The initial spread of food production in eastern Africa is associated with livestock herding during the Pastoral Neolithic. Recent excavation at Luxmanda, Tanzania, a site dating to c. 3000 BP, revealed circular installations of lower grinding stones and numerous handstones. This discovery, unprecedented for this era, challenges previous ideas about pastoralist mobility and subsistence.

The cemetery site for which the Wielbark Culture was named has been known for over a century. The scientific value of the site is, however, only now beginning to be realised. With a continuous sequence of use spanning five centuries, the site may hold clues that can shed new light on population continuity and the migrations of the Goths.

The study of prehistoric textile production requires the excavation of sites with exceptional organic preservation. Here, the authors focus on thread production using evidence from two fourth-millennium BC pre-Alpine wetland sites: Arbon-Bleiche 3 in Switzerland and Bad Buchau-Torwiesen II in southern Germany. A comparison of the spindle whorls from these two settlements with a contemporaneous East-Central European dataset suggests that multiple culture-historical groups with distinct technological signatures inhabited Neolithic Central Europe. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of conical spindle whorls within the pre-Alpine settlements suggests the immigration of both people and technology from the east, thereby illuminating the wider themes of mobility and innovation in prehistoric Europe.

Investigations at Bushat in northern Albania during 2017–2019 have brought to light a massive fortification wall dating to the fourth century BC and enclosing approximately 20ha of hilly terrain. The wall is connected to the development of Illyrian settlements and the Hellenisation of the area.

World history is often framed in terms of flows of people: humans coming ‘out of Africa’, the spread of farmers in the Holocene, the disruptions of the ‘Sea Peoples’, or ‘colonisation’ by Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. In this article, the authors argue that world history is also about the flows of objects. To illuminate the impacts of objects on past societies, they introduce the concept of ‘objectscapes’ as a means of writing new kinds of histories of human-thing entanglements, in which objects in motion have roles to play—beyond representation—over both the short and long term. To illustrate, they present examples from two regions at the end of the first millennium BC: southern Germany and northern Syria.

Turtles are important barometers of human impact on marine biodiversity. Very little, however, is known about the deep history of human-turtle interactions and whether this is reflected in the present-day vulnerability of Mediterranean turtle populations. Here, the authors critically assess the zooarchaeological evidence for the nature and intensity of past human interactions with green, loggerhead turtles and Nile soft-shell turtles in the Eastern Mediterranean. Species and sex identifications, estimates of relative abundance, and size reconstructions at five coastal archaeological sites demonstrate the variety in interactions, from turtle capture to processing, and allow informative comparisons with present-day distributions of these species across the region.

The shift to sedentary lifeways represents a significant change in human adaptation. Despite the broadly contemporaneous timing of this transition across East Asia during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, such changes varied regionally. This article synthesises new and existing data from Neolithic sites on the Mongolian Plateau to reveal a simultaneous shift towards investment in site architecture, with distinct variation in the organisation of settlement and subsistence across biogeographic zones. The development of sedentary communities here emphasises the importance of climatic amelioration for incipient sedentism, and demonstrates how differences in ecological and cultural contexts can encourage various responses to the same environmental stimuli.

Archaeological studies of belief, ideology and commemorative strategies in Ireland, and elsewhere in Europe, neglect the continuation of cremation far beyond the supposed fifth-century AD threshold for the shift to inhumation under the influence of Christianity. A database of radiocarbon dates from first-millennium AD Ireland permits the identification of new patterns in early medieval (AD 400–1100) mortuary practices, including a new phase of cremation. The authors discuss archaeological and historical implications to demonstrate how data-driven approaches can enhance and challenge established metanarratives. They also highlight serious methodological and interpretative issues that these data pose for current narrative frameworks, and their influence on post-excavation strategies.

The EVOSHEEP project combines archaeozoology, geometric morphometrics and genetics to study archaeological sheep assemblages dating from the sixth to the first millennia BC in eastern Africa, the Levant, the Anatolian South Caucasus, the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia. The project aims to understand changes in the physical appearance and phenotypic characteristics of sheep and how these related to the appearance of new breeds and the demand for secondary products to supply the textile industry.

The residential architecture of Alexandria has traditionally been extrapolated based on comparison with the plans and decoration of monumental hypogea from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. New evidence from an archaeological research programme launched at Kom el-Dikka offers novel insights into the style of domestic architecture and the urban topography of the city.

Population genetic studies often overlook the evidence for variability and change in past material culture. Here, the authors use a Mesolithic example to demonstrate the importance of integrating archaeological evidence into the interpretation of the Scandinavian hunter-gatherer genetic group. Genetic studies conclude that this group resulted from two single-event dispersals into Scandinavia before 7500 BC. Archaeological evidence, however, shows at least six immigration events pre-dating the earliest DNA, and that the first incoming groups arrived in Scandinavia before 9000 BC. The findings underline the importance of conducting careful archaeological analysis of prehistoric human dispersal in tandem with the study of ancient population genomics.

Between the sixth and the eighth centuries AD, the practice of depositing grave goods was almost entirely abandoned across Western Europe. To date, however, explanations for this change have focused on local considerations. By collating data from 237 cemeteries from across Western Europe, this article assesses the spatial and chronological development of this phenomenon. Beginning in the mid sixth century, the process accelerated towards the end of the seventh century, before near complete abandonment across the region by the following century. This widespread and rapid transition is interpreted in light of evidence for trade and connectivity, which facilitated the swift diffusion of this and other cultural practices across the region.

Motifs featuring trios of figures have been discovered at a newly documented rock art site in the Swaga Swaga Game Reserve in Tanzania. These images find parallels in paintings from rockshelters at the nearby Kolo site, and raise the possibility that they represent anthropomorphic figures with stylised buffalo heads.

The full extent of past military events can be difficult to appreciate using only historical and documentary accounts. By combining these visual and textual sources with archaeological and geoarchaeological evidence, the authors propose and test an interdisciplinary approach that aims to establish a process-oriented understanding of the genesis and transformation of conflict landscapes. Using the battle site at Vossenack Ridge in Germany as a case study, they demonstrate that such an approach can maximise our understanding of war-related transformations of the landscape, while minimising the damage to sub-surface archaeological materials.

Plastic entering the archaeological and geological record may be the defining signature of the Anthropocene. Amidst the growing awareness of the role of plastic in marine pollution, this study demonstrates its terrestrial ubiquity. The excavation of two experimentally reconstructed roundhouses built on their original sites at Castell Henllys Iron Age fort, Wales, reveals evidence of 30 years of heritage interpretation and visitor activity. The nature and extent of the cultural material recovered accurately reflects known activities at this heritage site, but also reveals an unexpected amount of plastic debris in archaeological contexts, indicating how, even in well-managed contexts, plastic is entering terrestrial deposits.

The recent discovery of several late Linearbandkeramik (LBK) sites in Central Europe, including Vráble in south-west Slovakia, has revealed evidence for increasing diversity in Neolithic mortuary practices, which may reflect inter-community war and socio-political crisis at the end of the LBK. Here, the authors combine osteological and radiocarbon analyses of inhumations from Vráble. Rather than a straightforward sign of inter-community conflict and war, this development reflects a culmination of internal conflict and a diversification in the ritual treatment of human bodies. The emerging variability in LBK methods of manipulating and depositing dead bodies can be interpreted as an experimental approach in how to negotiate social conflicts and community boundaries.

The Iron Age (c. 1300–600 BC) of South-eastern Arabia is characterised by rapid expansion of settlement. Social structures formed over the previous millennia, however, persisted and were reinforced through the development of collective funerary monuments. A recently discovered tomb of Late Bronze to Early Iron Age date at Dibbā al-Bayah in the Sultanate of Oman has yielded a range of artefacts that illuminate the nature and extent of the long-distance contacts of the local community. Seemingly selected not only for their exotic appeal, but also for their apotropaic function, these objects testify to a deep cross-cultural knowledge extending across the wider region during this crucial period in Arabian prehistory.

According to the ‘farming/dispersal’ hypothesis, the Early and Mid-Holocene spread of Neolithic material culture in East Asia would have arisen from dispersals of established farming populations. The authors test this hypothesis by considering the Beixin Culture that appeared in the south-west Haidai region of northern China c. 5000 BC, before spreading north and east to the coast over the subsequent millennium. While this culture had architecture, elaborate pottery and other forms of Neolithic material culture, analysis of archaeobotanical evidence from Guanqiaocunnan (4340–3970 BC) suggests an economic base of hunting, gathering and cultivating, rather than a reliance on farming.

Around 8150 BP, the Storegga tsunami struck North-west Europe. The size of this wave has led many to assume that it had a devastating impact upon contemporaneous Mesolithic communities, including the final inundation of Doggerland, the now submerged Mesolithic North Sea landscape. Here, the authors present the first evidence of the tsunami from the southern North Sea, and suggest that traditional notions of a catastrophically destructive event may need rethinking. In providing a more nuanced interpretation by incorporating the role of local topographic variation within the study of the Storegga event, we are better placed to understand the impact of such dramatic occurrences and their larger significance in settlement studies.

Hypotheses concerning climatic change during the Amazonian Holocene often assume that the presence of ancient charcoal from forest fires indicates periods of drier climate in the past. These theories, however, neglect the possibility that such charcoal may result from early human activity. This article presents new evidence of anthropogenic ash and charcoal accumulation in the state of Acre, Brazil, dating back to c. 10 000 cal BP, which questions the value of charcoal as a proxy for phases of natural climate aridification. Carbon isotope (δ13C) values also suggest no significant changes in Holocene climate or vegetation. If these results are confirmed, previous studies on Amazonian Holocene climate will require re-evaluation.