Original Value
The economics of Late Bronze age gold mining by the Egyptian New Kingdom in Nubia
Leigh Bettenay & James Ross
Journal of Archaeological Science, December 2025
Abstract:
This paper provides the first quantitative estimates of the profitability (in the sense of reward for effort) of gold mining in Antiquity. We have developed and assessed four models for New Kingdom gold mining in Nubia, during this period of peak gold production. These are: mining from oxidised lodes (OLM), proximal alluvial placer deposits in desert wadis (PAP), alluvial placer deposits along the Nile (NAP), and alluvial clast mining (ACM). The last refers to selective extraction of gold-bearing clasts (“quartz chunks”) from wadi alluvium and has become an archaeological focus in Nubia. We examine two variants: proximal to the source lodes (ACM-P) and distal in larger catchments (ACM-D). Daily worker productivity has been estimated for each step in the chaîne opératoire using parameters drawn from: records of 19th century miners in isolated locations and reliant on simple technologies; modern artisanal miners; recent observations in Nubia and along the Nile; and limited experimentation. Gold production in each model is standardized to a 50-day expedition of 50 people. Under our base-case parameters all models, except for distal clast mining (ACM-D), are profitable: they produce more gold than required to pay the workers. The main factor is the low cost of labour in New Kingdom Egypt, when priced in gold. However, only the placer models (PAP and NAP) can generate large returns within realistic modelling parameters, because their free gold particles can be simply recovered by screening and washing. In contrast, lode and clast mining methods (OLM and ACM) must allocate most of the workforce to crushing and grinding ore to liberate gold before recovery. Clast mining is further disadvantaged by barren sediment dilution and is only viable in small catchments close to source lodes. New Kingdom Egypt expanded into previously unmined areas of Nubia and along the Nile and therefore enjoyed “first-mover” status over large areas of richly endowed goldfields. By analogy with virgin goldfields in Australia and California, where substantial placer gold dominated earliest production, they had access to numerous unworked deposits with grades perhaps significantly higher than assumed in our models. A surge in New Kingdom gold production was likely, followed by an inevitable decline after depletion of best resources.
Indigenous accounting and exchange at Monte Sierpe (‘Band of Holes’) in the Pisco Valley, Peru
Jacob Bongers et al.
Antiquity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Stretching for 1.5km and consisting of approximately 5200 precisely aligned holes, Monte Sierpe in southern Peru is a remarkable construction that likely dates to at least the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1400) and saw continued use by the Inca (AD 1400–1532). Yet its function remains uncertain. Here, the authors report on new analyses of drone imagery and sediment samples that reveal numerical patterns in layout, potential parallels with Inca knotted-string records and the presence of crops and wild plants. All this, the authors argue, suggests that Monte Sierpe functioned as a local, Indigenous system of accounting and exchange.
An understanding of wealth inequality revealed by the Gini coefficient: Insights from prehistoric burial data in the Liyang Plain, China
Dongdong Li & Suwei Guo
Journal of Archaeological Science, December 2025
Abstract:
This paper proposes a composite metric for analyzing economic inequality reflected in prehistoric burials by integrating the value of burial goods with the labor investment required for burial construction. This approach helps mitigate interpretive biases that arise from relying on a single dimension of burial wealth assessment. To address the common challenge of small sample sizes in prehistoric burials, we adopt bootstrap resampling and apply appropriate small-sample corrections to the resulting Gini coefficients. Building on the above methods, this paper uses extensive prehistoric burial data from a site on China's Liyang Plain to trace diachronic patterns of economic inequality. The study reveals diachronic patterns of economic inequality, showing that increase in burial wealth inequality was likely tied to hydraulic infrastructure projects and that ritual power concentrated wealth more effectively than political-military power.
A comparative approach to the evolution of kissing
Matilda Brindle, Catherine Talbot & Stuart West
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Kissing can be observed across the animal kingdom. This presents an evolutionary puzzle, since the fitness benefits of kissing are unclear. We use a non-anthropocentric approach to define kissing as a non-agonistic interaction involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer. Using this definition we collate basic observational data across the Afro-Eurasian primates and employ Bayesian phylogenetic methods to reconstruct the evolutionary history of kissing. We find that kissing occurs in most extant large apes, and likely also occurred in Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis), first evolving in the ancestor to this group ∼21.5–16.9 mya. Additionally, we highlight various life history variables that correlate reasonably, but not perfectly, with kissing across the apes (multi-male mating systems, non-folivorous diets, and premastication). With a major caveat about the quantity of available data at present, we hope that our results provide a useful starting point for further research into the adaptive function of kissing that highlights hypothesis generation and testing within a phylogenetic framework.
Scaffolding minds? Toolmaking complexity and brain evolution in the hominin record
Alla Movsesian
Journal of Archaeological Science, December 2025
Abstract:
The Material Culture Scaffold Hypothesis (MCSH) proposes that durable tool traditions acted as external scaffolds for cognition, creating reciprocal feedbacks between technological elaboration and brain evolution. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed lithic procedural-unit (PU) data from 13 Paleolithic assemblages (2.35 Ma–32 ka) alongside taxon-level mean endocranial volumes (ECV). Procedural depth was distinguished into conservative units (PU_C), indexing routine, reversible steps, and non-conservative units (PU_NC), indexing irreversible, dependency-laden operations with higher executive demands. Ordinary least squares and cluster-robust regressions reveal positive associations between both PU measures and ECV, with PU_NC providing the more consistent predictor (R2 ≈ 0.50). Temporal analyses show gradual increases in PU_C, PU_NC, and ECV over ∼2.4 million years, with steep acceleration of PU_NC and brain volume in the Late Pleistocene. Taxonomic contrasts clarify this trajectory: early Homo and Mid-Pleistocene Homo (s.l.) remain confined to low-complexity, small-volume ranges; Neanderthals reach high PU values but with limited recurrence; Homo sapiens repeatedly generated and stabilized deep procedural chains across multiple contexts. These results support the hypothesis that toolmaking elaboration and encephalization were mutually reinforcing, with externalized technological routines structuring developmental and selective environments. Independent experimental and neuroimaging research further supports this interpretation, showing that complex knapping engages frontal executive networks and increases working-memory and planning demands. Although constrained by sample size and proxy measures, the findings highlight procedural depth as a useful bridge between archaeological evidence and cognitive evolution, consistent with broader models of gene–culture co-evolution.
Cities are different animals: A zooarchaeology of urbanism at Hamoukar, Syria, 5th–3rd millennia BC
Kathryn Grossman et al.
Journal of Archaeological Science, December 2025
Abstract:
The advent of urbanism marks a significant shift in human lifeways, and comparative study has shown that the world has seen many different forms of urbanism. We argue that animals were a fundamental part of what made cities different from other forms of settlement and different from one another. In this article, we provide the first long-term, diachronic analysis of a Mesopotamian city that foregrounds the evolving role of animals. We argue that the site of Hamoukar in northeastern Syria is best viewed as a succession of three cities, each distinctive in its own way and each dependent on animals in its own fashion. To make this argument, we summarize urban dynamics at Hamoukar from the late 5th through mid-late 3rd millennia BC, with a particular focus on faunal remains. We show that intensive and potentially long-distance caprine management was key to the first city; a more mixed animal economy, with caprines potentially harvested for wool, defined the second city; and pigs dominated the meat supply of the third city. Analysis of changing patterns in species composition, caprine survivorship, secondary products exploitation, and biometrics demonstrates that the three different cities were -- both literally and metaphorically -- different animals.