analysed the visual connections between them through intervisibility and network analysis, as well as through Individual Distance Viewsheds. Through the analysis of visual connections, we seek to understand how the architecture created a network across the entire landscape, and how the characteristics and properties of this network are key in understanding the relationship between Talayotic communities and their landscape. Our aim is to explore how architecture shaped and gave meaning to the landscape and how we cannot understand the buildings by themselves, but as part of a network.

Nearly seventy years ago, a group of competitive explorers, few on good terms, reconnoitred the Maya ruins of Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico. There, in what is now known as Structure 1, they found the most densely figured and compositionally ambitious paintings from Precolumbian America – the Bonampak murals, in a building dated by their final, painted notation to c. AD 791. The themes, events, dramatis personae, dynastic setting and execution of the murals find general consensus among scholars, if with some disagreement about detail and, in some respects, the overall thematic focus of the paintings. A key, under-used resource consists of some 125 texts or captions in hieroglyphic writing that identify, or studiously ignore, the serried warriors, dancers in feathered costumes, courtly ladies, foes in extremis, ambassadors, and lords in repose that crowd the murals. Brought to crisp view by infrared vidicon imaging in 1996, subsequently processed and here reported, the captions pose further questions about the decision to name people, past and present. The typology, positioning, relative weighting and onomastic contents of the captions at Bonampak clarify a veridical story, artfully positioned and cadenced, that stresses a tale of three youths. Likely brothers, they can be seen to enjoy a distinct centrality in the murals, more so than the ruler himself. The Bonampak paintings thus discharge several functions. They offer a specific account of a prince's career, assisted by two young peers, a primer for the skills and accomplishments of a suitable heir, a vertical account of generational interplay at times of transition, and a horizontal lesson, too, that a good prince both leads and relies on brothers, close kin and courtiers for collective success. Whether the path to the throne was completed remains an unresolved matter, insoluble without further evidence.

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.

This article examines a potential ‘throne–mat’ kenning in the Middle Formative period Olmec writing on the Cascajal Block, an incised serpentine slab dated to c. 900 bc. It is suggested that signs on the Cascajal Block are divorced from the Formative period representational canons in which they are usually contextualized. The organization of signs on the Cascajal Block thus de-emphasizes the connection between a depicted object and its iconographic frame of reference. Instead, the signs are recontextualized within a linguistic framework wherein they leverage their iconicity to denote a word, rather than functioning primarily as an iconographic element within a pictorial composition. It is argued that the throne–mat kenning explored here is one instance of such abstraction from ‘normative’ iconographic contexts and therefore offers potentially significant insights into the origin and development of writing in Mesoamerica.

Cosmological models are common in Mayanist settlement studies. In such models, causeways are often said to follow various cosmological principles that are more or less the same from the Middle Formative to the present time. The models have been created by merging disparate data from ethnography, ethnohistory, iconography, epigraphy and archaeology into a single form where all the parts are determined by a common principle. The Terminal Classic triadic causeways at Ichmul, Yucatan, Mexico, could potentially be interpreted with such cosmological models. The evidence, however, does not fit these models. It is proposed, instead, with reference to the philosophers Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda, that settlement studies should focus only on what is present at the site without reliance on transcendent concepts such as culture or cosmology. The triadic causeways at Ichmul are seen as virtual processes that have the potential to become actual forms at every present moment.

The interpretation of images in relation to their particular setting on rock surfaces has been highlighted in recent studies into the location of depictions in the natural landscape and shamanistic beliefs and practices. The significance of the approach in this article, however, lies in studying the morphology of the rock surface as an integral part of the visual imagery of the rock art, notably how the physical dimensions of the rock surface were used in recreating the physical landscape familiar to the prehistoric artists. We use experiential and cognitive approaches to visual perception to combine an appreciation of artistic endeavour of rock art with an enhanced understanding of the human capacity for creating such images. The results of this approach to rock art contribute to a better understanding of the creative and cognitive aspects of prehistoric fisher-gatherer-hunter art. A detailed example is discussed showing how the physical landscape was re-created in the morphology of the rock surface by using the motion of skiing to illustrate one of the visual narratives at the site of Zalavruga in northern Russia.

This article suggests that the rare motif on Breton menhirs often interpreted as an axe (of ‘Mané Rutual’ type) or an axe-plough, could be the representation of a whale, and that if so, this might be a mythic creature. The character of myth and narrative is considered. It is mooted that Late Mesolithic people or their immediate descendants could have been responsible for the erection of such menhirs. The juxtaposition of the suggested whale motif with versions of animals with curved horns on the broken menhir of La Table des Marchand and Gavrinis raises the possibility of alternative or competing myths and creation stories. Other representations of natural creatures in the Mesolithic and Neolithic in Europe are briefly noted, and the possible importance of myth in the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition of northwest Europe is discussed.

This article discusses the establishment of the Neolithic in western Europe, and presents two models which integrate aspects of the Neolithic funerary structures of western France. One model presents a cyclical evolution of tombs in France, in which there is a transformation of the funerary space around the corpse (the grave itself). This includes the modification of the anatomical order of the skeleton which becomes dependent on this transformation of the enclosing space, delimited by architectural forms such as allées couvertes.

The second model places emphasis on relationships which were observed in north-west Spain between the visual references inherent in any natural environment, and the location of the earliest monumental funerary structures. This model also emphasizes the location of these monuments in space, a location which seems to depend on human movement through the landscape.

When applied to such a region as the Morbihan débartement of Brittany (famous for sites such as Carnac and Locmariaquer), the two models converge. Together, they contribute to a better understanding of the succession of cultural complexes through time; but above all they suggest a radical process of transformation which is without doubt connected to the emergence of the Neolithic.

This article engages with current debates in archaeology with respect to matters of ontological difference — particularly in terms of bodies, personhood and the much-contested category of the individual. Drawing on early Spanish historical accounts of the material and bodily practices through which the Inka sovereign was constituted, I argue that although he was certainly not a Cartesian individual, neither was he a kind of fractal or partible person. Contrary to the growing tendency to see non-Western modes of personhood as highly ‘relational’, the Inka emperor was in my view a bounded and tightly delineated entity, albeit one not contiguous with a biological body. In archaeological theory, a growing divide appears to be emerging between relational and individual species of personhood — with the former often ascribed to non-modern societies, and the latter frequently associated with the modern West. I present a critique of this trend and argue for the need to break beyond such binaries — interpreting the Inka emperor as a form of individual that stood outside a nature/society divide and thus still very much incommensurable with Western ontologies of the person.

At the time of the Spanish invasion, central Andean society was organized around ayllus. These extensive social units, bound together by kinship, reciprocity, land claims, honoured ancestors and other criteria, are an example of the kin-based sodalities that have long been seen in political science as impediments to state development. Class should replace kin when large and complex polities like the Inca Empire form, and groups like the ayllu should fade away. This article seeks to re-evaluate the role played by kin-based sodalities in early state formation and expansion through a case study of the Wari State (ce 600–1000). We argue that the decades-long development of ayllus was a reaction to incipient urbanization, surging interregional interaction and the other challenges associated with Wari's rise. Ayllu development created a more heterarchical political structure that would endure some 200 years into the polity's existence. Elite efforts to consolidate power in the ninth century ce ultimately led to the polity's decline and highlight the need to develop more dynamic models of urbanization and state formation in the Andes and elsewhere.

To remain in place in the immediate aftermath of the ninth-century Maya collapse, Maya groups employed various resilient strategies. In the absence of divine rulers, groups needed to renegotiate their forms of political authority and to reconsider the legitimizing role of religious institutions. This kind of negotiation happened first at the local level, where individual communities developed varied political and ideological solutions. At the community of Actuncan, located in the lower Mopan River valley of Belize, reorganization took place within the remains of a monumental urban centre built 1000 years before by the site's early rulers. I report on the changing configuration and use of Actuncan's urban landscape during the process of reorganization. These modifications included the construction of a new centre for political gatherings, the dismantling of old administrative buildings constructed by holy lords and the reuse of the site's oldest ritual space. These developments split the city into distinct civic and ritual zones, paralleling the adoption of a new shared rule divorced from cosmological underpinnings. This case study provides an example of how broader societal resilience relies on adaptation at the local level.

Serpent Mound, in northern Adams County, Ohio, USA, is one of the most iconic symbols of ancient America and yet there is no widely agreed upon date for the age of its original construction. Some archaeologists consider it to have been built by the Adena culture around 300 bc, while others contend it was built by the Fort Ancient culture around ad 1100. There have been three attempts to obtain radiometric ages for the effigy, but they have yielded inconclusive results. The iconography of the earthwork offers an alternative means of placing the mound in its cultural context. Serpent imagery is abundant in the Fort Ancient culture as well as in the more encompassing Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere. Pictographs from Picture Cave in Missouri include a serpent, a humanoid female and a vulvoid in close association. We interpret these elements, in the light of Siouan oral traditions, as First Woman and her consort the Great Serpent. The Picture Cave imagery dates to between ad 950 and 1025. We argue that these same three elements are represented in the original configuration of Serpent Mound and therefore situate its design and original construction in the Early Fort Ancient period.

Archaeologists, like many other scholars in the Social Sciences and Humanities, are particularly concerned with the study of past and present subalterns. Yet the very concept of ‘the subaltern’ is elusive and rarely theorized in archaeological literature, or it is only mentioned in passing. This article engages with the work of Gramsci and Patricia Hill Collins to map a more comprehensive definition of subalternity, and to develop a methodology to chart the different ways in which subalternity is manifested and reproduced.

Studies of introduced subject matter in rock-art assemblages typically focus on themes of cross-cultural interaction, change and continuity, power and resistance. However, the economic frameworks guiding or shaping the production of an assemblage have often been overlooked. In this paper we use a case study involving a recently recorded assemblage of introduced subject matter from Marra Country in northern Australia's southwest Gulf of Carpentaria region to explore their production using a hybrid economy framework. This framework attempts to understand the nature of the forces that shape people's engagement with country and subsequently how it is being symbolically marked as adjustments to country occur through colonization. We argue that embedding these motifs into a hybrid economy context anchored in the pastoral industry allows for a more nuanced approach to cross-cultural interaction studies and adds another layer to the story of Aboriginal place-marking in colonial contexts. This paper aims to go beyond simply identifying motifs thought to represent introduced subject matter, and the cross-cultural framework(s) guiding their interpretation, and instead to direct attention to the complex network of relations that potentially underpin the production of such motifs.