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Preface Colin Renfrew, Michael J. Boyd and Iain Morley 1. 'The unanswered question': investigating early conceptualisations of death Colin Renfrew Part I. Intimations of Mortality: 2. Non-human animal responses towards the dead and death: a comparative approach to understanding the evolution of human mortuary practices Alex Piel and Fiona Stewart 3. Lower and Middle Palaeolithic mortuary behaviours and the origins of ritual burial Joao Zilhao 4. Upper Palaeolithic mortuary practices: reflection of ethnic affiliation, social complexity and cultural turn-over Francesco d'Errico and Marian Vanhaeren Part II. Mortality and the Foundations of Human Society: Sedentism and the Collective: 5. Gathering of the dead? The Early Neolithic sanctuaries of Goebekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey Jens Notroff, Oliver Dietrich and Klaus Schmidt 6. Death and architecture: the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A burials at WF16, Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan Steven Mithen, Bill Finlayson, Darko Maricevic, Sam Smith, Emma Jenkins and Mohammad Najjar 7. Corporealities of death in the central Andes (c.9000-2000 BC) Peter Kaulicke 8. Mediating the dominion of death in Prehistoric Malta Simon Stoddart 9. House societies and founding ancestors in Early Neolithic Britain Julian Thomas Part III. Constructing the Ancestors: 10. Constructing ancestors in Sub-Saharan Africa Timothy Insoll 11. Different kinds of dead: presencing Andean expired beings George F. Lau 12. Putting death in its place: the idea of the cemetery Anthony Snodgrass 13. Becoming Mycenaean? The living, the dead and the ancestors in the transformation of society in second millennium BC southern Greece Michael J. Boyd Part IV. Death, Hierarchy and the Social Order: 14. Life and death in late-prehistoric to early historic Mesopotamia Karina Croucher 15. The big sleep: early Maya mortuary ritual Norman Hammond 16. De-paradoxisation of paradoxes by referring to death as an ultimate paradox: the case of the state-formation phase of Japan Koji Mizoguchi 17. Death and mortuary rituals in mainland southeast Asia: from hunter-gatherers to the god kings of Angkor Charles F. W. Higham Part V. Materiality and Memory: 18. How did the Mycenaeans remember? Death, matter and memory in the early Mycenaean world Lambros Malafouris 19. Eternal glory: the origins of eastern jade burial and its far-reaching influence Li Shuicheng 20. Eventful deaths - eventful lives? Bronze age mortuary practices in the late prehistoric Eurasian steppes of central Russia (2100-1500 BC) Bryan Hanks, Roger Doonan, Derek Pitman, Elena Kupriyanova and Dmitri Zdanovich Part VI. Intimations of Immortality: Glimpsing Other Worlds: 21. Northern Iroquoian deathways and the re-imagination of community John L. Creese 22. Locating a sense of immortality in early Egyptian cemeteries Alice Stevenson 23. Buddhist mortuary traditions in ancient India: stupas, relics and the Buddhist landscape Julia Shaw 24. Killing mummies: on Inka epistemology and imperial power Terence N. D'Altroy Part VII. Responses and Reactions: Concluding Thoughts: 25. Death shall have no dominion: a response Timothy Jenkins 26. Comments: death shall have no dominion Paul Wason 27. The muse of archaeology Ben Okri.

This chapter summarizes the archaeological evidence for the Neolithic and early food production across South Asia, with a focus on four major macro-regions with distinct chronological sequences, crop ecologies and cultural traditions. The four macro-regions are given by the northwest, including the greater Indus valley, the Gangetic plains, eastern India and savanna India. The earliest agriculture in South Asia can be found along the western tributaries of the Indus River, at aceramic settlements like Mehrgarh. Towards the middle Ganges plains there is clear evidence of a strongly indigenous Neolithic tradition, which included the development of rice cultivation and eventual sedentism. The nature of early Neolithic societies in eastern India has been less well studied than other parts of the subcontinent. However, there is a growing corpus of information from various streams of evidence available in the archaeological literature. The case for a truly independent origin of agriculture in South Asia is strongest in the southern peninsula of India.

The oldest documented Neolithic cultures occur in the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia, more commonly known as the Near East. While future research may ultimately yield an even older Neolithic, it has been best and most thoroughly studied in this region. This chapter provides an overview of the Near Eastern Neolithic in the several terms like environment and climate, Near East-specific theories on the Neolithic, issues of sedentism and the nature of the first villages and contemporary and future research trends. The Near Eastern Neolithic was first documented during archaeology's formative development and some of the considerable diversity in terminology is result of the academic and national backgrounds of the variety of scholars involved in these early studies. Refinements in precise environmental reconstruction methods have greatly assisted in addressing this issue. The emerging research on Cyprus has reoriented how archaeologists view island colonization, domestication processes and accompanying social changes, and the spread of the Neolithic from its mainland cores.

Introduction Where do babies come from? Archaeologists do not need to dig around for an answer to this question as they attempt to understand and explain the empirical data uncovered at Catalhoyuk, other sites in the Neolithic, or elsewhere. They certainly need to search for plausible hypotheses to illuminate the vital kinship structures, pregnancy rituals, birthing practices, and neonatal health care policies of any specific community. However, if the community was composed of Homo sapiens , archaeologists can appropriately assume that infants appeared within the population as a result of the same basic procedures that produce them today, when – well, you know. The inhabitants of Catalhoyuk were anatomically modern humans and naturally reproduced in the same way that we do. Where do gods come from? In this chapter I will argue that archaeologists (as well as other scientists, philosophers, and theologians) can now also appropriately assume that the reproduction of supernatural agents in Catalhoyuk occurred in much the same way that it does today, at least in small-scale societies. Although we have known where babies come from for several millennia, only within the last few decades have we come to understand more fully why gods appear (and are cared for) in human populations. As with the process of bearing children, one finds an astonishing variety of ways of ritually surrounding and socially manipulating the process of bearing supernatural agents. Beliefs about and behaviors toward the latter are regulated and transmitted differently in the major religious traditions that were forged within complex literate states during the axial age and now dominate the global landscape. Nevertheless, all members of our species share a phylogenetic heritage that includes sets of cognitive and coalitional tendencies, which together help to explain why gods are so easily born(e) across cultures in time and space.

The Beidha archaeological site in Southern Jordan was occupied during the Natufian (two discrete occupation phases, c . 15,200–14,200 cal. BP and c . 13,600–13,200 cal. years BP) and Pre-Pottery B Neolithic periods ( c . 10,300–8,600 cal. years BP). This chapter reconstructs the palaeoenvironments at Beidha during these periods, using sedimentological observations and the stable isotopic composition (oxygen and carbon) of carbonate deposits. Age control is provided by uranium-series and radiocarbon dating. Detailed analysis of a carbonate stratigraphic section related to a fossil spring close to the site, and a sequence of carbonate nodules from a section on the western edge of the archaeological site, permits a reconstruction of climatic variations between c . 18,000 and c . 8,500 years BP. The results of the palaeoenvironmental study are compared with the archaeological evidence, to explore the relationship between human occupation and climatic variability at Beidha. The results indicate a marked correspondence between more favourable (wetter) environmental conditions and phases of occupation at Beidha, and provide clues to the likely sources of water that sustained the settlement during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene. INTRODUCTION Climate change during the Late Pleistocene–early Holocene is often seen as a key factor in the transition to sedentism and stable, agricultural societies in the Middle East, given the background of major events such as the start of the Younger Dryas and the Holocene (e.g. Moore and Hillman, 1992; Mithen, 2003; Cordova, 2007, see also Feynman and Ruzmaikin, 2007).

What has been achieved by this experiment in interdisciplinary dialogue on an archaeological site? Archaeologists are so often forced to work in relative isolation as they excavate and analyze, being able to engage in wider debate only in summary conference papers, workshops and the literature. The Templeton project has now been extended for a further three years, with a larger group of scholars and with new forms of more intense collaboration and investigation. But we can for the moment take stock and ask whether the initial phase, reported on in this volume, of sustained interaction by a group of scholars with a set of archaeological data produced any added value for archaeology. And have the different disciplines themselves gained anything from their brush with the archaeological process? In attempting to provide a summary and evaluation of the main conclusions and results I will organize my comments initially in relation to the four questions asked by the project. I will refer to the project participants who produced chapters for this volume, but also to others who contributed to the project listed in Chapter 1 but who did not write chapters.

The gales brought us here. They picked us up from the reef out at sea, they tossed us and rolled us and pushed us up high on the sandy head and now we lie here in the sun. (Spirit Quandemooka – Oogeroo Nunuccal, Aboriginal elder and poet, Stradbroke Island, Queensland) Introduction Aboriginal people have differing accounts of how the first people came to Australia, where they came from and how they travelled across the continent. These events involve animal and human-like spirit beings and heroes who undertook epic journeys across an empty and often dark landscape upon which they created natural and physical features and landscapes as well as animals and the people themselves. These ‘Dreaming’ stories tell of how all these things were infused with life and lore and language were given to the people. They describe the long journeys, adventures and battles of the ancestral beings and how the first people encountered strange creatures. The word ‘Dreamtime’ is not liked by some Aboriginal people, it implies a particular time in the past. The ‘Dreaming’ is better because it represents no particular time: it could be millions of years ago, 60 ky ago, yesterday, today and tomorrow. The ‘Dreaming’ continuum in Aboriginal society is strong because it helps explain the world, where people, animals, the landscape and everything came from. Perhaps even more important it represents the special attachment Aboriginal people have to the land.

Recent excavations of 1 wo sites in [he Mun River valley in Northeast Thailand (Fig. t.l, p. 5) as part of The Origins of Angkor Project have uncovered two large cemeteries. The site of Ban Lum Khao includes a bronze age cemetery in use between approximately 3400 and 2500 BP (Higham 2002), A IOm>< 14m square was excavated to a maximum depth of 1.7 m on the edge of this mounded site as other areas of the site had been subjected to looting (Higham 2002). The cemetery site of Noen U-Loke, only a few kilometres to the west, is dated to the iron age, approximately 2300-2200 BP to 1700-1600 BP (Higham 2002), This iron age site was considerably more extensive than earlier sites and covered up to l2ha (Higham 2002). A total of220m2 were excavated to a depth of 5 m (Higham 2002). Given the size of these sites, neither was excavated to their full extent. These two sites present an opportunity to compare health changes through time with the significant advantage that the populations lived in similar natural environments.

Introduction In 1979, Christy Turner put the Asia Pacific region on the global bioarchaeological radar with his highly cited paper characterising subsistence economies using mean caries frequencies. Collating dental caries data from some 64 samples, Turner (1979, p. 622) found a mean caries frequency for hunter–gatherers of 1.3%, for mixed economies of 4.8% and for agriculturalists of 10.4%. Rose et al . (1984) also posited a quantitative benchmark where a mean carious lesion rate per individual exceeding 2 indicated agricultural dependency. In fact, the contributions in the widely cited book by Cohen and Armelagos (1984) helped to formulate a consensus view that the frequency of carious lesions will increase with the move from foraging to agriculturally oriented subsistence bases, at least in the maize-based economies on the North American continent. Other contributions to that volume detailed the same correlation between increasing frequencies of lesions and intensification of millet-based agriculture in North Africa (Martin et al . 1984) and of barley- and wheat-based agriculture in the Levant (Smith et al . 1984). Lukacs (1992) has also documented the same trend in South Asia with the intensification of wheat and barley agriculture. With respect to Europe, Molnar and Molnar (1985) argued not so much an increase in carious lesions per se but rather for a high prevalence of root lesions with the increased use of unspecified domesticated grains. It is also worth pointing out that other types of grain have been associated with this apparent global trend.

This book is a fully updated and revised edition of William Andrefsky Jr's ground-breaking manual on lithic analysis. Designed for students and professional archaeologists, this highly illustrated book explains the fundamental principles of the measurement, recording and analysis of stone tools and stone tool production debris. Introducing the reader to lithic raw materials, classification, terminology and key concepts, it comprehensively explores methods and techniques, presenting detailed case studies of lithic analysis from around the world. It examines new emerging techniques, such as the advances being made in lithic debitage analysis and lithic tool analysis, and includes a new section on stone tool functional studies. An extensive and expanded glossary makes this book an invaluable reference for archaeologists at all levels.

The formal design of stone tools is closely linked to the various tasks or functions for which tools are employed. The tasks may relate to the production and maintenance of houses, tools, and clothing, or food procurement, such as hunting and butchering. Traditionally archaeologists have focused upon these task-oriented activities when considering tool design constraints. However, the design of stone tools can be related to constraints that are in addition to specific-task-related activities and functions. It has been shown that stone tool design and production can be affected by the abundance, quality, and shape of raw materials (Andrefsky 1994b, 1995; Ashton and White 2003; Bamforth 1986; Flenniken 1981; Flenniken and Wilke 1989; Lothrop 1989), by the relative mobility and sedentism of the people using the stone tools (Andrefsky 1991; Bamforth 1990, 1991; Blades 2001; Kelly 1988; Parry and Kelly 1987; Shackley 1990; Torrence 1983, 1989), and by artifact uselife (Andrefsky 1997b; Goodyear 1974; Jelinek 1976; Marks 1988; Rolland and Dibble 1990). Still other constraints on tool design include stylistic factors (Close 1989; Sackett 1982, 1986; Wobst 1977), risk minimizing (Bleed 1986; Cashdan 1985; Wiessner 1982), and time optimization (Boydston 1989; Rasic and Andrefsky 2001; Tomka 2001; Torrence 1983). The previous chapter discussed the relationship between artifact diversity and site functions within a context of prehistoric mobility. Related to the concept of prehistoric mobility is that of sedentism. This chapter explores the relationship between prehistoric sedentism and lithic artifact analysis.

The quantity and nutritional quality of food available to human populations undoubtedly played a major role in the adaptive processes associated with human evolution. This should have been particularly the case in that period of human history from Mesolithic times to the present when epochal changes took place in the subsistence base of many human societies. In the Near East the domestication of plants and animals began toward the end of the Mesolithic period but became fully developed in the Neolithic. This development included agriculture and pastoralism along with cultural changes associated with greater sedentism and urbanism. Paleopathology, primarily through the study of human skeletal remains, has attempted to interpret the impact such changes have had upon human health. A recent focus has been on the transition from a hunting and gathering way of life to one associated with incipient or fully developed agriculture (e. g., Cohen and Armelagos 1984b; Cohen 1989; Meiklejohn and Zvelebil 1991). One of the questions being asked is whether greater dependence on fewer food sources increased human vulnerability to famine and malnutrition. The later transition into an increasingly sedentary urban existence in the Bronze and Iron Ages has not been as carefully studied. However, analysis of data from skeletal remains in numerous archaeological sites is providing insight into some of the effects upon nutrition that increasing human density and attendant subsistence changes have had. In the study of prehistoric health, perhaps the least complex nutritional data comes from human remains that have been mummified. Preservation of human soft tissues occurs either naturally, as in the bogs of northern Europe and very arid areas of the world, or through cultural intervention with embalming methods. Some mummies have provided direct evidence of diet from the intestinal contents of their stomachs (e.g., Glob 1971: 42–3; Fischer 1980: 185–9; Brothwell 1986: 92). However, the most ubiquitous source of data comes from human skeletal remains where the impact of dietary factors tends to be indirect, limited, and difficult to interpret.

Archaeological evidence for Amerindian ancestors' migration through the Arctic is sketchy. There is still argument over the details of chronology and route, but it is clear that the human career in America is an extension of Eurasian Upper Paleolithic lifeways. If people lived in America before 12,000 years ago, their remains have become extremely scarce and nearly impossible to authenticate. This chapter examines evidence about supposed very early populations known under the rubrics of pre-Paleoindian, pre-Clovis, or pre-projectile-point populations. From the beginning, many of the proponents of a South American Paleolithic stage have been European archaeologists, amateur or professional, who modeled their expectations on the Old World paleolithic sequence and relied principally on archaeological indications. Sedentism and village formation occurred at the end of the Archaic and have been seen, in most of the world, as correlates of agriculture and harbingers of a Formative stage, in which class structure and civilization emerge.

Introduction The main purpose of this volume is to provide empirical data concerning the health of Australia's original inhabitants over the last 50,000 years. The trouble with such a task is that the palaeopathological evidence on which it is based is comparatively slight, because of its limited disease spectrum, and incomplete in terms of the skeletal material that is available. Unfortunately, we have no data for thousands of years at a time and when it is available it almost always covers only a minute part of the continent. Nevertheless, one must remain undaunted by these constraints as well as being slightly buoyed by the fact that this is the nature of this type of study for any area of the globe. Therefore, in the first part of this chapter I will try and gather together the meagre evidence for the health of people living in the Australian late Pleistocene. The second part puts together a more complete picture of Aboriginal health in the Holocene. It compares and contrasts different parts of the continent and interprets health in terms of the wider lifestyle of Aboriginal people and how they lived. No doubt some people will disagree with certain diagnoses, that is normal in palaeopathology; others will reject the social and demographic conclusions and implications that I have made based on these. In the end it is my hope that the presentation of the data in itself will improve our understanding of Aboriginal health, demography, ecology, epidemiology, palaeobiology and the adaptive capabilities of the people that lived here before European colonisation.

In the past 15,000 years, epochal social and cultural changes have created fundamentally different relationships between humankind and the environment. One of the most important innovations has been the domestication of plants and animals, a major factor in the gradual establishment of agriculture as the world’s predominant economic base. The development of agriculture brought an increase in sedentism, in which human groups lived in more or less permanent communities. Associated with farming was the domestication of animals and, in some societies, nomadic pastoralism. By about 6000 B.C., animal husbandry provided a relatively widespread and stable source of high-quality protein in the Near East. Moreover, the protein was typically produced in ways that did not compete directly for agricultural land resources. Domestic herds grazed on agricultural land after the harvest (Bentley 1987) or on land that was fallow, marginal, or inadequate for farming. The greater control that agriculture and the domestication of animals gave people over food production resulted in food surpluses. Surplus food created the potential for the emergence of specialists such as craftsmen, merchants, and a ruler class, which are essential components of urban society, another major social change. Urbanism began in the Near East during the Chalcolithic Age (c. 4000–3200 B.C.) but had its major efflorescence during the Early Bronze Age (c. 3200–2000 B.C.) The advent of agriculture, the domestication of animals, and the development of urbanism had a significant impact on human health. Although agriculture dramatically increased the calories that could be produced by a given individual, the emphasis on a few cultigens increased the vulnerability of agricultural societies to famine and malnutrition (Cohen 1984a).

The tribe was camping in Hassan Agha's estates near a clump of mulberry trees. They had pitched their long black tents in a neat, orderly file, and this did not escape Hassan Agha's notice. Just as if they were founding a new village, he said to himself with growing anxiety. (From The Legend of the Thousand Bulls by Yashar Kemal) We have seen that the low archaeological profile of nomad sites cannot be attributed to the absence of material remains alone. But while nomad material culture and architecture may be comparable in variety and durability to that of more settled communities, the distribution of these remains occurs over a much wider range and in greatly reduced densities. Moreover the manner in which fluid patterns of residence group formation and fortuitous shifts in migration tracks are translated into archaeological assemblages will vary according to time and place. It is possible nevertheless to make some broad generalizations about what sets a nomad settlement system apart from a sedentary one and how nomad campsites differ fundamentally in their internal structure from sedentary communities. Nomad settlement systems The term ‘settlement system’ has been carefully chosen as against ‘settlement pattern’ in order to distinguish a system of controlling variables (Flannery 1976b, pp.162–3) from a physical pattern of settlement (Chang (ed.) 1968; Trigger 1968). The latter approach applied to nomad camps would yield a picture of segmented settlement units located in relation to each other according to patterns of kinship, tribal affiliation and economic cooperation.