Behavioural studies suggest that awareness of one's mortality, known as mortality salience, enhances the inclination to respond positively to prevailing societal values, fostering an adherence to social practices, for example, the treatment of the dead. Nevertheless, when acceptance of these societal values wanes, there is an increased motivation for their modification. This results in a series of subtle changes that eventually reshape the entire set of practices that define a community's social identity. This paper delves into the impact of mortality salience on the emergence, maintenance, and evolution of mortuary practices in south and west Messenia during the Middle Helladic and Late Helladic periods (c. 2050/2000 bce to 1200/1190 bce). This analysis explores how individuals addressed their mortality salience by adjusting their proximal (e.g. practices) and distal (e.g. ideology) defences. Moreover, it incorporates the notion of the ‘taming of the terror’, suggesting that individuals may adopt new practices as a strategy to manage or alleviate the fear associated with mortality. The analysis explores the introduction of new practices, providing valuable insights into how people navigate and comprehend the existential challenges brought about by the recognition of their mortality.

This study considers the role played by Teotihuacan in the emergence of the office of the Classic Maya ajawtaak, or ‘lords’. I argue that the synthesis of this office at the site of Tikal was influenced by the building of Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent between about 180 and 230 ce. Prior to and in concert with this building's construction, Teotihuacanos orchestrated the sacrifice of an estimated 200 or more individuals, some number of whom resided beyond the Basin of Mexico before burial. Osteological traits consistent with origins in the Maya region are present among these sacrifices. The Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent features mirror and obsidian icons, which later grew to prominence in the self-presentations of the ajawtaak. I note that around the time of this monument's construction, Tikal's obsidian corpus changed in ways that paralleled similar, earlier changes that had occurred to obsidian procurement strategies at Teotihuacan. I conclude that from about 200 ce, some Classic ajawtaak observed the religion that cohered with the building of Teotihuacan's Temple of the Feathered Serpent. The ajawtaak occupied a unique positionality in Early Classic Mesoamerica that was neither essentially Teotihuacan nor essentially Maya, but a dynamic syncretism of the two ethnicities.

The Inka empire's expansion incorporated diverse cultural and ecological elements in microcosmic representations of their empire. Imperial practices included the resettlement of communities from various regions into labour enclaves near Inka ceremonial, administrative and economic hubs. This degree of imperial control might suggest a limitation on Inka subjects’ freedom to integrate non-local food resources into their diets. Employing starch grain analysis from stone tools, we seek to identify the range of plant food sources and examine the extent to which the Inka imposed constraints on inter-community interactions and the exchange of comestibles. Focusing on a translocated labour force residing near the Inka provincial centre of Vilcashuamán, our findings reveal the consumption of a variety of edible plants originating from multiple, occasionally distant, ecological regions. The results indicate that, in contrast to the restrictions on trade of other commodities as recorded in ethnohistorical accounts and previous archaeological research, the exchange of edible plant species among the subjugated peoples may have been less regulated. This study demonstrates how food landscapes potentially served as loci of resistance to the Inka empire's manipulative cosmopolitanism.

Exploring and using remote segments of complex karst systems represents the incorporation of one of the wildest and most demanding natural environments into the cultural fabric of Neolithic-Chalcolithic village-based communities in the Levant. The unique preservation of an early fifth-millennium bce activity phase in Har Sifsof Cave in northern Israel allows for a detailed investigation of an early case of human interaction with the deep underground in this region. The study of archaeological assemblages, environmental and speleological data and spatial distribution of cultural remains form the basis for interpreting the activity inside the cave in the context of fertility cults. The rituals conducted in Har Sifsof Cave revolve around the agricultural cycle of cereal grains and include the interment of multiple individuals, some of whom were buried in remote cul-de-sac passages. The emergence of complex caves as favourable off-settlement arenas dedicated to ritual activity during the later stages of Neolithization marks a conscious effort of ‘domestication’ of these unique wildscapes, while sowing the seeds for the enduring connection observed in later Levantine societies between mortuary rituals, fertility and the underground.