Back in 2013, Rob Witcher, in his first NBC, mused on the future of academic publishing, and especially the potential impact of open access and e-books on traditional book reviews. Reading these lines five years later as incoming Reviews Editor, it is striking how little an impression e-books in particular have made on the market, and more generally how persistent print editions of both journals (including Antiquity) and books have remained in the face of rapidly changing digital technologies. Sales of major e-reader brands have declined since their height in 2014, at least in the UK, and e-book sales have stabilised since then at around 25 per cent of all book purchases. At Antiquity, we still receive upwards of 300 books per year, and send out over 120 to review across the six issues. NBC is an attempt to provide some critical perspective on a selection of the remaining books, many of which merit reviews in their own right but cannot be included for reasons of space. This section will continue in much the same manner as in the past, safe in the knowledge that, as Groucho Marx put it, ‘Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend . . .’ (the second half of the quotation is less relevant here but perhaps worth including—‘. . . inside of a dog, it's too dark to read’).

New archaeological investigations at the key Palaeolithic Russian site of Kara-Bom have further characterised its stratigraphy through analysis of the rich lithic complex recovered. This evidence both complements and supplements our understanding of central and northern Asian Initial Upper Palaeolithic populations.

The site of Tappeh Asiab in Iran is one of only a handful of Early Neolithic sites known from the Zagros Mountains. Discovered during Robert Braidwood's ‘Iranian Prehistory’ project, the site has seen limited publication of its early excavations. Here, the authors challenge some of the initial assumptions made about the site by discussing the first findings of renewed excavations, in the hope of substantially improving our currently limited knowledge of the Early Neolithic in this region.

Analysis of oil lamps and clay figurines recovered from a Late Roman ceramics workshop at Beit Nattif in Israel has revealed numerous fragments with evidence of the manufacturer's fingerprints preserved on some of the ceramic surfaces. Further study of these fingerprints has provided a unique insight into the production history of the workshop, even showing how particular innovations in technique may be associated with particular individuals.

Coastal erosion of archaeological sites has long been a problem for archaeologists seeking to understand maritime interactions in the past. A new model, using ArcGIS to collate various sources of data relating to processes of erosion over time along the south coast of Cyprus, is showcased here, with the hope that it can be expanded and adapted for use elsewhere in prioritising sites according to rates of destruction.