The prehistoric shell middens of Atlantic Europe consist of marine molluscs, but the eastern Baltic did not have exploitable marine species. Here the sole recorded shell midden, at Riņņukalns in Latvia, is on an inland lake and is formed of massive dumps of freshwater shells. Recent excavations indicate that they are the product of a small number of seasonal events during the later fourth millennium BC. The thickness of the shell deposits suggests that this was a special multi-purpose residential site visited for seasonal aggregations by pottery-using hunter-gatherer communities on the northern margin of Neolithic Europe.

Despite being one of the most intensively explored prehistoric monuments in western Europe, Stonehenge continues to hold surprises. The principal elements of the complex are well known: the outer bank and ditch, the sarsen circle capped by lintels, the smaller bluestone settings and the massive central trilithons. They represent the final phase of Stonehenge, the end product of a complicated sequence that is steadily being refined (most recently in Darvill et al. ‘Stonehenge remodelled’, Antiquity 86 (2012): 1021–40). Yet Stonehenge in its present form is incomplete—some of the expected stones are missing—and it has sometimes been suggested that it was never complete; that the sarsen circle, for example, was only ever finished on the north-eastern side, facing the main approach along the Avenue. A chance appearance of parchmarks, however, provides more evidence.

Excavations at three open-air sites in the Karama valley of West Sulawesi have revealed similar suites of ceramics and overlapping chronologies. The pottery from the basal layers at Minanga Sipakko and Kamassi resembles that of the Philippines and Taiwan, and suggests the settlement of migrants from those areas, consistent with the theory of Austronesian expansion. The absence of the flaked lithic technology typical of earlier Sulawesi populations indicates that these two sites do not represent the indigenous adoption of Neolithic features. The Karama valley evidence underlines the importance, in the quest for the earliest farmers, of research at open-air sites close to agriculturally suitable land, while indigenous populations may have continued for some time to occupy remote caves and rockshelters.

Recent survey work in western Azerbaijan has revealed that hilltop fortresses of the Bronze Age and Iron Age may have been parts of larger walled complexes and could have functioned as the urban centres of small independent polities. On the Şərur Plain long lengths of stone wall link the major fortress Oğlanqala it to its smaller neighbour Qızqala 1, with evidence of a substantial settlement on the lower ground between the two. The southern Caucasus lies beyond the core area of Near Eastern states but these new discoveries suggest that major centres of power arose here, controlling both the fertile plains and strategic trade routes through mountainous terrain.

The popular image of metalworking sites in desert settings envisages armies of slaves engaged in back-breaking labour. This is in conflict with ethnographic evidence indicating that skilled specialist metalworkers are often accorded high social status. This study approaches that contradiction directly by studying the remains of domesticated food animals from domestic and industrial contexts at Timna in southern Israel. The authors demonstrate that the higher-value meat cuts come from industrial contexts, where they were associated with the specialist metalworkers, rather than the ‘domestic’ contexts occupied by lower status workers engaged in support roles. It is suggested that the pattern documented here could also have been a feature of early metalworking sites in other times and places.

The discovery of a crushed golden bowl in the remains of the Iron Age citadel of Hasanlu in 1958 attracted considerable media attention at the time. The circumstances of its loss have long remained unclear, but were clearly associated with the violent destruction of the site in c. 800 BC. Detailed review of the find context and the skeletons found nearby now suggests that the bowl was being looted during the sack of the citadel by Urartian soldiers from an upper room where weapons, armour and fine metal vessels were stored. The enemy soldiers carrying off the Gold Bowl died in the attempt when the upper floors of the building collapsed, plunging them to their deaths.

Pottery production in Formative Period Mesoamerica appears to have been organised at the household level, but its distribution also provides evidence of political or economic boundaries. One distinctive ware from the Valley of Puebla, Tlaquexpa Red, used for the manufacture of sub-hemispherical bowls, was analysed by instrumental neutron activation analysis. The results indicated that many of these vessels were being made by families at Tlaquexpa itself, but that some of their products were being traded to other communities, including the nearby civic-ceremonial centre of Xochiltenango. The study gives new insight into the role of pottery production in pre-Hispanic households.

Excavations at four Iron Age moated sites in the Mun Valley in Thailand have identified seminal innovations, defined as emergent properties, that illuminate the origins of the kingdom of Angkor. Combined with recent research at Angkor itself, they present a compelling case for re-examining fundamental cultural changes that took place over a period of little more than four centuries, from AD 400–800. They compare with similarly rapid developments in Mesoamerica and Mesopotamia; fundamental parallels are evident in the role of charismatic agents for change, an ideology conferring god-like status on leaders, a new and highly productive economic base, an expanded interaction sphere for the exchange of prestige goods, and endemic warfare.

Social analysis of cemeteries has traditionally viewed them as static images of social organisation. In this study of the Middle Yayoi jar-burial cemetery of Tateiwa-Hotta, however, the dynamic interrelationship between competing groups and successive generations can be discerned. Two initial burials proved to be foundational acts, followed by over 40 further burials spread over a series of generations. Differences in grave orientation and grave goods signalled the separate identities of the adjacent hamlets that came to bury their lineage leaders in this prominent location. Competition between lineages is indicated by externally acquired grave goods, including prestigious bronze mirrors from the Han commandery of Lelang in Korea, and by the varying styles of burial jar that illustrate and symbolise connections or alliances with other communities.

Ritual practices and their associated material paraphernalia played a key role in extending the reach and ideological impact of early states. The discovery of a leather bag containing snuffing tablets and traces of psychoactive substances at Cueva del Chileno in the southern Andes testifies to the adoption of Tiwanaku practices by emergent local elites. Tiwanaku control spread over the whole of the south-central Andes during the Middle Horizon (AD 500–1100) but by the end of the period it had begun to fragment into a series of smaller polities. The bag had been buried by an emergent local elite who chose at this time to relinquish the former Tiwanaku ritual practices that its contents represent.

Biała Góra 3 is a small settlement founded in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century AD in the disputed Christian borderlands of Northern Europe. The incorporation of Pomerania into the Polish state in the tenth century was followed by a process of colonisation across the lower Vistula valley, which then stalled before resuming in the thirteenth century under the Teutonic Order. Biała Góra 3 is unusual in falling between the two expansionist phases and provides detailed insight into the ethnicity and economy of this borderland community. Pottery and metalwork show strong links with both Pomeranian and German colonists, and caches of bricks and roof tiles indicate durable buildings of the kind associated with the monastic and military orders. Evidence for the presence of merchants suggests Biała Góra 3 was one of many outposts in the commercial network that shadowed the Crusades.

A bark shield now in the British Museum can be identified from documentary and pictorial evidence as one collected by Captain Cook during his first voyage to Australia in 1770. Such shields often had special value to their Australian Aboriginal owners and hence might have been exchanged over considerable distances. This particular shield is known to have been collected in Kamay Botany Bay but analysis of the bark of which it is made revealed it to be of red mangrove, a tropical species found today more than 500km distant on the New South Wales north coast. It hence bears valuable testimony to the long-distance exchange networks operating in eastern Australia in the period before the disruption caused by European colonisation.

The increasing availability of multi-dimensional remote-sensing data covering large geographical areas is generating a new wave of landscape-scale research that promises to be as revolutionary as the application of aerial photographic survey during the twentieth century. Data are becoming available to historic environment professionals at higher resolution, greater frequency of acquisition and lower cost than ever before. To take advantage of this explosion of data, however, a paradigm change is needed in the methods used routinely to evaluate aerial imagery and interpret archaeological evidence. Central to this is a fuller engagement with computer-aided methods of feature detection as a viable way to analyse airborne and satellite data. Embracing the new generation of vast datasets requires reassessment of established workflows and greater understanding of the different types of information that may be generated using computer-aided methods.

Almost a century and a half ago, Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man (1871: 141) highlighted the evolution of bipedalism as one of the key features of the human lineage, freeing the hands for carrying and for using and making tools. But how did it arise? The famous footprints from Laetoli in Tanzania show that hominin ancestors were walking upright by at least 3.65 million years ago. Recent work, however, suggests a much earlier origin for bipedalism, in a Miocene primate ancestor that was still predominantly tree-dwelling. Here Susannah Thorpe, Juliet McClymont and Robin Crompton set out the evidence for that hypothesis and reject the notion that the common ancestor of great apes and humans was a knuckle-walking terrestrial species, as are gorillas and chimpanzees today. The article is followed by a series of comments, rounded off by a reply from the authors.