ABSTRACT This paper fills a research gap on the quarrying, transportation, and erection of megaliths among the Naga communities of Northeast India and South Asia. I draw insights from a megalith-building event documented in 2020 at Willong Khullen, a Maram Naga village in Manipur. In this case, a quarry crew spent 16 days extracting a stone and transporting it approximately 42 kilometres. Contemporary practices combine modern and traditional methods, yet indigenous knowledge shows that villagers once quarried and transported stones on wooden sledges. Survey findings lead me to argue that small-scale traditional societies in the highland regions of South Asia could not have transported stones over long distances. Instead, they transported stones only over shorter ranges – typically less than five kilometres – because of rugged terrain and dense vegetation. I further argue that both the availability of suitable stone and the ability to mobilise a workforce played a decisive role in megalith construction among the Naga communities.

ABSTRACT It is widely accepted that visiting culturally humancentric heritage sites is potentially therapeutic, although how this process unfolds is still relatively understudied. Most studies reviewed see interventions through the lens of Cultural Heritage Therapy or, if human heritage is not foregrounded, ecotherapy. In this paper, these approaches are critiqued for their polarised stance, leading to a suggestion that an interdisciplinary approach could be applicable where human and ecological heritage overlap. A new ontology is suggested, that of archaeotherapy. We use a qualitative study of accounts from a sample of thirty-one participants. A hybridised methodology, where Westernised analysis tools are utilised in tandem with Indigenous Torres Strait, Māori and Australian Aboriginal perspectives on land, ancestors, and cultural belonging, to better understand participants’ experiences. Ecologically enmeshed qualities of place, which include human ones, are identified as pivotal to ideas of connectedness, healing, and understanding. This study revealed that a five-stage narrative process is employed by respondents, highlighting individually chosen sites as meaningful: (1) Physical site arrival, (2) Connection made, (3) Transformation point reached and passed, (4) Outcome of connectedness, understanding, or health and healing, (5) Incorporation or sense making. The five stages are transcended in specific order, over varying timescales.

ABSTRACT The theoretical concepts that underpin archaeological interpretation frequently lack clarity regarding the intricate processes occurring at the confluence of materiality and perception. This ambiguity has resulted in the widespread and indiscriminate application of these concepts to explain diverse facets of human behaviour within the archaeological theory. The confluence of their application has, at times, led to interpretative challenges and a lack of precision in understanding the intricate relationship between materiality and perception in the archaeological context. In response to these challenges, this article embarks on a comprehensive exploration into the intersection of the theory of movement and commonly utilised terms anchoring cognitive processes to the human body. The central objective of this paper is to integrate an understanding of the neurological processes that constitute the basic schemata of perception, thereby shedding light on key theoretical concepts. Through this nuanced examination, the aim is to contribute to a more precise and grounded understanding of the complex interplay between materiality, perception, and human behavior within the realm of archaeological theory.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the investigation of spatial cognitive implications in early chopper tools selected from the main sites of the Near East. Early toolmakers of chopper tools required actions that included spatial concepts such as proximity, separation, and navigation in different directions. The evidence discovered proposes that visual perception, sensorimotor tasks, spatial working memory, and decision-making are involved during the knapping process. These tasks generally activate the primary motor, somatosensory, cerebellar, superior parietal, and primary visual cortices. These brain areas may represent the complex spatial cognition resulting in the emergence of simple choppers about 1.5 million years ago in this region.

ABSTRACT Göbekli Tepe, an archaeological site in southern Turkey, features several temple-like enclosures adorned with many intricately carved symbols. It is located centrally among a group of Taş Tepeler pre-pottery Neolithic sites which include Karahan Tepe and Sayburç. Here, an earlier astronomical interpretation for Gobekli Tepe’s symbolism is supported and extended by showing how V-symbols on Pillar 43 in Enclosure D can be interpreted in terms of a lunisolar calendar system with 11 epagomenal days, which would make it the oldest known example of its type. Furthermore, it is shown how Göbekli Tepe’s 11-pillar enclosures and a megalithic 11-pillar pool structure at nearby Karahan Tepe can also be interpreted in terms of the same lunisolar calendar system. Other V-symbols at Göbekli Tepe are also interpreted in astronomical terms, and it is shown how the Urfa Man statue, a wall carving at Sayburç and a statue at Karahan Tepe that display V-symbol necklaces can be interpreted as time-controlling or creator deities. Symbolic links with later cultures from the Fertile Crescent are explored. Throughout, links are made with the Younger Dryas impact and Cauvin’s theory for the origin of the Neolithic revolution in the Fertile Crescent.

ABSTRACT In 1781, a book discussing the relationship between cats and dogs was published in Lisbon. Among the illustrations, there is a representation of a palace, more precisely the Marquess of Ponte de Lima palace in Mafra, Portugal. This illustration reveals how this space was lived and felt not only by the observer but also by all the human and non-human agents that circulated and existed in this space. The palace still exists, it is a public building, and 241 years later, we, as archaeologists, visited the palace. We observed its architecture, touched its walls, and heard how sound would propagate, trying to use our senses to feel the space. After the visit, we sat down and discussed how we perceived the place. We then returned to the late eighteenth-century representation and debated how visual stimulation can provoke a sensorial experience of a place we never smelled or listened to. This paper aims to debate whether we can use past representations of still-existing spaces to understand how different agents effectively reacted to different environments and how those representations influenced the way we engage with such spaces.

Material Culture Studies

ABSTRACT Cultures using mind-altering psychedelic mushrooms in literate periods have been identified in the ancient Near East. key to their recognition in preliterate periods. One may assume that psychedelic substances such as mushrooms were elevated to the status of gods, and their secret identity embedded in the iconography of material items in a variety of media. I trace some of these images from late Holocene cultures until at least the Early Bronze Age, and suggest analogies from known contemporary cultures where the mycological cult was practiced. I note the presence of such a cult in the rock art of the Negev and Sinai deserts in Israel. Most of this art is thought to date within the last 5000 years. I also suggest a symbiotic relationship between man and ibex with the growth and collection of mushrooms linking the two.

ABSTRACT Humans are unique in their creative abilities and this creativity likely arose as a result of self-domestication. Language use would have been a driver of early human self-domestication, and this paper examines how the controlled use of fire for cooking was an early driver in the development of language. Cooking allowed for greater caloric intake and a greater diversity of diet, contributing to larger hominin brain sizes and group sizes. These developments created new social constraints that were met by the emergence of language. Diets can impact neuroplasticity, enhancing divergent thinking and creativity. One potential source of such transformative foodstuffs were intoxicants, the use of which could have easily become ritualized and used as social and cognitive tools. Cooking and ritualization, as fundamentally hierarchically and temporally structured actions, are grounded in recursion, which is also a key aspect of language. Cooking, recursive, and symbolic thought coevolved, driving the development of language. This paper is part one of a two-part article.