With the onset of the Near Eastern Neolithic during the 12th millennium cal BP, and thereafter, one can observe growing sedentary tendencies, as well a significant increase in populations and community sizes, all reflected in the Neolithic demographic transition. At that time (and even somewhat earlier in certain areas) a notable tendency for within and between community differentiation was observed, archaeologically visible through the variances in the material remains. A specific domain where this phenomenon can be observed are the easily portable items of adornment. The aspiration for symbolling and signaling at both the community level and the individual served to increase webs of interactions and exchange between communities, sometimes over huge distances. The differences and the similarities actually reflected the degree and intensity of connectivity between the communities far and wide.

This article presents the method applied by the iClassifier (©Goldwasser/Harel/Nikolaev) digital research tool for the study of the linguistic phenomenon of classifiers. The tool was created in 2019 with the objective of curating corpus-based and data-driven documentation of classifier systems. The record of classifiers comprises millions of tokens worth of “big data” analysis. By tagging classifiers in various corpora, a topography of categories emerges, visualized as complex, multilayered networks. This article offers an overview of how classifier-based networks are created and how network analysis methods can be applied to analyze knowledge organization. We present the data structure and annotation scheme of the iClassifier research tool, demonstrating how one can plot classifier networks and generate reports of lemma and classifier repertoires in each corpus. The iClassifier tool provides quantitative reports, including classifier frequency, variation and co-occurrence statistics. Each data subset, such as a certain part of speech, timespan, geographical location or textual genre, can be queried and visualized. The tool is meant to allow browsing between a macro-overview of all categories in a corpus and zooming in into micro-analysis of the individual categories and lemmas that built up a corpus. Each classifier is seen as a category head, and the categories are drawn in their multilayered and multidimensional relationships. The potency of this tool is in documenting the phenomenon in large corpora of texts and expanding our knowledge about the rules and functions of classifier systems, leading us to a more refined mind-mapping of ancient cultures. Currently, very little systematic analysis has been done on this ancient record of emic information.

This article explores the role of unpronounced semantic classifiers, also known as graphemic classifiers or determinatives, in three ancient complex scripts: Egyptian, Chinese and Sumerian. These classifiers are silent hieroglyphs, Chinese characters or cuneiform signs that are combined with other signs that carry phonetic information to form a complete written representation of a word. While these classifiers are written and visible, they are not pronounced. They add silent, motivated semantic information related to the meaning of the word. These classifiers can be found in various positions within words, reflecting cultural and referential information. Classifier studies, in general, have gained significant interest at the intersection of linguistic typology, cognitive linguistics, semiotics of scripts and neuroscience. The research field examines classifiers in oral languages, signed languages and complex scripts, emphasizing that regardless of modality they reflect a shared cognitive effort to organize knowledge. It is our hope that the scholarly contributions in this issue will open up a new chapter in classifier studies and in comparative script analysis. Theoretical and analytical work undertaken in the last few decades has been done primarily by individual researchers specializing in one language or script. Our approach combines large-scale corpus data with comparative script analysis carried out by teams of collaborators who can contribute specialized expertise in different ancient writing systems. The research possibilities opened by our newly developed digital tool iClassifier are presented in detail in the other contributions in this issue. This work has laid a strong comparative foundation that we can now build on, to develop new insights into the early history of script development and the commonalities and differences among ancient cultural conceptualizations of the world.

The archaeological site of Notarchirico, chronologically placed at the end of MIS 17 and MIS 16 (675-610 ka), is a key site for studying Acheulean technology in southern Europe and gaining a better understanding of human occupation in that region during the Middle Pleistocene. It was excavated between 1979 and 1995 by Marcello Piperno and re-opened since 2016. Between 1990 and 1991, around forty remains of Palaeloxodon antiquus, mostly comprising the head of the animal, such as cranium, mandible and tusks fragments belonging to a sub-adult male were discovered as a result of the excavation of a lateral discontinuity of the level A, situated in an area known as the “elephant butchery area”. Remains of deer, mainly assigned to Dama sp., and 42 stone tools, including choppers, hand-axes, cores and some flakes were also identified in the surroundings. This accumulation was originally interpreted as a butchering site, reflecting a single event of processing of an elephant carcass, and the entire paleosurface was exposed to visitors in situ. This work re-evaluates the original archaeological materials, especially those still preserved on the paleosurface, in terms of stratigraphic distribution, taphonomy and technology, to critically evaluate the putative role of hominins in the exploitation of the megaherbivore. After a meticulous examination of each element's surface and its deposition, we conclude that there is no support for the previous interpretation of the so-called "elephant butchery area" of Notarchirico as the result a butchery event, as there is no evidence of human exploitation of the remains and the accumulation derives from at least two diverse and unrelated depositional events, one resulting in the deposition of the elephant remains, and the other of the majority of the fallow deer remains and the stone tools.

In the last two decades, we have extensively explored the semantic classifiers in ancient Egyptian scripts, showing how they encode the world from two complementary perspectives: universal cognitive tendencies of classification along with Egyptian society's categorization of the world. Our central hypothesis is that each graphemic classifier in the Egyptian writing system heads a conceptual category. The assemblage of words classified by a particular classifier presents us with a dynamic map of an emic category in the mind of a culture. Classifiers in the Egyptian script allow us to trace central and marginal members of conceptual categories, spot interrelations and overlaps between categories, observe diachronic developments and changes, and discover incompatibility of categories. The number of classifier occurrences in complex script systems amounts to millions (i.e., big data). In the last decade, we developed in the ArchaeoMind Lab the digital tool iClassifier (© Goldwasser, Harel, and Nikolaev) designed to check our hypothesis on a large scope of texts from different periods and different scripts. We mark classifiers in imported digitalized corpora—in ancient Chinese, ancient Egyptian, and Sumerian cuneiform. This contribution introduces the reader to the rules of the classifier system in the Egyptian script and presents new results from a pilot project on a genuine Egyptian corpus (variants of the Story of Sinuhe).

The edges of stone tools have significant technological and functional implications. The nature of these edges–their sharpness, whether they are concave or convex, and their asymmetry–reflect how they were made and how they could be used. Similarly, blunt portions of a tool’s perimeter hint at how they could have been grasped or hafted and in which directions force could be applied. However, due to the difficulty in accurately measuring the complex 3D geometry of tool edges with traditional methods, their attributes are often overlooked. When they are analyzed, they have traditionally been assessed with visual qualitative categories or unreliable physical measurements. We introduce new computational 3D methods for automatically and repeatably measuring key attributes of stone tool edges. These methods allow us to automatically identify the 3D perimeter of tools, segment this perimeter according to changes in edge angles, and measure these discrete edge segments with a range of metrics. We test this new computational toolkit on a large sample of 3D models of handaxes from the later Acheulean of the southern Levant. Despite these handaxes being otherwise technologically and morphologically similar, we find marked differences in the amount of knapped outline, edge angle, and the concavity of their edges. We find many handaxes possess blunt portions of perimeter, suitable for grasping, and some handaxes even possess more than one discrete sharp edge. Among our sample, sites with longer occupations and more diverse toolkits possessed handaxes with more diverse edges. Above all, this paper offers new methods for computing the complex 3D geometry of stone tool edges that could be applied to any number of artifact types. These methods are fully automated, allowing the analysis and visualization of entire assemblages.

Sedimentary records of lipid biomarkers such as leaf wax n-alkanes are not only influenced by ecosystem turnover and physiological changes in plants, they are also influenced by earth surface processes integrating these signals. The integration of biomarkers into the sedimentary record and the effects of integration processes on recorded environmental signals are complex and not fully understood. To determine the depositional constraints on biomarker records in a high-altitude small catchment system, we collected both soil and stream sediments along a 1000 m altitude transect (1500 – 2500 masl) in the Areguni Mountains, a subrange of the Lesser Caucasus Mountains in Armenia. We utilize the existence of a treeline at ~ 2000 masl, which separates alpine meadow above from deciduous forest below, to assess the relative contribution of upstream biomarker transport to local vegetation input in the stream. We find that average chain length (ACL), hydrogen isotope (δD) and carbon isotope (δ¹³C) values of n-alkanes are significantly different in soils collected above and below the treeline. However, samples collected from the stream sediments do not integrate these signals quantitively. As the stream drops below the treeline, the ACL, δD and δ¹³C values of n-alkanes preserved in streambed sediments reflect a bias toward n-alkanes sourced from trees. This suggests that there is either 1) minimal transportation of organic matter from the more open vegetation in higher elevations, or 2) greater production of target biomarkers by trees and shurbs found at lower elevations results in overprinting of stream signals by local vegetation. Though this latter observation may preclude using n-alkanes to measure past treeline movement in these mountains, δD values of biomarkers in fluvial deposits in these settings are more likely to record local hydrological changes rather than changes in upstream fractionation differences associated with vegetation turnover.

Recent attempts to resolve the chronostratigraphic sequence of the sedimentary layers encasing the Oldowan and early Acheulian occupation horizons of the Garba IV gully of Melka Kunture constitute a welcome effort, given the longstanding uncertainties and frequent changes in the reporting on the age of the early Acheulian occupation horizons from this gully (e.g., ca. 1.5 Ma, Gallotti, 2013; Gallotti and Mussi, 2017; ca. 1.6 Ma, Gallotti and Mussi, 2018; Mussi et al., 2023a). Muttoni et al. (2023) contend that their new magnetostratigraphic framework places Garba IVD and E-F below the base of the Olduvai subchron, rendering a minimum age of 1.925 Ma for the underlying early Acheulian and Oldowan archaeological sequences. These data serve as the basis for Mussi et al. (2023b) in their interpretation of Garba IVD as the oldest Acheulian occurrence in the world at around 2.0 Ma, roughly 200 ka older than other widely accepted occurrences dated to ca. 1.75 Ma (i.e., Kokiselei 4, Lepre et al., 2011; KGA6-A1 of Konso, Beyene et al., 2013), thus significantly pushing back the origin of the Acheulian. The newly proposed age model for Garba IV would have important implications for our understanding of the origins and evolution of the Oldowan and Acheulian techno-complexes and their environmental contexts. Such far-reaching conclusions should therefore be based on a robust and conclusive age model.

A spring tunnel is an ancient water installation used to artificially increase the water yield of a spring through a subterranean tunnel. We have developed a database of 216 spring tunnels documented in the central region of the Southern Levant (present-day Israel), constructed between Iron Age II and the modern era. The study focuses on the evolution of this water installation over a period of 2500 years, examining these constructions from technological, typological, spatial, and cultural perspectives. Within the larger database, 132 spring tunnels have been mapped, from which we present 36 examples selected to outline the typology and chronology of this type of water installation. The findings of the study indicate a diachronic correlation between the distribution of settlement in the mountain region and the number and geographical distribution of spring tunnels. Ethnic and religious changes, and the complexity of the mountain region's population, are also reflected in the use of these water installations. The comprehensive water structure database presented in this article, from a peripheral, yet strategically located region in relation both to the Far East and to West Mediterranean Empires, is used for initial consideration of local initiatives versus the knowledge-transfer process.