In the light of discussions surrounding the social changes attributed to the arrival of the Corded Ware culture in central Europe, here we investigate the economic strategies of one of the cultural complexes of the immediately preceding Late Neolithic. The Cham culture of southern Bavaria is characterised by a variety of economic choices but problems remain in synthesising and combining archaeozoological and archaeobotanical evidence. Using lipid residue analysis from Cham culture pottery excavated at the unenclosed settlement of Riedling, Lower Bavaria, we succeed in identifying a dairying economy at this time. Compound-specific lipid radiocarbon dates are then combined with other samples to provide a formal estimate for the duration of activity at Riedling and the first Bayesian chronological model for the Cham culture as a whole. Although data are currently not fine-grained enough to distinguish between competing models for site permanence, we suggest that the Cham culture pattern fits into a wider central European trend of greater mobility and economic flexibility in the pre-Corded Ware horizon, concluding that key economic strategies previously associated with ‘steppe invasions’ were already present in the preceding centuries. Finally, the demonstrated use of cups for milk-based products, as opposed to alcoholic drinks as previously suggested, leads us to propose possible alternative uses and users for these items.

A single-stage accelerator mass spectrometer (GXNU-AMS) developed for radiocarbon and tritium measurements was installed and commissioned at Guangxi Normal University in 2017. After several years of operational and methodological upgrades, its performance has been continuously improved and applied in multidisciplinary fields. Currently, the measurement sensitivity for radiocarbon and tritium is 14C/12C ∼ (3.14 ± 0.05) ×10–15 and 3H/1H ∼ (1.23 ± 0.17)×10–16, respectively, and the measurement accuracy is ∼0.6%, which can meet the measurement requirements in the nuclear, earth, environmental and life science fields. This study presents the performance characteristics of GXNU-AMS and several interesting application studies.

This article inquiries into Poland’s current approach to the implementation of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. It argues that it is more focused on the recovery of national heritage than on providing justice to Holocaust victims and their heirs. First, it discusses the outputs of the Expert Group established in 2009 to implement provenance research in line with the Washington Principles’s recommendations. It explains the failure of this initiative by bringing into focus the wider context of the inheritance of the war-time displacements and splitting of collections. It argues that Holocaust victims’ assets are one of many problematic items in Polish memory institutions and that the unresolved issue of post-war nationalizations are often perceived as an argument that hinders the Washington Principles’s implementation. It outlines the notions of “Polish war losses” and “national cultural goods” and discusses in detail the Polish provenance research databases. It notices that restitution in Poland is increasingly considered as an important national identity-building tool and analyzes several recent educational and branding initiatives of this kind.

Often assumed to be ritual votives or toys for children, miniature ceramic vessels in the Bronze Age Aegean have been afforded little thorough study. Their presence at peak sanctuaries, sacred caves and shrines on Crete has led to their uncritical association with ritual activity, even outside of sacred areas. When miniature pots are found in domestic spaces, they are often dismissed as objects of household ritual or simple toys. Yet miniature vessels, diverse in form and context, are so common in archaeological investigations of Minoan settlements that they merit further comprehensive study. Considered alongside the abundance of small-scale Minoan material culture, including figurines, seals, miniature wall paintings, and models, miniature pottery appears to be one facet of a larger semiotic ideology – one well-versed in the language and power of the miniature. By analysing 504 miniature pots from 13 sites in central and east Crete, this paper explores the wide range of miniature vessel types used in the Protopalatial and Neopalatial periods and applies contextual analysis to draw out their meanings. Contextualisation and data analysis reveal two distinct categories within the corpus of miniature pots: ‘micro-miniatures’ and ‘small miniatures’. While micro-miniatures were indeed inherently cultic, small miniatures served a variety of practical functions within the world of Minoan Crete and should not be assumed to relate to ritual. To differentiate between the categories, the relationship between the miniature and its prototype, as well as its semiotic meaning are considered. By applying Peircean understandings of iconicity and indexicality to these two categories, the use and significance of Bronze Age miniature vessels are further illuminated, in ritual and beyond.

This article presents the results of Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) of, altogether, 145 pottery and clay samples deriving from five sites located in the Thessalian region of Magnesia: Dimini, Nea Ionia, Kastro/Palaia (Volos), Pefkakia and Velestino. Chronologically, the sampled pottery covers the entire Late Bronze Age (LBA), with a few samples dating to the Middle Bronze Age. Within this broad chronological range, Mycenaean-type pottery dominates, the majority of it being decorated, with an addition of fine unpainted pottery and such used for transport and cooking. Pottery of non-Mycenaean derivation is represented by a variety of types belonging to the early LBA as well as two classes of the early post-palatial period (i.e. after 1200 BC): Handmade Burnished Ware and Grey Ware. Importantly, samples associated with two pottery kilns at Dimini and Velestino were included in the project, although no kiln wasters were identified. Results of the analysis provide important insights into both local Thessalian pottery production and inter- and intra-regional pottery exchange. Local production utilising clay beds around Dimini is best evidenced, with a distribution of its products reaching beyond Thessaly. Two further chemical patterns appear to be associated with Velestino, while an additional two small chemical groups are likely Thessalian as well. In terms of identified imports, the Argolid stands out as the major source of non-local pottery from the beginning of the LBA until the end of the palatial period. Other regions and production localities play a significantly smaller role as sources of supply. On the basis of the study, for the first time the local production as well as importation of pottery in the region of Magnesia is documented by scientific means, opening new research perspectives and strengthening the region's standing as part of the Mycenaean world.

Current scholarship suggests that Neo-Eneolithic systems of settlement and subsistence in Eastern Europe were defined by short-to-medium range migration, while sparsely populated land in peripheral regions allowed for the continual colonization of new territories. We address the Eastern Tripolye Culture (ETC), a sub-group of the Cucuteni-Tripolye cultural complex that flourished ca. 4300–2950 BC by expanding into the forest-steppe ecozone of Central Ukraine. While a general lack of multi-layer sites complicates regional chronology, we resolve several longstanding questions in Ukrainian archaeological discourse by combining traditional relative chronologies of ceramic types with high-precision AMS dating of material from key sites. We offer a revision of the chronology of Tripolye BI and BI-II, which, rather than consisting of distinct “early” and “late” temporal periods, instead constitute a single period characterized by stylistic diversity in material culture. With an absolute chronology established, we then analyze the space-time distribution of sites, revealing a southwest-to-northeast migratory vector across Central Ukraine characterized by punctuated episodes of “leapfrog” colonization. The establishment of this vector by the ETC presages larger-scale population movements by the Western Tripolye Culture (WTC), which led to the establishment of the giant-settlement phenomenon during the first part of the 4th millennium BC.

Este trabajo se focaliza en el análisis espacial intrasitio del material lítico procedente de un montículo de tierra del sitio arqueológico Pago Lindo (Departamento de Tacuarembó, Uruguay). Se realizaron análisis tecnológicos y distribucionales (vecino más cercano, K de Ripley y modelos kernel) que permitieron caracterizar distintas fases de ocupación y uso del espacio entre 3021 ± 32 y 690 ± 35 años 14C aP. Se reconoció una tecnología predominantemente expeditiva en la que no se observaron cambios significativos a través del tiempo. Los resultados de los análisis distribucionales muestran patrones heterogéneos que responden al uso diferencial del espacio en la estructura monticular. Los patrones agrupados, observados principalmente en microlascas, permitieron identificar sectores donde se localizaron espacios domésticos cuya ocupación y gestión de residuos contribuyó al crecimiento del montículo. También se reconocieron sectores donde las agrupaciones del material lítico tienden principalmente a la aleatoriedad, y que corresponden a episodios constructivos planificados. Esto es congruente con el modelo de crecimiento espaciotemporal discontinuo de las estructuras monticulares —basado en la alternancia de momentos de abandono y momentos de uso— pero también con episodios constructivos intencionales.

Andean prehispanic textiles are renown for being complex masterpieces made with labor-intensive techniques and high-quality raw materials. Nevertheless, the vast majority of textiles, those used by the population at large, were plain, simple, and without any decoration. We study a sample composed of the most common textiles used by people living at Cerro de Oro in the Cañete Valley, Peru. Our analysis focuses on fiber selection, yarn thickness, and the presence of errors throughout the process of weaving. We discuss relevant aspects of the social process of textile production, such as the role played by plain-weave textiles in different contexts, their use in different types of garments, and the varied ways community members, with particular skill levels, participated in clothing the living and the dead at Cerro de Oro.

In the Roman world, lamps with replicated images of sex were in circulation from the late 1st c. BCE until the end of the 4th c. CE. This paper maps out key regional and chronological trends in the representation and consumption of these objects using data from 11 provincial sites. It demonstrates sustained sensitivity of replicated sexual disc-reliefs to distinctive regional styles of consumption and representation. It also shows that symplegmata disc-reliefs were interacting and changing over time, resulting in innovative imagery that produced new meanings in localized contexts. This is the first comparative systematic study of the styles of consumption and representation of replicated lamp iconography using statistical methods. As such, the paper contributes a novel methodological approach to Roman sexuality research and also advances our understanding of how Roman replicated sexual imagery came about, how it constructed meaning, and how it was consumed by different communities over time.

During the 2019 archaeological excavation season in Blaundos, a Roman-period bronze medallion was found within a wall of a Byzantine-period structure on the main street. It is a medallion struck by the Lydian city of Silandos, bearing the bust of Faustina II on the obverse and Marcus Aurelius clasping hands with Lucius Verus on the reverse. A literature search revealed that it is a rare and unpublished specimen. Neither RPC, the largest database of Roman Provincial Coinage, nor auction databases record any example of it. The iconography, combining the portrait of the empress with a depiction of the co-emperors of the period, does not point to any specific event or incident. The reverse die was, however, used for another medallion struck later by Silandos. This paper aims to introduce, interpret, and discuss this unique Lydian medallion from the 2nd c. CE.

The Swan Point site in interior Alaska contains a significant multi-component archaeological record dating back to 14,200 cal BP. The site’s radiocarbon (14C) chronology has been presented in scattered publications that mostly focus on specific archaeological periods in Alaska, in particular its terminal Pleistocene components associated with the East Beringian tradition. This paper synthesizes the site’s 14C data and provides sequential Bayesian models for its cultural zones and subzones. The 14C and archaeological record at Swan Point attests that the location was persistently used over the last 14,000 years, even though major changes are evident within regional vegetation and local faunal communities, reflecting long-term trends culminating in Dene-Athabascan history.

Temporal and spatial variation in radiocarbon (14C) in the atmosphere has been the subject of investigation from the first pioneering work of Libby and Arnold. However, as the precision of measurements has improved, now by almost two orders of magnitude, what constitutes a significant variation has also changed. Furthermore, it has become possible to test degrees of variation over much longer timescales and with ever wider geographic coverage. As knowledge has improved, the interpretation of 14C measurements has had to be revised. These re-evaluations, and the loss of chronological precision that comes with accurate calibration, have often been seen as an unfortunate drawback in the 14C dating method. However, these problems have stimulated extensive research in global 14C records, statistical methods for dealing with complex 14C data, and measurement methods. This research has provided a wealth of information useful for other scientific challenges, most notably the quantification of the global carbon cycle, but also enabled, in the right circumstances, measurement precision an order of magnitude better than if there had been no variation in atmospheric 14C. Challenges remain but the research undertaken for 14C calibration has, through its ingenuity and innovation, provided rich scientific dividends in both chronology and broader geoscience.

In the province of Ontario, Canada, it is estimated that 80% of archaeological sites are Indigenous, yet there are very few Indigenous archaeologists involved in management and decision-making about Indigenous heritage. Systemic barriers, particularly around licensing and regulations for curatorial facilities, continue to prevent Indigenous people from directly managing and protecting their own cultural heritage. Recognizing that Indigenous communities in northeastern Ontario have had little exposure or opportunity to learn about archaeology, for several years we have been involved in educational programs to train Indigenous youth, staff in First Nations government offices, and others. We illustrate with two examples: the monitor training program undertaken in northeastern Ontario and a project to catalog artifacts from the legacy collection from the La Cloche site.

The lack of systematic chronologies is a key problem for the archaeological sites of Altai and adjacent territories during the Great Migration Period. Here we present an attempt to establish the chronology of the Bulan-Koby culture objects of the Karban-I necropolis by correlation of accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) data from human remains with data from archaeological dating methods. This is the first application of such a combined targeted 14C and archaeological approach to the chronology of the Great Migration Period materials of northern Altai, and in particular the Bulan-Koby culture. Systematic analysis of the mutual occurrence of dated types of certain grave goods and 14C dating of a series of samples supports a predominant period of use for the site that spans the 2nd–3rd c. AD, which corresponds to the early Xianbei period. This study demonstrates strong agreement between the indicators obtained by archaeological and radiocarbon methods, suggesting chronological consistency of the necropolis which functioned at the beginning of the Great Migration Period. The very combination of the two techniques will allow more precise and detailed chronologies for other archaeological complexes of Altai and adjacent territories from the first centuries of the 1st mil. AD, which is the basis of historical reconstructions.