The Palaeolith collection of the antiquarian Dr Tom Armstrong Bowes was the founding component of Herne Bay’s first museum and became one of the larger and more significant collections in the British Palaeolithic record. Its value to debates on the British Palaeolithic, however, has been limited by a stark lack of contextual data. Previously unstudied museum archives have now begun to unlock the lost provenance of this large collection so that it once again can contribute to long-standing regional questions on Acheulean typologies.

The authors present results from a new research project focusing on the prehistory of the area surrounding a vast flint outcrop in Mongolia, called Tsakhiurtyn Hundi, in the borderland between the Gobi-Altai Mountains and Gobi Desert. They present the discovery of a cave and the results of its exploration, confirming its use by Pleistocene hunter-gatherers.

Archaeological nomenclature influences the classification of cultural phases, objects and related behavioural interpretations. The term ‘Madrasien’, synonymous with the Acheulian, was a key concept in early studies of Indian prehistory, encompassing notions of geographical/administrative boundaries, tool types, cultural identities and migrations. Madrasien was coined in 1931 by the Austrian prehistorian Oswald Menghin and established in South Asian prehistory by V.D. Krishnaswami. Here, the authors trace the evolution of the term, situating it within the wider discourses in Indian prehistory and examining its role in shaping ideas on South Asian Palaeolithic nomenclatures. The Madrasien was gradually replaced by the current medley of African, European and Southeast Asian terminologies.

Throughout the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene, humans adapted to significant climate and environmental change. One key region for investigating these adaptive strategies is Island Southeast Asia, where fluctuating sea levels led to dramatic changes in coastlines, vegetation and fauna. The authors present new data from the re-excavation of Pilanduk Cave on Palawan Island, Philippines. The results corroborate the results of earlier excavations that identified Pleistocene occupation of the site. Pilanduk shows evidence for specialised deer hunting and freshwater mollusc consumption during the Last Glacial Maximum. The results add to the evidence for the shifting foraging behaviours of modern humans occupying variable tropical environments across Island Southeast Asia.

Beginning in the Middle Palaeolithic, human populations penetrated areas of Central Asia that are today characterised by extremely arid conditions. Mongolia's Gobi Desert comprises one such region. Tsagaan Agui Cave presents an example of the later Pleistocene occupation of this area, containing stratified evidence of diachronic, intense human and animal occupation.

The Romanelli Cave in south-east Italy is an important reference point for the so-called ‘Mediterranean province’ of European Upper Palaeolithic art. Yet, the site has only recently been subject to a systematic investigation of its parietal and portable art. Starting in 2016, a project has recorded the cave's interior, discovering new parietal art. Here, the authors report on a selection of panels, featuring animal figures, geometric motifs and other marks, identifying the use of different types of tools and techniques, along with several activity phases. These panels are discussed with reference to radiocarbon dating of nearby deposits, posing questions about chronology, technology and wider connections between Upper Palaeolithic cave sites across western Eurasia.

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.

Nery Delgado was a key figure in the development of archaeological methods applied to prehistoric sites in Portugal within European archaeology at the end of the nineteenth century. He was the first in Europe to use a grid in his 1879–1880 excavation at the Casa da Moura cave (Óbidos, Portugal). The grid divided the cave into twenty-eight sectors excavated independently and, in each, all archaeological and bioanthropological finds were documented and marked with labels recording depth and excavation units. The 3D information obtained by Nery Delgado features among late nineteenth-century attempts at recording contextual data, a precursor of archaeological methods of data gathering that are used worldwide today. Nery Delgado was, thus, a pioneer of contemporary archaeological excavation methods.

The discovery of an Early Upper Palaeolithic rockshelter, Nahal Rahaf 2, in the southern Judean Desert revives the debate about whether the Levantine Aurignacian extended into the arid regions of the Southern Levant.

Here we report the findings from excavations at the open-air Middle Palaeolithic site of Alapars-1 in central Armenia. Three stratified Palaeolithic artefact assemblages were found within a 6-m-thick alluvial-aeolian sequence, located on the flanks of an obsidian-bearing lava dome. Combined sedimentological and chronological analyses reveal three phases of sedimentation and soil development. During Marine Oxygen Isotope Stages 5–3, the manner of deposition changes from alluvial to aeolian, with a development of soil horizons. Techno-typological analysis and geochemical sourcing of the obsidian artefacts reveal differential discard patterns, source exploitation, and artefact densities within strata, suggesting variability in technological organization during the Middle Palaeolithic. Taken together, these results indicate changes in hominin occupation patterns from ephemeral to more persistent in relation to landscape dynamics during the last interglacial and glacial periods in central Armenia.

Identifying the residues of children's activities in deep time contexts is essential if we are to build a comprehensive understanding of human cognitive and cultural development. Despite the importance of such data to human evolution studies, however, archaeologists have only recently begun to look for prehistoric children's material culture, and the identification of children's spaces is completely absent for deep time contexts. This paper draws together sociological and historical data regarding the universal need of Homo sapiens children for ‘secret’ places – places away from parental control. These spaces are important for the behavioural development of children and are universal in modern contexts. This paper demonstrates that these features can be identified in prehistoric archaeological records – and as such – researchers will have new datasets with which to interrogate the role of children in the development of their respective societies.

The Pleistocene archaeological record of South Asia is important for addressing questions relating to the origin and evolution of Palaeolithic cultures, continuity or change in lithic technologies, and population dispersals across Asia. Here, the authors report on intensive regional studies to investigate variability within this record, employing field survey, lithic analysis and experimental knapping. They examine Palaeolithic hominin behavioural change in the Wainganga Basin, central India, focusing on variability in spatial distribution, stratigraphy and lithic reduction strategies in Acheulian to Late Palaeolithic sites. This emphasises the diversity of cultural sequences in South Asia and contributes to questions of transition and change based on cultural preferences, raw materials and lithic strategies in different regions.

The discovery of eight biface lithic artefacts at Kashiwabara in Japan demonstrates the use of lithic reduction strategies, and suggests that mobile hunter-gatherers on the Japanese Islands were caching artefacts during the Incipient period of Jomon (c. 15–11 500 cal BP). This has parallels with hunter-gatherer behaviour in North America, and indicates that caching strategies may not have been unique to Palaeoindians.

Circular features made from mammoth bone are known from across Upper Palaeolithic Eastern Europe, and are widely identified as dwellings. The first systematic flotation programme of samples from a recently discovered feature at Kostenki 11 in Russia has yielded assemblages of charcoal, burnt bone and microlithic debitage. New radiocarbon dates provide the first coherent chronology for the site, revealing it to be one of the oldest such features on the Russian Plain. The authors discuss the implications for understanding the function of circular mammoth-bone features during the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum.

Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan became an iconic Palaeolithic site following Ralph Solecki's mid twentieth-century discovery of Neanderthal remains. Solecki argued that some of these individuals had died in rockfalls and—controversially—that others were interred with formal burial rites, including one with flowers. Recent excavations have revealed the articulated upper body of an adult Neanderthal located close to the ‘flower burial’ location—the first articulated Neanderthal discovered in over 25 years. Stratigraphic evidence suggests that the individual was intentionally buried. This new find offers the rare opportunity to investigate Neanderthal mortuary practices utilising modern archaeological techniques.

This project aims to reconstruct the settlement patterns and palaeoenvironment of the Sąspów Valley in the Polish Jura by combining unpublished archaeological fieldwork with results of recent excavations at 13 cave sites.

The FINDER project aims to apply ZooMS to identify new hominin fossils from across large parts of Eurasia previously lacking in such evidence.