ABSTRACT The distinctive materiality (qualia) of fire can account for its near universal sacred status, including in past Andean societies. As a brilliant manifestation of destructive-creation, fire epitomizes a highly-motivated, non-arbitrary sign, thus explaining its intimate link with sacrifice, beginnings, endings, life, and empowering transformation. In the context of a select survey of global traditions, we mobilize a case study from the Moche temple of Huaca Colorada (700–900 CE) in the Jequetepeque Valley of northern Peru to demonstrate that fire served as an important medium in rituals of sacrificial consumption essential for metabolic creation and growth, and by extension, social and cosmic reproduction. The immolation of ceremonial constructions in rededication rites and the sacrifice and interment of individuals associated with intense burning events at the temple support this argument. We further contend that fire-based rites complemented pyro-technologies widely practiced at Huaca Colorada, and cooking and craft industries formed part of integrated religious liturgies. Ultimately, a comparison of Huaca Colorada with the neighbouring ceremonial centre of Huaca Dos Cruces (1000–1350 CE) reveals that despite fire’s inherent material-semiotic properties, its meaning and ritual efficacy varied historically and appears to have changed in the post-Moche period in the Jequetepeque Valley.

ABSTRACT Stone funerary orbs with carved ornamentation, along with similarly decorated stones, but in the form of slabs, are a distinctive yet underexplored category of archaeological objects from Late Iron Age Sweden. These carved stones are originally found in burial contexts from the Migration Period (c. 400–550 CE) and at times early Vendel Period (c. 550–800 CE). In later centuries, they are known to have been removed from their original context, and re-used for other purposes. This paper discusses stone funerary orbs and slabs from the Mälar Valley, south Sweden, and sheds light on their different object itineraries throughout time. In doing so, it focusses on the making of their ornamentation, and its (desired) affects and effects, as well as the possible qualities that were associated with the stone itself (e.g. form, colour, descent) and how these aspects may have played pivotal roles in their removal from burial contexts to new ontological realms.

ABSTRACT Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century archaeological studies of stone artefacts in Australia were part of colonial pursuits that categorized Aboriginal people as ‘stone-age’. This paper examines the history of archaeology in Australia to expose and expel such negative portrayals and focuses on changing narratives which centre on Indigenous communities working with researchers to revisit archaeological collections with new approaches. Such work began 40 years ago when Isabel McBryde published research on greenstone axes in World Archaeology. The publication alerted a global audience to the past greenstone axe exchange systems of Victoria’s Traditional Owners. Here, we share a story of re-connection driven by collaborative research in which the community have re-discovered McBryde’s archaeological work and re-visited colonial museum collections. We also contextualize our work alongside current debates over Indigenous cultural heritage in Australia.

ABSTRACT Carved stone plinths and pedestals, the leftovers of previously intact monuments, are found around the world. These lithics have been understudied by archaeologists; and as this paper examines, empty monuments are not banal spaces. Despite a missing statue, the stone and stone-like foundations of former monuments continue to communicate authorized memories about pioneering settlers and Indigenous disappearance. The negative spaces also reflect iconoclastic takedowns. As seen in four examples from San Francisco and other cities in central California, the hauntings of broken monuments further reveal latent power to either uplift Indigeneity or reinstate the harmful messaging that culminated in a monument’s disfigurement. This paper argues for more attunement to dissonant spaces in support of Indigenous heritage and presence in civic landscapes and beyond.

ABSTRACT To enhance our understanding of everyday people during the Late Ceramic Period in Panama, burials from Operation 5 at the Cerro Juan Díaz site (1050–1400 CE) are assessed within a biocultural approach. Here, burials cut through and overlay a pre-existing house floor to place the majority of the deceased in uniform extended, supine positions. Grave goods were only found with children, following similar patterns of special adornment of child burials during the Middle Ceramic Period. Relatively high frequencies of non-specific physiological stress markers evidenced widespread inflammation and anaemia, perhaps relating to social and environmental factors affecting sanitation, infectious disease risk, and food availability. Artificial cranial modification and activity-related dental wear suggest that body modification may have been used to reinforce cultural boundaries and that children may have used their teeth as tools. These inferences deepen knowledge of human experiences during this time and provide a basis for future research.

ABSTRACT Archaeology in the Nile Valley as a whole has long been skewed to mortuary and funerary archaeology, in part due to mono-focused Egypto-centric perspectives and the influence of European colonialism in the region. While the long-standing bias towards mortuary data is less emphatic in the archaeology of northern Sudan than that seen in certain parts of Egypt, and in spite of significant work having sought to redress the balance between funerary and settlement archaeology, less work has focused on combining methodological and interpretative frameworks between the two. This paper draws on evidence from the 2nd and 3rd millennium BC, at which time northern Sudan was a complex interaction and border zone region between competing political powers. Cultural entanglements manifest in subtly different ways at mortuary and domestic sites, and only by exploring how cross-cultural interactions affected different spheres and contexts is it possible to move towards a more nuanced understanding of social dynamics in the region.

ABSTRACT Cotswold or South Midlands morris dance is a rural proletarian dance tradition which was at its height from the 18th century to the mid-19th century in central England. This paper explores the materiality of two surviving elements of morris-dance costume – a pair of bell-pads held in the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford. It emphasizes the ad hoc nature of their construction, and particularly explores the wider social significance of the use of ribbon, situating this within a wider practice of the mobilization of ribbon as a social signifier within the rural milieu in which this dance tradition was practiced.

ABSTRACT Cross craft interactions were prevalent in the past. The provision of ceramic crucibles was essential for a variety of metallurgical processes as well as being used in glassworking. The question we address in this paper is, who made these crucibles? We explore this by using examples from the British Isles that date from the 1st to the 16th century AD. By assessing these objects and the information they demonstrate about cross craft interactions, we reveal the complexities of the relationships between the three industries – potting, metallurgy, and glassworking – and how these changed over time. These changes trace, and appear to be products of, the general development of these industries. Whilst the existing evidence provides a unique opportunity to explore a wide range of factors pertinent to these industries, it has become clear that there is a need for further work.

ABSTRACT Major changes in lithic technologies are often explained by either migration or crisis. Here we argue that continuity and minor adjustments in lithic production can tell equally dramatic tales of altered social situations. We base our interpretations on identified lithic blade production concepts and raw materials at 30 sites dating 7500–5000BC, i.e. from before and after the massive Storegga tsunami hit the coast of western South-Norway around 6150BC. Regional continuation, but also local variations in lithic production are interpreted inspired by a machine-oriented ontological framework. The tsunami disrupts the environment, society and its lithic traditions are affected. Although no immediate major breaks are observed, sometime after the tsunami, societies or lithic production as ‘machines’ in separate regions had begun to hum to different tunes. We suggest that variation in tsunami impact had created differing local social contexts which in turn pushed the lithic traditions down diverging paths.

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the role and meaning of grinding artefacts in Handoga (Djibouti), a medieval town that flourished between the 13th and 16th centuries in a territory previously occupied by nomadic communities. The technical-morphological and morphological-functional studies conducted on the sample suggest that the management of tools related to agriculture followed an approach characterized by minimal care through the different stages of the objects’ lives. This situation, contradictory to what could be expected in a town that had been sedentary for centuries, has been used to reflect on the interrelations between these objects and their users, following Hodder’s concept of entanglement. The analyses conducted on Handoga’s tools point that contrary to what could be expected, some processes such as sedentarization, which are usually conceived as univocal or inevitable can be negotiated or even rejected, and the material-human interactions built around them can also be untangled, if desired.