This article discusses some aspects of the way the ancient Egyptians classified their world. The Egyptian method of representation aimed at showing things as they existed in the imagination of the artist who accordingly rendered them as they ‘really were’, and not as they were seen, that is, without having recourse to foreshortening, shadow, perspective. What is stored is a mental image of the prototype or ‘genus’ of the object. Linguistic and pictorial material provide evidence of the existence of inalienable properties of a given mental picture. Another set of components is the interactional properties. Both are grounded in the basic experience of the perceptual, motor and intellectual apparatus of the body. Their distribution is overlapping, because the factual inalienability of its own members is one of the first experiences of a child. While some aspects of the conceptual system and categorization grow out of this immediate experience, others can only be understood in terms of other types of experience, such as metaphors in the sense of Lakoff and Johnson. Hieroglyphs and art are discussed in terms of the notion of metaphorical structuring.

Humans define themselves through personhood as agents in society. To become persons, children differentiate their self from others. They take, as George Mead (1934) says, the other and self-objectify by predicating a sign-image or trope upon themselves. Birth rituals realize these tropes with the child's body as tool and raw material. Birth almanacs in Highland Mexican codices depict, as I argue, the transformation of a child into a person. Patron gods pierce the child, display it, manipulate its umbilical cord and nurse it. Gods provide the child with vital life forces while the child and future adult nourishes the gods through sacrifice. The birth almanacs situate Aztec personhood in a covenant of humans with gods. As children mature, bodily changes metonymically express the metaphoric relationship of the children with their patron gods. In the bathing ceremony, fellow humans — especially the child's parents and the midwife — step into the roles of the patron gods and perform the above activities on the child. Aztec children other themselves in gods through ritual practices. By connecting the ideology and practice of personhood, the birth almanacs are a theory of social action.

The pre-Hispanic art of the Lowlands of Paraná comprises very realistic to extremely simplified ceramic figurines made by complex hunter-gatherer groups during the Late Holocene. In particular, the article seeks to discuss the differences found between parrot and raptor figures, which are the most frequent motifs. Alternative styles of representation were involved in the visual symbolism of the two groups of birds with well-differentiated morphological and behavioural attributes. Whereas parrot images were elaborated with greater naturalism in sites mostly located in the middle Paraná, birds of prey exhibit a higher degree of stylization and schematization, especially in the lower Paraná. It is proposed that the differences in the artistic modalities used to represent these groups of birds could be related to the positioning of these animals within different metaphorical domains and opposable conceptual categories. It is also suggested that this iconography could be specifically linked to a totemic ontology, which implies a particular attitude towards nature. This study attempts to contribute to broadening our knowledge about the symbolic relationships between humans and animals in pre-Columbian America.

This article discusses the aggregation and dispersion of the Chulmun hunter-gatherers (c. 8000–1500 bce) in prehistoric Korea. The following observations are made from settlement datasets. First, large numbers of houses do not necessarily imply aggregation, as they can be palimpsests of dwelling structures from different phases. Second, aggregation settlements were segmented and contained multiple discrete subunits. Individual residential clusters typically had fewer than 60 inhabitants. Third, there are some indications of social hierarchy in nucleated settlements such as Unseo-dong. Fourth, despite some evidence of emergent elites and social differentiation, social complexity did not intensify over the long run. Levelling mechanisms (e.g. group fission) were in operation and they suppressed the institutionalization of social hierarchy.

In the last 20 years, demography has re-emerged as a key research area within archaeology. This research has refined archaeological demographic methods and examined the relationships between demographic, cultural and environmental change. Here, I discuss how the results of the growing corpus of archaeological demographic studies can contribute to gender archaeology, aiding the incorporation of women into narratives of the past. By considering the important role of women in the demographic regimes of small-scale societies, I explain how archaeological demography can provide insights into the behaviour and lives of women, without relying on the often problematic identification of gendered artefacts, activities and/or places. Archaeological demography as a tool for gender archaeology also permits a move away from the female empiricism of simply adding women into archaeological narratives, to provide an alternative framework for the analysis of gender roles and practices. I demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of this approach using an example from the Upper Palaeolithic of southwestern France.

This paper describes the chaîne opératoire of earthen architecture relating to buildings and thermal structures at the Neolithic site of Kleitos 2 in Kozani. It provides a material-based approach to the variable processes involved in construction as a practice of community involvement. The chaîne opératoire, adapted based on a refined concept of technology, is employed here as a key analytical tool. This paper tackles questions relating to the social scale of the construction processes concerned, specialization in construction, and the participation and collaboration of the builders. By choosing to focus on a local-scale analysis of a single site, we were able to develop a detailed framework that includes all the steps involved in manufacturing the earthen features, from the decision-making processes to questions of spatial allocation, the acquisition and processing of materials and construction practices, together with their subsequent use and end-life. The aim of this paper is to recognize construction processes as a social event involving cooperation and social performativity, which fosters and reaffirms social interactions, obligations and entanglements, shedding light on the dynamics of the society in question.

In 1994, H. de Lumley's teams of researchers finished the colossal task—initiated more than 20 years earlier—of recording every pecked rock engraving of Mont Bégo's rock art. The following year, in the book Le grandiose et le sacré, Lumley defined the site as a sacred mountain and attributed rock engravings, considered as ex-votos, to the Early Bronze Age and the Bell Beaker period. However, it is hard to recognize what interpretations can be directly drawn from the data: some exceptional rock engravings are considered as representative of the whole corpus of rock engravings and the most numerous ones are considered as a ‘bruit de fond’ [background noise]. Furthermore, recognition of associations—where rock engravings are contemporaneous and significantly grouped—had been criticised, and the hypothesis that all the rock engravings can be considered as a single archaeological event seems also to be contradicted by studies of superimpositions. We developed a GIS and a comprehensive database, with statistics, to identify specific spatial configurations, seriation effects and, finally, the evolution of the rock art. By going further in the periodization, our aim is to propose some provisional hypotheses about the meaning of Mont Bégo's rock engravings.

Using examples drawn from the European Upper Palaeolithic, this article advocates a visual cultures approach to studying the art of this period. Visual culture is defined as the biological, cognitive and social underpinnings of how we see, while the term art refers to what we see. A visual cultures approach to these images allows the archaeologist to explore how they were experienced, decoded and innovated upon within historically situated, overlapping and entangled communities of practice and further affords archaeologists the tools and the vocabulary they need to explore apprenticeship, active teaching, embodied cognition, situated learning, scaffolding, enskillment, the existence of chaînes opératoires and the impact of these materials on the human brain. European Upper Palaeolithic finger flutings are presented as a case study of the visual cultures approach.

Diplomatic relations between the 18th-dynasty Egyptian court and the polities of the Aegean Bronze Age are gaining increasing scholarly attention. The work conducted so far on chronological synchronization has established a relatively firm base for further discussions on social relations. The role of the prestige objects arriving from the Aegean to Egypt has not received the same attention. This is partly because our knowledge of these objects is restricted to Egyptian visual representations in tombs of the officials and not the imported objects per se. This paper will discuss the transformative capacities of Egyptian decorum in regards to the foreign prestige objects of the Aegean provenance arriving in the Egyptian 18th-dynasty court. We first have to understand the iconographical phenomena of transference, hybridization and creativity in Egyptian visual culture, and only then may we attempt to read any historical reality behind them. These transformative representational processes are crucial for the understanding of the reception and the memory of the Aegean objects.

Archaeological analyses of child funerary remains have often revolved around discussions of ascribed status and demographic trends. Other social and spatial dimensions of child burial are often left unexplored. This article introduces a novel perspective, through the analysis of child burials in Predynastic Egypt. My analysis focuses on the changing rates and spatial distribution of child burials in community necropoleis, with special attention to how their placement was used to renegotiate power relationships, and perhaps even concepts of personhood, in Predynastic society. The importance of children's funerals for creating of a sense of community through attachment to place is also considered. Criticizing analyses that rely on quantitative data to the exclusion of other factors, I emphasize the contribution of childhood, practice theory, emotions and personhood for the study of social complexity. My arguments point towards significant changes in the emotional dimension of children's funerary practices experienced during the later fourth millennium bc, and links these transformations to processes of state formation in Egypt.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of the metalworker in the northwest Iberian Iron Age. By adopting a holistic and diachronic perspective, a broad review of the influence of metalworking and its agents on the social structuring of the communities of the Atlantic seaboard is presented. With the aim of exploring the implications of metallurgy and the blacksmith's activity, a new perspective of metalworking is suggested. Thus, an exploration of perspectives beyond the technical aspects will be addressed, considering the ‘technological dimension’ as part of all the elements that define this activity. The objective of the work is to present a narrative that allows analysis of the role of the metalworker throughout different historical periods, focusing on the social, technical and symbolic dynamics that have shaped its development.

The relationship between handmilling, undertaken in domestic contexts, and mechanized mills in medieval Kent is used to challenge linear approaches to economic progress in the Middle Ages. Inspired by posthuman perspectives which emphasize messiness, non-linearity and multiplicity, medieval economic development is re-imagined as a patchwork of intensive material processes. In so doing, an approach is developed which works towards dissolving problematic binaries between gendered labour, domestic and economic spheres and the Middle Ages and modernity.

Whaling was a central aspect of Nuu-chah-nulth, Ditidaht and Makah culture on the northwest coast of North America. Not only was it economically important, it was vital to chiefly prestige. Art and ceremonial life were dominated by themes related to whaling. Thunderbird, the great supernatural whaler, was the source of hereditary prerogatives held by chiefs, including names, dances, regalia and rights to display images of thunderbird and whale. This paper argues that human observations of predatory behaviour by orcas (or killer whales) led to these animals also being perceived as non-human whalers from which chiefly prerogatives could be obtained. Wolves, the main figures in Nuu-chah-nulth ceremonial life, had the power to transform into orcas, explaining their frequent presence in the art with thunderbirds and whales. This paper presents archaeological evidence for orca in the context of whaling and offers interpretations based on the extensive ethnographic and oral historical records. It also places perceptions of animals, the role of the hunter's wife and beliefs about orca in a broader context involving hunting societies in northwestern North America.

In their introduction to the discussion of Beiläufigkeit in archaeology, Pollock, Bernbeck, Appel, Loy and Schreiber build pleasingly on the theme of what Daniel Miller refers to as the ‘humility’ of physical things (2010, 50). By this he means that objects do not determine or prescribe the actions of human beings, but mutely establish the circumstances under which we operate, conditioning our expectations of how to proceed. Things are often not conspicuously meaningful, but unobtrusive or ‘hiding in plain sight’ and bringing about unacknowledged effects (Alvis 2017, 212). This state of affairs has been recognized by both the phenomenological tradition and the more recent ‘new materialisms’, but what I want to suggest in this contribution is that these perspectives implicitly indicate that things can be ‘incidental’ in a variety of subtly different ways.

The production and use of masks at multiple scales and in diverse contexts is a millennia-long tradition in Mesoamerica. In this paper, we explore some implications of Mesoamerican masking practices in light of materiality studies and the archaeology of the senses. We also discuss a collection of 22 masks, miniature masks and representations of masks from the lower Río Verde valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. The iconography of these artefacts as well as their recovery from well-documented archaeological contexts inform our interpretations of masking practices during an approximately 2000-year span of the Formative period (2000 bc–ad 250). Specifically, we argue that these masking-related artefacts index sociocultural changes in the region, from the first villages and the advent of ceramic technology during the Early Formative period (2000–1000 bc) to a time of increasing consolidation of iconographic influence in the hands of the elite in the final centuries before the Classic period. As indicated by their continued use today, masks have long been intimates of communal activities in Oaxaca.

This contribution contrasts ‘Assemblage theory’ with more traditional archaeological understandings of the term ‘assemblage’. It is argued that the flat ontology of assemblage theory is productive, particularly in relation to scale, enabling archaeologists to describe their own materials more precisely. However, more traditional ‘assemblages’, perhaps as a result of the more restrictive view they provide, should not be neglected, as they generate particularly archaeological perspectives and effects.

Late Early Bronze Age (EB IIB–III, 2500–2000 bc) evidence from the northeast Peloponnese and central Crete present two coeval sequences of events with very different societal outcomes. By drawing on resilience theory and the model of adaptive cycles, this article explores when and why the paths of mainland Greece and Crete diverged around 2200 bc, leading to an eventually destabilizing change on the mainland and a more sustainable one on Crete. It is argued that the two EB II societal structures were more similar than current discourse generally allows. However, during some hundred years leading up to the end of the EB II period, an increased societal uniformity and a decrease of social arenas on northeast Peloponnese may in the end have circumscribed the Early Helladic communities’ room to manoeuvre. Conversely, through strong regionalism and greater multiplicity of social arenas, Early Minoan societies seem to have retained a greater level of socio-economic variability that enabled proactiveness and sustained expansion through ideological change.

The distribution of designs on Mesopotamian terracottas can provide clues to the relationship between symbols and meaning at different localities. Unlike other Mesopotamian terracottas whose iconography reflects pan-Mesopotamian beliefs, the designs on model chariots are site-specific. While Mesopotamian religious symbols should probably be interpreted as representing aspects of divine power rather than individual deities, combinations of symbols serve to identify particular gods. When these are found on model chariots, they can be related to the titular deities of the specific city in which they were found. Examination of the findspots of these objects, especially those from Mashkanshapir, suggests a possible link between model chariots and the centralizing institutions of the city.