Some of humanity's earliest ancestors lived in southern Africa and evidence from sites there has inspired key debates on human origins and the emergence of complex cognition. Building on its rich rock art heritage, archaeologists have developed theoretical work that continues to influence rock art studies worldwide, with the relationship between archaeological and anthropological data central to understanding past hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, and farmer communities alike. New work on pre-colonial states contests models that previously explained their emergence via external trade, while the transformations wrought by European colonialism are being rewritten to emphasise Indigenous agency, feeding into efforts to decolonise the discipline itself. Inhabited by humans longer than almost anywhere else and with an unusually varied, complex past, southern Africa thus has much to contribute to archaeology worldwide. In this revised and updated edition, Peter Mitchell provides a comprehensive and extensively illustrated synthesis of its archaeology over more than three million years.
JOHN C. KRANTZ, jr., Historical medical classics involving new drugs, Baltimore, Williams & Wilkins Co., 1974, 8vo., pp. x, 129, illus., $8.50. Reviewed by Edwin Clarke, M.D., F.R.C.P., Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, London NWI 2BP In times of financial stringencies, it is natural to wonder why books of this kind should be published. The author has gathered together the histories of digitalis, morphine, nitroglycerin, aspirin, adrenaline, arsphenamine, insulin, vitamin B12, sulphonamides, penicillin, streptomycin, LSD, and fluorinated anaesthetics. He includes biographical accounts of the pioneers, and illustrates their discoveries by presenting excerpts from their classic papers or books. The work is intended" ... as an ancilliary text for the training of the student in the multifaceted field of the health sciences ... ." (p. vii), but unfortunately it is most unsuitable for this purpose. In the first place it is packed with errors, both factual and interpretative. Some are minor, but some are not, as for example when it is claimed that both Van Helmont and Beaumont discovered hydrochloric acid in the stomach! Why in the first place Beaumont's investigations are included is not clear. The analysis of historical developments are frequently in error and much of the vital secondary literature is omitted. Thus the section on penicillin contains the usual panegyric to Fleming, with Florey and Chain dismissed in a sentence. It is based on the distorted and unreliable Maurois biography, with no reference to Sir Ernst Chain's recent account of the true sequence of events, or to the remarkable "practical history" of Ronald Hare. The last "classic" in the book concerns the discovery of fluorinated anaesthetics, and the main reason for its inclusion seems to be that the author and one of his students were involved. The extracts from primary sources contain many errors, especially in those translated into English. Identification is often faulty or absent. Documentation is minimal and occasionally erroneous. If, in addition, it is pointed out that most of this material has been presented before in an excellent book by B. Holmstedt and A. Liljestrand (Readings in pharmacology, Oxford, etc., Pergamon Press, 1963), there is even more justification for exclaiming, "why, oh why?"
Revolution and the restructuring of the material world Soviet hygiene and the battle against dirt and petit-bourgeois consciousness the Narkomfin Communal House and the material culture of socialism Stalinism and the domestication of Marxism the Narkomfin Communal House and Marxist domesticity de-Stalinization and the reinvigoration of Marxist understandings of the material world the Narkomfin Communal House and the material culture of de-Stalinization.
Kamilla L. Lomborg, Carolina Cucart-Mora, Jan-Olaf Reschke
et al.
In a world of drastic climatic and ecological changes, our knowledge of how the environment influenced hominin behaviour is of the utmost importance. Archaeology plays a key role in this domain, as it is the only discipline that studies empirical evidence of past societies’ responses to environmental change. Computational models generating predictions about past climatic and ecological conditions are vital for understanding the archaeological record and how these factors shaped the dispersal of hominins out of Africa and into Eurasia during the Early and early Middle Pleistocene. In this paper, various models for past reconstructions of climatic and ecological conditions and simulation techniques are presented to provide an overview of the diverse approaches, possibilities, advantages and constraints of using computational reconstructions in archaeological research. Focusing on studies of hominin dispersals out of Africa and into Eurasia during the Early and early Middle Pleistocene, this paper discusses the links between environmental factors and hominin dispersal behaviour. The use of simulation techniques to represent hominin populations, such as cellular automata or agent-based modelling, can contribute to connecting small-scale environment-induced influences on hominins to large-scale patterns, supported by ecological theories of species survival and spatial behaviour. Collectively, these approaches provide an elaborate foundation for understanding environmental influences on past hominin dispersals.
Nicodemo Abate, Diego Ronchi, Sara Elettra Zaia
et al.
This study presents a multi-resolution and multi-temporal remote sensing approach to assess human-induced changes in cultural landscapes, with a focus on the archaeological site of Amrit (Syria) within the MapDam project. By integrating satellite archives (KH, Landsat series, NASADEM) with ancillary geospatial data (OpenStreetMap) and advanced analytical methods, four decades (1984–2024) of land-use/land-cover (LULC) change and shoreline dynamics were reconstructed. Machine learning classification (Random Forest) achieved high accuracy (Test Accuracy = 0.94; Kappa = 0.89), enabling robust LULC mapping, while predictive modelling of urban expansion, calibrated through a Gradient Boosting Machine, attained a Figure of Merit of 0.157, confirming strong predictive reliability. The results reveal path-dependent urban growth concentrated on low-slope terrains (≤5°) and consistent with proximity to infrastructure, alongside significant shoreline regression after 1974. A Business-as-Usual projection for 2024–2034 estimates 8.676 ha of new anthropisation, predominantly along accessible plains and peri-urban fringes. Beyond quantitative outcomes, this study demonstrates the replicability and scalability of open-source, data-driven workflows using Google Earth Engine and Python 3.14, making them applicable to other high-risk heritage contexts. This transparent methodology is particularly critical in conflict zones or in regions where cultural assets are neglected due to economic constraints, political agendas, or governance limitations, offering a powerful tool to document and safeguard endangered archaeological landscapes.
Mathias Bellat, Jordy D. Orellana Figueroa, Jonathan S. Reeves
et al.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in archaeology have increased significantly in recent years, and these now span all subfields, geographical regions, and time periods. The prevalence and success of these applications have remained largely unexamined, as recent reviews on the use of machine learning in archaeology have only focused only on specific subfields of archaeology. Our review examined an exhaustive corpus of 135 articles published between 1997 and 2022. We observed a significant increase in the number of publications from 2019 onwards. Automatic structure detection and artefact classification were the most represented tasks in the articles reviewed, followed by taphonomy, and archaeological predictive modelling. From the review, clustering and unsupervised methods were underrepresented compared to supervised models. Artificial neural networks and ensemble learning account for two thirds of the total number of models used. However, if machine learning models are gaining in popularity they remain subject to misunderstanding. We observed, in some cases, poorly defined requirements and caveats of the machine learning methods used. Furthermore, the goals and the needs of machine learning applications for archaeological purposes are in some cases unclear or poorly expressed. To address this, we proposed a workflow guide for archaeologists to develop coherent and consistent methodologies adapted to their research questions, project scale and data. As in many other areas, machine learning is rapidly becoming an important tool in archaeological research and practice, useful for the analyses of large and multivariate data, although not without limitations. This review highlights the importance of well-defined and well-reported structured methodologies and collaborative practices to maximise the potential of applications of machine learning methods in archaeology.
We present a novel underground imaging system that utilizes cosmic-ray muons to explore the subsurface environment at the City of David archaeological site in ancient Jerusalem. This report details the initial findings from measurements conducted at a large cistern, commonly called "Jeremiah's cistern" (referenced in Jeremiah 38:6). The system aims to locate and map hidden voids and structural anomalies within the overburden. Our primary outcome is the derivation of the angular ground depth, which serves as a proxy for understanding the integrated density distribution of the overburden. This work represents a significant interdisciplinary effort to deepen our understanding of this historically important site.
This technical note presents a reproducible workflow for converting a legacy archaeological image collection into a structured and segmentation ready dataset. The case study focuses on the Lower Palaeolithic hand axe and biface collection curated by the Archaeology Data Service (ADS), a dataset that provides thousands of standardised photographs but no mechanism for bulk download or automated processing. To address this, two open source tools were developed: a web scraping script that retrieves all record pages, extracts associated metadata, and downloads the available images while respecting ADS Terms of Use and ethical scraping guidelines; and an image processing pipeline that renames files using UUIDs, generates binary masks and bounding boxes through classical computer vision, and stores all derived information in a COCO compatible Json file enriched with archaeological metadata. The original images are not redistributed, and only derived products such as masks, outlines, and annotations are shared. Together, these components provide a lightweight and reusable approach for transforming web based archaeological image collections into machine learning friendly formats, facilitating downstream analysis and contributing to more reproducible research practices in digital archaeology.
A. Flewellen, Justin P. Dunnavant, Alicia Odewale
et al.
This forum builds on the discussion stimulated during an online salon in which the authors participated on June 25, 2020, entitled “Archaeology in the Time of Black Lives Matter,” and which was cosponsored by the Society of Black Archaeologists (SBA), the North American Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), and the Columbia Center for Archaeology. The online salon reflected on the social unrest that gripped the United States in the spring of 2020, gauged the history and conditions leading up to it, and considered its rippling throughout the disciplines of archaeology and heritage preservation. Within the forum, the authors go beyond reporting the generative conversation that took place in June by presenting a road map for an antiracist archaeology in which antiblackness is dismantled.
Carmen Marín-Buzón, A. Pérez-Romero, J. López-Castro
et al.
Archaeology has made significant advances in the last 20 years. This can be seen by the remarkable increase in specialised literature on all archaeology-related disciplines. These advances have made it a science with links to many other sciences, both in the field of experimental sciences and in the use of techniques from other disciplines such as engineering. Within this last issue it is important to highlight the great advance that the use of photogrammetry has brought for archaeology. In this research, through a systematic study with bibliometric techniques, the main institutions and countries that are carrying them out and the main interests of the scientific community in archaeology related to photogrammetry have been identified. The main increase in this field has been observed since 2010, especially the contribution of UAVs that have reduced the cost of photogrammetric flights for reduced areas. The main lines of research in photogrammetry applied to archaeology are close-range photogrammetry, aerial photogrammetry (UAV), cultural heritage, excavation, cameras, GPS, laser scan, and virtual reconstruction including 3D printing.