Anthropological Archaeology

Because the stability of the anaerobic conditions in littoral environments has been favorable to the conservation of wood, vegetal fibers, seeds, and pollen, these locations today provide us with almost unequalled data for the study of the history of relations between ...

Occupied from ca. 7040 B.C. to A.D. 1400, the Eel Point Site (CA-SCLI-43) on San Clemente Island, California represents one of the longest sequences of near-continuous marine resource exploitation on the west coast of North America. Faunal remains suggest transitions from heavy exploitation of fur seals and sea lions during the early Holocene, to increased hunting of cetaceans at mid-Holocene, to a focus on sea otters and fish during the late Holocene. These trends are consistent with patterns of overexploitation and economic intensification on the California and Oregon mainland, but they also suggest watercraft-based hunting earlier on the island than elsewhere. Fur seal and sea lion bones mainly represent females and juveniles, indicating that exploitation of island rookeries was guided more by self-interest than by principles of game conservation. Two intervals of temporary site abandonment, ca. 6150–3970 B.C. and A.D. 1020–1400, were both followed by periods of increased marine mammal exploitation and may reflect intervals during which marine mammal populations rebounded. Broad-scale diachronic trends in the zooarchaeological remains do not correlate with flux in paleo-sea temperatures and are best interpreted as products of overhunting and increased use of watercraft over time.

The early ethnological works of Alfred Métraux are analysed bearing in mind his first fieldwork trip to the Chiriguano, in 1929. The paper discusses personal, academic and professional features of Métraux’s ethnological experience, the nature of the 1929 trip and his concrete relationships with the Chiriguano groups and individuals. Next, we analyse his ideas on material culture as a privileged means of understanding the synthesis of Andean, Chaco and Amazonian cultural influences. Finally, the dilemmas and limitations of his analytical approach regarding Créole cultural influence and social and cultural change are discussed. [Key words: Alfred Métraux, Chané, Chiriguano, material culture, change.]
Se analiza la etnología temprana de Alfred Métraux a la luz de su primer viaje de campo a los chiriguanos, en 1929. Se discute el perfil personal, académico y profesional de Métraux, las peculiaridades de su trabajo de campo en 1929 y sus relaciones concretas con los indígenas chiriguanos en el terreno. Se examinan luego sus ideas sobre la cultura material como campo experimental privilegiado para rastrear procesos de síntesis de influencias culturales andinas, chaqueñas y amazónicas, así también sus dilemas y límites a la hora de interpretar el factor de la influencia criolla y el proceso de cambio social y cultural en un sentido amplio. [Palabras clave: Alfred Métraux, Chané, Chiriguano, cultura material, cambio.]

Warfare and violence played an important role in the history and development of complex huntergatherer societies on the north Pacific Rim. Wars were waged between islands over 700 km apart and included dozens of villages within and between ethnic groups. Wars were generally fought for revenge, status, over women, and rarely, over critical resources. Warfare was so ubiquitous in the later prehistoric sequence that is must be considered central to the development and organization of north Pacific society. ᭧ 1998 Academic Press

No previous longitudinal study has examined the impact of comorbid maternal personality disorder (PD) and depression on child development. We set out to examine whether maternal PD and depression assessed at 2 months post partum would be independently associated with adverse developmental outcomes at 18 months of age. Method: Women were recruited into the study shortly after delivery and screened for depression and PD. Those meeting criteria for depression, PD, or both conditions, were selected for assessment at 2 months post partum, together with a comparison group with neither condition (total sample, N ϭ 200). Assessments of cognitive, social and emotional development were conducted with their children at 18 months of age. Results: Maternal postpartum depression and PD were both associated with higher levels of dysregulated infant behavior. There was a significant interaction between depression and PD in the model of dysregulated behavior and the detrimental effects of maternal depression and PD were evident only among mothers with both conditions. Maternal depression was independently associated with impaired infant cognitive scores and higher levels of internalizing behavior. Conclusions: Future studies of the effects of maternal depression should also take into account the effects of comorbid maternal PD. Health professionals need to be aware of the possible co-occurrence of PD among mothers presenting with postnatal depression and that mothers with these co-occurring disorders are likely to require greater support.

Bioarchaeology is a powerful tool in the examination of prehistoric collections of human skeletal remains. Application of a few bioarchaeological techniques (ancient DNA, carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes, and dental micro-wear) to the human osteological remains from the Early Neolithic LBK settlement of Vedrovice (Moravia), has allowed us to reconstruct not only broad cultural patterns but also the life histories of the individuals with insights into diet, migrations, ancestry, personal identity, social position and life experience. Vedrovice acted as a gateway settlement for a farming community with close ties to western Hungary and northeast Bohemia. The individuals showed clear differences in status and migration histories, giving glimpses of more complex social practices and patterns than could have been determined through the traditional culture-historical studies.

This paper reviews the evidence for Neolithic burial practices in SE Arabia, focusing in particular on sites in the Ja'alan region of eastern Oman. Attention is given to the nature of material buried with human remains, including jewellery and, most interestingly, the bones and shells of green turtles in the burials of Ra's al-Hamra 5 and 10. The paper concludes with a discussion of the possible evidence for "necrophobia" at the 5 th millennium BC Neolithic necropolis of Suwayh 1.

Locational information about moated settlements derived from examination of aerial photographs of central Thailand is used to assess the degree of regional integration and political centralization during the sixth to ninth centuries A.D. around the Bay of Bangkok. A consideration of settlement size hierarchy, rank-size distribution, and geographical location suggests that the moated settlements were integrated into a single regional economic system by the end of the time under consideration. While it is argued that the moated settlements represent remnants of administrative hierarchy, it is unclear from the current data whether a single state-level polity or a series of smaller competing polities were present. Further investigation is needed to comprehend how the inhabitants of this region, who shared a common material culture and symbolic system, conceptualized their political relationships.

The recognition of the dynamic role of site formation processes led archaeologists to recognize a behavioral dichotomy between 'living floors' and palimpsests', Yet the archaeological proxies of 'living floor' and 'palimpsest' were never defined formally, and therefore have been used variably. We use archaeological criteria mentioned in the archaeological literature to model types of formation processes. The case study of the Lower Paleolithic open-air site of Revadim Quarry, Israel is used to test the model. Two types of palimpsests, differing in the rate of accumulation and thus in their effects on the anthropogenic remains, were discerned. Based on these results we review some other Lower Paleolithic instances. A sliding scale of formation processes provides a much needed middle ground between the scales of coarse, time-averaged formation processes and short, ''near real-life'' behavioral episodes and is an appropriate archaeological frame of reference.

"""Table of Contents.
1. Arabia and the study of the ancient Near East.
2. Ecological and environmental diversity in Arabia.
3. The formation of Arabian society: 7000 to 3000 BC.
4. Eastern Arabia from 3000 to 2000 BC.
5. The Bronze Age in western Arabia.
6. Eastern Arabia from 2000 to 1300 BC.
7. Humans, dromedaries, and the transformation of ancient Arabia.
8. Intensification and consolidation: Arabia from 1300 to 800 BC.
9. Expansion and engagement: Arabia and the ancient Near East.
10. Adaptation and social formation in ancient Arabia."""

Mobility change and its archaeological indicators is one aspect that has been dealt with extensively in archaeological literature. Archaeologically, movement change has been understand at two levels, at the level of the region and at the level of a single site. This present work is a methodological exercise which seeks to understand mobility change from the archaeological record of a single site, ie, Inamgaon by reanalysing earlier arguments and bringing some new methods in this respect using actualistic research as a heuristic device to understand archaeological patterning. Criteria used by researchers to understand mobility change like house shape, form, change in organic remains, maintenance behaviour, spatial patterning have been critically assessed and used in this respect. The Chalcolithic site of Inamgaon situated in the western part of India has been taken up as a case study for this purpose.

Collapse, societal failure, doom and dystopia are popular topics, both in scholarship and in much wider spheres of cultural consumption. The decline or disappearance of human societies has been a point of interest for as long as people have been aware of the vestiges of cultures past, from colonial sensationalism concerning the ruins of apparently mighty civilizations through to early scholarship emphasizing historical process (e.g. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776–1789). Modern studies of collapse have highlighted the topic as a historical and anthropological problem of comparative interest in the archaeology of complex societies (see the foundational works of Tainter 1988; Yoffee & Cowgill 1988)...

Oral tradition is one means by which traditional societies preserve and transmit information about subsistence risks and coping strategies. This paper addresses subsistence risk, information processes, and oral tradition among the Klamath and Modoc, two closely related Native peoples of Oregon and California. Ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and ecological evidence of subsistence risks and coping strategies among the Klamath and Modoc in late precontact and early postcontact times are discussed. References to subsistence risks and coping strategies in Klamath and Modoc mythology are then examined, revealing that subsistence stress is an explicit theme in 28 documented Klamath and Modoc myths. The narratives emphasize reciprocal exchange as an ideal means of coping with hunger and affirm a range of other coping strategies-skilled hunting and fishing, storage, diversification, mobility, resource conservation, and supernatural agency-some of which are not referenced in ethnography or ethnohistory. The traditional context of Klamath and Modoc myth narration elucidates how this mythology preserved and transmitted survival information over time and space. These findings suggest that myth analysis, combined with ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and ecological data, can strengthen the theories and models we use to explore subsistence risks and survival strategies in past cultural contexts. nis 1985), subsistence risks and coping strategies as significant variables in sociopolitical evolution (e.g., Arnold et al. 1997; Halstead and O'Shea 1982; Peebles and Kus 1977; Yesner 1980), subsistence risk as a factor in the development of agriculture (e.g., Redding 1988), and cross-cultural variation in risk-coping strategies (Halstead and O'Shea 1989a).

In this paper we report a study designed to shed light on the possibility that clothing differences played a role in the replacement of the Neanderthals by early modern humans. There is general agreement that early modern humans in Europe utilized specialized cold weather clothing, but the nature of the clothing used by Neanderthals is debated. Some researchers contend that they did not use clothes. Others argue that they were limited to cape-like clothing. Still others aver that their clothing was not substantively different in terms of thermal effectiveness from that of early modern humans. To test among these hypotheses, we employed a novel line of evidence-the bones of animals whose skins may have been made into clothing. We used an ethnographic database to identify mammalian families that were used to create cold weather clothing in the recent past. We then compared the frequency of occurrence of these families in European archaeological deposits associated with early modern humans and Neanderthals. We obtained two main results. One is that mammalian families used for cold weather clothing occur in both early modern human-and Neanderthal-associated strata. The other is that three of the families-leporids, canids, and mustelids-occur more frequently in early modern human strata than in Neanderthal strata. There is reason to believe that the greater frequency of canid and mustelid remains in early modern human strata reflects the use of garments with fur trim. Thus, these findings are most consistent with the hypothesis that Neanderthals employed only cape-like clothing while early modern humans used specialized cold weather clothing. We end by discussing the implications of this hypothesis for the debate about the replacement of the Neanderthals by early modern humans.

A central issue in archaeology is the study of technological change, and yet we have relatively little theory to explain the origin of technological novelty. Most models assume that inventions are generated as needed to solve adaptive problems. Alternatively, some view innovation as a creative and random process capable only of generating variation on which selection operates. This article considers the role of risk sensitivity in the production of technological invention. It is argued that evolutionary ecological models of risk and opportunity cost establish expectations for the contexts in which individuals are likely to stick to conservative technologies and when they are likely to be inventive. Archaeological evaluation of the risk-sensitivity theory of technological change requires attention to components of technological systems and their associated mechanical, operational, and strategic costs. The framework is examined with a case study of technological change from the prehistory of the Kodiak Archipelago in the Gulf of Alaska.

Nabta Playa basin offers an unprecedented longitudinal view on the emergence, consolidation and complexification on human-livestock relationships, from the early stage of the Early Holocene (c. 11,000 cal. B.P.) to 6000 B.P. The problem of cattle domestication in Northeastern Africa is considered and hopefully ''solved'' in the light of new mtDNA evidence which suggest an early late Pleistocene split between African, Asian, and Eurasian wild Bos populations. The paper presents a contextualized analysis of almost all the components of archaeological investigation, including climatic change, culture history of Early to Mid-Holocene Nabta-Playans, the development of social differentiation, and probably ranking with ''labor-consuming'' megalithic features with the emergence of characteristic features of pastoral ideology and religions. As far as the emergence and adoption of new foodways are concerned, the cultural development outlined with the Nabta Playa archaeological record is important for the understanding of the Holocene prehistory of Africa as a whole.

Synopsis Technically the Vesica Piscis is a symbol made from two circles of the same radius intersecting in such a way that the center of each circle lies on the circumference of the other. Vesica Piscis means 'Vessel of the Fish'. In Latin it translates as fish bladder. The ancient Pagan symbol is the sacred feminine (vulva). The sexual symbology crops up repeatedly in Buddhist art and architecture. The cross as the female compliment inserted in the oval produces the rhombus by adding a few lines. It creates the indestructible diamond of the sun god inside the 'propitious eye'. Vesica Piscis also forms the mouth of a pot. Some believe that the that the pot symbol in name of Egyptian mother goddess Isis and sky goddess Nut name also stands for the uterus. The Genesis Geometry is actually linked to the goddess (Gene-of-Isis). Vesica Piscis translates as the worship of the forces of creation, which seem to have determined the main Buddhist design. The earliest sacred architecture and art is distinguished by the monumental phallic pillar and the Vessel of Fullness called Amrit Kalash, the vessel containing the ambrosia of immortality. At all levels early Buddhist culture finds ways to represent what it values as most important. At times the real is depicted in a surreal mode, thus we encounter apparently 'whimsical image', composite animals and distorted forms which at times have human connotations. The images are invariably of profound nature and even when religious significance is indistinct and obscure in its unfamiliar iconography their significant role in fertility and funerary rituals makes early art objects essentially religious in content. In yaksha and yakshi cult a miniature sculptured spherical stone depicts ritual scenes that bring together three realms: divine devas, spirit and human world (fig.1). Around the middle of compressed sphere is a frieze divided into two scenes by a tree: one side is in leaf and the other on which a peacock is perched, covered with bloom. The enigmatic miniature has two main scenes. Scene one represents a man and woman with hands raised in adoration. They stand before a rocky outcrop with a lotus bud in front. Profile of a man facing the worshipers can be seen at the centre of the rocks. In scene two the divine female accompanied by a goose dancing to harp played by a man might represent Venus. A couple stands to one side, the woman

Persistence and change are necessary for the stability and development of both the human individual and the human society, since the beginnings of human history. Man needs a static framework, which, related to his self-awareness, defines a topocentric system of perception, evaluation, order, and meaning. He also requires a dynamic impetus, which allows exceeding the limits of special world views, shifting of perspectives and transformations of individual as well as social approaches to life. Travelling especially helped to broaden man’s horizon and mind. Accross cultures voyages guided by the skies are linked with practical concepts of exploring and domesticating time and space, but also figuratively with the life’s journey and with other worlds, being expressed by mythic, ritual and later scientific language.

In this paper, an attempt is made to fit together various kinds of data related to the process of the formation of the Ghana empire, the earliest West African state. An overview of research on this topic outlines some of the major problems concerning state formation in this region. This is followed by a discussion of the key politicoeconomic features and their dynamic relations in the process of social differentiation. The use of this theoretical framework helps to make sense of the Dhar Tichitt archaeological record. After careful examination of the prehistoric data, it seems that, before the advent of the Ghana empire, trends towards state formation were already in motion in the Dhar Tichitt region o 1985 Academic Press, Inc.

Situated at the disciplinary boundary between prehistory and history, this book presents a new synthesis of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Greece, from the rise and fall of Mycenaean civilization, through the "Dark Age," and up to the emergence of city-states in the Archaic period. This period saw the growth and decline of varied political systems and the development of networks that would eventually expand to nearly all shores of the Middle Sea. Alex R. Knodell argues that in order to understand how ancient Greece changed over time, one must analyze how Greek societies constituted and reconstituted themselves across multiple scales, from the local to the regional to the Mediterranean. Knodell employs innovative network and spatial analyses to understand the regional diversity and connectivity that drove the growth of early Greek polities. As a groundbreaking study of landscape, interaction, and sociopolitical change, Societies in Transition in Early Greece systematically bridges the divide between the Mycenaean period and the Archaic Greek world to shed new light on an often-overlooked period of world history.

The origins of the Germanic “Straw-bears” have been subject to speculation for years. In this study the Straw-bears will be contextualized along with their European relatives so that their meaning can be better appreciated within a larger framework of European ritual belief and social practice. The cosmogony in question is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears, a belief that continued into the 20th century among Basque-speakers. The transformative aspects of the Straw-bear performances will be examined in relation to “Good-Luck Visits”, a type of performance aimed at bringing good health and prosperity to the houses visited and in which Straw-bears and their relatives have played a major role.

Anthropological archaeology has long been a process of categorization. The history of the subdiscipline could be rendered in terms of an ongoing project to create, critique, and then refashion the categories by which archaeologists understand and explain social and ecological processes. Despite ever-changing theoretical tides, many archaeologists have continued to adhere to a lingua franca that demarcates their object of study, whether "the past," "nature," complexity, material culture, or historical knowledge. In 2018, strong currents in archaeological scholarship have both challenged and washed out the boundaries of many of these epistemological mainstays. This was more than a postmodern exercise to question metanarratives of history or to destabilize supposed social universals. The recent scholarship develops innovative theoretical perspectives and sophisticated methodological tools to shed light on the varied human interactions, practices, and projects that were previously occluded by research too sharply focused on bounded categories such as periods, polities, adaptations, and meanings. Furthermore, archaeologists are now more than ever critically examining the colonial institutions that they perpetuate and seeking to establish new common ground with Indigenous communities. A decidedly archaeological perspective seems to be taking shape. This is a view that sees social life from the ground up in terms of complicated relationships between people, things, and other organisms that cannot be reduced to catchall categories. [year in review, archaeology, archaeological theory, current issues, Indigenous archaeology, environmental anthropology]

RESUMEN La arqueología antropológica ha sido durante mucho tiempo un proceso de categorización. La historia de la subdisciplina podría ser descrita en términos de un proyecto continuo de crear, criticar y luego rehacer las categorías a través de las cuales los arqueólogos entienden y explican los procesos sociales y ecológicos. A pesar de las mareas teóricas siempre cambiantes, muchos arqueólogos han continuado adhiriéndose a una lengua franca que demarca su objeto de estudio, ya sea "el pasado", "naturaleza", complejidad, cultura material o conocimiento histórico. En 2018, corrientes fuertes en la investigación arqueológica han tanto retado como difuminado los límites de muchos de los pilares epistemológicos. Esto fue más que un ejercicio posmoderno para cuestionar metanarrativas de la historia o para desestabilizar supuestos universales sociales. La reciente investigación desarrolla perspectivas teóricas innovadoras y herramientas metodológicas sofisticadas para arrojar luz sobre las variadas interacciones humanas, prácticas y proyectos que estuvieron previamente ocluidos por investigación excesivamente enfocada en categorías delimitadas tales como períodos, unidades políticas, adaptaciones y significados. AdemásAdem´Además, los arqueólogos ahora están más que nunca examinando críticamente las instituciones coloniales que perpetúan y buscando establecer un nuevo terreno común con las comunidades indígenas. Una perspectiva decididamente arqueológica parece estar tomando forma. Esta es una perspectiva que ve la vida social desde el principio en términos de relaciones complicadas

This book discusses the cultural, social and archaeological aspects of space and the impact of spatial concepts in practical archaeological case studies. It summarizes recent developments and looks to the future, exploring some of the cutting-edge ideas in spatial method and theory. The past decade has seen significant advances in the tools available for spatial analysis in archaeology, and theory and method regarding the spatial character of archaeology must keep pace with these advances. Geomorphological and geochemical techniques, geographic information systems, remotely sensed data, virtual reality and electronic survey technology provide new opportunities, but also require new ideas. This book gives us insight into the ways that people have used space to subsist, to recreate their culture in their ‘homelands’ or in new areas, or impose their culture on others. Contributors address the way archaeological notions of space and deep time can add to society’s understanding of landscape, social relationships, past environment and cultural heritage. The contributions from Europe and North America demonstrate intercontinental connections and explore ways of using dynamic models of spatial patterning to assess human activity within natural and cultural landscapes.

This paper reviews the archaeobotanical record of the transition from foraging to farming in the southern Levant. The concise presentation of the published botanical evidence follows a critical assessment of: (a) the nature of Epipalaeolithic plant management strategies, (b) the place of the southern Levant in the polycentric development of Near Eastern plant cultivation and domestication, and (c) region-specific pathways for the emergence of domesticated crop ‘‘packages’’. Some inferences are drawn and suggestions are made concerning the potential contribution of archaeobotanical research to questions of broader archaeological significance about socio-economic change in the southern Levant during the Pre-pottery Neolithic.

This article considers the incorporation of part of Britain into the Roman empire in the context of globalization theory and world-systems history. Emphasis is placed on the local effects of the expansion of global systems and their impact on the social practices of eating and drinking at a range of settlements in the southeast of Britain in the Iron Age to Roman transition, c. 50 BC-AD 200. Through the analysis of consumption practices via quantitative pottery assemblage data, it is argued that globalization offers a more sophisticated framework to describe change than current archaeological approaches to Romanization and identity. The results show that while much of the populace was subject to a progressively homogenizing supply of food-related pottery vessels, the use of such technologies was negotiated within social practices drawing on the integration of both local and global cultural elements. Such findings highlight the potential of critical applications of globalization theory to conceptualize economic, social, and cultural changes in Roman provincial societies.

The scale and nature of early cultivation are topics that have received relatively limited attention in research on the origins of agriculture. In Southwest Asia, one the earliest centers of origin worldwide, the transition to food production is commonly portrayed as a macroevolutionary process from hunter-gatherer through to cultivator-forager and farming stages. Climate change, resource intensification, sedentism, rising population densities, and increasing social complexity are widely considered by prehistorians as pivotal to the emergence of protoagricultural village life. In this paper we revisit these narratives that have been influenced by culture-history and social evolution, together forming the dominant theoretical paradigms in the prehistory of Southwest Asia. We propose a complementary contextual approach seeking to reconstruct the historical development of Early Holocene plant-food production and its manifold sociocultural environments by intersecting multiple lines of evidence on the biology of plant domestication, resource strategies, settlement patterns, cultivation and harvesting technologies, food storage, processing and consumption, ritual practices and symbolic behaviors. Furthermore, we propose that early plant-food production in Southwest Asia should be dissociated from ethnographically derived notions of sedentary village life. Plants emerge as important components of community interactions and ritual performances involving suprahousehold groups that were mediated through communal food consumption.

Animal bones in human burials may reveal aspects of the relationship between animals and humans. This article describes the roles of birds in mortuary practices and in the ideology of Stone Age northern Europe. Bird bones from two large burial sites, Middle Neolithic Ajvide (Gotland, Sweden) and Mesolithic and Neolithic Zvejnieki (Latvia) are investigated with osteological methods. Beads and pendants were fashioned from the wing bones of waterbirds, and used in the decoration of the body or the burial dress. The jay was found in three Neolithic burials at Zvejnieki, and it may have been a totem animal for the Middle Neolithic people at Zvejnieki, and its wings or feathers were presumably attached to dresses and costumes for the dead. Bird remains in burials at Ajvide, Zvejnieki and some other Stone Age cemeteries may indicate similar features in the way of perceiving birds, especially the possible symbolic roles of waterbirds and wings. The findings are discussed from the perspective of the cosmology of historical hunter–gatherer (and herding) groups in modern Russia.

The devastation wrought across the ancient Near East by the Assyrian and Babylonian empires during the Iron Age has received considerable schrift in Near Eastern studies. Yet, no systematic effort has been made to assess the archaeological and historical data for what must have been a tidal wave of refugees that fled opposite these approaching threats, as is amply documented for modern conflicts. Attention has been focused instead on the victims rather than the survivors of imperial aggression, a fact largely due to the historical sources preserved and the ensuing archaeological inquiry based on these narratives. From the ninth century BCE it is possible, however, to identify examples of likely refugee communities in the archaeological record and to correlate them with specific historical campaigns by the Assyrians and Babylonians as they sought to expand their territories in the Levant. Archaeological data from sites in Judah, Philistia, and Egypt, for example, taken in combination with historical-geographical evidence and textual sources serve as case studies permitting the creation of a set of criteria for the identification of refugees in the archaeological record that can be applied to different periods and regions. This work addresses the evidence from Israel and its neighbors for population displacements resulting from Assyrian and Babylonian military campaigns from the 9th to the 6th centuries BCE.

The Bible portrays circumcision as having an important role in Israelite culture. Consequently, circumcision has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Some have viewed it as having an " internal " role, for example, for rites of fertility and marriage, whereas others have highlighted its " external " role as an ethnic marker, differentiating the Israelites from " other " groups. Circumcision, however, was practiced by many groups in the ancient Near East, and it is commonly accepted that if circumcision was an ethnic marker, it functioned mainly against the " foreign " Philistines, who did not practice it. Interestingly, all the biblical texts that depict the Philistines as ‫ערלים‬ (uncircumcised) project this reality into the pre-monarchic period (Iron I), regardless of their date, source, or genre. Not a single text, regardless of genre, uses this pejorative to describe the Philistines in the monarchic period (Iron II). This clear-cut dichotomy is supported by additional historical and archaeological lines of evidence (direct and indirect) and is in line with other changes in Philistine culture. All this seems to suggest that the Philis-tines started to circumcise in Iron II, the time when they ceased to manufacture their Aegean-inspired decorated pottery, adopted the local script, changed their foodways, and so on. This, in turn, gives us a better understanding of the significance of circumcision for the Israelites, and it appears that the " internal " and " external " explanations are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they reflect different perspectives on the practice over time, as well as different views by different social fractions.