This volume, with essays by leading archaeologists and prehistorians, considers how prehistoric humans attempted to recognise, understand and conceptualise death.

Preface Colin Renfrew, Michael J. Boyd and Iain Morley; 1. 'The unanswered question': investigating early conceptualisations of death Colin Renfrew; Part I. Intimations of Mortality: 2. Non-human animal responses towards the dead and death: a comparative approach to understanding the evolution of human mortuary practices Alex Piel and Fiona Stewart; 3. Lower and Middle Palaeolithic mortuary behaviours and the origins of ritual burial João Zilhão; 4. Upper Palaeolithic mortuary practices: reflection of ethnic affiliation, social complexity and cultural turn-over Francesco d'Errico and Marian Vanhaeren; Part II. Mortality and the Foundations of Human Society: Sedentism and the Collective: 5. Gathering of the dead? The Early Neolithic sanctuaries of Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey Jens Notroff, Oliver Dietrich and Klaus Schmidt; 6. Death and architecture: the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A burials at WF16, Wadi Faynan, Southern Jordan Steven Mithen, Bill Finlayson, Darko Mari¿evi¿, Sam Smith, Emma Jenkins and Mohammad Najjar; 7. Corporealities of death in the central Andes (c.9000-2000 BC) Peter Kaulicke; 8. Mediating the dominion of death in Prehistoric Malta Simon Stoddart; 9. House societies and founding ancestors in Early Neolithic Britain Julian Thomas; Part III. Constructing the Ancestors: 10. Constructing ancestors in Sub-Saharan Africa Timothy Insoll; 11. Different kinds of dead: presencing Andean expired beings George F. Lau; 12. Putting death in its place: the idea of the cemetery Anthony Snodgrass; 13. Becoming Mycenaean? The living, the dead and the ancestors in the transformation of society in second millennium BC southern Greece Michael J. Boyd; Part IV. Death, Hierarchy and the Social Order: 14. Life and death in late-prehistoric to early historic Mesopotamia Karina Croucher; 15. The big sleep: early Maya mortuary ritual Norman Hammond; 16. De-paradoxisation of paradoxes by referring to death as an ultimate paradox: the case of the state-formation phase of Japan Koji Mizoguchi; 17. Death and mortuary rituals in mainland southeast Asia: from hunter-gatherers to the god kings of Angkor Charles F. W. Higham; Part V. Materiality and Memory: 18. How did the Mycenaeans remember? Death, matter and memory in the early Mycenaean world Lambros Malafouris; 19. Eternal glory: the origins of eastern jade burial and its far-reaching influence Li Shuicheng; 20. Eventful deaths - eventful lives? Bronze age mortuary practices in the late prehistoric Eurasian steppes of central Russia (2100-1500 BC) Bryan Hanks, Roger Doonan, Derek Pitman, Elena Kupriyanova and Dmitri Zdanovich; Part VI. Intimations of Immortality: Glimpsing Other Worlds: 21. Northern Iroquoian deathways and the re-imagination of community John L. Creese; 22. Locating a sense of immortality in early Egyptian cemeteries Alice Stevenson; 23. Buddhist mortuary traditions in ancient India: st¿pas, relics and the Buddhist landscape Julia Shaw; 24. Killing mummies: on Inka epistemology and imperial power Terence N. D'Altroy; Part VII. Responses and Reactions: Concluding Thoughts: 25. Death shall have no dominion: a response Timothy Jenkins; 26. Comments: death shall have no dominion Paul Wason; 27. The muse of archaeology Ben Okri.