Prehistoric Ceremonial Warfare: Beginning of Institutionalized Violence

Sadly, aggression is still one of the most common features of human behaviour; it is an instinct to promote and survive our own genes against the genes of others. Human intraspecific aggression has gradually become part of human culture over the last 40,000 years and has been institutionalized in various forms of social activities. Particularly in the post-glacial period, the level of social relations has developed dramatically in the context of population growth and the growth of human communities. In the time of Neolithic and Chalcolithic European agricultural populations, the motive of control over farming land became highly important. Also the control of main means of production and social power was increasingly maintaining the intragroup competition and aggression. Thus, violence was employed within the community in order to obtain and maintain individual or collective social status, but also against other communities in an effort to protect property and territory. Particularly the intracommunity aggression was soon transformed into variety of different formal ways of symbolic fighting, which usually did not lead to the unwanted death of a defeated member of the community. The symbolic struggle between members of the community as well as the defense against external aggression were gradually formalized in the form of introduction of specialized weapons designed for combat between people and creation of fortifications. During the Neolithic period a new phenomenon arose in human culture: warfare.     

Altamira 1937: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Grotta Aperta—</Emphasis>Conflict Archaeology of a World Heritage Cave

This article addresses the dark and barely known side of one of the most iconic symbols of Spanish heritage: the Palaeolithic cave of Altamira (region of Cantabria). The cave is a benchmark of European rock art and was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985. Access to the cave’s guestbook (inaugurated on 18 August 1928 with King Alfonso XIII’s signature) has granted us the opportunity to deconstruct the hegemonic discourse therein, and to approach a time, the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), which had been left almost without discussion in historical literature on the archaeological site. Conflict Archaeology can cast light on this unknown reality and raise controversial and contentious issues about the Altamira cave and its role as a wartime cultural asset during the war.     

The Sociopolitics of Archaeology in Quebec: Regional Developments within Global Trends

In the 1960s, archaeology was a newcomer to Quebec’s cultural francophone scene, and commercial archaeology made its first appearance at the end of the 1970s. Today, in a context of global chronic economic crisis, we intend to examine the effects of provincial and federal ideological and economic trends on the praxis of archaeology in Quebec. These include a progressive deregulation of the public sector by weakening the institutions through the termination of archaeological posts or/and non-replacement of retired archaeologists, and a progressive disengagement of the public sector through conditional regulation, accompanied by a lax attitude towards entrepreneurs, and stickler regulations for archaeologists. We present a series of current issues and examples in Quebec archaeology which illustrate these trends, in particular two case studies occurring in Montreal and Northern Quebec, respectively.     

From Activity Areas to Occupational Histories: New Methods to Document the Formation of Spatial Structure in Hunter-Gatherer Sites

Over the past five decades, archaeologists have proposed a wide range of methods for the study of spatial organization within hunter-gatherer sites. Many of these methods sought to identify the spatial location of activities based on patterns of behavior observed in ethnographic contexts. While this resulted in productive observations at certain sites, many of these methods were tailored to specific situations and thus could not be applied to a wide range of sites. For example, open-air sites rarely contain preserved bone or features, such as hearths, which were central components to identifying characteristics of site structure. In addition, many of these methods often did not take into consideration the temporal dynamics of the occupation, i.e., that many sites were formed through subsequent occupations of differing duration. This paper proposes the use of two related methods that assume many assemblages are the result of more than one occupation. The methods target the distribution of lithic artifacts, the most ubiquitously preserved of archaeological materials, and accounts for the potential that the final resting place of artifacts was the result of both intentional and unintentional movement by humans and a host of biological and geological processes. The main goal of this paper is to use an understanding of how these processes influenced the formation of site structure to estimate the relative number and duration of occupations for each site in the sample. These new methods will be presented and explained through the study of seven open-air Middle Paleolithic sites in France but are applicable to a wide range of hunter-gatherer sites.     

Trade and Power in Ancient Egypt: Middle Egypt in the Late Third/Early Second Millennium BC

Middle Egypt provides a unique insight into the organization of power, politics, economy, and culture at the turn of the third millennium BC. The apparently easy integration of this region into the reunified monarchy of king Mentuhotep II (2055–2004 BC) was possible because the interests and the local lineages of potentates were preserved. Trade and access and/or control of international exchange networks were important sources of wealth and power then. And Middle Egypt appears as a crossroads of diverse populations, as a hub of political and economic power, as a crucial node of exchanges through the Nile Valley, and as a power center whose rulers provided support to the monarchy in exchange of local autonomy and considerable political influence at the Court. In the new conditions of early second millennium, potentates from Middle Egypt succeeded in occupying a unique advantageous position, not matched elsewhere in Egypt, because of the concentration of wealth, trade routes, new technologies, political power, and autonomy in the territories they ruled.     

Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction from Faunal Remains: Ecological Basics and Analytical Assumptions

Paleozoologists have long used taxa represented by ancient faunal remains to reconstruct paleoenvironments. Those ancient environments were the selective contexts in which hominin biological and cultural evolution took place. Knowing about those particularistic selective environments and how organisms responded to them is increasingly seen as critically important to identifying both how biota will respond to future (to some degree anthropogenically driven) environmental change, and biological conservation and management applications that will ensure sustainability of ecological resources and services. Reconstructing paleoenvironments requires knowledge of species’ ecological tolerances, geographic ranges, habitats, environments, and niches. It also requires assumptions that extant species had the same ecological tolerances in the past as they do today and that changes in taxonomic composition or abundances reflect environmental change rather than sampling or taphonomic factors. Greater knowledge of ecological processes as well as increased analytical sophistication in paleozoology is providing increasingly rigorous and detailed insights to paleoenvironments.     

Foodways Archaeology: A Decade of Research from the Southeastern United States

Interest in the study of foodways through an archaeological lens, particularly in the American Southeast, is evident in the abundance of literature on this topic over the past decade. Foodways as a concept includes all of the activities, rules, and meanings that surround the production, harvesting, processing, cooking, serving, and consumption of food. We study foodways and components of foodways archaeologically through direct and indirect evidence. The current synthesis is concerned with research themes in the archaeology of Southeastern foodways, including feasting, gender, social and political status, and food insecurity. In this review, I explore the information that can be learned from material remains of the foodstuffs themselves and the multiple lines of evidence that can help us better understand the meanings, rituals, processes, and cultural meanings and motivations of foodways.