The popular image of metalworking sites in desert settings envisages armies of slaves engaged in back-breaking labour. This is in conflict with ethnographic evidence indicating that skilled specialist metalworkers are often accorded high social status. This study approaches that contradiction directly by studying the remains of domesticated food animals from domestic and industrial contexts at Timna in southern Israel. The authors demonstrate that the higher-value meat cuts come from industrial contexts, where they were associated with the specialist metalworkers, rather than the ‘domestic’ contexts occupied by lower status workers engaged in support roles. It is suggested that the pattern documented here could also have been a feature of early metalworking sites in other times and places.

Recent investigations at Stonehenge have been accompanied by new research on the origin of the famous ‘bluestones’, a mixed assemblage of rhyolites and dolerites that stand among the much taller sarsens. Some of the rhyolite debitage has been traced to a quarry site at Craig Rhosyfelin near the Pembrokeshire coast; but fieldwork on the upland outcrops of Carn Menyn has also provided evidence for dolerite extraction in the later third millennium BC, and for the production of pillar-like blocks that resemble the Stonehenge bluestones in shape and size. Quarrying at Carn Menyn began much earlier, however, during the seventh millennium BC, suggesting that Mesolithic communities were the first to exploit the geology of this remote upland location.

The origins of the Neolithic in the Near East were accompanied by significant ritual and symbolic innovations. New light is thrown on the social context of these changes by the discovery of a bone wand displaying two engraved human faces from the Early Neolithic site of Tell Qarassa in Syria, dating from the late ninth millennium BC. This small bone object from a funerary layer can be related to monumental statuary of the same period in the southern Levant and south-east Anatolia that probably depicted powerful supernatural beings. It may also betoken a new way of perceiving human identity and of facing the inevitability of death. By representing the deceased in visual form the living and the dead were brought closer together.

When fire swept through a workshop at Ambelikou Aletri on Cyprus in the nineteenth or twentieth century BC it brought a sudden halt to pottery production, leaving the latest batch of recently fired vessels. The remains of the kiln and its immediate surroundings provide a rare opportunity to gain direct insight into the technology and organisation of a Middle Bronze Age pottery workshop in the eastern Mediterranean. Analysis of the batch of cutaway-mouthed jugs adjacent to the kiln reveals a level of standardisation focused more on vessel shape than capacity, and shows that at a detailed level, no two jugs were alike. This pottery production site provides vital background for the study of contemporary pottery assemblages on Cyprus and elsewhere in the broader region.

The discovery of a crushed golden bowl in the remains of the Iron Age citadel of Hasanlu in 1958 attracted considerable media attention at the time. The circumstances of its loss have long remained unclear, but were clearly associated with the violent destruction of the site in c. 800 BC. Detailed review of the find context and the skeletons found nearby now suggests that the bowl was being looted during the sack of the citadel by Urartian soldiers from an upper room where weapons, armour and fine metal vessels were stored. The enemy soldiers carrying off the Gold Bowl died in the attempt when the upper floors of the building collapsed, plunging them to their deaths.

The African origins of Egyptian civilisation lie in an important cultural horizon, the ‘primary pastoral community’, which emerged in both the Egyptian and Sudanese parts of the Nile Valley in the fifth millennium BC. A re-examination of the chronology, assisted by new AMS determinations from Neolithic sites in Middle Egypt, has charted the detailed development of these new kinds of society. The resulting picture challenges recent studies that emphasise climate change and environmental stress as drivers of cultural adaptation in north-east Africa. It also emphasises the crucial role of funerary practices and body decoration.

The Neolithic of Taiwan represents the first stage in the expansion of Austronesian-speaking peoples through the Pacific. Settlement and burial evidence from the Tapenkeng (TKP) or Dabenkeng culture demonstrates the development of the early Taiwanese Neolithic over a period of almost 2000 years, from its origin in the pre-TPK of the Pearl River Delta and south-eastern coastal China. The first TPK communities of Taiwan pursued a mixed coastal foraging and horticultural lifestyle, but by the late TPK rice and millet farming were practised with extensive villages and large settlements. The broad-spectrum subsistence diversity of the Taiwanese Neolithic was an important factor in facilitating the subsequent expansion of Austronesian-speaking peoples to the Philippines and beyond.

Pottery has sometimes been compared to a living organism in its cycle of birth, life and death or discard. A biographical approach to an unusual assemblage of pottery from the Late Bronze Age site of Pico Castro in central Spain suggests that they had been used together at a communal feast. The shared social memory that they acquired thereby conferred on them a special status that resulted in their eventual placement in the pit, fine wares and coarse wares together. Thus the varied biographies of the individual vessels—and the individual sherds—eventually converged not only in their discard but in the episodes that preceded it.

The long-term history of prehistoric populations is a challenging but important subject that can now be addressed through combined use of archaeological and genetic evidence. In this study a multidisciplinary team uses these approaches to document the existence of a major population bottleneck in Finland during the Late Neolithic period, the effects of which are still detectable in the genetic profile of the Finnish population today. The postglacial recolonisation of Finland was tracked through space and time using radiocarbon dates and stone artefact distributions to provide a robust framework of evidence against which the genetic simulations could be compared.

Pottery production in Formative Period Mesoamerica appears to have been organised at the household level, but its distribution also provides evidence of political or economic boundaries. One distinctive ware from the Valley of Puebla, Tlaquexpa Red, used for the manufacture of sub-hemispherical bowls, was analysed by instrumental neutron activation analysis. The results indicated that many of these vessels were being made by families at Tlaquexpa itself, but that some of their products were being traded to other communities, including the nearby civic-ceremonial centre of Xochiltenango. The study gives new insight into the role of pottery production in pre-Hispanic households.

Three prehistoric sites in the Upper Mun River Valley of north-eastern Thailand have provided a detailed chronological succession comprising 12 occupation phases. These represent occupation spanning 2300 years, from initial settlement in the Neolithic (seventeenth century BC) through to the Iron Age, ending in the seventh century AD with the foundation of early states. The precise chronology in place in the Upper Mun River Valley makes it possible to examine changes in social organisation, technology, agriculture and demography against a background of climatic change. In this area the evidence for subsistence has been traditionally drawn from the biological remains recovered from occupation and mortuary contexts. This paper presents the results of carbon isotope analysis to identify and explain changes in subsistence over time and between sites, before comparing the results with two sites of the Sakon Nakhon Basin, located 230km to the north-east, to explore the possibility of regional differences.

The lake-dwellings of the Circum-Alpine region have long been a rich source of detailed information about daily life in Bronze Age Europe, but their location made them vulnerable to changes in climate and lake level. At several Late Bronze Age examples, skulls of children were found at the edge of the lake settlement, close to the encircling palisade. Several of the children had suffered violent deaths, through blows to the head from axes or blunt instruments. They do not appear to have been human sacrifices, but the skulls may nonetheless have been offerings to the gods by communities faced with the threat of environmental change.

The discovery of a child’s skeleton in a Late Neolithic well in Sweden raises again the issue of watery rituals and human sacrifice in prehistoric societies. Analysis of diatoms from the right humerus and from the surrounding sediment indicated that the child died by drowning and had not simply been disposed of in the well after death. The scenarios of accidental drowning and murder are examined to account for this discovery. The preferred hypothesis, based on a comparative study of similar finds from north-western Europe, interprets this instead as a ritual sacrifice. The use of diatom analysis to establish drowning as the cause of death adds a new weapon into the armoury of forensic archaeology.

The Lapita expansion took Austronesian seafaring peoples with distinctive pottery eastward from the Bismarck Archipelago to western Polynesia during the late second millennium BC, marking the first stage in the settlement of Oceania. Here it is shown that a parallel process also carried Lapita pottery and people many hundreds of kilometres westward along the southern shore of Papua New Guinea. The key site is Hopo, now 4.5km inland owing to the progradation of coastal sand dunes, but originally on the sea edge. Pottery and radiocarbon dates indicate Lapita settlement in this location c. 600 BC, and suggest that the long-distance maritime networks linking the entire southern coast of Papua New Guinea in historical times may trace their origin to this period.

The Terracotta Army that protected the tomb of the Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang offers an evocative image of the power and organisation of the Qin armies who unified China through conquest in the third century BC. It also provides evidence for the craft production and administrative control that underpinned the Qin state. Bronze trigger mechanisms are all that remain of crossbows that once equipped certain kinds of warrior in the Terracotta Army. A metrical and spatial analysis of these triggers reveals that they were produced in batches and that these separate batches were thereafter possibly stored in an arsenal, but eventually were transported to the mausoleum to equip groups of terracotta crossbowmen in individual sectors of Pit 1. The trigger evidence for large-scale and highly organised production parallels that also documented for the manufacture of the bronze-tipped arrows and proposed for the terracotta figures themselves.

Excavations at four Iron Age moated sites in the Mun Valley in Thailand have identified seminal innovations, defined as emergent properties, that illuminate the origins of the kingdom of Angkor. Combined with recent research at Angkor itself, they present a compelling case for re-examining fundamental cultural changes that took place over a period of little more than four centuries, from AD 400–800. They compare with similarly rapid developments in Mesoamerica and Mesopotamia; fundamental parallels are evident in the role of charismatic agents for change, an ideology conferring god-like status on leaders, a new and highly productive economic base, an expanded interaction sphere for the exchange of prestige goods, and endemic warfare.

Recent work at La Laguna in Central Mexico provides an excellent illustration of the way in which information from architecture, food remains, ceramic vessels and chemical signatures can be brought together to demonstrate communal feasting associated with specific structures and public spaces. Structure 12M-3 contained a range of evidence indicative of food preparation and consumption. Ritual effigy vessels depicted deities connected with food and fertility, and fire and the hearth. Taken together, the several lines of evidence indicate that Structure 12M-3 was a special building, located directly behind the main temple and devoted to the preparation and production of communal feasts that were held in the adjacent plaza. This provides new insights into community life in the urban centres of early Mesoamerica.

Social analysis of cemeteries has traditionally viewed them as static images of social organisation. In this study of the Middle Yayoi jar-burial cemetery of Tateiwa-Hotta, however, the dynamic interrelationship between competing groups and successive generations can be discerned. Two initial burials proved to be foundational acts, followed by over 40 further burials spread over a series of generations. Differences in grave orientation and grave goods signalled the separate identities of the adjacent hamlets that came to bury their lineage leaders in this prominent location. Competition between lineages is indicated by externally acquired grave goods, including prestigious bronze mirrors from the Han commandery of Lelang in Korea, and by the varying styles of burial jar that illustrate and symbolise connections or alliances with other communities.

The discovery of an iron pin in place of an upper incisor tooth from a La Tène burial at Le Chêne in northern France may represent one of the earliest examples of a dental implant in Western Europe. The body was that of a young woman who had been buried in a richly furnished timber chamber. The iron pin may have been inserted during life to replace a lost tooth, or before burial to restore the visual integrity of the corpse. The concept of the dental prosthesis may have been taken from the Etruscans by returning Celtic mercenaries, although dental implants of this specific kind have not been found in Etruscan contexts.

The date of the Late Bronze Age Minoan eruption of the Thera volcano has provoked much debate among archaeologists, not least in a recent issue of Antiquity (‘Bronze Age catastrophe and modern controversy: dating the Santorini eruption’, March 2014). Here, the authors respond to those recent contributions, citing evidence that closes the gap between the conclusions offered by previous typological, stratigraphic and radiometric dating techniques. They reject the need to choose between alternative approaches to the problem and make a case for the synchronisation of eastern Mediterranean and Egyptian chronologies with agreement on a ‘high’ date in the late seventeenth century BC for the Thera eruption.