As a Palestinian archaeologist whose work is focused on the geopolitics of Palestinian archaeology practice and theory, I reflect in this provocation article on the current devastation of the Gaza Strip by Israel and how archaeology can be incorporated into Gaza’s current situation. Pertinent questions include the following: How should archaeologists treat the ruins of the Baptist Hospital or any ruins in Gaza? What should be done with all these ruins? When does democide become genocide? Is an ex situ analysis possible? Is there such a thing as archaeology without a place? What kind of ‘regime of truth’ does it establish? What ethical implications does this form of analysis have? What kind of accountability does it possess? In what ways does it shape our memories of events?

The concept of a matricentric society, linked with female rule, has been enthroned in studies of Europe’s prehistory during the past two centuries. Nevertheless, in the 1960s and 1970s, feminist approaches dethroned the idea of the Mother Goddess as the key organizing principle of Aegean Neolithic societies. Recently, however, certain versions of gynecocracy, implying female rule, and/or of matrilineal kinship have been rethroned for studies in the Aegean Neolithic and Bronze Age. This article critically assesses how and why scholars have supported the existence of matrilineal kinship and/or female rule in the Aegean Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Which pools of evidence have they used to support their claims and why? The multiple lives of matrilineal kinship and female rule in the research record will be discussed through the lens of enthroning, dethroning and rethroning processes. Ultimately, tracing these processes helps to elucidate the troubled relationship between translating socio-cultural anthropological concepts with and without applying socio-cultural anthropological knowledge to the archaeological material.

In response to the article written by Sabina Cveček, it is argued that the view expressed by the author that matrilineal kinship has been ‘throned’ and ‘re-throned’ in Aegean prehistory has resulted from a poor understanding of anthropological terms. It is also proposed that archaeological perspectives on matrilineal kinship cannot be ‘streamlined’ through the contribution of social anthropology and ethnography as both fields are plagued by their own limitations.

To date, traditional narratives of the Late Iron Age have focused almost exclusively on discussions of the elite. These were the martial rulers and major landholders who occupied the upper strata of Scandinavian society. The lives of lower-status population groups, including enslaved and other ‘unfree’ or dependent peoples such as landless farmers, have long been marginalized in archaeological discourse. We have little knowledge of the ways in which the lifeways of subaltern peoples were shaped by the construction and maintenance of socio-political hierarchies and networks, or of how social inequality permeated and impacted the daily lives of communities. In this article, the authors propose that the concept of structural violence, developed by sociologist Johan Galtung, has the potential to offer an interdisciplinary framework for multi-proxy studies of (bio)archaeological and textual data.

Focusing on the late prehistoric southern Levant, we recently suggested that the diffused low-frequency distribution of large predator bones (lion, leopard and bear) coalesces into a coherent temporal pattern when observed at a sufficiently long timescale. While in the previous research we sought to determine what sort of sociocultural mechanism might explain this pattern, effectively drawing it into the orbit of the familiar, in this brief provocation, we push in the other direction, towards the unfamiliar: how can a process or phenomenon be culturally significant yet meaningless at the human and societal levels? How is a phenomenon substantial in the long term and insubstantial in the short term?

Object biography, amended and expanded by the newer and ontologically updated concept of object itineraries, is a well-established analytical tool for documenting human–object interactions. The present paper explores its intersection with art, and proposes the concept of Creative Object Biography, as a step forward in the discourse and as a means for articulating and sharing alternative narratives and imageries not only among specialists but also – and especially – with the wider public, aiming to render discussions on materiality relevant to diverse audiences. The paper uses as a case study a group of three every-day objects associated with the Vlach pastoral transhumance of northern Greece, whose entanglements and cultural itineraries functioned as the inspiration for the creation of three original short films.