Although culture contact is a well-studied area of archaeological inquiry, complex ancient cross-cultural interactions can be challenging to discern. As zones of innovation in which boundaries are obscure, ancient frontiers offer ideal contexts to analyze the nuances of such interactions. To address the challenges of interpreting a multicultural frontier in the Moquegua Valley, southern Peru, we apply a practice-based approach using foodways to elucidate the complexity of culture contact between Wari-affiliated and Indigenous Huaracane communities during the Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000). Our findings indicate that after Wari colonization of the Moquegua frontier, the Huaracane community at Yahuay Alta began brewing chicha de molle, an alcoholic beverage associated with and central to Wari political and religious social structures. They did not, however, adopt the practice in a completely Wari fashion. Instead, we see Huaracane leaders brewed and served chicha de molle in ways that aligned with their own cultural practices. The material remains of chicha de molle production and consumption at Yahuay Alta should not be seen as a simple adoption of a nonlocal cultural practice by an Indigenous group, but instead an active manipulation of practice as part of frontier cultural negotiations and entanglements.

El objetivo del trabajo es analizar la relación entre humanos y animales a lo largo del tiempo. En este contexto, buscamos puntualmente comprender el papel de estos últimos en los procesos de construcción identitaria de los grupos humanos de Sierras Centrales (Córdoba, centro de Argentina). Para ello, proponemos una perspectiva que integre herramientas metodológicas de la etnozoología, la historia y la arqueología. Desde el presente, abordamos el conocimiento ecológico local de las comunidades rurales, donde muchas familias llevan como apelativo el nombre de algún animal. En tanto, indagamos en los vínculos identificados en los documentos y trabajos históricos, lo que habilita rastrear cambios y continuidades de algunas prácticas sociales donde fueron mencionados los animales. Consideramos que la conjunción de estas líneas posibilita repensar la presencia de estos seres en las dinámicas sociales de las comunidades humanas del período Tardío (ca. 700-1550 dC), con base en el análisis de la iconografía zoomorfa del arte rupestre. La evidencia recuperada nos habilita a reconocer la continuidad del diálogo entre personas y animales como central en las dinámicas sociales, y cómo sus diferentes expresiones identitarias tuvieron lugar en distintos momentos históricos en las regiones objeto de estudio.

Salt is a commodity valued for nutrition; seasoning, drying, and storing food; tanning hides; and its social and economic role in exchange systems. This study reports on salt caches and manufactured disks from Middle Holocene (∼5500–4000 cal BP) archaeological sites on the north coast of Peru. During this period, salt extraction occurred at a time of rising sea levels and wetland development in the littoral of the Chicama Valley, where maritime foragers and farmers cohabited and probably exchanged salt and marine products with inland populations for exotic food crops, minerals, and other resources. The findings here add to a growing body of archaeological evidence on the environments, techniques, and uses of salt extraction by early precontact societies.

This article describes a unique patolli board found in a large residential compound at the Classic period Maya site of Naachtun (Petén, Guatemala) and discusses its implications. While dozens of patolli engraved in stucco floors and benches are known, the example from Naachtun has divisions outlined with sherds inlaid in the fresh mortar. This way of creating the board may provide a fresh perspective on the way the game was played, as it indicates boards could be included in the architecture from the planning stage and also potentially have a long use life.

The results of a ground-penetrating radar survey and multiproxy studies of the sediment cores collected from two lakes in the Valdai Highlands (East European Plain) provide new insights into the late glacial and Holocene environmental history of the region situated in the marginal zone of the last Scandinavian ice sheet. The cores were analyzed for organic carbon and nitrogen content, as well as for pollen and diatoms. The chronology of the cores is based on radiocarbon dates and pollen-based stratigraphy. The studied records document that vast dead ice masses and associated ice-dammed lakes existed in the Valdai Highlands area until ∼14 cal ka BP. Open tundra-steppe communities dominated the study area during the Oldest Dryas, Bølling, and Older Dryas (between ca. 17 and 14 cal ka BP), but dwarf birch (Betula nana), shrub alder (Alnus fruticosa), and willow (Salix) were also common. Scots pine forest (Pinus sylvestris) became common for a short interval during the Bølling warming (ca. 14.9 and 14.4 cal ka BP). The appearance of spruce (Picea) forest in the landscape occurred in the beginning of the Allerød warming (∼14 cal ka BP), but the open steppe-like plant communities remained common until the onset of the Holocene. The modern lake systems emerged at ∼10 cal ka BP, marked by an onset of organic-type sedimentation and the appearance of modern-type forests. The Mid-Holocene (∼8–4 cal ka BP) was the warmest time, as documented by the maximal distribution of temperate and broadleaved taxa in the region. The onset of agricultural land use and simultaneous trend of increasing lake trophic state and increasing paludification in the area is recorded at ∼2.5 cal ka BP.

An archaeological investigation at the western margin of the Cordillera de la Sal Formation in Catarpe (San Pedro de Atacama, northern Chile), revealed a series of pyrometallurgical furnaces from the Late period (AD 1400–1536). The furnaces, found at the Catarpe Túnel archaeological site, were used to reduce atacamite, clinoatacamite, brochantite, chrysocolla, and azurite to obtain unalloyed copper prills. Exceptional for the Atacama oasis and salt flats, Catarpe Túnel represents the only major archaeometallurgical site recorded in the area. Archaeometric analysis has determined the type of ore smelted, the composition of the metallic copper produced, and the characteristics of the fuel used by the operations. Although these operations are typical of the local metallurgical tradition, their proximity to a documented section of the Qhapaq Ñan and the Inka administrative center of Catarpe Este led us to wonder about the possible Tawantinsuyu influence in the region.

This study applies Bayesian chronological modeling to 16 new AMS radiocarbon dates on short-lived botanical remains and wood-charcoal recovered from the archaeological site Ahatsistari, a seventeenth-century Huron-Wendat village located in Simcoe County in Ontario, Canada. The modeled radiocarbon dates provide an independent time frame for understanding site phase and sequence, compatibility with historically documented events of a known date, and assessment of the socioeconomic and political influences affecting the composition of European trade good assemblages from different sites. We argue that Ahatsistari is likely Carhagouha, the principal village of the northern Attignawantan who were members of the Huron-Wendat Confederacy, and home to Samuel de Champlain and Joseph Le Caron from 1615 to 1616. In addition, Ahatsistari is contemporary with the archaeological site Warminster, which is believed to be Champlain’s Cahiagué. Radiocarbon dates from the archaeological sites of Ahatsistari, Warminster, and Ball are consistent with earlier suppositions for the beginning and end of Glass Bead Period 2 (AD 1600–1625), whereas differences in the composition of the glass trade bead assemblages speak to the prominent role of Ahatsistari in trade with the French and to variable trade relations among other early seventeenth-century Huron-Wendat villages.

While conducting archaeological survey to document the large prehistoric canal systems in the central portion of the Tehuacán Valley, investigators recorded a mound and plaza complex that includes what appears to be an effigy mound in the shape of a scorpion. Large quantities of ceramics, including surface-decorated and polychromes, indicate a Late Classic and Postclassic occupation. The site is interpreted as being part of an intensive agricultural system as it appears centrally located in the context of highly developed agricultural and irrigation infrastructure. For the reasons described, we interpret this ca. 60 meter scorpion effigy mound as an intentional feature with possible astronomical alignments. It is hypothesized as being part of a local civic/ceremonial complex with the possible use/function of observing the summer and winter solstices. If so, it provides an insight into the integration of calendrical ritual with the surrounding complex system of fields and irrigation canals. Admittedly, these observations and explanations are relatively subjective. However, we consider them to be persuasive when the evidence is considered in its entirety.

Earth oven baking pits are common occurrences within the Indigenous archaeological record of North America, yet archaeologists have paid minimal attention to evaluating how earth oven technology varies over the long term. The extensively sampled record of thermal features from Wyoming represents a unique opportunity to evaluate changes in earth oven technology through time and consider how earth ovens relate to other facets of Indigenous land use and subsistence strategies. This article is based on a sample of nearly 1,300 radiocarbon-dated features dating from 11,000 to 4000 cal BP. It evaluates diachronic shifts in feature morphology from the Early through Middle Holocene. Major changes in earth ovens include increasing size and the use of cook stone, first after 10,000 cal BP and then after 7500 cal BP. The observed variation indicates that Indigenous peoples adapted their cooking technology to address changes in types and quantities of resources processed, as well as changing requirements of the overall adaptive system. Recognizing how the diversity of thermal features and earth ovens change through time and across space allows researchers to ask more specific questions about Indigenous cooking technology, subsistence resources, and the role(s) these features played within broader lifeways.

Commingled human skeletons have the potential to reveal information about ancient funerary traditions through detailed bioarchaeological analyses of element representation (via minimum number of individuals, or MNI) and postmortem distribution. While MNI estimates are often presented in a perfunctory way, calculations using more nuanced methods may offer insight into taphonomic alteration and mortuary practices no longer visible to archaeologists. At the Early Bronze Age communal tombs of Unar 1 and 2 at the Shimal Necropolis in Ras al-Khaimah, United Arab Emirates (UAE), MNI counts using skull, leg, and foot fragments varied dramatically, probably a result of differences in cortical bone density but also of cremation practices. Additionally, the presence of more elements from the left side of the skeleton suggests continuity with Neolithic interments in which individuals were preferentially laid on their right sides. Complex arrays of internal tomb chambers likewise demonstrate no particular preference for certain skeletal elements, indicating bone was not intentionally relocated to different areas of the tomb following cremation. These patterns differ from other tombs in the region, highlighting the need to more critically assess mortuary practices through “back-to-basics” approaches involving MNI estimates, particularly when involving large numbers of individuals represented by commingled and fragmentary bone.

The transformation of the Birnirk culture into the Thule culture is essential in reconstructing the emergence of modern Inuit across Alaska and the larger Bering Strait. To this end, two adjacent semi-subterranean houses of late Birnirk and early Thule affiliation, respectively, at the Rising Whale (KTZ-304) site at Cape Espenberg were recently excavated and dated by radiocarbon and tree-ring measurements. We present the Bayesian analysis of the resulting large series of dates, demonstrating the lack of contemporaneity between the two features: the Birnirk house was occupied in the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries AD, whereas the occupation of the Thule house occurred in the second half of the thirteenth into the early fourteenth century. With the increased precision made possible by coupling dendrochronology with radiocarbon, our results place the Birnirk-Thule transition more that 200 years later than the generally accepted date of AD 1000. A transition in the second half of the thirteenth century has major implications for the timing of Thule presence along the coast of Alaska and for their migration into the Alaska interior. It aligns with a thirteenth-century migration into the western Canadian Arctic and farther east and a brief early or “initial” Thule period.

In response to stagnated repatriation efforts in the 32 years since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) became law, a proposed rule to revise implementation regulations was entered into the federal register in October 2022; 181 written comments on the proposed changes were submitted to regulations.gov, representing input from Native nations, the general public, universities, museums, and other individuals and entities engaged in NAGPRA work. Although the comments were publicly available, their quantity and format presented barriers to access. Interested parties could search for and read individual comments, but it was difficult to get an overall impression of demographic or feedback trends among respondents. I undertook a rigorous, independent analysis of the submitted written comments with the goals of (1) providing NAGPRA practitioners with a “snapshot” view of attitudes toward the proposed regulations; (2) considering more closely the responses of NAGPRA stakeholders, in particular Native nations; (3) summarizing the shared and specific concerns of Native respondents; and (4) highlighting the degree to which those concerns were addressed in the issuance of the Final Rule. I hope that this analysis helps focus the lens of NAGPRA praxis in the present moment more squarely on the needs and concerns of the descendant communities most affected by the Act.

El objetivo del presente trabajo es indagar acerca de la movilidad de los camélidos procedentes del Valle de Ambato, Catamarca, Argentina, mediante el estudio de isótopos estables de oxígeno y carbono. En este caso, se realizaron análisis a especímenes de camélidos procedentes de sitios arqueológicos ubicados en los sectores bajos del valle. Asimismo, a los fines de establecer los valores locales de referencia, se efectuaron análisis a muestras de agua actuales tomadas en distintos cursos permanentes. Los resultados de las muestras permitieron observar una marcada variación estacional en los valores de δ18O, así como una relativa menor variabilidad en las muestras de agua procedentes de la ladera oriental del valle. Los resultados de los análisis arqueológicos permiten observar la presencia de animales domésticos y silvestres con patrones locales y foráneos, lo que confirmaría la existencia de distintos lugares de crianza para los camélidos consumidos en el valle. Entre estos, habría existido un grupo de animales de rebaño criado localmente y otro grupo que habría ingresado al valle procedente de otras regiones, producto del intercambio o acceso directo.

Worldbuilding is a concept that has been used to describe the creation of immersive landscapes in fiction and games and is deeply resonant with archaeological knowledge construction. This article argues for worldbuilding in archaeology as a creative intervention that encourages an exploration of archaeological data throughout the process of creation, interpretation and dissemination to generate past worlds, shaped through community storytelling. Through the examples of Çatalhöyük in Second Life, Other Eyes and the Avebury Papers projects, I explore a playful practice that closely interrogates reuse of archaeological data and encourages lateral thinking amongst students and other archaeological storytellers.