A model is developed for the relationship between the tool behaviour and social behaviour of Homo erectus. This explores the role of social learning as the link between social organization and techniques — the methods used to manufacture stone tools. Predictions are made as to how techniques should vary with increasing group size and these are evaluated through a case study from the Middle Pleistocene of southeast England. The case study suggests that inter-assemblage variability in the Lower Palaeolithic can partly be attributed to different relative intensities of individual and social learning arising from varying hominid group size and social interaction in open and closed (i.e. wooded) environments. As such, the paper seeks to integrate material from three fields — comparative socioecology, primate social learning and Palaeolithic archaeology — to explore the relationship between society and technology.

This article deals with the ritual burial of cultic objects in the Near East during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods. These items are not grave goods associated with human burials but objects buried on their own because of their ritual significance. A systematic survey of the depositional context of anthropomorphic statues, plastered skulls and other cultic objects from a large number of sites indicates clearly that the earliest evidence for this concept can be traced to the early agricultural communities of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period of the seventh millennium bc. The custom was a ritual institution for the disposal of worn-out and unwanted cultic items. A further analysis of twelve other symbols and artistic components emphasizes the importance of the seventh millennium bc as a formative era for the cult and mythology of the ancient Near East.

Research has recently resumed at Aksum, capital of a major state which flourished in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea during the early centuries ad. A wide-ranging investigation is planned into many aspects of Aksumite civilization. This paper summarizes results from the first season's work on the setting and symbolic meaning of the monumental stelae for which the site is justly famous, as well as on the technology which they illustrate. It is argued that the stelae were grave markers and that the tradition which they represent was substantially modified following the adoption of Christianity at Aksum in the fourth century.

An interest in New World slavery is a recent and exciting development within American archaeology. As archaeologists have rushed to discover the material aspects of what slaves ate, what kinds of dwellings they inhabited, and what sorts of material culture they used, they have also gathered information about slave religion. Although much of this information is incomplete and open to numerous interpretations, it nonetheless exposes an important area of archaeological endeavour. I explore some of what is today known about the slaves' religious observances, both African-inspired and non-African. My focus is on the antebellum period, roughly from 1800 to 1861, of the American South, with some reference to other times and places.

Depictions of battle scenes, skirmishes and hand-to-hand combat are rare in hunter-gatherer art and when they do occur most often result from contact with agriculturalist or industrialized invaders. In the Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory of Australia we have been documenting rare depictions of fighting and are able to show that there has been a long tradition of warrior art. At least three phases have been identified and in each of them groups of hunter-gatherers are shown in combat. The oldest are at least 10,000 years old, and constitute the most ancient depictions of fighting from anywhere in the world, while the newest were produced as recently as early this century. Significantly, a pronounced change in the arrangement of figures began with the second, middle phase — beginning perhaps about 6000 years ago. This appears to be associated with increased social complexity and the development of the highly complicated kinship relationships that persist in Arnhem Land today. Evidence from physical anthropological, archaeological and linguistic studies supports the idea of the early development of a highly organized society of the type more commonly associated with agriculturalists or horticulturalists.

Excavations at the Early Dynastic site of Abu Salabikh in southern Iraq have aimed at recovering a rounded view of early urban life. One of the questions regularly and rightly asked about our results is ‘how large was the population?’, but we are still far from being able to provide an answer. This article is intended as a report from the field on where we stand at this one site, rather than a general exploration of the issues. Geomorphological and taphonomic issues relating to site size and use of space are exemplified from our own data. Progress beyond a blanket guess (based on comparative ethnography) for population density requires us to break the urban area down into individual houses and the houses into individual rooms. In this context the need for, and possible methods of, more accurate characterization of space use are described. Calculations based on high and low assumptions illustrate the wide range of estimates we still have to work with, but help to crystallize those areas where progress might be made.

No term in the ancient Egyptian language corresponds neatly with Western usages of ‘art’, and Egyptologists have often argued that there is no such thing as ‘Egyptian art’. Yet aesthetically organized structures and artefacts constitute the majority of evidence from Egypt, a legacy created mainly for a small élite. The genres of these materials, all of which had functions additional to the purely aesthetic, are similar to those of many other cultures. They constitute a repository of civilizational values, related to the system of hieroglyphic writing, that was maintained and transmitted across periods. Civilization and artistic style are almost identified with each other. Funerary material constitutes one central context for artistic forms; others are temples and such poorly-preserved locations as palaces. The importance attached to artistic activities in Egypt, high-cultural involvement in them, and idiosyncratic developments can be illustrated from many periods. Egyptian art is a typically inward-looking and almost self-sustaining product of a professional group. It is no less ‘art’ for the wide range of functions and purposes it fulfilled.

There can be few more contentious subjects in the study of archaeology than the proper contribution of aesthetics. Many early excavators were little more than art historians who saw the recovery of works of art as their main objective. But much has changed since Alcubierre's treasure-hunting at Herculaneum or Layard's tunnelling for Assyrian reliefs at Nineveh. Professional archaeology in the twentieth century has largely eschewed its treasure-hunting origins and now seeks to understand the material of the past in terms of the societies who created it rather than through any preconceived notions of taste and value.

The dilemma, however, remains. Few people gazing at the ceiling of Altamira, or at the death-mask of Tutankhamun, can fail to feel some emotion or sense of awe. Yet we cannot enter the minds of the original creators, and in most cases we cannot know why (or even if) they found the product pleasing or beautiful. Should archaeologists therefore ignore aesthetics, as a subject too difficult to handle? Or should they endeavour to understand the aesthetic component and integrate it more effectively, by development of a more rigorous approach, into an understanding of the early human past?

In this Viewpoint, five specialists concerned with the study of art in early or nonwestern societies have been asked to consider just how they approach the aesthetic dilemma. Two of them (Smith and Vickers) write about Classical art, perhaps the leading area where artistic appreciation and aesthetics have been used in an archaeological context. Two more (Renfrew and Taylor) focus on the still more intractable problem of prehistoric art, where even textual information about ancient ideas and attitudes is unavailable. Finally, no discussion of archaeological approaches to art and aesthetics can ignore the parallel concern of anthropology (Morphy). No single solution emerges; such could hardly have been expected; but the question cannot be avoided, and remains at the heart of our concern to understand how former societies thought about themselves and their world.