Understanding how prehistoric human groups sustained themselves upon encountering novel island environments is crucial for modelling population movements in key world regions like Southeast Asia. Here, the authors present new radiocarbon dates and isotopic data for human and animal remains recovered from the Neolithic site of Xiying on Haitan Island, on the south-east China coast. The human remains are the earliest yet discovered on the island, their stable isotope ratios revealing a lifelong heavy reliance on marine foods despite the availability of a diversity of terrestrial resources, offering new insights into human adaptive flexibility in maritime environments.

Since 2017, the Samtskhe-Javakheti Project has identified about 168 archaeological sites in the highlands of southern Georgia and conducted excavations at Meghreki Fortress and Baraleti Natsargora. These sites reveal complex occupational sequences, fortification strategies and decorative practices, highlighting the region’s role as an interactive cultural frontier between highlands and steppes.

Archaeology is not a solitary discipline concerned only with digging up the past; rather, its wide potential for transdisciplinary collaboration and unique deep-time perspective provide traction for real-world current and future impact. Here, the author proposes integration of systems thinking, small-wins psychology and a more creative interdisciplinary approach as ways for archaeologists to address the existential ‘polycrisis’. Using food security as an example, this article argues that, as archaeologists, we should focus far more attention on the polycrisis than we do at present, that we can make a difference in addressing it and that we have a responsibility to try.

The ‘Costumes of Authority’ project (2022–2024) investigated how clothing expressed secular and religious authority in Christian Nubia (ninth–fourteenth centuries). Experimental reconstruction of five representative costumes (two kings, two royal mothers, one bishop) based on iconographic and textile evidence highlights the physical impact and visual effect of these garments.

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.