For those in search of current perspectives on the Aztec with a focus on matters economic, I heartily recommend a deep dive into these three volumes. Each book offers an insightful vantage on what we presently know about this pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican empire, as well as how new discoveries over the last 60–70 years force serious rethinking of both the long-term history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and key tenets that underpin pre-industrial political economies more broadly. Empires were a relatively rare phenomenon in the pre-industrial world, especially in the ancient Americas, and few have been so skilfully studied through a multi-disciplinary approach that integrates both historical texts and archaeology.

At the end of Antiquity’s ninetieth year, this issue of NBC looks at a selection of new books through the eyes of Antiquity’s founder: O.G.S. Crawford. He died exactly 60 years ago, but were he to be resurrected in 2017, what would he make of archaeology today? What would be familiar? And what developments would surprise him? He would undoubtedly scour Antiquity to bring himself up to date, but he might also turn to some introductory texts for a panorama of the modern archaeological landscape; he would have plenty to choose from.

In world archaeology, there has always been a problem regarding the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition. Late twentieth-century research has attempted to address this issue through the recognition of Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) lithic industries. These assemblages were first characterised through evidence from the sites of Boker Tachtit and Ksar Akil (the Levant), and they are now identified in many regions of Eurasia, including Central Asia, the Near East, the Altai Mountains, Transbaikalia, Mongolia and northern China. A characteristic IUP assemblage has also been recently found in Kazakhstan (Ushbulak-1) (Shunkov et al. 2016). Large blades and elongated pointed flakes dominate these assemblages, and there is a prevalence of Upper Palaeolithic tool types in tool sets.

In contrast to the Acheulian and Middle Palaeolithic, the Late Palaeolithic archaeological record of the south-east coast of India is poorly understood (Pappu 2001; Petraglia et al. 2010; Pappu et al. 2011). Considerable uncertainty surrounds the definition of the blade-based microlithic or non-Levallois, flake-based assemblages, largely as a result of the lack of chronometric dates from excavated sites and due to the paucity of lithic studies (Pappu 2001). The Late Palaeolithic is a crucial period in relation to questions about the dispersals of anatomically modern humans across India and Sri Lanka (Petraglia et al. 2010; Mellars et al. 2013; Roberts et al. 2015) and regional evolutionary trajectories of blade technologies. Here, we present an overview of the site complex of Kunjaram (KJ) in the Kortallaiyar River Basin, Tamil Nadu, south-east India. This represents one of the 43 Late Palaeolithic sites documented in this region (Pappu et al. 2010). While analysis of the lithics from other sites continues, we focus here on the lithic assemblage from KJ-3 because of its good preservation and potential to yield information on all stages of the reduction sequence, as well as its geographic proximity to the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic site of Attirampakkam, which would enable the construction of regional cultural sequences.

Intensive research on the Mesolithic of western Central Asia began in the mid twentieth century, when the discovery of key sites allowed for the formulation of the main regional cultural-chronological schemes (Figure 1).

The end of the last Ice Age in Britain (c. 11500 BP) created major disruption to the biosphere. Open habitats were succeeded by more wooded landscapes, and changes occurred to the fauna following the abrupt disappearance of typical glacial herd species, such as reindeer and horse (Conneller & Higham 2015). Understanding the impact of these changes on humans and how quickly they were able to adapt may soon become clearer, due to recent discoveries in the Colne Valley on the western edge of Greater London, north of the River Thames. An exceptionally well-preserved open-air site was discovered in 2014 as part of a wider project of archaeological investigation and excavation carried out by Wessex Archaeology (2015), on behalf of CEMEX UK. The site, at Kingsmead Quarry in Horton, is unusual because it has good organic preservation and, in addition to worked flint artefacts, it has yielded groups of articulated horse bone. The extreme rarity of such sites of this period in Britain makes this discovery especially significant and re-emphasises the potential importance of the Colne Valley (Lacaille 1963; Lewis 2011; Morgi et al. 2011).

The Lothagam harpoon site in north-west Kenya's Lake Turkana Basin provides a stratified Holocene sequence capturing changes in African fisher-hunter-gatherer strategies through a series of subtle and dramatic climate shifts (Figure 1). The site rose to archaeological prominence following Robbins's 1965–1966 excavations, which yielded sizeable lithic and ceramic assemblages and one of the largest collections of Early Holocene human remains from Eastern Africa (Robbins 1974; Angel et al. 1980).