The pig appears to have been among the earliest domesticated animals in China, with evidence for pig domestication at Cishan from 8000 BP. The authors propose a model for the development of animal domestication.

Grinding-stones as a technology are seen as a key element in the artefactual transformations of the latest Pleistocene – both for themselves and the foods which were ground on them. In Australia, as in other regions, their age and status is also material to what (if any) kind of a broad-spectrum revolution in foraging accompanied them.

Language is a feature to distinguish the ‘human’ from the ‘animal’ that has seemed a more enduring diagnostic character than some. But how is the breath of words to be made visible in the stony traces of the Pleistocene?

The archaeological sites of Iraq, precious for their bearing on human history, became especially vulnerable to looters during two wars. Much of the looting evidence has been anecdotal up to now, but here satellite imagery has been employed to show which sites were looted and when. Sites of all sizes from late Uruk to early Islamic were targeted for their high value artefacts, particularly just before and after the 2003 invasion. The author comments that the ‘total area looted … was many times greater than all the archaeological investigations ever conducted in southern Iraq and must have yielded tablets, coins, cylinder seals, statues, terracottas, bronzes and other objects in the hundreds of thousands’.

The nature and date of the human colonization of Australia remains a key issue in prehistory at the world scale, for a sufficiently early presence there indicates either Homo sapiens sapiens arriving precociously in a place remote from a supposed African origin, or a greater competence in sea-crossing than has been expected of archaic humans. Stratigraphic integrity, the new science of luminescent dating and the recognition of worked stone and of rock-engraving are immediate issues in this report from far northwestern Australia.

When did the market economy come to Europe? Fish might seem an unlikely commodity to throw light on the matter, but the authors use fish bones from English sites to offer a vivid account of the rise and rise of the market as a factor in European development from the late tenth century.

The famous upper Palaeolithic (Gravettian) burial with shell ornaments known as “Il Principe” was discovered in Italy sixty years ago. Here the authors present recent scientific research on his skeleton, leading to new assessments of the date of the burial and indications of diet.

The oxygen-isotope curve, derived from the record of organisms stratified in the deep ocean ooze, has replaced the old pattern of four glaciations with a more complex record of cool and warm events. Since people live by their local sea-level, rather than an abstract world average, that global pattern is itself mediated by other geological forces, on several scales, before it directs the possibilities of human settlement. Here the effect of those forces is unravelled and illustrated.

From Brazil to the United Kingdom, 2016 was a critical year in global politics. Heritage, ethics and the way that archaeologists relate to the public were and will all be affected, and it is time to reflect critically on the phenomenon of ‘reactionary populism’ and how it affects the practice and theory of archaeology. ‘Reactionary populism’ can be defined as a political form that is anti-liberal in terms of identity politics (e.g. multiculturalism, abortion rights, minority rights, religious freedom), but liberal in economic policies. It is characterised by nationalism, racism and anti-intellectualism, and as Judith Butler states in a recent interview, it wants “to restore an earlier state of society, driven by nostalgia or a perceived loss of privilege” (Soloveitchik 2016). Our intention here is to argue that the liberal, multi-vocal model of the social sciences and the humanities is no longer a viable option. Instead, we ask our colleagues to embrace an archaeology that is ready to intervene in wider public debates not limited to issues of heritage or of local relevance, is not afraid of defending its expert knowledge in the public arena, and is committed to reflective, critical teaching.

The determination of the leafy vegetable constituents of the diets of early societies is notoriously difficult using traditional archaeobotanical techniques. In an effort to provide a solution to this problem, a new approach, using gas chromatography (GC) and GC/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), has been adopted to detect the presence of preserved epicuticular leaf wax components absorbed in potsherds. The characteristic compounds identified can serve as chemotaxonomic indicators of the vegetables prepared in vessels during their usage.

This paper defines the potential reasons for low population levels in Oxygen Isotope Stages 6–4: climate, habitat preferences and sea level.

The declassification of CORONA high-resolution space photography has made a valuable new resource available for the study of ancient landscapes. Using a recent case-study from Syria, examples are given of various ways in which CORONA imagery can significantly enhance regional survey work.

For many years, the southern Mesopotamia of Ur and Uruk, ancient Sumer, has been seen as the origin centre of civilisation and cities: ‘The urban implosion of late-fourth- and early-third-millennium Mesopotamia resulted in a massive population shift into large sites’ said Nissen in 1988. ‘These new city-states set the pattern for Mesopotamia as the heartland of cities’ (Adams 1981; Yoffee 1998). And for Stone & Zimansky (2005) ‘Remains of the world's first cities are the most noteworthy feature of the landscape in southern Iraq’. But at Tell Brak Joan Oates and her team are turning this model upside down. A long campaign of study, culminating in the new discoveries from 2006 reported here, show that northern Mesopotamia was far along the road to urbanism, as seen in monumentality, industrialisation and prestige goods, by the late fifth millennium BC. The ‘world's earliest cities’ are as likely to have been in north-eastern Syria as southern Iraq, and the model of a core from the south developing a periphery in the north is now ripe for revision.

The late Pleistocene colonization of Greater Australia by humans by c. 40,0130 b.p. is now generally accepted. This landmass, which comprised at periods of lower sea levels Tasmania, Australia and Papua New Guinea, has now produced sites with rich and diverse sequences extending towards or now mainly beyond 30,000 b.p., in the present arid country of western New South Wales (Barbetti & Allen 1972), in southwest Western Australia (Pearce & Barbetti 1981), in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (Gillieson & Mountain 1983), and recently even in Tasmania (Cosgrove 1989).

Prior to 1985, with the exception of an 11,000 b.p. date for occupation in Misisjl Cave on New Britain (Specht et al. 1981), the tropical lowlands of Papua New Guinea and its attendant nearer Melanesian island chain had remained a blank on the region’s map of Pleistocene human expansion.

Not every first footstep on a virgin shore leaves enduring trace, nor every first human settlement an enduring deposit that chances to survive, and then chances to be observed archaeologically. Good environmental evidence from Mangaia Island, central East Polynesia, gives — it is contended — a fairer picture of the human invasion of remote Oceania than the short and sceptical chronology recently published in ANTIQUITY.

The authors offer a new chronological framework for prehistoric Southeast Asia, based mainly on the Bayesian modelling of 75 radiocarbon dates from well-stratified excavations at Ban Non Wat. The results are revolutionary. Neolithic practice now begins in the second millennium and hierarchical state-forming activity is dated to a ‘starburst’ around 1000 BC. The authors reflect on the social implications of the new model – and on the criteria for an ever stronger chronology.

CORONA satellite imagery, preserving an account of the earth's surface from 40 years ago, is a most important archaeological survey tool and we have often sung its praises. Here the authors use new procedures to extend the competence and revelations of CORONA even further. Stereo pairs derived from images taken from fore and aft of the satellite give three dimensional images of landscapes and even individual sites. Techniques of modelling and rectification restore the sites to their original shape without recourse to survey on the ground – in many cases no longer possible since the sites have been buried, inundated or erased. The ingenuity shown here indicates that results from CORONA are only going to get better.

Research on six late Mesolithic shell middens on the small Hebridean island of Oronsay address questions of permanent and seasonal occupation. Stable isotope analysis of human bones shows marine resources providing the majority of protein, supporting year-round occupation of Oronsay. One individual, however, demonstrated a mixed diet of marine and terrestrial protein, suggesting seasonal visits and different patterns of site occupation.