The centuries from the Late Naqada period to the Second Dynasty saw significant changes in Egyptian society. Elite seizures of power and a shift towards a centralised economy changed the way that objects were traded and valued. It is over a century since the discovery of a large flint assemblage in the tomb of Khasekhemwy, the last Second Dynasty ruler, in ‘Cemetery B’ at Abydos. New analysis of these lithic artefacts has revealed that the presence of debitage among the grave goods was more than simply a by-product of manufacture. Such changes in funerary materiality demonstrate a move towards royal control of a prestige goods economy.

How violent was life in Neolithic society, and was there anything resembling organised warfare? Recent research has largely overturned ideas of peaceful farming societies. Spanish Levantine rock art offers a unique insight into conflict in Neolithic society, with images of violence, real or imagined, being acted out in scenes preserved in rockshelters. Combining this body of data with evidence from the archaeological record, a new way of understanding the imagery in rock art is here proposed. Ethnographic and anthropological methodologies allow the author to show how socio-cultural behaviours and individual social roles can be read from rock art.

Between c. 4500 and 3500 BC, the deposition of human remains within circular pits was widespread throughout Central and Western Europe. Attempts at forming explanatory models for this practice have proven difficult due to the highly variable nature of these deposits. Recent excavations at Bergheim in Alsace have revealed a particularly unusual variant of this phenomenon featuring a number of amputated upper limbs. The evidence from this site challenges the simplicity of existing interpretations, and demands a more critical focus on the archaeological evidence for acts of systematic violence during this period.

Detailed taphonomic and skeletal analyses document the diverse and often unusual burial practices employed by European Neolithic populations. In the Upper Chamber at Scaloria Cave in southern Italy, the remains of some two dozen individuals had been subjected to careful and systematic defleshing and disarticulation involving cutting and scraping with stone tools, which had left their marks on the bones. In some cases these were not complete bodies but parts of bodies that had been brought to the cave from the surrounding area. The fragmented and commingled burial layer that resulted from these activities indicates complex secondary burial rites effecting the transition from entirely living to entirely dead individuals.

The Folkton ‘Drums’ constitute three of the most remarkable decorated objects from Neolithic Britain. New analysis using Reflectance Transformation Imaging and photogrammetry has revealed evidence for previously unrecorded motifs, erasure and reworking. Hence these chalk drums were not decorated according to a single, pre-ordained scheme, but were successively carved and recarved over time. Such practices may have been widespread in the making of artefacts in Neolithic Britain. The study of these drums also demonstrates the ability of these new techniques not only to record visible motifs, but to document erased and reworked motifs clearly.

Rice has been an important cultivated crop in Korea since c. 1500 BC, but in historical times it was a luxury food too valuable for consumption by the farmers who produced it. It was widely used as a form of currency and for tax payments. Analysis of plant remains from Sangdong-dong and Songguk-ri, two Bronze Age settlements of the early first millennium BC, however, reveals that rice was not the preserve of elites in that period. The situation changed with the state formation during the first three centuries AD, when rice consumption became increasingly restricted. Thus in Korea rice was not initially cultivated as a luxury food, but became so through social and political change.

Attempts to understand the origins of domestication and sedentary settlement in the Near East have traditionally focused on the Fertile Crescent. Beyond this region, however, in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains of north-eastern Iran, evidence has emerged that charts the Neolithic transition over a period of 1500 years. Investigations at the twin mounds of Tappeh Sang-e Chakhmaq have revealed pre-pottery and pottery Neolithic occupation in a sequence long enough to document the evolving exploitation of plants and animals leading to the development of a permanent, agro-pastoral community during the eighth to sixth millennia BC. The continuous occupation of this settlement during this crucial transition allows significant changes in lifestyle to be mapped, and provides a new framework for the earliest Neolithic occupation of Iran.

Megalithic art is a well-known feature of the Neolithic chambered tombs of Atlantic Europe. The surviving evidence consists largely of carved motifs, and, until recently, painted megalithic art was thought to be restricted to western Iberia. Recent discoveries have expanded that distribution, assisted by new methods of detection, recording and analysis. The discovery of painted motifs at Barnenez in Brittany, reported here, marks a breakthrough and raises the possibility that many megalithic tombs in north-west Europe were once coloured as well as carved. Similarities in motifs and techniques also point to the likelihood of direct connections with Iberia.

The long-distance transport of the bluestones from south Wales to Stonehenge is one of the most remarkable achievements of Neolithic societies in north-west Europe. Where precisely these stones were quarried, when they were extracted and how they were transported has long been a subject of speculation, experiment and controversy. The discovery of a megalithic bluestone quarry at Craig Rhos-y-felin in 2011 marked a turning point in this research. Subsequent excavations have provided details of the quarrying process along with direct dating evidence for the extraction of bluestone monoliths at this location, demonstrating both Neolithic and Early Bronze Age activity.

The origins of urbanism are a controversial subject, with neo-evolutionary progress through graduated stages of ‘civilisation’ still having significant influence despite criticism, while others in the field prefer more diverse, regionally based trajectories. Using data collected over 30 years and applying the full range of archaeological and historical sources, the authors offer an alternative reading of the evidence, identifying multiple pathways to urbanism within a single region—northern Mesopotamia. Here, early urbanism was a phased and pulsating phenomenon that could be sustained only within particular geographic parameters and for limited periods. Older urban hubs, growing slowly, were accompanied by rapidly expanding new sites, with the combination of the different forms demonstrating the complexities of urban growth.

Except for some excavated coastal sites, the rural hinterland of ancient Chersonesos on the Tarkhankut Peninsula in north-west Crimea has been understood only from pot scatters recorded during landscape survey and fieldwalking. The city's rural territory (chora) thrived from the fourth to second century BC, but little is known of the identity of its inhabitants, especially those in the inland areas. This paper presents the results of the first systematic excavations in this part of the peninsula. The results challenge previous notions that the territory was occupied by nomadic indigenous communities and reveal that the site shared the fate of the entire Chersonesean chora, meeting a violent end in the early part of the third century BC.

An unexpected new source of tin was recently located at Hisarcık, in the foothills of the Mount Erciyes volcano in the Kayseri Plain, close to the Bronze Age town of Kültepe, ancient Kanesh and home to a colony of Assyrian traders. Volcanoes in Turkey have always been associated with obsidian sources but were not known to be a major source of heavy metals, much less tin. X-ray fluorescence analyses of the Hisarcık ores revealed the presence of minerals suitable for the production of complex copper alloys, and sufficient tin and arsenic content to produce tin-bronze. These findings revise our understanding of bronze production in Anatolia in the third millennium BC and demand a re-evaluation of Assyrian trade routes and the position of the Early Bronze Age societies of Anatolia within that network.

Logboats are widely known as the earliest form of water transport and continue to be used today. How then can such a ubiquitous phenomenon be useful in demonstrating maritime networks between distant places? A reassessment of the European, and especially Scandinavian, examples of logboats has revealed that technological and decorative aspects of their design demonstrate a connection between Western Europe, Scandinavia and Britain and Ireland. Here the details of this skeuomorphism are used to argue for a North Atlantic, European maritime network in the Bronze Age.

Mining has commonly been thought of as hard manual labour undertaken by the lower echelon of a hierarchical society, but was this always the case? Recent excavations of the variscite mines at Gavà have revealed burials contemporary with the peak of mining activity that represent a community of miners exploiting the subterranean resources for trade and manufacturing variscite beads with a nuanced symbolism. Skeletal evidence demonstrates the physicality of mining while grave goods reveal a community that worked collectively to mine, manufacture and trade goods, with miners themselves benefiting from the fruits of their labours.

The adoption of the horse for chariots, wagons and riding had a major impact on human societies, but it has proved difficult to reliably identify early domesticated horses in the archaeological record. This comparative study of equine palaeopathology addresses the problem by analysing wild and domestic horses used for traction or riding. Osteological changes to the skull appear to be the result of mechanical and physiological stress from the use of horses for transport. The results are applied to archaeological examples from the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Complex of Bronze Age Mongolia (1300–700 BC) and show that those horses were probably bridled and used for transport.

The discovery of Neolithic houses at Durrington Walls that are contemporary with the main construction phase of Stonehenge raised questions as to their interrelationship. Was Durrington Walls the residence of the builders of Stonehenge? Were the activities there more significant than simply domestic subsistence? Using lipid residue analysis, this paper identifies the preferential use of certain pottery types for the preparation of particular food groups and differential consumption of dairy and meat products between monumental and domestic areas of the site. Supported by the analysis of faunal remains, the results suggest seasonal feasting and perhaps organised culinary unification of a diverse community.

The later African Iron Age saw a shift to centralised polities, as seen in the expansion of hegemonies such as Great Zimbabwe. During this period, trade with the interior of Africa became increasingly centrally controlled. Excavations at the site of Kaitshàa, on the edge of the Makgadikgadi saltpans in Botswana, have revealed how a small settlement based on prehistoric salt trading was able to take its place in the Indian Ocean trade network before such centralised polities arose. Using compositional analysis of glass beads, the authors argue that this site in the central Kalahari Desert exemplifies the role of heterarchy and indigenous agency in the evolving political economy of the subcontinent.

Cattle are a key focus of traditional pastoralist societies in eastern Africa and also figure prominently in the rock art of the region. In both contexts, their cultural and social significance is underscored by colour and decoration. The contemporary Mursi of south-west Ethiopia transform favourite oxen in various ways, including horn alteration, ear cutting and decorative pattern branding. These practices may provide direct insight into cattle portrayal in Ethiopian rock art, where abstract or non-realistic symbols depicted on cattle coats could indicate the modification, alteration or beautification of cattle in prehistoric societies.

Rock art, especially in China, has often been associated with the non-literate, non-Chinese periphery. It is often thought of very broadly as a universal phenomenon rooted in religion and sharing a widely recognised iconography. This paper challenges both of these assumptions. Its focus is the rock art of the Zuo River in the Guangxi Province of China and in particular its landscape location and visibility. Broadening the parameters of what we categorise as rock art, such art is shown to have multi-layered meanings that spoke to different groups in different ways. The content, location and visibility of images along this arterial waterway reveal how rock art played a significant role in life and death in Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Guangxi.

Dramatic environmental changes have had an enormous impact on human populations in the past, sometimes expressed through objects that might easily be overlooked. The later prehistory marine inundations within the fenland of East Anglia—and the eventual creation of its islanded marsh-landscape—demanded a social response open to investigation. Did they alter the ways that communities expressed their identity? Did larger communities develop to exploit the new economic potential of things such as salt? Behind these major shifts, smaller signifiers such as shell necklaces may offer clues about use of resources and the identity of those who lived through these changes.