We thank the four commentators for adding new dimensions and important data relevant to interpreting the new Ingombe Ilede dates. These contribute to the recent wave of reassessments and critiques of earlier interpretations and frameworks for the development of trade and complexity in southern Africa. Such reconsiderations are made possible by more sophisticated and precise radiocarbon dating, expanded investigation of both new and previously excavated sites, and by the use of chemical analyses to identify differently sourced groups of glass beads and metals (e.g. Pikirayi 2009; Robertshaw et al. 2010; Chirikure et al. 2013, 2014, 2016; Koleini et al. 2016).

Over the past decade or so, the submerged prehistoric archaeology and landscapes in the area that is known to us today as the North Sea have received increasing attention from both archaeologists and earth scientists. For too long, this body of water was perceived as a socio-cultural obstacle between the prehistoric Continent and the British Isles, the rising sea level a threat to coastal settlers, and the North Sea floor itself an inaccessible submerged landscape. Notwithstanding the many pertinent and pervasive problems that the archaeology of the North Sea still needs to overcome, recent research has made clear that these rather uninspiring beliefs are misplaced.

The two monographs under review here are both published by the University Press of Florida and both feature results of field research at two previously understudied sites on the north and south coasts of Peru. Based on descriptions of excavation contexts and the analysis of material remains, Melissa Vogel and Christina Conlee discuss the implications of El Purgatorio and La Tiza for understanding Casma urbanism and the development of complex societies in Nasca, respectively. Field and laboratory results are used to revisit perennial questions in Andean archaeology, including the origins of urbanism, human-environment interactions and the role of regional phenomena in the unfolding of local cultures. While both authors report on site-based projects, they structure their presentations differently. Conlee takes a more regional approach, synthesising previous research at the national, regional, local and site levels. Vogel takes a more site-centric approach, presenting a summary of the ancient city's organisation and examining its impact on regional developments.

Until a few years ago the bioarchaeology of care was a topic very rarely touched upon. Stimulated in large part by the innovative work by Tilley and colleagues, which provides a socially contextualised model to interpret the implications of health care in the past (Tilley & Oxenham 2011; Tilley 2015), this is now a burgeoning field in bioarchaeology. The two volumes on care in the past under review here showcase leading research in this emerging field, emphasising the social aspects of care in palaeopathological cases of disability. These volumes also illustrate the value of bioarchaeological consideration of the social implications of care provision, abuse and neglect of infants and children, as well as a consideration of care for animals in the past.

Reflecting on his motivations for writing a history of tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari (2017: 68) observes that: “historians are asked to examine the actions of our ancestors so that we can repeat their wise decisions and avoid their mistakes. But it almost never works like that because the present is just too different from the past”. What then would Harari make of the new archaeology books reviewed in this instalment of NBC, concerned as they are with the present day and the future as much as they are with the past?

In the article by Pollard et al. (2017), Figure 2 was incorrectly duplicated as Figure 5.

Despite the potential importance of southern Iran, and the Persian Gulf area in particular, for discussions on the dispersal of early hominins from Africa into Eurasia during the late Pliocene and early Pleistocene (Bar-Yosef & Belfer-Cohen 2001; Rose 2010), this area has remained almost unexplored until recently. Historically, Palaeolithic survey and excavations in Iran have mainly concentrated in western regions, especially the Zagros Mountains. As a result of recent studies, however, evidence for Palaeolithic sites in the southern regions of Iran, from Fars province to Qeshm Island, has greatly increased (Dashtizade 2009, 2010). Even with this improvement, no sites of Lower Palaeolithic date have yet been reported from the southern coastal areas on one of the proposed early hominin routes into Eurasia. As a result, it has been suggested that the few Lower Palaeolithic sites reported from other parts of Iran, especially in the west (e.g. Biglari & Shidrang 2006), were not populated from the south.

There is a paucity of Palaeolithic art in the southern Levant prior to 15 000 years ago. The Natufian culture (15 000–11 500 BP; Grosman 2013) marks a threshold in the magnitude and diversity of artistic manifestations (Bar-Yosef 1997). Nevertheless, depictions of the human form remain rare—only a few representations of the human face have been reported to date. This article presents a 12 000-year-old example unearthed at the Late Natufian site of Nahal Ein Gev II (NEGII), just east of the Sea of Galilee, Israel (Figure 1). The object provides a glimpse into Natufian conventions of human representation, and opens a rare opportunity for deeper understanding of the Natufian symbolic system.

Until about two decades ago, the Neolithic of north-east Iran was known only from a few brief excavation reports: the sites of Yarim Tappeh (Stronach 1972) and Turang Tappeh (Deshayes 1967) on the Gorgan Plain, and preliminary reports of large-scale excavations at the twin mound of Sang-e Chakhmaq in the southern foothills of the eastern Alborz Mountains (e.g. Masuda 1984). In the absence of absolute chronologies, these sites were dated by ceramic assemblages to the sixth millennium BC, and were considered to relate to the so-called ‘Jeitun Culture’ of southern Turkmenistan (Figure 1; Roustaei 2016a).