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Purpose: This paper provides practical advice for archaeologists and heritage specialists wishing to use ML approaches to identify archaeological features in high-resolution satellite imagery (or other remotely sensed data sources). We seek to balance the disproportionately optimistic literature related to the application of ML to archaeological prospection through a discussion of limitations, challenges and other difficulties. We further seek to raise awareness among researchers of the time, effort, expertise and resources necessary to implement ML successfully, so that they can make an informed choice between ML and manual inspection approaches. Design/methodology/approach: Automated object detection has been the holy grail of archaeological remote sensing for the last two decades. Machine learning (ML) models have proven able to detect uniform features across a consistent background, but more variegated imagery remains a challenge. We set out to detect burial mounds in satellite imagery from a diverse landscape in Central Bulgaria using a pre-trained Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) plus additional but low-touch training to improve performance. Training was accomplished using MOUND/NOT MOUND cutouts, and the model assessed arbitrary tiles of the same size from the image. Results were assessed using field data. Findings: Validation of results against field data showed that self-reported success rates were misleadingly high, and that the model was misidentifying most features. Setting an identification threshold at 60% probability, and noting that we used an approach where the CNN assessed tiles of a fixed size, tile-based false negative rates were 95–96%, false positive rates were 87–95% of tagged tiles, while true positives were only 5–13%. Counterintuitively, the model provided with training data selected for highly visible mounds (rather than all mounds) performed worse. Development of the model, meanwhile, required approximately 135 person-hours of work. Research limitations/implications: Our attempt to deploy a pre-trained CNN demonstrates the limitations of this approach when it is used to detect varied features of different sizes within a heterogeneous landscape that contains confounding natural and modern features, such as roads, forests and field boundaries. The model has detected incidental features rather than the mounds themselves, making external validation with field data an essential part of CNN workflows. Correcting the model would require refining the training data as well as adopting different approaches to model choice and execution, raising the computational requirements beyond the level of most cultural heritage practitioners. Practical implications: Improving the pre-trained model's performance would require considerable time and resources, on top of the time already invested. The degree of manual intervention required – particularly around the subsetting and annotation of training data – is so significant that it raises the question of whether it would be more efficient to identify all of the mounds manually, either through brute-force inspection by experts or by crowdsourcing the analysis to trained – or even untrained – volunteers. Researchers and heritage specialists seeking efficient methods for extracting features from remotely sensed data should weigh the costs and benefits of ML versus manual approaches carefully. Social implications: Our literature review indicates that use of artificial intelligence (AI) and ML approaches to archaeological prospection have grown exponentially in the past decade, approaching adoption levels associated with "crossing the chasm" from innovators and early adopters to the majority of researchers. The literature itself, however, is overwhelmingly positive, reflecting some combination of publication bias and a rhetoric of unconditional success. This paper presents the failure of a good-faith attempt to utilise these approaches as a counterbalance and cautionary tale to potential adopters of the technology. Early-majority adopters may find ML difficult to implement effectively in real-life scenarios. Originality/value: Unlike many high-profile reports from well-funded projects, our paper represents a serious but modestly resourced attempt to apply an ML approach to archaeological remote sensing, using techniques like transfer learning that are promoted as solutions to time and cost problems associated with, e.g. annotating and manipulating training data. While the majority of articles uncritically promote ML, or only discuss how challenges were overcome, our paper investigates how – despite reasonable self-reported scores – the model failed to locate the target features when compared to field data. We also present time, expertise and resourcing requirements, a rarity in ML-for-archaeology publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological LiDAR has evolved into an indispensable component of archaeological prospection and landscape archaeology. However, it is frequently employed as a black-box digital method, which confines it to the realm of a specialized field. Making scientific publications more accessible, transparent, and reproducible is one of the steps required to turn LiDAR into a background method for all archaeologists. This is possible, according to our proposal, through the Executable Map Paper concept. This concept can be understood as a type of executable paper that pursues Open Science's goals. The proposed technical solution consists of a PDF frontend, a persistence layer, and a hyperlinked interactive map. Executable Map Paper is applicable to all map-dependent sciences, including geography, geology, and any geoscience. In this paper, we outline the theoretical context, propose technical solutions, and provide a practical illustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article collected papers published by Chinese archaeologists in Chinese and World core journals (CCJs and WCJs for short) in the past century. Based on bibliometric analysis, the general characteristics and trends of Chinese archaeology were summarized. In a macroscopic perspective, historiography-rooted archaeology focusing on historical periods and central areas of China and preferring traditional archaeological methods (mainly a culture-historical paradigm) will continue to occupy a leading position in China. Simultaneously, interdisciplinary research and internationalisation will likely continue to develop and diversify Chinese archaeology, though the speed is unknown due to the impact of the pandemic. In comparison, more attention needs to be paid to theoretical research and to publishing more results of historical archaeology in WCJs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aerial and remote sensing archaeology are tools for identifying marks on images of archaeological remains covered by soil. In other words, they are archaeological prospection tools that fall into the category of non-destructive research methods. In this paper, a short review of these valuable research tools is carried out, presenting the way marks appear, and also the categories of aerial and remote sensing archaeology, depending on the medium of storage of images and the type of platform of transfer of sensors. The timing of the emergence of each category is determined and examples of relevant surveys are presented. Focusing on the use of an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) with a multispectral sensor (aerial remote sensing archaeology), their partial utilization is revealed for collecting images in areas outside of the visible spectrum, aiming at the identification of covered archaeological remains. To this end, examples of the use of UAS with different sensors are presented and indexes that have been used so far in respective applications are gathered. Aerial remote sensing archaeology took place in two areas of particular interest in Northern Greece. UAS WingtraOne GEN II was used to collect multispectral images. In both study areas, soil and vegetation or crop marks were detected, possibly covered archaeological remains, initially in RGB orthophotomosaics and then more clearly in the index maps, such as the normalized difference vegetation index, simple ratio, brightness index, second brightness index, and anthocyanin reflectance index 2b. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-four years ago, the National Heritage Resources Act, No. 25 of 1999 (NHRA) was enacted in South Africa. This was a moment of change, when the heritage of those marginalised during the colonial and Apartheid eras would finally be given its rightful place on the national heritage list. There was a sense of optimism amongst politicians that the African past was finally to be recognised in an inclusive and representative future. This was echoed in archaeology, given its central role in uncovering and telling the story of precolonial South Africa. The discipline slowly opened its doors to academics of all ethnic groups and new perspectives were identified. But an examination of the practical consequences and impact of this progressive legislation for transforming officially declared heritage in the past 24 years shows surprisingly little change in the overall body of recognized, listed heritage. Recent studies of transformation in South African archaeology have focussed on institutional transformation; possible transformation of the types and frequency of sites declared as national and provincial heritage sites has not yet been examined. It is this issue which our paper addresses. The paper presents analysis that relies on the South African Heritage Resources Information System (SAHRIS) database covering the period 1936 to mid-2022. Whilst sites associated with European colonialism still predominate, there has been a change in the frequency of types of heritage declared since 1999, with an increase in sites associated with the Black liberation struggle. Yet the list remains very unbalanced, with only a single heritage site connected to the precolonial past of Black South Africans having been declared as a national heritage site since 1999. We discuss and classify the types of heritage declared since 1999 and suggest reasons for the distortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Colonial Period, Maya communities underwent significant social and religious transformations. This paper investigates how the Maya communities of Lamanai, Belize maintained resilience in the 16th century. By examining ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence at Lamanai, especially zoomorphic effigies at two Christian churches, the study demonstrates that resilience was not solely a product of human agency but also arose from engagement with other species and materials. Drawing influence from process philosophy, this paper redefines resilience as a dynamic and creative process encompassing active adaptation, reorganisation, and transformation. It argues that the ability to cross boundaries is essential to resilience. Maya communities were able to transcend the boundaries of properties, entities, realities, and cultures, which enabled them to re-envision their relationships with others and the world. Boundary-crossing allowed them to navigate complex changes with ease and integrate diverse cultural elements into their identity, ultimately fostering resilience in the face of colonial challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last twenty years, due to the growing concern with the human-environment relationship in the contemporary world as well as in the study of the ancient world, Resilience Theory (RT) has been adopted and adapted from the study of ecosystems to the study of stress dynamics within socio-political systems. The adaptation is indebted to the seminal work of Holling and Gunderson (2002. "Resilience and Adaptive Cycles." In Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems, edited by L. H. Gunderson, and C. S. Holling, 25–62. Washington, DC: Island Press), reviewed recently for application in archaeology in a volume edited by Faulseit (2016b. "Collapse, Resilience, and Transformation in Complex Societies: Modeling Trends and Understanding Diversity." In Beyond Collapse: Archaeological Perspectives on Resilience, Revitalization, and Transformation in Complex Societies, edited by R. K. Faulseit, 3–26. Visiting Scholar Conference Volumes. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press). While social scientists, anthropologists and archaeologists interested in system theories have welcomed this new interpretative tool for the study of rapid change in socio-political systems, RT has been considered unsatisfactory and substantially rejected by several scholars in the humanities because of the lack of freedom and intention assigned to human actors. After a short presentation of these premises, the paper seeks to affirm a different model for a social cycle of formation-growth-maturity-release, in which resilience is only one among a number of possible outcomes of the release phase, depending on the collective/political choice/orientation of a society. Put simply, the new model suggests reorganization and transformation as two alternative outcomes alternative to resilience. The model is applied to the case study of the Late Bronze Age (LBA) – Early Iron Age (EIA) transition in Anatolia and north Syria, corresponding to the time of the fall and aftermath of the Hittite empire. It will be shown that the adoption of the model offers a productive interpretive key to understand different outcomes in the new fragmented reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When studying ancient societies, it is inevitable that eventually the theme of social collapse will arise. Archaeology has long been concerned with the theme of resilience, collapse, and resistance, triggered by either external factors such as conquest and natural disasters, or from internal factors such as environmental mismanagement, political or economic calamity, or sociocultural revolutions. Most approaches to the themes of resilience, collapse, and resistance have primarily relied on socioecological models that results in binarized explications of the archaeological record, framing evidence in competing terms of collapse and resilience: either societies endured collapse through a series of choices that resulted in either failure or success on the one hand or that societies overcame problems and exhibited resilience by adapting to new pressures or moving to new environments on the other hand. This paper seeks to explore concepts of resilience, collapse, and resistance through an anthropocentric rather than ecocentric perspective, touching on the theories used to construct the ideas of collapse, resilience, and resistance, with a particular focus on sociocultural aspects. Finally, this paper suggests a model which centers on the notion of sociocultural transformation, enculturation and hybridity placed into direct dialogue with resilience, collapse, and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioarchaeology lacks a system for recording the morphology of muscle and ligament attachment sites, called entheses, in growing individuals. Such information is useful in investigating factors that affect bone growth and development, including sex, age, puberty, pathology, and activity. This paper presents a standardized recording method for nonadult entheses based on 29 archaeological individuals of archivally known sex and age-at-death, ranging from two to 17 years. This paper (a) assesses the range of osseous changes of 16 entheses in the upper and lower limbs of growing individuals, and (b) presents a scoring method for each enthesis, which is evaluated through inter-and intra-observer comparisons. Nonadult entheses show a wide range of morphological variation. Method reproducibility is established. This method will allow researchers to further investigate factors affecting bone development in nonadult skeletal remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classical rabbinic literature is intensely material, as it invokes numerous objects on seemingly every page. Through the earliest rabbinic discussions on kindling Sabbath lights (M. Shabbat 2), this paper explores new pathways into rabbinic materiality or "talmudic archaeology." Whereas texts can promote a narrow focus on unique or exceptional objects, I argue that they could also provide a promontory to help us see more typical and widely used artifacts, which nets a broader understanding of the material culture that was more likely to be known by most people in Roman Galilee, including rabbis. The "Palestinian Discus Lamp" was the lighting device of choice for most people in the place and time when the Mishnah took shape. Its popularity, I argue, demonstrates the importance of design and practical use, functional aspects that have received insufficient attention. This paper contributes to rabbinics, late antique Judaism, and Jewish material culture studies, while building bridges to design theory, economics, and material religion. Classical rabbinic literature is intensely material, as it invokes numerous objects on seemingly every page. Through the earliest rabbinic discussions on kindling Sabbath lights (M. Shabbat 2), this paper explores new pathways into rabbinic materiality or "talmudic archaeology." Whereas texts can promote a narrow focus on unique or exceptional objects, I argue that they could also provide a promontory to help us see more typical and widely used artifacts, which nets a broader understanding of the material culture that was more likely to be known by most people in Roman Galilee, including rabbis. The "Palestinian Discus Lamp" was the lighting device of choice for most people in the place and time when the Mishnah took shape. Its popularity, I argue, demonstrates the importance of design and practical use, functional aspects that have received insufficient attention. This paper contributes to rabbinics, late antique Judaism, and Jewish material culture, while building bridges to design theory, economics, and material religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Universitatis Lodziensis: Folia Archaeologica is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Archaeology is often argued to provide a unique long-term perspective on humans that can be utilised for effective policy-making, for example, in discussions of resilience and sustainability. However, the specific archaeological evidence for resilient/sustainable systems is rarely explored, with these terms often used simply to describe a community that survived a particular shock. In this study, a set of 74 case studies of papers discussing archaeological evidence for resilience/sustainability are identified and analysed using bibliometric methods. Variables from the papers are also quantified to assess patterns and provide a review of current knowledge. A great variety of scales of analysis, case study locations, stressors, resilient/sustainable characteristics, and archaeological evidence types are present. Climate change was the most cited stressor (n = 40) and strategies relating to natural resources were common across case studies, especially subsistence adaptations (n = 35), other solutions to subsistence deficiencies (n = 23), and water management (n = 23). Resilient/sustainable characteristics were often in direct contrast to one-another, suggesting the combination of factors is more important than each factor taken individually. Further quantification of well-defined variables within a formally-produced framework is required to extract greater value from archaeological case studies of resilience/sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arqueología Iberoamericana is the property of Arqueologia Iberoamericana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On 1 August 2002, the Allahabad High Court in India, adjudicating the Ayodhya Case, ordered archaeological excavations by the central government agency Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) at the site of the demolished mosque Babri Masjid in Uttar Pradesh. The order marked a new moment for the convergence of law and archaeology in India, with archaeological knowledge being produced on judicial demand as evidence in a civil dispute. This paper argues that this marked the emergence of a hybrid episteme of archaeology-as-legal-evidence which redefines archaeology within the framework of law. It traces these tendencies by a close reading of three documents: the judgements of the Allahabad High Court and the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya Case and an order issued by a lower court in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh on 8 April 2021 in the GyanVapi Case. I argue that the new role that archaeology is assuming in courtrooms in India is destabilising the standing of the ASI as the authority of archaeological knowledge and the protector of the nation's material past. It has also produced a category of assertive public that successfully demands production of archaeological knowledge towards ideological ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whenever twentieth-century modern art or new contemporary artworks are included amongst displays of ancient Egypt, press statements often assert that such juxtapositions are 'surprising', 'innovative', and 'fresh', celebrating the external perspective they bring to such collections. But contemporary art's relationship with museums and other disciplines needs to be understood in a longer-term perspective. Pairings of twentieth- and twenty-first-century artistic works with objects of antiquity is an activity that has been undertaken for more than a century in what has been a relatively long period of mutually reinforcing influences between modern/contemporary art, museum display, the art market, and Egyptian heritage. Together, they have decontextualised ancient Egyptian culture and shaped the language and perspectives of scholars, curators, and artists. In this paper, rather than considering how artists have been inspired by ancient Egypt, I will give a few examples of how more recent art practices from the late nineteenth century onwards have impacted the language and discourse of Egyptology and its museum representation. Then, using more recent artist engagements with the British Museum, I argue for greater interdisciplinary dialogues between artists and Egyptologists, as both take more critical stances towards research that recontextualises the power and agency of collections, representation, and knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Definition: The history of women archaeologists in Portugal and their contribution to the development of the discipline is yet to be studied. However, in recent years, some articles published in Portugal have contributed to the construction of this history. Some of these are from the year 2020, and although the coronavirus pandemic has affected the progress of these investigations, especially regarding fieldwork. Generally, these are quantitative studies based on the number of publications by women archaeologists and their references and interviews in newspapers. These articles, which require significant time for database analysis, have not yet explained the existing gaps. It is not the scope of this paper to pursue this quantitative scope; instead, it intends to conduct a qualitative analysis of the contribution of women archaeologists to the development of prehistoric studies in Northern Portugal. To achieve this goal, we are focusing on analysing the doctoral theses developed by women concerning pre- and proto-historic archaeology in Northern Portugal. With this evaluation, we intend to contribute to the history of Portuguese women's archaeology and, at the same time, highlight their methodological and conceptual achievements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value of artificial intelligence and machine learning applications for use in heritage research is increasingly appreciated. In specific areas, notably remote sensing, datasets have increased in extent and resolution to the point that manual interpretation is problematic and the availability of skilled interpreters to undertake such work is limited. Interpretation of the geophysical datasets associated with prehistoric submerged landscapes is particularly challenging. Following the Last Glacial Maximum, sea levels rose by 120 m globally, and vast, habitable landscapes were lost to the sea. These landscapes were inaccessible until extensive remote sensing datasets were provided by the offshore energy sector. In this paper, we provide the results of a research programme centred on AI applications using data from the southern North Sea. Here, an area of c. 188,000 km2 of habitable terrestrial land was inundated between c. 20,000 BP and 7000 BP, along with the cultural heritage it contained. As part of this project, machine learning tools were applied to detect and interpret features with potential archaeological significance from shallow seismic data. The output provides a proof-of-concept model demonstrating verifiable results and the potential for a further, more complex, leveraging of AI interpretation for the study of submarine palaeolandscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ebenezer Howard is one of the foundational figures of town planning. His Garden Cities of To-morrow envisions a Utopian synthesis of the urban and the rural to enhance the well-being of residents, in contrast to the industrial megalopolis of the late 19th century. While realized Garden Cities took many forms different from Howard's original layout, this is the one we find in the urban roots of the deep past. About 4350 BCE we see the formation of large, circular, decentralized settlements in what is today central Ukraine. Elsewhere, in the Brazilian Amazon between 1200 and 1600 CE, we see a transformation of the jungle into a vast park landscape filled with clusters of circular settlements, with horticultural land-use in between them. In addition to similarities in planning, these past settlements also involve the social aspect of countering inequality and fostering freedom and cooperation. This paper explores the possibility of Garden Cities in the past and the implications of decentralized 'rurban' landscapes from the deep history perspective of archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Khirbat Iskandar is an Early Bronze Age (ca. 3800-1950 BCE) mound in the Madaba Governorate of Jordan. Until a decade ago, it was better known as a key site for the non-urban Early Bronze IV period (ca. 2500-1950 BCE), but is increasingly emerging as a signature site for the urban Early Bronze II-III period (ca. 3050-2500 BCE). The contour of the tall site is shaped by the presence of buried fortifications that were investigated in the north-western sector of the mound, where a long sequence of rebuilds was recognized, but were exposed to and impacted by modern construction activities along the southern and south-eastern areas prior to being recorded. There, due to erosion and weathering, the stone fortifications dating to the first half of the Early Bronze III (ca. 2850-2650 BCE) fell down. In this paper, we report on our strategies to assess threats, document damages, sustainably stabilize, and consolidate the collapsed ancient fortifications in the 2023 field season at Khirbat Iskandar. At the same time, we discuss the conceptual/methodological and practical challenges of identifying best practices in the conservation and preservation of antiquities that collapsed prior to being excavated. We conclude with some thoughts on how to build on these actions to efficiently present the archaeology and cultural heritage at protohistoric sites, like Khirbat Iskandar, and to make it accessible for the local and the international communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As arid lands expand across the globe, scholars increasingly turn to the archaeological record for examples of sustainable farming in extreme environments. The arid north coast of Peru was the setting of early and intensive irrigation-based farming; it is also periodically impacted by sudden, heavy rainfall related to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. While the sociopolitical effects, technologies, and engineering expertise of these irrigation systems have been thoroughly examined and theorized, little is known about how farmers managed periods of water stress. The aim of this study is to test whether arid zone farming was supported by hybrid, intermittent flood and perennial water source systems in the prehispanic past. An arroyo in the Chicama Valley was selected for preliminary data collection, and these data are presented here: (1) drone photography of the arroyo capturing the aftermath of a recent (2023) rain event; and (2) potassium (K) soil test kit results from samples collected near suspected prehispanic check dam features in the same area. The paper combines these data with comparative examples from the literature to suggest that the prehispanic features functioned as water-harvesting infrastructure. The paper concludes that sustainable, arid zone farming can be supported by hybrid, intermittent flood and perennial water source systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating political ecology and archaeology has resulted in innovative approaches for reconstructing past human-environment interactions and understanding the legacies that shape environmental degradation and resource struggles today. This paper contributes to this emerging interdisciplinarity by proposing a political ecological approach to investigate how archaeological remains are assigned value as resources, drawing on interpretive theories in both archaeology and political ecology. This article applies this approach to examine the archaeological imagination driving expeditions in eastern Honduras that aimed to find the remains of a site of monumental importance associated with the legend of the White City. Through a political ecological lens, it becomes clear that the interpretation of the region's archaeological heritage within the context of a legend is the result of displacement and resource control dynamics. Although archaeologists reject the legend as a credible source, actors continue to exploit its symbolism for prestige and profit. This approach highlights the disjuncture between profit-driven narratives of archaeological heritage and the socio-natures that underpin our imagination of such sites. The paper suggests that engaging with the socio-nature of archaeological sites may lead to more inclusive and nuanced interpretations of the past, showing how political ecology can contribute to public archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the workflow followed to survey and monitor the interior and exterior of a large and complex metal wreck, the SS Thistlegorm in the Red Sea, using digital photogrammetry. Utilizing a simple single-camera rig and off-the-shelf software, this study presents a cost-effective and easily replicable method for monitoring change in metal wrecks that meets professional standards and can involve non-specialists in data collection. This paper details the background of the SS Thistlegorm, the equipment used, and the photogrammetric surveys conducted in 2017 and 2022. It outlines the importance of having a clearly thought-out data-management system when working on a large target recorded over a limited series of dives. In particular, this paper considers testing the accuracy of the data obtained and describes the post-processing workflow in detail. The conclusion underscores the feasibility of achieving an accurate geo-referenced baseline 3D survey with readily available equipment and how these data can contribute to historical research and ongoing monitoring efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is focusing on another case in the series Coins in archaeological context. The case under study is the farmstead/villa rustica from Rapoltu Mare - La vie (Hunedoara County, Romania) in the former Roman province of Dacia. Based on the correlation between archaeological, artefact data and the numismatic evidence the paper indicate how single coin finds are distributed by layers according to the site stratigraphy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the ongoing conflicts in various countries, including Ukraine, Gaza, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Myanmar, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. It emphasizes the importance of studying the archaeology and history of conflict to understand the reality of mass violence and its impact on communities. The article also highlights the need for diverse perspectives and the inclusion of indigenous voices in conflict archaeology research. Additionally, it presents summaries of three papers published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology, focusing on topics such as the preservation of a Civil War battlefield, glass artifacts from World War I, and the military archaeology of the Italian occupation of Croatia during World War II. [Extracted from the article]

This paper provides new insights into the long-term history of Aboriginal use of mountainous Victoria over the past 25,000 years. It presents results of excavations at Garden Range 2 rock art site located on the edge of the Strathbogie Ranges in central Victoria. The excavations were a research collaboration between the Taungurung Land and Waters Council (TLaWC) and Monash University. Results indicate possible ephemeral visitation by the Old People during the Last Glacial Maximum, clear evidence of occupation over the past 11,000 years, and increased activity since 1600 cal BP. The stone artefact assemblage is dominated by flakes of local quartz. Three igneous flakes from ground-edge axes, dating to after 700 cal BP, are contemporary with a grinding stone showing use-wear and residues from stone axe maintenance. The faunal assemblage is dominated by forest and grassland animals, such as macropod and emu, with mussel shells and fish bones indicating the use of nearby Seven Creeks. The rarity of ochre within sediments precludes insights into the age of rock art paintings on the shelter's surface. Fossil pollen documents the nineteenth-century European forest clearances, a period when Taungurung people's use of the site became unsafe. Unburnt fragments of rabbit and sheep bone suggest subsequent use of the site as a fox den. Garden Range 2 illustrates Aboriginal use of mountainous central Victoria during periods of significant environmental changes in the Early Holocene and possibly in the Late Pleistocene. These chronological patterns, including increased activity in the central Victorian uplands during the Late Holocene, match emerging chronological patterns of long-term use of other mountainous regions of southeastern Australia. How sites like Garden Range 2 relate to broader long-term Aboriginal use of more elevated sub-alpine and alpine (snow country) zones of central and eastern Victoria is a question for future archaeological research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing literature on underfloor archaeological deposits often observes exceptional material preservation within these matrices. Drawing from recent work at Fremantle Prison, this paper reports on the site formation processes that produced the rich preservation of the underfloor deposit of Fremantle Prison's cell D40. These site formation processes are characteristic of non-soil underfloor deposits and explain why these types of archaeological sites enable the preservation of fragile, organic materials. This understanding of material preservation and decomposition enables a holistic understanding of the deposited materials and related human behaviour over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, maritime trade has been a major driver of economic growth and cross-cultural interchange, especially in antiquity. Because of its advantageous position and extensive maritime history, the Persian Gulf has been essential in bridging cultures and promoting the exchange of ideas and products. This article explores the historical evidence of maritime trade in the Persian Gulf, emphasising its revolutionary influence on the region’s history, especially during the pivotal Bronze Age. The article also emphasises how important it is to acknowledge the Persian Gulf’s historical significance as a crucial commerce route connecting Europe, Africa, and East and West Asia. The paper uses these realisations to support the growth of Chabahar Port as a pillar of economic independence and regional collaboration. Through the application of historical lessons and the embracement of sustainable maritime trade, the Persian Gulf and the Makoran Sea have the potential to resurface as centres of cultural and economic interaction, thereby promoting global wealth and connectedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rituals are central to the everyday life of the nurse, yet the fundamental roles that rituals play in caring for the dead and dying has often been neglected. This paper explores modern palliative and post-mortem care – its practices, practitioners and arenas – against the background of long-held, global concerns regarding the dead and dying. Comparison with the archaeological and ethnographic records demonstrates the ubiquitous and enduring practices surrounding death, and the centrality of ritual specialists to this complex social and biological process. This deep-time perspective highlights the importance of nurses, and their associated nursing rituals, in the transition of patients between life and death, and the difficult journeys that nurse, patient and family undertake in this mediation between worlds. Such a perspective not only empowers nurses in their daily practices, and places nursing rituals firmly at the centre of modern palliative care work, but demonstrates the value of archaeology and ethnography in contextualising the challenges of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The traces of marks left by human bodies on surviving archaeological artefacts can be a rich and informative source for understanding everyday individuals and their practices in the past. Nevertheless, such traces have tended to be neglected or generalized in archaeology, in favour of elite artefacts and manufacturing statistics – or in pursuit of 'clean', forensically amenable evidence, e.g. dry fingerprints. Using two case studies from Bronze Age Crete, this paper calls for an attitudinal, as much as a methodological, shift in how we exploit the remnants of gestural preferences, limitations and mistakes which we have hitherto chosen to dismiss. I argue that, if we want to understand nameless individuals of past societies, we need to overcome our implicit aversion to the mundane and everyday and to find new ways of exploring the 'messy', inconvenient, but also abundant fleeting moments of bodies no longer extant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the hypothesis that Waun Mawn in West Wales provided the bluestone monoliths that were used at Stonehenge. Some archaeologists believe that the site supports the last remains of a giant stone circle or 'Proto Stonehenge' which was dismantled and transported to Salisbury Plain around 5000 years ago. It was claimed, after three excavation seasons at Waun Mawn in 2017, 2018 and 2021, that there is firm evidence of some standing stones which were later removed or broken up, but it has still not been demonstrated that there ever was a small stone circle here, let alone a 'giant' one. Furthermore, there have been no control studies in the neighbourhood which might demonstrate that the speculative feature has any unique characteristics. There is nothing at Waun Mawn to link this site in any way to Stonehenge, and this is confirmed by recent cited research. No evidence has been brought forward in support of the claim that 'this was one of the great religious and political centres of Neolithic Britain'. It is concluded that at Waun Mawn and elsewhere in West Wales there has been substantial 'interpretative inflation' driven by the desire to demonstrate a Stonehenge connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a bibliometric analysis undertaken on Joseon gogo yeongu (Joseon Archaeological Research), North Korea's preeminent archaeology journal, providing information on the researchers, institutions, and research topics that have come to form the field of archaeological research in North Korea since the mid-1980s. Deviating from previous analyses of Joseon gogo yeongu, this paper focuses on the authors that contributed to Joseon gogo yeongu, identifying the archaeologists that have been most active in publishing articles. This particular method of establishing the key figures of North Korean archaeology reveals the presence of certain archaeologists whose importance has been overlooked within the South Korean discourse on North Korean archaeology. In addition, by tracing the research topics of these key figures over time, a broad understanding of the field of archaeological research in North Korea can be obtained. Information on institutional affiliations and co-authorships present within Joseon gogo yeongu also provide valuable insights into the workings of North Korean academia. Finally, by visualizing the results of the bibliometric analysis using word clouds and networks, the efficacy of Digital Humanities approaches to large data sets is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an approach to the worship of Allāt through the concept of the geography of religions and ritual landscape. It combines the epigraphic, archaeological and geographical evidence to present the goddess as the protectress of the borderland with a focus on the rocky deserts and drylands. For the first time it offers a study not through the "Arabic", ethnic, approach, but through the topography of the sacred places dedicated to the goddess. The paper focuses on the emplacement of the temples of Allāt in Palmyra, Salkhad, Wadi Ramm and Hatra as well as on the location of the Northern Arabian inscriptions (Safaitic and Dadanitic) on the rocks. The paper emphasizes the role of the desert in the perception of the divine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Households on the Mimbres Horizon: Excavations at La Gila Encantada, Southwestern New Mexico" by Barbara J. Roth is a significant publication for Mimbres Mogollon research, providing insights into the development of households and their spatial and artifactual patterns at early Mimbres Mogollon habitation sites. The author's research at the La Gila Encantada site, uncluttered by overlying pueblo remains, allows for a clearer understanding of site layout, habitation, and contextual relationships of features and artifacts. The volume includes seven chapters, with contributions from specialists, covering topics such as excavation methods, ceramic data, stone artifacts, jewelry, and plant and animal remains. This book is valuable for researchers studying Mogollon archaeology and early village and household developments in the region. [Extracted from the article]

These two useful and beautifully-produced sets of conference and associated papers span 1200 years of theology and church archaeology in these islands and beyond. The volumes are complementary, comprising a thematic Venn diagram on the rood, its screen and the Reformation afterlife of screens. The area of Venn intersection around screens points to a missing fourth theme of great importance, which I will add to the rich store of data presented by the sixteen essayists, all of whose contributions are worthwhile in their own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese scholars' performance in international academic community and research on foreign archaeology has brought hot discussion about the internationalization of Chinese archaeology. Based on the databases of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and the Web of Science core collection (WoS), this paper collected archaeology-related papers published by Chinese scholars in Chinese and world core journals (CCJs and WCJs for short), then filtered translated and original articles about foreign archaeology in CCJs, as well as all original archaeological articles in WCJs. Using Excel, CiteSpace and VOSviewer visualization software, we analyzed these data to give a bird's-eye view of how archaeology research in Mainland China has become internationalized. Chinese archaeology has seen active-interrupt-active phases characterized by learning from foreign academics in the last century. Over the past two decades, the number of articles published in WCJs by scholars from Mainland China has increased significantly, and most research topics are at the forefront of international scholarship. Collaboration networks largely expanded, with the number of Mainland China–led articles increasing significantly. Archaeological papers written by researchers from Mainland China have appeared in a more extensive range of journals, including those with high impact factors. However, articles related to joint Sino-foreign archaeological projects were mostly published in CCJs. The archaeology-related articles published by Chinese scholars in WCJs occupied only a small proportion of all archaeological articles in WCJs. Compared to articles in CCJs, the number of those published by Chinese scholars in WCJs is a drop in the ocean. Therefore the internationalization is not yet a dominant trend and with the introduction of the new inward-looking policy we need more time to observe where the trends of internationalization and localization in Chinese archaeology are heading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first Nordic Meeting on Stratigraphy took place in Stockholm in 1996. The tenth session in Helsinki 2015 opened for reflections from the earlier meetings. What was the original intention when we started the conference? Which topics has been discussed over time, what can we say about geographical and chronological issues? Is it possible to detect new ways of thinking concerning stratigraphy and contextual archaeology? These are questions that will be addressed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anne Reynolds, an educator, artist, avocational archaeologist, and award-winning author, passed away in 2017. She and her husband Charles were active members of the Florida Anthropological Society (FAS) and were dedicated to preserving and studying the Blueberry Site, a significant Native American site in Highlands County, Florida. Anne made significant contributions to education and Florida archaeology and received prestigious awards for her work. She was also involved in various organizations and served as a trustee of South Florida Community College. Anne's efforts in archaeology and preservation were highly regarded, and she was known for her hospitality and generosity. Dr. Butler's book, "Archaeology of South-Central Florida: Unearthing the 13th – 17th Centuries," includes a section on Belle Glade Plain pottery. The book compares pottery sherds from the Blueberry Site with those from Fort Center and Belle Glade, contributing to the understanding of Belle Glade Plain ceramics. The book is dedicated to the memory of Anne Reynolds, who was a dedicated advocate for public archaeology and played a significant role in the Florida archaeological community. The references cited in the article provide additional information on related topics and research. [Extracted from the article]

One of the most significant aspects of cultural variation that world archaeology has revealed is the many different forms of social complexity among ancient and more recent premodern societies. Although this exposes the shortcomings of older evolutionary approaches, Levantine and broader Near Eastern archaeology remains relatively inflexible and conservative in the perception of social complexity in the archaeological record. A necessary association between complexity and monumentality remains prevalent, whereby monumentality is understood as an important operative cog in the complexity machine. Conversely, complexity can only be read in the archaeological record where monumentality is present. This paper seeks to untie this necessary association by demonstrating that complexity without monumentality occurred in societies of the biblical period that were fully or partly nomadic and otherwise lacked a clear cultural conception of monumentality as central to the ideology of political authority and structure. This is done through the presentation of early Iron Age Edom and its implications for the understanding of the neighboring United Monarchy of ancient Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last forty years, the use of strontium isotopes in archaeology and biogeochemical research has spread widely. These isotopes, alone or in combination with others, can contribute to trace past and present environmental conditions. However, the interpretation of the isotopic values of strontium is not always simple and requires good knowledge of geochemistry and geology. This short paper on the use of strontium isotopes is aimed at those who use this tool (archaeologists, but not only) but who do not have a thorough knowledge of mineralogy, geology, and geochemistry necessary for a good understanding of natural processes involving these isotopes. We report basic knowledge and suggestions for the correct use of these isotopes. The isotopic characteristics of bio-assimilable strontium depend not so much on the isotopic characteristics of the bulk rock as, rather, on those of its more soluble minerals. Before studying human, animal and plant remains, the state of conservation and any conditions of isotopic pollution should be carefully checked. Samples should be collected according to random sampling rules. The data should be treated by a statistical approach. To make comparisons between different areas, it should be borne in mind that the study of current soils can be misleading since the mineralogical modification of soil over time can be very rapid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with an analysis of Tennie's account of hominin culture: the claims that cumulative culture depends on a distinctive form of social learning; that that form of social learning is absent in the great apes; that its archaeological signature in the hominin lineage is late; and, finally, that the forms of social learning available to apes and probably earlier hominins only accelerated their pathways to skills they could acquire for themselves. This synthesis is bold, and influential, and hence an appropriate target of critical reflection. But the further aim of the paper is to develop an alternative view of cumulative culture and its relation to our lineage. It accepts the view that copying is one aspect of cumulative culture. But the paper argues that cumulative culture depends as well on integrating information from a variety of social and nonsocial sources and through an array of sensory modalities. It is not mostly a matter of copying from models but is socially guided re-creation of the model's skill. On this alternative view of cumulative culture, first, copying plays a less central role, and, second, cultures become cumulative not just through the incremental improvement of existing capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: This paper looks at past relationships between humans and certain wild animal species, that is, raptors, bears, beavers, and elks. As we have observed, it was the behaviour of animals that caught the attention of humans, such as spectacular flights and hunting by raptors, the similarities in bear and human behaviour, the fascinating impressiveness and charisma of elks, and the landscape-shaping by enigmatic beavers. All these animals have special meanings to humans far beyond their economic significance. Wild goshawks, falcons, and other raptor species have acted as trained hunting companions, but they were never domesticated and had to be treated with care. As for bear, beaver, and elk, there were often complex rituals before, during, and after the killing, because there was no clear separation between humans and animals. The animals were not just prey but equal beings and other-than-human persons. However, there were also changes over time in the human–animal relationship, such as the advent of the farming way of life with a preference for domesticated animals, as well as the arrival of Christianity, by which animals became second to human. Humans have developed a special relationship with some animal species throughout history, even though these animals were never domesticated. Based on raptors, bears, beavers, and elks, the question of whether there are similarities between the perception of these animals that triggered a special kind of fascination in humans and how the relationship between humans and these animals changed between Mesolithic age and medieval times is addressed. As we demonstrate, the categorical antagonism between 'animal' and 'human' is a concept that saw different kinds of influence, from the advent of sedentarism and husbandry to Christianity and from philosophical thinking in Classical Antiquity and the Period of Enlightenment. In prehistory and early history, we find different, opposing world views across time, cultures, and periods. Differences between animals and humans have been considered as fluid, and humans have had to engage with animals and their needs. The well-known and famous 'bear ceremonies' attested to different peoples and times were not unique, but were a part of belief systems that also included other animal species. Among the considered animals, certain raptor species attracted the attention of humans who tried to establish contact with them, as companions, whereas bears were almost 'disguised humans' due to all their similarities with humans, but they were also tabooed beings whose real names had to be avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate lexical materials in Latin and Romance that appear to stem from ancient substrata in the Mediterranean. We focus on plant names and landscape related vocabulary, e.g., words for 'berries', 'shrubbery, herbs and trees', and words for 'rocky' and 'swampy' terrains, as both of these semantic fields are parts of the lexicon considered to be of very archaic origin. After investigating evidence for potential cognates in languages in the Mediterranean and exploring the geolinguistic distribution of the investigated words, we try to form conclusions about the involved strata and their chronological organization. We identify two important strata: an older Eurafrican layer (Hubschmid 1960) and a widely attested Euskaro-Caucasian layer associated with the arrival of Neolithic farming (see the discussion in Bengtson (2017a/2022, 2017b) and Bengtson/Leschber (2019, 2021, 2022)). The so-called 'Mediterranean Thesaurus' (in memory of Johannes Hubschmid) aims to establish a compilation of lexical data featuring words with unclear or highly disputable etymologies in the languages around the Mediterranean Sea. As a first step, we are collating words in an open-ended table and their geolinguistic/dialect-geographical distribution across the ranges of the Mediterranean languages, some of which are geolinguistically remote areas. We trace two main questions: (a) whether there are characteristic semantic fields that can be more often identified (such as plant names and topography); (b) whether we can highlight typical phonetic features and sound clusters in these words. Since the period of the Swiss and Italian etymological pioneers of the 20th century (Johannes Hubschmid, Giovanni Alessio, Carlo Battisti, Vittorio Bertoldi, Jakob Jud, Laura Lombardo, Alfredo Trombetti and many others), there has been great scientific progress in human genetics and archaeology that is increasingly revealing the prehistory of the Mediterranean. We recognize the work of these etymologists who – under much more demanding circumstances – offered suggestions about the origin of etymologically difficult words. Several hypotheses have been revisited in order to include or to reject the contribution of a specific substrate to the linguistic substrata of the macro-area. Our aim is to explore the prehistory of the Mediterranean area to understand the ethnogenesis of its peoples and their rootedness in millennia past, and to find evidence for a tentative stratification of substratum languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along the coast of northwestern Alaska, architectural wood remains are well preserved in the Birnirk and Thule coastal sites of the early 2nd millennium CE. These structural wood elements are unique archives for documenting climatic variations and cultural transformations during this key development period of Inuit culture. Along this treeless Arctic coast, driftwood accumulates from the subarctic forests of interior Alaska. Except for northwestern Alaska, regional tree-ring chronologies are too short (at best 350–400 years) to successfully date archaeological wood remains from Birnirk and Thule coastal sites using conventional dendrochronology. This paper examines the potential of tree-ring derived δ 18O signal to annually date eight architectural wood samples from the Rising Whale (KTZ-304) site at Cape Espenberg, northwestern Alaska. We developed a δ 18O master chronology, covering the period 935–1157 CE, using five wood samples from the KTZ-304 site. Blind isotope cross-dating of individual series belonging to this δ 18O master chronology (one against the other four) showed conclusive dating and a very strong coherence of the isotopic signal. We, then, used the δ 18O master chronology to cross-date three other wood samples for which we knew, from previous 14C wiggle-matching procedure, the first measured ring to be in this time interval, within a ± 18 to 30-year precision. Oxygen isotope dendrochronology provided a plausible date for one of the samples (the first measured ring at 1073 CE). This preliminary study encourages us to acquire additional data to extend in time and strengthen the δ 18O master chronology of northwestern Alaska (NWAK18O) and help refine our understanding of climate and culture change during the 2nd millennium CE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In 2018, the University of Birmingham, UK, hosted a weekend of events for the Association for Environmental Archaeology (AEA)'s spring conference 'Pests of Society'. The event was organised in collaboration with Historic England – the publicly-funded 'Arms-Length Body' with statutory responsibility for the historic environment in England. During the course of the one day conference and workshop the following day, multiple aspects were covered of how pests have interacted, and continue to interact, with humans and their day-to-day activities, as well as their presence in the wider landscape. This paper outlines and describes the meeting, introducing the range of topics covered, and summarises the papers that have been published in the resulting special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Athar alrafedain is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Australian mining projects frequently undertake cultural salvage, involving archaeological consultants and Aboriginal Elders to identify important artefacts. However, the storage conditions within shipping containers present challenges, such as weather, insects, and limited access for Traditional Owners. The author, reflecting on his experience working as a project heritage advisor in Western Australia's Pilbara region, emphasises the need for collaborative engagement between the mining sector and Aboriginal communities to develop effective storage strategies that prioritise both scientific integrity and cultural significance. The author raises questions about the purpose and sustainability of storing cultural artefacts in containers, while highlighting the need to balance safeguarding heritage with the evolving needs of Indigenous communities. Ultimately, the author emphasises the importance of empowering Traditional Owners in decisions about artefact storage and engaging in meaningful consultation to preserve cultural heritage. The author suggests that the process should prioritise not just tangible artefacts but also intangible aspects like stories and songlines that make up the living Indigenous culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significance of data acquisition in archaeological practice has consistently held great importance. Over the past few decades, the growing prevalence of digitization in acquiring data has significantly transformed the landscape of archaeological fieldwork, influencing both methodology and interpretation. The integration of digital photogrammetry and laser scanning technologies in archaeology has transformed data acquisition, enabling efficient and precise documentation. However, this digital shift raises concerns about information overload, the potential loss of on-site insights, and the need for suitable data management methods. Over the past 15 years, digital tools like photogrammetry, laser scanning, and unmanned aerial vehicles have advanced cultural heritage documentation. These methods offer detailed 3D models of archaeological sites, artifacts, and monuments, with evolving accessibility and user friendliness. This paper delves into methods for documenting cultural heritage, examining the implications of various approaches on the archaeologist's workflow and on the field as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient ceramics with attractive features of art have always fascinated the world and created a demand with a higher level of attraction for the artifacts. This has led the treasure hunters actively involved in looting the sites all around Balochistan. In the recent years, this phenomenon has increased at an alarming rate which endangered is harming to the archeology of Balochistan. Many consignments have been confiscated in the decade that include the artefacts from Balochistan. One of such consignments was confiscated in 2005 which includes the pottery of Naal and Kulli, a Bronze Age phase, from Balochistan. This research paper focuses on these artifacts have certainly lost their context, but they are still important as they give numerous clues about the ancient inhabitants of Balochistan. In order to understand these hidden clues, the authors have analyzed the artifacts through observations and comparisons. While doing so, we have been able to trace their tentative position in chronological profile of Balochistan. Apart from the descriptive study of pottery, the paper also deals shortly with treasure hunting and illicit trafficking of archaeological materials of Balochistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]