In recent decades, the Eurasian Middle–Upper Palaeolithic (M–UP) transition has been a topic of major interest among palaeoanthropologists. Great progress has been made in several domains, particularly palaeogenetics, which have revealed the complex ancestry of early Eurasians. This progress—including the identification of a ghost lineage of Eurasians in the Middle East—is providing important new biogeographical hypotheses. A key region for such topics is the Iranian Plateau—an area that has so far not been subject to intensive research.

Evidence for the earliest occupation of Cyprus (c. 11000–8500 cal BC) has been elusive as it often consists of small, diffuse and unobtrusive scatters of debris from stone tool manufacture. Yet tracing these sites is crucial if we are to understand how humans first explored the island, learned to exploit its resources and introduced useful flora and fauna from elsewhere. Our approach to this problem is to employ new methods of pedestrian survey and predictive modelling so as to investigate a route that could have linked the coast and the interior.

Over the last five years, excavation of a large, stone, fortified site at Shimao, on the northern edge of the Loess Plateau in Shaanxi Province, China, has radically changed our understanding of the events that precipitated the development of the first bronze casting in central China at Erlitou (Figure 1). An international conference on the Shimao site, held at Shenmu in August 2016, explored many aspects of this major discovery.

The archaeological site of Al-Ashoosh is a third-millennium BC settlementlocated in the Rub al-Khali Desert (or Empty Quarter), 70km south of Dubaiin the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (Figure 1). This site provides anexcellent example of the type of occupation of the inland deserts of theOman peninsula during the period following the Holocene Climatic Optimum.Between November 2015 and May 2016, the Dubai Municipality and the SaniseraArchaeology Institute conducted excavations at the site of Al-Ashoosh. Thissite was discovered during two seasons of survey in 2002–2003. This surveywork, undertaken by the Dubai Municipality and the Department of Antiquitiesof Jordan, identified 33 archaeological sites ranging in date fromprehistory to the late Islamic period. In 2006–2007, more-detailedarchaeological investigations of the area of Al-Ashoosh were conducted,including survey, excavation and geological sampling (Casana et al. 2009; Herrmann 2012; Contreras & Carcacer 2016).

Durham University's Sudan Archive was founded in 1957 by former members ofthe Sudan Government under the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, and by staff fromDurham University, including the first director of the Oriental Museum, T.W.Thacker (Cory & Forbes 1983). Since the initial call for donations, theSudan Archive has now collected 800 boxes of documents and photographs,mainly from former Sudan Government officials. This material now forms anintegral part of Durham University Library's special collections (SudanArchive Catalogue). The archive holds a wide variety of documents, frompersonal communications and photographs, to official reports mainlypertaining to political and social issues from early twentieth-century Sudanand neighbouring countries. It also includes a wealth of material relevantto the archaeology of both the Sudan and neighbouring countries (e.g. Egypt,Israel, Syria) (Figure 1), yet only a limited amount of the potentiallyrelevant material has been used by archaeologists. The Sudan Archive remainsa largely untapped resource for archaeological research. This situation isprobably to be explained partly by the description of the archive as ahistorical and political collection; moreover, a search of the existingcatalogue for the term ‘archaeology’ returns only four results, whereasabout 700 documents are directly relevant to the subject. An additionalproblem is that the spellings of both archaeological sites and locations areinconsistent; for example, Meroë also appears as Meroe, Merowe and Bakarwiyyeh. To remedy these issuesand to make the material more accessible, a recent project has identifiedover 1000 individual references to archaeological sites or themes andcatalogued them in a database (Figure 2).

The Middle East generally (Bar-Yosef 1994) and Iran specifically (VahdatiNasab et al. 2013) have become a focus for the study ofhuman migration between South-west Asia and Central and Eastern Asia duringthe Pleistocene (Asgari Khaneghah et al. 2005; Biglari& Shidrang 2006; Heydari Guran 2012). In Iran, studies of thePalaeolithic have concentrated on the Zagros and Alborz areas, but recentwork in the sub-montane areas, desert margins and lowland plains have alsorevealed interesting results regarding the activities of hunter-gatherersocieties (Biglari et al. 2000; Dashtizadeh 2009; VahdatiNasab et al. 2009, 2010, 2013; Darabi et al. 2012).

Digital media and learning initiatives for virtual collaborativeenvironments are contributing to the definition of new (sub-)disciplines inarchaeological and heritage sciences. New nomenclature and terminology isemerging such as cyber archaeology, cyber archaeometry, virtual worlds andaugmented and immersive realities; and all of them are related to museumsand cultural heritage—tangible, intangible or natural (Forte 2010; Liritzis et al. 2015).

In a recent Antiquity debate, Todd Braje and respondentsdiscuss the merits or otherwise of the recently proposed and hotly contestedgeological ‘Age of Man’—the Anthropocene. These papers make a usefulcontribution to the rapidly growing literature on this epoch-in-the-making(cf. Swanson et al. 2015). Recent publications by membersof the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG; http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene/)suggest a start date for this epoch of c. 1950 (Zalasiewicz et al. 2015; Waters et al. 2016;Zalasiewicz & Waters 2016), the adoption of which would challengearchaeology as a discipline concerned with deep-time socio-ecologicaldynamics.

The burial of animals is attested in Egypt from the pre-Dynastic periodthrough to Roman times. This phenomenon is observed across different animalspecies and involves varied funerary practices, although mummification isthe most significant. Against this background, a series of burials of smallanimals, under excavation since 2011 at Berenike, suggests a unique exampleof pet-keeping rather than the religious or magical deposits found in theNile Valley.

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA; c. 9600–8500 cal BC)period in the Levant provides the earliest confirmed evidence for plantcultivation anywhere in the world, marking a significant escalation in thehuman management of plants towards fully fledged agricultural foodproduction. Until now, the majority of PPNA sites have been documented inthe Jordan Valley, the Wadi Araba and farther north along the UpperEuphrates (e.g. Mureybet, Jerf el-Ahmar, Djade). By contrast, few PPNA siteshave so far been reported from the semi-arid to arid eastern part of theLevantine interior. Among these is El Aoui Safa (Coqueugniot & Anderson1996) and sporadic flint scatters elsewhere in the Harra.Recent fieldwork in the Qa’ Shubayqa area in the Harra hasproduced the first evidence for a more substantial settlement site in thisregion.

The Zohreh Prehistoric Project (ZPP), a long-term archaeological researchprogramme focused on the river valley south of the modern city of Behbahanin Khuzestan Province, was launched in April 2015 (Figure 1). The valley,which lies in close proximity to the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, wassurveyed extensively during the early 1970s by Hans Nissen from the OrientalInstitute of the University of Chicago (Nissen & Redman 1971; Dittmann1984, 1986). The ZPP aims to develop full-coverage archaeological survey ofthe valley, focusing on the human landscape over time, mostly in relation tosettlement hierarchy and dynamics, modes of production and the emergence ofregional centres at the end of the fifth and beginning of the fourthmillennia BC. The focal point for the project is the principal site of theZohreh Valley, known as Tol-e Chega Sofla (39RN1Q22108; thesite was previously registered as Chogha Sofla, BZ.71 (Dittmann 1984: 110).We have changed this to reflect its local name. The digital reference is theunique Iranian archaeology map registration number.

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?