Intensive survey and three sample sections at Jebel Gharbi in north-west Libya offer a new dated sequence of the environment, and the human presence within it, from the Middle Stone Age to the early Holocene. Hunter-gatherers were continuously active, including during the hitherto elusive Later Stone Age.

Variation in the frequency and severity of porotic hyperostosis [porous defects], seen in the skulls of individuals buried at two First Dynasty cemeteries at Abydos, suggested differences in health and social conditions. Those buried near the kings had suffered from childhood deficiencies, while those associated with funerary enclosures in a second cemetery further to the north seemed to have benefited from occupational or social advantages. The author speculates on the possible factors which gave rise to this difference.

When did people start to eat small seeds, and what drove them to it? New investigations and dating at the Danger Cave in the American Great Basin show that seeds (pickleweed seeds) did not become part of the staple diet until after 8700 b.p. It was at this time that animal and plant resources had begun to seriously diminish in a shrinking wetland.

The Minusinsk Basin is located where China, Mongolia, Siberia and Kazakhstan meet. Enclosed, but broad, and rich in copper and other minerals, the valley offers missing links between the prehistory of China and that of the greater Russian steppes. In the late Bronze Age the material from Minusinsk was important for the origins of bronze metallurgy in China, and in the Iron Age the area was a focus for the development of that equestrian mobility which was to become the elite way of life for much of the Eurasian steppe for more than a millennium.

We are privileged to publish the following two papers deriving from research at the Institute for the History of Material Culture at Saint Petersburg, which give us the story so far on the archaeology of this remarkable place. In The emergence of the Karasuk culture Sophie Legrand discusses the people who occupied the Minusinsk Basin in the Bronze Age, and in The emergence of the Tagar culture, Nikolai Bokovenko introduces us to their successors, the horsemen and barrow-builders of the first millennium BCE.

Long characterised as merchants in pursuit of metals, the Phoenician settlers on the Iberian peninsula are here given an alternative profile. The author shows that a new aristocracy, visible in the archaeology of both cemeteries and settlements, was engaged in winning a social advancement denied it at home in the east. In particular, the Egyptian alabaster vases found in Spain, far from being the products of pillage or trade, were appreciated as prestige objects which often ended their days as receptacles for high status cremations.

New excavations and survey on the island of Rapa have shown that a rockshelter was occupied by early settlers around AD 1200 and the first hill forts were erected about 300 years later. Refortification occurred up to the contact period and proliferated around AD 1700. Taro cultivation in terraced pond-fields kept pace with the construction of forts. The authors make a connection between fort-building and making pond-fields, demonstrating that the pressure on resources provoked both the intensification of agriculture and hostility between the communities of the small island.

The author demonstrates that the complex images of rock art known as formlings depict or evoke the equally complex architecture of ant-hills. Presented in cutaway and full of metaphorical references, they go beyond the image into the imagination.

Investigating the use of land during the medieval period at the celebrated ceremonial area of Angkor, the authors took a soil column over 2.5m deep from the inner moat of the Bakong temple. The dated pollen sequence showed that the temple moat was dug in the eighth century AD and that the agriculture of the immediate area subsequently flourished. In the tenth century AD agriculture declined and the moat became choked with water-plants. It was at this time, according to historical documents, that a new centre at Phnom Bakeng was founded by Yasovarman I.

The iron-axe hammer from the Mound 1 ship-burial at Sutton Hoo is reinterpreted as an instrument for sacrificing animals by pole-axing. As such it is a symbol of the leader-as-priest who was a feature of both Germanic and Roman pre-Christian society. (The editor is most impressed with this interesting suggestion).

The famous stelae from the Tartessos region of southern Iberia are compared with new discoveries from the Levant. Similarities of theme and iconography endorse the Phoenician connection, but show it to be more a cultural dialogue between east and west than an imposition by colonists.

A newly discovered site at Shangshan in the Lower Yangzi River region has revealed the oldest open-air sedentary village and domesticated rice in south China.

One way to understand how a landscape captures memories is to study places where documents have also preserved them. The author does this to remarkable effect in the island of Rarotonga, showing how the great road Ara Metua and its monuments and land boundaries were structured and restructured through time to reflect what was to be remembered. Students of the pre- and proto-histories of all continents will find much inspiration in the pages that follow.

The authors study burials of the medieval period in western Mongolia shortly before emergence of Genghis Khan. They find that both inhumation and cremation are practised, with a variety of accompanying rituals. Systematic micro-analysis of bone fragments on the one hand, and the accounts of early travellers on the other, allow these researchers to propose detailed explanations of mortuary practice in thirteenth century Altai that will be highly suggestive to prehistorians working elsewhere.

The origin of pottery is among the most important questions in Old World archaeology. The author undertakes a critical review of radiocarbon dates associated with the earliest pottery-making and eliminates a number of them where the material or its context are unreliable. Using those that survive this process of ‘chronometric hygiene’, he proposes that food-containers made of burnt clay originated in East Asia in the Late Glacial, c. 13 700-13 300 BP, and appeared in three separate regions, in Japan, China and far eastern Russia, at about the same time.

How did the Neolithic begin and develop in Southeast China? The author uses a highly detailed sequence of changes in sea-level, climate and vegetation to provide the back-drop – and some explanations – for the distinctive maritime community of the Taiwan Strait, whose descendants are thought to have colonised the Pacific.

The boat-grave cemetery at Abydos has provided the world's oldest sewn planked hulls, and vivid evidence for the way early Egyptian wooden boats were built. As well as sailing on the Nile, they were designed to be dismantled for carriage over land to the Red Sea. By the mid-fourth millennium BC the ship was a major technical force in the Egyptian political economy as well as an iconic force in ceremonial burial.

A recent study has suggested that the decorated Bronze Age metalwork of South Scandinavia depicted the path of the sun through the sky during the day and through the sea at night. At different stages in its journey it was accompanied by a horse or a ship. Similar images are found in prehistoric rock art, and this paper argues that, whilst there are important differences between the images in these two media, they also signal some of the same ideas.

The authors describe an ingenious Aztec form of irrigated field system and assess its costs and benefits. Swamps were reclaimed by digging channels by hand and the excavated soil used to construct embanked fields (chinampas). The banks were anchored by planted trees and the trees, the crops and the water channels created a sheltered space which itself raised the temperature and increased productivity. The construction of the whole system took 25 million person-days spread over 40 years. In their study of the energetics of construction, the authors show that this project, forced on the local community, was within their capacity and comparable to the labour expended on the production of cloth.

The unusual assemblage of aurochs horn cores from the baths of Bourbonne-les-Bains suggests votive deposits. But were they? The authors describe the assemblage, date it to the later Roman to early medieval period, discuss its possible environmental and ritual connotations, but also raise the possibility that it relates to craft-workers making use of the hot water supply to work the horn.