This article is a proof-of-concept that archaeologists can now disseminate archaeological topics to the public easily and cheaply through video games in teaching situations or in museum or heritage communication. We argue that small but realistic, interactive, and immersive closed- or open-world 3D video games about cultural heritage with unscripted (but guardrailed) oral conversation can now be created by beginners with free software such as Unreal Engine, Reality Capture, and Convai. Thus, developing tailor-made “archaeogames” is now becoming extremely accessible, empowering heritage specialists and researchers to control audiovisual dissemination in museums and education. This unlocks new uses for 3D photogrammetry, currently mostly used for documentation, and could make learning about the past more engaging for a wider audience. Our case study is a small game with two levels, one built around 3D-scanned Neolithic long dolmens in a forest clearing and an archaeologist and a prehistoric person, who are both conversational AI characters. We later added a more open level with autonomous animals, a meadow, and a cave with a shaman guiding the player around specific cave paintings. We tested the first level on players from different backgrounds whose feedback showed great promise. Finally, we discuss ethical issues and future perspectives for this format.

Monkeys kept as exotic pets by wealthy Romans have hitherto been determined as African species exclusively, specifically Barbary macaques, in the few documented cases of monkey skeletons. This has now been revised following the discovery of three dozen burials of Indian macaques from the first two centuries CE at the animal cemetery of the Red Sea port of Berenike. The special status of these primates among other buried companion animals, mainly cats and some dogs, is suggested by grave goods including restraining collars, apparent status markers like iridescent shells and food delicacies, and kittens and a piglet as the monkey’s own pets. The Berenike material is the most comprehensive source to date for the socio-cultural context of keeping exotic pets. It suggests a resident Roman elite, possibly associated with Roman legionary officers posted at the harbor. The monkey burials from Berenike also provide the first zooarchaeological evidence of trade in live animals from India.

This study offers a review of the artistic dimension of the Chinchorro culture, a complex hunter-gatherer society along the coast of the Atacama Desert that, around 7000 years ago, created elaborate representations of the dead. It provides archaeological background and investigates the possible reasons for the development of artificial mummification. Drawing on the art therapy model and the concepts of art and grief, the analysis interprets Chinchorro mortuary rituals as expressions of emotional and social processes. This study argues that these anthropogenically prepared mummies represent artistic expressions that reflect the intentional decision-making and emotional awareness of these ancient communities, serving as a means to process grief. Furthermore, the paper highlights the multifaceted nature of Chinchorro society, including the mining and use of pigments such as manganese—materials that, while symbolically meaningful, posed serious health risks and may have contributed to the eventual decline of their elaborate funerary practices. Finally, the study underscores the enduring cultural significance of the Chinchorro, particularly in shaping contemporary identity of Arica region, where artistic portrayal of dead links ancient and modern narratives of cultural heritage.

The aim of this paper is to provide an in-depth study, including both invasive and non-invasive chemical analyses, and lead isotope analysis, of one of the northernmost Early Neolithic copper flat axeheads in Europe, the Öja axehead from west Sweden. In addition, we present an updated catalogue of the early copper axeheads found in Sweden. Our analyses suggest that the copper used to manufacture the Öja axehead originates from eastern Serbian ore sources, confirming previous studies on other Early Neolithic metal finds from southern Scandinavia. Comparing our results with the current understanding of copper production and circulation across the continent during the 5th and 4th millennium BCE, important new questions emerge concerning early copper mining in south-east Europe and the production and consumption of early copper artefacts in Europe and Scandinavia.

Despite the substantial volume of literature on the Second Sophistic, only rarely do current approaches focus on a formal analysis of its language and the ways in which it correlates to the contemporary debate on language correctness. The present paper suggests that such an analysis could be a fruitful field of enquiry and offers several suggestions as to how it might be executed to enhance our literary appreciation of these texts. It focuses on the use of Attic phonology and morphology in two literary texts (Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon and Aristides’ Panathenaic Oration) and a second-century CE Eleusinian inscription. By exploring the roles played by language and sound, the paper highlights how imperial high-register prose interweaves nostalgic motifs and innovative practices in a programmatic mixture of archaising elements and contemporary koine features that engenders a novel style.

Scholars have been sharply divided over the legal status of temple cult in the fourth century. This is due to a large body of evidence that appears in some ways to be contradictory. However, insufficient attention has been paid to Libanius’ claim (Or. 30.33–6) that the civic cults of Rome and Alexandria were exempt from the bans that were in effect elsewhere. The hypothesis derived from this testimony is capable of explaining all of the evidence, resolving the apparent contradictions. To simplify the matter somewhat, all aspects of temple cult were legal in Rome and Alexandria until 391, but, except for the period from late 361–c. 366/372, the central ritual of public sacrifice (at a minimum) had been illegal in the rest of the Empire since the latter years of Constantine’s reign.

Legal reforms in California are reshaping archaeological education and professional training in ways that may soon warrant national attention. These changes challenge traditional pedagogical models, particularly in bachelor’s and master’s degree programs that have long served as entry points into cultural resource management (CRM) careers. Drawing on one of the most extensive surveys of CRM organizations in California, this article examines how employers are responding to this evolving landscape. The data reveal a demand for field experience, local familiarity, knowledge of relevant laws, and interpersonal skills. We contextualize these findings within broader efforts to reform training and research models in California and discuss tensions in this shifting terrain. We advocate for a new public archaeology that redefines training and professional pathways through collaboration, accountability, and a deeper commitment to the communities that archaeology serves.

In 2022, a Tunisian citizen was arrested in Oslo when he tried to sell 30 Carthaginian bronze coins to a local antiques dealer. The dealer had previously alerted the police after receiving an email inquiry asking him whether he was interested in buying a ‘large number’ of Punic coins from an alleged underwater find, presumably a hoard, off the coast of Tunisia. The University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, which cooperates with law-enforcement agencies and the authorities in cases involving illicit cultural artefacts, assisted with the identification of the coins. Eventually, the latter were returned to Tunisia, and Norwegian prosecutors dropped the charges against the Tunisian national. This article discusses the relevant legal framework of the case and the process that unfolded from the time when an attempt was made to sell the coins until they were returned to their country of origin. The broader numismatic implications of this find are also examined.

This article examines some recent trends within the scholarship on ancient Greek women. The field of gender and women’s studies is vast, and so this review is necessarily selective; it is also historical in focus, though I have deliberately tried to include works that cover a broad chronological and geographical range, and those that draw on different kinds of source material. It is divided into three parts: part 1 examines questions concerning ‘real’ women, part 2 is on agency and part 3 draws some observations on the difficulties of, and opportunities for, writing histories of women.

The last decades have seen great scholarly interest in the fate of Roman temples and cult statues during the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. The surge of studies on spatiality and lived religion in Roman studies have demonstrated that ancient religious practice was not confined to sanctuaries but rather infused into all spheres of everyday life. Informed by these studies, I argue that the Christianisation effort was not confined to temples and cult statues in sanctuaries, despite the narrow focus on these monuments in legal and patristic sources. The spaces where people most frequently moved, lived, and practised religion in their everyday lives were equally important religious arenas. In this article I venture out of the temples and into the streets of late antique Ephesus to the Triodos intersection to highlight an array of subtle transformations that are unassuming in isolation, but together effectively Christianised the streetscape. I demonstrate that streetscapes were arenas of material Christianisation alongside monumental sanctuaries. The Triodos is used as a point of departure to show how the Roman streetscapes functioned as more-than-material religious assemblages. Human–material interaction in ritual and everyday movement and practices made the streetscapes active participants in the Christianisation process.

This study identifies, introduces and joins up the long lives of the geographically dispersed fragments that exist of the famed and fabled Stone of Scone/Destiny, used in inauguration and coronation of Scottish, English and British monarchs since medieval times. Based on an interdisciplinary approach that combines material culture studies and ethnographic methods, it characterises the networks in which the fragments have lived and considers what work these fragments were and are doing. It asks what difference fragmentation and the existence of fragments makes to our contemporary understanding of the meaning, values and significance of the Stone. The Stone and its considerable fragmentation evoke specific procedural and curatorial issues that invite wider reflection on the nature and role of fragments, and about private collections and their afterlives. Through the life of pieces, the study suggests, we can better understand what role social value could and should be playing in our museum and heritage practices.

The Antikythera shipwreck provides a rare chronological anchor in the history of Greek sculpture. The cargo, a massive haul of more than four-dozen bronze and marble statues, in addition to amphorae and portable luxury goods, was lost at sea c. 70–50 BCE, possibly later, along the north-east coast of the island of Antikythera. Previous research on the sculptural assemblage from the wreck has focused on the style and iconographic heritage of individual statues. This article examines the statuary as a gathered whole to isolate trends in material, size, and subject matter. The results suggest a main setting where some, maybe all, of the statues might have originally been displayed: the gymnasion. The statues were probably obtained through plunder or extortion, not normal commercial activity. The study concludes by considering where the statues might have been set up once they reached their presumed destination in Italy. It is shown that the statues were most appropriate for display in a lavish public building in Rome.

Inscribed Greek verse epitaphs were produced in relatively high numbers in the city of Rome under the Principate. Although many were made for slaves and freedmen, their use was not confined to them. The individuals who opted to use them made a deliberate choice to emphasize their Greek cultural identity. They may have had several motives, but often the deceased or their (grand)parents had migrated from the eastern parts of the Roman empire to Rome, voluntarily or involuntarily. By presenting themselves as Greek in their language and use of mythological exempla, they claimed the paideia (‘education’) and culture associated with the Greek literary past. Yet despite the heavy emphasis on Greekness, the epigrams also display an awareness of the Roman context in which they were set up. Greek epigrams formed excellent vehicles to navigate the cultural ambiguities of ‘being Greek’ in Rome, and this explains why Rome became a major production centre of Greek funerary epigram.

The Tomb of the Scipios is a multigenerational patrician tomb outside Rome dating from the early third to mid-second century b.c.e. The tomb is perhaps most famous for its verse epitaphs, which have traditionally been identified as echoes of the lost elite family domestic archives that informed the first Roman histories. In dialogue with the recent turn towards considering the role of non-literary methods of recording the past in the development of Roman historical thought, this paper proposes a reinterpretation of these epitaphs within their archaeological context. Ultimately, this paper argues that the Tomb of the Scipios and its epitaphs should be understood not simply as lost echoes of other types of family history, but as a site where the family experienced history through an ongoing dialogue with the dead.

In 1937 the philosopher Robin Collingwood excavated a henge monument in Cumbria and identified the postholes of a series of timber buildings, which he compared with those at other sites. These structures at Eamont Bridge were replaced by a stone circle. He planned to continue the work for a second season, but was prevented by illness. His project was completed by the famous German scholar Gerhard Bersu, who concluded that many of the features identified two years earlier were of geological origin; others were rootholes and animal burrows. Their projects have played a part in the history of fieldwork, but in recent years influential researchers have tried to rehabilitate Collingwood’s reputation as an excavator. Their views were encouraged by his pivotal role in studies of the northern frontier of Roman Britain. In 2023 parts of the monument at King Arthur’s Round Table were re-excavated with the aim of settling the dispute. The new work supported Bersu’s interpretation, but recognised that Collingwood’s approach was not as misguided as his critics had supposed – it was directly based on his agenda for historical research. The real problem is that he had been working without sufficient experience on a difficult subsoil. This article considers the methods used by both researchers at King Arthur’s Round Table and compares their distinctive approaches to field archaeology.

This article describes a unique patolli board found in a large residential compound at the Classic period Maya site of Naachtun (Petén, Guatemala) and discusses its implications. While dozens of patolli engraved in stucco floors and benches are known, the example from Naachtun has divisions outlined with sherds inlaid in the fresh mortar. This way of creating the board may provide a fresh perspective on the way the game was played, as it indicates boards could be included in the architecture from the planning stage and also potentially have a long use life.

While conducting archaeological survey to document the large prehistoric canal systems in the central portion of the Tehuacán Valley, investigators recorded a mound and plaza complex that includes what appears to be an effigy mound in the shape of a scorpion. Large quantities of ceramics, including surface-decorated and polychromes, indicate a Late Classic and Postclassic occupation. The site is interpreted as being part of an intensive agricultural system as it appears centrally located in the context of highly developed agricultural and irrigation infrastructure. For the reasons described, we interpret this ca. 60 meter scorpion effigy mound as an intentional feature with possible astronomical alignments. It is hypothesized as being part of a local civic/ceremonial complex with the possible use/function of observing the summer and winter solstices. If so, it provides an insight into the integration of calendrical ritual with the surrounding complex system of fields and irrigation canals. Admittedly, these observations and explanations are relatively subjective. However, we consider them to be persuasive when the evidence is considered in its entirety.

This article examines how Native Nations and institutions have been affected by a new directive in the revised NAGPRA regulations, the duty of care provision (43 CFR 10.1(d)), with a focus on the care of Indigenous Ancestral remains and cultural items. The Native Nation’s perspective is provided by the Osage Nation and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology; the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; the Illinois State Museum; and Indiana University share their viewpoints as institutions that house Indigenous Ancestral remains, cultural items, and archaeological collections and describe the initial impacts of the revised legislation on their programs. There are several key takeaways of its initial effects, including (1) an increased burden to Native Nations, given the substantial uptick in requests for consultation linked to new requirements for consent and the revised definitions of cultural items and research (although the end result of more consultations leading to repatriations is desired), (2) a disconnect between Native Nations and institutions regarding cultural item identification, (3) a strengthening of existing NAGPRA-related institutional policies and procedures, and (4) an emphasis on the importance of consultation between institutions and Native Nations to facilitate repatriation.