The tomb of Marcus Venerius Secundio was discovered in July 2021 in the necropolis of Porta Sarno at Pompeii. This paper contextualizes it against the backdrop of 1st-c. CE burial customs and social history. The inscription on the pediment shows that the tomb owner was a former public slave who, after manumission, rose to the rank of the Augustales; he was a “custodian” of the temple of Venus, and he organized “Greek and Latin games/performances.” This is the first archaeological discovery providing direct evidence of Greek musical and/or theatrical performances at Pompeii. Another peculiarity is that Secundio was inhumed, not cremated, a practice so far unique among adults in Pompeii during this period. The inhumation of Secundio and his titulus sepulcralis can be read as local reflections of the Neronian zeitgeist and shed light on the modes by which cultural trends spread from the capital throughout the empire.

The chronology of Machu Picchu was traditionally associated with the period attributed to the reign of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui. Within the scheme of the so-called “historical chronology”, proposed by John H. Rowe in 1945, the ascension to power of Pachacuti Inca took place around 1438 CE, and the construction of Machu Picchu began by 1450–1460 CE. Several radiocarbon-dated samples may help to understand the chronology of the construction of llaqta of Machu Picchu, Chachabamba, and Choqesuysuy. However, there is a lack of consensus between different radiocarbon-based Inca chronologies because of the lack of information of which calibration curves to use: Northern Hemisphere (NH), Southern Hemisphere (SH), or a mixed calibration curve? Thus, the main goal of the present investigation is to develop a new methodological approach to reconstruct a radiocarbon-based Incan chronology, an approach based on the determination, through modeling, of the proportion of NH and SH air parcels arriving at three relevant Inca settlements. We found air parcel contributions from the NH and SH for Machu Picchu (51% NH and 49% SH), Chamical (29% NH and 71% SH), and Tiquischullpa (41% NH and 59% SH). Thereby, our investigation brings three proportions to mix NH and SH 14C curves, based on an empirical method and supported by a high-resolution paleoclimatic tracer, for Inca radiocarbon dating studies. Our study emphasizes that great attention should be paid when applying radiocarbon calibration to radiocarbon measurements of samples originating from regions under the influence of the atmospheric circulation-boundary between hemispheres.

This article revises the spatial and temporal boundaries of the Casas Grandes tradition associated with northwest Chihuahua, Mexico, based on new data collected in neighboring northeastern Sonora. The Casas Grandes tradition attained its greatest extent during the Medio period (AD 1200–1450/1500) followed by a dramatic demographic and political collapse. Hunter-gatherer groups subsequently occupied most of northwest Chihuahua. Data from the Fronteras Valley, Sonora, presents an alternative scenario, with a clear pattern of cultural continuity from the eleventh century to the colonial period in which sedentary farmers occupied the same landscapes and occasionally the same villages. These observations contribute to our understanding of the spread and subsequent demise of the Casas Grandes tradition in hinterland regions. For the Fronteras Valley, we infer that immigrant groups originally introduced Casas Grandes traditions and that uneven participation in a suite of shared religious beliefs and practices was common to all the hinterlands.

Fifty years after the ratification of the World Heritage Convention, we have come to learn that there is a huge discrepancy between the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) ideals of protecting heritage sites with outstanding universal values and unmatched realities in situ. I attempt to elucidate what World Heritage ideals of heritage protection are held in iconic sites in Southeast Asia. The studied sites are ancient monumental heritage sites of national importance – namely, Borobudur of Indonesia, Sukhothai and Ayutthaya of Thailand, and Angkor of Cambodia. The authorities in these countries have converted heritage sites into parks for visitors and for capitalization, which has placed authenticity and integrity at stake as well as converting the sites for contestation between the authorities and local communities. In order to solve the dilemma of the World Heritage ideals and their unwanted realities, I explore possible effective approaches for UNESCO and its partners to take into consideration.

Mortuary rituals are conservative and transformative. As practices of hands-on and conceptual learning, memory making, and inter-generational knowledge transfer they take place within Communities of Practice, where emotionality and temporalities shape learning about death, interment, and commemoration. Drawing on mortuary, ethnographic, and archaeothanatological evidence, this paper explores how inhabitants of the provincial Tiwanaku site Omo M10 (eighth–twelfth centuries ce) in southern Peru experienced and learned death and burial. The reconstruction of three stages of funerary ritual—body preparation, interment, and remembering—represents distinct episodes of bundling. During each stage, increasingly more diverse participants, materials, spaces, and activities differentially shape episodic memory formation and knowledge transfer. I propose that coming to understand the constituent participants, practices, and knowledge of mortuary ritual as emergent and heterogeneous Communities of Practice has important implications for the interpretation of synchronic and diachronic mortuary variability.

Los resultados de investigaciones arqueológicas recientes llevadas a cabo en el sitio Nakum, ubicado en el noreste de Guatemala, indican que este centro experimentó una importante evolución cultural, sociopolítica y arquitectónica entre los horizontes pre-Mamom y Mamom (1000–300 a.C.). Las excavaciones arqueológicas permitieron documentar varios edificios y complejos fechados para este periodo, incluyendo un grupo tipo E, una cancha de juego de pelota y un baño de vapor. Asimismo, producto de las excavaciones, se obtuvo una gran colección cerámica de dicha temporalidad, la cual permite—gracias a estudios estilísticos, modales, petrográficos y fisicoquímicos—conocer con mayor detalle los cambios culturales y sociales que tuvieron lugar en el sitio durante el preclásico medio.

Artificial illumination is a fundamental human need. Burning wood and other materials usually in hearths and fireplaces extended daylight hours, whilst the use of flammable substances in torches offered light on the move. It is increasingly understood that pottery played a role in light production. In this study, we focus on ceramic oval bowls, made and used primarily by hunter-gatherer-fishers of the circum-Baltic over a c. 2000 year period beginning in the mid-6th millennium cal bc. Oval bowls commonly occur alongside larger (cooking) vessels. Their function as ‘oil lamps’ for illumination has been proposed on many occasions but only limited direct evidence has been secured to test this functional association. This study presents the results of molecular and isotopic analysis of preserved organic residues obtained from 115 oval bowls from 25 archaeological sites representing a wide range of environmental settings. Our findings confirm that the oval bowls of the circum-Baltic were used primarily for burning fats and oils, predominantly for the purposes of illumination. The fats derive from the tissues of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial organisms. Bulk isotope data of charred surface deposits show a consistently different pattern of use when oval bowls are compared to other pottery vessels within the same assemblage. It is suggested that hunter-gatherer-fishers around the 55th parallel commonly deployed material culture for artificial light production but the evidence is restricted to times and places where more durable technologies were employed, including the circum-Baltic.

This study evaluates the degree of correspondence between chronological frameworks implemented in Maya studies and current archaeological evidence, focusing on dynamics in the Preclassic period in the Champotón River drainage, Campeche, Mexico. The earliest ceramics documented in Champotón, dating to the early facet of the Middle Preclassic, were part of a regional tradition that shared decorative modes with contemporary complexes across Mesoamerica. The transition between the early and late facets of the Middle Preclassic was an era of abrupt change, with communities in Champotón participating in the first widespread autochthonous material culture horizon of the Maya Lowlands. The ensuing centuries would be characterized by conservatism and growth, with spatial continuity in settlement locations and homogeneity in material culture through the Late Preclassic. These historical dynamics are not unique to coastal Campeche, but were embedded within broader historical developments during the Middle Preclassic period in the Maya Lowlands. Instead of forcing new evidence into an incongruent chronological framework, this article proposes a revision to the traditional periodization used in the Maya Lowlands.