This article furthers our understanding of commercial fishing on the lower Tiber during the Republic and Principate, arguing for a robust industry in the center of Rome. Literary references to the lupus fish and a fishing site “between the bridges” direct attention to the area of the river around the Cloaca Maxima and Tiber Island. Situating intensive fishing there requires reconciliation with other commercial uses of the river, a common-pool resource shared by users with divergent and competing needs. Epigraphic evidence offers insight into professional associations and attendant relationships that were leveraged in favor of the interests of both fishermen and barge operators. I contend that two separate navigation zones existed, to the north and to the south of Tiber Island, and that transport barges venturing inland from Ostia did not navigate beyond Rome’s southern wharves. This system enabled fishing and barge traffic to coexist, protecting numerous interests and allowing for the unimpeded transportation of goods.

This paper presents excavation results from Nyabusora, northern Tanzania, conducted by M. Posnansky and W.W. Bishop (1959) and M. Posnansky (1961). Only preliminary reports have previously been published. It synthesises the site’s history, incorporating previously unpublished analyses and information from Posnansky’s original field notes, and presents new 2014 field survey results and new archival research. Nyabusora holds particular significance as the only Early to Middle Stone Age (ESA/MSA) site in the region to have yielded both lithic and faunal remains, which gain new relevance in light of recent developments in ESA/MSA archaeology in eastern Africa. Nyabusora’s ‘Sangoan’ lithic assemblage is now largely decontextualised and associated finds have been lost, so this study presents the only available lithic and faunal analyses, alongside interpretations of the stratigraphic sequence and site. Such stratified assemblages are exceptionally rare and are generally attributed to the Middle Pleistocene. This research enhances understanding of Plio-Pleistocene landscape evolution in the Kagera River and western Lake Victoria-Nyanza Basin. It contributes important new data on ESA/MSA lithic variability and, via ongoing investigations by Basell within the Kagera catchment, offers huge potential for clarifying Middle Pleistocene palaeoenvironments.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the contemporary world. Trickling deeper into archaeology and history, these technological changes will influence how the past is written about and visualized. Through the evaluation of text and images generated using AI, this article considers the systemic biases present in reconstructed archaeological scenes. We draw on advances in computer science, running large-scale, computational analyses to evaluate patterns in content. We present a case study examining Neanderthal behavior, juxtaposing published archaeological knowledge with images and text made using AI. Our study reveals a low correspondence between scientific literature and artificially intelligent material, which reflects dated knowledge and cultural anachronisms. Used to identify patterns in (mis)representations of the past, the methodology can be applied to understand the distance between scholarly knowledge and any domain of content generated using AI, across any archaeological time depth and beyond the discipline.

Food preservation, including salting and barreling meat, has played a significant role in human history; however, it remains challenging to identify cases of salting in the archaeological record. Most studies have relied on limited datasets and focus on body-part profiles observed in faunal assemblages. Known and suspected cases of barreled meat and on-site butchery, drawn from six shipwrecks and seven fur trade posts, provide a means of identifying body-part profiles for salted pork and beef. Modeled body-part profiles based on these data reveal differences in expected body-part frequency between salted and locally butchered beef, although the patterning is less obvious for pork. Comparing these models against 26 military forts reveals that, despite the prominence of salted beef and pork in historic records, many forts exhibit patterns consistent with on-site butchery of live animals.

Red ochre may be found in igneous, metamorphic, or sedimentary rock, but igneous and metamorphic sources formed in localized geological events are easier to define. In sedimentary landscapes, ochre sources can be thought of as the geologic formations from which ochre is collected. This study provides the first description of red or red-firing ochre sources in the sedimentary Central Great Plains, based on 17 geologic ochre samples from five contexts: Cretaceous Pierre Shale; Cretaceous Niobrara Formation, Smoky Hill Chalk member; Cretaceous Carlile Shale; Cretaceous Dakota Formation; and Permian system siltstone and shale. Ochre analysis with powder X-ray diffraction reveals mineralogical differences—particularly differences in iron and sulfate minerals—between two defined ochre sources. Source 1 is the Cretaceous Dakota formation, with exposures on the eastern side of the study area. Source 2 includes younger strata exposed to the west: the Cretaceous Carlile Shale, Niobrara, and Pierre Formations. Source 2 ochre is yellow but becomes red at 250°C–500°C. Samples from a third potential source, Permian siltstones and shales (“red beds”; Tucker 2001:60), lacked identifiable iron oxides or hydroxides in this analysis and may not have been used as ochre.

This article discusses the Impressed Ware (IW) ceramic class from the early Late Chalcolithic 2 period (4200–4000 B.C.), which is considered fundamental for understanding chronological and socio-economic issues related to production and craft specialization in the Northern Mesopotamian region. The unpublished materials from the proto-historic site of Asingeran (Kurdistan region of Iraq) are examined through stylistic and decorative analysis and compared with specimens from contemporary sites across a broad territory, including the north-eastern Altinova plain, the south-eastern Erbil area, the south-western Khabur valley, and the Upper Eastern Tigris Basin. This paper aims to provide an overview of all IW ceramics found in Northern Mesopotamia, highlighting how the presence of this type, despite its diverse versions, serves as a significant means of identifying shared social practices among different communities within a specific ceramic region.

Although the Mixteca region has witnessed a long period of human occupation from before village societies were established to the present, traditional archaeological narratives tend to simplify this history by emphasizing singular points of origin and radical moments of change. Based on decolonial perspectives, we examine how persistence may be a more suitable framework for understanding the long history of human occupation in the region. Using information from three archaeological projects, this article analyzes the enduring histories of household practices at the site of Etlatongo in the Nochixtlan Valley. We focus on the construction of domestic spaces over three different periods in the long occupation of the site: during the latter half of the Early Formative (1400–1000 BC), the late Middle Formative (500–300 BC), and the Postclassic (AD 900–1500s). By analyzing the changing continuities of domestic practices at Etlatongo, this study contributes to scholarship examining the persistence of Indigenous communities in Mesoamerica.

Many archaeological arguments are based on artifact identification, but to be replicable the categories must be well defined, with researchers able to consistently identify the relevant attributes. If data are to be compared across projects or researchers, the same training and reference material should be available. Standardized visual guides for specific artifact types and contexts are valuable tools for improving identification by individuals and reducing inter-operator variation. To standardize shell temper description within Pensacola Mississippian pottery, we describe the development of a visual guide based on replicated shell-tempered pastes. We created 98 unique fired clay briquettes, varying in measured ways across four variables: shell type, particle size, particle density, and whether shell was still present or leached. The resulting briquettes were imaged and arranged for quick comparison with archaeological materials. To test the utility of this guide, we conducted a survey among professional archaeologists, assessing their confidence in and success with identifying shell temper attributes with and without the guide images. The results of the survey demonstrate the effectiveness of such tools for collaborative archaeological research. We describe the general method for producing this type of guide, which may be adapted for different pottery temper types, and provide our own images for use by others studying shell-tempered pottery.

In STEM fields, women tend to leak out of the pipeline to the professoriate. In archaeology, however, robust databases and chronological control reveal that there is no leakage from earning a PhD to tenure-track positions. Nor is there a leak from assistant professor to associate professor. Nevertheless, men get hired as faculty in PhD programs more often than women. This is important because PhD programs are research-intensive and train future leaders. Furthermore, women PhD students have women as advisers more than often men and report advantages to this arrangement. Yet with fewer women faculty in PhD programs, women mentors are in short supply. Potential solutions to these problems target areas where bias can intervene. Specifically, job search committees should (1) wait until late in the process before consulting letters of recommendation, (2) standardize the valorization of coauthorship for both men and women, and (3) prioritize applicants who match the job description when creating long lists. Finally, implicit bias training is critically important, and mentoring should be continuous and enthusiastically positive.

What happens to material knowledges and practices in the aftermath of involuntary uproot and relocation? How do displaced newcomers weave their lifeworlds, knowledges and practices into a novel context in the early stages after arrival? Anchored in a contemporary prism case in Zimbabwe, this archaeological study employs a temporally layered approach to displaced communities in southern Africa experiencing intense mobility in a dense political landscape with one or more dominant political entities. Extending the temporal scope and analytical relevance back to at least the early nineteenth century ce, our primary aim is to understand craftspeople’s practical problem-solving when coping with loss and absence while seeking to re-weave their social webs. The case examples share a common focus on earth materials (mud, soil, clay), stone and wood—easily available, low-cost or cost-free materials frequently used by displaced and refugee communities. Key analytical concepts are epistemic encounters, social memory, resistance and Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics. The approach seeks to merge two domains that are rarely combined: craftspeople’s engagements with their socio-ecological landscapes and the relevance of ancestral commemoration.

Cultural resource management (CRM) archaeology is a multimillion-dollar industry in Canada and the lead employer for archaeology graduates. Yet, the growth of and the challenges facing the Canadian CRM industry remain poorly documented. We therefore designed and distributed a job satisfaction and labor market survey to Canadian CRM practitioners with the goal of understanding how industry professionals feel about their positions and the health of the industry as well as what they believe are the most pressing challenges facing the Canadian CRM industry. These data indicate that the sector has grown faster than the supply of labor, that owner-operators are faced with difficult challenges related to the staffing required for the scale and volume of work, and that employees in the CRM sector are experiencing frustration with working conditions, compensation, and the preparation that postsecondary training offers. In this article, we attempt to determine the size of the Canadian CRM industry and highlight the challenges faced within the industry that must be addressed for CRM in Canada to attract and retain professional archaeologists.

From the fifth century onward, the creation of monumental ‘Big’ Buddhas (dafo 大佛), carved from living rock, became a significant cultural and religious phenomenon across Asia. This paper takes the Sichuan Basin as a case study, given its high concentration of rock-carved religious (RCR) sites. Notably, the number of monumental Buddha sculptures in the region increased significantly between 700 and 1200 ce. This paper examines the extent to which the construction of these Big Buddhas represents the appropriation of Buddhist RCR sites by non-local political and religious elites as a form of social control, and it is herein proposed that these social and religious elites commissioned and maintained such projects to reinforce authority and integrate local religious practices into institutional Buddhism. Since the construction of Big Buddhas required vast resources, labour and coordination, this paper examines those Big Buddhas which were left unfinished in order to understand the criteria for both success and failure, while also considering how these sculptures, as acts of social appropriation, mediated between the mundane and the divine, the imperial periphery and the centre, functioning as both spiritual symbols and political instruments.