Kinship studies recently have been going through a new wave of attraction in archaeogenetics and archaeology. Interdisciplinary cooperation remains an important challenge in these endeavours. Any research that requires interdisciplinary efforts will lead to reductive and potentially misleading conclusions if that cooperation is restricted to a range that is too narrow. The consequences usually are inadequate research results and insufficient ranges of interpretation. Moreover, such methodologically limited inquiries also may entail ethical concerns. Some of this is also valid for kinship analyses, in the study of the deep past as well as for contemporary communities. The present article examines the recently presented case of (‘Pannonian’) Avar excavations to demonstrate how archaeogenetic and archaeological interpretations may tend to ignore socio-cultural complexities. By arguing for the inclusion of socio-cultural anthropology in professional interdisciplinary kinship analyses of the deep past, concepts such as polygyny, levirate, ghost marriage and the notion of ‘female exogamy’ are examined for the case under scrutiny. The article illustrates how certain kinship practices—often misinterpreted in solely genetic terms or entirely ignored—can be understood as ethnographically grounded while also having a cross-cultural meaning suitable for comparison that is indispensable for the study of kinship in any historical period.

This commentary returns to the initial motivation for the 2000 volume Beyond Kinship, which was to create an intersection between ethnographic approaches to kinship and archaeological ones through the overlap constituted by materiality and practice. From the vantage point of that project, the current collection of papers adds important additional material bases for exploring kinship derived from archaeogenetic investigations. It is significant that the contributors express shared commitments to non-reductive use of new genetic data, seeking to avoid static and essentializing approaches that would privilege a biological domain. Equally important is the commitment of the participants to understanding kinship as work, making kin, not simply recognizing kin. In this sense, it exemplifies the rhetorical move ‘beyond kinship’ in the 2000 volume. By adopting a perspective from queer theory, the volume’s push to recognize a ‘kinship trouble’ parallel to Judith Butler’s ‘gender trouble’ invites consideration of making kin as a process of emergence of belonging. This begins to fulfil an ethical burden that anthropology has, as the discipline that claims kinship, to understand the intimacy of the kind of knowledges we produce, and to ensure they are so critically grounded that they can no longer be used against people’s interests.

In recent years, palaeogenomics has significantly advanced our understanding of human population history and evolution. Emerging studies now employ ancient genomic data to explore biological relatedness in archaeological contexts, with a growing number of studies on the topic. These investigations probe, for instance, the role of biological kinship in burial organization and mortuary practices, shedding new light on the complexities of ancient and historical human societies. Our review surveys a few examples of these studies, scrutinizing the methods and interpretations of DNA-based kinship research. We discuss the overlap between biological relatedness and other forms of kinship, acknowledging the complexity of human relationships across time and cultures. Emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration, we advocate for integrating theoretical frameworks from sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, and Indigenous studies into palaeogenomics for a more thorough understanding of kinship in past societies. Additionally, we offer guidance throughout for newcomers venturing into using ancient DNA to study relatedness, reviewing key methodological aspects involved in biological relatedness inference and addressing common misconceptions, potential pitfalls, and methodological limitations.

Houses and unilineal descent groups have been treated as different types of social phenomena in socio-cultural anthropology, and as borrowed for analysis of households and settlements in archaeology. This paper contends that houses and lineages, especially those configured by Crow–Omaha kinship terminologies, are better considered as perspectival variants, reflecting differences that are fundamentally synchronic versus diachronic. Crow–Omaha systems and house societies exhibit signal similarities, occupying an intermediate status between kin-based and class-based formations, and evidently derive in an evolutionary sense from prior ‘Iroquois’ or ‘Dravidian’ forms. Setting out the terms in which kinship systems should be considered if they are to serve as useful explanatory analogues for archaeological analysis, the paper then proceeds to examine Lévi-Strauss’s original inspiration for the ‘house’, i.e. societies of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. It is no coincidence, the present paper contends, that Kwakwa̲ka̲’wakw, the archetypal house society is situated adjacent to a Crow-matrilineal series of communities that share a great deal in common with it culturally, as a result of centuries of exchange. In short, the house needs to re-attend to kinship structures, as descent groups need to be reconnected with exchange structures and alliance processes earlier elaborated by Lévi-Strauss.

This paper examines the phenomenon of posthumous kinship. In 1951, E.E. Evans-Pritchard introduced us to the possibility that a ghost could be defined as the legal father or mother of a child. Since the time of his writing, this once seemingly ‘exotic’ cultural practice has been brought ‘home’ to Western audiences through the clinical practice of harvesting gametes of recently (or soon to be) deceased individuals for reproductive purposes. Through an examination of several cases in which the dead have been made to ‘father’ or ‘mother’ a child, this paper explores the social and political ramifications of posthumous kinship including what it reveals about shifting Euro-American understandings concerning biological properties (and property), subjectivity, embodiment and the contested boundary between life and death.

Kinship in archaeology has often been understood through a narrow biological lens, privileging genetic relatedness and the nuclear family as the primary unit of social organization. Yet anthropological and ethnographic studies demonstrate that care and child-rearing are widely shared practices that extend beyond parents, involving kin and non-kin alike. This article explores how such forms of cooperative childcare, particularly alloparenting, can be recognized in prehistoric burial contexts. By integrating archaeological, genetic, isotopic and osteological evidence, it argues for a broader interpretation of adult–child co-burials, moving beyond the assumption of direct biological parenthood. A series of Iberian case studies illustrates both the potential and the challenges of detecting fostering, non-parental care and the social significance of children in mortuary practices. Finally, the article introduces the SKIN: Social Kinship and Cooperative Care project, which applies a multi-disciplinary framework to investigate how women and children buried together in Iberia’s later prehistory reveal the diversity of social bonds that shaped communities.

There has been much discussion of various lines of evidence—genetic, bioarchaeological, and cultural–phylogenetic—that indicate patrilineal and patrilocal kinship systems predominated in Neolithic to Bronze Age Europe. These patterns were unique to this time and place, however, and evidence from prior periods and from other regions outside of Europe suggest a broader diversity in kinship systems that was replaced over time. Moreover, practices such as cousin marriage might have emerged in distinct regions, influenced by subsistence strategies and particular lifeways. In considering this diversity, we propose that the patrilineal/patrilocal developments observed in Europe during the Neolithic and Bronze Age were a distinctive prehistoric process among livestock herders and agriculturalists who dispersed into this region. Patrilineal kinship spread with these dispersals, as it now appears that matriliny was practised at Neolithic Çatalhöyük and in Iron Age Britain, for example. In this context, we can argue for different kinship systems in continental Europe before, during and after the Neolithic.

This ‘afterword’ offers a critical reflection on the theme of ‘kinship trouble’ which runs through the papers in this special collection. Central to all of them are the questions of what it takes for individuals to be ‘biologically’ related, of what—if anything—this has to do with genetic connection, and of whether anything can be deduced about the kinship of individuals from the prehistoric past by way of the biomolecular analysis of their remains. It is shown that much of the trouble with kinship comes from the confusion between two understandings of the gene: as an information-bearing particle in a system of inheritance, and as a segment of the molecular genome. Starting from one or the other gives rise to markedly different accounts of kinship, founded respectively on inheritance and begetting. This also underpins the different ways we understand connections with other-than-human kin, whether in terms of evolutionary phylogenesis or ecologies of coexistence. The latter, better regarded as ‘kinning’ than ‘kinship’, lies not in a mix of genetic and cultural inheritance, but in the milieu of an intergenerational life process.

Postsecondary education is at the forefront of preparing the next generation of cultural resource management (CRM) practitioners for the workforce. We conducted a study from 2022 to 2023 to gain perspective on improving postsecondary CRM curricula in order to better prepare students for careers in CRM. Our research included semi-structured interviews of nine key consultants with careers in CRM, along with a survey of the broader CRM professional community in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Results from the research identified the necessary skills for new college graduates, areas where CRM programs could improve their curricula, and various approaches in and out of the classroom that are helpful in training students.

In this article we present a methodological framework for integrating nondigital legacy excavation data with modern stratigraphic datasets in a 3D-GIS environment. Using a case study from the Late Bronze Age site of Hala Sultan Tekke (Cyprus), we demonstrate how georeferenced photogrammetric models can be combined with digitized legacy documentation to overcome inconsistencies in archival records. The approach enables the correction of elevation data, the reconstruction of stratigraphic layers that are no longer preserved, and the interpolation of missing contexts. By aligning old section drawings with high-resolution 3D models of recent sondages, we created a coherent spatial and chronological framework that facilitates new archaeological interpretations. This integrated model also supports cross-disciplinary collaboration and long-term digital preservation. The study contributes to wider discussions on the sustainable use of unpublished or fragmentary excavation records, offering a practical, step-by-step guide for researchers working with similar datasets. Ultimately, this approach underscores the potential of 3D modeling to revitalize underused archaeological archives and transform them into dynamic analytical tools, in line with current best practices in digital archaeology and open data sharing.

Community-based archaeology does not always arrange itself cleanly into standard frameworks of practice. As archaeologists, our relationships with communities are situated and emergent. It stands to reason that our methods should be as well. Several years ago, as a graduate student at the start of a community-based project, I remember my anxious desire for a roadmap—a prescribed set of methods that would guide my work with and in community. Actual practice, however, demonstrated that roadmaps have little utility on this type of terrain. Community-based archaeology is rooted in relationship building as much as research design, and relationships push us to reorient how we do (and write about) archaeology. This article examines my on-the-ground and emergent experiences using three methods during a community-based project: (1) working with oral histories as narrative sources, (2) navigating community archives in the field, and (3) learning and applying close-range photogrammetry. I argue that examining how methods emerge and change during community-based projects is a valuable aspect of archaeological practice and that a narrative approach to discussing methodology allows us to interrogate how specific challenges push us to develop creative and interdisciplinary ways to do archaeology with others.

The southwestern Atlantic margin plays a crucial role in understanding ocean circulation, with the Brazil Current (BC) driving surface flow and various water masses (TW, SACW, AAIW, UCDW, NADW, LCDW) influencing different depths. The Santos Basin, a marginal basin formed following the breakup of Gondwana, remains understudied with respect to late Quaternary sedimentary processes, and the recent literature offers conflicting interpretations of sediment sources and depositional processes. Additionally, radiocarbon data for this region are scarce, and calibration uncertainties and regional reservoir effects have limited previous studies. This study compiles a comprehensive radiocarbon dataset (264 datings from 70 sediment cores) for the upper to middle slope of the Santos Basin (120–2000 mbsl), combining published and unpublished data (69 new ages). Previously published ages were recalibrated using Marine20 and SHCal20 curves, applying a regional ΔR correction. The dataset, showing minimal age inversions, provides a robust foundation for future research on late Quaternary sedimentary and paleoenvironmental dynamics in the southwestern Atlantic.

The field of anthropological archaeology in North America is undergoing significant changes, particularly within academia, with an increased focus on and inclusion of Indigenous perspectives. Concomitant with the reorientation of archaeological practice that centers on Indigenous voices, concerns, and sensibilities is a subsequent reorientation in the training of the next generation of practitioners. This article highlights an example of a collaborative archaeological field school developed by, with, and for the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, and the University of Oregon. We document the long-term use of collaborative field schools to train the next generation of Tribal and non-Tribal archaeologists in archaeological field methods and collaborative research practices with, for, and by Indigenous communities.

In recent years, mobile GIS systems have become essential tools for the real-time management and recording of archaeological data, particularly in archaeological survey projects. This article explores their potential for the real-time digital management of archaeological excavations and presents a practical application. One of the main limitations to the use of mobile GIS applications in archaeological excavation has been that global navigation satellite system receivers embedded in mobile devices do not provide the necessary accuracy for detailed stratigraphic documentation. The free and open-source mobile GIS application QField offers a possible solution to this problem. Because of the Bluetooth connection with external differential global navigation satellite system receivers, QField achieves the high accuracy required by stratigraphic excavation workflows. At the same time, because it shares the core libraries of QGIS, QField supports the development of a real-time excavation GIS environment, in which each stratigraphic unit is uniquely encoded and becomes the focus of the digital data acquisition process.

This article presents an analysis of the relationship between urbanization as an ongoing process and economic development in medieval (c. AD 1250–1400) southern and midland England. It is proposed that understanding the distribution of pottery through network analysis provides a means of comprehending the role played by affective material relations in these processes. Rather than seeing pottery distributions as reflecting an overarching economic context, the author investigates how relations with pottery, and between pottery and other commodities, generated distinctive and situated modes of urban life. He proposes that the medieval economy was a patchwork rather than a coherent system. The study draws on Deleuze’s concept of the ‘virtual’ to examine how economic emergence and urbanization are open-ended and difference-making processes.

Widely found at archaeological sites across the Roman Empire, the appearance in the late 1st c. BCE onward of the red gloss ceramic referred to as terra sigillata signals important transformations in the socio-economic organization of production and consumption for provincial societies. Nonetheless, relatively few studies have explored diachronically the ways in which the appearance of terra sigillata may have impacted local lifeways compared with the uses of earlier ceramics. This article explores these issues in the context of Roman Mediterranean Gaul, focusing in particular on the region of eastern Languedoc, by comparing, in both discard and funerary contexts, the differential uses of black gloss ceramics from the 3rd to the 1st c. BCE with later terra sigillata vessels. The evidence discussed here suggests that the appearance of terra sigillata was important in reifying more individual-centered social relationships in dining and other aspects of daily life.