{"title":"Error or Minority? The Identification of Non-binary Gender in Prehistoric Burials in Central Europe","authors":"E. Pape, N. Ialongo","doi":"10.1017/s0959774323000082","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774323000082","url":null,"abstract":"Gender is under focus in prehistoric archaeology, with traditional binary models being questioned and alternatives formulated. Quantification, however, is generally lacking, and alternative models are rarely tested against the archaeological evidence. In this article, we test the binary hypothesis of gender for prehistoric Central Europe based on a selection of seven published burial sites dating from the Early Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age. Results show that the binary model holds for the majority of individuals, but also supports the existence of non-binary variants. We address such variants as ‘minorities’ rather than ‘exceptions’, as only the former can be integrated in interpretive models. However, we also find that quantification is undermined by several sources of error and systematic bias.","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43919970","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
C. Tsoraki, Huw Barton, Rachel J. Crellin, O. Harris
{"title":"From Typology and Biography to Multiplicity: Bracers as ‘Process Objects’","authors":"C. Tsoraki, Huw Barton, Rachel J. Crellin, O. Harris","doi":"10.1017/S0959774323000094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774323000094","url":null,"abstract":"In this article we put forward an alternative account of the famous wristguards, or bracers, of the European Early Bronze Age. Combining new materialism with empirical microwear analysis, we study 15 examples from Britain in detail and suggest a different way of conceptualizing these objects. Rather than demanding they have a singular function, we treat these objects as ‘multiplicities’ and as always in process. This, in turn, has significant implications for the important archaeological concepts of typology and object biography and our understandings of material culture more widely.","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"33 1","pages":"693 - 714"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42773694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Wealth in Livestock, Wealth-in-People, and Shifting Modes of Production in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Jordan – CORRIGENDUM","authors":"M. Price, C. Makarewicz","doi":"10.1017/s0959774323000197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774323000197","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42470846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Proceduralization of Hominin Knapping Skill: Memorizing Different Lithic Technologies","authors":"Antoine Muller, C. Shipton, Chris Clarkson","doi":"10.1017/S0959774323000070","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774323000070","url":null,"abstract":"Reconstructing the technical and cognitive abilities of past hominins requires an understanding of how skills like stone toolmaking were learned and transmitted. We ask how much of the variability in the uptake of knapping skill is due to the characteristics of the knapping sequences themselves? Fundamental to skill acquisition is proceduralization, the process whereby skilful tasks are converted from declarative memories (consciously memorized facts and events) into procedural memories (sub-consciously memorized actions) via repetitive practice. From knapping footage, we time and encode each action involved in discoidal, handaxe, Levallois and prismatic blade production. The structure and complexity of these reduction sequences were quantified using k-mer analysis and Markov chains. The amount of time spent on tasks and the pattern of core rotations revealed portions of these reduction sequences that are predisposed to being converted into procedural memories. We observed two major pathways to achieve this proceduralization: either a repetitive or a predictable sequence of core rotations. Later Acheulean handaxes and Levallois knapping involved a predictable platform selection sequence, while prismatic blade knapping involved a repetitive exploitation of platforms. Technologies and the portions of their reduction sequence that lend themselves to proceduralization probably facilitated the more rapid uptake of stone toolmaking skill.","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"33 1","pages":"655 - 672"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45078652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Wealth in Livestock, Wealth in People, and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Jordan","authors":"M. Price, C. Makarewicz","doi":"10.1017/s0959774323000136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0959774323000136","url":null,"abstract":"Within archaeology, the value of livestock is usually presented in terms of use values, the calories and products animals provide humans. Yet domestic animals are also sources of wealth that accrue symbolic and social values, tying livestock production to the reproduction of human social relations. Taking a Marxist perspective that recognizes dialectical relations between forms of value, we develop a model based on ethnographic examples in which the cycling between use value and social/symbolic values adhering to wealth in livestock are mobilized for the reproduction of ‘wealth in people’, or the accumulation of rights stemming from relationships between people. This model of cycling between forms of value can be applied to many ethnohistorical agropastoral political economies. We apply it to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B societies (c. 8500–7000 bc) in Jordan. During this time, the mode of production shifted from one grounded in the community to one centered on extended households. We suggest wealth in people was a key asset for LPPNB households and that wealth in livestock served as a major component of, and a particular ‘moment’ within, its reproduction. This might help explain the accelerated pace by which livestock production overtook hunting in the southern Levant in the eighth millennium bc.","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47442114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in San Forager Theories of Disease, and Its Implications for Understanding Images of Conflict in Southern African Rock Art","authors":"A. Skinner, Sam Challis","doi":"10.1017/S0959774323000148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774323000148","url":null,"abstract":"San forager populations in nineteenth-century southern Africa were forced to adapt to greatly destructive aspects of the colonial project. Forging new societies from heterogeneous sources, they engaged in prolonged armed insurgency, recording their exploits, presence and beliefs in the rock-art archive of the Maloti-Drakensberg. These images reference conflict and trauma, conventionally interpreted as visions of spiritual warfare. However, viewed through the lens of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), deeper dimensions emerge. PTSD is the culturally subjective experience of generalizable neuropathologies which develop following a traumatic event. Diagnosable in diverse communities worldwide, it nonetheless requires insider idioms to understand its local expressions. We explore how PTSD manifested in this historic and cultural context; how its symptomatic social dysfunctions would have been understood in forager aetiology, and how its intrusive flashbacks would have intruded on altered-state experiences induced to heal the consequences of violence. We find that the artists were not passive victims of trauma, but rather used art symbolically to reconsolidate individual and collective understandings of traumatic events.","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"33 1","pages":"673 - 691"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49597269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New Materialism and Posthumanism in Roman Archaeology: When Objects Speak for Others","authors":"Eva Mol","doi":"10.1017/S0959774323000124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774323000124","url":null,"abstract":"Theories derived from the ontological, posthumanist, or the new materialist turn have been increasingly employed in various fields within archaeology in the past decade. Recently, Roman archaeology also picked up on these theories: however, critical integration as well as more theoretical refinement is necessary to show the real potential of such theories. New materialism is not about writing a ‘history of objects’, but about a better ontological positioning of the non-human and human otherness. For Roman archaeology it can therefore be a powerful tool to broaden our perspectives on material culture and diverse social issues such as inequality, marginalized communities, slavery and coloniality. In this paper I will show how we can regard ontological fluidity in the Roman world through a new theoretical lens.","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"33 1","pages":"715 - 729"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46764298","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Earthen Architecture as a Community of Practice: A Case Study of Neolithic Earthen Production in the Eastern Mediterranean","authors":"Marta Lorenzon","doi":"10.1017/S0959774323000033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774323000033","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the development of Neolithic earthen architecture in the Eastern Mediterranean as a concrete example of ‘communities of practice’. Recent studies on earthen architecture have highlighted its adaptability to different climates, architectural forms and craftmanship levels, focusing on the technological aspects of earthen construction. This paper explores the anthropological significance of earth as a building material. It provides evidence on the development of earthen building techniques, interactions between different communities regarding building practices and an understanding of the dynamics of chaîne opératoire in relation to various materials. A review of archaeological case studies provides compelling preliminary evidence for the existence of early specialized architecture in Neolithic Aegean contexts.","PeriodicalId":47164,"journal":{"name":"CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL","volume":"33 1","pages":"601 - 618"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47086031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}