Figurines made of wood, bone, amber, clay and lithics are occasionally discovered in prehistoric contexts in Fennoscandia, but the discovery, in 2020, of a unique wooden snake figurine during the excavations of a Neolithic wetland site in Finland broadens our understanding of the worldview of northern peoples 4400 years ago.

Taking a landscape-based approach, the Aurifer Tagus project has demonstrated the significance of gold mining in the Roman province of Lusitania. New radiocarbon dates reveal the foundation, use and abandonment of the Covão do Urso and Mina da Presa mining sites. Combined with ancient literature, this evidence sheds light on the territory's organisation and the evolution of its social structure.

In 2015 an ethnoarchaeological survey of standing earthen buildings took place near the city of Celano in central Italy's Abruzzo region. The study provided observations relevant to archaeologists interpreting earthen architectural remains in many areas of the world: insights on structural function and the longevity of such buildings.

Archaeological research conducted in the western part of the Lublin Upland (eastern Poland) has yielded new data on hunter-gatherer settlement in Central Europe in the Late Palaeolithic, and has redefined the eastern boundary of Late Magdalenian and Federmesser Culture settlement.

This study addresses issues related to the modern reuse of prehistoric ringstones in the Bargarh district, Odisha, India. Drawing on ancestral knowledge, ringstones are today used in a medicinal context by some agro-pastoral communities to heal cattle. Surveys of ten villages in a study area, which also includes two archaeological surface sites (Dekhulia and Kumbho), allowed investigations of the properties of ringstones and the ritualised context of their modern reuse.

Bioarchaeological research provides unique insights on human adaptation, diet, lifestyle and epidemiology. The Mogou Bioarchaeology Project explores how health was affected by the Bronze Age transition in north-west China. Preliminary results reveal that the inhabitants experienced substantial physiological stress, infectious disease and lethal trauma.

Focusing on the North European heathlands, this project investigates how self-organised communities in the past established large-scale grazing regimes. By considering changes in their particular forms of disturbance, exhaustion, autonomy and collaboration, the author envisages a new archaeology of emergent multispecies entanglements across a deep-time scale.

The Maldives Heritage Survey was established to document cultural heritage vulnerable to human and environmental threats in the Maldives. An open-access online database is being produced to inform academic studies, support heritage-management plans and create a permanent archive of digital heritage resources.

Rich in carbohydrates, underground storage organs played a key role in human history. This project aims to establish a systematic methodology for their multi-proxy study, creating an online reference collection, using different microscopy techniques for identification and establishing a reference guide to use-wear patterns on experimental archaeology tools used for the processing of underground storage organs.

The architectural connections between western Central Asia and China are not well understood. Recent investigations at the Haermodun site in central Xinjiang reveals new evidence of the influence of western Central Asia on the construction of fortifications in China during the early first millennium AD.

Stećci are medieval tombstones. Scattered across the landscapes of the Western Balkans in their thousands, they amalgamate the historical, cultural and religious components of medieval societies in the region, and are expressions of identity, social systems, politics and religious belief. Through these monuments, a diverse spectrum of identities was enunciated, providing us with a rare opportunity to investigate the archaeo-historic development of medieval South-eastern Europe.

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 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 Small Cycladic Islands Project is a diachronic archaeological survey of several small, currently uninhabited islands located in the Cyclades, Greece. In 2019 and 2020, surface investigations focused on the multi-method, comparative documentation of 21 islets surrounding Paros and Antiparos, revealing oscillating patterns of use and non-use from prehistory to the present.

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.

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.

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.

At the time of European contact, Torres Strait, New Guinea and northern Australia were home to highly restricted fraternities focused on warfare, headhunting and mortuary rituals. Masked dancers, representing spirits of the dead, initiated the next generation into secrets reputedly brought by a pantheon of wandering heroes, such as Waiat. A new project explores the deep history of Islander traditions, excavating initiation places associated with Waiat. In so doing, it demonstrates the advantages of collaborative history-building using archaeology and traditional knowledge.

A large-scale geophysical survey conducted recently in Alaska has confirmed the location of a fort associated with a pivotal battle between Tlingit people and Russian colonising forces. The find is preceded by a century of attempts to locate the fort, which the authors have now identified from its unusual shape.

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.