Excavations at the Middle Pleistocene site of La Cotte de St Brelade, on the island of Jersey in the English Channel, have revealed a long sequence of occupation. The continued use of the site by Neanderthals throughout an extended period of changing climate and environment reveals how, despite changes in the types of behaviour recorded at the site, La Cotte emerged as a persistent place in the memory and landscape of its early hominin inhabitants. The site's status as a persistent place for these people suggests a level of social and cognitive development permitting reference to and knowledge of places distant in time and space as long ago as at least MIS 7.

Early Archaic human skeletal remains found in a burial context in Lapa doSanto in east-central Brazil provide a rare glimpse into the lives ofhunter-gatherer communities in South America, including their rituals fordealing with the dead. These included the reduction of the body by means ofmutilation, defleshing, tooth removal, exposure to fire and possiblycannibalism, followed by the secondary burial of the remains according tostrict rules. In a later period, pits were filled with disarticulated bonesof a single individual without signs of body manipulation, demonstratingthat the region was inhabited by dynamic groups in constant transformationover a period of centuries.

The interment of bodies in ceramic vessels, or ‘pot burial’, was a widespread practice across the ancient world. Commonly associated with poverty, and with child and infant burials, the reuse of domestic vessels for burial has been taken to indicate that low value was assigned to the containers and their contents. New analysis urges a more holistic and culturally situated understanding. Contradictory evidence reveals that this burial practice was also used for adults and is represented in high-status tombs. Far from being recycled ‘rubbish’, the ceramic containers may have reflected symbolic associations between pots, wombs and eggs, facilitating rebirth and transition into the afterlife.

The first direct absolute dates for the exploitation of several summer crops by Indus populations are presented here. These include rice, millets and three tropical pulse species at two settlements in the hinterland of the urban site of Rakhigarhi. The dates confirm the role of native summer domesticates in the rise of Indus cities. They demonstrate that, from their earliest phases, a range of crops and variable strategies, including multi-cropping, were used to feed different urban centres. This has important implications for understanding the development of the earliest cities in South Asia, particularly the organisation of labour and provisioning throughout the year.

Recent excavations at the coastal cemetery of Pain Haka on Flores have revealed evidence of burial practices similar to those documented in other parts of Southeast Asia. Chief among these is the use of pottery jars alongside other forms of container for the interment of the dead. The dating of the site combined with the fact that this burial practice is present over such a wide geographic area suggests a widespread belief system during the Neolithic period across much of Southeast Asia.

Representations and remains of sharks are found in Mesoamerican art and archaeology from the first millennium BC onwards. They appear at coastal sites, but also remarkably far inland, hundreds of kilometres from the waters where they were sighted or hunted. For the Maya of the interior of the Yucatán Peninsula, encounters with live sharks would have been an exceedingly rare occurrence. Yet the animals arrived inland in piecemeal fashion—as chunks of meat and sets of teeth—and via stories. By following the procurement, transportation, representation and ritual use of sharks from the sea to the jungle, the author shows how the ancient Maya drew on both evidence and myth to imagine and explain these unfamiliar marine creatures.

Taiwan presents a puzzling anomaly in the development and expansion of South and Southeast Asian trade routes. The lack of historical records from the island emphasises the value of archaeology for understanding the establishment of trade and the transmission of people, ideas and knowledge. Recent research focusing on newly excavated sites such as Jiuxianglan shows that the Metal Age in Taiwan began around 400 BC, much earlier than was previously thought. Furthermore, it seems that early trade predominantly prioritised links to the south, and not, curiously, with Mainland China to the immediate west as had traditionally been supposed.

The Base Ring juglets of Late Bronze Age Cyprus have long been associated with opium due to their hypothetical resemblance to inverted poppy heads. Analysis of organic residues on Base Ring juglets from Cyprus and Israel, however, showed no trace of opium; instead, the vessels had contained a variety of perfumed oils. The analytical results are supported by textual evidence attesting to a lively trade across the eastern Mediterranean in aromatic substances and compounds, rather than in opium. The poppy-head shape of the Base Ring juglets was not a reference to their contents.

The rare discovery of a well-preserved miliarium—a water boiler—in a rural bath house in Gaul suggests that the technology of water supply had penetrated the remoter parts of the Roman world. Such boilers were frequently recycled for their valuable metal content. This example, by contrast, was buried close to where it once stood—perhaps in connection with the ritual deposit of complete animal carcasses around the bath house. The symbolic associations of the boiler are suggested by decorative elements including the mask of a bearded man, argued to represent Okeanos, a divine personification of the sea. The near-complete state of the boiler also provides new insight into the processes used in its manufacture from lead and copper alloys.

The settlement of high-altitude uplands by early agropastoralists demanded specific kinds of social and economic adaptation. Upland valley systems in north-west Argentina were used extensively during the Formative period (200 BC to AD 850). New investigations of the alluvial fans of the Tafí Valley show how the occupation history of the region developed across time and space, demonstrating remarkable stability over 1000 years of agropastoral exploitation. The dense but scattered distribution of early farmers across this landscape highlights household continuity through a period of regional population growth.

Fieldwork at Rendlesham in Suffolk has identified a major central place complex of the early–middle Anglo-Saxon periods. This has particular significance in the light of Bede's eighth-century reference to a ‘royal settlement’ at Rendlesham and the princely burial site at nearby Sutton Hoo. This interim report summarises the archaeology, and considers the wider interpretative issues relating to economic complexity and social diversity.

The rock art of Doria Gudaluk (Beswick Creek Cave) in the Northern Territory of Australia has previously provided a valuable lesson in the difficulties of definitive interpretation without local knowledge. Now, newly recorded motifs at the site—some only visible with digital enhancement—highlight the dangers of relating stylistic changes to the replacement of different cultures. When considered in the context of local history, developments in the rock art of Doria Gudaluk during the second half of the twentieth century can be understood as the result of new cultural collaborations between incoming groups and older, local communities.

How should we identify, protect and preserve contemporary heritage? Five years ago, comparisons in an Antiquity paper between the ‘simulations of scenes’ drawn on the wall of 6 Denmark Street by John Lydon, during Sex Pistols rehearsals in the 1970s, and the Palaeolithic cave art of Lascaux provoked a strong response. Less contentious was the recent listing of the building, bringing its punk artworks under statutory protection. In this follow-up to their earlier article, the authors review the initial reaction from the media, the public and the artist himself, and consider how attitudes may have shifted. They also offer a novel, ‘punk’-informed approach to the management of cultural heritage.

Since the establishment of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the systematic reporting of metal-detected finds in England and Wales has increased our knowledge of distribution patterns and complemented the evidence from assemblages uncovered by conventional excavation. The large number of Roman metal small finds documented, particularly brooches, now allows for a quantitative comparison between those recovered through excavation and those discovered by metal-detecting. This study shows that certain artefact morphologies are more easily detected than others, resulting in differential rates of representation in the archaeological record. It is suggested that similar biases can be seen in artefacts from other periods. This has important consequences for anyone wishing to use metal-detected material in synthetic studies.

Photogrammetry provides an accessible, cost-effective means of creating a high-resolution, digital 3D record of archaeological artefacts. The methodology has been widely adopted, but a number of issues remain, especially in relation to model variability, and to misalignments that result in gaps in the models generated. Two new approaches are presented here that have been shown to increase standardisation during data capture and processing routines. This ensures that models are seamless and quantitatively accurate.