Forced population resettlement constituted a strategic instrument in the territorial expansion of the Roman Empire. Survey and geophysical data from Macchia di Circello (Campania) offer novel evidence on the settlement of a forcibly relocated community, the Ligures Baebiani, transferred from Liguria to Samnium in the second century BC.

Before Navan Fort became the mythological capital of the Irish province of Ulster, construction of the monumental Haughey’s Fort around 1200 BC marked the foundation of an important prehistoric centre. Here, the authors report on research integrating remote sensing, excavation and archival reassessment in the exploration of this Bronze Age landscape. Indicators of long-distance exchange and craft production of high-status artefacts, together with the presence of 204 possible structures and a ceremonial avenue leading towards a unique ritual pool, help elucidate the site’s social, economic and ritual importance, while identification of a 109ha enclosure underlines the exceptional scale of activities.

Although thousands of prehistoric standing stones have been recorded across Iberia, the lack of associated detailed contextual data allows ongoing debate about their possible functions. Following the chance discovery of a ‘diademated’ stela in 2018, excavations at Las Capellanías (Cañaveral de León, Huelva), in south-west Spain, led to the discovery of two more stelae and facilitated the compilation of vital contextual information. Here, the authors explore the association between these stelae, Bronze and Iron Age burials and an ancient routeway, revealing reuse, temporal persistence, geographical connectivity and cultural hybridisation in the widening networks of prehistoric Iberia.

Mortuary traditions offer a wealth of insights into the social landscapes of human communities. Here, the author examines anthropomorphic representations in the decorated tombs of Kyushu Island, Japan, dating from the Late Kofun period (sixth–seventh centuries AD). The consistently subordinate scale, strategic architectural placement and systematic anonymity of these figures suggest that they did not function as portraits of the dead but were likely symbolic agents embodying a collective rather than individual identity. By demonstrating that the human figure is not consistently the protagonist in these funerary contexts, this study reframes our understandings of Late Kofun deathways.

Earthquakes and the destruction they wreak on communities and landscapes are regular features of both modern news output and historical accounts. Archaeology can add to our understanding of such disasters, demonstrated here in the discussion of architectural damage noted during recent excavations at Panaztepe, an Early Bronze Age settlement in Western Anatolia. Distinct destruction horizons illustrate the primary and secondary impacts of two earthquakes during the third millennium BC: the first was followed by reconstruction and adaptation, the second by abandonment. By focusing on evidence of seismic activity, the authors examine the resilience of communities inhabiting this geologically fragile region.

Photographed over more than two decades, alterations to the Alto Caramucho geoglyphs in the Atacama Desert show the unfolding of a heritage disaster. This article presents research that integrates new digital technologies (photogrammetry and artificial intelligence) for the evaluation and documentation of the deterioration of the geoglyphs.

First excavated in 1928 by Dorothy Garrod, Hazar Merd represents the earliest documented Palaeolithic site in the Zagros Mountains and a landmark in regional archaeological research. Nearly a century later, renewed investigations are refining the site’s stratigraphy and cultural sequence, providing a more nuanced understanding of its long-term occupation.

This study examines clay fragments found at Çemka Höyük, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic site in Mardin, Türkiye (tenth millennium BC). Analysis of mineral inclusions in the clay matrix indicates that these fragments may have been deliberately fired, representing an early example of ceramic technology in South-west Asia. The diversity of forms identified and their likely uses suggest, the authors argue, a formative phase in ceramic innovation during which the properties and potential applications of clay were explored by the local community and adopted and adapted within existing social and economic traditions in advance of widespread application in the seventh millennium BC.

Despite common associations with plague pits and mass graves, many individuals who succumbed to the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century AD, and to the numerous subsequent outbreaks of plague, were buried in parish cemeteries. This limits the usefulness of contemporaneous cemetery assemblages for the establishment of comparative, non-catastrophic (or ‘attritional’) demographic profiles for medieval populations in Britain. Drawing from three earlier cemeteries, this study reveals similarities in age-at-death and survivorship profiles for adults, offering a characteristic pre-Black Death profile that helps reinforce the distinctiveness of the over-representation of individuals aged 15–24 years among plague burials.

Though mortuary practices seem largely archaeologically invisible in Iron Age Britain, the visible dead were subject to diverse treatment. Here, the authors report the results of a multi-strand analysis of two Iron Age skeletons buried in a stone cairn at Loch Borralie, north-west Scotland. Manipulation of one skeleton, including the possible removal of the brain, fashioning of long bones into ‘tools’ and reassembly for burial, suggests complex mortuary processing, while the east-coast origin of both individuals and their biological ties to Orkney reveal long-distance connections, expanding our understanding of funerary practice, mobility and connectivity in Iron Age Britain.

Central governments have controlled cultural heritage management in most African countries since colonial times. Focusing on Tanzania, the authors here argue that heritage sites are at risk from the institutions tasked with managing them, citing an institutional reluctance to protect threatened sites, delegation of responsibility to unqualified organisations, inappropriate development of sites as income-generating entities and a resistance to working with and recognising local community initiatives. The deleterious impacts of such management are explored through four case studies, which the authors hope will help sound an alarm in the international community and provoke calls for a national review of policy.

Archaeologists are increasingly integrating the analysis of ancient DNA into cemetery studies; however, while such efforts highlight relatedness and descent, biological kinship forms only one aspect of social organisation in human societies. Here, the authors demonstrate this using the Tamir necropolis in Mongolia (100 BC–AD 100) as a case study. Employing a pipeline that combines linear discriminant analysis, machine-learning classifiers and cultural phylogenetics, they interrogate the cultural and social dynamics that structured the cemetery, disentangling the influence of genetic relatedness, social status and cultural tradition and offering a powerful framework for the investigation of social organisation in ancient populations.