An enduring challenge for the human evolutionary sciences is to integrate the palaeoanthropological record of human evolution and speciation with the archaeological record of change and differentiation in hominin lifeways. The simplest hypothesis, and therefore an attractive hypothesis, is that change is made possible by, and reflects, evolutionary change in the capacity of individual humans. The very long-term trend of increasing diversity and sophistication of technical and social lifeways (albeit with noise and periods of stasis) reflects long-term trends of increasing cognitive capacity linked to bipedality, followed by body size increase, encephalization and slow life history. We suggest instead that the long-term trend sees a gradual decoupling of human lifeways from the intrinsic capacities of individual people. We develop this view through an analysis of the Middle Stone Age and behavioural modernity, arguing that these depend on mosaics of social and individual factors, none clearly connected to specific evolved changes in individual humans.

Among the most recurring motifs in the prehistoric rock-art corpus, handprints stand out as one of the most significant elements due to their dual nature, both artistic and fossil. These markings represent a unique source of information for characterizing the corresponding artists and the social and cultural context of prehistoric communities. This study focuses on a comprehensive characterization of the phenomenon of Upper Palaeolithic hand representations from a multidimensional perspective, combining various theoretical and methodological approaches. By offering a holistic view, the aim is to contextualize these artistic expressions within a broader framework that includes biological, social, cultural, spatial and technological considerations. The study revisits classical documentation on hand representations and brings new perspectives through experiments and analyses conducted under conditions that replicate, as closely as possible, the physical and technological characteristics of the Upper Palaeolithic. These new perspectives broaden our understanding of these artistic expressions and their significance within prehistoric societies, shedding light on their potential role within rock art and their functional and symbolic meaning.

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.

In the Roman imperial worldview, masculine, civilized Rome saw a duty to control and care for uncivilized, feminine foreigners—a gendered power dynamic shared by more recent colonizing states as well. However, it is a methodological challenge to catch sight of the way such a worldview may have impacted colonial subjects. I examine the impact in Roman Britain and Gaul by applying a symbolic anthropological approach to a well-suited body of evidence, votive offerings: widely accessible and highly individual, each represents a single symbolic act. Taking up archaeological questions of material symbolism, I analyse the confluence of gender and offering material categories. Analysis of objects men and women offered at 10 sanctuaries in Britain and Gaul, and of the materials in which men and women were portrayed, reveals a permeability–impermeability binary: women are associated with breakable clay, porous bone and translucent glass, and men with strong, durable metal. This binary reflects Roman understandings of femininity and masculinity, shedding light on the fraught relationship between colonial rule and gendered understandings of the world.

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.

The East African coast has long been recognized as a cosmopolitan region, where different cultures and peoples met and exchanged ideas, goods and knowledge. The culture that developed there from the seventh century ce was shaped by these relations, often referred to under the term Swahili, and many of the coastal residents engaged in Islamic practice, long-distance trade, conspicuous consumption of valued goods, and spoke a common language. This paper investigates the presence of slaves and migrants from the East African interior, through pottery assemblages uncovered at two eleventh- to fifteenth-century ce sites in northern Zanzibar: Tumbatu and Mkokotoni. These are groups of people not usually discussed in relation to medieval Swahili towns, and slavery has been especially difficult to study archaeologically on the coast. Through a material culture of difference, I argue that enslaved and non-elite migrants can be recognized and allow for a fuller understanding of socio-economic and cultural complexity in Swahili towns.

In the Sámi worldview, reindeer herders perceive the herd as a social unit consisting of individuals who vary in characteristics and social roles. Age, sex, physical appearance, personality and other social roles are acknowledged and recognized by the herders, who maintain their relationships with animals in different ways within herding tasks. Archaeological data, too, show that ancient reindeer herders were in contact with different kinds of reindeer, including wild reindeer, working reindeer and ‘ordinary’ herd reindeer. This paper uses zooarchaeological and ethnoarchaeological perspectives to examine the variety of life on the hoof at two fourteenth- to seventeenth-century Sámi sites in northern Finland. Archaeological data and zooarchaeological analyses will be used to assess hunting and herding practices as well as the characteristics of herd structure. Ultimately, the aim of this paper is to examine critically and characterize the variety of the relations prevailing between reindeer and ancient Sámi herders, thus contributing both to the study of culturally specific ontologies and the analytical possibilities of archaeological research to understand such ontologies.

Archaeology prides itself on its ability to see beyond the urban elite. The countryside, the urban poor, gender and even children have all gradually come under the discipline’s gaze. The elderly, however, have failed to attract much scholarly attention. The few groundbreaking studies that tackled the issue scrutinized mortuary data and examined the ‘body’ of the elderly, but hardly any archaeological attention was given to the social aspects of the daily life of the old. Using one of the most detailed archaeological case studies available, and with the aid of ancient texts and ethnography, this article seeks to identify the ‘elderly’ and ‘elders’ in Iron Age Israel and, using Building 101 at Tel ʿEton as a test case, it places the fathers and mothers and their activities within the household.

In this paper we demonstrate how a concentrated mound of 8622 stone artefacts excavated at Walanjiwurru 1 rockshelter in Marra Country, northern Australia, reflects the emotional and spiritual dimensions of sweeping, and moral obligations to maintain Country. While archaeological studies have previously documented sweeping as part of site formation, and the social significance of stone in Australia is well established, few studies have examined how these practices intersect with Indigenous understandings of maintaining Country. Through analysis of stone artefacts combined with Marra knowledge, we demonstrate how sweeping activities 2500–300 cal. bp created a unique expression of ongoing relationships between people, materials and Country, maintained through the practice of sweeping. The mound’s composition shows distinctive patterns in both size distribution and stone type representation, most notably in the concentration of yellow quartzite—a stone type with particular cultural power due to its ancestral connections. These findings contribute to broader discussions about the integration of Indigenous and archaeological knowledge systems, while demonstrating how stone artefacts and sweeping practices remain active participants in maintaining relationships between Country, people and ancestors.

This paper develops a framework based on Bourdieusian principles to analyse the formation of a trans-cultural colonial community in Sinope (Türkiye) by highlighting spaces where social competition was performed. A case study based on the Greek colonial settlement of Sinope in the Black Sea highlights five gathering spaces: the city wall, cemeteries, the city plan, domestic architecture, and the marginal lands beyond the agricultural catchment. This framework is intended to be equally useful for analysing the sharing of cultural elements across Greek and non-Greek settlements in a complex colonial world. Focusing on the changing dynamics of social, cultural and economic capital in community formation, the ‘ethnicity’ of cultural forms is downplayed and the social stimulus of cross-cultural contact illuminated. The ultimate goal is to develop a framework that applies to a broad range of trans-cultural situations including ancient and modern colonialism, pilgrimage and refugeeism.