Building floor plans are frequently recovered by archaologists. A common first sorting of the shapes of small domestic buildings is between round houses and rectangular houses. What do these differences mean? Why do social groups change their building form from one to the other? An ethnoarchaeological study from northern Cameroon illustrates how four ethnic groups in a single community use building shape to blur or define group boundaries for political self-interests.

The authors find a context for the rock art of the central Sahara by excavating and recording examples of engraved stones from circular platforms used to sacrifice animals. The type of rock art known as the Pastoral style, featuring evocative outline drawings of cattle, appears on upright stones incorporated into the platforms in the period 5430–5150 BP, and probably earlier. Furthermore, they show that these places were part of a dense and extensive monumental landscape, occupying a harsh environment, supplying quartzite, but with little settlement, appearing to serve the spiritual needs of hundreds of Neolithic people.

The tooth of a tiger shark, perforated to make a pendant, was lost in New Ireland, New Guinea between 39500 and 28000 years ago. The author argues that this has to be the work of anatomically modern humans, and implies the use of symbolic language not only across the former continent of Sahul, but also Eurasia.

Bone points of two types, the one thin and poisoned and the other robust and not poisoned, are examined in this study of impact fractures. The bone points seem to have had similar experiences to stone points, producing fractures of a similar kind. Most of the fractures in the historical collection examined were caused by impacts. However, this early twentieth-century collection is not thought to be representative of contemporary fracture frequencies that occurred in hunting.

There is a large gap between the fact of a radiocarbon determination and the archaeological answer to the question to which it relates. The first part of the gap is addressed by calibration, that turns a measure of 14C activity into an estimate of a calendar date. Here is a contribution to the second part, by which a set of calibrated dates is made to provide a calendar range for the archaeological events under study.

This note follows ANTIQUITY's usual convention, under which uncalibrated determinations are given in lower-case, b.p., and calibrated dates in small capitals, BP, BC or AD.

Dactylopius coccus has been used in Mexico and Peru as a source of natural dyes since pre-Columbian times. A phylogenetic analysis of the genus Dactylopius, and the disjoint distribution of D. coccus, suggest that the origin of D. coccus is South America and was introduced into North America by sea routes.

The bronze razor with the horse-head handle appeared in Scandinavia in the fifteenth century BC. Where did it come from and what did it mean? The author shows that the razor had some antecedents in the Aegean, although none of these objects were imported to the north. He argues that the Scandinavian warrior class consciously adopted elements of the Mycenaean warrior package, including a clean-shaven face. This vividly exposes new aspects of the busy and subtle nature of international communication in the Bronze Age.

To what extent is there spatial and temporal patterning in the spread of our genus around the planet, and what environmental and behavioural factors specify this patterning? The prevailing model of Pleistocene dispersals of Homo holds that this process was essentially terrestrial, with oceans and seas inhibiting and directing the movement of hominins out of Africa (e.g. Mellars 2006; Dennell & Petraglia 2012; Gamble 2013), although some scholars propose short-range maritime hops at both the Strait of Gibraltar and Bab-el-Mandeb (Lambeck et al.2011; Rolland 2013). The relatively recent discovery of stone tools with apparently Lower and Middle Palaeolithic characteristics on islands in the eastern Mediterranean and in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) has, however, been used by some scholars to challenge this terrestrial model.

The early mosque at Jarash is reconstructed by archaeological excavation and survey and attributed to a wave of urban renewal in the reign of caliph Hisham (AD 724-743).

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.

In a recent article, Parcak et al. (2016) presented the results of a study in which they used satellite imagery to evaluate looting and other damage at over one thousand heritage sites in Egypt. Assessing imagery dating between 2002 and 2013, their results indicated an increase in visible damage to sites during this period caused by looting and encroachment, which by Parcak et al.’s definition “includes building development, cemetery growth, agricultural expansion and intentional damage through targeted destruction” (2016: 190). Their findings support the work of previous authors who have documented an increase in looting and other damage to archaeological sites connected with increasing nationwide economic and political instability (e.g. Ikram 2013; Ikram & Hanna 2013).

Are sites in lowland Europe destroyed when they are ploughed many times? In north Denmark, many Neolithic and Early Bronze Age sites are now reduced to just lithic scatters, but distinctive ‘site signatures’ persist. A lithic economic prehistory from the ploughsoil is possible and instructive.