This article presents the results of a contextual analysis of graffiti found in Substructure II-B at the Maya city of Calakmul. The final use of this space was for the burial of an important Kanu’l lord, whose identity—as shown by a recent analysis of the Long Count date inscribed as part of the graffiti—seems to be that of Yukno’m Ch’een II. My analysis of the frequency of appearance of different categories of graffiti within the structure, compared to the frequency of the same categories within the total set of graffiti recorded in the Maya area, suggests that the main objective of its creators was the ritual reconditioning of this space: they wished to make it more suitable for the entombment of the ruler, through its aesthetic modification, in what constitutes an example of placemaking. The inclusion of images of deities associated with death, rebirth, abundance, and kingship reconfigured the room and transformed it into a sacred space in which the burial process could be properly carried out. Analyzing the graffiti in the context in which they are located allows us to better understand the intentionality of its creators.

Rather than static traces of the past, ruins and ancient material objects represent dynamic and important generative components of communities. A relational ontology views objects and matter as animate; here we focus on their collaborative potential with humans to inspire memory practices that bring together ancestors and living humans, things, and landscapes in recursive relationships. Situated at Etlatongo in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, our research interrogates broader Mixtec and Mesoamerican perspectives on things, which indicates certain materials and ruined places could be especially potent, imbued with cosmogonic energy from previous eras. Such material had animating properties as well as inspiring memorial narratives. Continuously occupied for more than 3,500 years, Etlatongo illustrates dynamic and varied interactions with past places and things. We present two precontact archaeological case studies that highlight these persistent engagements with the past: the first focuses on the reuse and reincorporation of earlier public architecture while the second features the selection and generative power of ancient ceramic figurine heads in two later domestic settings.

The sourcing of exotic raw materials provides a window into the social networks of ancient peoples. Here we source copper from four archaeological contexts at the Mound City Group, a UNESCO World Heritage site and major Hopewell ceremonial site in south-central Ohio, USA. Results of laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry indicate the use of copper at Mound City from both the Great Lakes Copper District and the southern Appalachians. Forty-two percent of the Mound City sample was classified as southern Appalachian copper, a higher percentage than for any other large Ohio Hopewell site tested. The use of Appalachian copper has not been documented in earlier, pre-Hopewell contexts in the central Ohio Valley. This new pattern correlates with both an increased demand for copper and the development of broader-based social networks connecting the central Ohio River Valley with the Southeast. This context is different from and complementary to that of the “copper trail” to the north established hundreds of years earlier.

Since about 1960, the study of petroglyphs and pictographs has escaped the confines of anthropology, art history, and philology and established itself as a discrete field of transdisciplinary scholarship, supported by its own organizations, periodicals, and lexicon. “Rock art research” emerged as the field’s moniker, and “rock art” became the most popular term for describing anthropogenic marks in and on geological surfaces. However, this label has sparked controversy over whether “art” is an accurate, ethical, and inclusive gloss for non-Western and premodern imagery. Although some pragmatic scholars, preservationists, and descendant community representatives accept this nomenclature, others find it imprecise, distracting, and, at times, offensive. We advance this debate with results from two surveys. First, a review of article titles published since 1865 shows that “rock art” is just one of many terms used in the field, and it is one of the youngest. Second, a survey of federally recognized Tribes found strong though not universal dissatisfaction with “rock art” to characterize ancestral petroglyphs and pictographs. As a bridge between field practitioners and descendant communities, we recommend that researchers and organizations work with Tribes to develop and use terms that are respectful, useful, and of mutual benefit.

In the course of archaeological excavations at Metropolis between 1999 and 2004 when the hall of the city council (boule) was unearthed, an important inscription now referred to as the ‘Apollonios Decree’ was discovered on the bouleuterion terrace. This inscription decrees that a statue honouring Apollonios is to be erected ‘in that part of the Agora where it will be the most conspicuous’. Ongoing excavations have revealed a concentration of sculptures in the same area, further strengthening the hypothesis that the Agora was located on the bouleuterion terrace. The present study was undertaken to better understand and interpret the functions of this part of the site based on the findings of excavations on the northern side of the bouleuterion in 2018. It also aims to ascertain if this is the area referred to in inscriptions as the place where public benefactors (euergetai) were honoured with boule-decreed statues, to determine if the statue dedicated to Apollonios of Metropolis was indeed located here, and to propose a possible location for the as-yet unidentified Metropolitan agora.

Archaeological investigations in the Prut-Dniester region during the Roman Imperial Period have yielded numerous Sarmatian culture necropolises and isolated graves. Establishing a precise chronology for these remains has long been a challenge due to the limitations of typological dating alone. This study integrates radiocarbon (14C) analysis of 11 human bone samples from selected funerary contexts with traditional typological methods, refining the chronological framework of the Sarmatian culture in this region. The radiocarbon analyses were subjected to Bayesian modeling, which allowed for the delineation of these samples into distinct phases, thereby adjusting and improving the periodization established through traditional methods. The results not only confirm but also refine previously established chronologies, offering deeper insights into the cultural, social, and economic dynamics of Sarmatian communities in the Prut-Dniester Barbaricum. These findings represent a significant contribution to the broader understanding of the Roman Imperial Period beyond the Eastern Limes.

In the Roman imperial worldview, masculine, civilized Rome saw a duty to control and care for uncivilized, feminine foreigners—a gendered power dynamic shared by more recent colonizing states as well. However, it is a methodological challenge to catch sight of the way such a worldview may have impacted colonial subjects. I examine the impact in Roman Britain and Gaul by applying a symbolic anthropological approach to a well-suited body of evidence, votive offerings: widely accessible and highly individual, each represents a single symbolic act. Taking up archaeological questions of material symbolism, I analyse the confluence of gender and offering material categories. Analysis of objects men and women offered at 10 sanctuaries in Britain and Gaul, and of the materials in which men and women were portrayed, reveals a permeability–impermeability binary: women are associated with breakable clay, porous bone and translucent glass, and men with strong, durable metal. This binary reflects Roman understandings of femininity and masculinity, shedding light on the fraught relationship between colonial rule and gendered understandings of the world.

Antiquities in the Middle East region face various threats, including illicit trade, theft, and forgery. This research examines a leather manuscript obtained by the Palestinian Tourist Police following the arrest of an antiquities smuggler. The manuscript contains Phoenician inscriptions along with symbols such as the Menorah, Shofar, and a plant branch. Radiocarbon dating using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) techniques determined the manuscript’s date to be post-1950 CE. Therefore, the results indicate that the manuscript is a modern forgery, likely created for commercial purposes. Additionally, the text contains several grammatical errors, further supporting the conclusion that it is not an authentic historical artifact.

This study presents a comparative analysis of the radiocarbon dates obtained on paired samples of various organic materials extracted from a lake sediment core. AMS radiocarbon dating of bulk sediment, chironomid capsules, and Trapa seeds was conducted to assess whether systematic offsets exist in the dates obtained on material that are commonly used to develop chronological frameworks for lake-based paleoenvironmental research. The findings reveal significant discrepancies between 14C dates obtained on bulk sediment, chironomid capsules, and on the Trapa seeds used to develop a previously published age-depth model for a sediment core recovered from Deoria Tal, Garhwal Himalaya, India. The systematic offset between the bulk sediment, and to a lesser extent chironomid remains, and the Trapa seeds is attributed to the integration of allochthonous carbon in the bulk sediment, leading to older apparent ages. The 3.6‰ shift in the δ13C value of the bulk sediment at 252 cm is inferred to reflect an increase in the contribution of C4 plant matter to the lake. The increase in enriched δ13C organic matter, coincident with the increasing offset between the dates obtained on bulk sediment and chironomids, and those obtained on the Trapa seeds, between 800 and 400 cal BP, was likely driven by anthropogenic land use changes, as evidenced by the four-fold increase in Cerealia-type pollen during this interval. This study underscores the necessity of selecting appropriate materials for radiocarbon dating to ensure accurate chronological reconstruction and highlights the potential of using chironomids remains to develop robust radiocarbon chronologies for lake sediment records.

Quantifying marine reservoir effects (MREs) across time and space is crucial for establishing accurate archaeological chronologies, including the activities of past hominines. Although the northern Iberian Peninsula shows a high density of Upper Paleolithic sites and marine shells are frequently found in these assemblages, quantification of MREs in this coastal region remains limited. We performed Bayesian modeling of radiocarbon measurements from both terrestrial (Capra pyrenaica, Cervus elaphus and other herbivores unidentified at species level) and marine (Littorina littorea Linnaeus, 1758 and Patella vulgata Linnaeus, 1758 taxa) archaeological samples recovered from the Tito Bustillo cave (Asturias, Spain) in order to determine the ΔR values for northern Iberia during the Lower Magdalenian period (ca. 20–17 ka cal BP). For the time span between 18.6 and 18.2 ka cal BP we estimated ΔR values of –298±44 14C yr and –495±122 14C yr for the periwinkle L. littorea and the common limpet P. vulgata, respectively. This finding has significant implications for future archaeological research in the northern Iberian Peninsula, as researchers must apply distinct ΔR values depending on the mollusk species selected for radiocarbon dating. Furthermore, the consistency between our calculated ΔR value for P. vulgata and previously recorded data for the same taxon from a neighboring coastal region (Cantabria, Spain) suggests remarkable stability in the marine environment of this area during the Lower Magdalenian period.

We combine Indigenous and Western scientific ontologies to explore the deep history of pinyon pine in the Holocene Great Basin. We address 61 Theft of Pine Nuts (TPN) oral histories transcribed over the last 152 years. Contemporary Paiute, Shoshone, and Wá∙šiw storytellers still tell these narratives, which five Indigenous coauthors heard growing up. Considered judiciously and in concert with independent corroboration, these traditional oral histories (often dismissed as “myths”) potentially convey significant historical landmarks. Four themes emerge: (1) pine nuts have been a driving force in Indigenous Great Basin lifeways for millennia, (2) TPN oral histories pinpoint homelands beyond which pinyon trees grow today, (3) TPN narratives encode shifting animal biodiversity, and (4) massive ice barriers (likely dating to the Late Pleistocene) thwarted pine-nut thieves. We seek out elements encoded in oral histories that reflect pinyon-pine ecology and pinyon as a long-term vehicle of survivance among Indigenous Great Basin communities. Our findings reflect Roger Echo-Hawk’s (2000:90) wise counsel that “written words and spoken words need not compete for authority in academia, nor should the archaeological record be viewed as the antithesis of oral records. Peaceful coexistence and mutual interdependence offer more useful paradigms for these ‘ways of knowing.’”

The East African coast has long been recognized as a cosmopolitan region, where different cultures and peoples met and exchanged ideas, goods and knowledge. The culture that developed there from the seventh century ce was shaped by these relations, often referred to under the term Swahili, and many of the coastal residents engaged in Islamic practice, long-distance trade, conspicuous consumption of valued goods, and spoke a common language. This paper investigates the presence of slaves and migrants from the East African interior, through pottery assemblages uncovered at two eleventh- to fifteenth-century ce sites in northern Zanzibar: Tumbatu and Mkokotoni. These are groups of people not usually discussed in relation to medieval Swahili towns, and slavery has been especially difficult to study archaeologically on the coast. Through a material culture of difference, I argue that enslaved and non-elite migrants can be recognized and allow for a fuller understanding of socio-economic and cultural complexity in Swahili towns.

Holocene environmental changes on the Paraty coastal plain in southeastern Brazil unfolded under dynamic sea-level fluctuations and shifting sedimentary regimes. Continental and marine palynomorph analyses, combined with calibrated radiocarbon dating from two sediment cores (JBS1 and JBS2), reveal a continuous depositional record spanning approximately 7800 to 1000 cal yr BP. Sandy mud and muddy sand sequences reflect variable coastal energy conditions through out the mid to late Holocene. Dinoflagellate cyst assemblages indicate a transition from open marine to marginal marine environments, with maximum marine influence between 7000 and 5000 cal yr BP. Terrestrial palynomorphs show a concurrent shift from grassland-dominated landscapes to mixed vegetation including ombrophilous forest taxa. A marked increase in pollen concentration in the upper stratigraphic layer suggests coastal progradation, enhanced continental input, and reduced marine influence during the late Holocene regression. Bayesian age-depth models demonstrate uninterrupted but variable sedimentation rates, with no evidence for erosional surfaces or depositional hiatuses. The results align with regional sea-level reconstructions and under score the role of transgressive-regressive processes and delta infilling in shaping vegetation dynamics. This integrated micropalaeontological and chronostratigraphic approach offers a robust framework for interpreting Holocene palaeoenvironmental evolution in tropical coastal settings.