There are no known written records pertaining to the origins of the enigmatic bronze ‘Lion’ that stands atop one of the two large columns of the Piazzetta in St Mark’s Square, Venice (Italy). Representing the Venetian Winged Lion, a powerful symbol of statehood, the sculpture was installed during a time of political uncertainty in medieval Mediterranean Europe, yet its features do not reflect local artistic conventions. Here, the authors argue that stylistic parallels are found in Tang Dynasty China (AD 618–907); employing lead isotope analysis, they further show that the figure was cast with copper isotopically consistent with ore from the Lower Yangzi River basin.

First minted by polities in north-central Myanmar as early as the fourth century AD, silver coins bearing Rising Sun and Srivatsa motifs have been found in numerous archaeological contexts across Southeast Asia from Vietnam to Bangladesh. Strong standardisation in the design of these coins highlights patterns of trade and cultural interaction across this region that are otherwise underexplored. Here, the authors draw on a dataset of 245 coins from museums in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar, identifying die links that support trade routes between widely disparate areas, and illuminating the utility of die studies in counteracting the illicit trafficking of antiquities.

Bronze Age–Early Iron Age tin ingots recovered from four Mediterranean shipwrecks off the coasts of Israel and southern France can now be provenanced to tin ores in south-west Britain. These exceptionally rich and accessible ores played a fundamental role in the transition from copper to full tin-bronze metallurgy across Europe and the Mediterranean during the second millennium BC. The authors’ application of a novel combination of three independent analyses (trace element, lead and tin isotopes) to tin ores and artefacts from Western and Central Europe also provides the foundation for future analyses of the pan-continental tin trade in later periods.

Understanding the development and use of musical instruments in prehistory is often hampered by poor preservation of perishable materials and the relative rarity of durable examples. Here, the authors present a pair of third-millennium BC copper cymbals, excavated at Dahwa, Oman. Although they are the only well-contextualised examples from Arabia, the Dahwa cymbals are paralleled by contemporaneous examples from the Indus Valley and images in Mesopotamian iconography. Not only do the cymbals add to the body of evidence interpreted in terms of Indus migrants in Early Bronze Age Oman, they also suggest shared musical and potentially ritual practices around the Arabian Gulf at that time.

A shift towards constructing large circular monuments, including henges, during the Middle Neolithic of Britain and Ireland is exemplified in the monumental landscape of south-west England. Seventeen new radiocarbon dates for the Flagstones circular enclosure and the adjacent long enclosure of Alington Avenue, presented here, provide a chronology that is earlier than expected. Comparison with similar sites demonstrates that Flagstones was part of a broader tradition of round enclosures but was also distinctly innovative, particularly in terms of its size. These findings reinforce the value in developing precise chronologies for refining understanding of monument forms and associated practices.

Representations of the human body are ubiquitous in cultures across the world. Beyond the aesthetic, figurines transmit deeper meanings that were readily decodable by their intended audience and may still offer sociocultural insights despite the loss of this coding through time. The discovery of a rare tableau of ‘Bolinas’-type clay figurines dating to 410–380 BC at San Isidro, El Salvador, now permits the theoretical reconstruction of a less stratified Preclassic society in south-east Mesoamerica and the exploration of its spheres of interaction, which may have stretched along the coast from Guatemala to Costa Rica.

Extraordinary finds from the Store Frigård cremation cemetery on the Danish island of Bornholm suggest that the society that used the site played a key role in supra-regional contacts and in the distribution of goods and people across the Baltic Sea between the Continent and Southern Scandinavia during the Iron Age.

Widening and diversifying trade networks are often cited among the boom and bust of Bronze and Iron Age worlds. The great distances that goods could travel during these periods are exemplified here as the authors describe the spectroscopic identification of Baltic amber beads in an Iron Age cremation grave at Hama in Syria. Yet these beads are not unique in the Near Eastern record; as the authors show, comparable finds and references to amber or amber hues in contemporaneous texts illustrate the high social and economic value of resinous substances—a value based on perceptions of their distant origin.

The ancient site of Nessana in the south-western Negev had an important role in the logistics of early-Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The arid climate, which preserved organic material, and the richness of multilingual epigraphic evidence from this region make Nessana a key site for archaeological study of the material culture of pilgrimage.

Rice agriculture was brought to Japan during the first millennium BC by migrant communities of farmers from the Korean peninsula. Substantial geographic variation is observed in the uptake of this new subsistence economy, reflecting different forms of interaction between farmers and foragers. Here, the authors analyse a combination of settlement and radiocarbon data to determine the extent to which these different forms of interaction led to regional variations in population growth rate. Their results confirm the presence of different trajectories of growth, providing new insights into the diversity of demographic processes during the earliest stages of farming in Japan.

The Redes Andinas (Andean Networks) project assesses the complexity of ancient road networks in the archaeological record in the Andes, beyond the Inca roads system. A multiscale methodological approach allows us to characterise the transformation and resilience of the road networks over the past millennium, in the context of the 18°South parallel's vertical transect.

The Maghreb (north-west Africa) played an important role during the Palaeolithic and later in connecting the western Mediterranean from the Phoenician to Islamic periods. Yet, knowledge of its later prehistory is limited, particularly between c. 4000 and 1000 BC. Here, the authors present the first results of investigations at Oued Beht, Morocco, revealing a hitherto unknown farming society dated to c. 3400–2900 BC. This is currently the earliest and largest agricultural complex in Africa beyond the Nile corridor. Pottery and lithics, together with numerous pits, point to a community that brings the Maghreb into dialogue with contemporaneous wider western Mediterranean developments.

Minimally invasive compositional analyses of glass trade beads have revolutionised the study of these highly portable and socially significant items. Here, the authors interrogate new and legacy compositional data to investigate how Indigenous communities in eastern North America, particularly Wendat confederacy members, obtained beads from European traders and connected to broader interregional exchange systems c. AD 1600–1670. Diagnostic chemical elements in glass compositions reveal down-the-line exchange and population movement into the Western Great Lakes region prior to the arrival of European settlers, which highlights active Indigenous participation in transatlantic economic networks during a historical period of dynamic reorganisation and interaction.

Broomcorn millet and foxtail millet were first cultivated in Neolithic China then the process spread west across Asia during the Bronze Age. But the distinctive ceramic, and later bronze, vessels utilised in East Asian cuisines for boiling and steaming grains did not move west alongside these crops. Here, the authors use measurements of 3876 charred millet grains to evaluate regional variations and implications for food preparation. In contrast to wheat grains, which became smaller as their cultivation moved east, millet grains became larger as they spread from northern China into Inner Asia and Tibet. This indicates the decoupling of millets from associated cooking techniques as they reached geographical and cultural areas.