Well-designed experimental archaeology combined with ingenious social argument show that a type of coarse-ware pottery, the BRB, performed a key role in early Mesopotamian governance. Its thick walls and conical shape produce a fine loaf of risen bread, supplied perhaps as tasty recompense to those undertaking the newly-proliferating public administrative duties.

Writing about the ‘Tophet’, a children's cemetery in Carthage, Smith et al. argued in these pages that the age distribution of the children peaks at 1–1.49 months, supplying “another link in the chain of evidence—funerary practices, texts, iconography—that supports the interpretation of the Phoenician Tophets as ritual sites set aside for infant sacrifice” (2011: 871). In this they had challenged Jeffrey Schwartz and colleagues, who previously argued (2010) that “skeletal remains from Punic Carthage do not support systematic sacrifice of infants”. Here Schwartz et al. restate their position for Antiquity readers, showing that the verdict on the Phoenician practice of child sacrifice is, at best, not proven.

The classification of man-made features recorded on aerial photographs depends on a combination of morphological comparison and functional interpretation. Here, a computer-based method of morphological recording and classification is described, and its advantages argued. It has special relevance in England, where the Monument Protection Programme needs to assess the relative value and importance of many thousands of buried archaeological sites that are known only from the evidence of aerial photography.

Lessons from history on sustainability, collapse and resilience are the ultimate goal of the Byzantine Bio-Archaeology Research Program of the Negev (BYBAN) (Tepper et al. 2015). Addressing the unprecedented flourishing and collapse of the Byzantine Negev agricultural settlements (fourth–seventh centuries AD), the BYBAN project offers a unique and original approach. It focuses on ancient middens and domestic contexts, which provide an exceptional focus on the materiality of daily life. Archaeobotanical research is central to this project because the copious plant remains retrieved are a reflection of the region's agricultural economy and its environmental sustainability. This approach will enable us to answer important research questions about the Byzantine–Islamic transition in the Negev: what were the major cash and subsistence crops? Which were grown locally, and which, if any, were imported? How, if at all, did the agricultural economy change during the Byzantine–Islamic transition? Were there any major changes in climatic conditions, and, if so, can they be implicated as a cause for agricultural collapse?

The authors show that the Jomon clay figurines made by hunter-gatherers use imagery that emphasises a narrow waist and full hips, showing that a female construct was part of the symbolism of these possibly shamanistic objects. In creating these figurines, prehistoric people were no doubt turning a recognition of health and fertility into more cultural icons. Admirers of the female form will be interested to learn that preference for the fuller, curvaceous ‘hourglass’ shape ‘has probably been the norm over much of human evolution’.

The basic importance of food in the daily lives both of individuals and of communities, and the all-pervading influence upon outlook and social structure exercised by the methods adopted to ensure its adequate supply have become more and more widely recognized among students of ancient society during recent years (1). Rather less attention has yet been paid to water (2), that other necessity of life, bound up so intimately with the distribution and density of human settlement, and linked at the same time with man’s exploitation of his physical environment. Yet water-supply merits the closest attention, not only of those who approach prehistory from a functionalist point of view, but of all those whose studies are in the last resort based on archaeological material. In the first place, the connexion between human settlement and sources of water offers a cardinal clue to the location of ancient sites; in the second, the dampness of wells and springs has made for conditions favourable to the preservation of objects, organic as well as inorganic, which in the course of time have found their way into their recesses; and in the third, the veneration in which sources have been held has fostered from time immemorial the deposition in their waters of offerings as welcome to the archaeologist as to the spirits themselves.

The first major season of field operations at this major Lowland Maya site, located on the eastern edge of the Classic Maya core area, has revealed a great deal of information about the layout of the site and also demonstrated that its history was a long one.

The rock-cut churches of Ethiopia have long intrigued visitors and historians – and have frustrated archaeologists seeking their sequence of construction. Do they belong to one grand ceremonial monastic plan, or a long-lived ritual centre, continually refashioned over time? Since the churches are cut into live rock, the conventional signals of archaeological phasing are hard to find. The authors address these problems at the famous site of Lalibela, showing that, embedded in the cuts and openings, the spoil heaps, and even in the now vanished sediments, the stratigraphic sequence is there to be read.

The subdivision of the Chinese Palaeolithic is a controversial topic. A recent article in Antiquity (Yee 2012) critiqued Gao’s two-stage model that distinguished only an Early and a Late Palaeolithic. Yee argued that the two-stage model should be abandoned, and that a distinct Middle Palaeolithic phase can be identified. Responding to Yee, Feng Li argues that there is no solid evidence of distinctive and widespread technological changes before the Late Palaeolithic, and that it is hence premature to abandon Gao’s two-stage model at present.

A new look at one of the more famous puzzles in prehistoric art, and the derivation of a scene at Lascaux from shamanistic practice.

High altitude snowfields provide repositories of well-preserved organic remains of considerable antiquity, as spectacular discoveries such as the Similaun Iceman illustrate. In Scandinavia, melting snow patches have been systematically surveyed by volunteer groups for almost a century, and a growing collection of archaeological artefacts has been recovered. Only recently, however, has AMS dating confirmed that some of the finds go back as far as the Neolithic. Here fragments of five Neolithic arrowshafts and a Neolithic longbow discovered in 2010–11 in the Oppdal area of Norway are described. They throw light on Neolithic bow and arrow technology and tangentially on the hunting techniques which may have attracted hunters to these snow patches in search of game. The progressive and accelerated melting of the snow patches in recent years draws attention to processes of climate change and the urgency of discovering and recovering these fragile perishable artefacts.

Fowling has seldom played a part in the food-quest at all comparable with that of hunting or fishing : the situation of St. Kilda, where during the 17th century the 180 inhabitants are held by Martin (1) to have consumed annually some 22,600 Solan Geese (Gannets) and of which the Rev. Macaulay exclaimed in 1758 ‘. . . deprive us of the Fulmar, and St. Kilda is no more (2)’, is an exception which only proves the general rule. Yet, we know that birds helped to vary the diet of most of the communities of prehistoric Europe and that catching them was an activity of economic importance, especially at certain seasons of the year. The only scientific way of estimating the part played by fowling in the economy of any prehistoric group is through an accurate knowledge of the total fauna represented in the food debris, with special regard to the relative proportions of the different species. While this is too seldom available, there is in the aggregate sufficient data to show how far prehistoric man depended on fowling to supply himself with food. As to the methods used, direct evidence of this is all the harder to come by, since these were mainly of a kind to leave little or no tangible trace behind them. Throughout prehistoric times fowling remained at a primitive stage of development, but fortunately the methods used still survived in Europe down to modern times and most are still practised to-day, whether among peasant peoples in the remoter parts of the continent or among poachers nearer home.

The extraction and processing of metal ores, particularly those of copper and tin, are regarded as among the principal motors of Bronze Age society. The skills and risks of mining lie behind the weapons, tools and symbols that drove political and ideological change. But we hear much less about the miners themselves and their position in society. Who were these people? Were they rich and special, or expendable members of a hard-pressed workforce? In this study the spotlight moves from the adits, slags and furnaces to the bones and seeds, providing a sketch of dedicated prehistoric labourers in their habitat. The Mauken miners were largely dependent on imported meat and cereals, and scarcely hunted or foraged the resources of the local forest. They seem to be the servants of a command economy, encouraged to keep their minds on the job.

Archaeological interest in the study of the acoustics of important historic buildings is currently gaining in importance, and there are several areas where research is conducted. Among these I include music archaeology, archaeology of sound, archaeomusicology and archaeoacoustics (Watson & Keating 1999; Scarre & Lawson 2006; Knight 2010: 1). Research on acoustic space can, in principle, be divided into two types of project: the measurement of acoustic parameters and the storage of acoustics as audio heritage.

The furnished barrow burials of Wessex represent a maturation of the Beaker rite during the Early Bronze Age in Britain. Many of these burials were unearthed centuries ago, when archaeology was at its most eager and insouciant, but – happily for us – there were often a few careful recorders on hand. Thanks to their records, the modern scientists engaged in the Beaker People Project can still follow the trail back to a museum specimen and obtain high precision dates – as in the case of the ‘Wessex 1’ grave from West Overton in Wessex reported here.