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.

The notions of “emergence” and “becoming” have become widely adopted in relational studies in archaeology, but their definition and application remain nebulous. We advocate a middle-range approach to the incorporation of these related concepts into the study of migration and pronounced cultural shifts. Our study relies on the Bayesian modeling of a significant corpus of radiocarbon dates from Mississippian sites in the Tombigbee Valley of southeastern North America. This investigation has identified the likelihood of two broad migration episodes that we hypothesize are related to cultural rephrasings of landscape and temporality.

Within a collaboration between the Brazilian Federal Police and the Radiocarbon Laboratory of the Fluminense Federal University (LAC-UFF), this work studies seized art objects made from ivory. We aim to develop protocols to verify whether they are illegal according to the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species from Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) law by measuring the carbon-14 concentration in the modified ivory samples from different sampling spots and comparing it to the bomb peak curve. Over the course of this research, we evaluate the uncertainties related to the determination of the elephants’ death. These uncertainties are due to several factors such as the provenance of the elephants, growth pattern of the tusks and incorporation of atmospheric radiocarbon to the tissues, sampling methods of ivory objects of different sizes and shapes, and radiocarbon data analysis. This work is a pioneer study in Brazil and is likely to become a reference in the country in the field of radiocarbon analyses in forensic contexts.

This paper examines the understudied role of reading and oral performance in Maya “scribal” imagery from the Late Classic period (a.d. 600–900). Although many studies consider the ways in which Maya artists represented the production of text and image, few systematically examine how textual reception was rendered in Maya art. With this in mind, the present essay considers one specific motif that recurs on painted drinking vessels: the image of a seated figure in front of a codex book. A systematic review of this imagery reveals the limits of conceptualizing these figures as “scribes,” a term which implicitly privileges the acts of painting and writing (tz’ihb). The majority of the figures who appear with books do not hold writing implements. Instead, they make a variety of gestures to texts that likely encode distinct forms of oral performance. Writers and readers can also be tied to separate deities and regalia, which suggests that this division is an emic distinction with implications for the hierarchy of Maya courts. The emphasis on speech and textual interpretation in scribal imagery demonstrates the value of embracing a more flexible, orality-based notion of aesthetics in studies of Maya imagery and non-Western material culture more broadly.

Aerial lidar (light detection and ranging) has been hailed as a revolutionary technology in archaeological survey because it can map vast areas with high-precision and seemingly peer beneath forest cover. This excitement has led to a proliferation of lidar scans, including calls to map the entire land surface of earth. Highlighting how the growth of aerial lidar is tied to fast capitalism, this article seeks to temporarily pause the global rush for data collection/extraction by focusing on the ethical dilemmas of remotely scanning Indigenous homelands and heritage. Although lidar specialists must obtain federal permissions for their work, few engage with people directly in the path of their scans or descendant stakeholders. This oversight perpetuates colonial oppression by objectifying Indigenous descendants. To address Indigenous objectification, I argue that aerial lidar mapping should be preceded by a concerted, culturally sensitive effort to obtain informed consent from local and descendant groups. With the Mensabak Archaeological Project as a case study, I demonstrate how aerial lidar can become part of a collaborative, humanizing praxis.

Archaeology comprises both systematic and pragmatic attitudes and processes concerned with the collection and maintenance of data. Thus, it needs to obtain formally defined data while also grappling with the fuzzy and uncertain nature of archaeological encounters, especially in fieldwork environments. This produces an epistemic tension, as archaeologists struggle to reconcile their desire to produce concrete outcomes based on objective facts and their intuitive understanding that data are in fact products of situated decisions and actions. Through observations of archaeological practices, interviews with archaeologists at work, and analysis of the documents they produced while recording objects of archaeological concern, this article describes how archaeologists cope with this tension and integrate it into their work experiences.

Understanding what happened after the collapse of and dating the different reoccupations of Teotihuacan can be challenging due to different factors, including the reuse of building materials and looting during Postclassic and modern times, which resulted in altered archaeological contexts or significant inbuilt ages for the samples. A Bayesian approach integrating radiocarbon ages and detailed archaeological information can help to overcome these difficulties. In this contribution we present the process of building a high-resolution chronology for the tunnels located to the east of the Pyramid of the Sun (excavated by Linda R. Manzanilla from 1993 to 1996) by the integration of 20 radiocarbon ages from Cueva del Pirul and Cueva de las Varillas with detailed archaeological information on the context for each dated sample, including ceramic style. With the resulting chronology it is possible to distinguish the moment of the different occupations during the Epiclassic and Postclassic times, helping to refine chronologies based on ceramic styles and to understand the population dynamics in the area.

The programme of radiocarbon dating undertaken at Stanwick, Northamptonshire, demonstrates the value of scientific dating of Romano-British sites, including those with good pottery sequences and large numbers of datable coins and other finds. It has refined and clarified the chronology and phasing of the site, particularly in its final phase of occupation. It confirmed some of our original dating of the human burials, and showed other dates were significantly wrong. It also addresses issues relating to the calibration of radiocarbon dates and dietary isotopes in the period. This has enabled us to identify activities, material culture and burial practices current at Stanwick and elsewhere in the immediate post-Roman period.

In recent years a redating of relief-patterned tiles has been proposed, which argues against an established Flavian to Antonine chronology in favour of an earlier and much shorter Claudio-Neronian chronology. This paper tests the chronological underpinning of this important hypothesis by revisiting the dating for relief-patterned tiles in Roman London, which has produced by far the largest corpus of these tiles from any settlement in Roman Britain. The results provide considerable support for the traditional chronology, but do not necessarily rule out an earlier start date for this keying technique or the continued use of these tiles beyond the second century. The technique may have initially been used by certain tile makers supplying building projects that were largely outside London.

Excavations at the Agora of Amathous, Cyprus, were carried out between 1977 and 2003, initially under the auspices of the Department of Antiquities and the direction of Michael Loulloupis, and subsequently by the French School at Athens, under the direction of Jean-Paul Prête. While the plans and chronological phases of the Agora’s buildings have been successfully reconstructed, the rich assemblage of architectural decorations – exceptionally well preserved – has yet to be thoroughly studied. The remarkable state of preservation and completeness was the primary motivation for undertaking the current research, which aims to identify the fragments of architectural decoration with their respective stoas. The reconstructed decorative program significantly enhances our understanding of historical Cypriot architecture, illuminating the influence of Alexandria and other Mediterranean centers on architectural trends. It highlights how agoras were framed with colonnaded stoas that combined traditional elements with innovative designs, revitalizing the architectural landscape of Cyprus in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.