Excavations at Kalat-e Yavar offer new insights into prehistoric connectivity between the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia. Stratified deposits yielded ceramics and burials from the third/second millennia BCE, alongside architectural remains, pits, faunal/botanical assemblages and a kiln, marking the Bojnord Plain as a cultural contact zone.

The WEAR project is developing integrative methods to analyse and predict use-related shape transformation of Neolithic stone tools from Central Europe through experimental archaeology and computational modelling.

Newly discovered open-air sites along the Dorps River in the arid Karoo (South Africa), a region with uneven archaeological coverage, demonstrate multiple visits to this favoured habitat in the late Holocene Later Stone Age (c. 3000–2000 BP).

The Polychrome Expansion marks the widespread dispersal of an emblematic ceramic style across much of Amazonia during a period of broad social transformation. Yet the timing and constituent routes for this dispersal are poorly understood, in part due to a lack of dating at many sites. Here, the authors apply computational methods to model the expansion via existing radiocarbon dates, critically examining issues of timing, travel and trade/conflict. The results, they argue, call for a reinterpretation of the Polychrome Expansion as a long-lasting and gradual process that advanced from secondary rivers and spread along main channels, eventually impacting colonial history.

This study investigates Escuadrón 41, a former colonial battery turned detention and torture centre, to examine the material and mnemonic afterlives of state violence in Cuba. Through excavation, archival research and oral histories, it reveals how ruins, memory and erasure intersect, positioning archaeology as critical engagement with difficult pasts.

Despite contemporary relevance in understanding how cities historically overcame demographic, social and economic constraints imposed by the lack of clean, fresh water, the value of estimating aqueduct delivery rates and their potential relationship with population size in the Roman Empire remains uncertain. Here, the authors use settlement scaling theory to examine recent statistics for city size and aqueduct capacity, revealing a systematic but sublinear relationship between these variables, whereby water supply increased at a slower rate than population size. Far from merely ostentatious displays of power, aqueducts were carefully planned to ensure an adequate supply of clean and fresh water.

The analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone collagen can reveal aspects of diet and how this may change between periods and places. Here, the authors apply a ‘whole-town’ approach to isotopic analysis, to characterise and explore variation in diet within medieval Cambridge and its hinterland. By adopting this approach, and a robust isotopic baseline, the authors argue that the number of confounding variables that typically plague archaeometric research are reduced, allowing for more nuanced interpretation of data. For medieval Cambridge, this nuance comes in the form of inter-site comparisons in the lived experience of social differentiation.

Ostrów Lednicki was a centre of the Piast dynasty (tenth–fourteenth centuries AD), laying the foundations for the development of the Polish state. A collapsed tenth-century wooden fortification associated with Bolesław the Brave (the first king of Poland) and its unique sculptural element provide insights into early-medieval construction techniques.

Diet and material culture are interlinked, and examination of organic residues in ceramic vessels permits the simultaneous study of both; exemplified here in the analysis of early-medieval pottery from England and Denmark for biomarkers indicative of fish processing, a possible dietary indicator of Scandinavian migration during the Viking Age (c. AD 793–1066). While almost a quarter of sampled Danish pots were used to cook fish, diagnostic aquatic markers were securely identified in only 13 of 298 English vessels. Geographic homogeneity and temporal persistence in processing terrestrial animal fats instead suggest that Scandinavian settlers pragmatically conformed to Anglo-Saxon culinary traditions.

Debates concerning the roles of sensory perceptions and responses in past societies are increasingly gaining traction in the archaeological discipline, but European medieval archaeology has only recently begun to engage with them. Moving beyond previous approaches in medieval studies that focused on the five physical senses, this article investigates material culture through the conceptual lens of sensory regimes. Drawing on case studies from the sixth to seventeenth centuries and examining diverse archaeological evidence—including artefacts, burial practices and urban environments—the author argues that material culture can facilitate or oppose social, political and religious regimes through sensory practices.

This project investigates archaeological material collected from north-west China in the 1920s and housed at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm. Finds and archival materials are examined and catalogued to learn about prehistoric cultural interactions and to reconnect discoveries with the original excavation contexts and excavators.

An archaeological survey of Kitsissut, a remote island cluster in the High Arctic of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), has revealed a human presence almost 4500 years ago, during the formation of a vital marine environment—Pikialasorsuaq polynya. Kitsissut is accessible only by a difficult open-water journey, and repeated occupation thus permits inferences on the sophistication of watercraft technology and navigational skill. Here, the authors argue that this demonstrable reach of Early Paleo-Inuit communities across marine and terrestrial ecosystems enhances our understanding of their lifeways and environmental legacy, raising critical new questions about Indigenous agency in shaping emerging Arctic ecosystems.

Adapting to a global urban future requires diverse, long-term perspectives on urbanism. URBank supports this by bringing together global deep-time urban datasets in a modern open-science computing platform. Its design eschews checklist definitions of cities, representing the variability of past urbanism and enabling systematic comparative spatiotemporal research.

Analysis of historic aerial photography has identified a possible monumental formal garden complex on the outskirts of Tabriz, Iran. Here, the authors describe this complex and explain why it is an important addition to our knowledge of elite Persian garden design practice that spread globally over time.