Past and present cultures perceive their natural landscape as an integral and vital component of their complex worlds, while particular landscape features and associated monuments built in selected locales become sacred and revered through stories, legends and rituals embedded in mundane and ceremonial events. The hyper-arid Har Tzuriaz area in the southern Negev, Israel, offers a case study of culture-geographic continuities over a chronologically cumulative archaeological sequence. The large set of well-preserved structures located adjacent to water sources, a massive escarpment and a major desert crossroads includes campsites, cult sites, rock-art sites, cairn fields and one desert kite (a large game trap). Cultural continuities and change can be traced from the sixth millennium bce through recent times, reflecting a dynamic system of meanings and interpretations of both the natural and the built landscape within one particular sacred area in the desert. These phenomena are exemplified in archaeological analyses of an open-air shrine, burial cairns, an isolated desert kite and a precise engraving of that kite dated 5000 years later, all in the general context of a dense concentration of surveyed sites.

This paper proposes a novel procedural framework for the archaeological study of the long-term transformation of religious practices by heuristically defining the religious in terms of their functional-effective elements. Thus, religious activities constitute a distinct communicative domain that responds to and processes the uncertainties and risks of the world. Drawing on this re-definition, this paper proposes a procedure comprising the following units of investigation: (A) what uncertainties and risks of the world were generated in and differentiated by a certain social formation; (B) how were they responded to and processed; and (C) how is the mode of the responding and processing changed as social formations are transformed? The applicability of this procedure is examined through a case study from the pre- and proto-historic periods of the Japanese archipelago. It is hoped that the framework reintroduces causally explanatory, comparative and long-term perspectives to the archaeological study of religious practices.

Tell sites are central to archaeological interpretation in many world regions due to their lengthy sequences of stratified deposits. However, the cultural choices that create architectural remnants and associated materials are more poorly understood, as are the ways that previous layers situate the living community above. This article calls for agentive understandings of tell-formation processes through examination of archaeological sites in Burkina Faso, West Africa. We argue that tells here formed through strong cultural beliefs of co-residence between the living and ancestral communities. Drawing on data from excavation and cross-section profiles exposed by road construction, we provide evidence that architectural remnants were actively created and preserved in rituals related to the making and veneration of ancestors. Particular places in tells were used for new construction (often with foundation ritual deposits) only after the active memory of the individual faded from the living community, resulting in a slow (at least 80–100 years) stratification process. Through variations on these core ritual processes, dynamic multi-temporal social groups reinvented themselves over 1500 years through eras of inequity, egalitarian revolution and the Black Death pandemic.

The 1000-year Neolithic occupation of An Son in southern Vietnam consists of ceramics that belong to a tradition that was potentially ancestral to those in many other regions of mainland Southeast Asia. The forms, dimensions, modes of decoration and fabrics of the An Son ceramics throughout the site's occupation have been studied in detail. The morphological dimensions were analysed with coefficient of variation (CV) calculations and the fabrics were characterized using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDX), in conjunction with statistical applications such as principal components analysis (PCA), cluster analysis and canonical variate analysis (CVA). The results suggest that a coherent method of manufacture and a mental template was applied in the manufacture of each major rim form that existed throughout the occupation of An Son. These vessel forms had a continuous evolution with evidence for conservatism in the shape and raw materials, while innovation and variation was observed in the decorative variables. The established mental templates indicate that the organization of ceramic production at An Son was linked to tradition and function in the community.

Space and gender have been two of the ‘buzz words’ in archaeology over the last few years; and quite rightly so, since they identify two of the most crucial aspects of human experience. As we move around buildings today, we are all well aware of norms and restrictions — public spaces and doors marked ‘private’, lounges and bedrooms, stairways and corridors. We negotiate and respect these according to customs and habits learned mainly in childhood. What is true of our own society is true of every other society, past and present, and one of the challenges — not to say obligations — facing archaeologists is to gain some understanding of these spatial mores, even when presented with little more than a ground plan.

In Gilchrist's case-study of medieval English nunneries, the evidence is rather more substantial. Not only has some of the fabric survived — both of churches and their associated buildings — but there is a rich body of textual information about the nunneries, the nuns who inhabited them, and the Christian symbolism and belief which underlay the whole institution.

What better place to study gender and its material expression than in such a uniquely female institution as the medieval nunnery? Fezv would deny that archaeology can play a powerful role in helping us to understand these religious communities — enabling us to see beyond the confines of written records. The application of particular theoretical approaches, however, is somewhat more contentious. Just how well do they fit such a body of evidence? And on a subject where we already have a great deal of textual evidence, can study of the material remains — in layout of buildings, evidence of their use, and iconography — truly reveal new levels of meaning? In sum, how successful is this new analysis?

These are among the key issues which are discussed in the following pages. As usual, we begin this Review Feature with an introduction by the author herself, Roberta Gilchrist. Then follow four contrasting reactions, from archaeologists and historians, rounded off by Gilchrist's reply. Whatever our assessment, the interplay of gender and space has profound and far-reaching significance, and raises issues that no serious historical archaeologist — or indeed prehistorian — can afford to ignore.

The stone of Saint-Samson is a Neolithic stele of 70 tons and 10 m of probable length. Its intriguing leaning position and its very regular morphology have aroused curiosity since medieval times. Three of its four faces—oriented towards the cardinal points—display engravings that were discovered in the 1970s. Now, a new recording protocol has combined 2D techniques for emphasizing the contrast of the engravings (oblique rotating lights) and 3D methods for restoring the volumes of the support (photogrammetry, structured-light scanner). The results obtained have made it possible to implement the first structural analysis of the stone. The north and west faces show an opposition between domestic (cattle, goats) and wild animals (suidae, cervidae, birds, cetaceans), depicted confronted and with their horns or tusks clearly visible. The south face was reserved for the human figure and for iconic artefacts (polished axe, throwing stick, ring disk, steering oar). The four faces have in common the presence of boats. The relationship linking the monument to waterways and the sea is approached by analysing both local legends and the phenomenon of the tidal wave.