The elites of many past cultures have sought to romanticise agricultural labour—often the source of their wealth and hence their status. A recently discovered winery at the Villa of the Quintilii on the Via Appia Antica, near Rome, provides only the second known example from the Graeco-Roman world of an opulent wine production complex built to facilitate vinicultural ‘spectacle’. The authors present the architectural and decorative form of the winery and illustrate how the annual vintage was reimagined as ‘theatrical’ performance. Dating to the mid third century AD, the complex illuminates how ancient elites could fuse utilitarian function with ostentatious luxury to fashion their social and political status.

We thank our colleague for his comment, address concerns raised, and encourage future collaborative research to answer important questions about the Middle Preclassic at Cahal Pech.

As lidar becomes a regular part of surveying, ground-based platforms (handheld, mobile, and terrestrial lidar) and airborne platforms (piloted aircraft) are being joined by unpiloted aerial vehicle (UAV)–acquired lidar. We present a method for leveraging UAV-acquired lidar data with data collected using different lidar platforms (terrestrial and piloted aircraft), at a range of resolutions (1 to +1,000 points per m2) and geographic scales. We use these instruments to document a dry-masonry stone wall enclosing a religious precinct within the royal center at Kealakekua, Kona District, Hawai'i Island. Prior to European contact in AD 1779, Kealakekua was the center of the island-wide polity during the annual Makahiki festival. Results of this study suggest that when the wall was constructed around AD 1640, it was the largest structure ever built on the island of Hawai'i as well as a strong material expression of the power of state religion and the Makahiki rituals.

North-western Arabia is marked by thousands of prehistoric stone structures. Of these, the monumental, rectilinear type known as mustatils has received only limited attention. Recent fieldwork in AlUla and Khaybar Counties, Saudi Arabia, demonstrates that these monuments are architecturally more complex than previously supposed, featuring chambers, entranceways and orthostats. These structures can now be interpreted as ritual installations dating back to the late sixth millennium BC, with recent excavations revealing the earliest evidence for a cattle cult in the Arabian Peninsula. As such, mustatils are amongst the earliest stone monuments in Arabia and globally one of the oldest monumental building traditions yet identified.

This article examines the iconography of a type of Caracalla tetradrachm that has been newly attributed to Neapolis in Roman Palestine and whose reverse depicts a monumental altar decorated with statues of Tyche, Ephesian Artemis, and Kore Persephone. The study contextualizes these deities in the religious life of Neapolis and identifies the monument as an altar often depicted as a miniscule element in panoramic views of Mount Gerizim on the bronze coins of Neapolis. The tetradrachms provide, for the first time, a close-up view of this long-lost civic monument.

Recent investigations at Cahal Pech, Belize, documented a previously unrecognized Middle Preclassic (700–500 cal BC) E-Group complex. Located in an open public plaza, the monumental complex likely functioned as a forum for communal public events. In the Late Preclassic, the E-Group was replaced by an ancestor shrine where several royal tombs are located, as well as buildings separating public civic space from private elite space. These shifts in monumental construction temporally track the development of ideological manifestations of power and provide evidence for the formalization of dynastic rulership by an emerging elite class.

The development of Middle Preclassic (900–300 BC) ceremonial architecture is receiving more attention by archaeologists conducting research in the Maya Lowlands. Although a few examples have been partially excavated, there is still a dearth of information on how and why monumental constructions were originally built. This is largely because early structures often lie below several layers of sequential architecture, making them difficult to locate. Even when Middle Preclassic architecture is identified, exposure is often too limited to fully investigate its form and function. A well-preserved and accessible Middle Preclassic platform would be a rare find and could greatly enhance our knowledge and understanding of the subject. At Pacbitun, Cayo District, Belize, such a discovery has been made beneath the artificially raised surface of the main plaza. To make the most of this opportunity, five seasons of excavation worked to expose this massive building in its entirety. In this article, we provide details concerning the structural design of the platform and its abandonment, as well as present potential architectural comparisons. We conclude by reevaluating complexity at Pacbitun.

The Chacoan great houses and great kivas of the U.S. Southwest are monumental, both in their scale and in conveying meaning. Visibility is key to understanding how and by whom that meaning was experienced. Although often discussed in Chaco studies, visibility has been infrequently tested. Here, the authors consider 430 great house and great kiva locations, and evaluate their visibility within their local landscapes. Using a total viewshed approach, they provide new evidence to suggest that great houses, but not great kivas, were often placed to be highly visible to individuals in the surrounding landscape. These patterns may speak to the social and physical properties of the structures.

This article concerns the study of power and space within the Archbishop's Palace in Trondheim and, in particular, how the structure and organization of the precinct in the late medieval period formed a medium through which the archbishop's powers were exercised. Its aim is to explore the ways in which the spatial patterning of occupation, as revealed by the recent excavations in the palace, can cast light on the articulation of the archbishop's wealth, status and authority during the turbulent period prior to the Reformation.

The theoretical starting point is a reformulation of Michael Mann's theory of social power and Anthony Giddens's concept of ‘locale’ within a Marxist framework. It is suggested that, in the historical context of the crisis of Scandinavian feudalism, the palace at Trondheim became the focus for overlapping networks of ideological, economic, military and political power. These developments were expressed through the reorganization of the architectural space and the construction of a series of workshop complexes within the walled precinct between c. AD 1500 and 1537. By analysing the archaeological evidence for craft production, in particular minting, this paper considers how the palace formed a locale for the interaction of a specific set of social relations. It consequently examines some of the processes underpinning the expansion of the archbishop's power during the late medieval period, and discusses the social dynamics behind the conflict between the Church and the centralizing, Protestant-leaning forces of the Danish-Norwegian state.

The El Niño phenomenon can cause devastating inundation with catastrophic social and economic impacts. Evidence for multiple second-millennium BC El Niño events is present as laminated sediment layers at Huaca Cortada, a large Initial Period monument of the Caballo Muerto Complex in the Moche Valley, Peru. These indicate that one response to this period of climatic flux was the renewal and expansion of temple architecture, perhaps in an effort to demonstrate control over nature, and to maintain a symbol of community permanence. The final abandonment of Huaca Cortada is also associated with an El Niño event around 1000–900 BC.