bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
New perspectives on the Varna cemetery (Bulgaria) – AMS dates and social implications
Authors: Higham Tom , Chapman John , Slavchev Vladimir , Gaydarska Bisserka , Honch Noah , Yordanov Yordan , Dimitrova Branimira
Published: January 2015

The research team of this new project has begun the precision radiocarbon dating of the super-important Copper Age cemetery at Varna. These first dates show the cemetery in use from 4560-4450 BC, with the possibility that the richer burials are earlier and the poor burials later in the sequence. The limited number of lavish graves at Varna, representing no more than a handful of paramount chiefs, buried over 50-60 years, suggests a stabilisation of the new social structure by the early part of the Late Copper Age.
The amazing Dr Kouznetsov
Authors: Meacham William
Published: January 2015

Here is a story to strike a chill of anxiety into the hearts of editors and their peer-reviewers. Do we, should we, need we check our submissions with greater rigour?
A 14000 year-old hunter-gatherer's toolkit
Authors: Edwards Phillip C.
Published: January 2015

A sickle, 21 flint lunates for tipping spears and evidence of the hunted quarry – gazelle bones – lay together by the wall of a Natufian building. The author deduces that these objects were contained in a bag and constituted the versatile working equipment of a hunter-gatherer.
A mass grave from the catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus in Rome, second-third century AD
Authors: Blanchard Philippe , Castex Dominique , Coquerelle Michaël , Giuliani Raffaella , Ricciardi Monica
Published: January 2015

Investigations in a catacomb revealed an early mass grave, in which the bodies were bound tightly with plaster and textile in a type of mummification. Over 100 individuals, mostly young adults, including women, were stacked in rows apparently following a communal fatal incident, perhaps an epidemic. The presence of traces of gold, silver and probably amber with many of the bodies, and their burial in an imperial property suggests a group of some status being interred in the early years of the catacomb, at the end of the second century AD or beginning of the third.
From the perspective of time: hunter-gatherer burials in south-eastern Australia
Authors: Littleton Judith
Published: January 2015

In this study of the Murray River basin in south-eastern Australia, the author shows that Aboriginal burials are persistently attracted to specific kinds of landscape feature intermittently over long periods of time. Some attributes of burial, like body position, vary from site to site and over much shorter periods; others, like orientation, are even more local, relating only to a specific group of graves. Burial rites are thus sets of variables which may be independent of each other and change at different rates. Far from reflecting cultural arrivals and departures, in south-eastern Australia burial grounds were never formally founded and continually abandoned.
Bridging the gap at La Téne
Authors: Hummler Madeleine
Published: January 2015

Some thirty years ago, I took part in the Seminar für Ur- und Frühgeschichte der Universität Basel's traditional field trip to La Tène. We discussed the various interpretations put forward for a site that had given its name to the later Iron Age in Europe: bridges, toll, battle, fort, refugium, accident, votive deposit, sanctuary. We berated the methods of investigation of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: they could not bridge the gap between what was found and what La Tène had come to mean in the ensuing century. Thirty years on, things have changed.
Polish archaeology in my lifetime
Authors: Tabaczyński Stanisław
Published: January 2015

Professor Stanisław Tabaczyński, a Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) since 1989 and a prominent exponent of theory, field method and interdisciplinary studies, offers us a summary of his personal vision of Polish archaeology since the Second World War.
Footprints in the sand: appraising the archaeology of the Willandra Lakes, western New South Wales, Australia
Authors: Allen Harry , Holdaway Simon , Fanning Patricia , Littleton Judith
Published: January 2015

Here is a paper of pivotal importance to all prehistorians attempting to reconstruct societies from assemblages of shells or stone artefacts in dispersed sites deposited over tens of thousands of years. The authors demonstrate the perilous connections between the distribution and content of sites, their geomorphic formation process and the models used to analyse them. In particular they warn against extrapolating the enticing evidence from Pleistocene Willandra into behavioural patterns by drawing on the models presented by nineteenth-century anthropologists. They propose new strategies at once more revealing and more ethical.
Refitting megaliths in western France
Authors: Mens Emmanuel
Published: January 2015

Refitting flakes to cores is a well-developed way to investigate how stone tools were made. Here the author takes on the formidable task of refitting the stone blocks of menhirs, orthostats and megalithic tombs to their quarries. The results are impressive: the order of erection in a row of menhirs, the method of construction in a passage grave and the monumental chronology of a region are just three of the rewards of this promising new method.
From Sicily to Salcombe: a Mediterranean Bronze Age object from British coastal waters
Authors: Needham Stuart , Giardino Claudio
Published: January 2015

Bronze Age objects found in the English Channel off Salcombe, southern Britain, include an implement which has its normal home in Sicilian agriculture – perhaps as a plough shoe. The authors assemble and classify the objects and consider the web of exchange networks that brought the artefact from Sicily to Devon via France around the thirteenth century BC.
Medieval élite burials in eastern Mecklenburg and Pomerania
Authors: Biermann Felix
Published: January 2015

High status burial remains one of archaeology's most evocative types of site – but it is not always easy to know why they were built, where and when they were. The author describes a group of élite burials that appeared in north Europe in the late eleventh-twelfth century in a historical context that is unusually clear, and proposes the rise of a pagan élite in the face of aggressive Christianisation from the neighbours.
Exploring the lower Gulf, 1947-2007
Authors: de Cardi Beatrice
Published: January 2015

Beatrice de Cardi has been a figure in British archaeological life for much longer than most of us can remember. Less well-known outside Asia are her achievements as an explorer of the archaeology of the countries of the lower Persian Gulf. Here she offers a brief mémoire for us, penned at the age of 93. It is a story of pottery, peoples and vast tracts of ancient lands, then little known.
Prehistoric string theory. How twisted fibres helped to shape the world
Authors: Hardy Karen
Published: January 2015

The author reviews the role of string in early human communities, using prehistoric and ethnographic evidence. Fibres, rolled into string, offer a technical means of holding things together; but the process of manufacturing string itself inspired special roles and structures - which in turn held together the members of communities.
The use of caves for funerary and ritual practices in Neolithic Ireland
Authors: Dowd Marion A.
Published: January 2015

Caves in Ireland, as elsewhere, have been used for shelter and burial over much of recorded time. The author here focuses on their use during the Neolithic, carefully isolating the available material and arguing from it that caves then had a primary role in the remembrance of the dead, and were used for excarnation, token deposition or inhumation. The author compares these practices to other contemporary types of burial and concludes that there was a strong symbolic or ritual sense shared in Neolithic Ireland between passage tombs and those certain kinds of cave that they resembled.
Meat-acquisition patterns in the Neolithic Yangzi river valley, China
Authors: Jing Yuan , Flad Rowan , Yunbing Luo
Published: January 2015

The authors provide an overview of animal exploitation in the Chinese Neolithic, emphasising regional differences in meat procurement strategies. While the Yellow river peoples turned from hunting wild animals to the rearing of pigs, dogs, sheep and cattle during the Neolithic, the peoples of the Yangzi valley continued to rely on an abundant supply of wild creatures into their Bronze Age. Their staples were deer, fish and birds and there was a special relationship with fish that extended even to the grave.
Geometric templates used in the Akrotiri (Thera) wall-paintings
Authors: Papaodysseus C. , Panagopoulos M. , Rousopoulos P. , Galanopoulos G. , Doumas C.
Published: January 2015

A research team at Akrotiri, Thera, here examine the Bronze Age frescoes and show that the artists were making use of templates of well known geometric curves. Some of the spirals, hyperbolae and ellipses which all feature in the repertoire do not occur in nature and must have their origin in some still unknown human science or aesthetic.
Deported nation: the fate of the Bohai people of Mongolia
Authors: Kradin Nikolay N. , Ivliev Alexander L.
Published: January 2015

The mass deportation of a conquered people from tenth-century Mongolia known from documents is here tracked archaeologically by survey and excavation. The authors found evidence for the maintenance of Bohai tradition in the fortress of Chintolgoi, many thousands of kilometres south of their homeland.
Diet and status in Birka: stable isotopes and grave goods compared
Authors: Linderholm Anna , Jonson Charlotte Hedenstierna , Svensk Olle , Lidén Kerstin
Published: January 2015

In this paper the authors investigate isotopic signatures of burials from the famous Viking period cemetery at Birka in Sweden, comparing their results on diet with the status and identities of individuals as interpreted from grave goods. These first observations offer a number of promising correlations, for example the shared diet of a group of women associated with trade, and a marine emphasis among men buried with weapons.
The warriors' new headgear
Authors: Brandherm Dirk
Published: January 2015

The important paper by S. Celestino Pérez and C. López-Ruiz that we published in 2006 (Antiquity 80: 89-101) suggested that the warrior slabs (stelae) with their horned-helmet motifs found in Iberia show iconographical influence from the bull-figures seen in the Levant in the early first millennium BC. This of course has important implications for the development of belief systems at either end of the Mediterranean. It was not to the taste of Dirk Brandherm who claims that the Iberian motifs are both different and earlier than any pre-echoes from the east. In a brief response the authors hold firmly to their thesis.
Academic critique and the need for an open mind (a response to Kristiansen)
Authors: Holtorf Cornelius
Published: January 2015

In two recent books, From Stonehenge to Las Vegas – Archaeology as popular culture (AltaMira 2005) and Archaeology is a brand! The meaning of archaeology in popular culture (Archaeopress 2007), Cornelius Holtorf wants us to readdress the focus of archaeology from being predominantly a study of the past to becoming a study of its use in popular culture in the present. While I am in general sympathy with the attempt to analyse the role of archaeology in modern popular culture – and his 2007 book especially provides some good examples of that – I am deeply sceptical of Holtorf's theoretical and political programme for archaeology. It represents a dangerous attempt to deconstruct archaeology as a historical discipline in order to allow modern market forces to take over the archaeological heritage and the consumption of the past as popular culture.
Social networks and the spread of Lapita
Authors: Torrence Robin , Swadling Pamela
Published: January 2015

Lapita pottery seems to arrive in the Pacific out of the blue, and signal a new social, economic or ideological network. The authors show that widespread interaction, articulated by obsidian tools and stone mortars and pestles decorated with various motifs, was already in existence in New Guinea and New Britain. These earlier networks provide a preview of the social interaction that was to light up with the advent of Lapita.
The water management network of Angkor, Cambodia
Authors: Fletcher Roland , Penny Dan , Evans Damian , Pottier Christophe , Barbetti Mike , Kummu Matti , Lustig Terry ,   Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap (APSARA) Department of Monuments and Archaeology Team
Published: January 2015

Meticulous survey of the banks, channels and reservoirs at Angkor shows them to have been part of a large scale water management network instigated in the ninth century AD. Water collected from the hills was stored and could have been distributed for a wide variety of purposes including flood control, agriculture and ritual while a system of overflows and bypasses carried surplus water away to the lake, the Tonle Sap, to the south. The network had a history of numerous additions and modifications. Earlier channels both distributed and disposed of water. From the twelfth century onwards the large new channels primarily disposed of water to the lake. The authors here present and document the latest definitive map of the water network of Angkor.
Reconstructing the prehistoric burial tumulus of Lofkënd in Albania
Authors: Papadopoulos John K. , Bejko Lorenc , Morris Sarah P.
Published: January 2015

When a monument is excavated it removes a piece of cultural property from the landscape. So modern thinking in field archaeology rightly includes the maintenance of monumentality in its initial design. Better still if that value is enhanced. Reconstructing their excavated tumulus in Albania, the authors found they could leave the monument in place and give it added value from the new knowledge of its relevance to local people, not to mention the revival of a dying craft: the making of mud-brick.
Stereo analysis, DEM extraction and orthorectification of CORONA satellite imagery: archaeological applications from the Near East
Authors: Casana Jesse , Cothren Jackson
Published: January 2015

CORONA satellite imagery, preserving an account of the earth's surface from 40 years ago, is a most important archaeological survey tool and we have often sung its praises. Here the authors use new procedures to extend the competence and revelations of CORONA even further. Stereo pairs derived from images taken from fore and aft of the satellite give three dimensional images of landscapes and even individual sites. Techniques of modelling and rectification restore the sites to their original shape without recourse to survey on the ground – in many cases no longer possible since the sites have been buried, inundated or erased. The ingenuity shown here indicates that results from CORONA are only going to get better.
Locating places for repatriated burial: a case study from Ngarrindjeriruwe, South Australia
Authors: Wallis Lynley A. , Moffat Ian , Trevorrow George , Massey Toni
Published: January 2015

In this ingenious co-operative case study, archaeologists and Indigenous peoples use geophysical survey to scan suitable places for the reburial of repatriated human remains. The process is also building a procedure for the low impact and respectful research of early Indigenous burial locations.
‘Whatever turns you on’: a response to Anna Machin, ‘Why handaxes just aren't that sexy’
Authors: Mithen Steven
Published: January 2015

Evaluating theories and testing hypotheses that relate to the no-longer observable behaviour of hominin species which have no close analogue in the modern world is an obvious challenge. Machin argues that Kohn & Mithen (1999) did not do so in a sufficiently rigorous manner concerning their so-called 'Sexy Handaxe Theory' (SHT). She is right, of course. Indeed how could it be otherwise when there is always room for improvement by subjecting previously published ideas to newly available data-sets and new types of critical thinking. Machin provides some valuable arguments, bringing together a probably unparalleled breadth of knowledge about the archaeological record, evolutionary theory and sexual selection. Ultimately, however, I am not persuaded that she makes handaxes any less sexy than they had previously appeared.
Repatriation, display and interpretation
Authors: James N.
Published: January 2015

The British Museum and the National Museum of Wales have lent the finds from Kendrick's Cave, in Llandudno, north Wales, for display and storage at Llandudno Museum; and the British Museum has sent the famous body from Lindow Moss, near Manchester, to be shown at the Manchester Museum, 100km away in England. How should metropolitan or national museums relate to provincial museums? Should there be more such loans? The exhibition in Manchester deliberately raises another question too: how – if at all – should human remains be displayed?
A Middle Palaeolithic bone tool from Crimea (Ukraine)
Authors: Burke Ariane , d'Errico Francesco
Published: January 2015

A fragment of equid tibia found with a Mousterian assemblage in a rockshelter in the Crimean peninsula is carefully examined. The authors show that it has been knapped like flint to produce a tool probably at a time when stone resources were becoming exhausted. This tool is thus the product of a Neanderthal response to a local need as well as proof that the technological properties of bone were known.
New finds of art objects from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Zaraysk, Russia
Authors: Amirkhanov Hizri , Lev Sergey
Published: January 2015

The new art objects from Zaraysk show an extraordinary repertoire of incised carving on mammoth ivory plaques and carving in the round, including representations of women and large mammals, and geometric decoration on bone utensils. The authors show that while belonging to the broad family of Upper Palaeolithic artists, the Zaraysk carvers produced forms particular to their region, some with magical associations.
Tanged points, microblades and Late Palaeolithic hunting in Korea
Authors: Seong Chuntaek
Published: January 2015

The present study examines the stone weapons available in Late Palaeolithic Korea, showing how the change in lithics signals a change in hunting strategy. In advance of the Late Glacial Maximum, a tanged spear tip flourished, reflecting the hunting of large mammals associated with the colder climate. In the more variable climate that followed, the prevalence of microliths suggests lightweight composite hunting weapons mostly used in pursuit of small game and diverse food resources. These weapons eventually included bow and arrows in the final Pleistocene.
Sweeter than wine? The use of the grape in early western Asia
Authors: Miller Naomi F.
Published: January 2015

Emotional news for lovers of a dry white wine. The blissful Hippocrene was composed from wild grapes from the sixth millennium BC in the lands of its natural habitat. But, as the author shows, the cultivation, domestication and selective breeding of the grape following in the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age was aimed primarily at the enjoyment of its sweetness.
Modelling maritime interaction in the Aegean Bronze Age
Authors: Knappett Carl , Evans Tim , Rivers Ray
Published: January 2015

The authors raise spatial analysis to a new level of sophistication – and insight – in proposing a mathematical model of ‘imperfect optimisation’ to describe maritime networks. This model encodes, metaphorically, the notion of gravitational attraction between objects in space. The space studied here is the southern Aegean in the Middle Bronze Age, and the objects are the 34 main sites we know about. The ‘gravitation’ in this case is a balance of social forces, expressed by networks with settlements of particular sizes and links of particular strengths. The model can be tweaked by giving different relative importance to the cultivation of local resources or to trade, and to show what happens when a member of the network suddenly disappears.
Archaeological resource modelling in temperate river valleys: a case study from the Trent Valley, UK
Authors: Howard A.J. , Brown A.G. , Carey C.J. , Challis K. , Cooper L.P. , Kincey M. , Toms P.
Published: January 2015

Methods for mapping and determining the condition of archaeological resources while they are still underground have been in development for nearly half a century. The authors here offer an example from the frontiers of the art: the application of a package of remote sensing procedures not only designed to locate sites but to model the valley deposits which contain and cover them. The variation in success of different methods in different deposits offers a guide to the design of evaluation projects on sand and gravel terrain everywhere.
The Lower Pleistocene lithic assemblage from Dursunlu (Konya), central Anatolia, Turkey
Authors: Güleç Erksin , White Tim , Kuhn Steven , Özer Ismail , Saǧır Mehmet , Yılmaz Hakan , Howell F. Clark
Published: January 2015

Homo erectus leaving Africa a million years ago ought to have passed through the area that is now Turkey, and the authors report a first certain sighting of human activity of this date in a lignite quarry near Konya. The remains of rhino, hippo and horse were found with 135 modified quartz implements in layers dated by palaeomagnetic reversal to between 0.78 and 0.99 million years ago.
Who was buried at Stonehenge?
Authors: Pearson Mike Parker , Chamberlain Andrew , Jay Mandy , Marshall Peter , Pollard Josh , Richards Colin , Thomas Julian , Tilley Chris , Welham Kate
Published: January 2015

Stonehenge continues to surprise us. In this new study of the twentieth-century excavations, together with the precise radiocarbon dating that is now possible, the authors propose that the site started life in the early third millennium cal BC as a cremation cemetery within a circle of upright bluestones. Britain's most famous monument may therefore have been founded as the burial place of a leading family, possibly from Wales.
A new approach to the archaeology of livestock herding in the Kalahari, Southern Africa
Authors: Lindholm Karl-Johan
Published: January 2015

The author notes that livestock herding in the Kalahari Desert would require water during the dry season. By mapping and dating artificially dug or enlarged waterholes, he shows when and where such herding would have been possible. Dating is by radiocarbon, artefact scatters and cartography. Comparison with climatic, documentary and oral evidence shows that the use of the artificial wells correlates with what is known so far about the movement of peoples over the last two millennia. This inspires confidence in the connection between the wells and herding and in the survey methods.
Eung Tae's tomb: a Joseon ancestor and the letters of those that loved him
Authors: Lee Eun-Joo , Shin Dong Hoon , Yang Hoo Yul , Spigelman Mark , Yim Se Gweon
Published: January 2015

In medieval Korea certain burials were sealed in concrete resulting in the exceptional preservation of organic materials, including, in this case, written documents. As well as studying changes in rank and ideology, archaeologists who investigate tombs are often moved to wonder about the character of the deceased, the thoughts of the mourners and their hopes and fears on the passing of a person dear to them. In this extraordinary burial from Korea, we hear these voices directly.
Nineteenth-century Apache wickiups: historically documented models for archaeological signatures of the dwellings of mobile people
Authors: Seymour Deni J.
Published: January 2015

Highly mobile people must have sheltered in structures of some kind; but these are notoriously difficult to find. The author uses nineteenth-century photographs of an occupied Apache settlement to show how such shelters may have been made, comparing them with their archaeological remains in the present day. This suggests a ‘signature’ for the temporary shelters used by mobile groups in any period.
Is there a crisis facing British burial archaeology?
Authors: Sayer Duncan
Published: January 2015

2007 was an eventful year for the ethics of burial in Britain: the Science Museum returned the remains of Tasmanian Aborigines to their cultural home (Henderson 2007), the legal system governing the excavation of human remains was reinterpreted (Small 2008), TheGuardianreported on the desire of neo-pagans to take ownership of human remains (Randerson 2007) and there was a debate in the museum literature on just this topic (see Restall Orr & Bienkowski 2006 and Smith & Mays 2007). In light of these changes and debates it may be unsurprising to learn that many British archaeologists feel that it is 'getting more difficult to work with human remains'.
Pavlov VI: an Upper Palaeolithic living unit
Authors: Svoboda Jiří , Králík Miroslav , Čulíková Věra , Hladilová Šárka , Novák Martin , Fišáková Miriam Nývltová , Nývlt Daniel , Zelinková Michaela
Published: January 2015

This newly discovered and excavated site defines an Upper Palaeolithic activity unit consisting of a roasting pit at the centre of an area 5m across. Although the main task was the processing of two mammoths, there were numerous other wild animals in the assemblage. The occupants used flint knives, made bone tools and modelled in baked clay – on which they left their fingerprints, along with imprints of reindeer hair and textiles. Pavlov VI offers an exemplary picture of the basic living unit that made up the settlement clusters of the Gravettian people in Central Europe.
‘The Farm Beneath the Sand’ – an archaeological case study on ancient ‘dirt’ DNA
Authors: Hebsgaard Martin B. , Gilbert M. Thomas P. , Arneborg Jette , Heyn Patricia , Allentoft Morten E. , Bunce Michael , Munch Kasper , Schweger Charles , Willerslev Eske
Published: January 2015

It is probable that ‘The Farm Beneath the Sand’ will come to stand for a revolution in archaeological investigation. The authors show that a core of soil from an open field can provide a narrative of grazing animals, human occupation and their departure, just using DNA and AMS dating. In this case the conventional archaeological remains were nearby, and the sequence obtained by the old methods of digging and faunal analysis correlated well with the story from the core of ancient ‘dirt’ DNA. The potential for mapping the human, animal and plant experience of the planet is stupendous.
Celebrating the annus mirabilis
Authors: Evans Christopher
Published: January 2015

We are grateful to Chris Evans for convening and introducing this imaginative archaeological tribute to the work of Charles Darwin, 150 years after the publication of his On the origin of species – the inspiration for an evolutionary concept of history in so many fields. June 2009 is also the 150th anniversary of a yet more momentous event in the history of archaeology, the endorsement of the antiquity of human tool-making by observations in the Somme gravels. Clive Gamble and Robert Kruszynski reconstruct the occasion and publish the famous axe for the first time. Chris Evans returns to present us with the bitter-sweet spectacle of the Darwin family as excavators and Tim Murray rediscovers a suite of pictures made for John Lubbock which show how prehistoric life was envisaged in polite society at the time. Lastly we are grateful to Colin Renfrew for his own reflections on the anniversary.
Moonshine over Star Carr: post-processualism, Mesolithic myths and archaeological realities
Authors: Mellars Paul
Published: January 2015

The interpretation of Star Carr is central to the interpretation of the European Mesolithic, and has attracted functional, ecological, economic and ideological readings. Is each of these always possible? In a disquisition of wide relevance, the author argues that any evocation of ancient activity at Star Carr – and its motives – must begin with a detailed reading of the excavated data. Pictures desired by theory may not be supported by facts.
Horticultural experimentation in northern Australia reconsidered
Authors: Denham Tim , Donohue Mark , Booth Sara
Published: January 2015

Did the banana, yam and taro arrive in Australia at the hands of Europeans or come across the Torres Strait 2000 years before? Reviewing the evidence from herbaria histories and anthropology, the authors propose a ‘hierarchy of hypotheses’ and consider a still earlier option, that these food plants were potentially grown in Australia at least 8000 years ago, while it was still joined to New Guinea. This hypothesis, first proposed by Jones and Meehan in 1989, locates early horticultural experiments among peoples too often seen as inveterate hunter-gatherers.
Pre-Inca mining in the Southern Nasca Region, Peru
Authors: Eerkens Jelmer W. , Vaughn Kevin J. , Grados Moises Linares
Published: January 2015

Guided by modern miners of the region the authors track down pre-Inca mining sites in the Southern Nasca Region of Peru. In the hinterlands away from both modern and ancient roads they find a surprising number of small sites serving the pre-Inca industry, principally in the Nasca period. Drawing analogies from modern practice they are able to distinguish the ancient sites dedicated to exploration, extraction or production.
The demonstration of human antiquity: three rediscovered illustrations from the 1825 and 1846 excavations in Kent's Cavern (Torquay, England)
Authors: White M.J. , Pettitt P.B.
Published: January 2015

The authors disentangle the fascinating tale of the investigations in Kent's Cavern, iconic site for the acceptance of early man. The drawings they have discovered in the archives of the Geological Society are the only ones known from the earliest excavations and they are published here for the first time. As this paper shows, it takes intellectual courage to be an archaeologist. Whatever the enormity of his challenge to contemporary religion, I like to think that MacEnery would have been fairly supported by Antiquity's reviewing system. But perhaps our doctrinal challenges are lesser ones.…
Stone tool experiments and reduction methods at the Acheulean site of Isampur Quarry, India
Authors: Shipton C.B.K. , Petraglia M.D. , Paddayya K.
Published: January 2015

What better way to understand how to make a handaxe or cleaver than getting into an Acheulean quarry and doing it yourself. The authors experimented at Isampur Quarry in India, finding that handaxes were best produced by reducing a slab to shape, while cleavers were best made by striking large flakes. There was a good correspondence with the ancient implements, and the authors deduced that Acheulean hominins were learning and transmitting standardised manufacturing methods to each other.
A Bayesian approach to dating agricultural terraces: a case from the Philippines
Authors: Acabado Stephen
Published: January 2015

Field terraces are notoriously difficult to date – but historically of high significance. Here the author uses a Bayesian model applied to radiocarbon dates to date the tiered rice fields of the northern Philippines. They turn out to have been built in the sixteenth century probably by peoples retreating inland and upland from the Spanish.
Ochre and hide-working at a Natufian burial place
Authors: Dubreuil Laure , Grosman Leore
Published: January 2015

Particular stones found on Epi-Palaeolithic sites in the Levant are thought to be for grinding vegetable matter and to be essential instruments in the development of food processing. Finding an assemblage of these tools in a burial cave, the authors ask a harder question: could they have been used for processing hides with ochre? Use-wear analysis allows a positive verdict, and so the tools take their place in the ritual apparatus associated with burial.
Sourcing African ivory in Chalcolithic Portugal
Authors: Schuhmacher Thomas X. , Cardoso João Luís , Banerjee Arun
Published: January 2015

A recent review of all ivory from excavations in Chalcolithic and Beaker period Iberia shows a marked coastal distribution – which strongly suggests that the material is being brought in by sea. Using microscopy and spectroscopy, the authors were able to distinguish ivories from extinct Pleistocene elephants, Asian elephants and, mostly, from African elephants of the savannah type. This all speaks of a lively ocean trade in the first half of the third millennium BC, between the Iberian Peninsula and the north-west of Africa and perhaps deeper still into the continent.
For Gods or men? A reappraisal of the function of European Bronze Age shields
Authors: Molloy Barry
Published: January 2015

Are the imposing, decorated copper-alloy shields of Bronze Age Europe symbolic objects or functioning weapons? The author undertakes new analysis and experiments to conclude that whether bronze, leather or wood, all shields had a range of purpose in which the ceremonial and homicidal could rarely be completely isolated.
Landscapes of death: GIS modelling of a dated sequence of prehistoric cemeteries in Västmanland, Sweden
Authors: Löwenborg Daniel
Published: January 2015

We will never be able to excavate everything – nor should we – but it would be good to know how to make the best use of what is visible in the landscape to write social prehistories. In this project the author creates a set of parameters for the 1000 mound-cemeteries seen north of Lake Mälaren and clusters them by period, using 51 examples that have been excavated and dated. The result is that 1000 cemeteries can now be allocated to period, with that special kind of confidence in which statisticians rejoice.
The Acropolis and its new museum
Authors: James N.
Published: January 2015

The new Acropolis Museum was opened in June 2009 with worldwide fanfare. For this was for the Athenian acropolis – the Acropolis. After two lower galleries, visitors reach the top floor and find what is now the world's most exciting coup of archaeological presentation – a sudden view of the Parthenon. We stand there in the middle of a gallery that sets out the temple's sculpted pediments, metopes and friezes according to the original plan. They are hung on a framework that matches the Parthenon's colonnades at the same orientation and scale and on the same plan as the great temple itself (Figure 1); so that, walking along the gallery, we can imagine ourselves in the temple by just looking out at it on the Acropolis.
A brief history of TAG
Authors: Gaydarska Bisserka
Published: January 2015

Readers will know thatAntiquity, a long term supporter of TAG, now gives this most spontaneous and peripatetic of conferences a memory by hosting the ‘TAG Archive’ on its website. In this article Bisserka Gaydarska offers a preliminary analysis of TAG trends – how the subjects of talks and the speakers who gave them have changed over the past few decades. Readers are invited to comment on her findings and share their views with us by emailing us ateditor@antiquity.ac.uk.
Sex, symmetry and silliness in the bifacial world
Authors: Hayden Brian , Villeneuve Suzanne
Published: January 2015

After 10 years of pursuing sexy handaxes it is probably time to put these coquettish creatures to bed. Readers wishing to continue the debate are courteously directed to our Project Gallery.
Symmetry is sexy: reply to Hodgson's ‘Symmetry and humans’
Authors: Burriss Robert P.
Published: January 2015

In his contribution to the Antiquity debate over the viability of Kohn and Mithen's 'Sexy Handaxe Theory' (1999),Hodgson (2009: 195-8) asserts that 'symmetry is not connected with health and thus cannot have served as a sign of genetic worth'. Because I find his interpretation of the current literature on symmetry and its relationship to health and attractiveness to be flawed, I cannot accept Hodgson's argument. I address each of my concerns below in the first part of this response. I also remain unconvinced that, even if Hodgson's assertion were supported by the literature, it would necessarily follow that symmetry in manufactured objects, including Acheulean handaxes, cannot signal 'sexiness'. In the second part of my response I explain why I consider this to be so.
The emergence of agriculture in southern China
Authors: Chi Zhang , Hung Hsiao-chun
Published: January 2015

The authors give us a newly documented account of the dissemination of agriculture, and rice cultivation in particular, into southern China and beyond. From the central and eastern Yangtze it spread in two prongs – east to Guangdong, Taiwan and island Southeast Asia and south to Guangxi and Vietnam.
The date and context of a stone row: Cut Hill, Dartmoor, south-west England
Authors: Fyfe Ralph M. , Greeves Tom
Published: January 2015

The beginning of monolithic monumentality in Europe is of outstanding significance and its accurate dating a consummation devoutly to be wished. In this case study from England, the researchers had the good fortune to find monoliths stratified above and below by peat and so were able to give them a bracketed radiocarbon date and an environmental context. The results show that the stones, belonging to a linear alignment of eight others, were erected in a clearing of heathland in the fourth millennium BC. The date raises the possibility of a Neolithic appearance for this type of stone row in south-west Britain and Britanny.
Oscillating climate and socio-political process: the case of the Marquesan Chiefdom, Polynesia
Authors: Allen Melinda S.
Published: January 2015

Does climate affect behaviour and social process? In this case study, powerful scientific, anthropological and archaeological arguments are deployed to show that it can. The capricious climate of the latest centuries of the Marquesas Islands was instrumental in transforming a chieftain society into less hereditary and more flexible polities by the time of European contact.
Chert hoes as digging tools
Authors: Milner George R. , Hammerstedt Scott W. , French Kirk D.
Published: January 2015

What type of implement was used to cut and move earth in prehistory? In the Mississippian culture at least, the key tool was the stone hoe – formed from a chert blade strapped to a handle. These blades were hoarded and depicted in use, leaving little doubt that they were for digging, in the service of agriculture and extracting earth for building. Drawing on a series of controlled experiments, the authors deduce the capabilities and biographies of the stone hoes, evoking the admirable efforts of the people who constructed the massive mounds of Cahokia.
Ground-penetrating radar for anthropological research
Authors: Conyers Lawrence B.
Published: January 2015

During its development years, geophysical survey has served field archaeology by defining possible sites underground, prior to excavation or preservation. Now we can see the art taking off as a research method in its own right. After summarising some recent research applications of magnetic mapping, the author gives us three case studies from USA and Jordan, where ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has produced new interpretations of prehistory and history. Since GPR can map in horizontal slices without damage, it opens up important heritage preservation options. In one case, excavation was discouraged on ethical grounds, in another it was inhibited by the presence of later monuments and in a third, an early agricultural site, the GPR actually saw more than the excavators. This presages a research tool of particular power.
Faces of the ancestors revealed: discovery and dating of a Pleistocene-age petroglyph in Lene Hara Cave, East Timor
Authors: O'Connor Sue , Aplin Ken , St Pierre Emma , Feng Yue-xing
Published: January 2015

A petroglyph showing a human face found in East Timor is dated to the late Pleistocene. It recalls ancient Australian forms and raises the possibility of connecting early cave art with the better known painted figures of Lapita/Austronesian art ten millennia later. This new discovery at a known cave shows what precious evidence still lies in store even in well-trodden places.
Gravettian painting and associated activity at Le Moulin de Laguenay (Lissac-sur-Couze, Corrèze)
Authors: Mélard Nicolas , Pigeaud Romain , Primault Jérôme , Rodet Joël
Published: January 2015

Presented here is the so far unique discovery and interpretation of an occupation area directly associated with Upper Palaeolithic cave paintings. The paintings, of red spots and hand stencils, overlook two hearths with selected flints. There were also fragments of stalactite, deduced by analysis and experiment to be waste products from the manufacture of beads. The authors deduce that the hearths and their assemblage complement the ritual nature of the paintings.
The iceman as a burial
Authors: Vanzetti A. , Vidale M. , Gallinaro M. , Frayer D.W. , Bondioli L.
Published: January 2015

Since his discovery in 1991 the iceman has been widely seen as meeting a dramatic end – mortally wounded by an arrow shot while attempting to flee through an Alpine pass. A careful study of all the located grave goods, here planned comprehensively for the first time, points strongly towards the scene as one of a ceremonial burial, subsequently dispersed by thawing and gravity. The whole assemblage thus takes on another aspect – not a casual tragedy but a mortuary statement of its day.
The origins of metallurgy in central Italy: new radiometric evidence
Authors: Dolfini Andrea ,   To the memory of Lawrence Barfield, Peroni Renato
Published: January 2015

Precision radiocarbon dating continues to bring historical order into key moments of social and economic change, such as the use of metals. Here the author dates human bone in graves with metal artefacts and shows that copper, antimony and silver were being fashioned into daggers and beads in west central Italy by the early to mid fourth millennium cal BC; but the new-fangled objects had not reached contemporary cemeteries on the other side of the Apennines. We can perhaps look forward to a time when the arrival of metallurgy in Europe is neither diffusionary nor piecemeal, but the result of real historical events and social contacts, mapped for us by radiocarbon.
What did grinding stones grind? New light on Early Neolithic subsistence economy in the Middle Yellow River Valley, China
Authors: Liu Li , Field Judith , Fullagar Richard , Bestel Sheahan , Chen Xingcan , Ma Xiaolin
Published: January 2015

Grinding stones have provided a convenient proxy for the arrival of agriculture in Neolithic China. Not any more. Thanks to high-precision analyses of use-wear and starch residue, the authors show that early Neolithic people were mainly using these stones to process acorns. This defines a new stage in the long transition of food production from hunter-gatherer to farmer.
Prospects for Sweden
Authors: Rundkvist Martin
Published: January 2015

Swedish archaeology enters the new decade reeling, not so much from seasonal feasting as from lay-offs and excavation unit close-downs caused by the 2008-09 recession. Where to now? Where should we go? And, wishful thinking aside, where are we likely to end up?
Salomon Reinach and the religious interpretation of Palaeolithic art
Authors: Palacio-Pérez Eduardo
Published: January 2015

When did upper Palaeolithic cave art come to be thought of as religious? The author shows an origin rooted in the intellectual movements of the later nineteenth century, and in particular in the personage and thought of Salomon Reinach.
Witchcraft and Deep Time–a debate at Harvard
Authors: Mitchell Stephen , Price Neil , Hutton Ronald , Purkiss Diane , Patton Kimberley , Raudvere Catharina , Severi Carlo , Aldhouse-Green Miranda , Semple Sarah , Pluskowski Aleks , Carver Martin , Ginzburg Carlo
Published: January 2015

Archaeology, consistently warned off religion by wise old heads, here rushes deeper into the thicket to tackle the thorny topic of ancient witchcraft. The occasion was a seminar at Harvard organised by Stephen Mitchell and Neil Price to mark the twentieth anniversary of Carlo Ginzburg's influential book on the connections between witches and shamanism – and by implication the possible connections with prehistoric ritual and belief. Archaeology was by no means the only voice at the meeting, which was attended by scholars active in history, literature, divinity and anthropology. The discussions revealed much that was entangled in the modern psyche: ‘don't let's tame strangeness’ was one leitmotiv of this stimulating colloquium. A romantic attachment to the irrational is a feature of our time, especially among academics. But maybe taming strangeness is an archaeologist's real job…
Copro-PCR based detection of bovine schistosome infection in India
Authors: Lakshmanan B. , Devada K. , Joseph S. , Aravindakshan T.V. , Sabu L.
Published: January 2015

Schistosomosis and amphistomosis are the two economically important and widely prevalent snail-borne trematode infections in grazing cattle of southern India. Acute infections are symptomatically similar and difficult to detect by routine microscopy for eggs. The present study was directed towards the development of a copro-polymerase chain reaction (copro-PCR) for detection of bovine schistosome species, using custom-designed primers targeting 18S and 28S ribosomal RNA as well as mitochondrial DNA. The study demonstrated the enhanced diagnostic specificity of mitochondrial DNA markers over ribosomal RNA genes as genus-specific probes to detect schistosomes. We developed a sensitive PCR assay using primers designed from mitochondrial DNA sequences targeting the partialrrnl(16S rRNA), tCys (transfer RNA for cysteine) and partialrrnS(12S rRNA) genes ofSchistosoma spindaleto specifically detect schistosome infection from faecal samples of naturally infected bovines. The salient findings of the work also throw light on to the high similarity of the ribosomal RNA gene sequences of schistosomes with those ofGastrothylax crumeniferandFischoederius elongatus,the most prevalent pouched amphistomes of the region. Further investigation has to be directed towards unravelling the complete gene sequences of 18S and 28S ribosomal RNA as well as mitochondrial DNA sequences of amphistome isolates from India.
Trichinella spiralisnewborn larvae: characterization of a stage specific serine proteinase expression, NBL1, using monoclonal antibodies
Authors: YANG YONG , LACOUR SANDRINE A. , LAINÉ-PRADE VÉRONIQUE , VERSILLÉ NICOLAS , GRASSET-CHEVILLOT AURÉLIE , FENG SHUANG , LIU MING YUAN , BOIREAU PASCAL , VALLÉE ISABELLE
Published: January 2015

Trichinella spiralisis an intracellular parasitic nematode of mammalian skeletal muscle, causing a serious zoonotic disease in humans and showing a high economic impact mainly in pig breeding. Serine proteinases ofT. spiralisplay important roles in the host–parasite interactions mediating host invasion. In this study, we have focused on newborn larvae (NBL-1), the first identified serine proteinase from the NBL stage ofT. spiralis.Five monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) directed against the C-terminal part of NBL1, were produced. These mAbs were IgG1κisotype and specifically recognized as a common motif of 10 amino acids (PSSGSRPTYP). Selected mAbs were further characterized using antigens from various developmental stages ofT. spiralis.Western blot revealed that selected mAbs reacted with the native NBL1 at Mr50 kDa in the adult and NBL mixed antigens and NBL stage alone. Indirect immunofluorescence analysis revealed that selected mAbs intensely stained only the embryos within the gravid females and the NBL. Thus, the produced mAbs are useful tools for the characterization of NBL1 as a major antigen ofTrichinellainvolved in the invasion of the host but also for the development of new serological tests with an early detection ofT. spiralisinfection.