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.

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.

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.

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.

The influence of pareidolia has often been anecdotally observed in examples of Upper Palaeolithic cave art, where topographic features of cave walls were incorporated into images. As part of a wider investigation into the visual psychology of the earliest known art, we explored three hypotheses relating to pareidolia in cases of Late Upper Palaeolithic art in Las Monedas and La Pasiega Caves (Cantabria, Spain). Deploying current research methods from visual psychology, our results support the notion that topography of cave walls played a strong role in the placement of figurative images—indicative of pareidolia influencing art making—although played a lesser role in determining whether the resulting images were relatively simple or complex. Our results also suggested that lighting conditions played little or no role in determining the form or placement of images, contrary to what has been previously assumed. We hypothesize that three ways of artist–cave interaction (‘conversations’) were at work in our sample caves and suggest a developmental scheme for these. We propose that these ‘conversations’ with caves and their surfaces may have broader implications for how we conceive of the emergence and development of art in the Palaeolithic.

Archaeology is centrally concerned with the tension between material remains in the present and a reconstructed past. This tension is captured by the concept of a trace, namely a contemporary phenomenon that references the past through some sort of epistemic intervention. Traces are deceptively complex in terms of both their epistemology and their ontology and hence worthy of detailed exploration. In particular, archaeological traces not only concern the past per se but also possess a latent quality of as yet unrealized signification. This gives archaeological traces a future orientation that is rarely considered in discussions of archaeological epistemology.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The historic environment—comprising a palimpsest of landscapes, buildings and objects—carries meaning and plays a crucial role in giving people a sense of place, identity and belonging. It represents a repository of ever-accumulating collective and individually held values—shared perceptions, experiences, life histories, beliefs and traditions. These social or private values are mostly ascribed by people to familiar places within this environment based on the ontological security which this everyday heritage provides. However, these values are notoriously hard to capture and categorize. This makes it difficult to incorporate them into heritage-management strategies, which typically rely on objective, fact-based datasets. In this paper, we present a new methodology to capture those elusive values, by combining Topic Modelling with the principles of Grounded Theory. Results show that our novel approach is viable and replicable and that these important values can be effectively and meaningfully integrated, thus creating more inclusive approaches to heritage management than exist currently.

Direct or indirect evidence of ropemaking are scarce in European prehistory. Only a few references to Middle or Upper Palaeolithic remains are known to us, with more examples towards the Holocene. The archaeological contexts of ropes offer little information about possible uses, as the activities they are used for are often archaeologically invisible. However, some rock-art traditions shed some light on potential uses, worth exploring. In Spain, Levantine rock art offers the best graphic examples across Europe showing various uses of ropes, including climbing. Starting from the recently discovered climbing scene of Barranco Gómez site (Teruel, Spain), including the best preserved and more complex use of ropes seen so far in Levantine art, this paper analyses representations of ropes in this art, as well as their varieties and diverse uses. Our study suggests that different rope-making techniques were used by Levantine societies, which we believe are indicative of a complex rope-making technology, requiring a considerable investment of time and efforts. It also shows a certain variety of rope climbing techniques and rope climbing gear, illustrating that both were mastered by Levantine societies. Moreover, a preferential use of ropes in honey-hunting scenes is observed.

Thus far, most researchers have focused on the cognition of fire use, but few have explored the cognition of firemaking. With this contribution we analyse aspects of the two main hunter-gatherer firemaking techniques—the strike-a-light and the manual fire-drill—in terms of causal, social and prospective reasoning. Based on geographic distribution, archaeological and ethnographic information, as well as our cognitive interpretation of strike-a-light firemaking, we suggest that this technique may well have been invented by Neanderthal populations in Eurasia. Fire-drills, on the other hand, represent a rudimentary form of a symbiotic technology, which requires more elaborate prospective and causal reasoning skills. This firemaking technology may have been invented by different Homo sapiens groups roaming the African savanna before populating the rest of the globe, where fire-drills remain the most-used hunter-gatherer firemaking technique.

This article proposes an interpretive framework of paradox and wonder as a new approach to understanding the affective properties and social consequences of miniature objects in the archaeological record. Building upon current scholarly theories of miniatures as inherently intimate, this approach accounts for how small-scale artworks were also designed and deliberately manufactured to elude user attempts at full sensory access and immersive escapism. This desire-provoking tension between intimacy and distance—which lures viewers into small-scale encounters only to insist upon the object's life-size existence—is wonder, and it is what gives miniature objects their social relevance and ability not only to reflect, but also to influence, the real world. The benefits and applicability of this approach to miniaturization are illustrated through analysis of case studies of miniature objects (figurines, coins, seals and seal impressions, and jewellery) from Hellenistic Babylonia (Seleucid and Parthian periods in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq, 323 bce–ce 224).

Macrolithic tools are linked to daily activities and, fundamentally, to settlements, hence their importance for the study of Late Prehistoric societies. However, these objects are also associated with funerary contexts, but have not often been analysed holistically. This paper studies an assemblage of macrolithic elements from three collective tombs from the third millennium cal. bc at the site of La Orden-Seminario (Huelva, Spain), from a theoretical and methodological perspective based on the biography of the object. Our analysis focuses on typology, raw materials, technology, function and burial context. The results show that the tools can be linked to domestic activities such as the grinding of cereals and the processing of plant materials, as well as for the production and maintenance of the elements used in these activities. The analysed objects display long biographies of use and, in some cases, we have documented intentional breakage for their deposition in the tombs. The patterns of deposition in the funerary contexts reflect social practices related to the ritual and symbolic behaviours surrounding death and the relationship with everyday objects.

Gender is under focus in prehistoric archaeology, with traditional binary models being questioned and alternatives formulated. Quantification, however, is generally lacking, and alternative models are rarely tested against the archaeological evidence. In this article, we test the binary hypothesis of gender for prehistoric Central Europe based on a selection of seven published burial sites dating from the Early Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age. Results show that the binary model holds for the majority of individuals, but also supports the existence of non-binary variants. We address such variants as ‘minorities’ rather than ‘exceptions’, as only the former can be integrated in interpretive models. However, we also find that quantification is undermined by several sources of error and systematic bias.

In this article we put forward an alternative account of the famous wristguards, or bracers, of the European Early Bronze Age. Combining new materialism with empirical microwear analysis, we study 15 examples from Britain in detail and suggest a different way of conceptualizing these objects. Rather than demanding they have a singular function, we treat these objects as ‘multiplicities’ and as always in process. This, in turn, has significant implications for the important archaeological concepts of typology and object biography and our understandings of material culture more widely.

Reconstructing the technical and cognitive abilities of past hominins requires an understanding of how skills like stone toolmaking were learned and transmitted. We ask how much of the variability in the uptake of knapping skill is due to the characteristics of the knapping sequences themselves? Fundamental to skill acquisition is proceduralization, the process whereby skilful tasks are converted from declarative memories (consciously memorized facts and events) into procedural memories (sub-consciously memorized actions) via repetitive practice. From knapping footage, we time and encode each action involved in discoidal, handaxe, Levallois and prismatic blade production. The structure and complexity of these reduction sequences were quantified using k-mer analysis and Markov chains. The amount of time spent on tasks and the pattern of core rotations revealed portions of these reduction sequences that are predisposed to being converted into procedural memories. We observed two major pathways to achieve this proceduralization: either a repetitive or a predictable sequence of core rotations. Later Acheulean handaxes and Levallois knapping involved a predictable platform selection sequence, while prismatic blade knapping involved a repetitive exploitation of platforms. Technologies and the portions of their reduction sequence that lend themselves to proceduralization probably facilitated the more rapid uptake of stone toolmaking skill.

Within archaeology, the value of livestock is usually presented in terms of use values, the calories and products animals provide humans. Yet domestic animals are also sources of wealth that accrue symbolic and social values, tying livestock production to the reproduction of human social relations. Taking a Marxist perspective that recognizes dialectical relations between forms of value, we develop a model based on ethnographic examples in which the cycling between use value and social/symbolic values adhering to wealth in livestock are mobilized for the reproduction of ‘wealth in people’, or the accumulation of rights stemming from relationships between people. This model of cycling between forms of value can be applied to many ethnohistorical agropastoral political economies. We apply it to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B societies (c. 8500–7000 bc) in Jordan. During this time, the mode of production shifted from one grounded in the community to one centered on extended households. We suggest wealth in people was a key asset for LPPNB households and that wealth in livestock served as a major component of, and a particular ‘moment’ within, its reproduction. This might help explain the accelerated pace by which livestock production overtook hunting in the southern Levant in the eighth millennium bc.