The narrative of socio-political development on the semi-arid island of Cyprus during the early first millennium BC (c. 1100–500) has focused largely on the institutions, practices and material culture of major 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 authorities through the management of agropastoral and metal goods, and through the creation of new mortuary, ritual and community spaces (Iacovou 2014). These regional contexts, whose settlements and land-use practices have now been recorded through several survey projects, provide a rich yet under-used source of material for investigating social transformations during this period. Ongoing interdisciplinary work in the Vasilikos and Maroni Valleys of south-central Cyprus has begun systematic analysis of these landscape changes and their long-term contexts. The project is focused on a 150km2 research area situated 20km east of the ancient polity of Amathus, extending from the central Troodos massif down to the coast (Figure 1).

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

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

Lessons from history on sustainability, collapse and resilience are the ultimate goal of the Byzantine Bio-Archaeology Research Program of the Negev (BYBAN) (Tepper et al. 2015). Addressing the unprecedented flourishing and collapse of the Byzantine Negev agricultural settlements (fourth–seventh centuries AD), the BYBAN project offers a unique and original 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 copious plant remains retrieved are a reflection of the region's agricultural economy and its environmental sustainability. This approach will enable us to answer important research questions about the Byzantine–Islamic transition 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 be implicated as a cause for agricultural collapse?

In a recent Antiquity debate, Todd Braje and respondents discuss the merits or otherwise of the recently proposed and hotly contested geological ‘Age of Man’—the Anthropocene. These papers make a useful contribution to the rapidly growing literature on this epoch-in-the-making (cf. Swanson et al. 2015). Recent publications by members of 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 challenge archaeology as a discipline concerned with deep-time socio-ecological dynamics.