Over the last decades, archaeology has experienced a transformative revolution in the wake of the digital that has shaped the ways in which it is researched and published. A key concept, openness, has emerged from this shift. This article explores digital approaches to data management conducted within the framework of the PERAIA project, which provides a comprehensive open database and a web application that integrate data on archaeological heritage spanning from late prehistory to antiquity, covering the Aegean area (Crete) and northeastern Libya / northwestern Egypt (Marmarica). We used a methodology that integrates legacy data with historical aerial and satellite imagery to identify archaeological features in the landscape, thereby enriching them with associated environmental and historical (meta)data. Our open data practices reflect a commitment to open science, in which digital technology and the LOUD+FAIR principles have been at the core of the project to achieve data openness, fair access to information, and enhanced data reusability potential.

During the Late Classic (a.d. 600–900), Maya stone monuments from the Western Lowlands documented people with the sajal title. This position was associated with corporate group leaders who acted as governors of secondary sites, supervised warfare-related activities, and manufactured and distributed goods. The increase in records, along with the elaboration of monuments by sajals with differing narratives from those of the rulers, has been identified as a contributing factor to the regional political instability that led to the abandonment of Classic Maya capitals. This article aims to analyze monuments from the political spheres of Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras, and Palenque using a discourse analysis approach to identify the discursive strategies sajals used to showcase and strengthen their hierarchical positions. To accomplish this, I will analyze the discourse in relation to the intermediality of monuments to examine how sajals rivaled the rulers of these cities. Additionally, I will explore the correlation between these discourses and the sociopolitical transformations that preceded the regional collapse in the ninth century a.d.

Zoroastrians are one of Iran's religious minorities, who managed to survive pressures and adversities during many centuries after the rise of Islam. Despite threats and dangers, this minority always tried to resist the pressures and maintain their identity and social cohesion with some measures. Aqda Cave is one of the examples of material culture left by the Zoroastrians, which can be very helpful for a better understanding of the preservation of their identity and social cohesion over time, a heritage that, based on the assessment of social values, can be effective in the sense of identity, sense of place and sense of belonging of this community. The presentation and preservation of this cultural heritage with the help of Zoroastrians will provide a foundation to acknowledge their rights and construct a respectful character for this minority group. Consequently, the preservation of this heritage could be an attempt to respect cultural diversity, heritage rights and equity as the factors of inclusive social development and world peace.

This article examines the Qhapaq Ñan Project in Peru and its unprecedented mobilization of heritage policymaking to foster a participatory approach. The World Heritage listing of the Qhapaq Ñan, or Inca road system, catalyzed a new ethos in the Peruvian cultural heritage sector, reflected in a cohesive set of values and practices centered on community participation. This study analyzes the crafting of a participatory approach within Peruvian national heritage regulations despite legal, technical, and ideological constraints, following the rationales and processes that challenged traditional material-centered paradigms. It focuses on how heritage specialists reimagined their ethical commitments in conceptualizing and implementing this framework. It further demonstrates how participatory practices intersect with official regulations and informal practices within pre-existing technical and normative structures, integrating elements such as benefits, consultation, and collaboration. Therefore, the adoption of the Qhapaq Ñan’s participatory approach is argued not merely as a passive compliance with intergovernmental policy recommendations but as an active assertion of ethical perspectives and practices by heritage specialists.

Excavation at the site of Bhagatrav yielded four layers of cultural deposits: the lowermost being the Sorath Harappan, the upper two are medieval, and layer three caps the Sorath Harappan layer. A horn-deity painted dish was found in a stratified context at the lowest level. The medieval deposit includes turquoise glazed and celadon wares, followed by an abundance of Monochrome Glazed Ware, which is otherwise known as Khambhat ware. The date of the Sorath Harappan layer of the site, the time and space of the horn-deity motif in the Harappan world, and the date of Khambhat ware have long been subjects of discussion. With the help of a series of absolute dating (radiocarbon and luminescence), this paper attempts to place the site, horn-deity motif, and the Khambhat ware in the cultural chronology of Gujarat.

Datos históricos, lingüísticos y etnográficos muestran que, cuando se utilizan para apoyar la existencia de mercados durante la época prehispánica en el área maya, demandan una interpretación más cautelosa y crítica. En este trabajo se argumenta que fue hasta finales del período posclásico cuando las plazas funcionaron exclusivamente como lugares de mercado de forma cotidiana, ya que antes de ese período las plazas fueron los espacios donde se celebraron numerosos eventos sociales donde también ocurrió un intercambio de mercado, aunque de manera periódica. Además, ciertos términos económicos del lenguaje maya sugieren que transacciones de compra y venta, así como el intercambio por trueque, canje o permuta, pudieron haberse utilizado desde el período preclásico en esos acuerdos económicos. Ambos tipos de transacción forman parte de los intercambios de mercado y, en este artículo, se profundiza en la explicación de cómo pudo haber operado el trueque o canje, tomando en cuenta que, hasta hoy día, la permuta de bienes y/o servicios continúa jugando un papel importantísimo en las transacciones económicas que se realizan en diferentes mercados de México. Un tercer tema analizado en el presente artículo se enfoca en mercaderes quienes concurrían o reunían con otros mercaderes en “puertos francos” o centros de comercio o trasbordo para el intercambio de mercancías, ya sea por trueque o por compra y venta. Estos mercaderes parecen haber sido proveedores de productos que pudieron haber vendido al por mayor a otros mercaderes, o bien, los vendieron a otros comerciantes quienes a su vez realizaron ventas al por menor.

La Milpa, situated in northern Belize, stands out as one of the region's largest archaeological sites, having served as the capital of an ancient Maya city-state. Its significance is indicated by extensive monumental architecture, with the epicenter covering approximately 8.8 ha. The site's corpus of monuments, comprising 23 stelae and several altars, underscores its prominence in northern Belize, rivaling the corpora of sites such as Nim li Punit and Caracol. Despite its remote location, La Milpa has garnered the attention of researchers, particularly since the first modern survey of the site in 1988. Subsequent studies—in particular, that by Nikolai Grube in the 1990s—has provided detailed analyses of the site's corpus of carved monuments. Recent efforts, including epigraphic documentation in 2019, serve to enhance our understanding of La Milpa's dynastic history through traditional epigraphic and computational photographic methods. Utilizing field observations, raking light photography, and 3D photogrammetric models, we have refined previous analyses and provide new insights into the iconography and textual segments of the monuments. Here, we present the results of these recent efforts as well as our new analyses of a selection of monuments.

The debates on the ownership of contested cultural objects bring forth questions regarding the representation of history. But might these debates also lead to the fabrication of history? Previous research has analyzed how the British Museum’s anti-restitution position contributes to its distortion of British (Museum) history. Instead, this article considers if – and, if so, how – history is distorted to argue for restitution. It examines the eulogized publication The Brutish Museums (2020) by Oxford professor Dan Hicks asking whether his claims regarding British mass atrocities in the conquest of Benin in 1897 can be substantiated by the documentary evidence. The investigation shows that this is not the case. The article also scrutinizes what the source material reveals about the death toll of the events of 1897. The results of the inquiry question oversimplified notions about culprits and victims in the wake of colonial conquest. It is argued that an incomplete understanding of the past impairs efforts to repair past wrongs and that questions about the ownership of colonial collections could productively be linked with questions about the representation of history, such as whose and which histories are told – or not – through contested objects.

This date list reports the unpublished results from a multi-year radiocarbon dating program of the prehistoric Iapodes collection at the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb. Dated materials were excavated from cave, burial, and settlement contexts by various museum teams during the past century.

This article unpacks a Nahuatl metaphor based on the kin term hueltiuh, “man's elder sister,” used in multiple sixteenth-century Nahuatl texts and their Spanish derivatives. Through a minute analysis of several Nahua stories, the article identifies various roles described with this term: spies, “toothed-vagina” femmes fatales, heart-eating monsters, and seducers. Applying a method borrowed from cognitive linguistics, it then constructs a model of “man's elder sister,” which explains the application of this metaphor to different contexts. In Nahua stories, hueltiuh is usually a female mediator who throws the male characters off balance, leading to a new status quo. Confusingly, this metaphor often appears where one would expect a real kinship term and in a way that makes identifying its symbolic meaning difficult. These complications have led scholars to see (only) genealogical information in stories concerned with symbolic rather than genealogical relations between elite members or deities. The results presented here allow for refining our understanding of some famous Nahua narratives, such as the one on Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl's abandonment of Tollan. They also invite a rethinking of our views on the Nahua (Aztec) pantheon of gods, whose figurative “family bonds” may, in fact, indicate complex nonkinship relations and dependencies.

These two volumes arise from Michael Fulford's career-long programme of fieldwork research at the Roman town of Silchester, which is 80km west of London at the intersection of two important roads. The Little London report is part of a wider project examining the developments that took place at Silchester in the first few decades of the Roman occupation of Britain. It is concerned with the excavation of pottery and tile kilns 3km from the city. Oppidum to Roman city is the final volume of five describing the excavations between 1997 and 2014 within insula IX in the heart of the city.

Research by the Tlalancaleca Archaeological Project (PATP) has corroborated modifications to the Middle Formative chronology in Puebla-Tlaxcala (Lesure et al. 2006, 2014) using Bayesian modeling on 26 radiocarbon dates from Tlalancaleca. The present study is the first to evaluate the region’s Middle Formative chronology with radiocarbon dates from superposed stratigraphy. Nine Bayesian models were constructed with different combinations of radiocarbon dates and OxCal’s phase and sequence functions to determine the beginning and end of the Texoloc phase. Results place the Tlatempa-Texoloc transition at around 650 cal BC and the Texoloc-Tezoquipan transition at around 500 cal BC. The OxCal Interval function supports a timespan of approximately 150 years for the duration of the Texoloc phase. These results suggest the process of initial urbanization in Central Mexico was a rapid one.

These are, as their titles indicate, two very different Maya books: Christina Halperin's is at the hard-core end of theoretical interpretation and aimed at the professional market, while Traci Ardren's is an attempt to explain ancient Maya civilisation to a general audience. Both succeed in their basic objectives and both have annoying minor flaws.