New excavations in ravines at Ounjougou in Mali have brought to light a lithic and ceramic assemblage that dates from before 9400 cal BC. The authors show that this first use of pottery coincides with a warm wet period in the Sahara. As in East Asia, where very early ceramics are also known, the pottery and small bifacial arrowheads were the components of a new subsistence strategy exploiting an ecology associated with abundant wild grasses. In Africa, however, the seeds were probably boiled (then as now) rather than made into bread.

Western Sahara has one of the last remaining unexplored prehistories on the planet. The new research reported here reveals a sequence of Holocene occupation beginning in a humid period around 9000 bp, superceded around 5000 bp by an arid phase in which the land was mainly given over to pastoralism and monumental burial. The authors summarise the flint and pottery assemblage and classify the monuments, looking to neighbouring cultures in Niger, Libya and Sudan.

Particular stones found on Epi-Palaeolithic sites in the Levant are thought to be for grinding vegetable matter and to be essential instruments in the development of food processing. Finding an assemblage of these tools in a burial cave, the authors ask a harder question: could they have been used for processing hides with ochre? Use-wear analysis allows a positive verdict, and so the tools take their place in the ritual apparatus associated with burial.

Dating and examination of plaster floor sequences by micromorphology at a tell site in Greece shows when they were made and how they were composed. While numerous informal floor surfaces using recycled rubbish were put in place, as and when, by the occupants, formal floors rich in plaster seem to have been re-laid at regular intervals in reflection of a communal decision – even if the actual floors followed a recipe determined by each household. The authors rightly champion the potential of the technique as a possible indicator of social change at the household and settlement level.

The Early Neolithic central place at Herxheim is defined by a perimeter of elongated pits containing fragments of human bone, together with pottery imported from areas several hundred kilometres distant. This article offers a context for the centre, advancing strong evidence that the site was dedicated to ritual activities in which cannibalism played an important part.

A recent review of all ivory from excavations in Chalcolithic and Beaker period Iberia shows a marked coastal distribution – which strongly suggests that the material is being brought in by sea. Using microscopy and spectroscopy, the authors were able to distinguish ivories from extinct Pleistocene elephants, Asian elephants and, mostly, from African elephants of the savannah type. This all speaks of a lively ocean trade in the first half of the third millennium BC, between the Iberian Peninsula and the north-west of Africa and perhaps deeper still into the continent.

‘They dream of the acorned swill of the world, the rooting for pigfruit…’ Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood.

Carbon and nitrogen isotopes show a marked change in the diet of British pigs between the Neolithic and the Iron Age. The authors neatly deduce that this was due to the loss of the Neolithic wildwood where pigs were wont to root for fungus amongst the rotting trees.

The authors reconsider the origins of metallurgy in the Old World and offer us a new model in which metallurgy began in c. eleventh/ninth millennium BC in Southwest Asia due to a desire to adorn the human body in life and death using colourful ores and naturally-occurring metals. In the early sixth millennium BC the techniques of smelting were developed to produce lead, copper, copper alloys and eventually silver. The authors come down firmly on the side of single invention, seeing the subsequent cultural transmission of the technology as led by groups of metalworkers following in the wake of exotic objects in metal.

Does the riding of horses necessarily go with the emergence of Eurasian pastoralism? Drawing on their fine sequence of animal bones from Begash, the authors think not. While pastoral herding of sheep and goats is evident from the Early Bronze Age, the horse appears only in small numbers before the end of the first millennium BC. Its adoption coincides with an increase in hunting and the advent of larger politically organised groups.

With its forts, swords, halberds and daggers the Argaric people of south-east Spain has long been seen as a warrior society. The authors dismantle this model, showing that defences around settlements and weapons and knives in tombs have quite different social roles. An analysis of skeletons showed that while these Bronze Age people might have been periodically clubbing each other on the head, they were not doing a lot of lethal stabbing.

Are the imposing, decorated copper-alloy shields of Bronze Age Europe symbolic objects or functioning weapons? The author undertakes new analysis and experiments to conclude that whether bronze, leather or wood, all shields had a range of purpose in which the ceremonial and homicidal could rarely be completely isolated.

A decorated pair of trousers excavated from a well-preserved tomb in the Tarim Basin proved to have a highly informative life history, teased out by the authors – with archaeological, historical and art historical dexterity. Probably created under Greek influence in a Bactrian palace, the textile started life in the third/second century BC as an ornamental wall hanging, showing a centaur blowing a war-trumpet and a nearly life-size warrior of the steppe with his spear. The palace was raided by nomads, one of whom worked a piece of the tapestry into a pair of trousers. They brought no great luck to the wearer who ended his days in a massacre by the Xiongnu, probably in the first century BC. The biography of this garment gives a vivid glimpse of the dynamic life of Central Asia at the end of the first millennium.

Stable isotopes in skeletons indicate changes in diet, and a sample of humans from Classical Thebes showed an unexpected increase in nitrogen values – usually associated with increased access to protein. But from what and how? After considering the possible sources of meat, milk and manure, the authors highlight the contribution of freshwater fish, and find support in Aristophanes – where the citizens are heard clamouring for the eels of Lake Kopais.

It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. The combination of land cleared of its rainforest for grazing and satellite survey have revealed a sophisticated pre-Columbian monument-building society in the upper Amazon Basin on the east side of the Andes. This hitherto unknown people constructed earthworks of precise geometric plan connected by straight orthogonal roads. Introducing us to this new civilisation, the authors show that the ‘geoglyph culture’ stretches over a region more than 250km across, and exploits both the floodplains and the uplands. They also suggest that we have so far seen no more than a tenth of it.

The origin of the English is an interesting problem – and not only for them. In one short century, the evidence from texts, burial, artefacts, stable isotopes and now DNA provides several different answers to the question of whether England was invaded by Germans in the fifth century and if so in what manner. The rigorous approach by our authors tips the balance back in favour of a population changing its cultural allegiance – rather than being physically overwhelmed – but, as they emphasise, any new reading must depend on a very high level of archaeological precision – perhaps only now coming within reach.

During the ongoing excavations in the palace of the famous Qatna complex, the excavators noted patches of brown staining on the floor of a high status tomb. Chemical extraction revealed the presence of brominated derivatives of indigo and indirubin, and more detailed characterisation showed that it likely came from Hexaplex trunculus. In short, this was none other than the renowned Tyrian or Royal Purple mentioned by Pliny, which was to have such an influential career colouring the clothing of the powerful. Furthermore, it was associated in the tomb with ghosts of high quality textiles preserved in gypsum.

Stable isotopes get personal in this analysis of burials at a medieval cathedral. Compared with the local meat-eating rank and file, those people identified as bishops consumed significantly more fish and were incomers from the east. These results, while not so surprising historically, lend much increased confidence that isotope analysis can successfully read the status and mobility of individuals in a cemetery.

We will never be able to excavate everything – nor should we – but it would be good to know how to make the best use of what is visible in the landscape to write social prehistories. In this project the author creates a set of parameters for the 1000 mound-cemeteries seen north of Lake Mälaren and clusters them by period, using 51 examples that have been excavated and dated. The result is that 1000 cemeteries can now be allocated to period, with that special kind of confidence in which statisticians rejoice.

The new Acropolis Museum was opened in June 2009 with worldwide fanfare. For this was for the Athenian acropolis – the Acropolis. After two lower galleries, visitors reach the top floor and find what is now the world's most exciting coup of archaeological presentation – a sudden view of the Parthenon. We stand there in the middle of a gallery that sets out the temple's sculpted pediments, metopes and friezes according to the original plan. They are hung on a framework that matches the Parthenon's colonnades at the same orientation and scale and on the same plan as the great temple itself (Figure 1); so that, walking along the gallery, we can imagine ourselves in the temple by just looking out at it on the Acropolis.