This article, which is based on the fourteenth McDonald Lecture, considers two tensions in contemporary archaeology. One is between interpretations of specific structures, monuments and deposits as the result of either ‘ritual’ or ‘practical’ activities in the past, and the other is between an archaeology that focuses on subsistence and adaptation and one that emphasizes cognition, meaning, and agency. It suggests that these tensions arise from an inadequate conception of ritual itself. Drawing on recent studies of ritualization, it suggests that it might be more helpful to consider how aspects of domestic life took on special qualities in later prehistoric Europe. The discussion is based mainly on Neolithic enclosures and other monuments, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement sites and the Viereckschanzen of central Europe. It may have implications for field archaeology as well as social archaeology, and also for those who study the formation of the archaeological record.

Following trends in anthropology, the human body has recently become an important topic of discourse in archaeology. While some anthropologists consider the body as a social metaphor or site of symbolic inscription, others have questioned the validity of approaches based on the dichotomization and hierarchization of the mind and body. Semasiology, in particular, offers an epistemologically sound basis for interpreting the body, by grounding agency in the socially-structured actions that constitute corporeal space. This article applies the semasiological concept of the action-sign to archaeological problems through an examination of the interrelationship between Tairona anthropomorphic imagery and remains of ceremonial architecture at Pueblito, an archaeological site in Colombia. In both cases, physical remains constitute the traces of the actions through which agential persons created sacred spaces, and the meanings of these spaces may be more fully reconstructed by comparing diverse modes of embodiment. Tairona figural art and architecture constitute a creative technology, serving as an indexically-bound nexus of embodied social action.

Archaeological data from Wallacea (Indonesia) and elsewhere are summarized to show that the history of seafaring begins in the Early Pleistocene, and that this human capability eventually led to Middle Palaeolithic ocean crossings in the general region of Australia. To understand better the technological magnitude of these many maritime accomplishments, a series of replicative experiments are described, and the theoretical conditions of these experiments are examined. The proposition is advanced that hominid cognitive and cultural evolution during the Middle and early Late Pleistocene have been severely misjudged. The navigational feats of Pleistocene seafarers confirm the cultural evidence of sophistication available from the study of palaeoart.

With comments from Mike Morwood, Michael Rowland, Matthew Spriggs, Iain Davidson, Ursula Mania, and G.A. Clark and followed by a reply from the author.

Distances of raw material transportation reflect how hominid groups gather and exchange information. Early hominids moved raw materials short distances, suggesting a home range size, social complexity and communication system similar to primates in equivalent environments. After about 1.0 million years ago there was a large increase in raw material transfer distances, possibly a result of the emergence of the ability to pool information by using a protolanguage. Another increase in raw material transfer occurred during the late Middle Stone Age in Africa (after about 130,000 years ago), suggesting the operation of exchange networks. Exchange networks require a communication system with syntax, the use of symbols in social contexts and the ability to express displacement, which are the features of human language. Taking the Neanderthals as a case study, biological evidence and the results of computer simulations of the evolution of language, I argue for a gradual rather than catastrophic emergence of language coinciding with the first evidence of exchange networks.

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

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.

Imperial expansions tend to be legitimated by myths of empire that support the position of a particular group of ruling élite. In order to maintain their power, these élites must take this ideology seriously or risk losing their positions to those that will. In the Inca Empire of the Andes, expansion was justified in large part as a divine mandate to spread a true religion to the people. Although the Inca generally strove to maintain local religions, a long-standing ritual tradition involving painted tablets ended with the Inca conquest of southern Peru. The demise of this practice suggests a greater imperial concern for providing proper gifts to the gods than can be gleaned from the historical records.