This paper explores the utility of conviviality thinking for archaeological theory and practice. It first situates calls for convivial analysis as a response to the excesses of late capitalism and the existential challenges of the global Anthropocene polycrisis. The paper then highlights the critical, ethical and interpretive potentials of the concept to re-think human–animal coexistence, to frame new approaches to ecological conservation and to creatively reimagine shared multispecies futures. A suite of examples from hunter-gatherer archaeology and archaeological museums is offered to illustrate how conviviality thinking helps to challenge traditional representations of the past and contributes to an engaged, post-critical approach to museum and heritage practices fostering a fruitful dialogue on the diversity of species co-living. Conviviality constitutes a powerful lens through which to integrate theory and practice and to draw on the empirical strengths of archaeology, while recognizing the need to speak to a critical moment in planetary history.

This paper presents an archaeological material science study of pottery production and use at the Bronze Age Minoan town of Palaikastro, east Crete, from Middle Minoan IIA to Late Minoan IIIA2 (c. 1850 to 1300 BC), through petrographic analysis of thin sections and wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. The compositions of 288 archaeological samples are compared with geological references collected from the site and its adjacent hinterland. The results of this study indicate that throughout this period the majority of the archaeological pottery assemblage was probably produced using materials from a small number of geological outcrops local to the town; however, the manner in which these resources were utilised changed significantly over time, particularly between the Proto- and Neopalatial periods.

Since its rediscovery in the context of nineteenth-century colonial India, the study of the ancient Buddhist sculpture of Gandhara (northern Pakistan) has been hampered by very limited information about the provenance of finds. This is the result of poorly documented expeditions by archaeologists and antiquarians, as much as the enduring appeal of classically-influenced Gandharan art to collectors. The present study casts light on the modern itineraries of antiquities recovered on the North-West Frontier of late colonial India with new discoveries about the extraordinary Evert Barger expedition of 1938.

Although it made a major contribution to the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, its nominal sponsor, the Barger expedition was characterised by a surprisingly haphazard and unstrategic approach, even by the standards of the day, and it straddled the diplomatically sensitive boundary between the official jurisdiction of British India and the princely state of Swat. By exploring new information about three Barger sculptures in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, two of which were previously unprovenanced, this study unpacks the complex history of the Barger antiquities, correcting past misapprehensions and adding depth to a story of colonial archaeology that has tended to rely on generalisations.

Panoramic accounts of long-term socio-political change tend to marginalize the role of animals. Taking a materialist stance, we re-evaluate the ways livestock shaped the emergence of the tributary mode of production out of a kinship-ordered mode of production. This explicitly Marxist analytical framework foregrounds the interplay between value, wealth, and labour, while attending to the economic specificities of livestock that make it particularly dynamic. Drawing on ethnohistorical data, we identify wealth in livestock as heritable, expandable, flexible, and convertible, while inherently unstable. We offer the first synthesis tying these qualities together and present a holistic picture of how these qualities can catalyse the class formation by promoting differential accumulation of wealth, economic growth, and direct appropriation of value from producers. These dynamics offer an animal-centric explanatory lens to view the long-term trajectory of northern Mesopotamia from the Neolithic through the Late Chalcolithic (9700-3500 BCE), where caprines, cattle, and pigs were central to the development of urbanism and states. While our analysis is specific to the social formations, species, and human-animal relations in northern Mesopotamia, the framework we present can be applied to contexts globally to better understand the animal side of political economic dynamics of early complex societies.

The capacity to relate a signal to an arbitrary, specific and generally understood meaning—symbolism—is an integral feature of human language. Here, we explore two aspects of knapping technology at the Acheulean site of Boxgrove that may suggest symbolic communication. Tranchet tips are a difficult handaxe form to create, but are unusually prevalent at Boxgrove. We use geometric morphometrics to show that despite tranchet flaking increasing planform irregularity, handaxes with tranchet tips have more standardized 3D shapes than those without. This challenging standardization suggests tranchet tips at Boxgrove were part of a normative prescription for a particular handaxe form. Boxgrove presents some of the thinnest handaxes in the Acheulean world. To replicate such thin bifaces involves the technique of turning-the-edge. Since this technique is visually and causally opaque it may not be possible to learn through observation or even pointing, instead requiring arbitrary referents to teach naïve knappers. We use scar ordering on handaxes to show a variety of instances of turning-the-edge in different depositional units at Boxgrove, indicating it was socially transmitted to multiple knappers. The presence of societally understood norms, coupled with a technique that requires specific referents to teach its salient features, suggests symbolism was a feature of hominin communication at Boxgrove 480,000 years ago.

John Carter’s fervour as a recorder and polemicist for Gothic architecture has been debated since his lifetime, but his classical designs have attracted less interest. However, these give some insight into the influences upon aspiring young Georgian architects, as Carter was in the 1770s. His two sets of designs for Bywell Hall, Northumberland, the first published in the Builder’s Magazine in 1776, and a more detailed portfolio now in a private collection, are presented together for the first time. This is an opportunity to examine Carter’s early ideas and his thoughts on the appropriate styles to be employed for public, domestic and ecclesiastical buildings. Analysis of Carter’s designs demonstrates his desire to create impressive interior spaces, but poor consideration of the practicalities for family and servant life in country houses. Carter’s preference for Gothic over classical architecture, combined with humble origins and personality traits, prevented his aspiration to be an architect, but his drawing skills secured fame as one of the foremost architectural draughtsmen.

This article concerns opportunities for improving systems for processing public finds through digital technology and citizen science, taking England, Estonia, and Finland as case studies. These three countries have differing legislation, but all face a significant growth in hobby metal detecting and consequent increase in archaeological finds being reported, which places pressure on existing resources for recording them. While archaeologists in the different countries all value public finds as items that add to public collections, provide information about sites at risk, and can advance research, their priorities vary. This has an impact on approaches to processing finds, but offers the chance to embrace digital technology and involve the public. This article shows how digital technology and public involvement in archaeology have already facilitated change in all three countries and highlights further opportunities these might provide, given a growing desire to democratize archaeology and share public finds data as widely as possible.

By the end of the fourteenth-century AD, Native peoples throughout the midwestern and southeastern regions of North America had withdrawn from major monumental and political centers established in prior centuries. In this article, I present the results of a community-level examination of settlement transformations on the Georgia Coast that I argue are the outcome of this large-scale movement of Mississippian peoples. Specifically, I examine the consequences of the depopulation of the Savannah River Valley, a case of a rapid, historically contingent Mississippian emigration beginning in the fourteenth century AD. My results establish how a large-scale immigration event affected community spatial and political organization and demonstrate that migrants and coastal locals engaged in the collective cultural construction of new identities and lifeways in response to the challenges of negotiating the use of common pool resources, such as fisheries and suitable farmland. Reconstructing the spatial organization of communities can help explain the demographic, economic, and political processes that undergird the cultural materialization of space. Although much remains to be learned about intra-settlement organization at post-Archaic, precolonial sites along the Georgia Coast, this investigation provides new information about the local, community-level spatial response to the fourteenth-century immigration event.