La Milpa, situated in northern Belize, stands out as one of the region's largest archaeological sites, having served as the capital of an ancient Maya city-state. Its significance is indicated by extensive monumental architecture, with the epicenter covering approximately 8.8 ha. The site's corpus of monuments, comprising 23 stelae and several altars, underscores its prominence in northern Belize, rivaling the corpora of sites such as Nim li Punit and Caracol. Despite its remote location, La Milpa has garnered the attention of researchers, particularly since the first modern survey of the site in 1988. Subsequent studies—in particular, that by Nikolai Grube in the 1990s—has provided detailed analyses of the site's corpus of carved monuments. Recent efforts, including epigraphic documentation in 2019, serve to enhance our understanding of La Milpa's dynastic history through traditional epigraphic and computational photographic methods. Utilizing field observations, raking light photography, and 3D photogrammetric models, we have refined previous analyses and provide new insights into the iconography and textual segments of the monuments. Here, we present the results of these recent efforts as well as our new analyses of a selection of monuments.

The debates on the ownership of contested cultural objects bring forth questions regarding the representation of history. But might these debates also lead to the fabrication of history? Previous research has analyzed how the British Museum’s anti-restitution position contributes to its distortion of British (Museum) history. Instead, this article considers if – and, if so, how – history is distorted to argue for restitution. It examines the eulogized publication The Brutish Museums (2020) by Oxford professor Dan Hicks asking whether his claims regarding British mass atrocities in the conquest of Benin in 1897 can be substantiated by the documentary evidence. The investigation shows that this is not the case. The article also scrutinizes what the source material reveals about the death toll of the events of 1897. The results of the inquiry question oversimplified notions about culprits and victims in the wake of colonial conquest. It is argued that an incomplete understanding of the past impairs efforts to repair past wrongs and that questions about the ownership of colonial collections could productively be linked with questions about the representation of history, such as whose and which histories are told – or not – through contested objects.

This date list reports the unpublished results from a multi-year radiocarbon dating program of the prehistoric Iapodes collection at the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb. Dated materials were excavated from cave, burial, and settlement contexts by various museum teams during the past century.

This article unpacks a Nahuatl metaphor based on the kin term hueltiuh, “man's elder sister,” used in multiple sixteenth-century Nahuatl texts and their Spanish derivatives. Through a minute analysis of several Nahua stories, the article identifies various roles described with this term: spies, “toothed-vagina” femmes fatales, heart-eating monsters, and seducers. Applying a method borrowed from cognitive linguistics, it then constructs a model of “man's elder sister,” which explains the application of this metaphor to different contexts. In Nahua stories, hueltiuh is usually a female mediator who throws the male characters off balance, leading to a new status quo. Confusingly, this metaphor often appears where one would expect a real kinship term and in a way that makes identifying its symbolic meaning difficult. These complications have led scholars to see (only) genealogical information in stories concerned with symbolic rather than genealogical relations between elite members or deities. The results presented here allow for refining our understanding of some famous Nahua narratives, such as the one on Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl's abandonment of Tollan. They also invite a rethinking of our views on the Nahua (Aztec) pantheon of gods, whose figurative “family bonds” may, in fact, indicate complex nonkinship relations and dependencies.

These two volumes arise from Michael Fulford's career-long programme of fieldwork research at the Roman town of Silchester, which is 80km west of London at the intersection of two important roads. The Little London report is part of a wider project examining the developments that took place at Silchester in the first few decades of the Roman occupation of Britain. It is concerned with the excavation of pottery and tile kilns 3km from the city. Oppidum to Roman city is the final volume of five describing the excavations between 1997 and 2014 within insula IX in the heart of the city.

Research by the Tlalancaleca Archaeological Project (PATP) has corroborated modifications to the Middle Formative chronology in Puebla-Tlaxcala (Lesure et al. 2006, 2014) using Bayesian modeling on 26 radiocarbon dates from Tlalancaleca. The present study is the first to evaluate the region’s Middle Formative chronology with radiocarbon dates from superposed stratigraphy. Nine Bayesian models were constructed with different combinations of radiocarbon dates and OxCal’s phase and sequence functions to determine the beginning and end of the Texoloc phase. Results place the Tlatempa-Texoloc transition at around 650 cal BC and the Texoloc-Tezoquipan transition at around 500 cal BC. The OxCal Interval function supports a timespan of approximately 150 years for the duration of the Texoloc phase. These results suggest the process of initial urbanization in Central Mexico was a rapid one.

These are, as their titles indicate, two very different Maya books: Christina Halperin's is at the hard-core end of theoretical interpretation and aimed at the professional market, while Traci Ardren's is an attempt to explain ancient Maya civilisation to a general audience. Both succeed in their basic objectives and both have annoying minor flaws.

During the Syrian war, many archaeological sites were subjected to systematic looting and destruction, often on a massive scale. Among the casualties of this looting is a colossal basalt statue of a lion that was located at the archaeological site of Ain Dara in northwest Syria. The lion of Ain Dara is a prominent local symbol and of great importance for the collective memory of northwest Syria, especially for the people of Wadi Afrin. Its disappearance will also have serious repercussions for the local economy as it was, in the past, an important tourist attraction. In this article, we investigate how the statue was stolen, why it was stolen, and where it is now. By using the lion statue of Ain Dara as a case study, we aim to shed more general light on the networks responsible for looting and trafficking Syrian antiquities, the factors that have enabled their growth during the conflict, and the role of civil society organizations in reducing their harmful impact on the cultural community of the Syrian people.

The so-called “Prakhon Chai Hoard” is one of Southeast Asia’s most infamous cases of looting. The story begins in 1964 when a cache of Buddhist bronzes from Northeast Thailand appeared on the international art market via the auction house Spink & Son, London. They quickly ended up in museums and private collections throughout the US and Europe. The exact findspot was unclear but soon became associated with an unidentified temple in Prakhon Chai district in Buriram province. The moniker “Prakhon Chai Hoard/bronzes” subsequently took hold, becoming commonplace in museum displays, dealer/auction house catalogs, and art historical discourse. However, in 2002, it was revealed the temple in question was Plai Bat II in Lahan Sai district.

This article untangles the many myths and misunderstandings surrounding this act of looting. It does so by reviewing the extant literature in light of information revealed by criminal investigations into the late Douglas Latchford from 2012 onwards, and presenting conclusions drawn from our decade-long documentation of villager testimonies at Plai Bat II (2014–2024).