The Gravettian is known for its technological innovations and artisanal craftwork. At the same time, continued climatic deterioration led to the coldest and driest conditions since the arrival of Homo sapiens sapiens in Europe. This article examines the palaeodemographic development and provides regionally differentiated estimates for both the densities and the absolute numbers of people. A dramatic population decline characterises the later part of the Gravettian, while the following Last Glacial Maximum experienced consolidation and renewed growth. The results suggest that the abandonment of the northern areas was not a result of migration processes, but of local population extinctions, coinciding with a loss of typological and technological complexity. Extensive networks probably assured the maintenance of a viable population.

Evidence for light architecture characteristic of mobile and semi-mobile societies is difficult to detect archaeologically. This article investigates such evidence in the form of narrow cylindrical holes discovered on rock walls at the archaeological site of Sphinx, in the Sixth Nile Cataract (central Sudan). Using innovative experimental reconstruction, these holes are interpreted as features associated with wooden pole-built structures, some of which may have been dwellings. This research highlights a significant category of North African archaeological evidence which has, to date, received limited attention.

The 1950s excavations at Châteauneuf-lès-Martigues—type site of the Late Mesolithic Castelnovian phase—played a significant role in shaping theories about the nature of the Neolithic transition in the western Mediterranean. Results of new AMS dating and Bayesian modelling of extant short life samples now date the Late Mesolithic deposits to c. 6460–6200 cal BC, and the Cardial deposits to c. 5260–4860 cal BC. The long gap within the stratigraphic sequence is interpreted as a consequence of erosion during the mid sixth millennium BC. These results overturn the older argument for Mesolithic–Neolithic continuity at this key site.

Bronze Age social and cultural interconnections across the Eurasian steppe are the subject of much current debate. A particularly significant place is occupied by the Andronovo Culture or family of cultures. Important new data document the most easterly extension of Eurasian Bronze Age sites of Andronovo affinity into western China. Findings from the site of Adunqiaolu in Xinjiang and a new series of radiocarbon dates challenge existing models of eastward cultural dispersion, and demonstrate the need to reconsider the older chronologies and migration theories. The site is well preserved and offers robust potential for deeper study of the Andronovo culture complex, particularly in the eastern mountain regions.

Recent analysis of the wool textiles from the famous Egtved oak coffin burial in Denmark indicated that the wool had been obtained from beyond Denmark. Was this an isolated case or evidence of a large-scale wool trade in the Danish Bronze Age? To investigate the broader pattern of wool provenance, textile manufacturing and trade practices, strontium isotope and organic dye analyses were conducted on textiles from a variety of selected burial contexts. Strontium isotope analysis revealed that at least 75 per cent of the Bronze Age wool samples originated outside present-day Denmark. Results also showed no evidence for the use of organic dyes, thereby supporting the hypothesis that no dyestuffs were used in Nordic Bronze Age textile production. These results challenge extant interpretations of Scandinavian Bronze Age textile provenance, and demonstrate the complexity of exchange networks in wool textiles during this period.

Protohistoric populations of the southern steppes experienced a series of significant changes in settlement and material culture between the Late Bronze Age (c. 1500 BC) and the end of the Iron Age. Analysis of new archaeozoological data from Turkmen sites and re-examination of published data from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan reveal considerable economic flexibility and adaptive responses to the variety of ecosystems. They indicate that localised cultural choices, perhaps responding to local environmental constraints, persisted throughout this period, despite successive cultural or political shifts, including the Achaemenid conquest of the region in the sixth century BC.

The Shang (c. 1500–1045 BC) and Zhou dynasties (c. 1045–771 BC) of China are famous for their sophisticated ritual bronze vessels. Sourcing the leaded tin-bronze has, however, proved to be a challenge. A new systematic approach to metal chemistry uses trace elements and isotopes to characterise the underlying circulation pattern. It reveals the complexity of the copper sources on which the late Shang capital at Anyang depended for its bronzes, suggesting the transport of copper from distant regions in the south, on the Yangtze, and from north-east China. The new interpretational system furthers our understanding of the network on which successive Chinese dynasties depended for copper, lead and tin, and attempts to give equal weight to the archaeological and chemical data.

Metallurgy in pre-Columbian America first developed in the Andes, and Peru has long been considered to be the initial point of origin. The recent discovery of an anthropomorphic copper mask in north-west Argentina, however, draws new attention to the southern Andes as a centre of early metalworking. Found in a funerary context c. 3000 BP, at a time of transition from mobile hunter-gatherer bands to agro-pastoral villages, the mask from Bordo Marcial shows that the Cajón Valley and its surrounding region was an important locus for copper metallurgy. To date, the mask is the oldest intentionally shaped copper object discovered in the Andes, and suggests that more than one region was involved in the origin of this technology.

Excavations at Ceibal in Guatemala have recovered numerous polished celts from contexts dating throughout the Preclassic Maya occupation of the site. The celts are made of different types of greenstone, and most were deposited in caches in public areas close to ceremonial structures. Recent study shows how deposition practices changed over time. Furthermore, microwear analysis suggests that the majority of celts did not have a practical function. It is argued, instead, that the caches of greenstone celts represent public rituals relating to the establishment of early Preclassic elites.

Research in two distinct steppe landscapes in southern Patagonia—the western basaltic plateaux and the central Deseado Massif—compares hunter-gatherer strategies in the two environments, focusing on the use of hunting blinds and associated tactics in the hunting of guanaco. The evidence obtained brings this region into discussions about the use of rocky structures and the recognition of tactics used for hunting ungulates in a global perspective. The authors also emphasise the importance of highland settings as major and reliable sources of critical resources for foraging peoples, a topic still not fully appreciated in archaeological studies of hunter-gatherers.

Recent excavations at the site of Igbo Olokun in the Yoruba city of Ile-Ife, in south-western Nigeria, have shed light on early glass manufacturing techniques in West Africa. The recovery of glass beads and associated production materials has enabled compositional analysis of the artefacts and preliminary dating of the site, which puts the main timing of glass-working between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries AD. The results of these studies suggest that glass bead manufacture at this site was largely independent of glass-making traditions documented farther afield, and that Igbo Olokun may represent one of the earliest known glass-production workshops in West Africa.

The glass bead trade in southern Africa provides important evidence of interregional contact during the early modern period. Compositional analysis of a large assemblage of imported glass beads from the sixteenth- to seventeenth-century AD trading site of Baranda in northern Zimbabwe reveals a south Asian origin of the majority of the beads. Combining stratigraphic data and morphological analysis with innovative compositional XRF and Raman spectroscopy approaches, the research was able to assign the Baranda beads accurately to their correct chronological range. This coincides with the period of Portuguese dominance of Indian Ocean trade.