Control of fire was a hallmark of developing human cognition and an essential technology for the colonisation of cooler latitudes. In Europe, the earliest evidence comes from recent work at the site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar in south-eastern Spain. Charred and calcined bone and thermally altered chert were recovered from a deep, 0.8-million-year-old sedimentary deposit. A combination of analyses indicated that these had been heated to 400–600°C, compatible with burning. Inspection of the sediment and hydroxyapatite also suggests combustion and degradation of the bone. The results provide new insight into Early Palaeolithic use of fire and its significance for human evolution.

Where did pottery first appear in the Old World? Statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates suggests that ceramic vessel technology had independent origins in two different hunter-gatherer societies. Regression models were used to estimate average rates of spread and geographic dispersal of the new technology. The models confirm independent origins in East Asia (c. 16000 cal BP) and North Africa (c. 12000 cal BP). The North African tradition may have later influenced the emergence of Near Eastern pottery, which then flowed west into Mediterranean Europe as part of a Western Neolithic, closely associated with the uptake of farming.

For the past 15 years, a succession of stable isotope studies have documented the abrupt dietary transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in Western and Northern Europe. Portugal, with its Late Mesolithic shell middens and burials apparently coexisting with the earliest Neolithic, further illustrates the nature of that transition. Individuals from Neolithic contexts there had significantly different diets to their Mesolithic counterparts. No evidence was found for a transitional phase between the marine-oriented Mesolithic subsistence regimes and the domesticated, terrestrial Neolithic diet. Two later Neolithic individuals, however, showed evidence for partial reliance on marine or aquatic foods. This raises questions about the possible persistence of marine dietary regimes beyond the Mesolithic period. This article is followed by a brief note by Mary Jackes and David Lubell.

In 1994 we published the unexpected result of an extreme Mesolithic stable isotope signal from a Neolithic context (Lubell et al.1994; Table 1). The sample, identified as Gruta de Lagar I, was from one of two caves at the site of Melides, near the Atlantic coast of Portugal between Sines and Setúbal. A sample from the second cave at Melides, Cerca do Zambujal, gave results consonant with our Neolithic samples from north of the Tagus River. Lagar I, on the other hand, had stable isotope values similar to Cabeço da Arruda N, a Late Mesolithic individual from the Muge Valley to the north-east of Melides.

The appearance of the distinctive ‘Beaker package’ marks an important horizon in British prehistory, but was it associated with immigrants to Britain or with indigenous converts? Analysis of the skeletal remains of 264 individuals from the British Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age is revealing new information about the diet, migration and mobility of those buried with Beaker pottery and related material. Results indicate a considerable degree of mobility between childhood and death, but mostly within Britain rather than from Europe. Both migration and emulation appear to have had an important role in the adoption and spread of the Beaker package.

The El Niño phenomenon can cause devastating inundation with catastrophic social and economic impacts. Evidence for multiple second-millennium BC El Niño events is present as laminated sediment layers at Huaca Cortada, a large Initial Period monument of the Caballo Muerto Complex in the Moche Valley, Peru. These indicate that one response to this period of climatic flux was the renewal and expansion of temple architecture, perhaps in an effort to demonstrate control over nature, and to maintain a symbol of community permanence. The final abandonment of Huaca Cortada is also associated with an El Niño event around 1000–900 BC.

Evidence of Bronze Age settlement in Rome has, for the most part, been conspicuous by its absence. The later development of the city has precluded most excavations from reaching a depth sufficient to encounter any such deposits, and early finds have been mostly recovered from secondary deposits. A series of boreholes below the church of Sant'Omobono have revealed in situ deposits of anthropic activity, which date to the late second millennium BC, interspersed with thick alluvial deposits. This new data from the Forum Boarium demonstrates that early settlement activity in Rome was not restricted to the summits or slopes of the Palatine and Capitoline Hills, but also included activity on the banks of the Tiber.

Traditional studies of early bronze metallurgy in China have focused on typology, decoration and production methods. The application of new analytical techniques to investigate chemical composition, however, is offering important new insights. The use of one such method (electron probe microanalysis) to study bronze artefacts from the Hanzhong basin in central China shows a level of diversity that implies much greater complexity in the extended landscape networks of the Bronze Age than was previously thought. The ability to appreciate these finds from a new perspective allows progression beyond older, simplistic models, and demonstrates that the Hanzhong region held greater importance within the power structure of Bronze Age Central China than has previously been recognised.

Mobility has long been recognised as a key feature of later prehistoric communities in eastern Eurasia. Isotope analysis of human hair offers new potential for studying individual mobility patterns within these communities. Hair samples from individuals of the Tashtyk culture buried in the Oglakhty cemetery in southern Siberia (third to fourth centuries AD) reveal variations in diet during the last months of their lives. Millet and fish were important in summer and autumn, С3 plants and meat and dairy products at other times of year. The results indicate strong seasonal shifts in diet, and seasonal movement between different areas.

The development of complex social organisation and trade networks during the first and second millennia AD in the Sahel region of West Africa has long been hampered by a paucity of reliable data. Investigations at Birnin Lafiya, a large settlement mound of this period on the eastern arc of the Niger River, help to fill this gap. The site can now be placed within its broader landscape, and discoveries of early mud architecture, circular structures, human burial remains, personal ornamentation and striking potsherd pavements can be contrasted with contemporary sites both within the inland Niger region and at Ife to the south.

Multispectral visual analysis has revealed new information from scarce fragments of a pre-Columbian document excavated in 1932 from a burial at Uaxactun, in Guatemala. The plaster coating from decomposed bark-paper pages of an Early Classic (c. AD 400–600) Maya codex bear figural painting and possibly writing. Direct investigation of these thin flakes of painted stucco identified two distinct layers of plaster painted with different designs, indicating that the pages had been resurfaced and repainted in antiquity. Such erasure and re-inscription has not previously been attested for early Maya manuscripts, and it sheds light on Early Classic Maya scribal practices.

Modern excavations can sometimes provide surprising new insights on antiquarian finds of metalwork. The Pictish silver hoard from Gaulcross in north-eastern Scotland provides an excellent example. Recent fieldwork, including metal-detecting, has clarified the size and composition of the hoard, and uncovered 100 new silver items, including coins, fragments of brooches and bracelets, ingots and parcels of cut, bent and broken silver known as Hacksilber. Comparisons with other hoards and with Pictish symbol stones illustrate the circumstances and date of deposition, the origin of the silver and the forms of society emerging in Scotland in the post-Roman period.

The discovery of an unusual early medieval plough coulter in a well-dated Anglo-Saxon settlement context in Kent suggests that continentally derived technology was in use in this powerful kingdom centuries before heavy ploughs were first depicted in Late Saxon manuscripts. The substantial investment required to manufacture the coulter, the significant damage and wear that it sustained during use and the circumstances of its ultimate ritual deposition are explored. Investigative conservation, high-resolution recording and metallographic analysis illuminate the form, function and use-life of the coulter. An examination of the deposition contexts of plough-irons in early medieval northern Europe sheds important new light on the ritual actions of plough symbolism in an age of religious hybridity and transformation.

Widespread violence and military conflicts dominate many historical accounts of the Early Middle Ages in Europe, but archaeological evidence to corroborate such a picture has hitherto been scarce. Analysis of human remains from the Bohemian stronghold of Budeč offers a unique insight into one such event: a wave of violence that probably followed the removal of Duke Wenceslas from power by his brother Boleslav I in AD 935. A mass grave near the hillfort holds mainly male burials that show numerous injuries sustained from sword blows, testifying to the human cost of this disturbance and demonstrating the structure and reality of early medieval violence.

The Black Death swept across Europe and Asia in the fourteenth century, killing millions and devastating communities. Recent re-evaluations of source data, the discovery of new plague cemeteries and advances in genotyping have caused scholars to reconsider the extent of the devastation and to revise estimated mortality rates upwards. But what was the true impact of this catastrophic episode? Systematic test-pitting can reveal changes in medieval demography that can be both quantified and mapped at a range of scales. Comparing the relative amounts of high medieval (copious) to late medieval (much scarcer) pottery suggests that the pottery-using population across eastern England was around 45% lower in the centuries after the Black Death than before, and such comparison identifies exactly where this contraction was the most and least severely felt.

The discovery of the Nan'ao One shipwreck off the southern coast of China throws new light onto Chinese maritime trade during the late Ming period. The primary cargo was a massive consignment of blue-and-white export porcelain, most probably destined for markets in Southeast Asia or Europe. Compositional analysis was performed on 11 fragments of blue-and-white export porcelain from the wreck site and on 64 samples from 3 Chinese porcelain production centres. The results indicate that the blue-and-white export porcelain recovered from the Nan'ao One came from two sources: the Jingdezhen and Zhangzhou kilns. Given the location of the shipwreck, the most probable destinations were the Portuguese trading centre at Macau or the Dutch at Batavia.