Khirbet Al-Sheikh Humaid is found 615 m above sea level in the central highlands of Palestine, northwest of the city of Nablus. During rescue excavations carried out at the site, part of a male human skull with a tooth attached was discovered. Accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) dating and stable isotope analysis were performed on the tooth at the Hertelendi Laboratory in Debrecen, Hungary. Dating revealed the individual had lived in the time frame 900–1030 AD, which is within the Abbasid period (750–1258 AD). Dietary analysis gave information on the daily life of the inhabitants of the settlement, showing local agriculture provided a diet of legumes and vegetables.

Marine radiocarbon (14C) ages are an important geochronology tool for the understanding of past earthquakes and tsunamis that have impacted the coastline of New Zealand. To advance this field of research, we need an improved understanding of the radiocarbon marine reservoir correction for coastal waters of New Zealand. Here we report 170 new ΔR20 (1900–1950) measurements from around New Zealand made on pre-1950 marine shells and mollusks killed by the 1931 Napier earthquake. The influence of feeding method, living depth and environmental preference on ΔR is evaluated and we find no influence from these factors except for samples living at or around the high tide mark on rocky open coastlines, which tend to have anomalously low ΔR values. We examine how ΔR varies spatially around the New Zealand coastline and identify continuous stretches of coastline with statistically similar ΔR values. We recommend subdividing the New Zealand coast into four regions with different marine reservoir corrections: A: south and western South Island, ΔR20 –113 ± 33 yr, B: Cook Strait and western North Island, ΔR20 –171 ± 29 yr, C: northeastern North Island, ΔR20 –143 ± 18 yr, D: eastern North Island and eastern South Island, ΔR20 –70 ± 39 yr.

There are now 101 radiocarbon dates from the long Paleolithic and post-Paleolithic culture-stratigraphic sequence in El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain. Here we report on two dates on bone from two different humans whose remains were found in disturbed surface sediments in the cave vestibule rear and that confirm the existence of burials in addition to previously reported residential occupations in the vestibule front pertaining to the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age periods (ca. 5500–3500 cal BP). In another attempt to resolve problems of stratigraphic incoherence of dates from the early Magdalenian periods in the vestibule rear, six new assays on faunal remains from Levels 119, 117, 114, 108, and 106 were run at Queen’s University in Belfast. There continue to be date inversions in the Lower Magdalenian range of levels that may be explained by a combination of intensive anthropic and rodent activity, major rock fall, slope wash and gravity-caused object movements, as well as possible problems in following some thin levels during excavations over a large area and across many years of work in the cave vestibule interior, particularly in the absence of any layers that are culturally sterile or even poor. Nonetheless, the coherent age of the Initial Magdalenian is fully confirmed by a new date from Level 21 in the vestibule front at ca. 22,000–20,500 cal BP), as is the general age range of the Lower Magdalenian (ca. 20,500–18,000 cal BP).

Short-duration archeological sites situated entirely within plateaus in the radiocarbon calibration curve pose unique challenges for our understanding of past processes at regional and global scales. This paper aims to overcome these limitations by leveraging the specific characteristics of two depositional contexts, the Early Neolithic Swifterbant Culture sites S3 and S4, located in the Dutch wetlands. These sites are of exceptional significance as they provide the earliest conclusive evidence of crop cultivation and animal husbandry outside the expansion of Linearbandkeramik (LBK) farmers in north-western Europe. Here, we present a customized approach that combines radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modeling, predicated on vertical sequences of short-lived plant remains. Our innovative approach enables us to determine, at a fine scale, the temporal position and duration of the prominent archeological contexts at S3 and S4, and explore the chronological relationship between the two sites. Through our analysis, we propose a new chronology for the onset of Neolithization in the Dutch wetlands.

We developed a new approach to identify vulnerabilities to water insecurity across entire archaeological culture areas by combining a paleohydrological model of the sensitivites of hydrological systems to droughts with least-cost analyses of the costs to acquire domestic water. Using a custom Python script integrated into ArcGIS Pro software, we calculated the pairwise one-way cost in time for walking between 225 water sources and 5,446 Ancestral Pueblo cultural sites across the Jemez and Pajarito Plateaus of the Jemez Mountains, New Mexico. This allowed us to identify whether periodic hydrological droughts occurring between AD 1100 and 1700 increased water acquisition costs across these regions. We found that hydrological droughts increased travel times in both regions to durations exceeding modern standards for water insecurity. Beginning in the fourteenth century, greater underlying hydrogeological sensitivities to droughts and the decline of a dual-residence pattern caused by population losses made the remaining aggregated communities of the Pajarito Plateau much more vulnerable to water insecurity than those on the Jemez Plateau. This would have upended long-standing relationships between communities and water on the Pajarito Plateau during a time when socioeconomic integration across the northern Rio Grande Valley pulled people toward valley bottoms.

The octagonal prism of Sennacherib BM 103000, today in the Middle East collection of the British Museum, is well-documented as a purchase made from the antiquities dealer Ibrahim Elias Gejou. However, the circumstances that brought this object to London from Iraq, as well as the trial this acquisition triggered in France have not been explored in scholarship. Yet, several documents survive and preserve this history. The letters that Ibrahim Elias Gejou sent about the prism to E.A. Wallis Budge, Keeper of Assyrian and Egyptian antiquities at the time, still exist today in the archive of the British Museum. While in France, records of the court case brought against Gejou by Benjamin Minassian who accused Gejou of having sold the prism without his knowledge, are to be found in the Archives de Paris. Read together, these documents narrate a chronology of events that begins with the appearance of the prism on the antiquities market and go much beyond a French court of law. To reconstruct this long-forgotten part of BM 103000's biography, this case study examines a dispute over the ownership of an artefact illegally removed from Iraq specifically to be sold to the British Museum, and how it impacted the parties who sold it.

This article presents a study of seventeen cylinder seals discovered in the city of the Eshnunna (Tell Asmar), which was one of the most important cities during the Old Babylonian period in Mesopotamia; these pieces are part of a large group of finds, statues, pottery, metal pieces, cuneiform texts, as well as group of cylinder seals, all of which were found in the private houses in the southern part of the city, by the Iraqi excavations at the site, more than twenty years ago. They showed the social status of these houses' residents, their loyalties and their religious beliefs. Thus the discoveries shed light on the importance of this city and the necessity of continuing excavation work there.

Examining the archaeological findings within the Mannaean kingdom, a significant association with Assyria emerges, highlighting these regions’ interconnectedness. The influence of both Urartian and Assyrian cultures on the Mannaean people becomes evident, indicating a shared cultural heritage or intimate exchanges among these cultures. Notably, the Kani Charmou graveyard in Mannaea serves as a compelling example, revealing a rich assortment of artifacts that parallel those discovered in Ziwiye, a renowned archaeological site in the region. These diverse grave goods unequivocally demonstrate the existence of a robust trade and exchange network between Mannaea and its neighbouring western counterpart, Assyria, and the profound impact of Assyrian culture on Mannaean society. This connection is also evident in religious practices, which show similarities. Through stylistic analysis and the identification of parallels in metal vessels, glazed jars, and a cylinder seal, the proposed dating of the Kani Charmou graveyard aligns with the Iron Age II period.

The Lagoa Salgada is located in the Paraíba do Sul river delta plain on the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, and is one of the few lagoons in the world that have well-developed recent stromatolites. Lagoa Salgada is a hypersaline lagoon formed in a very complex environmental system subjected to terrestrial and oceanic influences under different sea level regimes and climate variations. In addition, sediment and stromatolites are characterized by unusually positive inorganic δ13C VPDB values. For this reason, it has been the target of several geological and paleoenvironmental studies, which, in their great majority, require a geochronological technique in order to determine the changes in the environment over time. When radiocarbon (14C) dating is used, it is necessary to consider some details as the source of 14C in the environment and perform 14C ages calibration accordingly. In the present paper, a bibliographic survey was carried out in order to review the data treatment and improve the environmental evolution discussion based on accurate calibration. Using the Marine20 curve and an undetermined ΔR, we generated growth and depositional models to establish an overview of the formation of this lagoon.