Figure S2 continued) 4. Burial Unit 4 (single primary) showing Skeleton A in a foetal position (20-25cm below surface). 5. Burial Unit 5 (single primary) showing Skeleton B partially articulated as disturbed (20cm below surface). 7. Burial Unit 7 (collective) showing disarticulated crania and one partially articulated post-cranial skeleton (20-30cm below surface)

Resumen. El presente artículo se basa en algunas cuestiones tecnológicas y sociales de una población indígena americana tradicional con el fin de aportar una reflexión sobre las dificultades para generar una interpretación holística de los cambios en la cultura material de una sociedad, en particular en aquellas ya desaparecidas. Se propone para ello recorrer el sentido inverso a las investigaciones etnoarqueológicas tradicionales: a partir de la revisión tecnológica de materiales cerámicos de un grupo étnico actual conservados en museo, se interactúa con las fuentes documentales, los alfareros indígenas, sus descendientes y otras personas cualificadas en el tema. De esta manera, la cerámica realizada por los alfareros qom durante distintos momentos de los dos últimos siglos se interpreta a la luz de varias alternativas: desde un mero elemento material definido por ciertas características tecnológicas y estéticas, a su documentación como objeto, la contextualización de la vida cotidiana y de la actividad cerámica en la sociedad qom tanto en el pasado reciente como en la actualidad, y la importancia que tiene en todo el proceso de cambio el apego a la identidad y a valores supramateriales como el territorio, factores que exceden la mera observación corpórea del objeto. Palabras clave: Cambio tecnológico; identidad; tradición; interpretación; colecciones de museo.[en] Ancient Territories and Missing Pottery. Qom Ceramics from the Grand Chaco (Argentina)Abstract. This article relies on some technological and social conditions of a South American indigenous population to reflect on the handicaps to reach a holistic interpretation of the changes in material culture, particularly in past societies. It is thus proposed to follow the opposite direction to traditional etnoarchaeological research: from the technological revision of the pottery vessels produced by a modern ethnic group found in museum collections to the interaction with indigenous potters, their descendants and other qualified people. Hence, vessels made by Qom potters in different periods of the last two centuries are considered from different perspectives: from a material element analysed in terms of technological and aesthetic features, to their documentation as objects, the contextualisation of Qom daily activities and pottery-making -both in the recent past and nowadays-and the significance of the preservation of identity and supramaterial values such as the territory in this change process, elements which surpass the sole corporeal observation of the object.

We are a group of archaeologists, anthropologists, curators and geneticists representing diverse global communities and 31 countries. All of us met in a virtual workshop dedicated to ethics in ancient DNA research held in November 2020. There was widespread agreement that globally applicable ethical guidelines are needed, but that recent recommendations grounded in discussion about research on human remains from North America are not always generalizable worldwide. Here we propose the following globally applicable guidelines, taking into consideration diverse contexts. These hold that: (1) researchers must ensure that all regulations were followed in the places where they work and from which the human remains derived; (2) researchers must prepare a detailed plan prior to beginning any study; (3)

A number of archaeologists have recently considered the possible functioning of shared systems of symbols and beliefs -sometimes called 'symbolic reservoirs' -within and between more or less closely related West African societies. Elements from these systems are expressed in behaviour and in material culture to support and articulate group social strategies: thev are therefore capable of structuring artefact variation on a large scale. This concept has obvious implications for our understanding of regional variation in archaeological assemblages. In this paper, I offer a critique of the concept of the 'symbolic reservoir'; I believe that the metaphorical implications of the term 'reservoir' are not useful, and that present conceptions are of an entity too bounded and too stable usefully to reflect the dynamics of social interaction within and (especially) between African societies. I then offer an alternative view of the spread of symbolic and stylistic elements between groups. RdsumdUn certain nombre d'arch~ologues ont r~cemment envisag~ la possibilit~ de syst~mes communs de svmholes et de croyances -patrols dcSsign6s "par le terme "r~servoirs symboliques" -au sein de soci6t~s d'Afrique occidentale entretenant entre elles des rapports plus ou moins ~troits. Des ('l~ments de ces systbmes s'expriment en termes de comportement et de culture mat~rielle et permettent de soutenir et d'articuler des strat6gies sociales de groupes; ils peuvent donc structurer sur une grande (chelle variation des objets fagonn~s. Ce concept a des consequences 6videntes par rapport 5. notre compr6hension des variations r~'gionales entre collections arch~ologiques. Dans cet article, je pr~sente une critique du concept de "r~servoir symbolique"; j'estime peu pertinentes les implications m&aphoriques du terme "r~servoir" et je pense que les conceptions actuelles repr6sentent une entit~ trop borncSe et trop stable pour pouvoir bien refl&er la dynamique de l'interaction sociale au sein des soci6t6s africaines et (surtout) entre elles. Je pr&ente ensuite un point de vue diff&ent sur la propagation d'616ments symboliques et stylistiques parmi des groupes.

The Muslim Wandala state controlled large areas of the plains south of Lake Chad between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries a.d. The Wandala also engaged in an extremely complex, and often hostile, set of relations with the inhabitants of the Mandara Mountains, which bordered their state to the south and closely adjoined successive Wandala capitals. These Wandala – montagnard relationships had diverse economic, ritual, political and military aspects. Their complexity appears to be due in large part to the fact that the Wandala and many of the montagnard groups share ethnic origins, and to the violent processes by which differentiation took place and the Wandala gained hegemony on the plains. These processes probably began with a Wandala use of trading advantages to gain access to the Kanuri market system and the subsequent use of products so obtained to expand their dominion.

No abstract

The northern Mandara Mountains of Cameroon have been a focus of slave raiding for the past five centuries, according to historical sources. Some captives from the area were enslaved locally, primarily in Wandala and Fulbe communities, while others were exported to Sahelian polities or further abroad. This chapter examines ethnohistorical and archaeological data on nineteenth- and twentieth-century slave raiding, derived from research in montagnard communities along the north-eastern Mandara Mountains of Cameroon. Enslavement and slave raiding existed within larger structures of day-to-day practice in the region, and were closely tied to ideas about sociality, social proximity and violence. Through the mid-1980s at least, enslavement in the region was understood as a still-relevant political and economic process, with its chief material consequence the intensely domesticated Mandara landscape.

The locations of diy-geδ-bay (DGB) sites in the Mandara Mountains, northern Cameroon are hypothesized to occur as a function of their ability to see and be seen from points on the surrounding landscape. A series of geostatistical, two-way and Bayesian logistic regression analyses were performed to test two hypotheses related to the intervisibility of the sites to one another and their visual prominence on the landscape. We determine that the intervisibility of the sites to one another is highly statistically significant when compared to 10 stratified-random permutations of DGB sites. Bayesian logistic regression additionally demonstrates that the visibility of the sites to points on the surrounding landscape is statistically significant. The location of sites appears to have also been selected on the basis of lower slope than random permutations of sites. Using statistical measures, many of which are not commonly employed in archaeological research, to evaluate aspects of visibility on the landscape, we conclude that the placement of DGB sites improved their conspicuousness for enhanced ritual, social cooperation and/or competition purposes.