• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• 2021-2021close
• Publications close
• CA close
• IE close
• Antiquity close

Morphological and compositional analysis of glass beads from three shipwrecks in the Indian Ocean world has increased our understanding of the chronology and distribution of mid-fifteenth to mid-seventeenth century glass.

The ancient city of Gabii—an Italian polity of the first millennium BC and a peer to early Rome—has often been presented as an example of urban decline, a counterpoint to Rome's rise from a collection of hilltop huts to a Mediterranean hegemon. Here the authors draw on the results from recent excavations at Gabii that challenge such simplistic models of urban history. Diachronic evidence documenting activity at the site over the course of 1400 years highlights shifting values and rhythms materialised in the maintenance, transformation and abandonment of different urban components. This complex picture of adaptation and resilience provides a model of ancient urbanism that calls into question outdated narratives of urban success and failure.

The EVOSHEEP project combines archaeozoology, geometric morphometrics and genetics to study archaeo- logical sheep assemblages dating from the sixth to the first millennia BC in eastern Africa, the Levant, the Ana- tolian South Caucasus, the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia. The project aims to understand changes in the physical appearance and phenotypic characteristics of sheep and how these related to the appearance of new breeds and the demand for secondary products to supply the textile industry. 379 95

Recent critiques of ancient DNA (aDNA) studies in archaeology have called into question the problematic conflation of genetics with ethnic, cultural and racial identity. As yet, however, there has been little discussion of the increasing use of aDNA to reconstruct prehistoric kinship systems. This article draws on anthropological research to argue that kinship relations are not determined by biogenetic links, but are generated through social practice. A variety of archaeological evidence can be employed to explore how enduring affective relationships are created with both human and non-human others. These points require us to challenge androcentric and heteronormative interpretations of aDNA data in the Bronze Age and more widely.