Archaeology increasingly attests the complex and cosmopolitan nature of societies in medieval Ethiopia (c. seventh to early eighteenth centuries AD). Without negating the existence of relations of dominance and periods of isolation, key emergent themes of such research are pluralism and interaction. Four religious traditions are relevant to this theme: Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Indigenous religions. This article introduces a special section of contributions on medieval Ethiopia and sets the scheme by highlighting the temporality of cosmopolitanism as episodic rather than continuous. The following articles address varied aspects of this cosmopolitanism, identifying issues of general relevance for studies of the archaeology of religion, as well as the need for further research in Ethiopia.

The investigation of Islamic archaeology in Ethiopia has until recently been neglected. Excavations at Harlaa, a large urban centre in eastern Ethiopia, are now beginning to redress this lack of research attention. By establishing occupation and material sequences, and by assessing the chronology and material markers of Islamisation, recent work provides important new insight on the presence and role of Muslims and Islamic practice at Harlaa, and in the Horn of Africa more generally. The results challenge previous assumptions of cultural homogeneity, instead indicating the development of cosmopolitanism. They also suggest a possible historical identity for Harlaa: as Hubät/Hobat, the capital of the Hārlā sultanate.

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a viral archive—an archaeological record of history in the making. One aspect of this archive is increased environmental pollution, not least through the discarded facemasks and gloves that characterise the pandemic. This article—directed specifically at archaeologists—argues that an archaeological perspective on ‘COVID waste’ using social media analysis can help to highlight environmental pollution, and that by giving this waste the status of archaeological material and working with other disciplines, archaeologists can contribute to sustainable, policy-led solutions to combat environmental pollution.

The Koźle Basin in Poland was radically transformed by aerial bombardment during the Second World War. Today, the region has approximately 6000 well-preserved bomb craters with diameters ranging from 5–15m and depths often exceeding 2m. Combining remote-sensing data and fieldwork with historical accounts, this article analyses these craters, demonstrating that their varied morphologies derive from the weight of the bombs that created them, and on the type and moisture content of the soil on which the bombs fell. Based on their results, the authors issue a call for the official protection of the Koźle landscape, which has particular historical, educational and ecological value.

The initial spread of food production in eastern Africa is associated with livestock herding during the Pastoral Neolithic. Recent excavation at Luxmanda, Tanzania, a site dating to c. 3000 BP, revealed circular installations of lower grinding stones and numerous handstones. This discovery, unprecedented for this era, challenges previous ideas about pastoralist mobility and subsistence.

The cemetery site for which the Wielbark Culture was named has been known for over a century. The scientific value of the site is, however, only now beginning to be realised. With a continuous sequence of use spanning five centuries, the site may hold clues that can shed new light on population continuity and the migrations of the Goths.

The study of prehistoric textile production requires the excavation of sites with exceptional organic preservation. Here, the authors focus on thread production using evidence from two fourth-millennium BC pre-Alpine wetland sites: Arbon-Bleiche 3 in Switzerland and Bad Buchau-Torwiesen II in southern Germany. A comparison of the spindle whorls from these two settlements with a contemporaneous East-Central European dataset suggests that multiple culture-historical groups with distinct technological signatures inhabited Neolithic Central Europe. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of conical spindle whorls within the pre-Alpine settlements suggests the immigration of both people and technology from the east, thereby illuminating the wider themes of mobility and innovation in prehistoric Europe.

Investigations at Bushat in northern Albania during 2017–2019 have brought to light a massive fortification wall dating to the fourth century BC and enclosing approximately 20ha of hilly terrain. The wall is connected to the development of Illyrian settlements and the Hellenisation of the area.

World history is often framed in terms of flows of people: humans coming ‘out of Africa’, the spread of farmers in the Holocene, the disruptions of the ‘Sea Peoples’, or ‘colonisation’ by Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. In this article, the authors argue that world history is also about the flows of objects. To illuminate the impacts of objects on past societies, they introduce the concept of ‘objectscapes’ as a means of writing new kinds of histories of human-thing entanglements, in which objects in motion have roles to play—beyond representation—over both the short and long term. To illustrate, they present examples from two regions at the end of the first millennium BC: southern Germany and northern Syria.

Turtles are important barometers of human impact on marine biodiversity. Very little, however, is known about the deep history of human-turtle interactions and whether this is reflected in the present-day vulnerability of Mediterranean turtle populations. Here, the authors critically assess the zooarchaeological evidence for the nature and intensity of past human interactions with green, loggerhead turtles and Nile soft-shell turtles in the Eastern Mediterranean. Species and sex identifications, estimates of relative abundance, and size reconstructions at five coastal archaeological sites demonstrate the variety in interactions, from turtle capture to processing, and allow informative comparisons with present-day distributions of these species across the region.

The shift to sedentary lifeways represents a significant change in human adaptation. Despite the broadly contemporaneous timing of this transition across East Asia during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, such changes varied regionally. This article synthesises new and existing data from Neolithic sites on the Mongolian Plateau to reveal a simultaneous shift towards investment in site architecture, with distinct variation in the organisation of settlement and subsistence across biogeographic zones. The development of sedentary communities here emphasises the importance of climatic amelioration for incipient sedentism, and demonstrates how differences in ecological and cultural contexts can encourage various responses to the same environmental stimuli.

Archaeological studies of belief, ideology and commemorative strategies in Ireland, and elsewhere in Europe, neglect the continuation of cremation far beyond the supposed fifth-century AD threshold for the shift to inhumation under the influence of Christianity. A database of radiocarbon dates from first-millennium AD Ireland permits the identification of new patterns in early medieval (AD 400–1100) mortuary practices, including a new phase of cremation. The authors discuss archaeological and historical implications to demonstrate how data-driven approaches can enhance and challenge established metanarratives. They also highlight serious methodological and interpretative issues that these data pose for current narrative frameworks, and their influence on post-excavation strategies.

The residential architecture of Alexandria has traditionally been extrapolated based on comparison with the plans and decoration of monumental hypogea from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. New evidence from an archaeological research programme launched at Kom el-Dikka offers novel insights into the style of domestic architecture and the urban topography of the city.

The EVOSHEEP project combines archaeozoology, geometric morphometrics and genetics to study archaeological sheep assemblages dating from the sixth to the first millennia BC in eastern Africa, the Levant, the Anatolian South Caucasus, the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia. The project aims to understand changes in the physical appearance and phenotypic characteristics of sheep and how these related to the appearance of new breeds and the demand for secondary products to supply the textile industry.

Population genetic studies often overlook the evidence for variability and change in past material culture. Here, the authors use a Mesolithic example to demonstrate the importance of integrating archaeological evidence into the interpretation of the Scandinavian hunter-gatherer genetic group. Genetic studies conclude that this group resulted from two single-event dispersals into Scandinavia before 7500 BC. Archaeological evidence, however, shows at least six immigration events pre-dating the earliest DNA, and that the first incoming groups arrived in Scandinavia before 9000 BC. The findings underline the importance of conducting careful archaeological analysis of prehistoric human dispersal in tandem with the study of ancient population genomics.

Between the sixth and the eighth centuries AD, the practice of depositing grave goods was almost entirely abandoned across Western Europe. To date, however, explanations for this change have focused on local considerations. By collating data from 237 cemeteries from across Western Europe, this article assesses the spatial and chronological development of this phenomenon. Beginning in the mid sixth century, the process accelerated towards the end of the seventh century, before near complete abandonment across the region by the following century. This widespread and rapid transition is interpreted in light of evidence for trade and connectivity, which facilitated the swift diffusion of this and other cultural practices across the region.

Motifs featuring trios of figures have been discovered at a newly documented rock art site in the Swaga Swaga Game Reserve in Tanzania. These images find parallels in paintings from rockshelters at the nearby Kolo site, and raise the possibility that they represent anthropomorphic figures with stylised buffalo heads.

The full extent of past military events can be difficult to appreciate using only historical and documentary accounts. By combining these visual and textual sources with archaeological and geoarchaeological evidence, the authors propose and test an interdisciplinary approach that aims to establish a process-oriented understanding of the genesis and transformation of conflict landscapes. Using the battle site at Vossenack Ridge in Germany as a case study, they demonstrate that such an approach can maximise our understanding of war-related transformations of the landscape, while minimising the damage to sub-surface archaeological materials.

Plastic entering the archaeological and geological record may be the defining signature of the Anthropocene. Amidst the growing awareness of the role of plastic in marine pollution, this study demonstrates its terrestrial ubiquity. The excavation of two experimentally reconstructed roundhouses built on their original sites at Castell Henllys Iron Age fort, Wales, reveals evidence of 30 years of heritage interpretation and visitor activity. The nature and extent of the cultural material recovered accurately reflects known activities at this heritage site, but also reveals an unexpected amount of plastic debris in archaeological contexts, indicating how, even in well-managed contexts, plastic is entering terrestrial deposits.

The recent discovery of several late Linearbandkeramik (LBK) sites in Central Europe, including Vráble in south-west Slovakia, has revealed evidence for increasing diversity in Neolithic mortuary practices, which may reflect inter-community war and socio-political crisis at the end of the LBK. Here, the authors combine osteological and radiocarbon analyses of inhumations from Vráble. Rather than a straightforward sign of inter-community conflict and war, this development reflects a culmination of internal conflict and a diversification in the ritual treatment of human bodies. The emerging variability in LBK methods of manipulating and depositing dead bodies can be interpreted as an experimental approach in how to negotiate social conflicts and community boundaries.