The bashful and the boastful : prestigious leaders and social change in Mesolithic Societies

The creation and maintenance of influential leaders and authorities is one of the key themes of archaeological and historical enquiry. However the social dynamics of authorities and leaders in the Mesolithic remains a largely unexplored area of study. The role and influence of authorities can be remarkably different in different situations yet they exist in all societies and in almost all social contexts from playgrounds to parliaments. Here we explore the literature on the dynamics of authority creation, maintenance and contestation in egalitarian societies, and discuss the implications for our interpretation and understanding of the formation of authorities and leaders and changing social relationships within the Mesolithic

Not just a virtue : The evolution of self control

We rely constantly on self-control in every aspect of our lives. Although it is not an ability unique to humans, our elevated levels of self-control may have played a key role in our evolution. Self-control is likely to have been key to many of the traits such as prosociality, that define modern humans. Despite this, attempts to study the evolution of self control through characteristics of the archaeological record have been few. Studies of related concepts such as inhibitory control have often been vague and do not reflect the whole scope of self-control. Defining self-control as arising from a combination of cognitive abilities including inhibition and the conscious regulation of emotions, this paper sets out a novel approach. We identify links between material culture, behaviours and the cognitive–emotional processes underlying them and produce testable predictions of what increases in these abilities might look like in the archaeological record. Using an example, we consider how late Acheulean handaxes (bifaces) demonstrate five characteristics that can be related to forms of self-control: deliberate practice, forward planning, time and energy investment, hierarchical processing, and distress tolerance. This provides some initial insights and lays the groundwork for future research in this area

Local knowledge is required: a rhythmanalytical approach to the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland, UK

This is a paper about blurring the boundaries between people, land and water in the past and of appreciating the importance of the wider environment in our accounts of prehistory. Maritime approaches to time/space are shown to offer new ways of looking at how people engage with the world around them. Informed by these approaches, and building on Lefebvre’s concepts of lived space and rhythm, current tensions within archaeology between cartesian and phenomenological approaches to the past will be shown to be unconstructive. These issues are all addressed in relation the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the East Anglian Fenland. Here a rhythmical, maritime approach will be shown to offer us a subtly different view of life during this period