This paper aims to contribute to the current debate about Posthumanism in archaeology, arguing for the potential that Posthumanism can have for the study of rock art. Through a case study in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, this work seeks to explore a posthuman approach to rock art as vibrant and relational assemblages, through affects as relational agencies and non-human personhood and ritual landscape as theoretical tools, articulated with aspects from indigenous ontologies explored from archaeological, ethnographic and documentary information. It is proposed that this approach can help interpret hunter-gatherer rock art created between 1000 and 1500 ce in the northern region of Mexico. Through this exercise it is considered that Mexican archaeology of rock art can embrace posthumanism for a more complex and comprehensive understanding of the painted memory of hunter-gatherers from this part of the world.

Posthumanist archaeologies have attempted to move beyond humanist conceptions of the human for over a decade. But they have done so by primarily focusing on the ontological split between humans and non-human things. This only addresses one part of humanism, as Black studies scholars have long argued that it also equates humanity writ large with white, economically privileged, cis-gendered, heterosexual men, thereby excluding everyone else from the category of the human. They further argue that the violence and oppression inflicted on those excluded from humanism's definition of the human allows this ontological category to come into being. This article introduces Black studies’ critiques of humanism and applies them to posthumanist archaeologies. Ultimately, it argues that by not attending to the critiques raised by Black studies scholars, posthumanist archaeologies have inadvertently made humanist missteps wherein they continue using elements of humanism's definition of the human in their attempts to move beyond humanism.

Historical phenomena often have prehistoric precedents; with this paper we investigate the potential for archaeometallurgical analyses and networked data processing to elucidate the progenitors of the Southwest Silk Road in Mainland Southeast Asia and southern China. We present original microstructural, elemental and lead isotope data for 40 archaeological copper-base metal samples, mostly from the UNESCO-listed site of Halin, and lead isotope data for 24 geological copper-mineral samples, also from Myanmar. We combined these data with existing datasets (N = 98 total) and compared them to the 1000+ sample late prehistoric archaeometallurgical database available from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Yunnan. Lead isotope data, contextualized for alloy, find location and date, were interpreted manually for intra-site, inter-site and inter-regional consistency, which hint at significant multi-scalar connectivity from the late second millennium bc. To test this interpretation statistically, the archaeological lead isotope data were then processed using regionally adapted production-derived consistency parameters. Complex networks analysis using the Leiden community detection algorithm established groups of artefacts sharing lead isotopic consistency. Introducing the geographic component allowed for the identification of communities of sites with consistent assemblages. The four major communities were consistent with the manually interpreted exchange networks and suggest southern sections of the Southwest Silk Road were active in the late second millennium bc.

Does non-anthropocentrism necessitate a turn away from marginalized people? This is a crucial question, asked lately by a growing number of archaeologists. Some see a turn toward things as a turn away from people, while others take a more nuanced view. Greer falls into the latter group, exploring this question by highlighting important contributions and corrections from Black Studies. Although the paper is framed as a challenge to posthumanism, I read it as a broad critique of non-anthropocentric approaches; after reflecting on these relationships over the last few years, I no longer draw strong associations between posthumanism and symmetrical archaeology, entanglement theory, or even ANT; for me, posthumanism involves a relatively greater degree of social and political concern than the others.

A small rural stopover along overland Maya and Aztec trade and travel routes was identified in surveys and excavations at adjacent settlements and shrines at Mensabak, Chiapas, Mexico. This collection of Late Postclassic to Spanish conquest-era (c. ad 1350–1650) Maya sites are similar in function to rural Old World and Andean caravan stopovers, such as caravanserai and way stations, where travellers and traders obtained supplies, trading partners, safety, solidarity through ritual and travel information along long-distance land routes. These sites are similar to trading ports and pilgrimage centres, but they are smaller, located in the countryside, not often managed by regional states, and have scaled-down economic exchange with fewer exotic trade items. Stopovers often include landscape and rock-art shrines for collective ritual among foreign travellers and local populations. While investigators have researched the anthropological importance of overland routes, caravans and trade centres, less attention has been given to stopover sites in the countryside. This article discusses the archaeological signatures and outlines the comparative social, economic and ritual implications of small rural stopover sites that united people on the road.

Domestic architecture is increasingly revisited as a source of data about wealth inequality in the distant past via the Gini coefficient, a statistical tool often used in economics to compare income inequality. Many areas—including South America, Africa, South Asia and Oceania—remain under-sampled, making it difficult to develop a more complete picture of ancient political economies. In this paper we present a first look at this measure in the Hawaiian Islands. These data show that during the period prior to contact with Europeans inequality was extremely high, most similar to autocratic archaic states. We also found geographic patterning that may ultimately be linked to dryland (non-irrigated) farming. On islands reliant on dryland farming (Mau‘i, Hawai‘i), we find distinctively less inequality than elsewhere, or larger house sizes. We hypothesize these may have been innovations in how wealth was made visible to create and maintain cooperation in places where more labour would have been required to grow surplus. More research is necessary to test this hypothesis, investigate alternative interpretations, and to put these findings in larger regional context within Polynesia.

The ever-growing body of research on trans-Eurasian exchange during the third–first millennium bce continues to improve understanding of mechanisms that facilitated the movement of objects, materials, ideas, and even people. However, whether bronze mirrors in Central Asia and China represent the exchange of technological knowledge or movement of the objects themselves remains unresolved, as researchers require extensive knowledge of huge quantities of data generated during the Soviet Central Asia campaigns of the mid twentieth century. The often confusing, impenetrable excavation reports, combined with required knowledge of Chinese, Russian and English, have caused much confusion about dates and contexts. This article presents and compares data published in Russian and Chinese reports. By clarifying the chronology for mirrors in Central Asia and China, we challenge simplistic theories of object diffusion and spread that persist in studies of trans-Eurasian exchange. We argue that the early second-millennium bce appearance of mirrors in western and northwestern China resulted from different exchange mechanisms specific to each local socio-cultural context. This demonstrates not only the complexity of interactions at the group and individual levels, but also how these factors can be integrated with data-driven analyses to explore the role they played in large-scale Bronze Age exchange networks.

In ‘Humanist Missteps’, Matthew Greer makes the pointed observation that non-anthropocentric frameworks, including symmetrical, object-oriented and posthuman feminist archaeologies, have primarily focused on deconstructing the human–non-human binary while failing to problematize humanist assumptions about who counts as Human. At the core of Greer's argument is the matter of citational practice: which social theorists are archaeologists referencing in their efforts to craft relational approaches to humans, things, animals and plants? In answering this question, the author points to a notable lack of Black Studies theorists, particularly the work of Sylvia Wynter, Zakkiyah Jackson and Tiffany King, in posthumanist archaeologies. While I agree with Greer's critiques, his essay stops short of explaining this citational silence. In this brief commentary, I suggest that this absence of Black Studies scholarship reflects the fact that the discipline of archaeology remains a ‘white public space’ (Brodkin et al. 2011: 545) and maintains an artificial division between analysis and activism.

This paper describes the analysis of the Late Prehispanic rock-art site of Villavil 2 (Catamarca, Argentina). Despite its modest and inconspicuous nature, this is one of the few examples of rock-art sites known in the area to date. The relationship of the site with the surrounding landscape and the distribution of rock art throughout the site are analysed using a combination of GIS and 3D modelling. This analysis makes it possible to gain an understanding of the factors behind the location and distribution of rock art on different spatial scales. The interpretation presented here suggests that this rock art reproduces, on a modest local scale, patterns of production of Inka landscapes of control and dominion that have been recognized elsewhere, in sites with a much more obvious monumental scale. The internal organization of the site mimics, on a small scale, forms of interaction with the wider landscape that have been regionally observed, usually focusing on more conspicuous elements such as architecture.

We have documented more than 200 relative values of gold and silver across almost 3000 years (2500 bce–400 ce) to establish value benchmarks for essentially pure metal. Our aim is to improve understanding of ancient economies by enabling regional and temporal comparisons of these relative values. First, we establish silver as an early, reliable benchmark for valuing gold of varying purity before implementation of parting. Whilst purity accounted for two to threefold variation in the value of gold, we conclude that availability was more influential. Access to Nubian gold until about 1100 bce seems an important influence on gold-silver value ratios in Egypt and the Near East, which increased significantly following loss of this source. This investigation yields a suite of relative values for essentially pure gold and silver, subdivided by regions and intervals from 2500 bce–400 ce. These will enable future comparisons of precious metal-denominated costs of labour and commodities, including with today.

Handaxes have a uniquely prominent role in the history of Palaeolithic archaeology, and their early study provides crucial information concerning the epistemology of the field. We have little conclusive evidence, however, of their investigation or societal value prior to the mid seventeenth century. Here we investigate the shape, colour and potential flake scarring on a handaxe-like stone object seen in the Melun Diptych, painted by the French fifteenth-century artist Jean Fouquet, and compare its features with artefacts from diverse (including French) Acheulean handaxe assemblages. Commissioned by a high-status individual, Étienne Chevalier, Fouquet's work (Étienne Chevalier with Saint Stephen) depicts an important religious context, while the handaxe-like object points to the stoning to death of an important Christian saint. Our results strongly support the interpretation that the painted stone object represents a flint Acheulean handaxe, likely sourced from northern France, where Fouquet lived. Identifying a fifteenth-century painting of a handaxe does not change what we know about Acheulean individuals, but it does push back the evidence for when handaxes became a prominent part of the ‘modern’ social and cultural world.

Matthew Greer offers us a powerful, refreshing and thought-provoking critique of posthumanist approaches in archaeology as he sees them through the lens of Black Studies. He asks us to leave aside—temporarily—concerns with anthropocentrism to concentrate instead on the human side of the equation, while nonetheless positioning himself in line with posthumanist efforts to dismantle the human–non-human divide. The crux of Greer's arguments is that posthumanist approaches do not go far enough in distancing themselves from humanism for two reasons. First, humanity remains (tacitly) equated with white, heterosexual, economically well-off men, a single group that forms the scale against which all other people are measured. Second, posthumanist approaches do not acknowledge that racism and related forms of oppression were integral to the emergence of humanism and not a by-product of it.

Greer offers an excellent primer on some Black Studies scholars’ critiques of humanism, for which he uses the label ‘counter-humanism’ after Erasmus (2020), distinguishing these approaches from ‘posthumanism.’ He identifies two primary strains of posthumanism relevant to archaeological interpretation, symmetrical archaeology and posthuman feminism, though examples of the latter are drawn from a broader body of academic literature and are subject to less critique. Posthumanists are shown to prioritize dismantling a human–object divide, while counter-humanists critique the human–non-human split. This may appear to be more or less the same project, but the framing of ‘A/not-A’ rather than ‘A–B’ emphasizes the hegemonic relationships between these categories, the continuity within, and makes more explicit the fact that people are included in both the non-human and object categories.

By investigating the materiality of colonial encounters, specifically the consumption of introduced commodities by Indigenous peoples, archaeologists can explore questions concerning value, agency, consumer choice and localization. This has the significant capacity to broaden understandings of intercultural encounters and challenge colonial narratives. Glass beads represent one of the earliest foreign material culture introductions to the Indigenous peoples of Australia. The rock-shelter site of Madjedbebe, best known for yielding the oldest evidence to date for human occupation in Australia, also contains one of the largest assemblages from an Indigenous site context in Australia—51 glass beads and associated fragments. We present here an analysis of these objects—through attribute and microwear analysis—in concert with the archival record, to reveal the ways in which Bininj (Aboriginal people) incorporated glass beads into their own lifeways.

Past and present cultures perceive their natural landscape as an integral and vital component of their complex worlds, while particular landscape features and associated monuments built in selected locales become sacred and revered through stories, legends and rituals embedded in mundane and ceremonial events. The hyper-arid Har Tzuriaz area in the southern Negev, Israel, offers a case study of culture-geographic continuities over a chronologically cumulative archaeological sequence. The large set of well-preserved structures located adjacent to water sources, a massive escarpment and a major desert crossroads includes campsites, cult sites, rock-art sites, cairn fields and one desert kite (a large game trap). Cultural continuities and change can be traced from the sixth millennium bce through recent times, reflecting a dynamic system of meanings and interpretations of both the natural and the built landscape within one particular sacred area in the desert. These phenomena are exemplified in archaeological analyses of an open-air shrine, burial cairns, an isolated desert kite and a precise engraving of that kite dated 5000 years later, all in the general context of a dense concentration of surveyed sites.

Large walling projects are among the most visible features in the archaeological record. However, enclosure walls remain relatively under-theorized relative to other monumental buildings. In an attempt to move beyond simple explanations that analyse walls solely as defensive features or symbols, I link monumental walls to notions of sovereign power and action-oriented theories of value(s). Using examples from Pharaonic Egypt, I argue that monumental enclosure walls were attempts to define and realize particular social totalities, whether these were a temple complex, a royal tomb or an urban centre. If all efforts at border-making are also an exercise in power, walls have the potential to illuminate some of the goals and values of those ordering their construction. By analysing changes and continuities related to which structures required the protection of a monumental enclosure wall over time, it is possible to shed light on the fluid priorities of the most important political actors in Pharaonic society. Yet the very presence of a wall implies potential dissent and alternative practices—otherwise a wall's construction would not have been necessary.

The capacity of northern European gentlemen scholars educated in the love of wisdom, human dignity, friendship and rationality to treat their fellow human beings with irreconcilable prejudice and hold to ghastly beliefs of racial superiority, which legitimated violence, exploitation and extermination elsewhere, is one of the great tragedies of humanism. That the images of the human cultivated in texts were at variance with the lived experience of those who were treated as other than human was rarely noted in the books they read. I appreciate Matthew Greer's efforts to bring these concerns to the fore. I am grateful for the opportunity to read Sylvia Wynter, among others, and to think about their work in counter-humanism. I stand with Greer who reminds us that, as archaeologists, we must do more than critique ideologies, fight for inclusion, and engage in dialogue as demanded by a radical pluralism (Shanks & Tilley 1992, 246). Equity, social justice, openness, and decolonization demand the sustained effort of us all, both in our capacity as archaeologists and as readers of texts.

Archaeological materials from the Mediterranean world in Southeast Asia are scarce and their social context and cultural implications are rarely considered, while objects in Mediterranean style are often misinterpreted or overlooked. Concomitant to the increasing implementation of laboratory analysis, the range of new evidence, especially coming from recently excavated sites in Thailand and Myanmar, along with the reinterpretation of earlier data now brings the potential to compare different regions, and to discuss possible variations in terms both of the diversity and density of Roman materials. This study includes Mediterranean imports produced between the last centuries bce and first centuries ce, as well as Asia-produced inspired objects that integrate Mediterranean elements to varying degrees, combining new data and re-analysed materials. The paper not only contributes to building the sequence of cultural exchanges, but also interprets in cultural terms the varying Mediterranean elements present.

I want to begin by thanking Craig Cipolla, Lindsay Montgomery, Susan Pollock, Kathleen Sterling and Christopher Witmore for their responses. I am honoured to be in conversation with such thoughtful and insightful scholars. In my reading, two main themes emerged from their comments—citational politics and what the future of posthumanist archaeologies might look like. To conclude our discussion of archaeology, Black studies and posthumanism, I will address each in turn.

The majority of excavated human remains from Neolithic Britain emanate from monumental sites. However, it is increasingly recognized that multiple funerary practices are often attested within these monuments, and that diverse treatment of the dead is evident contemporaneously at non-monumental sites. In this paper, we highlight such variation in non-monumental funerary practices in Neolithic Britain (c. 4000–2500 bc) through the biographical study of an assemblage from a large post-hole at Bridlington Boulevard, Yorkshire. Through osteological and taphonomic analysis of the human bones and technological and microwear analysis of the accompanying axehead, we infer complex funerary processes, with the expediently manufactured axehead potentially featuring in the funerary rites and subsequent post-raising before being deposited in the feature. Bridlington Boulevard represents one element of a varied funerary complex—cremations in pits and post-holes—at a time when most individuals were not deposited in monuments, or indeed were not deposited at all. Compiling these non-monumental cremations across Britain causes us to look beyond categorizing these assemblages as funerary contexts, and instead suggests important cosmological associations and forces were brought together in pit and post-and-human cremation deposits.