Here is a paper of pivotal importance to all prehistorians attempting to reconstruct societies from assemblages of shells or stone artefacts in dispersed sites deposited over tens of thousands of years. The authors demonstrate the perilous connections between the distribution and content of sites, their geomorphic formation process and the models used to analyse them. In particular they warn against extrapolating the enticing evidence from Pleistocene Willandra into behavioural patterns by drawing on the models presented by nineteenth-century anthropologists. They propose new strategies at once more revealing and more ethical.

A fragment of equid tibia found with a Mousterian assemblage in a rockshelter in the Crimean peninsula is carefully examined. The authors show that it has been knapped like flint to produce a tool probably at a time when stone resources were becoming exhausted. This tool is thus the product of a Neanderthal response to a local need as well as proof that the technological properties of bone were known.

Stable isotopes extracted from two hominins and a range of animals from the original Neanderthal site shows these Middle Palaeolithic people to have been hunters predominately on a meat diet. Comparison with other specimens further south suggests this diet – deer, but no fish or plants – to be something of a behavioural norm, whatever the latitude and plant cover.

The authors have discovered small oval panels of parallel lines in the famous Ligurian cave of Arene Candide, and show that it must be art of the Epigravettian period, c. 11-10000bp (uncalibrated).

Refitting flakes to cores is a well-developed way to investigate how stone tools were made. Here the author takes on the formidable task of refitting the stone blocks of menhirs, orthostats and megalithic tombs to their quarries. The results are impressive: the order of erection in a row of menhirs, the method of construction in a passage grave and the monumental chronology of a region are just three of the rewards of this promising new method.

How early did steppe dwellers penetrate the forests? The authors compare and contrast settlement on the steppe, in the forest and on the steep sea coast of western Patagonia, finding that the steppe is occupied first, from 11400 calendar years BP. But around 2800 calendar years BP settlements enter the forest almost simultaneously for a brief period along the length of the Cisnes river valley. Within a few centuries the experiment appears to be abandoned, and the focus of prehistoric peoples returns to the steppe.

The author reviews the role of string in early human communities, using prehistoric and ethnographic evidence. Fibres, rolled into string, offer a technical means of holding things together; but the process of manufacturing string itself inspired special roles and structures - which in turn held together the members of communities.

The authors identify natural bitumen on stone implements dating to 70 000 BP. It is proposed that this represents residue from hafting, taking the practice back a further 30 000 years from the date previously noted and published in Nature. The bitumen was tracked to a source 40km away, using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and carbon isotopes.

The Sannai Maruyama site (3900-2300 BC) is one of the largest known from Japan's Jomon period (14000-300 BC). This study shows that over 1500 years the number of dwellings, their size, the type of stone tools and the fondness for figurines varied greatly. Nor was it a story of gradual increase in complexity: the settlement grew in intensity up to a peak associated with numerous grinding stones, and then declined to a smaller settlement containing larger buildings, many arrowheads and virtually no figurines. Using a bundle of ingenious analyses, the author explains what happened.

Introducing the methods of archaeoclimatology, the authors measure the relative locus of the monsoons, the intensity of winter rains and the volume of water in the rivers in the Upper Indus, in the region of Harappa. They also note the adoption of a multi-cropping agricultural system as a possible strategy designed to adjust to changing conditions over time. They find that around 3500 BC the volume of water in the rivers increases, and the rivers flood, implying annual soil refreshment and the consequent development of agriculture. By contrast, from around 2100 BC the river flow begins to fall while the winter rains increase. This time-bracket correlates nicely with the brief flourishing of Harappa. The locally derived evidence from Harappa combined with the Beas survey data provide a model for understanding the abandonment of settlements in the Upper Indus and possibly the wider civilisation.

The new art objects from Zaraysk show an extraordinary repertoire of incised carving on mammoth ivory plaques and carving in the round, including representations of women and large mammals, and geometric decoration on bone utensils. The authors show that while belonging to the broad family of Upper Palaeolithic artists, the Zaraysk carvers produced forms particular to their region, some with magical associations.

Examining the beginnings of agriculture in the ‘Fertile Crescent’, this research team has compared the distribution of rainfall with the distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroups. The extended families signalled by J1 and J2 haplogroups seem to have had different destinies in the era of agro-pastoralist experiment: J2 were the agricultural innovators who followed the rainfall, while J1 remained largely with their flocks. Acknowledging the fuzzy edges of such mapping, the authors nevertheless escort us into new realms of the possible for the early history of peoples.

The present study examines the stone weapons available in Late Palaeolithic Korea, showing how the change in lithics signals a change in hunting strategy. In advance of the Late Glacial Maximum, a tanged spear tip flourished, reflecting the hunting of large mammals associated with the colder climate. In the more variable climate that followed, the prevalence of microliths suggests lightweight composite hunting weapons mostly used in pursuit of small game and diverse food resources. These weapons eventually included bow and arrows in the final Pleistocene.

Using pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, the authors show that amber was imported into Late Bronze Age Syria and used for making the prestige artefacts found in a Royal tomb of c. 1340 BC. The objects included beads and a unique vessel in the form of a lion, likely fashioned in Syria from raw amber imported from the Baltic via the Aegean.

A group of Linearbandkeramik people at Talheim, Germany were previously found to have died at the same time, probably in a massacre, and the authors were able to ask some searching questions of their skeletons. The isotope signatures of strontium, oxygen and carbon, which gave information on diet and childhood region, showed up three groups which correlated with hereditary traits (derived previously from the analysis of the teeth). In the local group, there were many local children but no adult women, suggesting they had been selectively taken alive at the time of the massacre. Another group, with isotope signatures derived from upland areas, includes two men who may have been closely related. A third group has a composition suggestive of a nuclear family. The variations of one type of isotope signature with another suggested subtle interpretations, such as transhumance, and a probable labour division in the community between stockholders and cultivators. Here we see the ever-growing potential of these new methods for writing the ‘biographies’ of prehistoric skeletons.

Defining territories and settlement hierarchies is a primary goal of archaeological survey, involving the mapping of different-sized settlements on the ground. However it may not always work, owing to the particular land use or political strategies anciently employed. With the aid of cuneiform documents from Tell Leilan, Syria, the author shows how the settlements found by archaeological survey in northern Mesopotamia actually relate to a number of intersecting authorities, with a hold on major tracts of pasture as well as on arable land and cities. These insights from the Near East have important implications for the interpretation of surveyed settlement patterns everywhere.