An exceptional Late Neolithic burial discovered at Puisserguier, southern France, contains a skeleton buried with its head deposited on its torso; the disposal of the rest of the body follows a standard pattern for individual burials of this period. The authors discuss the nature of this deposit in terms of its funerary status.

When archaeologists discuss ‘ancestor cults’ or ‘ancestor veneration’, what this might entail in practice usually remains vague, leading to charges that the concept of ‘ancestors’ is often applied generically. In this article, the authors combine bioarchaeological, taphonomic, radiocarbon, and isotopic studies to explore the ritual practice of the selective retention, curation, and deposition of a group of human crania and mandibles. Between 5500–5400 bc, Neolithic people at Masseria Candelaro (Puglia, Italy) deposited broken crania and mandibles from about fifteen individuals in a heap in the centre of the village. These individuals were mostly probable males, collected over the course of two centuries and actively used, with their deposition marking the final disposal of a ritual collection. The motivations for the curation of cranial bone are investigated through comparison with archaeological and ethnographic examples, advancing an interpretation of ritual practice directed towards ancestors.

Post-mortem manipulation of human bodies, including the commingling of multiple individuals, is attested throughout the past. More rarely, the bones of different individuals are assembled to create a single ‘individual’ for burial. Rarer still are composite individuals with skeletal elements separated by hundreds or even thousands of years. Here, the authors report an isolated inhumation within a Gallo-Roman-period cremation cemetery at Pommerœul, Belgium. Assumed to be Roman, radiocarbon determinations show the burial is Late Neolithic—with a Roman-period cranium. Bioarchaeological analyses also reveal the inclusion of multiple Neolithic individuals of various ages and dates. The burial is explained as a composite Neolithic burial that was reworked 2500 years later with the addition of a new cranium and grave goods.

Cultural inheritance is a central issue in archaeology. If variation were not inherited, cultures could not evolve. Some archaeologists have dismissed cultural evolutionary theory in general, and the significance of inheritance specifically, substituting instead a view of culture change that results from agency and intentionality amid a range of options in terms of social identity, cultural values and behaviours. This emphasis projects the modern academic imagination onto the past. Much of the archaeological record, however, is consistent with an intergenerational inheritance process in which cultural traditions were the defining characteristics of behaviour.

For many years, scholars consistently dated cup marks – shallow depressions found on both portable and immovable stones – of northern Germany and southern Scandinavia to the Bronze Age. Novel findings trace them back to at least as far as the Late Neolithic period (LN, c. 2350 bc). Recently, portable cup marked stones belonging to a late Funnel Beaker context (c. 2800 bc) have been found. There are even indications of cup marks dating back to the 4th millennium bc. At present, a gap exists in the knowledge of cup marks and non-figurative art in general during the Younger Neolithic (YN) Corded Ware Culture (CWC) (c. 2800–2250 bc). This paper establishes the significance of three related types of secondary treatments of battle axe fragments, namely the addition of (hourglass shaped) unfinished shaft holes, deep pecking holes, and shallow cup marks. The argument put forward is that they were present in small numbers in the 4th millennium bc, becoming increasingly common during the proposed ‘gap phase’ in the context of CWC societies. The late 3rd millennium is a period of enormous social change. During this period, of the three types of secondary treatment only cup marks persist, while the potential media on which such cup marks are applied diversifies, with them appearing on objects and items other than battle axe fragments. It is proposed that this development is related to the social changes that characterise the onset of the LN. Finally, it is suggested that the LN and Bronze Age cup mark tradition is based on an earlier tradition initially associated with battle axes.

This project focuses on the subsistence strategies of Early Neolithic communities that inhabited the upland region of South Bohemia. Its results reveal a distinctive trajectory for this peripheral area that was colonised significantly later, brought incoming farmers into close contact with hunter-gatherers and made them adapt their conservative farming practices.

The shift towards cultivating domesticated crops was a pivotal development in ecological, economic, and human behavioural systems. As agriculture expanded beyond its origins, it faced diverse environments, often unsuitable for the originally cultivated domesticates. Farmers in Central Europe had to adjust and transform their farming systems, typically cultivating only five domesticated crop species. Here, we present new archaeobotanical data comprising 7955 determined charred remains and 22 radiocarbon dates from South Bohemia. This region, with higher altitudes, colder climates, and less fertile soils, lies on the periphery of Early Neolithic settlement. Our results reveal increased crop diversity as a form of adaptation to the harsher environment that bolstered resilience against crop failure. The earliest 14C-based evidence of deliberate cultivation of barley and Timopheev’s wheat in the region also provides new insights into the interplay between crop diffusion, landscapes, and food choices in the Neolithic Central Europe.

The Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia is considered one of the main centers of the first Neolithization worldwide. However, the dating and processes of its spread to neighboring regions have yet to be studied. This study reports new chronological data from the Fars highlands, southeast of the Fertile Crescent. Although the Pottery Neolithic in Fars has long been believed to have started in the late 7th millennium BC, recent excavations at Tepe Rahmatabad have suggested a date half a millennium earlier, raising controversy. Our data from Tol-e Sangi, a stratified site with Pre-Pottery (PPN) and Pottery Neolithic (PN) cultural deposits, support the advent of the Pottery Neolithic at the beginning of the 7th millennium BC. This suggests that despite the late arrival of the food production economy in the Fars highlands, which is dated from the mid-8th millennium BC, subsequent cultural development followed a path similar to that of the eastern wing of the Fertile Crescent.

Small, disc-shaped shell beads are recorded as mortuary offerings in many Neolithic and Bronze Age burials in Southeast Asia. Yet the provenance of these artefacts is often obscure, as production processes involve the removal of diagnostic morphological features, negating taxonomic classification. Here, the authors report on the combined isotopic and morphological analysis of a subset of shell beads from the site of Ban Non Wat in north-east Thailand. In addition to identifying freshwater sources for nearly all the beads, the results suggest the presence of multiple shell production centres—each with access to distinct aqueous environments—and widespread exchange in the Bronze Age.

The Maghreb (north-west Africa) played an important role during the Palaeolithic and later in connecting the western Mediterranean from the Phoenician to Islamic periods. Yet, knowledge of its later prehistory is limited, particularly between c. 4000 and 1000 BC. Here, the authors present the first results of investigations at Oued Beht, Morocco, revealing a hitherto unknown farming society dated to c. 3400–2900 BC. This is currently the earliest and largest agricultural complex in Africa beyond the Nile corridor. Pottery and lithics, together with numerous pits, point to a community that brings the Maghreb into dialogue with contemporaneous wider western Mediterranean developments.

The nature and timing of the transition to farming north of the Linearbandkeramik zone in Europe is the subject of much debate, but our understanding of this fundamental shift in lifeways is hampered by the low resolution of available data. This article presents new multi-proxy evidence from Swifterbant (4240–4050 BC), in the Dutch wetlands, for morphologically domestic cattle with two different dietary regimes. The authors argue that the results indicate early animal management, alongside arable farming and the continuance of foraging practices, prompting the reconsideration away from broad statements about the Neolithic north of the Linearbandkeramik zone towards more local trajectories.

Clusters of Neolithic cursus monuments are attested in several parts of Britain but have so far not been recorded in Ireland, where only isolated or pairs of monuments are known. A recent lidar survey of the Baltinglass landscape of County Wicklow, Ireland, has now identified a cluster of up to five cursus monuments. Here, the author explores this group of monuments and their significance within the wider setting of Neolithic Ireland and Britain. Their unique morphology, location and orientation offer insights into the ritual and ceremonial aspects of the farming communities that inhabited the Baltinglass landscape and hint at the variability in the form and possible functions of these monuments for early farming communities.

The diversity of human mortuary practices and treatments in prehistory is widely recognised, but our understanding of the purpose and manner of corpse manipulation in many regions is limited. This article reports on unusual aspects of funerary archaeology at the Neolithic site of Dingsishan, southern China. Anatomical consideration of cutmarks on human bones and the positioning of bodies and body parts within burials suggests that mortuary treatments at this site included strategic and systematic disarticulation, evisceration and excarnation. Rather than signalling social differences, these practices may have resulted from the very practical need to save space.

Broomcorn millet and foxtail millet were first cultivated in Neolithic China then the process spread west across Asia during the Bronze Age. But the distinctive ceramic, and later bronze, vessels utilised in East Asian cuisines for boiling and steaming grains did not move west alongside these crops. Here, the authors use measurements of 3876 charred millet grains to evaluate regional variations and implications for food preparation. In contrast to wheat grains, which became smaller as their cultivation moved east, millet grains became larger as they spread from northern China into Inner Asia and Tibet. This indicates the decoupling of millets from associated cooking techniques as they reached geographical and cultural areas.

This study presents the first extensive radiocarbon dating programme of Bronze Age material from northern Germany, and it combines radiocarbon dates, relative typo-chronological date ranges, and stratigraphic data within a Bayesian chronological framework. We estimate the cemetery complex at Mang de Bargen (Bornhöved, distr. Segeberg, Schleswig-Holstein) to be in use for more than two millennia, which is exceptionally long in northern Germany and in a wider European context. The site provides a unique insight into the dynamic nature of burial monuments and associated burial practices, from the Late Neolithic and into the Pre-Roman Iron Age (c. 2500–50 bc). The barrow building tradition lasted around a millennium (c. 2350 –1300 bc), with several barrows in concurrent use. The barrows were persistently re-used as burial ground, both within ‘living memory’ of the primary graves, but also long after. The burial intensity varied over the cemetery’s use-life, with distinct peaks in the Late Neolithic, when the first barrows were erected; in the Older Bronze Age when more barrows were erected; in the Younger Bronze Age, when secondary cremation graves were added to existing barrows; and finally in the Pre-Roman Iron Age, with the addition of an urnfield. The funerary rituals vary considerably over the period: from inhumation to cremation, and from primary and secondary graves in barrows to flat graves. Cremation was introduced in the 14th century bc but inhumation and cremation were used in parallel for around a century before the former ritual was abandoned c. 1300 bc. The study provides absolute chronological distributions of the grave types present at Mang de Bargen and shows them to be comparable to other sites at a regional and over-regional scale, successfully demonstrating how new types were quickly adopted across large parts of north-western Europe.

Lack of contextual evidence for the use of small personal ornaments means that much of our understanding of ornamentation traditions within archaeological cultures is reconstructed from ethnographic comparisons. New in situ finds from the areas around the ears and mouth in burials at Boncuklu Tarla, a Neolithic settlement in Türkiye, add a novel dimension to the interpretation of stone ‘tokens’ or ‘plugs’. This article presents a new typology for these artefacts and argues for their use as ear ornaments or labrets in a practice involving significant and lasting corporal alteration.

Sedentary occupation of the southern Levantine coast spans from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic C to the Early Bronze Age Ib phase (c. 7000–3100 BC). Sites dating to the Early Pottery Neolithic (c. 6400–5500 BC) are scarce, however, potentially reflecting the effects of the 8.2ka climatic event. Here, the authors present the investigations at the submerged site of Habonim North off the Carmel Coast. Typological and radiocarbon dating indicate an Early Pottery Neolithic occupation and evidence for continuity of subsistence and economic strategies with both earlier and later Neolithic cultures. The results indicate the resilience of coastal communities in the face of significant climatic uncertainty and contribute to understanding human responses to environmental change.

Recent research has considered the relationship between Stonehenge and sites in south-west Wales, raising questions about whether the first monument at Stonehenge copied the form of an earlier stone circle at Waun Mawn and how the relationship between these sites was connected with the transport of bluestones between the different regions. But Stonehenge and Waun Mawn are not the only prehistoric sites in Britain and Ireland that share architectural elements and hint at social connections across vast distances of land and sea. This debate article explains how the questions raised about these Late Neolithic monuments can and should be applied to other monumental complexes to explore this insular phenomenon.