Journal articles on the topic 'Social aspects of Prehistoric figurines'

AbstractFigurines offer archaeologists intriguing insights into many aspects of prehistoric culture. Beyond their utility as chronological markers, figurines offer information regarding the social and cultural structures of a society. This paper will demonstrate how the figurines of Michoacan can be used as markers of ethnic identity and ethnic continuity in the Lake Patzcauro Basin. The high degree of continuity in decorative and production styles throughout much of the sequence serves as evidence for ethnic continuity and the identity of the people who made the artifacts. A preliminary typology for the Michoacan figurines is presented to support the idea that a distinctly Michoacan style of figurine exists. The application of this figurine typology reveals a high degree of continuity in the figurine record. This supports the hypothesis that the ethnic origins of the Michoacan people may reach back as far as the Late Preclassic/Early Classic period.

Figurines—miniature human representations modelled in clay or stone — are one of those key categories of prehistoric material which no archaeologist who finds one can ignore. Whether working in central America or southeast Europe, or in any of the many other contexts in which figurines abound, they form a central class of material which generates a heightened level of interest and attention. But however numerous and how-ever intriguing, prehistoric figurines have another crucial quality — that of ambiguity. Without the help of textual evidence, can prehistoric figurines be confidently interpreted or understood? Can we ever hope to know what an individual figurine was meant to represent, or why it was modelled in the way it was? Yet the challenge of interpretation can hardly be refiised. For figurines illustrate self-awareness, which is a unique human characteristic. It is this dilemma — the impulse to interpret, but the difficulty of doing so convincingly — which is the focus of the present Viewpoint.Figurines are found in many (though not all) regions and periods of prehistory. The earliest — the female forms once referred to as ‘Venus figurines’ — date back to the Upper Palaeolithic. At the other end of the scale, figurines are still in active production today, in the form of dolls, models and statues. In a prehistoric context, figurines have multiple dimensions of interest and meaning. In first place, there is the issue of sex and gender. Many figurines are clearly female, yet their gender significance, in both social and cognitive terms (rather than in simplistic notions of Mother Goddess or sex object), has only recently begun to be considered in a serious and critical way. Then there is the aspect of human self-awareness which the figurines so vibrantly express. Figurines also encode important cognitive elements in the modelling and representation of the human form, their makers frequently exaggerating some features or concealing others. Nor, ultimately, can we avoid the question of belief, and the ritual context in which so many figurines were made or used.The contributors to this Viewpoint feature all believe that figurines can indeed be interpreted. But they also lay stress on the vital importance of context and definition. Prehistoric figurines cannot be understood as isolated artefacts, but must be seen as products of particular societies. How far we can penetrate into their meanings — and into the minds of their prehistoric makers — is the fundamental question which underpins this discussion. Can we interpret figurines? And if so, how should we go about it?

This article aimed to determine the three-dimensional visual tradition in the Majapahit kingdom. This was a manifestation of aesthetic that expressed in various forms, one of them was the figurines that represented linkage aspects in Majapahit’s community life. Terracotta was used as the main basic material in making figurines. Figurines indicated two aspects, namely the human relationship with the natural environment surrounding that translated into a mechanism for the creation, and showed the dimensions of social life in the Hindu tradition. The method used is empirical relational visual with text. In addition, the article was the result of field research conducted under the supervision of Sacred Bridge Foundation, which lasted from 2009 to 2010 in Trowulan as a heritage center site of Majapahit that spread over an area of nearly 100 km2. The research finds out that figurines as a proof of authenticity and identity of the Majapahit that understood as the embodiment of visual culture manifestation.

AbstractThis paper examines the materiality—or the mutually constitutive relationships between people and things—of Aztec rattle figurines in order to shed light on household ritual life in Postclassic central Mexico. By examining iconographic, archaeological, and ethnohistoric evidence, I argue that these figurines were actively used in household healing rituals concerning successful biological and social reproduction, comprised of the work, relationships, and attitudes that perpetuate human life. I then consider the physical experience of that ritual use by exploring the visual, tactile, auditory, and physiological aspects of these figurines. I contend that their visibility in workshops, markets, and the home presented an image of the female body that reinforced women's important roles in the production and reproduction of the household and society. Finally, the material qualities of these figurines reveal ancient discourses on the human body and experimentation with bodily representation in terms of scale, form, and material.

AbstractThrough analysis of a figurine assemblage from the site of Koçumbeli-Ankara, this study aims to re-evaluate the origins, meanings and functions of the Early Bronze Age (third millennium BC) anthropomorphic figurines of Anatolia. Conventional typological approaches to figurines are often focused on their origins and sex; however, such approaches hinder an understanding of the context of the norms of production, display and discard within which the figurines become more meaningful. Following an examination of breakage patterns and the decorative aspects of the Koçumbeli assemblage, a comparative review of figurine find contexts, raw materials and abstraction scales in Anatolia is provided, so that the social concerns underlying the use of these figurines can be explored. It is concluded that the origins of the figurines are difficult to pinpoint, due to the presence of similar items across a variety of regions of the Near East from the later Neolithic onwards. The sex of the figurines is equally ambiguous; while some human sexual features can be discerned, it is difficult to decide whether these features are ‘male’, ‘female’, both or beyond classification. Alternatively, the decoration, breakage and find contexts of the figurines suggest that the imagery was embedded in more complex perceptions of social status, death and social regeneration. The need for materialisation of these concerns in the form of the figurines could be related to the development of a new social landscape of interaction leading to political centralisation by the second millennium BC. Furthermore, the figurines were produced through a meaningful linking of particular raw materials and particular abstraction scales to particular use contexts, which seems to have shifted during the centralisation process.

Stone artefacts have been studied from various aspects. During the last decades possible behavioural aspects have been emphasized in discussions of different strategies in prehistoric manufacture and acquisition. In this paper specialization and distribution of stone tools are discussed in connection with manufacture, acquisition and consumption. The interpretation is based on Late Neolithic/Bronze Age assemblages in northern Sweden.

Technology studies have always been the most important focus of archaeology, as a science which analyzes human past through the study of material culture. To say that something is technological in archaeology, means to put the concept of technology in the centre of theoretical studies, and to study not only the form of the object, but also the entire sequence of technological factors, from raw material choice, mode of use, up to the reasons for abandonment. The concept of technology in anthropology and archaeology is based on the original meaning of the word ????? in ancient Greek, meaning the skill, i. e., to study how something is being done. Such a concept of technology as a skill or mode of doing something was for the first time outlined by the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss, whose starting point was that every technological statement was at the same time social or cultural statement and that technological choices have social foundations. Pierre Lemonnier further developed the anthropology of technology, focusing on the question of technological choices, as well as numerous other anthropologists. In archaeology, the most important contribution to the study of technology was the work of Andr? Leroi-Gourhan, who created the concept of cha?ne op?ratoire, as an analytical tool for studying the mode of creating, using and discarding an artefact, starting with raw material acquisition, mode of manufacture, final form, use (including caching, breaking and repairing) up to the final discarding. It is not only about reconstructing the algorithmic sequence of operations in creating one object, but it is a complex analysis of operational chain within one society which includes the analysis of technological choices. The analyses of technologies today include a variety of different approaches, most of them with emphasis on the cultural and social aspects of technology. The analysis of bone industry in the Early and Middle Neolithic in central Balkans (Starcevo culture), which included not only final objects, but also manufacture debris and semi-finished products, revealed a well developed industry, with a high level of technological knowledge on the properties of raw materials, skillful manufacture, well organized production, as well as possibility of a certain degree of specialization on the micro and macro level (within one settlement and within a group of settlements). Both raw material choices and manufacturing techniques, as well as the final forms, demonstrated a high standardization level. Also certain symbolic value was attributed to some raw materials, and there is a possibility that skill itself was valued. Further analyses of multiple technologies will help in reconstructing the organization of production, social and economic aspects in Neolithic societies, as well as the role of technology in everyday and ritual life.

Textiles and clothing are among the most visible aspects of human social and symbolic behaviour and yet they have left all too few traces in the archaeological record and it is easy to overlook their importance. Luxury textiles such as silk can additionally provide evidence of long-distance contact, notably between Europe and China during the Han dynasty and the Roman empire. But can these connections be projected back in time to the prehistoric period? The late Irene Good proposed a number of identifications of silk in Iron Age Europe and was instrumental in bringing the issue to wider attention. Closer examination reported here, however, calls those identifications into question. Instead, the case is put that none of the claimed Iron Age silks can be confirmed, and that early traffic in silk textiles to Europe before the Roman period cannot be substantiated.

After the collapse of most early states in the East around 1200 BC, parts of the western Mediterranean experienced technological progress and demographic rise, apparently without adapting forms of hierarchic political organization. A very good example is Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age nuragic Sardinia, which had been connected to eastern trade networks since Mycenaean times, and developed into one of the most important venues for culture contact and exchange in the West after 1200 BC. However, its rich archaeological record, including figurines, architecture, sanctuaries, villages and tombs, does neither indicate the existence of ‘elite’ groups, nor does it show any traces of a hierarchic society. This article examines the possibility that a non-hierarchical form of socio-political organization devoid of elites developed to a high level of cultural complexity and progress on the island. Other important aspects are the role of immigration as an integrant in nuragic society, considering comparable situations of non-hierarchic politics in ethnography and history, as well as theoretical approaches to forms of social organization. It is concluded that socio-economic development does not necessarily require a centralized political authority.

Recent developments in pottery studies have altered the way archaeologists handle and interpret prehistoric pottery. The technology and use of pottery, the symbolic and social meaning of the pot are considered as anthropological phenomena, the products of human action. Excavations at Late Neolithic Makriyalos offered the opportunity to explore from a new perspective several aspects of neolithic society in Greece in terms of the use, function, distribution and discard of pottery.

Recent work on the association between anthropological and archaeological interpretations has been of great value in the study of prehistoric social organisation. Health and dietary differences are an important aspect of the relationship between population and its environment. The present work investigates some forty skeletal remains from a partially excavated Early Iron Age (1100–700 BC) cemetery in northern Greece and attempts to trace aspects of the health status of the cemetery population concerned. Individuals of all ages and sexes have been recorded. Examination reveals a remarkable prevalence of dental disease, a few cases of cribra orbitalia (possibly related to some postcranial infectious manifestations), one typical case of osteoporosis, and a few arthritic spinal changes. The rarity of prehistoric skeletal material in northern Greece, as well as the noticeable lack of anthropological studies in the area, make the research significant for further interpretations considering issues of social structure and reconstruction of past human populations.

Archaeologists have tended to overemphasize spatial and temporal boundaries between social groups at the expense of crosscutting and historical links. This bias is rooted in ethnographic conceptions of cultural identity and fails to make use of the time depth that is archaeology's primary advantage in the study of human behavior. An emphasis on synchronic, bounded spatial units like culture areas has obscured diachronic dimensions of identity, especially linear and historical constructs that are common among many indigenous groups. Incorporating these indigenous perspectives into archaeological research is a productive means of advancing archaeological theory and practice regarding identity. A case study from the American Southwest illustrates this approach.

Prehistoric research in South Banyuwangi by the National Center of Archaeology of Yogyakarta Regional Office between 2008-2011 have found artifact assemblage which indicating stone tool workshop activities. The typology of artifacts which reflecting workshop activities, including; nucleus, percutor, debitage, rough adze, and polishing stone. This paper uses chaîne opératoire approach to reconstruct the producing process and technological aspects related to the manufacturing process of stone adze from neolithic workshop sites in the region. This study is expected to increasing our understanding on technological perspective in the manufacture of Neolithic stone tools, and to give some idea about the social aspects of life of Austronesian speaking people in Indonesia.

AbstractThis study investigates prehistoric West Mexican mortuary activities as technological systems. Specifically, the production, distribution, and use of mortuary ceramics are considered within a social context. Technological changes occurring between the Late Formative and Classic periods (200b.c.–a.d. 700) at the site of Tabachines are compared to changes occurring at the center of the Teuchitlan tradition, 50 km away. At Tabachines, all aspects of the technology point to profound social change: tomb construction, treatment of the dead and offerings, and the approach to the production and use of mortuary ceramics. These changes are considered within a regional scope.

The ability to identify distinct types of cherts and chalcedonies at the large prehistoric housepit site of Keatley Creek on the British Columbia plateau has made it possible to infer important aspects of socioeconomic organization from ca. 2400 to 1100 B.P. Each large housepit tested at the site appears to have a distinctive and characteristic composition of chert and chalcedony debitage which remains coherent over time (for at least 1,000 years). Three inferences concerning socioeconomic organization are derived from these observations: (1) residents of each large housepit probably foraged in distinctly different ranges during nonwinter months where they procured their raw stone materials; (2) residents of each large pithouse formed “residential corporate groups” that differed in their access to stone resources; and (3) the “residential corporate groups” that occupied large pithouses retained economic rights, corporate identity, and ownership of specific pithouse premises for unusually long time periods spanning more than a millennium. Differences between lithic assemblages of housepits were confirmed by three separate and independent analyses employing successively more sophisticated techniques.

The Bronze to Iron Age transition in Crete, a period of state collapse and insecurity, saw the island's rugged, high-contrast topography used in striking new ways. The visual drama of many of the new site locations has stimulated significant research over the last hundred years, with explanation of the change as the main focus. The new sites are not monumental in character: the vast majority are settlements, and much of the information about them comes from survey. Perhaps as a result, the new site map has not been much studied from phenomenological perspectives. A focus on the visual and experiential aspects of the new landscape can offer valuable insights into social structures at this period, and illuminate social developments prefiguring the emergence of polis states in Crete by c. 700 bc. To develop, share and evaluate this type of integrated study, digital reconstructive techniques are still under-used in this region. I highlight their potential value in addressing a regularly-identified shortcoming of phenomenological approaches — their necessarily subjective emphasis.

Fungi are some of the most diverse organisms on earth and since prehistoric times have played an important role in human society. In recent years they have become a strategic asset not only in the conservation and management of ecosystems but also as a resource for halting the exodus from rural areas in peripheral Mediterranean regions, such as inland eastern Spain. In view of this important ecological and socioeconomic role, in this paper we present a geographical analysis of edible fungi, paying particular attention to the Spanish case. To this end we carried out a bibliographic review of the climatic factors affecting the fruiting of these fungi and the socioeconomic aspects of their commercial exploitation. We also performed an online search for mycotourism-related activities and explored the statistical data on the cultivation of edible mushrooms and its economic impact. Our main findings include a synthesis of the international research on the effects of climatic variability on the natural production of macrofungi, and an assessment of the economic viability and the social importance of mushrooms in Spain, in particular in relation to the current and future potential of mushroom cultivation and the multifunctional management and use of forests.

Oliver J.T. Harris and Tim Flohr Sørensen have written an interesting and urgent paper, raising crucial points touching upon a question at the very core of archaeology: what can we learn about the lives of prehistoric people, based solely on the material remains? Or, rephrased, how far can we reach on the Hawkesian ladder? To tackle this question, Harris and Sørensen accept the ten-year-old challenge raised by Sarah Tarlow, and suggest a vocabulary that will enable archaeologists to include emotional aspects in their interpretations. As they point out, several studies in archaeology have focused on emotion during the last decade, using burials as their main material. But as they acknowledge that emotions were a part of mundane social life, and not limited to ritualized events such as burials, they want to broaden the span of their inquiry and include materials from other contexts as well. As they do this, they make an interesting point and take a step forward in the development of archaeological interpretation. However, I would argue that they could have explored the issue even further. It would, for example, have been interesting to see them apply their ideas to some of the more mundane archaeological materials, from, for example, settlements that would be more explicitly connected to everyday life. Instead they use a quite spectacular site, where dramatic events have taken place. Is it perhaps easier to make assumptions about emotions when they are suspected to have been intense and exceptional in some way? The mundane emotions still escape us. Nevertheless, the case study chosen by Harris and Sørensen still illustrates their arguments and serves as an example for how the suggested vocabulary may be used.

This article, which is based on the fourteenth McDonald Lecture, considers two tensions in contemporary archaeology. One is between interpretations of specific structures, monuments and deposits as the result of either ‘ritual’ or ‘practical’ activities in the past, and the other is between an archaeology that focuses on subsistence and adaptation and one that emphasizes cognition, meaning, and agency. It suggests that these tensions arise from an inadequate conception of ritual itself. Drawing on recent studies of ritualization, it suggests that it might be more helpful to consider how aspects of domestic life took on special qualities in later prehistoric Europe. The discussion is based mainly on Neolithic enclosures and other monuments, Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement sites and the Viereckschanzen of central Europe. It may have implications for field archaeology as well as social archaeology, and also for those who study the formation of the archaeological record.

For more than a century, archaeologists have studied the cultural and skeletal remains of the prehistoric Native Americans known as the “Hopewell Moundbuilders.” While many aspects of the Hopewell phenomenon are now well understood, questions still remain about the genetic makeup, burial practices, and social structure of Hopewell communities. To help answer these questions, we extracted mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the skeletal remains of 39 individuals buried at the Pete Klunk Mound Group in Illinois. The pattern of mtDNA variation at this site suggests that matrilineal relationships did not strongly influence burial practices. Because different forms of mortuary activity were not associated with distinct genetic lineages, this study provides no evidence of a maternally inherited or ascribed status system in this society. The genetic data collected here also help clarify another aspect of Illinois Hopewell social structure by suggesting a matrilocal system of post-marital residence. Finally, when these data were considered in conjunction with mtDNA data previously collected from the Hopewell Mound Group in Ohio (Mills 2003), they demonstrated that migration and gene flow did accompany the cultural exchange between Hopewell communities in the Illinois and Ohio Valleys.

Collapse and abandonment dominate the popular literature on prehistoric societies, yet we know that reorganization is a more common process by which social and ecological relationships change. We explore the process of reorganization using the emerging perspective of resilience theory. Ecologists and social scientists working within a resilience perspective have argued that reorganization is an important component of long-term adaptive cycles, but it remains understudied in both social science and ecology. One of the central assumptions to emerge from the resilience perspective is that declines in the diversity of social and ecological units contribute to transformations in social and ecological systems. We evaluate this assumption using archaeological data, which offer an opportunity to investigate a time span rarely examined in studies of resilience and reorganization. We focus on the 11th to 13th century in the eastern Mimbres area of southwestern New Mexico, a period within which a substantial reorganization occurred. Much is known about the regional-scale changes that resulted in the depopulation of nearly every large village in the Mimbres region, what some have referred to as the “Mimbres collapse.” Our analyses examine both continuity and change in aspects of house- and village-level reorganization.

New human aDNA studies have once again brought to the forefront the role of mobility and migration in shaping social phenomena in European prehistory, processes that recent theoretical frameworks in archaeology have downplayed as an outdated explanatory notion linked to traditional culture history. While these new genetic data have provided new insights into the population history of prehistoric Europe, they are frequently interpreted and presented in a manner that recalls aspects of traditional culture-historical archaeology that were rightly criticized through the 1970s to the 1990s. They include the idea that shared material culture indicates shared participation in the same social group, or culture, and that these cultures constitute one-dimensional, homogeneous, and clearly bounded social entities. Since the new aDNA data are used to create vivid narratives describing ‘massive migrations’, the so-called cultural groups are once again likened to human populations and in turn revitalized as external drivers for socio-cultural change. Here, I argue for a more nuanced consideration of molecular data that more explicitly incorporates anthropologically informed mobility and migration models.

Borneo island, a part of Sundaland &amp;ndash; a great mainland in South East Asia thousands of years ago &amp;ndash; is the largest island in Indonesian Archipelago. In the middle-eastern of East Borneo, lies a peninsula karst region named Sangkulirang Mangkalihat. The region’s biodiversity contains many species of flora and fauna which are part of karst ecosystem.<br> Surprisingly, thousands prehistoric rock art paintings and engraving were found here, spread over 48 inland caves in seven different karst mountain areas. The rock arts are painted on the ceiling, wall, and hollow of the cave depends on the meaning. They illustrate forms such as spiritual images (zoomorphic and antropomorphic) for sacred spiritual meaning, and social phenomenon images (tools and weapons) for description of daily life. From all those rock-arts, hand paintings are the most common elements appeared. Compared to other paintings, these are the only negative images using different techniques.<br> Radiocarbon dating indicated that the rock-arts at Tewet Cave in Sangkulirang Mangkalihat is 40,000&amp;thinsp;BP. It is much earlier compared to Lascaux Cave (35,400&amp;thinsp;BP) and Chauvet Cave (32,000) in France which were previously known as the earliest one in the world.<br> Rock arts and some archeological findings also indicate the migration of Austronesian People. During the migration, Borneo’s climate and land cover were changing from time to time. Continental climate occurred when all Sundaland was still dry (40,000&amp;ndash;21,000&amp;thinsp;BP), followed by tropical savanna climate and archipelagic climate (12,000&amp;ndash;7.000&amp;thinsp;BP), and then Tropical Rainforest consecutively (1,000&amp;thinsp;BP). Correlatively, geological interpretations from such areas indicate land cover changes. These changes effected Austronesian ways of living, e.g. from hunting to fishing, and were depicted clearly on their paintings.<br> Today, &amp;ndash; as observed from time series satellite images &amp;ndash; industrial activities such as karst exploitation for cement production and land clearing for palm oil plantation are threatening Sangkulirang Mangkalihat as they are approaching this particular areas. Efforts were conducted to preserve these particular sites, from establishing local regulations to a great step to propose it as one of UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage.<br> To disseminate its importance as the world’s earliest known rock arts, a particular map should be designed. The map should be able to describe multiple aspects regarding these sites, i.e. its location and position among other world rock arts, detail locations in the sites, climate and geomorphological changes occurred and its effects to these rock arts, its correlation to prehistoric migration, and threats faced today from industrial activities. An integrated, multiscale representation of such geospatial informations is considered.

There are few aspects of human behaviour more fundamental than our ability to use language. Language plays a key role in the study of any living human society, and of all historical communities which have left us written records. In theory it could also throw enormous light on the development and relationships of prehistoric human communities. But here there is a huge and obvious problem: what evidence can there be for human languages in the pre-literate, prehistoric age? In other words, what hope is therefor a prehistory of linguistics? There is no easy answer, yet it is hard to accept that any account of human prehistory can be considered adequate without some knowledge of prehistoric languages and linguistic relationships, if only at the broadest scale.The list of questions we might wish to pose stretches back to the period of the very earliest hominids. When did our human ancestors first begin to talk to each other? Was language acquisition sudden or gradual? Did human language arise in one place, and then spread and diversify from- that point? Or did it emerge independently, among separate groups of early humans in different parts of the world?Leading on from this is the study of ethnicity and ethnogenesis. Since the end of the nineteenth century one of the biggest problems facing prehistoric archaeologists has been the identification and interpretation of archaeological cultures and cultural groups. Do these have any social or ethnic reality? Is it right to speak of a Beaker ‘folk’? Was the Bandkeramik colonization the work of one people or of many? These questions would be so much easier to resolve if only we could trace the prehistory of languages, and could establish, for instance, whether all Bandkeramik and Beaker users spoke the same or a related language.Such possibilities may seem exciting and hopeful to some, irredeemably optimistic to others. Whatever view we take, they clearly merit serious discussion. In the present Viewpoint, our third in the series, we have asked five writers — two archaeologists (Renfrew & Bellwood), three linguists (Bynon, Ruhlen & Dolgopolsky) — to give their own, personal response to the key question ‘Is there a prehistory of linguistics?’ Can we, from the evidence of archaeology, linguistics (and now DNA studies), say anything positive about langtiage in prehistory?

Monumental ditches and Bell Beakers are two key phenomena in later prehistoric Europe involved in the study of El Ventorro, near Madrid. In this article, we discuss and develop an analytical protocol for a thorough characterisation of the patterns of breakage, abrasion, and representation of ceramics. The procedure is tested with a large ceramic sample from ‘Pithouse 013’, an unusually rich context which challenges stereotypical accounts of the domestic sphere, feasting, and prestige goods deposition. This sunken feature was filled with a heterogeneous mixture of recently broken remains and secondary residues, and is reinterpreted here as a ditch segment instead of everyday fossilised occupation surfaces. The paper sheds important new light on depositional practices, the social biographies of Beaker pottery, and the infilling of ditched enclosures. It also allows the assessment of the potential of this integrated re-fitting and taphonomic strategy to illuminate poorly understood aspects of pottery in a range of time–place contexts.

The first phase of the Trypillia mega-sites' methodological revolution began in 1971 with aerial photography, magnetic prospection, and archaeological excavations of huge settlements of hundreds of hectares belonging to the Trypillia culture in Ukraine. Since 2009, we have created a second phase of the methodological revolution in studies of Trypillia mega-sites, which has provided more significant advances in our understanding of these large sites than any other single research development in the last three decades, thanks partly to the participation of joint Ukrainian-foreign teams. In this paper, we outline the main aspects of the second phase, using examples from the Anglo-Ukrainian project ‘Early urbanism in prehistoric Europe: the case of the Trypillia mega-sites', working at Nebelivka (also spelled ‘Nebilivka’), and the Ukrainian-German project ‘Economy, demography and social space of Trypillia mega-sites', working at Taljanky (‘Talianki’), Maydanetske (‘Maydanetskoe’), and Dobrovody, as well as the smaller site at Apolianka.

This paper deals with the problems and discussions of the diversified cultural changes and the multicultural aspects of prehistoric societies. Prejudices about archaeology and "ethnicity" are exemplified by the almost 150 year old discussions on the Khazar khaganate, alternately a distinct delimited archaeological culture from the 8th-9th-centuries - the Saltovo-Majaki culture. The interpretation of Khazarian material culture has often been made in terms of "ethnicity", and yet the cultural identity, the multiplicity of the society, etc. , are not translated to the material culture. The economical, social and religious changes are the most significant phenomena within the "Saltovo-Majaki culture” and/or the Khazar khaganate: the transition from nomadism to sedentism, from tribal aristocracy to feudalism, and the transformation to a monotheistic religion. The common denominator for the Khazaria and the Saltovo-Majaki culture is, in my opinion, the pluralism of the social structures and economy, and the multidimensional character of cultural identity. The formation of complexes of archaeological items common to the whole of the steppe and forest/steppe areas, does not allow for connections between a specific archaeological material and a specific "ethnic" group of the past or of modern times.

Depictions of human faces and rice-crop images found at the Jiangjunya rock-art site in Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province, China, reveal entangling relationships between spiritual and economic aspects. Drawing on the relational ecology model and animist ontology theory, the author provides an analysis of the Jiangjunya rock art in its economic, social, spiritual and historical contexts, proposing that prehistoric farmers along China's east coast perceived rice plants as relating to persons. Rice was conceptualized not in utilitarian terms as a means of subsistence (used and consumed by humans) but rather as subjects capable of action. The human masks of Jiangjunya hence suggest a personhood for rice, rather than representing humans or anthropomorphic gods. Furthermore, the history of the Jiangjunya rock-art site corresponds with the history of local economics. The relational ontologies might have transformed gradually from human–animal interactions in the Late Palaeolithic and Early Neolithic periods to human–plant interactions in Late Neolithic societies. The author concludes that the art site was possibly treated as a mnemonic maintaining interpersonal and intersubjective relationships across thousands of years.

In human societies, we observe a wide range of types of stratification, i.e., in terms of financial class, political power, level of education, sanctity, and military force. In financial, political, and social sciences, stratification is one of the most important issues and tools as the Lorenz Curve and the Gini Coefficient have been developed to describe some of its aspects. Stratification is greatly dependent on the access of people to wealth. By “wealth”, we mean the quantified prosperity which increases the life expectancy of people. Prosperity is also connected to the water-food-energy nexus which is necessary for human survival. Analyzing proxies of the water-food-energy nexus, we suggest that the best proxy for prosperity is energy, which is closely related to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and life expectancy. In order to describe the dynamics of social stratification, we formulate an entropic view of wealth in human societies. An entropic approach to income distribution, approximated as available energy in prehistoric societies, till present-day economies, shows that stratification can be viewed as a stochastic process subject to the principle of maximum entropy and occurring when limits to the wealth of society are set, either by the political and economic system and/or by the limits of available technology.

Abstract:This article aims to explore the idea that enhancement technologies have been and will continue to be an essential element of what we might call the “human continuum,” and are indeed key to our existence and evolution into persons. Whereas conservative commentators argue that enhancement is likely to cause us to lose our humanity and become something other, it is argued here that the very opposite is true: that enhancement is the core of what and who we are. Using evidence from paleoanthropology to examine the nature of our predecessor species, and their proclivities for tool use, we can see that there is good reason to assume that the development of Homo sapiens is a direct result of the use of enhancement technologies. A case is also made for broad understandings of the scope of enhancement, based on the significant evolutionary results of acts that are usually dismissed as “unremarkable.” Furthermore, the use of enhancement by modern humans is no different than these prehistoric applications, and is likely to ultimately have similar results. There is no good reason to assume that whatever we may become will not also consider itself human.

The need for security is one of the basic human needs, and it occupies one of the basic places in the hierarchy of human motivation. Since prehistoric times, the human community and individuals, first in harmony with nature, and then with social challenges, have developed solutions and responses to challenges and threats to their survival, existence and development. As human society has progressed in its development, new challenges and threats to both individual and collective security have progressively emerged. In today's age and in modern society, there has been a paradoxical situation, that we have an exponentially increased number of security risks, and that the security culture, or the culture of security of life, has practically disappeared from the culture. The reasons are complex, and there are many factors in that chain. One of the most important factors is the media, especially the mass media, which in most aspects determine social consciousness, especially among adolescents and young people. The aim of this paper is to investigate the correlation between media, public discourse and adolescent culture, mechanisms of media action, as well as ways in which these mechanisms can be directed towards better performance of socially useful functions, of which encouraging the development of security culture awareness is one of the key tasks for the common good.

Archaeologists have long debated the potential role of iconographic repertoires in reconstructing prehistoric ontologies and symbolic systems. The rich and complex imagery unearthed at Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe (Turkey) has offered a promising ground to address this issue further. Previous interpretations have focused on the symbolic meaning of the depictions, often highlighting their male-centred and violent connotations, while overlooking the spatial and performative contexts of the depictions. This paper engages with this scholarly work in order to propose a new interpretation based on the anthropological framework of relational ontologies and on the analysis of some stylistic and contextual aspects of the iconography. Based on these premises, the curvilinear enclosures of Göbekli Tepe are interpreted as places of encounter devoted to interpersonal relationships among human and non-human agents, enabled by the intermediary role of images. The use of particular techniques of visual representation—including cues of motion and an emphasis on three-dimensionality—along with the centripetal orientation of the animal figures contributed to the animation of the depicted animals and to a sense of convergence of human and non-human beings in the social space of the enclosures.

<span>Food related research in Southeast Asian archaeology is heavily biased towards the assessment of subsistence strategies as well as typological and petrographic analyses of ceramics. Little is known about the range of diverse food items, how they were prepared and consumed, and the importance these foods played in the social lives of people in the past. My research seeks to extend the treatment of food in Southeast Asia archaeology from subsistence “strategies” to foodways by incorporating technofunctional and organic residue analyses of earthenware pottery vessels to address outstanding questions about their function with regard to the preparation and consumption of food. This paper presents preliminary findings on a range of prehistoric earthenware pottery excavated from Rạch Núi, An Sơn (Neolithic), and Gò Ô Chùa (Metal Age) sites in Long An Province, Southern Vietnam. Results are compared with similar data from experimental and ethnographic pottery as well as integrated with complementary data associated with the archaeological pottery samples. It is predicted that integrative analysis of technofunctional aspects of earthenware pottery with organic residue analysis will provide new perspectives on the foodways in Southern Vietnam during the Neolithic and Metal Age.</span>

The article deals with a group of ceramic toys originating from the archaeological excavations of Poltava city of the Early Modern period. The results of researches of urban centers in Ukraine show interesting material, which differs depending on the region, social and economic development, and other things. The things, which related to the world of childhood in the Hetmanate, are very important. Such finds represented mainly by clay toys. They are dividing into several categories. The compiling of the source base for this article began in the 1990s, when excavations within modern Poltava became systematic. Also there is considered the fact, that the collection of clay toys from Poltava is large, compared to other cities of Early Modern Europe. Archaeological materials have created a foundation for the study of various aspects of everyday life of citizens, including children. In Early Modern times, clay toys represented mainly by figures of animals (including birds), people, and small copies of household vessels. Most of them belong to the miniature dishes, which were represented mainly by pots-“monetary”. There are also bowls, jugs, mugs, and lids. Such products repeated mainly all forms of traditional ceramics, differing only in size. Miniature pottery probably reflected some part of the “adult” life of the Early Modern time. Musical instruments represent another group of clay toys. These were mostly zoomorphic whistles, which differed in technique and sound. The third category of toys includes anthropomorphic ceramic figurines, among which the image of a lady («bárynia») or a rider predominates. They can be used in children’s figurative play. There is a suggestion that toys helped the younger generation to get some skills in using household items or future social roles. Therefore, archaeological researches made it possible to shed some light on the life of the citizens of Early Modern Poltava. Keywords: Early Modern times, Hetmanate, Poltava, clay toy, miniature vessel, whistle, ceramic figurine.

During the colonial era, southern Mendoza, Argentina, functioned as a frontier where indigenous and Spanish-speaking people interacted. Contact caused major transformations to indigenous economic, social, and political organization. Archaeological analysis is fundamental to understanding the characteristics of local indigenous populations that rapidly incorporated European products into their diets. Analysis of archaeological remains from the region, therefore, can cast light on important aspects of Spanish-indigenous interactions. The aim of this work is to describe the archaeobotanical record of Cueva de Luna—located in the Rio Grande Valley and containing occupations dated between ca. 3800 B.P. and European contact—and to understand how plants were exploited by the inhabitants of southern Mendoza. Preliminary analysis of the archaeobotanical record, consisting primarily of seeds and woody endocarps in a dry state of preservation, indicates the use of native wild taxa, among which algarrobo (Prosopis sp.), molle (Schinus polygamus), solupe (Ephedra), and jarilla (Larrea nitida) abound. American cultivars including beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) are also present. Significantly, the record includes Eurasian taxa, including wheat (Triticum sp.) and walnut tree (Juglans sp.). The Cueva de Luna record is important in this regard for it may correspond to the nineteenth century, when the area was inhabited by what may have been the last indigenous Pehuenche group preceding the current ranchers. Our results provide a basis for future work related to change and continuity in the prehistoric use of plants.

Archaeological cultural resources in the Maluku Islands consist of a variety of aspects, including Prehistoric, Historic, Islamic, colonial and Ethnoarchaeology. These aspects are categorized in helping the mapping of archaeological research in the Maluku Islands. Functional structural archaeological remains integrated in the cultural unity of the social system as a symbolic interaction. Maluku Archipelago covers the two areas, namely Maluku and North Maluku. The problem this paper is how archaeological resources can show the interpretation of symbolic interaction. Archaeological remains (cultural resources); dolmen, caves, castles, old country/old settlement, menhirs, sultanate, Kapata / folklore is the basic structure of cultural understanding in the Maluku Islands. The goal is to know and understand the remains, archaeological remains were able to reconstruct the culture of human society Maluku Islands. Approach to research using library study. From the research that archaeological cultural resources is a symbolic interpretation of the interaction of a group of human society in a particular area. Sites sampled studies prove that archaeological cultural resources as a reflection of the people of Maluku Generally and certain areas in the Moluccas in particular.Sumberdaya budaya arkeologi di Kepulauan Maluku terdiri dari berbagai aspek, diantaranya Prasejarah, Sejarah, Islam, Kolonial dan Etnoarkeologi. Aspek-aspek tersebut dikategorisasikan untuk memudahkan pemetaan penelitian arkeologi di Kepulauan Maluku. Struktural fungsional tinggalan-tinggalan arkeologi terintegrasi dalam kesatuan sistem sosial budaya sebagai interaksi simbolik. Kepulauan Maluku berarti kita berbicara dalam dua wilayah, yaitu Maluku dan Maluku Utara. Permasalahan penulisan ini adalah bagaimana sumberdaya budaya arkeologis dapat menunjukan interprestasi interaksi simbolik. Tinggalan-tinggalan arkeologis (sumberdaya budaya); dolmen, gua, benteng, negeri lama/permukiman lama, menhir, kesultanan, kapata/folklore adalah struktur dasar pemahaman akan kebudayaan di Kepulauan Maluku. Tujuannya adalah untuk mengetahui dan memahami tinggalan-tinggalan arkeologis mampu merekonstruksi kebudayaan masyarakat manusia Kepulauan Maluku. Pendekatan penelitian menggunakan studi kepustakaan. Dari hasil penelitian bahwa sumberdaya budaya arkeologi merupakan suatu interprestasi interaksi simbolik suatu kelompok manusia masyarakat pada daerah tertentu. Situs-situs kajian penulis yang menjadi sampel membuktikan bahwa sumberdaya budaya arkeologi sebagai cerminan masyarakat Maluku Umumnya dan daerah tertentu di Maluku pada khususnya.

Pottery has given impact both on people’s lives in the past, ranging from prehistoric time to the present. This research aims to reveal cultural aspects of people in the past such as social, economic, art, religion, language and behavior. The data were collected through random sampling method, then analized typologically refers to the formulation of E.Edward Mc.Kinnon in Buku Panduan Keramik (ceramic guide book). The finding of pottery fragments at Delubang and Toroan Site includes two types of textures namely coarse and fine pottery fragments. The parts of pottery are base, body, rim/lip which are parts of pots, jars and plates. The findings show technology which marked the beginning of neolithic culture at this site, reminiscent of the race Mongolid which regarded as a disseminator of culture of pottery in the area of Indonesia. Gerabah telah memberikan pengaruh secara kompleks terhadap kehidupan masyarakat pada masa lalu, mulai dari masa prasejarah sampai sekarang. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui aspek-aspek budaya kehidupan manusia masa lalu seperti; sosial, ekonomi, seni, religi, bahasa dan pola tingkah laku. Pengumpulan data dengan menggunakan random sampling yang kemudian dianalisis secara tipologi mengacu pada rumusan E. Edward Mc.Kinnon dalam Buku Panduan Keramik. Temuan fragmen gerabah di Situs Delubang dan Toroan, meliputi dua jenis tekstur yaitu fragmen gerabah kasar dan halus. Jenis fragmen gerabah yang ditemukan adalah dasar, badan, tepian/bibir dengan bentuk yang bervariasi seperti periuk, tempayan, dan piring. Hal ini menunjukan teknologi yang menandakan dimulainya budaya neolitik pada situs ini, mengingatkan mengenai ras Mongolid yang dianggap sebagai penyebar budaya gerabah di wilayah Indonesia.

Abstract. The term "half-timbered walls with earth infill" refers to a wide number of techniques in which structural wooden elements are combined with enclosures made of earth. The use of these constructive systems dates back to prehistoric times and their evolution has differed based on the physical, social and cultural conditions of each place. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to define the concept of half-timbered walls with earth infill in the Spanish context and to understand the geographical, urban, architectural and constructive reasons that have favoured or hindered its use in traditional architecture. The methodology used is based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the largest possible number of case studies. This allows a database to be set up for the purposes of performing global analysis and drawing objective and statistically valid conclusions. This information is managed using a study sheet with information ranging from general aspects of buildings with the presence of these techniques to detailed features of half-timbered walls. The data and conclusions presented in this paper focus on these half-timbered walls, including information on the geographical distribution of these techniques, the characteristics of the buildings in which they are used, the combination of mixed walls with other construction techniques, and the state of conservation and transformation of the buildings in which they are used. It has been established that these techniques are common in mountainous landscapes, where there is optimal woodland for construction, and in urban environments, where they are presented as optimum techniques to maximize the profitability of the buildable surface.

European Trade and Colonial Conquest is authored by Biplab Dasgupta, arenowned political and social activist from Calcutta who taught economics atCalcutta University and was a member of the Parliament of India for severalyears. He has authored many books on various aspects of India’s socioeconomicand political life in the post-independence era, such as the oil industry,the Naxalite movements, trends in Indian politics, labor issues and globalization,agrarian change and technology, rural change, urbanization, and migration.The present book primarily focuses on the evolution of Bengal’s economyand society over the precolonial period, beginning from prehistoric days.Even though there are writings on Bengal’s colonial history, we know verylittle about its precolonial past except for the names of kings, the chronologyof dynasties, and scattered references to urban settlements.Dasgupta shows a specific interest in highlighting the socioeconomichistory of the last two and half centuries, from Vasco de Gama’s journey toIndia in 1498 to the battle of Palashi in 1757. The author asserts that heexplores in detail the socioeconomic and political context of Bengal thatfacilitated the transfer of power to European hands, because historians generallyignore this rather quite long and critical period. He, therefore, commentsthat this is “less a book on pre-colonial Bengal” and more a book onEuropean trade and colonial conquest (p. vii). The book explains howEuropean commercial enterprise in Bengal gathered political power throughits control over trade and gradually transformed itself into a colonial power.Although the Mughals held political power during this period, the economicpower and control of the Indian Ocean trade routes were gradually slippinginto European hands.It is believed that Clive’s victory at the battle of Palashi led to the colonialconquest of Bengal. However, focusing on Bengal’s socioeconomic ...

The rediscovery of human remains, correspondence and other unpublished excavation archival material in the Glasgow Museums collection of Ludovic McLellan Mann prompted the reappraisal of a short archaeological investigation undertaken in April 1931 at Holm Park, near Ballantrae, Ayrshire, by a schoolboy, Eric French and his biology teacher, William Hoyland. This article offers a re-evaluation of their fieldwork which exposed two inhumation burials, named ‘Tuesday Morning’ and ‘Tuesday Afternoon’. Eight dog whelk shells remain from an overlying diffuse shell midden spread that may reflect the remnants of a dye-processing site. The skeletons and marine shells went on temporary display at Bryanston School, Dorset. The area south of Ballantrae is well known for prehistoric flint scatter sites and the finds presented the intriguing possibility that the burials might be Mesolithic in age, the excavators believing they might even be Palaeolithic. A collection of flint cores, initially associated with the archive, now appears unrelated to this excavation for it was found with a note written by a local lithic collector, William Edgar. New osteological analysis confirmed the presence of at least two adult individuals, and one bone sample returned an early medieval radiocarbon date. This evidence contributes to national understandings of early historic burial practices in unenclosed cemeteries during the transition from Iron Age pagan to Christian burial rites, important given the paucity of 1st millennium evidence in south-west Scotland. It also offers insight into an earlier account of multiple inhumation burials, found in the general vicinity in 1879, although aspects of the precise location and relationship between the two discoveries is currently unresolved. Mann’s correspondence with French’s father, a prominent Glasgow industrialist, and with Hoyland reveals the character of archaeological social networks in western Scotland during the 1930s which have been a neglected aspect of research to date. Canmore ID 60957 Canmore ID 60935 Canmore ID 275902

Purpose. The period of the most intensive contacts of the ancient population of the Korean peninsula and the Japanese Islands (3rd – 7th centuries AD) is of special interest for study. The period witnessed a wide spread of the tradition of building burial mounds (kurgans). Due to the artifacts found in the kurgans, it becomes possible to study various aspects of the people’s social life, including cultural contacts. We aimed at studying territorial alliances based on the cultural and historical background, such as the spread of agriculture based on wet rice cultivation, bronze and iron production, the emergence of states. Results. The kurgan tradition on the Korean peninsula is associated with the era of the Three Kingdoms (3rd – 7th centuries AD). The tradition of erecting mounds started in Koguryo state in the 1st century BC, then from the 3rd century AD it continued in Baekje, Silla and Kaya, and disappeared in the middle of the 6th century AD because of adopting Buddhism. Common barrows had stone embankments, but they are also found with earthen mounds. Burial chambers were first constructed vertically, then horizontal ones appeared. On the Japanese Islands, kurgans first appeared during the Yayoi period (3rd century BC – 3rd century AD) and were widely constructed during the Kofun period (3rd – 7th centuries AD). The barrows had earthen embankments with burial chambers inside. The barrows differed in the form of their embankment and size. The burials of the Kofun period in Japan continued the Yayoi period traditions to a certain extent. They had earthen embankments and were decorated with bronze mirrors and stone ornaments in the burial chambers. In addition, their feature is clay haniva figurines around the perimeter of the embankment. Starting from approximately the 5th century AD, there began to appear a certain homogeneity in the funerary structures of the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. Sueci ceramics became a typical element of the funeral rite, as well as bronze and iron objects, gold jewelry and luxury items which appeared in burial chambers. The construction of kurgans acquired some new features, such as stone chambers with side corridors. Both on the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Islands, we observe similar types of embankments, such as round (embun), square (ho:fun), double round (so:embun), double square (so:ho:fun) and in the form of a “Japanese sea scallop” (hatategaishikikofun). Conclusion. The study of the structural features of the kurgans on the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Islands allows us to conclude that there are similarities in the forms and materials of embankments and the forms of burial chamber construction. The main difference is the larger size of Japanese kurgans. The similarities we revealed can be explained by the mutual influence of the population of the Korean peninsula and the Japanese islands.

<p><em> Purwoasri is one of the villages in Banyuwangi Regency. Most of the people are Hindus, but not a few adherents of Islam. Javanese culture has existed since prehistoric times, the arrival of Hinduism on the island of Java gave birth to the Javanese Hindu culture that every activity can not be separated with the tradition of Kenduri. Kenduri is basically a tradition of praying together that is attended by neighbors and led by traditional leaders, who follow the tradition of kenduri inipun also not only people who are Hindus, but religious other than Hindupun also included in pelaksaannya, but harmony is very awake in society This purwoasri though they are different religions but very respect for each other. Based on the background of existing problems, then in this study presents three formulation of the problem as follows (1) How the process of kenduri tradition in Javanese society at the celebration of galungan holiday in Purwoasri Village, Tegaldlimo Sub-district, Banyuwangi Regency, (2) What is the function of kenduri tradition in Javanese society at the ceremony of the galungan holiday in Purwoasri Village, Tegaldlimo Sub-district, Banyuwangi Regency, (3) What theological meaning is contained in the tradition of kenduri in Javanese society at the celebration of Galungan Festival in Purwoasri Village, Tegaldlimo Sub-district, Banyuwangi Regency. The purpose of this research is to know (1) The implementation of the tradition of kenduri (2) The function contained in the tradition of kenduri (3) The theological meaning contained in the tradition of kenduri. Theory used to analyze the problem formulation is the theory (1) Religious theory to dissect deep discussion on Javanese religious beliefs (2) structural functional theory to dissect the quality of beliefs of society or aspects of sradha and devotion in the field of religion (3) Theory of symbol to analyze the theological value contained in the tradition of kenduri. With the descriptive analysis, the results of the research (1) The process of implementing the kenduri tradition, which includes: the preparation stage of kenduri tradition begins with the making of offerings, kenduri tradition which begins with the prayer readings by the village elders then followed by the participants of the kenduri then continued with the blessing or banten (2) The function of tradition of kenduri namely social function and religious function (3) The meaning of traditional theology of kenduri includes the meaning of ethics and the meaning of balance.</em></p>

The Routledge Handbook of language and culture represents a comprehensive study on the inextricable relationship between language and culture. It is structured into seven parts and 33 chapters. Part 1, Overview and historical background, by Farzad Sharifian, starts with an outline of the book and a synopsis of research on language and culture. The second chapter, John Leavitt’s Linguistic relativity: precursors and transformations discusses further the historical development of the concept of linguistic relativity, identifying different schools’ of thought views on the relation between language and culture. He also tries to demystify some misrepresentations held towards Boas, Sapir, and Whorf’ theories (pp. 24-26). Chapter 3, Ethnosyntax, by Anna Gladkova provides an overview of research on ethnosyntax, starting from the theoretical basis laid by Sapir and Whorf and investigates the differences between a narrow sense of ethnosyntax, which focuses on cultural meanings of various grammatical structures and a broader sense, which emphasises the pragmatic and cultural norms’ impact on the choice of grammatical structures. John Leavitt presents in the fourth chapter, titled Ethnosemantics, a historical account of research on meaning across cultures, introducing three traditions, i.e. ‘classical’ ethnosemantics (also referred to as ethnoscience or cognitive anthropology), Boasian cultural semantics (linguistically inspired anthropology) and Neohumboldtian comparative semantics (word-field theory, or content-oriented Linguistics). In Chapter 5, Goddard underlines the fact that ethnopragmatics investigates emic (or culture-internal) approaches to the use of different speech practices across various world languages, which accounts for the fact that there exists a connection between the cultural values or norms and the speech practices peculiar to a speech community. One of the key objectives of ethnopragmatics is to investigate ‘cultural key words’, i.e. words that encapsulate culturally construed concepts. The concept of ‘linguaculture’ (or languaculture) is tackled in Risager’s Chapter 6, Linguaculture: the language–culture nexus in transnational perspective. The author makes reference to American scholars that first introduced this notion, Paul Friedrich, who looks at language and culture as a single domain in which verbal aspects of culture are mingled with semantic meanings, and Michael Agar, for whom culture resides in language while language is loaded with culture. Risager himself brought forth a new global and transnational perspective on the concept of linguaculture, i.e. the use of language (linguistic practice) is seen as flows in people’s social networks and speech communities. These flows enhance as people migrate or learn new languages, in permanent dynamics. Lidia Tanaka’s Chapter 7, Language, gender, and culture deals with research on language, gender, and culture. According to her, the language-gender relationship has been studied by researchers from various fields, including psychology, linguistics, and anthropology, who mainly consider gender as a construct that preserves inequalities in society, with the help of language, too. Tanaka lists diachronically different approaches to language and gender, focusing on three specific ones: gender stereotyped linguistic resources, semantically, pragmatically or lexically designated language features (including register) and gender-based spoken discourse strategies (talking-time imbalances or interruptions). In Chapter 8, Language, culture, and context, Istvan Kecskes delves into the relationship between language, culture, and context from a socio-cognitive perspective. The author considers culture to be a set of shared knowledge structures that encapsulate the values, norms, and customs that the members of a society have in common. According to him, both language and context are rooted in culture and carriers of it, though reflecting culture in a different way. Language encodes past experience with different contexts, whereas context reflects present experience. The author also provides relevant examples of formulaic language that demonstrate the functioning of both types of context, within the larger interplay between language, culture, and context. Sara Miller’s Chapter 9, Language, culture, and politeness reviews traditional approaches to politeness research, with particular attention given to ‘discursive approach’ to politeness. Much along the lines of the previous chapter, Miller stresses the role of context in judgements of (im)polite language, maintaining that individuals represent active agents who challenge and negotiate cultural as well as linguistic norms in actual communicative contexts. Chapter 10, Language, culture, and interaction, by Peter Eglin focuses on language, culture and interaction from the perspective of the correspondence theory of meaning. According to him, abstracting language and culture from their current uses, as if they were not interdependent would not lead to an understanding of words’ true meaning. David Kronenfeld introduces in Chapter 11, Culture and kinship language, a review of research on culture and kinship language, starting with linguistic anthropology. He explains two formal analytic definitional systems of kinship terms: the semantic (distinctions between kin categories, i.e. father vs mother) and pragmatic (interrelations between referents of kin terms, i.e. ‘nephew’ = ‘child of a sibling’). Chapter 12, Cultural semiotics, by Peeter Torop deals with the field of ‘semiotics of culture’, which may refer either to methodological instrument, to a whole array of methods or to a sub-discipline of general semiotics. In this last respect, it investigates cultures as a form of human symbolic activity, as well as a system of cultural languages (i.e. sign systems). Language, as “the preserver of the culture’s collective experience and the reflector of its creativity” represents an essential component of cultural semiotics, being a major sign system. Nigel Armstrong, in Chapter 13, Culture and translation, tackles the interrelation between language, culture, and translation, with an emphasis on the complexities entailed by translation of culturally laden aspects. In his opinion, culture has a double-sided dimension: the anthropological sense (referring to practices and traditions which characterise a community) and a narrower sense, related to artistic endeavours. However, both sides of culture permeate language at all levels. Chapter 14, Language, culture, and identity, by Sandra Schecter tackles several approaches to research on language, culture, and identity: social anthropological (the limits at play in the social construction of differences between various groups of people), sociocultural (the interplay between an individual’s various identities, which can be both externally and internally construed, in sociocultural contexts), participatory-relational (the manner in which individuals create their social–linguistic identities). Patrick McConvell, in Chapter 15, Language and culture history: the contribution of linguistic prehistory reviews research in this field where historical linguistic evidence is exploited in the reconstruction and understanding of prehistoric cultures. He makes an account of research in linguistic prehistory, with a focus on proto- and early Indo-European cultures, on several North American language families, on Africa, Australian, and Austronesian Aboriginal languages. McConvell also underlines the importance of interdisciplinary research in this area, which greatly benefits from studies in other disciplines, such as archaeology, palaeobiology, or biological genetics. Part four starts with Ning Yu’s Chapter 16, Embodiment, culture, and language, which gives an account of theory and research on the interplay between language, culture, and body, as seen from the standpoint of Cultural Linguistics. Yu presents a survey of embodiment (in embodied cognition research) from a multidisciplinary perspective, starting with the rather universalistic Conceptual Metaphor Theory. On the other hand, Cultural Linguistics has concentrated on the role played by culture in shaping embodied language, as various cultures conceptualise body and bodily experience in different ways. Chapter 17, Culture and language processing, by Crystal Robinson and Jeanette Altarriba deals with research in the field of how culture influence language processing, in particular in the case of bilingualism and emotion, alongside language and memory. Clearly, the linguistic and cultural character of each individual’s background has to be considered as a variable in research on cognition and cognitive processing. Frank Polzenhagen and Xiaoyan Xia, in Chapter 18, Language, culture, and prototypicality bring forth a survey of prototypicality across different disciplines, including cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology. According to them, linguistic prototypes play a critical part in social (re-)cognition, as they are socially diagnostic and function as linguistic identity markers. Moreover, individuals may develop ‘culturally blended concepts’ as a result of exposure to several systems of conceptual categorisation, especially in the case of L2 learning (language-contact or culture-contact situations). In Chapter 19, Colour language, thought, and culture, Don Dedrick investigates the issue of the colour words in different languages and how these influence cognition, a question that has been addressed by researchers from various disciplines, such as anthropology, linguistics, cognitive psychology, or neuroscience. He cannot but observe the constant debate in this respect, and he argues that it is indeed difficult to reach consensus, as colour language occasionally reveals effects of language on thought and, at other times, it is impervious to such effects. Chapter 20, Language, culture, and spatial cognition, by Penelope Brown concentrates on conceptualisations of space, providing a framework for thinking about and referring to objects and events, along with more abstract notions such as time, number, or kinship. She lists three frames of reference used by languages in order to refer to spatial relations, i.e. a) an ‘absolute’ coordinate system, like north, south, east, west; b) a ‘relative’ coordinate system envisaged from the body’s standpoint; and c) an intrinsic, object-centred coordinate system. Chris Sinha and Enrique Bernárdez focus on, in Chapter 21, Space, time, and space–time: metaphors, maps, and fusions, research on linguistic and cultural concepts of time and space, starting with the seminal Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), which they denounce for failing to situate space–time mapping within the broader patterns of culture and world perspective. Sinha and Bernárdez further argue that although it is possible in all cultures for individuals to experience and discuss about events in terms of their duration and succession, the specific words and concepts they use to refer to temporal landmarks temporal and duration are most of the time language and culture specific. Chapter 22, Culture and language development, by Laura Sterponi and Paul Lai provides an account of research on the interplay between culture and language acquisition. They refer to two widely accepted perspectives in this respect: a developmental mechanism inherent in human beings and a set of particular social contexts in which children are ‘initiated’ into the cultural meaning systems. Both perspectives define culture as “both related to the psychological make-up of the individual and to the socio-historical contexts in which s/he is born and develops”. Anna Wierzbicka presents, in Chapter 23, Language and cultural scripts discusses representations of cultural norms which are encoded in language. She contends that the system of meaning interpretation developed by herself and her colleagues, i.e. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), may easily be used to capture and convey cultural scripts. Through NSM cross-cultural experiences can be captured in a thorough manner by using a reduced number of conceptual primes which seem to exist in all languages. Chapter 24, Culture and emotional language, by Jean-Marc Dewaele brings forth the issue of the relationship between language, culture, and emotion, which has been researched by cultural and cognitive psychologists and applied linguists alike, although with some differences in focus. He considers that within this context, it is important to see differences between emotion contexts in bilinguals, since these may lead to different perceptions of the self. He infers that generally, culture revolves around the experience and communication of emotions, conveyed through linguistic expression. The fifth part starts with Chapter 25, Language and culture in sociolinguistics, by Meredith Marra, who underlines that culture is a central concept in Interactional Sociolinguistics, where language is considered as social interaction. In linguistic interaction, culture, and especially cultural differences are deemed as a cause of potential miscommunication. Mara also remarks that the paradigm change in sociolinguistics, from Interactional Sociolinguistics to social constructionism reshaped ‘culture’ into a more dynamic as well as less rigid concept. Claudia Strauss’ Chapter 26, Language and culture in cognitive anthropology deals with the relationship between human society and human thought/thinking. The author contends that cognitive anthropologists may be subdivided into two groups, i.e. ones that are concerned with the process of thinking (cognition-in-practice scholars), and the others focusing on the product of thinking or thoughts (concerned with shared cultural understandings). She goes on to explore how different approaches to cognitive anthropology have counted on units of language, i.e. lexical items and their meanings, along with larger chunks of discourse, as information, which may represent learned cultural schemata. Part VI starts with Chapter 27, Language and culture in second language learning, by Claire Kramsch, in which she makes a survey of the definition of ‘culture’ in foreign language learning and its evolution from a component of literature and the arts to a more comprehensive purport, that of culturally appropriate use of language, along with an appropriate use of sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic norms. According to her, in the postmodern era, communication is not only mere transmission of information, it represents construal and positioning of the self and of self-identity. Chapter 28, Writing across cultures: ‘culture’ in second language writing studies, by Dwight Atkinson focuses on the usefulness of culture in second-language writing (SLW). He reviews several approaches to the issue: contrastive rhetoric (dealing with the impact of first-language patterns of text organisation on writers in a second language), or even alternate notions, like‘ cosmopolitanism’, ‘critical multiculturalism’, and hybridity, as of late native culture is becoming irrelevant or at best far less significant. Ian Malcolm tackles, in Chapter 29, Language and culture in second dialect learning, the issue of ‘standard’ Englishes (e.g., Standard American English, Standard Australian English) versus minority ‘non-standard’ speakers of English. He deplores the fact that in US specialist literature, speaking the ‘non-standard’ variety of English was associated with cognitive, cultural, and linguistic insufficiency. He further refers to other specialists who have demonstrated that ‘non-standard’ varieties can be just as systematic and highly structured as the standard variety. Chapter 30, Language and culture in intercultural communication, by Hans-Georg Wolf gives an account of research in intercultural education, focusing on several paradigms, i.e. the dominant one, investigating successful functioning in intercultural encounters, the minor one, exploring intercultural understanding and the ‘deconstructionist, and or postmodernist’. He further examines different interpretations of the concepts associated with intercultural communication, including the functionalist school, the intercultural understanding approach and a third one, the most removed from culture, focusing on socio-political inequalities, fluidity, situationality, and negotiability. Andy Kirkpatrick’s Chapter 31, World Englishes and local cultures gives a synopsis of research paradigm from applied linguistics which investigates the development of Englishes around the world, through processes like indigenisation or nativisation of the language. Kirkpatrick discusses the ways in which new Englishes accommodate the culture of the very speech community which develops them, e.g. adopting lexical items to express to express culture-specific concepts. Speakers of new varieties could use pragmatic norms rooted in cultural values and norms of the specific new speech community which have not previously been associated with English. Moreover, they can use these new Englishes to write local literatures, often exploiting culturally preferred rhetorical norms. Part seven starts with Chapter 32, Cultural Linguistics, by Farzad Sharifian gives an account of the recent multidisciplinary research field of Cultural Linguistics, which explores the relationship between language and cultural cognition, particularly in the case of cultural conceptualisations. Sharifian also brings forth illustrations of how cultural conceptualisations may be linguistically encoded. The last chapter, A future agenda for research on language and culture, by Roslyn Frank provides an appraisal of Cultural Linguistics as a prospective path for research in the field of language and culture. She states that ‘Cultural Linguistics could potentially create a paradigm that “successfully melds together complementary approaches, e.g., viewing language as ‘a complex adaptive system’ and bringing to bear upon it concepts drawn from cognitive science such as ‘distributed cognition’ and ‘multi-agent dynamic systems theory’.” She further asserts that Cultural Linguistics has the potential to function as “a bridge that brings together researchers from a variety of fields, allowing them to focus on problems of mutual concern from a new perspective” and most likely unveil new issues (as well as solutions) which have not been evident so far. In conclusion, the Handbook will most certainly serve as clear and coherent guidelines for scholarly thinking and further research on language and culture, and also open up new investigative vistas in each of the areas tackled.

AbstractResearch on the emergence of institutionalized inequality has traditionally maintained an analytical divide between lived institutions that affect daily life and performed institutions materialized in mortuary contexts. Here, we argue that convergence or divergence between lived and performed contexts reveals key aspects of past social organization. When combined, mortuary archaeology and bioarchaeology provide a methodological framework well suited to evaluate the coherence or dissonance of such institutions. Three case studies from prehistoric Europe highlight how new insights gained by studying tension between institutions, identities and experiences across social dimensions can transform our understanding of the development of institutionalized inequality.

The text discusses the epistemological problems and dilemmas of the attempts to study religious life in prehistory by archaeological means. Among numerous difficulties, theoretical as well as practical, hindering these attempts, a general problem is discussed here: is archaeology of religion possible and on what grounds? This dilemma raised a series of discussions over the last decades of the 20th century, primarily among the English-speaking archaeologists. However, in the tradition of regional archaeology of Yugoslavian and post-Yugoslavian lands this discussion has not been initiated, and the religious life of the prehistoric communities has not been the subject of particular research interest. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to bring attention to the possibilities and limitations of research into religion in prehistory, referring to the recent discussions in wider archaeological community. Two questions are discussed: firstly, how religion is conceptualized and defined in prehistoric contexts, and secondly, how it is possible to make inferences on religion on the grounds of material remains, if religion is understood in general sense, as belief in supernatural, non-material principles. The text concludes by the suggestion that the holistic approach, advocating that the religious phenomena should be regarded in structural relationship to all other aspects of social life, is productive if this proposition is taken to imply the scrutiny of numerous correlations between religion and other social domains. However, it is not acceptable to deny heuristic and analytic value of the very concept of religion. The importance of research into religious rituals is stressed, i.e. religious behaviour and practices, that are accessible through archaeological record, as opposed to religious principles, beliefs and dogmas. The orientation of archaeological research towards the field of ritual practices presupposes the effort to discern the purpose of a ritual and its outcomes, i.e. to consider the structural intertwining of ritual behaviour with all other aspects of social life, in accordance with the holistic approach.

The text discusses the epistemological problems and dilemmas of the attempts to study religious life in prehistory by archaeological means. Among numerous difficulties, theoretical as well as practical, hindering these attempts, a general problem is discussed here: is archaeology of religion possible and on what grounds? This dilemma raised a series of discussions over the last decades of the 20th century, primarily among the English-speaking archaeologists. However, in the tradition of regional archaeology of Yugoslavian and post-Yugoslavian lands this discussion has not been initiated, and the religious life of the prehistoric communities has not been the subject of particular research interest. Consequently, the aim of this paper is to bring attention to the possibilities and limitations of research into religion in prehistory, referring to the recent discussions in wider archaeological community. Two questions are discussed: firstly, how religion is conceptualized and defined in prehistoric contexts, and secondly, how it is possible to make inferences on religion on the grounds of material remains, if religion is understood in general sense, as belief in supernatural, non-material principles. The text concludes by the suggestion that the holistic approach, advocating that the religious phenomena should be regarded in structural relationship to all other aspects of social life, is productive if this proposition is taken to imply the scrutiny of numerous correlations between religion and other social domains. However, it is not acceptable to deny heuristic and analytic value of the very concept of religion. The importance of research into religious rituals is stressed, i.e. religious behaviour and practices, that are accessible through archaeological record, as opposed to religious principles, beliefs and dogmas. The orientation of archaeological research towards the field of ritual practices presupposes the effort to discern the purpose of a ritual and its outcomes, i.e. to consider the structural intertwining of ritual behaviour with all other aspects of social life, in accordance with the holistic approach.

The cremation has been documented since prehistoric times and it was a common funerary custom until the advent of Catholicism. Falling into disuse, during XVII–XVIII centuries there were new movements to bring it back according to modern criteria, mainly due to hygienic reasons and cemeteries overcrowding. This also led to the prototyping of new crematory ovens to improve the ancient open-air pyre. Lodovico Brunetti was the first to carry out a crematory experimental research in the modern countries. Since Brunetti's studies were based on the study of ancient cremations, a comparison with a modern experience of reconstruction of archaeological cremation is presented to evaluate the validity of his crematorium oven. Furthermore, the social and religious aspects related to Brunetti's inventions and the revitalization of cremation shows how tools and technologies and also the cultural environment have evolved over the years, effectively accepting the cremation practice as an alternative to inhumation.

This paper is divided into three sections. The first section describes the historiographic evolution of the study of prehistoric lithic raw materials in the Basque Crossroads (in the north of the Iberian Peninsula) during the last three decades. The second section explains the currently available information about geological outcrops of flint in the eastern end of the Cantabrian Mountain range (the Basque-Cantabrian Basin), the upper Ebro valley and both sides of the western Pyrenees, in the central part of the northern Iberian Peninsula, as that was the main raw material used by hunter-gatherer groups in the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. Finally, the last section describes the way in which progress in both aspects of research have enabled the introduction of new concepts and perspectives in the reconstruction of the social and economic dynamics of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. This has given rise to an innovative methodology that is able to address and solve important issues, particularly regarding mobility and territoriality patterns of those human groups, allowing the proposal of mobility and territoriality models that, while they will not match exactly the systems used by Upper Palaeolithic communities, represent significant progress in understanding the social and economic dynamics of hunter-gatherer groups.

IntroductionThe common origin of the adjective “corporeal” and the noun “corpse” in the Latin root corpus points to the value of mortuary practices for investigating how the human body is objectified. In post-mortem rituals, the body—formerly the manipulator of objects—becomes itself the object that is manipulated. Thus, these funerary rituals provide a type of double reflexivity, where the object and subject of manipulation can be used to reciprocally illuminate one another. To this extent, any consideration of corporeality can only benefit from a discussion of how the body is objectified through mortuary practices. This paper offers just such a discussion with respect to a selection of two contrasting mortuary practices, in the context of the prehistoric past and the Classical Era respectively. At the most general level, we are motivated by the same intellectual impulse that has stimulated expositions on corporeality, materiality, and incarnation in areas like phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty 77–234), Marxism (Adorno 112–119), gender studies (Grosz vii–xvi), history (Laqueur 193–244), and theology (Henry 33–53). That is to say, our goal is to show that the body, far from being a transparent frame through which we encounter the world, is in fact a locus where historical, social, cultural, and psychological forces intersect. On this view, “the body vanishes as a biological entity and becomes an infinitely malleable and highly unstable culturally constructed product” (Shilling 78). However, for all that the cited paradigms offer culturally situated appreciations of corporeality; our particular intellectual framework will be provided by cognitive science. Two reasons impel us towards this methodological choice.In the first instance, the study of ritual has, after several decades of stagnation, been rewarded—even revolutionised—by the application of insights from the new sciences of the mind (Whitehouse 1–12; McCauley and Lawson 1–37). Thus, there are good reasons to think that ritual treatments of the body will refract historical and social forces through empirically attested tendencies in human cognition. In the present connection, this means that knowledge of these tendencies will reward any attempt to theorise the objectification of the body in mortuary rituals.In the second instance, because beliefs concerning the afterlife can never be definitively judged to be true or false, they give free expression to tendencies in cognition that are otherwise constrained by the need to reflect external realities accurately. To this extent, they grant direct access to the intuitive ideas and biases that shape how we think about the world. Already, this idea has been exploited to good effect in areas like the cognitive anthropology of religion, which explores how counterfactual beings like ghosts, spirits, and gods conform to (and deviate from) pre-reflective cognitive patterns (Atran 83–112; Barrett and Keil 219–224; Barrett and Reed 252–255; Boyer 876–886). Necessarily, this implies that targeting post-mortem treatments of the body will offer unmediated access to some of the conceptual schemes that inform thinking about human corporeality.At a more detailed level, the specific methodology we propose to use will be provided by conceptual blending theory—a framework developed by Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner, and others to describe how structures from different areas of experience are creatively blended to form a new conceptual frame. In this system, a generic space provides the ground for coordinating two or more input spaces into a blended space that synthesises them into a single output. Here this would entail using natural or technological processes to structure mortuary practices in a way that satisfies various psychological needs.Take, for instance, W.B. Yeats’s famous claim that “Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart” (“Easter 1916” in Yeats 57-8). Here, the poet exploits a generic space—that of everyday objects and the effort involved in manipulating them—to coordinate an organic input from that taxonomy (the heart) with an inorganic input (a stone) to create the blended idea that too energetic a pursuit of an abstract ideal turns a person into an unfeeling object (the heart-as-stone). Although this particular example corresponds to a familiar rhetorical figure (the metaphor), the value of conceptual blending theory is that it cuts across distinctions of genre, media, language, and discourse level to provide a versatile framework for expressing how one area of human experience is related to another.As indicated, we will exploit this versatility to investigate two ways of objectifying the body through the examination of two contrasting mortuary practices—cremation and inhumation—against different cultural horizons. The first of these is the conceptualisation of the body as an object of a technical process, where the post-mortem cremation of the corpse is analogically correlated with the metallurgical refining of ore into base metal. Our area of focus here will be Bronze Age cremation practices. The second conceptual scheme we will investigate focuses on treatments of the body as a vegetable object; here, the relevant analogy likens the inhumation of the corpse to the planting of a seed in the soil from which future growth will come. This discussion will centre on the Classical Era. Burning: The Body as Manufactured ObjectThe Early and Middle Bronze Age in Western Europe (2500-1200 BCE) represented a period of change in funerary practices relative to the preceding Neolithic, exemplified by a move away from the use of Megalithic monuments, a proliferation of grave goods, and an increase in the use of cremation (Barrett 38-9; Cooney and Grogan 105-121; Brück, Material Metaphors 308; Waddell, Bronze Age 141-149). Moreover, the Western European Bronze Age is characterised by a shift away from communal burial towards single interment (Barrett 32; Bradley 158-168). Equally, the Bronze Age in Western Europe provides us with evidence of an increased use of cist and pit cremation burials concentrated in low-lying areas (Woodman 254; Waddell, Prehistoric 16; Cooney and Grogan 105-121; Bettencourt 103). This greater preference for lower-lying location appears to reflect a distinctive change in comparison to the distribution patterns of the Neolithic burials; these are often located on prominent, visible aspects of a landscape (Cooney and Grogan 53-61). These new Bronze Age burial practices appear to reflect a distancing in relation to the territories of the “old ancestors” typified by Megalithic monuments (Bettencourt 101-103). Crucially, the Bronze Age archaeological record provides us with evidence that indicates that cremation was becoming the dominant form of deposition of human remains throughout Central and Western Europe (Sørensen and Rebay 59-60).The activities associated with Bronze Age cremations such as the burning of the body and the fragmentation of the remains have often been considered as corporeal equivalents (or expressions) of the activities involved in metal (bronze) production (Brück, Death 84-86; Sørensen and Rebay 60–1; Rebay-Salisbury, Cremations 66-67). There are unequivocal similarities between the practices of cremation and contemporary bronze production technologies—particularly as both processes involve the transformation of material through the application of fire at temperatures between 700 ºC to 1000 ºC (Musgrove 272-276; Walker et al. 132; de Becdelievre et al. 222-223).We assert that the technologies that define the European Bronze Age—those involved in alloying copper and tin to produce bronze—offered a new conceptual frame that enabled the body to be objectified in new ways. The fundamental idea explored here is that the displacement of inhumation by cremation in the European Bronze Age was motivated by a cognitive shift, where new smelting technologies provided novel conceptual metaphors for thinking about age-old problems concerning human mortality and post-mortem survival. The increased use of cremation in the European Bronze Age contrasts with the archaeological record of the Near Eastern—where, despite the earlier emergence of metallurgy (3300–3000 BCE), we do not see a notable proliferation in the use of cremation in this region. Thus, mortuary practices (i.e. cremation) provide us with an insight into how Western European Bronze Age cultures mediated the body through changes in technological objects and processes.In the terminology of conceptual blending, the generic space in question centres on the technical manipulation of the material world. The first input space is associated with the anxiety attending mortality—specifically, the cessation of personal identity and the extinction of interpersonal relationships. The second input space represents the technical knowledge associated with bronze production; in particular, the extraction of ore from source material and its mixing with other metals to form an alloy. The blended space coordinates these inputs to objectify the human body as an object that is ritually transformed into a new but more durable substance via the cremation process. In this contention we use the archaeological record to draw a conceptual parallel between the emergence of bronze production technology—centring on transition of naturally occurring material to a new subsistence (bronze)—and the transitional nature of the cremation process.In this theoretical framework, treating the body as a mixture of substances that can be reduced to its constituents and transformed through technologies of cremation enabled Western European Bronze Age society to intervene in the natural process of putrefaction and transform the organic matter into something more permanent. This transformative aspect of the cremation is seen in the evidence we have for secondary burial practices involving the curation and circulation of cremated bones of deceased members of a group (Brück, Death 87-93). This evidence allows us to assert that cremated human remains and objects were considered products of the same transformation into a more permanent state via burning, fragmentation, dispersal, and curation. Sofaer (62-69) states that the living body is regarded as a person, but as soon as the transition to death is made, the body becomes an object; this is an “ontological shift in the perception of the body that assumes a sudden change in its qualities” (62).Moreover, some authors have proposed that the exchange of fragmented human remains was central to mortuary practices and was central in establishing and maintaining social relations (Brück, Death 76-88). It is suggested that in the Early Bronze Age the perceptions of the human body mirrored the perceptions of objects associated with the arrival of the new bronze technology (Brück, Death 88-92). This idea is more pronounced if we consider the emergence of bronze technology as the beginning of a period of capital intensification of natural resources. Through this connection, the Bronze Age can be regarded as the point at which a particular natural resource—in this case, copper—went through myriad intensive manufacturing stages, which are still present today (intensive extraction, production/manufacturing, and distribution). Unlike stone tool production, bronze production had the addition of fire as the explicit method of transformation (Brück, Death 88-92). Thus, such views maintain that the transition achieved by cremation—i.e. reducing the human remains to objects or tokens that could be exchanged and curated relatively soon after the death of the individual—is equivalent to the framework of commodification connected with bronze production.A sample of cremated remains from Castlehyde in County Cork, Ireland, provides us with an example of a Bronze Age cremation burial in a Western European context (McCarthy). This is chosen because it is a typical example of a Bronze Age cremation burial in the context of Western Europe; also, one of the authors (MG) has first-hand experience in the analysis of its associated remains. The Castlehyde cremation burial consisted of a rectangular, stone-lined cist (McCarthy). The cist contained cremated, calcined human remains, with the fragments generally ranging from a greyish white to white in colour; this indicates that the bones were subject to a temperature range of 700-900ºC. The organic content of bone was destroyed during the cremation process, leaving only the inorganic matrix (brittle bone which is, often, described as metallic in consistency—e.g. Gejvall 470-475). There is evidence that remains may have been circulated in a manner akin to valuable metal objects. First of all, the absence of long bones indicates that there may have been a practice of removing salient remains as curatable records of ancestral ties. Secondly, remains show traces of metal staining from objects that are no longer extant, which suggests that graves were subject to secondary burial practices involving the removal of metal objects and/or human bone. To this extent, we can discern that human remains were being processed, curated, and circulated in a similar manner to metal objects.Thus, there are remarkable similarities between the treatment of the human body in cremation and bronze metal production technologies in the European Bronze Age. On the one hand, the parallel between smelting and cremation allowed death to be understood as a process of transformation in which the individual was removed from processes of organic decay. On the other hand, the circulation of the transformed remains conferred a type of post-mortem survival on the deceased. In this way, cremation practices may have enabled Bronze Age society to symbolically overcome the existential anxiety concerning the loss of personhood and the breaking of human relationships through death. In relation to the former point, the resurgence of cremation in nineteenth century Europe provides us with an example of how the disposal of a human body can be contextualised in relation to socio-technological advancements. The (re)emergence of cremation in this period reflects the post-Enlightenment shift from an understanding of the world through religious beliefs to the use of rational, scientific approaches to examine the natural world, including the human body (and death). The controlled use of fire in the cremation process, as well as the architecture of crematories, reflected the industrial context of the period (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 16).With respect to the circulation of cremated remains, Smith suggests that Early Medieval Christian relics of individual bones or bone fragments reflect a reconceptualised continuation of pre-Christian practices (beginning in Christian areas of the Roman Empire). In this context, it is claimed, firstly, that the curation of bone relics and the use of mobile bone relics of important, saintly individuals provided an embodied connection between the sacred sphere and the earthly world; and secondly, that the use of individual bones or fragments of bone made the Christian message something portable, which could be used to reinforce individual or collective adherence to Christianity (Smith 143-167). Using the example of the Christian bone relics, we can thus propose that the curation and circulation of Bronze Age cremated material may have served a role similar to tools for focusing religiously oriented cognition. Burying: The Body as a Vegetable ObjectGiven that the designation “the Classical Era” nominates the entirety of the Graeco-Roman world (including the Near East and North Africa) from about 800 BCE to 600 CE, there were obviously no mortuary practices common to all cultures. Nevertheless, in both classical Greece and Rome, we have examples of periods when either cremation or inhumation was the principal funerary custom (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 19-21).For instance, the ancient Homeric texts inform us that the ancient Greeks believed that “the spirit of the departed was sentient and still in the world of the living as long as the flesh was in existence […] and would rather have the body devoured by purifying fire than by dogs or worms” (Mylonas 484). However, the primary sources and archaeological record indicate that cremation practices declined in Athens circa 400 BCE (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 20). With respect to the Roman Empire, scholarly opinion argues that inhumation was the dominant funerary rite in the eastern part of the Empire (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 17-21; Morris 52). Complementing this, the archaeological and historical record indicates that inhumation became the primary rite throughout the Roman Empire in the first century CE. Inhumation was considered to be an essential rite in the context of an emerging belief that a peaceful afterlife was reflected by a peaceful burial in which bodily integrity was maintained (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 19-21; Morris 52; Toynbee 41). The question that this poses is how these beliefs were framed in the broader discourses of Classical culture.In this regard, our claim is that the growth in inhumation was driven (at least in part) by the spread of a conceptual scheme, implicit in Greek fertility myths that objectify the body as a seed. The conceptual logic here is that the post-mortem continuation of personal identity is (symbolically) achieved by objectifying the body as a vegetable object that will re-grow from its own physical remains. Although the dominant metaphor here is vegetable, there is no doubt that the motivating concern of this mythological fabulation is human mortality. As Jon Davies notes, “the myths of Hades, Persephone and Demeter, of Orpheus and Eurydice, of Adonis and Aphrodite, of Selene and Endymion, of Herakles and Dionysus, are myths of death and rebirth, of journeys into and out of the underworld, of transactions and transformations between gods and humans” (128). Thus, such myths reveal important patterns in how the post-mortem fate of the body was conceptualised.In the terminology of mental mapping, the generic space relevant to inhumation contains knowledge pertaining to folk biology—specifically, pre-theoretical ideas concerning regeneration, survival, and mortality. The first input space attaches to human mortality; it departs from the anxiety associated with the seeming cessation of personal identity and dissolution of kin relationships subsequent to death. The second input space is the subset of knowledge concerning vegetable life, and how the immersion of seeds in the soil produces a new generation of plants with the passage of time. The blended space combines the two input spaces by way of the funerary script, which involves depositing the body in the soil with a view to securing its eventual rebirth by analogy with the sprouting of a planted seed.As indicated, the most important illustration of this conceptual pattern can be found in the fertility myths of ancient Greece. The Homeric Hymns, in particular, provide a number of narratives that trace out correspondences between vegetation cycles, human mortality, and inhumation, which inform ritual practice (Frazer 223–404; Carney 355–65; Sowa 121–44). The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, for instance, charts how Persephone is abducted by Hades, god of the dead, and taken to his underground kingdom. While searching for her missing daughter, Demeter, goddess of fertility, neglects the earth, causing widespread devastation. Matters are resolved when Zeus intervenes to restore Persephone to Demeter. However, having ingested part of Hades’s kingdom (a pomegranate seed), Persephone is obliged to spend half the year below ground with her captor and the other half above ground with her mother.The objectification of Persephone as both a seed and a corpse in this narrative is clearly signalled by her seasonal inhumation in Hades’ chthonic realm, which is at once both the soil and the grave. And, just as the planting of seeds in autumn ensures rebirth in spring, Persephone’s seasonal passage from the Kingdom of the Dead nominates the individual human life as just one season in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. A further signifying element is added by the ingestion of the pomegranate seed. This is evocative of her being inseminated by Hades; thus, the coordination of vegetation cycles with life and death is correlated with secondary transition—that from childhood to adulthood (Kerényi 119–183).In the examples given, we can see how the Homeric Hymn objectifies both the mortal and sexual destiny of the body in terms of thresholds derived from the vegetable world. Moreover, this mapping is not merely an intellectual exercise. Its emotional and social appeal is visible in the fact that the Eleusinian mysteries—which offered the ritual homologue to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter—persisted from the Mycenaean period to 396 CE, one of the longest recorded durations for any ritual (Ferguson 254–9; Cosmopoulos 1–24). In sum, then, classical myth provided a precedent for treating the body as a vegetable object—most often, a seed—that would, in turn, have driven the move towards inhumation as an important mortuary practice. The result is to create a ritual form that makes key aspects of human experience intelligible by connecting them with cyclical processes like the seasons of the year, the harvesting of crops, and the intergenerational oscillation between the roles of parent and child. Indeed, this pattern remains visible in the germination metaphors and burial practices of contemporary religions such as Christianity, which draw heavily on the symbolism associated with mystery cults like that at Eleusis (Nock 177–213).ConclusionWe acknowledge that our examples offer a limited reflection of the ethnographic and archaeological data, and that they need to be expanded to a much greater degree if they are to be more than merely suggestive. Nevertheless, suggestiveness has its value, too, and we submit that the speculations explored here may well offer a useful starting point for a larger survey. In particular, they showcase how a recurring existential anxiety concerning death—involving the fear of loss of personal identity and kinship relations—is addressed by different ways of objectifying the body. Given that the body is not reducible to the objects with which it is identified, these objectifications can never be entirely successful in negotiating the boundary between life and death. In the words of Jon Davies, “there is simply no let-up in the efforts by human beings to transcend this boundary, no matter how poignantly each failure seemed to reinforce it” (128). For this reason, we can expect that the record will be replete with conceptual and cognitive schemes that mediate the experience of death.At a more general level, it should also be clear that our understanding of human corporeality is rewarded by the study of mortuary practices. No less than having a body is coextensive with being human, so too is dying, with the consequence that investigating the intersection of both areas is likely to reveal insights into issues of universal cultural concern. For this reason, we advocate the study of mortuary practices as an evolving record of how various cultures understand human corporeality by way of external objects.ReferencesAdorno, Theodor W. Metaphysics: Concept and Problems. Trans. Rolf Tiedemann. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002.Atran, Scott. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Barrett, John C. “The Living, the Dead and the Ancestors: Neolithic and Bronze Age Mortuary Practices.” The Archaeology of Context in the Neolithic and Bronze Age: Recent Trends. Eds. John. C. Barrett and Ian. A. Kinnes. 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