During archaeological excavations at Khovle Gora, in Georgia, in the early 1960s, a remarkable artefact was discovered in the form of a footwear-shaped vessel. The vessel strongly resembles an authentic leather boot, not only due to its colour, which results from a reducing firing process, and its smooth, polished surface, but also because of its decorative elements that imitate stitching. While this particular object, unearthed at level V of Khovle Gora, is a unique find both in Shida Kartli and in the wider context of Georgia, it belongs to a widespread tradition of footwear-shaped ceramic vessels, whose presence has been documented in settlements and burial contexts across Anatolia, the South Caucasus, Northern and Northwest Iran, and Mesopotamia since at least the Late Chalcolithic period. From a cultural perspective, the pottery found alongside the footwear-shaped vessel at Khovle Gora shows typical features of East Georgian pottery of the ninth-to-seventh centuries BC, implying a chronological placement within this time period. This article examines the morphology of the vessel, which incorporates typical elements of ancient, traditionally inherited elements of South Caucasian footwear, while also highlighting its differences from contemporaneous Urartian footwear-shaped vessels.

Geophytes are hardy, resilient plants that are tolerant of cold temperatures and drought and are well documented as a reliable food source for hunter-gatherers worldwide. Human settlement patterns and foraging behaviors have long been associated with the use of nutrient-dense geophytes rich in carbohydrates, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Indigenous communities in the northern Great Basin developed cultural practices centered around gathering, preparing, and consuming important geophytic plants. These practices became deeply embedded in their cultural identity, forming rituals, stories, and traditions that persist today. Although there is strong ethnographic precedent for the significance of geophytes, finding evidence of their use in the archaeological record remains a challenge. This study analyzed archaeological starch residue extracted from bedrock metates in the uplands of Warner Valley, Oregon. Systematic studies of starch granules collected from extant plant communities growing near archaeological sites were applied to the identification of archaeological granules. Starch granules from geophytes, specifically Lomatium spp. (biscuitroot), were identified on metate surfaces at all sites, thus providing direct evidence for the collection and processing of geophyte vegetables. Evidence of geophyte plant processing on bedrock metates contributes to archaeological theories about subsistence strategies, food-processing technologies, social organization, and cultural practices in past human societies.

Social power establishes and legitimizes actions for individuals within a society who accept the structures that create that power. Differences in power can develop without strict hierarchies, however. Here, we explore the power differences among groups living in the Mimbres Mogollon region of southwestern New Mexico using bioarchaeological data and a case study from the Harris site, a Late Pithouse period village occupied circa AD 550–1000. Aspects of mortuary practices and supporting archaeological data offer nuanced interpretations of individuals with situational power linked to social practices that both solidified and maintained power by particular households. The power differences documented here are not based on coercion; instead, they are tied to cooperation and engagement with the community. For small-scale communities such as Harris, situational power is interpreted for individuals with access to prime agricultural land and/or ritual, or by association with certain land-holding lineages. This system is consistent with a heterarchical structure that embraced flexibility in the use of power.

Since the discovery of the TÜRKMEN-KARAHÖYÜK 1 inscription in 2019, Iron Age Anatolian scholarship has been energised by the appearance of a hitherto unknown kingdom in the Konya Plain ruled by ‘Great King Hartapu’. While the historical context of Hartapu’s inscriptions have undergone dramatic reassessment in light of the new text as well as the archaeology of the associated site Türkmen-Karahöyük, little attention has been paid to the conditions that would have contributed to the rise of this kingdom in the first place. Although archaeological data remains scarce for south-cen- tral Anatolia during the early first millennium BCE, this article proposes several factors that likely played a role in the emergence of the kingdom: cultural and economic interaction with the Neo-Assyrian Empire, similar relations with Phrygia, emulative competition with its Tabalian peer polities and a propitious ecological setting at a time of significant environmental transformations. Interspersed with these arguments are reflections and anecdotes about Hartapu, and especially the way we represent Hartapu visually, that evoke how the effort we have spent on understanding political dynamics in Hartapu’s kingdom has been disproportionately imbalanced toward Hartapu himself, with insufficient consideration having been given to longer term, structural forces. Such reflections lead us to reconsider the potentially disproportionately impactful effect of Hartapu’s monuments in antiquity, and the extent to which Hartapu’s kingdom in fact consisted of his own self-imaging.

Chichilticale is a long-sought-after location on the Coronado expedition route in southeastern Arizona. It is referred to numerous times in documents, and various expedition members stayed there, making it potentially one of the most discoverable of the Coronado expedition camp sites. Nonetheless, it remained lost until recently when data from a variety of sources provided a basis to establish hypotheses that were then tested and retested until Chichilticale was located. This site, 1 km long, has hundreds of Spanish period artifacts related to the 1539–1540 two-month winter encampment established during Melchior Díaz's reconnaissance north to check on Fray Marcos de Niza's report. Crossbow bolt heads, copper lace aglets, caret- or gable-headed nails, copper bells, and many other artifacts and features provide a surprisingly rich archaeological record of this place and of an unexpected and unrecorded battle that changes history for the Sobaipuri O'odham.