CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL最新文献

The capacity to relate a signal to an arbitrary, specific and generally understood meaning—symbolism—is an integral feature of human language. Here, we explore two aspects of knapping technology at the Acheulean site of Boxgrove that may suggest symbolic communication. Tranchet tips are a difficult handaxe form to create, but are unusually prevalent at Boxgrove. We use geometric morphometrics to show that despite tranchet flaking increasing planform irregularity, handaxes with tranchet tips have more standardized 3D shapes than those without. This challenging standardization suggests tranchet tips at Boxgrove were part of a normative prescription for a particular handaxe form. Boxgrove presents some of the thinnest handaxes in the Acheulean world. To replicate such thin bifaces involves the technique of turning-the-edge. Since this technique is visually and causally opaque it may not be possible to learn through observation or even pointing, instead requiring arbitrary referents to teach naïve knappers. We use scar ordering on handaxes to show a variety of instances of turning-the-edge in different depositional units at Boxgrove, indicating it was socially transmitted to multiple knappers. The presence of societally understood norms, coupled with a technique that requires specific referents to teach its salient features, suggests symbolism was a feature of hominin communication at Boxgrove 480,000 years ago.

Worldbuilding is a concept that has been used to describe the creation of immersive landscapes in fiction and games and is deeply resonant with archaeological knowledge construction. This article argues for worldbuilding in archaeology as a creative intervention that encourages an exploration of archaeological data throughout the process of creation, interpretation and dissemination to generate past worlds, shaped through community storytelling. Through the examples of Çatalhöyük in Second Life, Other Eyes and the Avebury Papers projects, I explore a playful practice that closely interrogates reuse of archaeological data and encourages lateral thinking amongst students and other archaeological storytellers.

All societies throughout time have shown a greater or lesser degree of superstition when facing the traumatic event of death. Roman society was no exception, especially when numerous religious currents participated in the funerary rituals, sharing their own conception and beliefs. The following lines present a brief overview of children’s death, especially premature ones, from the early Imperial to the late Imperial period, when they became more highly regarded. It is followed by the traumatic or marginal deaths of some individuals whose behaviour, illnesses or ways of dying were suspicious for their closest people: the article closes with the treatment given to certain women. All the deaths in this research aroused suspicions among their relatives or the authorities, who did not hesitate to practise rituals to calm them in the afterlife and ensure that they did not return to life as evil spirits. In this article we will focus on the practices that developed in the city of Onoba and its hinterland or influential area; a Roman colony located in the westernmost part of the province of Baetica, a port city of enormous importance for the Empire given its importance as a gateway for minerals coming from the Urium mines.

Tell settlements often provide a unique window into prehistoric lifeways due to remarkable preservation and safeguarding from modern disturbances. Vésztő-Mágor in Hungary is one such tell with stratigraphy, features and finds that reflect thousands of years of prehistoric settlement. In 2021, the Vésztő-Mágor Conservation and Exhibition Program began the work of stabilizing, documenting and preserving prehistoric deposits, features and artefacts exposed in an in situ exhibition trench at Vésztő-Mágor. In the process, an exceptionally well-preserved carbonized item was discovered embedded in a series of Middle Bronze Age house floors. We describe the object and context of discovery, and interpret it as matting inside a wattle-and-daub house. We expand our discussion to similar contexts known from Vésztő-Mágor, in the Carpathian Basin, and beyond, to highlight the technologies involving organic materials used at prehistoric tell sites and their significance for understanding lifeways at these settlements.

‘Giant’ handaxes are a widely recognized but infrequently investigated phenomenon of the Acheulean period. The scale of their distribution and the selective pressures underpinning their production are not well explored. Here, we report new data from a large-scale experimental study that identifies the point at which handaxes become too large to use with a single hand, alongside a review of known Acheulean assemblages displaying ‘giant’ handaxes. On the understanding that most ‘regularly sized’ Acheulean handaxes were gripped in one hand, if handaxes require bimanual grips, alternative explanations for their production—beyond unimanual butchery and woodworking tasks—should be sought. Our data identify clear mass, length and thickness thresholds for bimanual gripping. It is revealed that spatially and temporally diverse archaeological sites display ‘giant’ artefacts that exceed these thresholds. We suggest these atypically large handaxes would most plausibly have been utilitarian tools used for cutting, but in alternative ways to more regularly sized bifaces. This includes when worked materials were secured by another individual or structure, during digging activities, or when used as a stationary cutting ‘plane’ secured on the ground.

This paper asks how an ontological perspective on Late Nordic Bronze Age art can advance archaeological interpretation of the ornamentation on personal objects used and carried directly on human bodies. To this end, the theoretical concepts perspectivism and ontological alterity are operationalized as an alternative to epistemological approaches to art. This entails framing the art on personal objects as a set of relations with the capacity to act and affect the lives of the humans interacting with it, rather than as representations. A central point is that this art should be considered as cosmology rather than representations of cosmology. The relational effects of this art in its bodily context are presented in examples illustrating how cosmology was encountered and experienced through the use of the objects. The paper concludes that art functioned as a medium for dialogue between the metaphysical and physical realities as it made cosmology present via personal objects.

Forgetting, an attendant to culture change, is the stuff of history. When cultural innovations, exchange and adoption occur, previous customs, knowledge, technology and other dimensions of culture are often lost—they are forgotten. This paper considers the phenomenon of forgetting and its permutations—the passive forgetting that is more or less an accepted outcome of change, the unintentional forgetting that is accidental and undesired, and the intentional forgetting of wilful erasure—as a way of contemplating agency and culture loss/change among the Dorset Paleo-Inuit peoples of the central and eastern North American Arctic, and more broadly, in Arctic archaeology.

This study examines geographic origins of basketry, animal and human grave offerings (including a feline trophy head, camelid bone instruments and human trophy heads) interred as grave goods at the cemetery of Uraca in the Majes Valley, Arequipa, Peru during the Early Intermediate Period to Middle Horizon (c. 100 bce–750 ce). We aim to identify whether any of these human or non-human beings or artifacts were non-local to the Majes Valley and explore the ontologically informed meanings underlying the incorporation of geographically distant beings and things into mortuary landscapes. We report new grave good 87Sr/86Sr (n = 36) relative to published data from Uraca human trophy heads and non-trophy individuals (n = 55). Defining the local 87Sr/86Sr range as the mean ±2σ of the non-trophy and non-camelid or small home-range fauna, we compare the proportions of non-local outliers between plant, animal and human grave-offering types. The 87Sr/86Sr range of all new samples is 0.70609–0.70954, encompassing the 87Sr/86Sr variability of much of southern Peru from the coast to the highlands. Nearly half of camelids, the feline trophy, most camelid whistles and one basketry sample were non-local, suggesting that assembling beings and things from both local and distant geographies was an important aspect of making the mortuary landscape.

This article is an exploration of how Christian influences manifested in Indigenous rock art, comparing two distinct case studies: western Arnhem Land in northern Australia and the southern Andes in north-central Chile. The analysis aims to understand the intersection between Indigenous artistic traditions and the introduction of Christianity through European colonization. Our comparative analysis reveals significant regional differences. In western Arnhem Land, the scarcity of Christian imagery suggests resistance to or avoidance of religious symbols, while in north-central Chile, the prevalence of Christian symbols indicates a more profound incorporation of Christianity into Indigenous artistic practices. These findings underscore the importance of considering local contexts and historical processes when examining the impact of colonization on Indigenous art. Understanding these differences provides valuable insights into the complex interactions between Indigenous cultures and European colonizers, revealing resistance and adaptation in the face of profound social and religious changes.