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The capacity of Homo sapiens for the intergenerational accumulation of complex technologies, practices, and beliefs is central to contemporary accounts of human distinctiveness. However, the actual antiquity and evolutionary origins of cumulative culture are not known. Here we propose and exemplify a research program for studying the origins of cumulative culture using archaeological evidence. Our stepwise approach disentangles assessment of the observed fidelity of behavior reproduction from inferences regarding required learning mechanisms (e.g., teaching, imitation) and the explanation of larger-scale patterns of change. It is empirically grounded in technological analysis of artifact assemblages using well-validated experimental models. We demonstrate with a case study using a toolmaking replication experiment to assess evidence of behavior copying across three 2.6 Ma Oldowan sites from Gona, Ethiopia. Results fail to reveal any effects of raw material size, shape, quality, or reduction intensity that could explain the observed details of intersite technological variation in terms of individual learning across different local conditions. This supports the view that relatively detailed copying of toolmaking methods was already a feature of Oldowan technological reproduction at ca. 2.6 Ma. We conclude with a discussion of prospects and implications for further research on the evolution of human cumulative culture.

In the past 10 years, flotation techniques have been introduced and implemented in Chinese archaeology. As a result, a tremendous quantity of plant remains have been recovered from archaeological sites located all over China. These plant remains include crops that might have been domesticated in China—such as rice, foxtail millet, broomcorn millet, and soybean—as well as crops that were introduced into China from other parts of world—such as wheat and barley. The new archaeobotanic data provide direct archaeological evidence for the study of the origins and development of agriculture in China. This paper attempts a synthesis of these new archaeobotanic data while presenting some new ideas about the origins and development of ancient agriculture in China, including the rice agriculture tradition that originated around the middle and lower Yangtze River areas; the dry-land agriculture tradition, with millets as major crops, centered in North China; and the ancient tropical agriculture tradition located in the tropical parts of China, where the major crops seem to be roots and tubers, such as taro.

This article represents a systematic effort to answer the question, What are archaeology’s most important scientific challenges? Starting with a crowd-sourced query directed broadly to the professional community of archaeologists, the authors augmented, prioritized, and refined the responses during a two-day workshop focused specifically on this question. The resulting 25 “grand challenges” focus on dynamic cultural processes and the operation of coupled human and natural systems. We organize these challenges into five topics: (1) emergence, communities, and complexity; (2) resilience, persistence, transformation, and collapse; (3) movement, mobility, and migration; (4) cognition, behavior, and identity; and (5) human-environment interactions. A discussion and a brief list of references accompany each question. An important goal in identifying these challenges is to inform decisions on infrastructure investments for archaeology. Our premise is that the highest priority investments should enable us to address the most important questions. Addressing many of these challenges will require both sophisticated modeling and large-scale synthetic research that are only now becoming possible. Although new archaeological fieldwork will be essential, the greatest pay off will derive from investments that provide sophisticated research access to the explosion in systematically collected archaeological data that has occurred over the last several decades.

Indigenous archaeology focuses on laudable processes of collaborative community research and decolonization. In contrast, theoretical contributions of Indigenous archaeology in terms of interpreting archaeological materials have been minimally articulated beyond praxis. Does Indigenous archaeology have an interpretative theoretical agenda? This paper addresses this question and articulates an agenda through distillation of theoretical developments and concerns from the considerable literature on Indigenous archaeology that has emerged from the Americas, Australia, and Africa over the past two decades. A shared fundamental concern is challenging ontological and epistemological divides and dualisms within mainstream Western archaeology. Two key dimensions of Indigenous archaeology are elaborated to provide broader scope to contextualize and address these theoretical challenges. First, encountering the past challenges objectivist tangibility of the archaeological record with ancestral presence and contexts where artifactual absence is the (in)tangible signature of spiritual association. Second, historicing the present challenges secularist archaeologies of a detached past with archaeologies of the more familiar ethnographically known recent past linked to identity and diachronic explorations of ontology and spiritualism. An agenda that embraces these theoretical challenges presents major opportunities for mainstream archaeology to reorient its Eurocentric focus and produce more cross-culturally relevant and culturally nuanced and sensitive understandings of the past.

According to current evidence, Homo sapiens was unable to survive on a diet of raw wild foods. Because cooked diets have large physiological and behavioral consequences, a critical question for understanding human evolution is when the adaptive obligation to use fire developed. Archaeological evidence of fire use is scarce before ca. 400 ka, which suggests to some that the commitment to fire must have arisen in the mid-Pleistocene or later. However, weak jaws and small teeth make all proposals for a raw diet of early Pleistocene Homo problematic. Furthermore, the mid-Pleistocene anatomical changes seem too small to explain the substantial effect expected from the development of cooking. Here I explore these and other problems. At the present time no solution is satisfactory, but this does not mean the problem should be ignored.

This article aims to reconsider the inscribed marks on reused Ionic capitals found within the area of the baths at Kom el-Dikka in Alexandria. The marks ΦΛ ΑΝΤ are reconstructed as the name of a prefect of Egypt, Flavius Antonius Theodorus (337 and 338 CE). This connection, as well as reconsideration of the archaeological evidence, provides precise clues to the dating of the baths’ foundation. Column capitals of earlier date, which were reused in the baths and inscribed with the name of the prefect of Egypt, suggest this official's involvement in supplying building material for the construction. This evidence provides an opportunity to reconsider the duties of the prefect of Egypt in the 4th c. CE.

Growing scientific evidence from modern climate science is loaded with implications for the environmental history of the Roman Empire and its successor societies. The written and archaeological evidence, although richer than commonly realized, is unevenly distributed over time and space. A first synthesis of what the written records and multiple natural archives (multi-proxy data) indicate about climate change and variability across western Eurasia from c. 100 B.C. to 800 A.D. confirms that the Roman Empire rose during a period of stable and favorable climatic conditions, which deteriorated during the Empire's thirdcentury crisis. A second, briefer period of favorable conditions coincided with the Empire's recovery in the fourth century; regional differences in climate conditions parallel the diverging fates of the eastern and western Empires in subsequent centuries. Climate conditions beyond the Empire's boundaries also played an important role by affecting food production in the Nile valley, and by encouraging two major migrations and invasions of pastoral peoples from Central Asia.

Archaeological research conducted in the NE part of the Iberian peninsula points to a period of generalized crisis around 200 B.C., when many settlements appear to have been destroyed and hurriedly abandoned. Castellet de Banyoles was an Iberian settlement of the Ilercavones tribe, situated on a large triangular platform looking out over a depression created by the river Ebro. Through its excellent strategic position it controlled the watercourse, the ford across the river, and the communication route linking the interior of the peninsula with the coast and thus with Tarraco, capital of the new province of Hispania Citerior from 197 B.C. Occupying an area of 4.2 ha, it was the largest inhabited site on the lower Ebro during the Iberian period. Its complex defensive system was formed by a narrow isthmus protected by two pentagonal towers (unparalleled in the peninsula) and a casemate wall. Iberian drachmae, imitating types from the Greek city of Emporion, were probably minted here. Luxury goods of gold and silver have also been found, pieces of lead bearing the Iberian script, and significant traces of metallurgical activity. The settlement had a complex, developed urban structure, with streets up to 10 m wide, covered drains, houses, and buildings of various sizes for public or display purposes. Thus it had the hallmarks of a town: unusual size, concentrated population, defenses, administration, coinage, housing, urban structures, and luxury items pointing to a high degree of social differentiation. [Abridged Publication Abstract]

Here I provide a perspective on the palaeogenetic revolution from an archaeologist who has spent the last four years working alongside palaeogeneticists. I address the questions posed for this journal issue by talking through some of the recurrent comments I have encountered from archaeologists regarding the results of palaeogenetic analyses, particular the renewed emphasis on migrations influencing certain cultural transitions in later prehistoric Europe. Most of the antagonism between the two approaches stems from misunderstandings regarding each other's implicit methods, questions and epistemologies. Palaeogenetic studies are far from infallible, particularly when it comes to characteristing the archaeological evidence, but many of the common points of criticism levelled at them by archaeologists are often misguided. If we can move past a climate antagonism and suspicion around palaeogenetics, synthesis with the archaeological evidence provides tantalizing opportunities for developing richer understandings of the archaeological record and the lives of people in the past.

With genetic studies showing unquestionable Asian origins of the first Americans, the Siberian and Beringian archaeological records are absolutely critical for understanding the initial dispersal of modern humans in the Western Hemisphere. The genetics-based Beringian Standstill Model posits a three-stage dispersal process and necessitates several expectations of the archaeological record of northeastern Asia. Here we present an overview of the Siberian and Beringian Upper Paleolithic records and discuss them in the context of a Beringian Standstill. We report that not every expectation of the model is met with archaeological data at hand.