Excavations at the Middle Pleistocene site of La Cotte de St Brelade, on theisland of Jersey in the English Channel, have revealed a long sequence ofoccupation. The continued use of the site by Neanderthals throughout anextended period of changing climate and environment reveals how, despitechanges in the types of behaviour recorded at the site, La Cotte emerged asa persistent place in the memory and landscape of its early hominininhabitants. The site's status as a persistent place for these peoplesuggests a level of social and cognitive development permitting reference toand knowledge of places distant in time and space as long ago as at leastMIS 7.

Early Archaic human skeletal remains found in a burial context in Lapa doSanto in east-central Brazil provide a rare glimpse into the lives ofhunter-gatherer communities in South America, including their rituals fordealing with the dead. These included the reduction of the body by means ofmutilation, defleshing, tooth removal, exposure to fire and possiblycannibalism, followed by the secondary burial of the remains according tostrict rules. In a later period, pits were filled with disarticulated bonesof a single individual without signs of body manipulation, demonstratingthat the region was inhabited by dynamic groups in constant transformationover a period of centuries.

The interment of bodies in ceramic vessels, or ‘pot burial’, was awidespread practice across the ancient world. Commonly associated withpoverty, and with child and infant burials, the reuse of domestic vesselsfor burial has been taken to indicate that low value was assigned to thecontainers and their contents. New analysis urges a more holistic andculturally situated understanding. Contradictory evidence reveals that thisburial practice was also used for adults and is represented in high-statustombs. Far from being recycled ‘rubbish’, the ceramic containers may havereflected symbolic associations between pots, wombs and eggs, facilitatingrebirth and transition into the afterlife.

The first direct absolute dates for the exploitation of several summer cropsby Indus populations are presented here. These include rice, millets andthree tropical pulse species at two settlements in the hinterland of theurban site of Rakhigarhi. The dates confirm the role of native summerdomesticates in the rise of Indus cities. They demonstrate that, from theirearliest phases, a range of crops and variable strategies, includingmulti-cropping, were used to feed different urban centres. This hasimportant implications for understanding the development of the earliestcities in South Asia, particularly the organisation of labour andprovisioning throughout the year.

Recent excavations at the coastal cemetery of Pain Haka on Flores haverevealed evidence of burial practices similar to those documented in otherparts of Southeast Asia. Chief among these is the use of pottery jarsalongside other forms of container for the interment of the dead. The datingof the site combined with the fact that this burial practice is present oversuch a wide geographic area suggests a widespread belief system during theNeolithic period across much of Southeast Asia.

Representations and remains of sharks are found in Mesoamerican art andarchaeology from the first millennium BC onwards. They appear at coastalsites, but also remarkably far inland, hundreds of kilometres from thewaters where they were sighted or hunted. For the Maya of the interior ofthe Yucatán Peninsula, encounters with live sharks would have been anexceedingly rare occurrence. Yet the animals arrived inland in piecemealfashion—as chunks of meat and sets of teeth—and via stories. By followingthe procurement, transportation, representation and ritual use of sharksfrom the sea to the jungle, the author shows how the ancient Maya drew onboth evidence and myth to imagine and explain these unfamiliar marinecreatures.

Taiwan presents a puzzling anomaly in the development and expansion of Southand Southeast Asian trade routes. The lack of historical records from theisland emphasises the value of archaeology for understanding theestablishment of trade and the transmission of people, ideas and knowledge.Recent research focusing on newly excavated sites such as Jiuxianglan showsthat the Metal Age in Taiwan began around 400 BC, much earlier than waspreviously thought. Furthermore, it seems that early trade predominantlyprioritised links to the south, and not, curiously, with Mainland China tothe immediate west as had traditionally been supposed.

The Base Ring juglets of Late Bronze Age Cyprus have long been associatedwith opium due to their hypothetical resemblance to inverted poppy heads.Analysis of organic residues on Base Ring juglets from Cyprus and Israel,however, showed no trace of opium; instead, the vessels had contained avariety of perfumed oils. The analytical results are supported by textualevidence attesting to a lively trade across the eastern Mediterranean inaromatic substances and compounds, rather than in opium. The poppy-headshape of the Base Ring juglets was not a reference to their contents.

The rare discovery of a well-preserved miliarium—a waterboiler—in a rural bath house in Gaul suggests that the technology of watersupply had penetrated the remoter parts of the Roman world. Such boilerswere frequently recycled for their valuable metal content. This example, bycontrast, was buried close to where it once stood—perhaps in connection withthe ritual deposit of complete animal carcasses around the bath house. Thesymbolic associations of the boiler are suggested by decorative elementsincluding the mask of a bearded man, argued to represent Okeanos, a divine personification of the sea. Thenear-complete state of the boiler also provides new insight into theprocesses used in its manufacture from lead and copper alloys.

The settlement of high-altitude uplands by early agropastoralists demandedspecific kinds of social and economic adaptation. Upland valley systems innorth-west Argentina were used extensively during the Formative period (200BC to AD 850). New investigations of the alluvial fans of the Tafí Valleyshow how the occupation history of the region developed across time andspace, demonstrating remarkable stability over 1000 years of agropastoralexploitation. The dense but scattered distribution of early farmers acrossthis landscape highlights household continuity through a period of regionalpopulation growth.

Fieldwork at Rendlesham in Suffolk has identified a major central placecomplex of the early–middle Anglo-Saxon periods. This has particularsignificance in the light of Bede's eighth-century reference to a ‘royalsettlement’ at Rendlesham and the princely burial site at nearby Sutton Hoo.This interim report summarises the archaeology, and considers the widerinterpretative issues relating to economic complexity and socialdiversity.

The rock art of Doria Gudaluk (Beswick Creek Cave) in theNorthern Territory of Australia has previously provided a valuable lesson inthe difficulties of definitive interpretation without local knowledge. Now,newly recorded motifs at the site—some only visible with digitalenhancement—highlight the dangers of relating stylistic changes to thereplacement of different cultures. When considered in the context of localhistory, developments in the rock art of Doria Gudaluk during the secondhalf of the twentieth century can be understood as the result of newcultural collaborations between incoming groups and older, localcommunities.

How should we identify, protect and preserve contemporary heritage? Fiveyears ago, comparisons in an Antiquity paper between the‘simulations of scenes’ drawn on the wall of 6 Denmark Street by John Lydon,during Sex Pistols rehearsals in the 1970s, and the Palaeolithic cave art ofLascaux provoked a strong response. Less contentious was the recent listingof the building, bringing its punk artworks under statutory protection. Inthis follow-up to their earlier article, the authors review the initialreaction from the media, the public and the artist himself, and consider howattitudes may have shifted. They also offer a novel, ‘punk’-informedapproach to the management of cultural heritage.

Since the establishment of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, the systematicreporting of metal-detected finds in England and Wales has increased ourknowledge of distribution patterns and complemented the evidence fromassemblages uncovered by conventional excavation. The large number of Romanmetal small finds documented, particularly brooches, now allows for aquantitative comparison between those recovered through excavation and thosediscovered by metal-detecting. This study shows that certain artefactmorphologies are more easily detected than others, resulting in differentialrates of representation in the archaeological record. It is suggested thatsimilar biases can be seen in artefacts from other periods. This hasimportant consequences for anyone wishing to use metal-detected material insynthetic studies.

Photogrammetry provides an accessible, cost-effective means of creating ahigh-resolution, digital 3D record of archaeological artefacts. Themethodology has been widely adopted, but a number of issues remain,especially in relation to model variability, and to misalignments thatresult in gaps in the models generated. Two new approaches are presentedhere that have been shown to increase standardisation during data captureand processing routines. This ensures that models are seamless andquantitatively accurate.