Considerable attention has been devoted to the architecture and art history of Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple in the last century. There has, however, been little research on the functions and internal organisation of the large rectangular enclosure surrounding the temple. Such enclosures have long been assumed to have been sacred precincts, or perhaps ‘temple-cities’: work exploring the archaeological patterning for habitation within them has been limited. The results of LiDAR survey and excavation have now revealed evidence for low-density residential occupation in these areas, possibly for those servicing the temple. Recent excavations within the enclosure challenge our traditional understanding of the social hierarchy of the Angkor Wat community and show that the temple precinct, bounded by moat and wall, may not have been exclusively the preserve of the wealthy or the priestly elite.

Famous for its role as a Vishnuite temple during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Angkor Wat's subsequent fate has attracted less interest. Traces of modifications to the outer walls of the complex may, however, hold the key to understanding its role during its later phases. Here, holes in the masonry and structural changes to the substantial walls are investigated to demonstrate how wooden structures with a defensive role were built to protect the site sometime between the late thirteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The results reveal how Angkor Wat may have made its last attempt at defence.

Shuidonggou localities 1 and 2 provide key evidence for the Initial Upper Palaeolithic of north-east Asia. In a recent article in Antiquity (87 (2013), 368–383), Li et al. proposed a new chronology, building on the earlier results of Madsen et al. (Antiquity 75 (2001), 705–716). Here Susan Keates and Yaroslav Kuzmin take issue with the new chronology. The article is followed by a response from Li and Gao.

Sustainability, culture change, inequality and global health are among the much-discussed challenges of our time, and rightly so, given the drastic effects such variables can have on modern populations. Yet with many populations today living in tightly connected geographic communities—cities, for example—or in highly networked electronic communities, can we still learn anything about societal challenges by studying simple farming communities from many thousands of years ago? We think there is much to learn, be it Malthusian pressures and ancient societal collapse, the devastating effects of European diseases on indigenous New World populations or endemic violence in pre-state societies (e.g. Pinker 2012). By affording a simpler, ‘slow motion’ view of processes that are greatly accelerated in this century, the detailed, long-term record of the European Neolithic can offer insight into many of these fundamental issues. These include: human adaptations to environmental change (Palmer & Smith 2014), agro-pastoral innovation, human population dynamics, biological and cultural development, hereditary inequality, specialised occupations and private ownership.

Archaeology has wandered into exciting but daunting territory. It faces floods of new evidence about the human past that are largely digital, frequently spatial, increasingly open and often remotely sensed. The resulting terrain is littered, both with data that are wholly new and data that were long known about but previously considered junk. This paper offers an overview of this diluvian information landscape and aims to foster debate about its wider disciplinary impact. In particular, I would argue that its consequences: a) go well beyond the raw challenges of digital data archiving or manipulation and should reconfigure our analytical agendas; b) can legitimately be read for both utopian and dystopian disciplinary futures; and c) re-expose some enduring tensions between archaeological empiricism, comparison and theory-building.

In a recent study, Hardy et al. (2012) examined ten samples of dental calculus from five Neanderthal individuals from El Sidrón in northern Spain (occupation dates between 47300 and 50600 BP). In calculus from a young adult, they discovered the presence of compounds (dihydroazulene, chamazulene and methylherniarin) that occur in yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and camomile (Matriarca chamomilla). In preference to other hypotheses, the authors proposed that these two plants were used for self-medication. In this paper, we do not reject the self-medication hypothesis, but our observations of wild chimpanzees in Uganda, at Sonso in the Budongo Forest Reserve and at Kanyawara and Sebitoli in Kibale National Park (separated by about 150km), as well as ethnological and palaeontological evidence, lead us to propose three other explanations for the presence of these compounds. In addition, data on Neanderthal behaviour suggest that their subsistence and technological strategies were complex.

The paper by Anderson-Whymark, Garrow and Sturt raises very important questions about how we understand Later Mesolithic Britain, Ireland and continental Europe. National research traditions have, at times, obscured our understanding of contacts and connections between areas in the Mesolithic. A focus on the distribution of a small range of artefacts has created a situation where Mesolithic cultures begin to resemble nation-states (Marchand 2014: 11). Our terminology reflects and reifies these distinctions. If we wish to understand how social geographies within Britain and Ireland change over time, it is unhelpful, to say the least, that they should have such inconsistent period terminology: the British Early Mesolithic is absent from Ireland; the British Later Mesolithic is the Irish Early Mesolithic; and the Irish Later Mesolithic does not exist in Britain. The continental terminology is different again, and linguistic barriers remain a problem to regional-level synthesis. Anderson-Whymark et al.'s engagement with the loving detail of French lithic typology is hence to be welcomed.

Susan Keates and Yaroslav Kuzmin have contributed valuable comments on our assessment of the chronology and technological characteristics of Shuidonggou localities 1 and 2. These comments have demonstrated some discordance in our publications that should be corrected here. Their rationale for abandoning the conclusions altogether is, however, weak at best. Most importantly, there is no reason to return to the chronology for the Initial Upper Palaeolithic (hereafter termed IUP) assemblages at the Shuidonggou site complex (SDG) proposed by Madsen et al. (2001). Keates and Kuzmin's critique focuses on two separate issues: the first is our characterisation of the assemblages from the lower part of SDG 2, and the second is our handling of the dates. We will address these in order.

In the above paper by Johan Ling and Zofia Stos-Gale, an object seen in a number of Swedish rock paintings and carvings is understood to be a representation of the so-called oxhide shaped ingot of the eastern Mediterranean Minoan-Mycenaean Bronze Age culture.