Issue 400 - August 2024

The dynamics of our species’ dispersal into the Pacific remains intensely debated. The authors present archaeological investigations in the Raja Ampat Islands, north-west of New Guinea, that provide the earliest known evidence for humans arriving in the Pacific more than 55 000–50 000 years ago. Seafaring simulations demonstrate that a northern equatorial route into New Guinea via the Raja Ampat Islands was a viable dispersal corridor to Sahul at this time. Analysis of faunal remains and a resin artefact further indicates that exploitation of both rainforest and marine resources, rather than a purely maritime specialisation, was important for the adaptive success of Pacific peoples.

Small, disc-shaped shell beads are recorded as mortuary offerings in many Neolithic and Bronze Age burials in Southeast Asia. Yet the provenance of these artefacts is often obscure, as production processes involve the removal of diagnostic morphological features, negating taxonomic classification. Here, the authors report on the combined isotopic and morphological analysis of a subset of shell beads from the site of Ban Non Wat in north-east Thailand. In addition to identifying freshwater sources for nearly all the beads, the results suggest the presence of multiple shell production centres—each with access to distinct aqueous environments—and widespread exchange in the Bronze Age.

Across more than seven centuries (c. 1350–600 BC), the Assyrian Empire established political dominance and cultural influence over many settlements in the Ancient Near East. Assyrian policies of resource extraction, including taxation and tribute, have been extensively analysed in textual and art historical sources. This article assesses the impact of these policies on patterns of wealth within mortuary material—one of the most conservative forms of culture, deeply rooted in group identity. The author argues that a trend of decreasing quality and quantity of grave goods over time supports models emphasising the heavy economic burden of Assyrian administration on its subjects.

Tophets are Phoenician and Punic sanctuaries where cremated infants and children were buried. Many studies focus on the potentially sacrificial nature of these sites, but this article takes a different approach. Combining osteological analysis with a consideration of the archaeological and wider cultural context, the authors explore the short life-courses and mortuary treatments of 12 individuals in the tophet at the Neo-Punic site of Zita, Tunisia. While osteological evidence suggests life at Zita was hard, and systemic health problems may have contributed to the deaths of these individuals, their mortuary rites were attended to with care and without concrete indication of sacrifice.

One century after its initial excavation, this article presents the first absolute chronology for the settlement of Karanis in Egypt. Radiocarbon dates from crops retrieved from settlement structures suggest that the site was inhabited beyond the middle of the fifth century AD, the time at which it was previously believed to have been abandoned. These dates add to the complex picture of population fluctuations and the remodelling and reuse of structures at Karanis. Two dates reach into the middle of the seventh century, placing the abandonment of the site in a period of political and environmental transition that changed the physical and social landscape of the Fayum region and beyond.

After St James the Apostle, Bishop Teodomiro of Iria-Flavia is the most important figure associated with the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. He supposedly discovered the apostolic tomb after a divine revelation between AD 820 and 830 yet, until the discovery, in 1955, of a tombstone inscribed with his name, his very existence was a matter of some debate. Here, the authors employ a multi-stranded analytical approach, combining osteoarchaeology, radiocarbon dating, stable isotope and ancient DNA analyses to demonstrate that human bones associated with the tombstone, in all likelihood, represent the earthly remains of Bishop Teodomiro.

Throughout the medieval period, thousands of ships plied their trade around England's coasts. History documents numerous lost ships, and more would have sunk without record, yet very few wrecks dating between the tenth and fifteenth centuries AD have previously been discovered in English waters. The author reports on one of the first of such finds—the wreck of a clinker-built sailing vessel, dated to c. AD 1250, that was carrying a cargo of Purbeck stone. Examination of the ship and its cargo reveals new insights into shipping and the Purbeck stone trade in the thirteenth century.

In the absence of written records, disease and parasite loads are often used as indicators of sanitation in past populations. Here, the authors adopt the novel approach of integrating the bioarchaeological analysis of cesspits in an area of medieval Leiden (the Netherlands) with historical property records to explore living conditions. Using light microscopy and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) they identify evidence of parasites associated with ineffective sanitation (whipworm, roundworm and the protozoan Giardia duodenalis)—at residences of all social levels—and the consumption of infected livestock and freshwater fish (Diphyllobothriidae, cf. Echinostoma sp., cf. Fasciola hepatica and Dicrocoelium sp.).

Paquimé (also known as Casas Grandes), situated in northern Chihuahua between Mesoamerican and Ancestral Puebloan groups, was a vibrant multicultural centre during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD. Substantial debate surrounds the social organisation of Paquimé's inhabitants. Here, the authors report on the analysis of ancient DNA from a unique child burial beneath a central support post of a room in the House of the Well. They argue that the close genetic relationship of the child's parents, revealed through this analysis, and the special depositional context of the burial reflect one family's attempts to consolidate and legitimise their social standing in this ancient community.

The authors report on ancient DNA data from two human skeletons buried within the chancel of the 1608–1616 church at the North American colonial settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. Available archaeological, osteological and documentary evidence suggest that these individuals are Sir Ferdinando Wenman and Captain William West, kinsmen of the colony's first Governor, Thomas West, Third Baron De La Warr. Genomic analyses of the skeletons identify unexpected maternal relatedness as both carried the mitochondrial haplogroup H10e. In this unusual case, aDNA prompted further historical research that led to the discovery of illegitimacy in the West family, an aspect of identity omitted, likely intentionally, from genealogical records.

Minimally invasive compositional analyses of glass trade beads have revolutionised the study of these highly portable and socially significant items. Here, the authors interrogate new and legacy compositional data to investigate how Indigenous communities in eastern North America, particularly Wendat confederacy members, obtained beads from European traders and connected to broader interregional exchange systems c. AD 1600–1670. Diagnostic chemical elements in glass compositions reveal down-the-line exchange and population movement into the Western Great Lakes region prior to the arrival of European settlers, which highlights active Indigenous participation in transatlantic economic networks during a historical period of dynamic reorganisation and interaction.

Current debates surrounding decolonisation and the democratisation of display are a critical issue for prehistoric collections as well as more recent material. The objects most likely to symbolise prehistory in museum displays, and thus in the popular imagination—those made of precious, skilfully worked materials—are a restricted group of iconic things, often interpreted as reflective of social status rather than anything more personal or spiritual. To contextualise this debate, the authors outline public reaction to the display of alternative objects with more representative messages within The World of Stonehenge exhibition, which was held at the British Museum in 2022.

Amid resurgent geopolitical fissures and in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a growing awareness in the sector of the need for, and concern about, national and international collaboration in archaeological projects. This article reflects on present-day challenges for international collaboration in central Eurasian archaeology and furthers a much-needed discussion about (re)integrating local narratives with inter-regional trends in future research. Responsible and practical proposals for bridging collaborator differences in institutional or publishing obligations, language capacities and access to resources are discussed.

The activities of metal-detectorists and other finders and collectors of archaeological objects are increasingly of interest for researchers in archaeology and related disciplines. In this methods article, the authors introduce semi-structured archaeological object interviews—inspired by the object interview in sociology—as a means of observing the meanings and biographies that finder-collectors create for, and with, the objects in their stewardship. The challenges and opportunities for researchers using this method are explored and the authors offer reflections from in-the-field experiences with finder-collectors in Flanders, Finland and Norway.

At a time when the Parthenon Sculptures refuse to go away (in every sense of the phrase) and uncatalogued items were allegedly found to have been sold off by a member of staff, The British Museum needs some good news. There must have been sighs of relief all round when their new exhibition in the (itself often controversial: Puffett 2023) BP Gallery, Legion: life in the Roman Army, opened to almost universal press acclaim (e.g. Clark 2024; Jones 2024); it runs from 1 February to 23 June 2024. However, some (perfectly valid) observations in her blog by a scholar qualified in the field triggered a ‘woke alarm’ in some less-qualified quarters (McGrath 2024). It was always likely to be a crowd pleaser, with something for every “exercitologist” (Bishop 2014: 24), whether amateur or professional. For those visitors who had cut their Roman military teeth on Graham Webster's seminal Roman Imperial Army (Webster 1969, 1979, 1985), it was going to have its work cut out to satisfy.

The reviewed volumes represent the past and future of triangulating human prehistory. Both works address the integration of the knowledge embedded in the Indo-European group of languages into the interpretation of archaeological and genetic data, but approach this very differently. By enlisting the expertise of scholars from the three different fields, with 22 contributions from more than 40 scholars from more than 10 different countries, The Indo-European puzzle revisited is both a seminal work and a resounding commentary on the, by its very nature, limited perspectives voiced by Jean-Paul Demoule as a sole archaeologist author of his book The Indo-Europeans. The title of the former is based on the subtitle of Colin Renfrew's Archaeology and language: the puzzle of Indo-European origins (1987), another archaeologist's foray into historical linguistics.

The peoples who inhabited the worlds discussed in these two books, either in reality or within our imaginations, are at once slippery and certain. We may believe we have a grip on what the Norse/Viking worlds were about, only to have new evidence or a new approach to existing data challenge our views. These two books, The Norse myths that shape the way we think and The Norse sorceress: mind and materiality in the Viking world, explore the ways in which medieval northerners understood and interacted with the sublime, the divine, the non-human within their worlds and, in turn, how these interactions shape our own imaginations.

Jicha is a Bronze Age settlement located next to the upper Mekong River in the Hengduan Mountains of Yunnan, south-west China. Recent excavations have revealed details of successive occupation and copper-base industrial activity. The site's position and chronology provide evidence of north–south demographic movement and technological transmission along the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau corridor.

In 2023, during the underwater archaeological documentation of the port of Puteoli, a submerged Nabataean temple was located and partially investigated. The authors present the first results of these new research activities, including a reconstruction of part of the building and details of two altars and some inscribed slabs.

This article reports on the archaeological survey of a (military) fort and (trade) caravanserai at Khirbet al-Khalde in southern Jordan, along the eastern Roman frontier. The results reveal the site's resilience and destruction up until the present day and the need for monitoring of threats to its preservation.

The Redes Andinas (Andean Networks) project assesses the complexity of ancient road networks in the archaeological record in the Andes, beyond the Inca roads system. A multiscale methodological approach allows us to characterise the transformation and resilience of the road networks over the past millennium, in the context of the 18°South parallel's vertical transect.

‘An archaeology of the Pomeranian Crime of 1939’ is a multidisciplinary scientific project that focuses on collecting the material evidence of the Nazi German mass execution committed in the first months of the Second World War in the Gdańsk Pomerania region in Poland. Since 2023, it has excavated mass graves containing material evidence of crimes against humanity.

Decades of conflict in the Gaza Strip have contributed to widely documented cultural heritage destruction, demonstrating a need to monitor vulnerable sites and enhance the empirical base. This article describes how the Gaza Maritime Archaeology Project (GAZAMAP 2022–2023) was developed to monitor coastal and near-coastal sites, collaboratively. Owing to the unprecedented destruction of heritage since October 2023, GAZAMAP's scope has fundamentally shifted.