In 2021, submissions to an art contest on Margarita Island, Venezuela, showcased Guaiquerí identity. Archaeology was largely absent from the artworks, but areas for meaningful future contributions connecting with existing identity narratives were identified. Intangible heritage, especially the Virgen del Valle and fishing, emerges as central to Indigenous identity formation.

Excavations at Xiaeryamakebu, located in the Qaidam Basin of north-west China, have uncovered a large Bronze Age settlement that includes residences and cemeteries. The site provides crucial insights into the Nuomuhong culture, its mortuary practices and local adaptation to the Tibetan Plateau.

‘The Castles’ project was completed in late 2025 (https://castles.unisi.it) and its innovative, multidisciplinary approach is revealing a revised chronological and typological sequence for the phenomenon of incastellamento in Italy. The results show an earlier appearance of large stone structures and a much later appearance of fortified stone-built villages around seigneurial centres than previously thought.

Conservation of fragile and fragmented archaeological remains can be essential to their preservation and study. Here, the authors use the example of the approximately 75 000-year-old Shanidar Z Neanderthal to illustrate the importance of appropriate conservation from excavation to the laboratory, and of the detailed documentation of this process, for enabling anatomical and taphonomic research.

Excavations on Letná Hill uncovered a forgotten 1950s labour camp linked to Prague’s Stalin Monument. Preserved architecture and artefacts reveal the daily life of workers, driven less by physical violence than by ideological pressure and social consequences, shedding new light on forced labour and material culture in communist Czechoslovakia.

Despite the survival of some historical records, little is known about water management in Urartu. This project focuses on the fortress of Argishtikhinili in the Araks Valley, Armenia, employing satellite imaging and remote sensing data to identify 1019km of water-management features, including a potential 134.6km of ancient canals.

Białowieża Forest in eastern Poland preserves a landscape largely unaffected by recent human activity. A multidisciplinary study combining airborne and surface surveys, excavations and palaeoenvironmental analysis confirms episodic human activity in the area over the past 10 000 years, providing a methodological foundation for future research and heritage conservation.

Excavations at the Jizhong site in eastern China reveal the agricultural and horticultural range of the ancient Yue state, uncovering rice, gourds and fruit seeds, and the integration of proto-urban foodways with state development. This suggests that increasing dietary complexity and urban-rural integration were inherited by the subsequent Qin-Han dynasties.