Unmodified and modified animal remains and animal representations significantly contribute to the content of Mesolithic and, in some cases, Early Neolithic hunter-gatherer burial assemblages in Northern Europe. Though these finds have received noteworthy attention, predominant archaeological narratives focus on their economic, aesthetic, or symbolic values in relation to humans. This contribution explores ways of looking at these assemblages beyond seeing them primarily as signifiers of human identities and human symbolic and/or economic choices. Drawing on insights from Russian ethnographic literature about near-recent East Siberian hunting and gathering communities, this paper explores paths for understanding unmodified and modified animal remains and animal representations from Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherer graves as animate objects and investigates ways of recognising their personhood. The paper outlines what could be considered as the material consequences of communicative actions and performative acts in relation to artefacts and animal remains that might have been perceived as having the qualities of a person, such as their placement and arrangement within the burial and treatment prior to deposition.

Archaeologists should always have their say in the interpretation of the archaeological record. Moreover, they should not allow those interpretations to be misappropriated by others, whether politicians, journalists or specialists of other disciplines. By contending that borders are a timely topic for archaeological attention, Emily Hanscam and Brian Buchanan (2023) make a decisive epistemological step forward within the field, also opening up the potential of the discipline's specialised knowledge for wider dissemination and impact. They advance from a straightforward position: the argument that re-bordering in the contemporary world, notably through the increasing fencing of borders (Bissonnette & Vallet 2020), often originates in a normative and normalising discourse on the past. The best example, according to the authors, is Hadrian's Wall, which appears as a common justification for the building of contemporary walls on a growing number of international borders. Their text unfolds a comparison between the archaeological findings about that one short segment of the Roman limes in northern Britain and the supposed properties of the contemporary infrastructure on the US/Mexico border, which successive US presidents have sought to reinforce—chief among them Donald Trump.

Hanscam and Buchanan (2023) give us an insightful comparative analysis of Hadrian's Wall and the US/Mexico border wall. Their analysis shows how critically to study and use these long walls in an explicitly political archaeology. I have engaged in archaeology as political action (McGuire 2008), and have researched the materiality of the US/Mexico border while doing humanitarian work along that border (McGuire 2013). Hanscam and Buchanan deftly employ archaeology as a political tool to challenge capitalist ideologies about borders. They plead for a politically relevant archaeology that engages the past to address modern issues. Without such relevance, they fear that archaeology will be made redundant. I emphatically agree with them that an activist archaeology makes our discipline more relevant. I fear, however, that these politics may be our demise rather than our salvation.

We are grateful for the participation of the respondents and heartened at the general agreement on the importance of a politically proactive archaeology. Inevitably, the authors offer differing perspectives on how best to achieve this goal, including the degree to which political engagement may foster the strength and relevance of the discipline (McGuire 2023), the limitations of landscape or assemblage perspectives for analysing these issues (Gardner 2023; Szary 2023), and whether or not such a call is even necessary because many archaeologists are already engaged with this type of research (Soto 2023). We appreciate the opportunity that these comments provide to us for critical reflection on our arguments; here, we briefly engage with the major themes raised as part of the ongoing dialogue.

This paper uses a Flavian aureus type depicting the aedes Vestae to explore both the ideological and the practical aspects of using coinage to propagate a dynasty. Firstly, we analyse the type from an iconographic perspective and argue that it should not be understood as a simple referent to the building itself, but rather as a complex interplay of different semantic units, intended to convey messages of dynastic harmony and security. Secondly, we use a die study to reconstruct the minting process and use our findings to elucidate the transformation of Roman coin production during the Flavian period. Taken together, the two parts of the paper demonstrate both the importance and the pay-offs of studying Roman coinage holistically, that is, with an integrated approach that combines iconographic and technical analysis. A catalogue of coins considered in the die study is provided as an appendix.

The scribe has been granted a special role in the creation of ancient Chinese narrative prose. Many texts seem to imply the presence of his person or written records, and scholars have often treated this feature as an indication of authorship. In this paper, I argue that another way of relating the scribe to ancient Chinese narrative prose is to see in him not an author but a witness of the events told. I will use several examples to demonstrate that the figure of the scribe stands out by its function of authenticating the narratives in which scribes takes part. Moreover, occasionally scribes appear to have been added to pre-existing “scribe-less” narratives. I will conclude my discussion by detailing how these findings shed light on the composition of individual pieces of literature and the nature of ancient Chinese narrative writing in general.

The Minoan eruption of Santorini, Greece, is an important and often-debated chronological marker in contexts of the Eastern Mediterranean region. Among various age estimates of this event, one based on wiggle-matching of radiocarbon (14C) dates from an olive branch found in Santorini by Friedrich et al. (2006) has been widely discussed. Calibrated age estimates based on wiggle-matching of these 14C ages have been changing with improvements in the 14C calibration curve. As also shown earlier, calibration of average 14C age of multiple tree rings dated together should not be done using a single-year calibration curve. Since recent calibration curves include many single-year 14C datasets, a different approach should be considered to calibrate the average 14C age of block of multiple tree rings. Here we have demonstrated the use of multiple moving average (MA) calibration curves for calibrating the sequence of four 14C ages reported for the Santorini olive branch. The resultant calibrated ages for the Minoan Eruption are relatively younger than previous estimates and range from the late-17th century BCE to mid-16th century BCE date.

As one of the most extensive prehistoric entities of western Iran, Dalma culture belonging to the Zagros Chalcolithic, flourished in vast areas of the Central Zagros and Northwest Region of the country. This culture is defined essentially by its characteristic ceramic assemblages that show a marked uniformity in terms of technology, vessel forms, and painted designs throughout its territory. One of the main issues regarding this culture is its chronology, which was largely based on comparative studies, a few radiocarbon (14C) dates analyzed in the 1960s–1970s, or a few confusing thermoluminescence dates. In this paper, a series of 15 charcoal samples from a recent salvage excavation at Nad Ali Beig, a single-period site dated to Dalma period, is presented that provide the first reliable absolute dates for a part of the Middle Chalcolithic period of the Central Zagros region. Based on these new dates we may suggest that Dalma culture flourished between ca. 5200/5100–4600 BCE. Furthermore, based on these dates it is now possible to determine the order of appearance of different types of the Dalma culture ceramic assemblage, including the Ubaid-related painted buff ceramics.

In the absence of wood, bone, and other organics, one possible candidate for determining the age of a site is the radiocarbon (14C) dating of pottery. In central Europe during the Early Neolithic, pottery was ubiquitous and contained substantial quantities of organic temper. However, attempts at the direct dating of organic inclusions raises a lot of methodological issues, especially when several sources of carbon contribute to the resulting radiocarbon age. Hence an alternative approach to dating of the early pottery is necessary. Here, we present a novel method of bulk separation of organic content from the grass-tempered pottery from Santovka (Slovakia). The procedure is based on the consecutive application of three inorganic acids, dissolving clay, silica content, and low molecular or mobile fractions to separate organic inclusions added to the pottery matrix during the formation of vessels. Radiocarbon dates obtained with this method are coherent and produce the shortest time span compared to other pretreatment methods presented in this study. The paired dates of grass-tempered pots with the 14C age of lipids extracted from the same pots point to a difference of 400–600 14C yr, however they are in line with the site’s chronostratigraphic Bayesian model. Grass-tempered pottery from Santovka (Slovakia) is dated to the first half of the 6th millennium cal BC, making it the earliest pottery north of the Danube. It seems feasible that ceramic containers from Santovka were produced by hunter-gatherers, and pottery predated the arrival of farming in the Carpathian region by a couple of centuries.

Radiocarbon (14C) data for 2nd millennium BC urban sites in northern Mesopotamia have been lacking until recently. This article presents a preliminary dataset and Bayesian model addressing the Middle and early Late Bronze Age (Old Babylonian and pre/early Mittani) strata of Kurd Qaburstan—one of the largest archaeological sites on the Erbil plain of Iraqi Kurdistan. The results place the large, densely occupied and fortified Middle Bronze Age city in the first part of the 18th century BC, an outcome consistent with the site’s tentative identification as ancient Qabra. A long occupation gap (up to two centuries) probably ensued, before a smaller town confined to the high mound and part of the northeastern lower town resumed in the late 16th and early 15th centuries BC, possibly before this region became part of the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Mittani.

The Lamoka Lake and Scaccia sites in present-day New York have played important roles in the development of archaeology in New York, and in the case of Lamoka Lake, in eastern North America. Lamoka Lake is the type site for the “Archaic” period in eastern North American culture history and the “Late Archaic” “Lamoka phase” in New York culture history. The Scaccia site is the largest “Early Woodland” “Meadowood phase” site in New York and has the earliest evidence for pottery and agriculture crop use in the state. Lamoka Lake has been dated to 2500 BC based on a series of solid carbon and gas-proportional counting radiometric dates on bulk wood charcoal obtained in the 1950s and 1960s. Scaccia has been dated to 870 BC based on a single uncalibrated radiometric date obtained on bulk charcoal in the early 1970s. As a result, the ages of these important sites need to be refined. New AMS dates and Bayesian analyses presented here place Lamoka Lake at 2962–2902 BC (68.3% highest posterior density [hpd])) and Scaccia at 1049–838 BC (68.3% hpd).