In the Salish Sea region, labret adornment with lip plugs signify particular identities, and they are interpreted as emblematic of both membership in horizontal relationships and achieved status for traditional cultures associated with labret wearing on the Northwest Coast (NWC) of North America. Labrets are part of a shared symbolic language in the region, one that we argue facilitated access to beneficial horizontal relationships (e.g., Angelbeck and Grier 2012; Rorabaugh and Shantry 2017). We employ social network analysis (SNA) to examine labrets from 31 dated site components in the Salish Sea region spanning between 3500 and 1500 cal BP. Following this period, the more widely distributed practice of cranial modification as a social marker of status developed in the region. The SNA of labret data shows an elaboration and expansion of antecedent social networks prior to the practice of cranial modification. Understandings of status on the NWC work backward from direct contact with Indigenous societies. Labret wearing begins at the Middle-Late Holocene transition, setting an earlier stage for the horizontal social relationships seen in the ethnohistoric period. These findings are consistent with the practice as signifying restricted group membership based on affinal ties and achieved social status.

The Sa'dan Toraja of upland Sulawesi, Indonesia have long been celebrated in the anthropological literature for their elaborate procession-filled mortuary rituals, which draw vast networks of kith and kin to mourn, memorialise, and reaffirm familial bonds and obligations. Whether residing in the homeland or abroad, most Torajans underscore funeral rites as the most vital expression of Toraja familial and cultural identity. Although some estimates suggest that more Torajans now reside off-island and overseas than remain in the homeland, extended familial funerals in the homeland continue to have a centripetal physical, economic and emotional pull. While various scholars have documented the ways in which remittances from Toraja migrants or the presence of international tourists have transformed Toraja funerals in recent decades, this article focusses on the role of social media in navigating global familial relationships and rituals. Indonesia has the largest number of Facebook subscribers in the world, and this study offers the first exploration of the ways in which Facebook interweaves far-flung familial relationships. This study also examines house-society orientations in the Toraja highlands and addresses the use of Facebook by Torajans in the homeland to cultivate continued allegiances to ancestral houses (around which extended Toraja families are oriented). Finally, this article also examines a large-scale 2012 Toraja funeral in order to spotlight the contours of the Toraja family in the current era of neoliberalism and cyber-technologies. The article offers insights into the ways in which various Torajans navigate social media and non-local corporations to image, reimagine and negotiate familial identities for various audiences (local, national and transnational).

This paper is based on the 2012 Europa Lecture and discusses the relationship between the forms and structures of domestic buildings and those of public monuments. Its chronological scope extends between the Neolithic period and the Viking Age in western, northern and central Europe, with a special emphasis on the contrast between circular and rectilinear architecture. There were practical limits to the diameters of circular constructions, and beyond that point they might be organised in groups, or their characteristic outlines were reproduced in other media, such as earthwork building. By contrast, the main constraint on building rectangular houses was their width, but they could extend to almost any length. That may be one reason why they only occasionally provided the prototype for specialised forms of monument such as mounds or enclosures. Instead rectangular buildings played a wide variety of roles from domestic dwellings to ceremonial centres.