Creating a facial appearance for individuals from the distant past is often highly problematic, even when verified methods are used. This is especially so in the case of non-European individuals, as the reference populations used to estimate the face tend to be heavily biased towards the average facial variation of recent people of European descent. To evaluate the problem, a facial approximation of a young woman from the Late Pleistocene rockshelter of Tham Lod in north-western Thailand was compared against the average facial variation of datasets from recent populations. The analysis indicated that the Tham Lod facial approximation was neither overtly recent in facial morphology, nor overtly European. The case is of particular interest as the Tham Lod individual probably belonged to a population ancestral to extant Australo-Melanesian peoples.

Knossos, on Crete, has long been famous both for its Minoan period remains and for the presence, at the base of the stratigraphy, of an early Neolithic settlement. The chronology and development of the Neolithic settlement, however, have hitherto been unclear. New light is now thrown on this formative period by combining new and older radiocarbon dates with contextual information in a Bayesian modelling framework. The results from Crete and western Anatolia suggest that an earlier, small-scale Aceramic colonisation preceded the later Neolithic reoccupation of Knossos.

Rock art worldwide has proved extremely difficult to date directly. Here, the first radiocarbon dates for rock paintings in Botswana and Lesotho are presented, along with additional dates for Later Stone Age rock art in South Africa. The samples selected for dating were identified as carbon-blacks from short-lived organic materials, meaning that the sampled pigments and the paintings that they were used to produce must be of similar age. The results reveal that southern African hunter-gatherers were creating paintings on rockshelter walls as long ago as 5723–4420 cal BP in south-eastern Botswana: the oldest such evidence yet found in southern Africa.

Recent genetic, isotopic and linguistic research has dramatically changed our understanding of how the Corded Ware Culture in Europe was formed. Here the authors explain it in terms of local adaptations and interactions between migrant Yamnaya people from the Pontic-Caspian steppe and indigenous North European Neolithic cultures. The original herding economy of the Yamnaya migrants gradually gave way to new practices of crop cultivation, which led to the adoption of new words for those crops. The result of this hybridisation process was the formation of a new material culture, the Corded Ware Culture, and of a new dialect, Proto-Germanic. Despite a degree of hostility between expanding Corded Ware groups and indigenous Neolithic groups, stable isotope data suggest that exogamy provided a mechanism facilitating their integration. This article should be read in conjunction with that by Heyd (2017, in this issue).

Two recent palaeogenetic studies have identified a movement of Yamnaya peoples from the Eurasian steppe to Central Europe in the third millennium BC. Their findings are reminiscent of Gustaf Kossinna's equation of ethnic identification with archaeological culture. Rather than a single genetic transmission from Yamnaya to the Central European Corded Ware Culture, there is considerable evidence for centuries of connections and interactions across the continent, as far as Iberia. The author concludes that although genetics has much to offer archaeology, there is also much to be learned in the other direction. This article should be read in conjunction with that by Kristiansen et al. (2017), also in this issue.

Excavation of the Han Dynasty chambered tomb at Laoguanshan in Chengdu, south-west China, has provided the earliest known evidence of pattern loom technology. Four model looms, along with accompanying artefacts and figurines relating to the weaving process, give insight into the technique of jin silk production. The discovery is hugely significant as it provides the first direct evidence of pattern-weave textile production in ancient China. Jin silk, made using this method, was both valuable and widely distributed, and the design of the machine influenced the invention of later looms and the spread of technology throughout Eurasia and Europe, representing great technological accomplishment for the second century BC.

The development of several key technologies in China—bronze and iron metallurgy and horse-drawn chariots—arose out of the relations of central China, of the Erlitou period (c. 1700–1500 BC), the Shang (c. 1500–1046 BC) and the Zhou (1046–771 BC) dynasties, with their neighbours in the steppe. Intermediaries in these exchanges were disparate groups in a broad border area of relatively high land around the heart of China, the Central Plains. The societies of central China were already so advanced that, when these foreign innovations were adopted, they were transformed within highly organised social and cultural systems.

The protohistoric graveyards of north-western Pakistan were first excavated in the 1960s, but their chronology is still debated, along with their relationship to broader regional issues of ethnic and cultural change. Recent excavation of two graveyards in the Swat Valley has provided new dating evidence and a much better understanding both of grave structure and treatment of the dead. Secondary burial was documented at Udegram, along with the use of perishable containers and other objects as grave goods. The complexity of the funerary practices reveal the prolonged interaction between the living and the dead in protohistoric Swat.

The Uffington White Horse is a unique later prehistoric geoglyph worked onto the chalk hillside of the Berkshire Downs in southern England. This large figure has seen little new interpretation since the early twentieth century. Unable to explain the form satisfactorily, archaeologists have shied away from acknowledging the distinct nature of the horse and its probable importance to previous occupants of the land. By reviewing the image's context within the broader archaeological landscape, the argument can now be made that the Uffington carving is a representation of the sun-horse found in iconography throughout later prehistoric Europe.

The limestone cliff face overlooking the coastline of Ritidian, on Guam, has revealed several caves with evidence of human activities. Since 2011, archaeological survey and excavation have exposed how use of the caves had changed over time, and that they were the focus of special behaviours, with quite distinct archaeology to that of nearby residential sites. To understand the significance of these caves fully, they must be contextualised within the broader framework of contemporary open-air sites. The result highlights the use of the caves for unique purposes at different times, including as water sources, venues for various art traditions and particular burial customs.

Recent issues of Antiquity have seen much discussion on the topic of Carthaginian infant sacrifice: was it a Graeco-Roman fiction or did it really happen? There are strongly held opinions on both sides of the argument, with much resting on the age profile of the children interred at the cemetery known as the Carthage Tophet. Here, the authors respond to claims by Smith et al. (2011, 2013) that their ageing of the infants and children was incorrect, and so also by extension was their interpretation that not all interments at the Tophet were the result of sacrifice.

The origins of the large Classic and Postclassic urban centres of Central Mexico remain poorly understood. Archaeological investigations at the Formative site of Tlalancaleca in Puebla (Mexico) provide the first detailed study of a large-scale urban centre of that period. Preliminary results suggest that the growth and development of this particular site may have influenced the subsequent growth of Teotihuacan itself. This study explores how urbanisation can be identified archaeologically by tracing the expansion of population and the emergence of monumental architecture.

The Malian Lakes Region of West Africa has long been overlooked in favour of better-known basins of the Niger River. New archaeological survey of this region, however, shows a history far more complex than had previously been thought, with settlement mounds and multiple phases of migration and eventual abandonment in a landscape of shifting power structures between the first millennium BC and second millennium AD. With the establishment of a relative chronology, the archaeology of this region now holds great potential for a better understanding of the broader cultural history of the Ghana Empire.

Climatic fluctuation is often cited as a major factor in the collapse of Maya civilisation during the Terminal Classic Period (e.g. Luzzadder-Beach et al.2016). Evidence of how people dealt or failed to deal with it has only recently become a more widespread focus for archaeologists. Investigations at Xcoch in the Puuc Hills show the various ways in which resident populations sought to manage water stores when faced with a climate prone to drought and other meteorological extremes. The study also presents results from the analysis of nearby speleothem laminae, which indicate that severe episodes of flooding and droughts may have contributed to a collapse in the population around AD 850.