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.

For years it has been assumed that tower kivas were observation points, using their high vantage to relay communications across the landscape, or acting as defensive outposts among the local population. Few of these enigmatic structures have been excavated, and archaeologists have consequently turned to landscape survey methods to understand their role and function. Here, the authors contrast visibility and intervisibility within the surrounding viewshed of two tower kivas, Kin Ya'a and Haystack, providing an alternative perspective to traditional interpretations by suggesting that rather than acting as lookout points, they were instead central places built to be looked upon by the surrounding community.

The Emptyscapes project is an interdisciplinary programme designed to stimulate new developments in Italian landscape archaeology. It achieves this through the integration of traditional approaches with multidisciplinary studies, to which are added the relatively new techniques of large-scale geophysical survey, airborne laser scanning and geo-environmental analysis. The effectiveness of such an approach has been borne out by results from central Italy. These show that the underlying ‘archaeological continuum’ can be detected even in an area where archaeological evidence was previously thought to be absent.

The discovery of a dismantled stone circle—close to Stonehenge's bluestone quarries in west Wales—raises the possibility that a 900-year-old legend about Stonehenge being built from an earlier stone circle contains a grain of truth. Radiocarbon and OSL dating of Waun Mawn indicate construction c. 3000 BC, shortly before the initial construction of Stonehenge. The identical diameters of Waun Mawn and the enclosing ditch of Stonehenge, and their orientations on the midsummer solstice sunrise, suggest that at least part of the Waun Mawn circle was brought from west Wales to Salisbury Plain. This interpretation complements recent isotope work that supports a hypothesis of migration of both people and animals from Wales to Stonehenge.

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.

The early Middle Ages saw a major expansion of cereal cultivation across large parts of Europe thanks to the spread of open-field farming. A major project to trace this expansion in England by deploying a range of scientific methods is generating direct evidence for this so-called ‘Medieval Agricultural Revolution’.

Research at the Chelechol ra Orrak rockshelter in Palau has revealed an extensive cemetery with at least 50 interred individuals, their graves overlain by later occupational deposits. Previous radiocarbon dating placed this sequence of burial and occupation at c. 3000 cal BP, making it one of the earliest Pacific Island cemetery sites. To provide a more robust chronological framework, Bayesian modelling was applied to construct probability ranges for the date and duration of activity at the site, assisted by a suite of new 14C determinations. The results provide more secure evidence for burial activity dating back to c. 3000 cal BP, thus confirming Chelechol ra Orrak as one of the only cemeteries in Remote Oceania that dates to the earliest, known stages of island colonisation.

The South Caucasus occupies the divide between ancient Mesopotamia and prehistoric Europe, and was thus crucial in the development of Old World societies. Chronologies for the region, however, have lacked the definition achieved in surrounding areas. Concentrating on the Tsaghkahovit Plain of north-western Armenia, Project ArAGATS's multi-site radiocarbon dataset has now produced Bayesian modelling, which provides tight chronometric support for tracing the transmission of technology, population movement and social developments that shaped the Eurasian Bronze and Iron Ages.