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This paper addresses the challenges posed by geophysical prospection in a high-altitude volcanic landscape. The case study is the site Karmir Sar, on Mount Aragats, Armenia. A major aim of the ongoing archaeological explorations at Karmir Sar is to detect, map and interpret prehistoric features on site, including the extraordinary concentration of megalithic monuments known as vishaps ("dragon stones"). This paper illustrates a workflow that has allowed us to detect archaeologically relevant features by combining geomagnetic prospection, groundpenetrating radar prospection and orthophotographs generated from image-based modelling of aerial pictures. The collected archaeological information was cross-checked through excavation and the results led to a new understanding of the site and its contexts.

Zaccagnini, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Here and in the following, dates are intended as , if not stated otherwise.1 Fargher et al., "Wealth Inequality, Social Stratification, and the Built Environment" (2020); McAnany, "Approaching the Archaeopo-this perspective, political authority is always performative, people-oriented, and negotiated in public. In archaeological terms, an archaeopolitical perspective focuses on public space to apprehend the negotiation of power between rulers and other civic community members. 2 In ancient Near Eastern studies, text-oriented scholars are currently rediscovering a similar interest in non-royal institutions and the politics of consensus. 3 litical" (2018); Martin, "Reflections on the Archaeopolitical" (2016). Central to this approach is collective action theory, as theorized in the social sciences since the 1990s. Essentially, collective action theory postulates that governance works through cooperation and bargain rather than coercion and mystification. One of its tenets is that "the more principals (rulers) depended on the populace for labor, tribute, or other revenues, the greater the agency (or "voice") a population had in negotiating public benefits." (De Marrais and Earle, "Collective Action Theory" [2017]: 183). Daniel Fleming has used collective action theory to interpret the social landscape of Emar, Mari, and Israel: Fleming, Legacy of Israel (2012), Democracy's Ancient Ancestors (2004) and Time at Emar (2000).2 "Civic community" is here intended to mean every community of persons bound together by a sense of belonging to a specific urban place, following Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia (1964), 95.3 E.g., the essays on collective governance in Wilhelm, Organization, Representation, and Symbols of Power (2012), 85-225, the session on "the world of politics" in Rollinger and van Dongen, Mesopotamia and the Ancient World (2015), 413-86, and Martin and Snell, "Democracy and Freedom" (2005).Rural Community [1976], 103) or 22,000-29,000 individuals (Liverani, "Histoire" [1979], who distinguishes between 20,000-25,000 villagers and 2,000-4,000 individuals affiliated with royal estates). Adding 6,000-8000 city dwellers, the total population of the kingdom was thus estimated at 28,000-36,000 individuals. According to these calculations, city dwellers would have amounted to 16%-29% of the total population. Based on the newly published administrative list RS 94.2411, Vidal recently proposed a lower estimate for the rural population of 11,000-14,000 individuals, organized in 200 villages, with, on average, fourteen families per village with four to five members per family (Vidal, "On the Demography of Ugaritian Villages" [2014]). If this were true, the total population of the kingdom would drop to 17,000-22,000 individuals, with a considerably higher percentage of city dwellers (27%-47%). Vidal's new estimate, however, should be emended by adding the personnel of the royal farms (Ug. gt) and vineyards, shepherds employed fulltime by th...

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This paper presents an analysis of a ritual event memorialised on stone reliefs at the ancient city of Carchemish around 800 BC. It is argued that the reliefs represent a ceremony of investiture, in which boys of royal lineage are handed out toys as oracular instruments to elicit favourable omens for the heir apparent. The inclusion of boys and their toys in the visual commemoration of a political ritual has bearings on three levels of meaning. First, it testifies to a hitherto unrecognised cult practice, involving grouping boys in age classes and harnessing their ludic practices for ritual purposes. Second, it reflects local political preoccupations connected with dynastic controversies, in an attempt to silence counternarratives through the emphatic staging of children. Finally, the chosen imagery conveys complex philosophical ideas about life, education, and individual destiny, connecting with issues of material religion and childhood studies. The study integrates interpretive perspectives from visual semiotics, architectural analysis, and ancient studies to show how, upon specific occasions, marginal groups and everyday material items, such as children and their toys, may play critical roles in collective ritual events.