Antarctica differs from all other regions in the world, not only from its unique geography, but also in the way humans understand it and have incorporated it into global relations. Considering Antarctica's distinctive landscapes and human relations, this paper discusses aspects of how time is humanly perceived in Antarctica. Basing on elements from different human occupations, nineteenth-century sailor-hunters and current incursions, this discussion approximates different historical groups in their experiences of Antarctica, connecting their personal lives, past and present. Meanwhile, also put into issue are the dualities that separate nature and culture, physical and relative time, and past and present, as well as the related notions of time in itself, perceived time speed and internal time consciousness.

This article explores the use of gold in the elite tombs of Han dynasty China, the popular use of which originated outside the Chinese cultural milieu, and its integration into the Han portfolio of materials representing people's expectations for the afterlife, such as immortality and well-being. In contrast to jade, which had a long history of use in China, gold was in itself a ‘new’ element of Chinese culture. This article outlines the introduction of gold objects from Europe and Central Asia via the Eurasian Steppe and borderland of China from around the eighth century bce. The unprecedented use of gold in the Han-specific jade suits, and the process by which foreign types of zoomorphic motifs were adopted and connected with local motifs, are explored. In light of the political change from multiple competing states before the first unification in Chinese history in the third century bce, and the development in ideology and concept of an ideal and eternal afterlife, this article explains the reasons and meanings of the new use of gold in Han dynasty China and the composite system of motifs, materials and objects.

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.

Dedicatory offerings of small colourful objects are often found in pre-Hispanic architectural contexts in the Ancestral Pueblo region of the American Southwest. These deposits are particularly numerous in the roof support pillars of circular ritual structures (kivas) at the site of Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, which served as the ceremonial hub of the Chacoan regional system between the tenth and twelfth centuries ce. Based on the importance of directionality and colour in traditional Pueblo worldviews, archaeologists speculate that the contents of these radial offerings may likewise reference significant Chacoan cosmographic elements. In this paper, I explore this idea by examining the distribution of colours and materials in kiva pilaster repositories in relation to directional quadrants, prominent landscape features, and raw material sources. I discuss the results in the context of Pueblo cosmology and assemblage theory, arguing that particular colours were polyvalent and relational, deriving their meanings from their positions within interacting and heterogenous assemblages.

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.

Decapitation was an integral part of the complex ritual practices recorded in the palaeographic and archaeological records at the Late Shang (c. 1250–1050 bce) site of Yinxu in Henan Province, China. Although representations of decapitation are often found in societies where the act was carried out, no clear evidence exists for Yinxu, where only a small number of human depictions have been uncovered to date. In this article, I use archaeological data from sacrificial contexts and material culture uncovered during excavations over the past 90 years to investigate the human head as Late Shang elite visual culture. I argue that the dramatic increase in decapitation at Yinxu necessitated the development of a ritually informed process for handling these remains that transformed them into elite objects, while simultaneously pacifying their potentially dangerous post-mortem agency. This research contributes to global comparative studies on the materiality of the human head.

At its peak in the sixteenth century, the Zimbabwe Culture encompassed an area the size of France. The greater Tuli area in east-central Botswana formed the western extent of this culture area. Here many dzimbahwe mark the residences of sacred leaders in the later Khami period (1400–1840 ad). These stone-walled headquarters formed a pyramid of political importance, with district chiefs (Level 4) and petty chiefs (Level 3) at the top and headmen (Level 2) and commoners (Level 1) at the base. Commoners and their headmen lived near arable land, while petty chiefs placed their administrative centres at the boundaries of their small chiefdoms. In death, sacred leaders rested in dzimbahwe on special hills, while ordinary villagers were buried in their homesteads. During the Khami period in Botswana, these various settlements were part of only one Level 4 district: Level 5 and Level 6 capitals were located elsewhere. After the collapse of the powerful Torwa state at Khami, decorative symbols changed from emphasizing the majesty of kingship (Khami) to the responsibilities of sacred leaders (Zinjanja), and then back again to kingship in the Rozvi state (Danangombe). The powerful Rozvi state did not extend to the Tuli area, probably because it was too dry.

Cassowaries (Casuarius) are one of the largest indigenous animal species of New Guinea. Researchers have long been trying to understand their local socio-cultural significance. Here we present new results from interviews recorded in 2018 on ethnography associated with bone daggers, a material culture ornament and tool carved from the cassowary's tibiotarsus. We present a ‘storied notion’—a contemporary narrative from oral history of why cassowary is not simply a bird, and briefly describe cassowary bone ornamentation in Auwim, East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea. By exploring the material history of Casuarius through a ‘storied notion’ approach, we reveal that cassowary bone daggers in rock art are narrative ideas of the species from its landscape to ornamentation and through to people's cosmological beliefs surrounding Casuarius. We argue that the cassowary bone dagger stencil can be seen as part of the life history of this animal.

Medicinal practices were critical in ancient societies, yet we have limited insight into these practices outside references found in ancient texts. Meanwhile, historic and ethnographic resources have documented how a number of plants, from across the landscape, are assembled into pharmacopoeias and transformed into materia medica. These documentary resources attest to diverse healthcare practices that incorporate botanical elements, while residues in the archaeological record (seeds, phytoliths and starch grains) point to a variety of activities, some of them therapeutic in nature. Focusing on four pre-Hispanic communities in northwestern Honduras, I draw upon ethnobotanical and ethnobiological knowledge to infer medical practices potentially represented by ancient plant residues. Comparing these findings with prior investigations, I address the limits of dividing taxa into mutually exclusive categories such as ‘food’, ‘fuel’ and ‘medicine’. I consider the importance of apothecary craft in past lifeways, as well as the persistence of many traditions in contemporary medical practice.

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.

This paper presents key results of the Making a Mark project (2014–2016), which aimed to provide a contextual framework for the analysis of mark making on portable artefacts in the British and Irish Neolithic by comparing them with other mark-making practices, including rock art and passage tomb art. The project used digital imaging techniques, including Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), and improved radiocarbon chronologies, to develop a new understanding of the character of mark making in the British and Irish Neolithic. Rather than considering this tradition in representational terms, as expression of human ideas, we focus on two kinds of relational material practices, the processes of marking and the production of skeuomorphs, and their emergent properties. We draw on Karen Barad's concept of ‘intra-action’ and Gilles Deleuze's notion of differentiation to understand the evolution and development of mark-making traditions and how they relate to other kinds of social practices over the course of the Neolithic.

Discussions of spatial relationships are persistent features of research on the organization of craft production. Despite the centrality of spatial issues, the correspondence between spatial patterning and economic organization remains relatively under-theorized, especially around questions of power and control. Drawing from the literature on craft ecology, specialization and landscape archaeology, I develop an approach that considers spatial scales of patterning, the power projection of elites and institutions and the articulation between elements of the crafting landscape. This approach recognizes the complex sets of factors affecting spatial patterning and ultimately produces a more robust understanding of how ancient economic systems were organized. These ideas are explored through a case study on Late Bronze and Early Iron Age metal production in the Caucasus, clarifying the organizational logics of the metal economy and highlighting how this industry differed in significant ways from other contemporary metal-producing regions in the ancient Near East.

This article discusses the aggregation and dispersion of the Chulmun hunter-gatherers (c. 8000–1500 bce) in prehistoric Korea. The following observations are made from settlement datasets. First, large numbers of houses do not necessarily imply aggregation, as they can be palimpsests of dwelling structures from different phases. Second, aggregation settlements were segmented and contained multiple discrete subunits. Individual residential clusters typically had fewer than 60 inhabitants. Third, there are some indications of social hierarchy in nucleated settlements such as Unseo-dong. Fourth, despite some evidence of emergent elites and social differentiation, social complexity did not intensify over the long run. Levelling mechanisms (e.g. group fission) were in operation and they suppressed the institutionalization of social hierarchy.

The Mayak Chemical Combine was one of the most secretive places in the Soviet Union. It was built in the southern Urals, close to Kyshtym. The facility produced weapons-grade plutonium and other radioactive isotopes for the Soviet nuclear military programme. Fugitives from behind the Iron Curtain mentioned the site, usually due to accidents and peculiar, unexplained observations. Such reports were often treated in the West as exaggerated or fictional, as they spoke of large-scale disasters, deportations and vast landscape transformations. This paper aims to present the research potential of declassified Cold War intelligence records for archaeological landscape studies of off-limits military sites. To outline a somewhat broader perspective, I will combine those sources with contemporary historical knowledge and modern remote sensing data. The analysis will be focused on the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] satellite imagery (CORONA and GAMBIT) from the 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s. The discussed sources recorded outcomes of nuclear disasters, hundreds of square kilometres of uninhabited wasteland, abandoned villages, disappearing lakes, dying forests, diverted rivers, and other features related to this clandestine plutonium facility.

Inference to religion and ritual does not require scripture. Since the early twentieth century, archaeologists have identified hundreds of deposits containing Buddhist scriptures, images and ritual objects throughout the Japanese archipelago, the majority dating to the late Heian period (794–1185 ce). Previous research suggests that scripture was the central feature of these deposits. This article argues that these deposits resulted from a range of highly variable contexts of religious and social practice, not limited to a focus on scripture. I survey early excavations and interpretations of sutra burial and then turn to two main case studies. These examples show that these deposits were complex assemblages that implicated diverse religious meanings, time frames and social actors. Scripture deposits can demonstrate how religious ritual illuminates, underwrites and interweaves variant scales of agency, time and social practice.

In this study, we outline a maritime perspective on interaction in the Late Bronze/early Iron Age Mediterranean. In response to what has elsewhere been termed the ‘maximalist’ approach, which foregrounds direct, long-distance trading connections between distant Mediterranean regions as a key feature of Late Bronze Age exchange systems, we propose a more nuanced, ‘minimalist’ and argue that notions of contact, connectivity and mobility need to be carefully distinguished if we wish to discuss both the material and social dimensions of maritime mobility. In particular, we critique the prominently proposed, allegedly direct trade route between Sardinia and Cyprus. The network we suggest hinges on multiply connected nodes, where a variety of social actors take part in the creation and maintenance of maritime connections. By unpacking several such nodes between Sardinia and Cyprus, we demonstrate that simply asserting the dominance of Sardinian, Cypriot or Aegean mariners falls short of the complex archaeological evidence and eschews possible social interpretations. In conclusion, we submit that maritime connectivity is an inherently social activity, and that a culturally diverse prehistoric Mediterranean was connected by multiple interlocking and overlapping networks.

Studies into the presence and absence of post-European contact rock art within Indigenous communities are particularly relevant to questions of colonial impact and influence. However, it is the presence of post-contact motifs and introduced subject matter that typically takes precedence in these studies. In this paper, we focus on the absence of post-contact paintings of European ships in Torres Strait (northeastern Australia) rock art. This absence is curious, given that Torres Strait peoples first encountered European ships over 400 years ago, yet the only paintings of watercraft are of their own double outrigger canoes. Furthermore, ethnographic information suggests many painted canoes were spirit canoes used by spirits of the dead, and European mariners were considered spirits of the dead who travelled in ‘ghost ships’. Despite apparent epistemological and ontological congruence between Islander and Kaurareg canoes and European ships, we argue the latter were conceptually and metaphysically different to spirit canoes and thus fell outside of the representational (rock art) genre of watercraft that was limited to spirit canoes. The lack of Torres Strait post-contact rock art reveals that reasons for the inclusion of introduced subject matter in post-contact rock art are likely to extend beyond simple exposure to, and familiarity with, so-called new subject matter.

Palaeolithic representations can be approached from different perspectives. Studying the creative processes, we can glimpse the decisions that the Palaeolithic artists made and the actions they carried out to materialize an idea. Additionally, the combined study of both graphic and functional actions performed on an object provides a comprehensive approach and understanding of the evidence: in the first place, it allows us to hypothesize about the presence or absence of symbolic purpose of the representations; secondly, it makes the potential choice of eliminating such symbolism discernible for us. The monographic study of a Magdalenian pebble from Coímbre Cave (Asturias, Spain) engraved between 15,680 and 14,230 cal. bp shows that a mistake was made during the engraving process; subsequently an attempt was made to eliminate the representations, and finally the pebble was used as a hammerstone. This paper provides argumentation to reconstruct a complex biography of an object of Palaeolithic portable art, discussing intentional loss of symbolic value of both the decoration and the object and the latter's reuse (as raw material) for an economic or domestic purpose.

Early urban societies feature specialized processes that integrate disparate populations as part of their social construction. One such process is commensalism and the associated display of exotica from interregional interaction. Hosts of a feast between 400 and 300 bce at the early urban centre of Etlatongo, in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, displayed pottery that manifested relationships with urban elites at Monte Albán and other regions of Oaxaca, but also expressed connections with something fundamentally different. The hosts sacrificed a greenstone sculpture in the Mezcala style from Guerrero state, located to the west and previously unknown in Oaxaca aesthetics. The discovery of this figure contributes to reassessing the extent of interaction during a time often marked by regionalism in Oaxaca as well as providing information on the little-known Mezcala civilization. A relational ontology explores how the discovery of this agentive object and the alterity of its aesthetics facilitates understanding perceptions of distant others or imaginaries, and how such entanglements facilitated processes of status differentiation for nascent urban elites, particularly their role as mediators.

The paper explores a group of graves in which the past was used actively in Viking Age eastern Norway. Studying the use of the past in the past was introduced in British landscape archaeology of the 1990s, but a reassessment and a renewed relevance of the theme may now be observed due to the rise of materiality studies and the affective turn within archaeology. Through an investigation of the apparently insignificant kerbstones on a number of Viking Age burial mounds in Eastern Norway, and their links to specific Roman period mounds and graves, the paper explores how time and the past were perceived in the Viking Age. This further opens potential for examining connections between the use of the past and identities and self-perceptions in a Viking Age society. The analysis also includes a movement away from understanding reuse merely as a means of power. The overall ambition is to demonstrate the relevance of studies of the past in the past in archaeology today.