Traditional views of Neanderthal hunting strategies envisage them preying on herd species such as bison and deer, rather than the sophisticated tracking of solitary animals. Analysis of faunal remains from El Esquilleu Cave in northern Spain, however, demonstrates that during certain periods of the Middle Palaeolithic occupation, Neanderthals focused on the hunting of ibex and chamois, small solitary species that inhabited the mountainous terrain around the site. These results indicate that Neanderthal hunting practices may have had more similarity to those of their Upper Palaeolithic relatives than is usually assumed.

The rock art of Southeast Asia has been less thoroughly studied than that of Europe or Australia, and it has generally been considered to be more recent in origin. New dating evidence from Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, however, demonstrates that the earliest motifs (hand stencils and naturalistic animals) are of late Pleistocene age and as early as those of Europe. The similar form of the earliest painted motifs in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia suggests that they are the product of a shared underlying behaviour, but the difference in context (rockshelters) indicates that experiences in deep caves cannot have been their inspiration.

Archaeologists have long sought appropriate ways to describe the duration and floruit of archaeological cultures in statistical terms. Thus far, chronological reasoning has been largely reliant on typological sequences. Using summed probability distributions, the authors here compare radiocarbon dates for a series of European Neolithic cultures with their generally accepted ‘standard’ date ranges and with the greater precision afforded by dendrochronology, where that is available. The resulting analysis gives a new and more accurate description of the duration and intensity of European Neolithic cultures.

The fragmentary ‘Processional’ wall painting from Teleilat Ghassul in Jordan is here shown to depict a religious procession involving eight individuals rather than the three identified in the original 1970s reconstruction. All of the figures wear masks and carry objects, but elaborately robed leaders, members perhaps of a dedicated priestly class, are clearly distinguished from their naked attendants. The scene belongs to the Late Chalcolithic period when Levantine society was becoming increasingly hierarchical, and the wall painting as a whole illustrates the prominent role of elites in ritual practices at this critical period of social transformation.

Recent investigations at Stonehenge have been accompanied by new research on the origin of the famous ‘bluestones’, a mixed assemblage of rhyolites and dolerites that stand among the much taller sarsens. Some of the rhyolite debitage has been traced to a quarry site at Craig Rhosyfelin near the Pembrokeshire coast; but fieldwork on the upland outcrops of Carn Menyn has also provided evidence for dolerite extraction in the later third millennium BC, and for the production of pillar-like blocks that resemble the Stonehenge bluestones in shape and size. Quarrying at Carn Menyn began much earlier, however, during the seventh millennium BC, suggesting that Mesolithic communities were the first to exploit the geology of this remote upland location.

The Neolithic of Taiwan represents the first stage in the expansion of Austronesian-speaking peoples through the Pacific. Settlement and burial evidence from the Tapenkeng (TKP) or Dabenkeng culture demonstrates the development of the early Taiwanese Neolithic over a period of almost 2000 years, from its origin in the pre-TPK of the Pearl River Delta and south-eastern coastal China. The first TPK communities of Taiwan pursued a mixed coastal foraging and horticultural lifestyle, but by the late TPK rice and millet farming were practised with extensive villages and large settlements. The broad-spectrum subsistence diversity of the Taiwanese Neolithic was an important factor in facilitating the subsequent expansion of Austronesian-speaking peoples to the Philippines and beyond.

The long-term history of prehistoric populations is a challenging but important subject that can now be addressed through combined use of archaeological and genetic evidence. In this study a multidisciplinary team uses these approaches to document the existence of a major population bottleneck in Finland during the Late Neolithic period, the effects of which are still detectable in the genetic profile of the Finnish population today. The postglacial recolonisation of Finland was tracked through space and time using radiocarbon dates and stone artefact distributions to provide a robust framework of evidence against which the genetic simulations could be compared.

The discovery of a child’s skeleton in a Late Neolithic well in Sweden raises again the issue of watery rituals and human sacrifice in prehistoric societies. Analysis of diatoms from the right humerus and from the surrounding sediment indicated that the child died by drowning and had not simply been disposed of in the well after death. The scenarios of accidental drowning and murder are examined to account for this discovery. The preferred hypothesis, based on a comparative study of similar finds from north-western Europe, interprets this instead as a ritual sacrifice. The use of diatom analysis to establish drowning as the cause of death adds a new weapon into the armoury of forensic archaeology.

The date of the Late Bronze Age Minoan eruption of the Thera volcano has provoked much debate among archaeologists, not least in a recent issue of Antiquity (‘Bronze Age catastrophe and modern controversy: dating the Santorini eruption’, March 2014). Here, the authors respond to those recent contributions, citing evidence that closes the gap between the conclusions offered by previous typological, stratigraphic and radiometric dating techniques. They reject the need to choose between alternative approaches to the problem and make a case for the synchronisation of eastern Mediterranean and Egyptian chronologies with agreement on a ‘high’ date in the late seventeenth century BC for the Thera eruption.

The island of Cyprus was a major producer of copper and stood at the heart of east Mediterranean trade networks during the Late Bronze Age. It may also have been the source of the Red Lustrous Wheelmade Ware that has been found in mortuary contexts in Egypt and the Levant, and in Hittite temple assemblages in Anatolia. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) has enabled the source area of this special ceramic to be located in a geologically highly localised and geochemically distinctive area of western Cyprus. This discovery offers a new perspective on the spatial organisation of Cypriot economies in the production and exchange of elite goods around the eastern Mediterranean at this time.

The discovery of a grave of the late second millennium BC containing an extinct South American fox, Dusicyon avus, at Loma de los Muertos raises intriguing questions about the relationship between wild canids and humans. This sub-adult individual appears to have been buried in a human mortuary context in a comparable manner to adjacent human burials. It may have been kept as a pet and been considered part of the human social group. The ability of pets, especially canids, to leave the animal world and enter into a special relationship with people may be related to the cosmology of South American hunter-gatherers.

Academic interest in the elaborate bead assemblages recovered from graves of the Western Zhou elite has grown in recent years. Beads and beaded ornaments have been seen as both markers of external contact and evidence of change in the Zhou ritual system. Recent study of these bead assemblages, however, indicates that they may also have reflected shifting political circumstances. The use of different bead materials and forms suggests a trend to centralised production and control of manufacture, particularly from the later tenth century BC. The authors correlate a move towards readily manufactured materials with evidence for widespread elite intermarriage, and consider a possible tension between production and the socio-political strategies of the Zhou court.

The extensive cemetery at Hepu in southern China represents one of the best-preserved tomb complexes of the Han period. It contains many elaborate tombs with exotic luxury materials that testify to the status of Hepu as the home port of the maritime Silk Road. This trading network carried Chinese products (notably silks) by sea to kingdoms and communities of South and Southeast Asia, and was the southern counterpart to the more famous overland Silk Road through Central Asia. The materials found in the Hepu tombs demonstrate the range and geography of contacts, including semi-precious beads from India and ceramics from the Parthian empire. This far-flung trade network had major impacts both on southern China and on the other regions that it connected.

Monumental construction is commonly associated with the rise of complex societies and frequently supported the ceremonies and ideologies that were instrumental in the creation of the new social order. Recent fieldwork at Heketa in eastern Tongatapu recorded stone-built platforms for houses and seats, and a three-tiered tomb and trilithon. Tongan tradition and archaeology combine to show that these were the setting for new ceremonies instituted by the emergent Tu’i Tonga lineage in the fourteenth century AD as they laid the foundations of the early Tongan chiefdom. Key to their success were activities that emphasised the sacred origins of the living Tu’i Tonga, including the drinking of kava and the presentation of first fruits to the chiefs.

The social complexities underlying imperial control are manifest in the material culture of everyday life encountered at archaeological sites. The Yavi-Chicha pottery style of the south-central Andes illustrates how local identities continued to be expressed in practices of pottery manufacture during the process of Inka expansion. The Yavi-Chicha style itself masks a number of distinct production processes that can be traced through petrographic analysis and that relate to the different communities by whom it was produced and consumed. The dispersion of pottery fabric types in this region may partly be attributable to the Inka practice of mitmaqkuna, the displacement and relocation of entire subject populations.

Concrete fortifications have long served as battle-scarred memorials of the Second World War. The forests of north-west Europe, meanwhile, have concealed a preserved landscape of earthwork field fortifications, military support structures and bomb- and shell-craters that promise to enhance our understanding of the conflict landscapes of the 1944 Normandy Campaign and the subsequent battles in the Ardennes and Hürtgenwald forests. Recent survey has revealed that the archaeology surviving in wooded landscapes can significantly enhance our understanding of ground combat in areas covered by forest. In particular, this evidence sheds new light on the logistical support of field armies and the impact of Allied bombing on German installations.

The mechanisms by which agriculture spread across Europe in the Neolithic, and the speed at which it happened, have long been debated. Attempts to quantify the process by constructing spatio-temporal models have given a diversity of results. In this paper, a new approach to the problem of modelling is advanced. Data from over 300 Neolithic sites from Asia Minor and Europe are used to produce a global picture of the emergence of farming across Europe which also allows for variable local conditions. Particular attention is paid to coastal enhancement: the more rapid advance of the Neolithic along coasts and rivers, as compared with inland or terrestrial domains. The key outcome of this model is hence to confirm the importance of waterways and coastal mobilities in the spread of farming in the early Neolithic, and to establish the extent to which this importance varied regionally.

The subdivision of the Chinese Palaeolithic is a controversial topic. A recent article in Antiquity (Yee 2012) critiqued Gao’s two-stage model that distinguished only an Early and a Late Palaeolithic. Yee argued that the two-stage model should be abandoned, and that a distinct Middle Palaeolithic phase can be identified. Responding to Yee, Feng Li argues that there is no solid evidence of distinctive and widespread technological changes before the Late Palaeolithic, and that it is hence premature to abandon Gao’s two-stage model at present.