Issue 397 - February 2024

Grain-cooking traditions in Neolithic China have been characterised as a ‘wet’ cuisine based on the boiling and steaming of sticky varieties of cereal. One of these, broomcorn millet, was one of the earliest Chinese crops to move westward into Central Asia and beyond, into regions where grains were typically prepared by grinding and baking. Here, the authors present the genotypes and reconstructed phenotypes of 13 desiccated broomcorn millet samples from Xinjiang (1700 BC–AD 700). The absence in this area of sticky-starch millet and vessels for boiling and steaming suggests that, as they moved west, East Asian cereal crops were decoupled from traditional cooking practices and were incorporated into local cuisines.

The late third-millennium BC Longshan period was a crucial time for state formation in central China. During these centuries, long-distance networks expanded and shared material culture and then cultural practices spread across wider areas precipitating social and ideological developments that presaged the rise of states and cities on the Central Plain. In this research, the authors use multiple (strontium, oxygen and carbon) isotope analyses from the dental enamel of 67 individuals buried at the Xiajin cemetery, Shanxi Province. The results indicate significant long-distance migration among females during the Longshan period, which the authors interpret as evidence of exogamous marriage for political alliance-building—a phenomenon found more widely across Eurasia at the start of the Bronze Age.

Wine was deeply embedded in all aspects of Roman life and its role in society, culture and the economy has been much studied. Ancient Roman texts and archaeological research provide valuable insights into viticulture and the manufacture, trade and consumption of wine but little is known of the sensory nature of this prized commodity. Here, the authors offer a novel oenological approach to the study of Roman dolia through their comparison with modern Georgian qvevri and associated wine-production techniques. Far from being mundane storage vessels, dolia were precisely engineered containers whose composition, size and shape all contributed to the successful production of diverse wines with specific organoleptic characteristics.

Durable architecture is a hallmark of Polynesian chiefdoms, associated with centralised control of residential and agricultural land. Previous work in West Polynesia has indicated a relatively late date for the onset of such construction activity—after AD 1000—suggesting that political development was influenced by events such as post-colonisation migration. The authors report new dating evidence from the excavation of a large earth mound on the island of Tongatapu. Its construction 1500 years ago indicates that, in contrast to previous findings, well-developed chiefdoms and field monuments probably dominated the landscapes of West Polynesia substantially prior to the colonisation of more easterly island nations.

Comparative studies of inequality based on archaeological data rely on universal notions of status or prestige that are not always meaningful across diverse cultural contexts. Here, the authors evaluate three broadly contemporaneous urban communities (Marothodi, Molokwane and Kaditshwene) in the southern African interior in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries AD. The study combines a statistical measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient, with insights from the rich ethnohistorical archives of African knowledge systems. The results suggest markedly different levels of inequality, but contextualisation points to divergent social strategies for settlement organisation and for managing sociopolitical insecurity. The findings raise important questions about cross-cultural indices of social inequality.

Imagery-based survey is capable of producing archaeological datasets that complement those collected through field-based survey methods, widening the scope of analysis beyond regions. The Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology (GeoPACHA) enables systematic registry of imagery survey data through a ‘federated’ approach. Using GeoPACHA, teams pursue problem-specific research questions through a common data schema and interface that allows for inter-project comparisons, analyses and syntheses. The authors present an overview of the platform's rationale and functionality, as well as a summary of results from the first survey campaign, which was carried out by six projects distributed across the central Andes, five of which are represented here.

In the Andean highlands, hilltop fortifications known as pukaras are common. Dating predominantly to the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450), pukaras are important to archaeological characterisations of a political landscape shaped by conflict but the distribution of these key sites is not well understood. Here, the authors employ systematic satellite imagery survey to provide a contiguous picture of pukara distribution on an inter-regional scale covering 151 103km2 in the south-central highlands of Peru. They highlight the effectiveness of such survey at identifying pukaras and capturing regional variability in size and residential occupation, and the results demonstrate that satellite surveys of high-visibility sites can tackle research questions at larger scales of analysis than have previously been possible.

The north coast of Peru is among the most extensively surveyed regions in the world, yet variation in research questions, sampling strategies and chronological and geospatial controls among survey projects makes comparison of disparate datasets difficult. To contextualise these issues, the authors present a systematic survey of satellite imagery focusing on hilltop fortifications in the Jequetepeque and Santa Valleys. This digital recontextualisation of pedestrian survey data demonstrates the potential of hybrid methodologies to substantially expand both the identification of archaeological sites within difficult terrain and, consequently, our understanding of the function of defensive sites.

Fog oases (lomas) present pockets of verdant vegetation within the arid coastal desert of Andean South America and archaeological excavation within some of the oases has revealed a long history of human exploitation of these landscapes. Yet lomas settlements are under-represented in archaeological datasets due to their tendency to be located in remote inter-valley areas. Here, the authors employ satellite imagery survey to map the locations of anthropogenic surface features along the central Peruvian coast. They observe two categories of archaeological features, large corrals and clustered structures, and document a concentration of settlement features within lomas landscapes that suggests a pre-Hispanic preference for both short- and long-term occupation of these verdant oases.

Recent archaeological research in the Andes suggests that Indigenous herders carefully managed their environments through the modification of local hydrology and vegetation. However, the limited geographical scale of previous research makes it challenging to assess the range and prevalence of pastoralist land management in the Andes. In this article, the authors utilise large-scale, systematic imagery survey to examine the distribution and environmental contexts of corrals and pastoralist settlements in Huancavelica, Peru. Results indicate that corrals and pastoralist settlements cluster around colonial and present-day settlements and that a statistically significant relationship exists between pastoral infrastructure and perennial vegetation. This highlights the utility of remote survey for the identification of trans-regional patterns in herder-environment relationships that are otherwise difficult to detect.

Archaeological surveys conducted through the inspection of high-resolution satellite imagery promise to transform how archaeologists conduct large-scale regional and supra-regional research. However, conducting manual surveys of satellite imagery is labour- and time-intensive, and low target prevalence substantially increases the likelihood of miss-errors (false negatives). In this article, the authors compare the results of an imagery survey conducted using artificial intelligence computer vision techniques (Convolutional Neural Networks) to a survey conducted manually by a team of experts through the Geo-PACHA platform (for further details of the project, see Wernke et al. 2023). Results suggest that future surveys may benefit from a hybrid approach—combining manual and automated methods—to conduct an AI-assisted survey and improve data completeness and robustness.

Previous archaeobotanical research in Southwest Asia focused on the Neolithic ‘founder crops’. The Founders project revisits this concept and the economic role these species played in the development of agriculture. To achieve this aim, archaeological food remains are studied and culinary practices of the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers are evaluated.

This terrestrial and underwater archaeological research project around a Mediterranean islet identifies that it was a commercial centre during the fifth century AD. The results shed light on Late Roman island occupation dynamics.