The author makes the case for cultural change during the period traditionally assigned to the Middle Palaeolithic in China (140–30 kya), challenging an earlier proposal (Antiquity 2002) that the period saw little change and the term should be abandoned.

The sites of the first modern humans who occupied what is now Britain have been reduced to a handful by subsequent glaciation and the rise in sea level, and their assemblages have been further depleted because early excavators ignored the microliths. Confronting the challenges of this exiguous material, the author succeeds in painting a vivid picture of Aurignacian hunters following prey down the now submerged Channel River Valley, colonising the preferred hilly zones at the west of Britain. The presence of two types of bladelet manufacture suggests a lengthy or repeated period of subsequent occupation.

The excavated site termed Yana RHS is dated to about 28000 BP and contained a stunning assemblage of ornamented and symbolic objects—the earliest art to be excavated in the Arctic zone. Decorated beads, pendants and needles connect the site to the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic; but other forms and ornaments are unparalleled. Shallow dishes and anthropomorphic designs on mammoth tusks find echoes among hunting practice and shamanistic images of the indigenous Yukaghir people recorded in the early twentieth century.

A Late Palaeolithic amber figurine has been skilfully recovered and reassembled from a ploughed open site in northern Germany. Dated between 11 800 and 11 680 cal BC it occupies a key point between the Magdalenian and the Mesolithic. The authors show that the figurine represents a female elk which was probably carried on the top of a wooden staff. They argue for continuity of art but change of belief in this crucial transition period.

Göbekli Tepe is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of modern times, pushing back the origins of monumentality beyond the emergence of agriculture. We are pleased to present a summary of work in progress by the excavators of this remarkable site and their latest thoughts about its role and meaning. At the dawn of the Neolithic, hunter-gatherers congregating at Göbekli Tepe created social and ideological cohesion through the carving of decorated pillars, dancing, feasting—and, almost certainly, the drinking of beer made from fermented wild crops.

Cave paintings and first-hand ethnographic accounts from living peoples have led to the notion that southern African spiritual experts routinely mediated with the other world through energetic dances leading to the trance state. The evidence for this idea has been challenged in recent years, and the importance of the trance dance diminished accordingly. The authors confront these criticisms and place the shamanistic dance back on centre stage—with important consequences not only for the study of San peoples, but for wider prehistoric interpretations.

This paper rewrites the early history of Britain, showing that while the cultivation of cereals arrived there in about 4000 cal BC, it did not last. Between 3300 and 1500 BC Britons became largely pastoral, reverting only with a major upsurge of agricultural activity in the Middle Bronze Age. This loss of interest in arable farming was accompanied by a decline in population, seen by the authors as having a climatic impetus. But they also point to this period as the time of construction of the great megalithic monuments, including Stonehenge. We are left wondering whether pastoralism was all that bad, and whether it was one intrusion after another that set the agenda on the island.

The south-east coast of Africa in the later first millennium was busy with boats and the movement of goods from across the Indian Ocean to the interior. The landing places were crucial mediators in this process, in Africa as elsewhere. Investigations at the beach site of Chibuene show that a local community was supplying imported beads to such interior sites as Schroda, with the consequent emergence there of hierarchical power structures.

Writing about the ‘Tophet’, a children's cemetery in Carthage, Smith et al. argued in these pages that the age distribution of the children peaks at 1–1.49 months, supplying “another link in the chain of evidence—funerary practices, texts, iconography—that supports the interpretation of the Phoenician Tophets as ritual sites set aside for infant sacrifice” (2011: 871). In this they had challenged Jeffrey Schwartz and colleagues, who previously argued (2010) that “skeletal remains from Punic Carthage do not support systematic sacrifice of infants”. Here Schwartz et al. restate their position for Antiquity readers, showing that the verdict on the Phoenician practice of child sacrifice is, at best, not proven.

Exploration of a group of Early Horizon platforms by quadrat in Peru made contact with a midden, rich in artefacts and faunal remains. Was this the result of discard from an elite residence, or deposits of ‘ceremonial trash’ emanating from ritual performance? The author shows how this question may be decided, even through the analysis of a single small sample.

The Romans are Britain's favourite invaders, and Hadrian's Wall is among the largest and finest of the relics they left behind on the island. However, as our authors urge, we should demand more intellectual depth from our monuments today. Not simply a cultural asset anchored in the Roman empire, Hadrian's Wall had a busy afterlife, a material history reflecting the uses, attitudes and emotions of later centuries. Its ‘biography’ not only captures new information about the last two millennia, it offers a story that the modern visitor deserves to hear.

Chemical analysis of the stunning Muisca metalwork shows that the alloys of copper and gold were especially composed for each offering. Traditionally, the Muisca objects have been collected and studied as works of art. Our authors show that when it comes to drawing understanding of people from the objects they have left us, context is all. The results have much to reveal to metallurgists and students of symbolic metalwork everywhere.

Travellers naturally prefer to use the most passable routes and establish staging points on the way. Cost surface analysis predicts the easiest routes and viewshed analysis the territory visible from a staging point or destination. Applying these GIS techniques to the Buenavista Valley Corridor, our authors write a history of travel and exchange that vividly reflects the rivalry of two polities and the rise and fall of their nodal settlements.

Not the least of the unusual revelations that have come from the wonderfully preserved ninth-century Norwegian ship burials at Oseberg and Gokstad, is the fact that both had been later broken into—by interlopers who defaced the ship, damaged the grave goods and pulled out and dispersed the bones of the deceased. These ‘mound-breakers’ helpfully left spades and stretchers in place, and through the application of some highly ingenious dendrochronology our authors have been able to date the break-ins with some precision. Mound-breaking, it seems, took place during the domination of Norway by Harald Bluetooth in the tenth century as part of an extensive campaign which included subduing local monuments as well as converting Scandinavians to Christianity. The old mounds retained such power in the landscape that it was worth desecrating them and disinterring their occupants a century after their burial.

The Dumbarton Oaks Maya mosaic mask is shown to have included tortoiseshell on an earlobe—remarkable since this is the only demonstrated use of this material in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. The authors present diagnostic evidence for the presence of tortoiseshell, account for its absence in pre-Hispanic artefacts because of decay, and propose its use (in the mask) as being symbolic of the ocean.

Double infant burials in unusually high numbers occurred at Khok Phanom Di during a phase associated with immigration and some evidence of early agricultural practices. A study of their stratigraphic context and relative ages led to the interpretation that these were twins. Through an exploration of the medical and anthropological literature of twins, and in conjunction with their mortuary context, the authors conclude that these babies died of natural causes at, or soon after, birth.

The metal composition of bronze alloys has been routinely examined as a means of inferring the source of the ore. But bronze is recycled, and the quantity of some components, such as arsenic, is depleted every time the alloy is melted down. Since the Early Bronze Age of the British Isles was largely supplied from a single mine on Ross Island, Co. Kerry, tracking arsenic content shows the number of re-melts and this gives the object a biography and a social context. Applying this ingenious new procedure to their large database, the authors also winkle out other sources of supply and new insights about the technology involved.

Egypt has some of the oldest written records and extended lists of named rulers. But radiocarbon dates have only fulfilled expectations 66 per cent of the time. So why haven&t the two types of dating made a better match? The authors provide a dozen excellent reasons, which will sound the alarm among researchers well beyond Dynastic Egypt.

In the course of their research campaign in Siberia, Ghent University archaeologists have developed a simple and cost effective method for the rapid 3D imaging of rock art, standing stelae and surface monuments. Their procedure will undoubtedly have a big role to play in archaeological research in advance of the oil pipeline expected soon.