This study presents a new stable oxygen isotope chronology, covering the years 800–2000 AD, constructed using modern and subfossil wood derived from trees growing around Lake Schwarzensee in Austria. The climatic signal imparted in the chronology is conditioned mainly by the direct influence of environmental factors on the isotopic signature of source water, which in turn is regulated by evaporation and condensation mechanisms. The second driver of stable oxygen isotope is the physiological response of trees to changing weather conditions, most importantly rates of transpiration. The chronology of stable oxygen isotopes corresponds well with both temperature (r = 0.485; p < 0.05) and total precipitation (r = −0.548; p < 0.05) during the growing season (May–September). This mixed signal results from the fact that the relationship between the content of stable oxygen isotopes and the influence of climate is multifactorial. Moreover, the effect exerted by meteorological conditions on stable isotope ratio changes over time. This is most probably linked to interannual variation in climatic and environmental factors.

This paper focuses upon alterity and how we can more fully embrace intimations of otherness in our dealings with prehistoric monuments. Taking as its inspiration recent attempts to explain such structures, and the landscapes of which they were part, it makes two arguments. First, that while ethnographic analogies offer a vital point of departure for thinking through the possibilities raised by alterity and otherness, we may well have been overlooking a rich set of data—derived from careful excavation and painstaking metrical analyses—that has been sitting in front of us for a very long time. Second, despite over a decade of sustained critical debate, we seem remarkably timid when it comes to seeing where these data might take us. Through the lens of two Late Neolithic stone circles from southern Britain (one big, one small), research into measurement units and alignments is allied with recent excavation and survey data in order to explore ideas of hybridity, nomad-geometry and the arresting/manipulation of time and motion. Placing these glimpses of alterity front and centre, they are then used to establish new starting-points for the interpretation of these structures.

At the time of the Spanish invasion, central Andean society was organized around ayllus. These extensive social units, bound together by kinship, reciprocity, land claims, honoured ancestors and other criteria, are an example of the kin-based sodalities that have long been seen in political science as impediments to state development. Class should replace kin when large and complex polities like the Inca Empire form, and groups like the ayllu should fade away. This article seeks to re-evaluate the role played by kin-based sodalities in early state formation and expansion through a case study of the Wari State (ce 600–1000). We argue that the decades-long development of ayllus was a reaction to incipient urbanization, surging interregional interaction and the other challenges associated with Wari's rise. Ayllu development created a more heterarchical political structure that would endure some 200 years into the polity's existence. Elite efforts to consolidate power in the ninth century ce ultimately led to the polity's decline and highlight the need to develop more dynamic models of urbanization and state formation in the Andes and elsewhere.