In southern Africa, Middle Stone Age sites with long sequences have been thefocus of intense international and interdisciplinary research over the pastdecade (cf. Wadley 2015). Two techno-complexes of the Middle Stone Age—theStill Bay and Howiesons Poort—have been associated with many technologicaland behavioural innovations of Homo sapiens. The classicmodel argues that these two techno-complexes are temporally separated‘horizons’ with homogenous material culture (Jacobs et al.2008), reflecting demographic pulses and supporting large subcontinentalnetworks. This model was developed on the basis of evidence from southernAfrican sites regarded as centres of subcontinental developments.

Despite ongoing fieldwork focusing on the Palaeolithic and Mesolithicperiods of the Aegean, the eastern part of this region, especially westernTurkey, remains almost entirely unexplored in terms of early prehistory.There is virtually no evidence from this area that can contribute to broaderresearch themes such as the dispersal of early hominins, the distribution ofEarly Holocene foragers and early forager-farmer interactions. The primaryaim of the Karaburun Archaeological Survey Project is to address thissituation by collecting data from the eastern side of the Aegean Sea,thereby contributing to the currently debated issues of Aegean and EasternMediterranean prehistory.

The narrative of socio-political development on the semi-arid island ofCyprus during the early first millennium BC (c. 1100–500)has focused largely on the institutions, practices and material culture ofmajor centres and their interrelationships with growing maritime networks.Less studied are the landscapes surrounding these coastal and inland towns,which helped condition the increasing wealth and power of authoritiesthrough the management of agropastoral and metal goods, and through thecreation of new mortuary, ritual and community spaces (Iacovou 2014). Theseregional contexts, whose settlements and land-use practices have now beenrecorded through several survey projects, provide a rich yet under-usedsource of material for investigating social transformations during thisperiod. Ongoing interdisciplinary work in the Vasilikos and Maroni Valleysof south-central Cyprus has begun systematic analysis of these landscapechanges and their long-term contexts. The project is focused on a 150km2 research area situated 20km east of the ancient polityof Amathus, extending from the central Troodos massif down to the coast(Figure 1).

Lessons from history on sustainability, collapse and resilience are theultimate goal of the Byzantine Bio-Archaeology Research Program of the Negev(BYBAN) (Tepper et al. 2015). Addressing the unprecedentedflourishing and collapse of the Byzantine Negev agricultural settlements(fourth–seventh centuries AD), the BYBAN project offers a unique andoriginal approach. It focuses on ancient middens and domestic contexts,which provide an exceptional focus on the materiality of daily life.Archaeobotanical research is central to this project because the copiousplant remains retrieved are a reflection of the region's agriculturaleconomy and its environmental sustainability. This approach will enable usto answer important research questions about the Byzantine–Islamictransition in the Negev: what were the major cash and subsistence crops?Which were grown locally, and which, if any, were imported? How, if at all,did the agricultural economy change during the Byzantine–Islamic transition?Were there any major changes in climatic conditions, and, if so, can they beimplicated as a cause for agricultural collapse?