The role played by the Arabian Peninsula in hominin dispersals out of Africa has long been debated. The DISPERSE Project has focused on south-western Arabia as a possible centre of hominin settlement and a primary stepping-stone for such dispersals. This work has led to the recent discovery, at Wadi Dabsa, of an exceptional assemblage of over 1000 lithic artefacts, including the first known giant handaxe from the Arabian Peninsula. The site and its associated artefacts provide important new evidence for hominin dispersals out of Africa, and give further insight into the giant handaxe phenomenon present within the Acheulean stone tool industry.

Palaeolithic burials are few and far between, and establishing their chronology is crucial to gaining a broader understanding of the period. A new programme of radiocarbon dating has provided a revised age estimate for the Palaeolithic burial at Kostënki 18 in European Russia (west of the Urals). This study reviews the need for redating the remains, and contextualises the age of the burial in relation to other Upper Palaeolithic funerary sites in Europe and Russia. The new date, obtained using a method that avoided the problems associated with previous samples conditioned with glue or other preservatives, is older than previous estimates, confirming Kostënki 18 as the only plausibly Gravettian burial known in Russia.

Fish-hooks discovered among grave goods associated with an adult female burial at the Tron Bon Lei rockshelter on the island of Alor in Indonesia are the first of their kind from a Pleistocene mortuary context in Southeast Asia. Many of the hooks are of a circular rotating design. Parallels found in various other prehistoric contexts around the globe indicate widespread cultural convergence. The association of the fish-hooks with a human burial, combined with the lack of alternative protein sources on the island, suggest that fishing was an important part of the cosmology of this community. The Tron Bon Lei burial represents the earliest-known example of a culture for whom fishing was clearly an important activity among both the living and the dead.

Aurochs played a prominent role in mortuary and feasting practices during the Neolithic transition in south-west Asia, although evidence of these practices is diverse and regionally varied. This article considers a new concentration of aurochs bones from the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Kfar HaHoresh, situating it in a regional context through a survey of aurochs remains from other sites. Analysis shows a change in the regional pattern once animal domestication began from an emphasis on feasting to small-scale practices. These results reveal a widely shared practice of symbolic cattle use that persisted over a long period, but shifted with the beginning of animal management across the region.

The Neolithic in north-east Asia is defined by the presence of ceramic containers, rather than agriculture, among hunter-gatherer communities. The role of pottery in such groups has, however, hitherto been unclear. This article presents the results of organic residue analysis of Neolithic pottery from Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. Results indicate that early pottery on Sakhalin was used for the processing of aquatic species, and that its adoption formed part of a wider Neolithic transition involving the reorientation of local lifeways towards the exploitation of marine resources.

Pottery-manufacturing sequences can act as proxies for human migration and interaction. A good example is provided by the ‘spiralled patchwork technology’ (SPT) identified at two key early farming sites in the Ligurian-Provencal Arc in the north-west of the Italian peninsula. SPT is distinct from the ceramic technology used by early farmer communities in south-east Italy that shows technical continuity with the southern Balkans. Macroscopic analysis and micro-computed tomography suggests the presence of two communities of practice, and thus two distinct social groups in the northern Mediterranean: one of southern Balkan tradition, the other (associated with SPT) of as yet unknown origin. The identification of SPT opens up the exciting possibility of tracing the origins and migrations of a second distinct group of early farmers into Southern Europe.

The difficulty in identifying acts of intentional injury in the past has limited the extent to which archaeologists have been able to discuss the nature of interpersonal violence in prehistory. Experimental replication of cranial trauma has proved particularly problematic due to the lack of test analogues that are sufficiently comparable to the human skull. A new material now overcomes this issue, and for the first time allows accurate insight into the effects of different weapons and different blows in inflicting cranial injury; in this case, blunt force trauma caused using a replica of the ‘Thames Beater’ Neolithic wooden club.

The Early Bronze Age Únětice Culture in central Germany was a highly stratified society with a ruling class of ‘princes’, as evidenced by the famous burials at Leubingen and Helmsdorf, and the newly excavated burial mound Bornhöck near Dieskau. To investigate the notion of Únětice military organisation, this article presents a new interpretation of the numerous weapons hoards recovered from the region. Hoard deposition and composition from central Germany strongly suggests a shift from a Late Neolithic culture of ‘warrior heroes’ to the creation of organised standing armies of professional soldiers under the control of ruling elites.

Recent excavation at Ucheliungs Cave in Palau has provided new evidence in the debate concerning the colonisation of the Palauan archipelago. An abundance of faunal material and the presence of transported artefacts contradict a previous interpretation that the site represents an early burial cave containing purported small-bodied humans. New radiocarbon dates suggest long-term use of the cave for both mortuary activity and small-scale marine foraging that may slightly precede the accepted date for the earliest human occupation of Palau. The results of this research here discount earlier claims for insular dwarfism among the earliest inhabitants of these islands.

Research on Late Bronze Age relations between Egyptians and local nomadic or semi-nomadic Libyans has hitherto focused almost exclusively on Egyptian textual and iconographic sources. Recent archaeological evidence for grain production and agrarian practice at the Egyptian fortress of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham allows us to address this imbalance, in combination with ethnographic data and cross-cultural parallels drawn from nomad-sedentary interactions in the Near East. Results suggest that Egyptian subsistence in this relatively isolated outpost of the New Kingdom Empire was probably dependent upon Libyan manpower and their knowledge of local environmental conditions and effective farming methods.

Lead is a major component of Chinese ritual bronze vessels. Defining its sources and usage is thus highly significant to understanding the metal industries of the Chinese Bronze Age. A new, simplified method has been developed for examining data, thereby providing insight into diachronic change in the origins of lead sources used in artefacts. Application of this method to the existing corpus of lead isotope data from the Erlitou (c. 1600 BC) to the Western Zhou (c. 1045–771 BC) periods reveals changes in the isotope signal over this time frame. These changes clearly reflect shifts in the sourcing of ores and their use in metropolitan foundries. Further data are required to understand these complex developments.

The recent discovery of the tomb of Liu Fei, King of Jiangdu, in eastern China, has provided a unique insight into the significance of early gold production in Western Han society. The recovery of luxury gold ornaments from mortuary contexts shows that hierarchical social order and status were maintained through the bestowal of these items upon the dead. Production of this gold not only entailed the control of organised local labour, but also the co-opting of methods and stylistic attributes associated with foreign territories. The influence of external aesthetics on local production may have helped imbue these artefacts with the prestige and significance that they carried for the elites who bore them into the afterlife.

The Atures Rapids have long been considered a major point of confluence in the Middle Orinoco landscape, Venezuela. This has been underlined by newly discovered rock art panels on islands within the Rapids and on the margins of the Orinoco River. The panels were recorded photographically and photogrammetrically, and the spatial organisation and taphonomic factors affecting the corpus were investigated. The rock art was also examined in the context of established models of chronology and authorship. Placing the corpus in relation to archaeological and ethnographic evidence from Amazonia and the Guianas emphasises how the Atures Rapids structured pre-Columbian and Colonial contact between diverse groups in lowland South America.

The origins of Venice have been of great interest to Venetians and to scholars more generally for centuries. Long shrouded in myth and legend due to the dearth of pre-ninth-century AD evidence, recent archaeological research is now illuminating how the famous city built on water began. Using high-resolution AMS dating of peach stones (pits) from below the Basilica of San Marco, the authors provide the first evidence for human activity at what is now the location of Piazza San Marco. Dating to between AD 650 and 770, this activity included canal in-filling and ground consolidation intended to create an area that was to become the city's civic centre in the early ninth century.

Archaeological evidence for Maya termination rituals has been reported from several sites, but spatial analyses based on quantitative data have not previously been undertaken. This study uses spatial analysis of deposits at the Guzmán Group, an outlying architectural group within the Maya centre of El Palmar in Mexico, to identify the participants and their behaviour in the termination ritual, along with associated public activities. Results suggest that participants were Guzmán Group inhabitants, who intentionally placed particular items in specific locations. The size and use-wear of vessels suggest repeated feasting events in the plaza. The study highlights the significance of contextual analyses for a greater understanding of the spatial dynamics inherent in the abandonment processes of early complex societies.