Extensively excavated village sites from the Chinese Bronze Age are rare. Information emerging from the analysis of the small Anyang-period village site of Guandimiao, however, challenges widely held assumptions concerning the Shang polity at Anyang and its hierarchical lineages based on war and sacrifice. Evidence for specialised pottery production and the presence of artefacts imported from Anyang suggest an unexpected degree of regional economic integration. Guandimiao is emerging as a site of revolutionary importance for understanding Anyang-period Shang political and economic networks, and in its significance to both Chinese archaeology and the study of early complex societies more generally.

Excavations at the Late Archaic site of Tulán-52 (3450–2250 BC) in the Atacama Desert of Chile revealed what was initially considered to be a very early semi-sedentary settlement. New investigations into these earlier excavations, however, show evidence for structural and organisational characteristics that overlap with those found at the nearby ceremonial site of Tulán-54, dated to around two millennia later. The reinterpretation of Tulán-52 suggests that early monumentalism in the Puna de Atacama may reflect the emergence of social complexity among late hunter-gatherers—a development that led to, rather than resulted from, the process of Neolithisation.

The Late Neolithic Corded Ware Culture (c. 2800–2300 BC) of Northern Europe is characterised by specific sets of grave goods and mortuary practices, but the organic components of these grave sets are poorly represented in the archaeological record. New microscopic analyses of soil samples collected during the 1930s from the Perttulanmäki grave in western Finland have, however, revealed preserved Neolithic animal hairs. Despite mineralisation, the species of animal has been successfully identified and offers the oldest evidence for domestic goat in Neolithic Finland, indicating a pastoral herding economy. The mortuary context of the goat hair also suggests that animals played a significant role in the Corded Ware belief system.

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.

The diversity of archaeological evidence for the adoption of farming in Northern Europe has led to competing hypotheses about this critical shift in subsistence strategy. Through a review of the archaeological material alongside ethnographic evidence, we reconsider the Neolithic Transition in Southern Scandinavia, and argue for both continuity and change during the early Funnel Beaker Culture (c. 4000–3500 cal BC). A new model is proposed for understanding the processes of regional transition—one which allows for compromise between the dominant explanatory frameworks. We conclude that the first centuries of the Scandinavian Neolithic saw cultural and economic negotiation between the last foragers and the first farmers. This has major implications for the understanding of agricultural origins in Northern Europe.

Recent palaeogenomic data have expanded the debate concerning the direction of cultural transmission during the European Chalcolithic by suggesting the western movement of people from the Eurasian Steppe. Heyd (2017) considers a simultaneous spread of material culture as supportive of these model. The author addresses Heyd’s suggestions in the light of new archaeological data from the southern Iberian Peninsula. These data strongly suggest both Eastern Mediterranean and endogenous influences and innovation in the spread of culture across Europe during the third millennium BC.

The deeply engrained stereotype of opposing ‘steppe’ and ‘sown’ societies has strongly influenced interpretation of Bronze Age Central Asia. This has led to the idea that the agricultural Oxus civilisation and non-Oxus mobile pastoralists formed two distinct cultural-economic groups in this region that are easily distinguishable through archaeological remains. Recent excavations of campsites in southern Turkmenistan, however, provide new evidence of variability in exchange between sites, suggesting adaptation by pastoralist groups in their interactions with settled Oxus farming groups. Rather than wholly reiterating or dissolving the distinctions between them, such practices dynamically reshaped the boundaries of these social and economic groups. These findings challenge us to move away from notions of centre-periphery, dependency and diffusion in discussions of intercultural contact in Eurasian prehistory.

The recent discovery of a well-preserved horse burial at the Third Cataract site of Tombos illuminates the social significance of equids in the Nile Valley. The accompanying funerary assemblage includes one of the earliest securely dated pieces of iron in Africa. The Third Intermediate Period (1050–728 BC) saw the development of the Nubian Kushite state beyond the southern border of Egypt. Analysis of the mortuary and osteological evidence suggests that horses represented symbols of a larger social, political and economic movement, and that the horse gained symbolic meaning in the Nile Valley prior to its adoption by the Kushite elite. This new discovery has important implications for the study of the early Kushite state and the formation of Kushite social identity.

El Médano-style rock art from the Atacama Desert coast in Chile provides one of the most spectacular and expressive representations of ancient marine hunting and maritime traditions. These red pictographs comprise hundreds of hunting scenes and portray a complex marine hunter-gatherer society. This study presents the discovery of El Médano pictographs from new sites—in particular the Izcuña ravine—and seeks to understand further the processes of marine hunting and the interspecies relationships between hunter and prey. When combined with archaeological evidence, this analysis provides important new information concerning the value and significance of this rock art to those ancient hunter-gatherers.

Two recent discoveries on the east bank of the Tiber are of major significance to the study of early Rome: the discovery that the sixth-century BC riverbank was in a different position to the modern bank, and the finding of a Late Bronze Age site deeply buried adjacent to Sant'Omobono church, the latter reported by Brock and Terrenato (2016). This article reconsiders the Sant'Ombono data in an environmental context, questioning both the previous interpretation of site usage and the provenience of the dating evidence. This reappraisal is placed within a recently developed research theme, namely the transformation of the landscape of early Rome into a cityscape, which involved large-scale encroachment on the east bank.

Lying on the north-west coast of Sri Lanka, the ancient port of Mantai was ideally situated as a ‘hub’ for trade between East and West from the first millennium BC onwards. Excavations at the site were interrupted by civil war in 1984, delaying publication of these results and leading to the underestimation of Mantai's importance in the development of Early Historic Indian Ocean trade. Renewed excavations in 2009–2010 yielded extensive archaeobotanical remains, which, alongside an improved understanding of the site's chronology, provide important new insights into the development of local and regional trade routes and direct evidence for early trade in the valuable spices upon which later empires were founded.

Late prehistoric archaeological research in Myanmar is in a phase of rapid expansion. Recent work by the Mission Archéologique Française au Myanmar aims to establish a reliable Neolithic to Iron Age culture-historical sequence, which can then be compared to surrounding regions of Southeast Asia. Excavations at Nyaung'gan and Oakaie in central Myanmar have provided 52 new AMS dates, which allow the creation of Myanmar's first reliable prehistoric radiometric chronology. They have also identified the Neolithic to Bronze Age transition in central Myanmar, which is of critical importance in understanding long-range interactions at the national, regional and inter-regional level. This research provides the first significant step towards placing late prehistoric Myanmar in its global context.

The spread of agriculture across the Andes is a topic of intense archaeological debate, particularly the processes driving the adoption of maize (Zea mays) by mobile hunter-gatherer groups of the Central Pampas of Argentina. This paper presents the first direct botanical evidence of maize from the Late Holocene hunter-gatherer sites of El Durazno and La Alborado in the San Luis province—an area considered climatically unsuited to maize production. These data provide important new information on the production, processing and consumption of maize on a macro-regional scale, and the development of Central Pampas exchange systems.

Recent research at Liangzhu in China documents the settlement as a fortified town dating from 3300–2300 BC, accompanied by an impressive system of earthen dams for flood control and irrigation. An earthen platform in the centre of the town probably supported a palace complex, and grave goods from the adjacent Fanshan cemetery include finely worked jades accompanying high-status burials. These artefacts were produced by a complex society more than a millennium before the bronzes of the Shang period. The large-scale public works and remarkable grave goods at Liangzhu are products of what may be the earliest state society in East Asia.

New evidence from archaeological investigations in north-east Thailand shows a transition in rice farming towards wetland cultivation that would have facilitated greater yields and surpluses. This evidence, combined with new dates and palaeoclimatic data, suggests that this transition took place in the Iron Age, at a time of increasingly arid climate, and when a number of broader societal changes become apparent in the archaeological record. For the first time, it is possible to relate changes in subsistence economy to shifts in regional climate and water-management strategies, and to the emergence of state societies in Southeast Asia.

The Shang Dynasty has attracted much archaeological research, particularly the renowned ‘royal tombs’ of the Xibeigang cemetery at Anyang Yinxu, the last Shang capital. Understanding of the social strategies informing Shang mortuary practices is, however, very limited. A new reconstruction of the detailed chronology of the cemetery is presented here, allowing social theory to be applied, and reveals the strategic social decisions behind the placement of the tombs in relation to each other. The results of this analysis are important not only for the reconstruction of the social structure and organisation of the late Shang dynasty, but also for understanding the relationship between mortuary practices and the functioning of early states in other regions.

The seventh-century AD switch from gold to silver currencies transformed the socio-economic landscape of North-west Europe. The source of silver, however, has proven elusive. Recent research, integrating ice-core data from the Colle Gnifetti drill site in the Swiss Alps, geoarchaeological records and numismatic and historical data, has provided new evidence for this transformation. Annual ice-core resolution data are combined with lead pollution analysis to demonstrate that significant new silver mining facilitated the change to silver coinage, and dates the introduction of such coinage to c. AD 660. Archaeological evidence and atmospheric modelling of lead pollution locates the probable source of the silver to mines at Melle, in France.

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.

Settlements incorporating large-scale human aggregations are a well-documented but poorly understood phenomenon across late prehistoric Europe. The authors’ research examines the origins and trajectory of such aggregations through isotope analysis of human skeletal remains from the mega-site of Marroquíes in Jaén, Spain. The results indicate that eight per cent of 115 sampled individuals are of non-local origin. These individuals received mortuary treatments indistinguishable from those of locals, suggesting their incorporation into pre-existing social networks in both life and death. This research contributes to our understanding of the extent and patterning of human mobility, which underlies the emergence of late prehistoric mega-sites in Europe.

The identification of parasites in ancient human remains can address questions of past health, disease, mobility and mortuary customs. Archaeoparasitological evidence from Russia is, however, almost absent. This study presents the first such evidence in the form of a helminth infection in a mummified individual from the southern Siberian site of Doge-Bary II, the burial ground of a nomadic Iron Age community. Despite the removal of the intestines as part of the mummification procedure, the residual eggs of Trichuris trichiura, a non-indigenous species of whipworm, were detected. This evidence provides the first confirmation of prehistoric contact between southern Siberian nomads and distant agricultural areas, such as China and Central Asia.