Stable isotopes extracted from two hominins and a range of animals from the original Neanderthal site shows these Middle Palaeolithic people to have been hunters predominately on a meat diet. Comparison with other specimens further south suggests this diet – deer, but no fish or plants – to be something of a behavioural norm, whatever the latitude and plant cover.

How early did steppe dwellers penetrate the forests? The authors compare and contrast settlement on the steppe, in the forest and on the steep sea coast of western Patagonia, finding that the steppe is occupied first, from 11400 calendar years BP. But around 2800 calendar years BP settlements enter the forest almost simultaneously for a brief period along the length of the Cisnes river valley. Within a few centuries the experiment appears to be abandoned, and the focus of prehistoric peoples returns to the steppe.

The Sannai Maruyama site (3900-2300 BC) is one of the largest known from Japan's Jomon period (14000-300 BC). This study shows that over 1500 years the number of dwellings, their size, the type of stone tools and the fondness for figurines varied greatly. Nor was it a story of gradual increase in complexity: the settlement grew in intensity up to a peak associated with numerous grinding stones, and then declined to a smaller settlement containing larger buildings, many arrowheads and virtually no figurines. Using a bundle of ingenious analyses, the author explains what happened.

Defining territories and settlement hierarchies is a primary goal of archaeological survey, involving the mapping of different-sized settlements on the ground. However it may not always work, owing to the particular land use or political strategies anciently employed. With the aid of cuneiform documents from Tell Leilan, Syria, the author shows how the settlements found by archaeological survey in northern Mesopotamia actually relate to a number of intersecting authorities, with a hold on major tracts of pasture as well as on arable land and cities. These insights from the Near East have important implications for the interpretation of surveyed settlement patterns everywhere.

Lapita pottery seems to arrive in the Pacific out of the blue, and signal a new social, economic or ideological network. The authors show that widespread interaction, articulated by obsidian tools and stone mortars and pestles decorated with various motifs, was already in existence in New Guinea and New Britain. These earlier networks provide a preview of the social interaction that was to light up with the advent of Lapita.

The Baden culture, like others in central Europe, has long been assumed to be the material indication of a people. In a searing analytical deconstruction, the author shows that ‘Baden’ pottery has no equivalence with other cultural practices, and is itself an amalgam of a number of different pottery fabrics and styles, many of them regionally diverse. Singled out among them is the early Boreláz fine ware which is actively spread in central Europe, perhaps accompanied by a knowledge of the first wheeled vehicles.

Beehives were discovered in a densley built area in the Iron Age city of Reḥov (tenth-ninth century BC). They consisted of hollow clay cylinders, each with a little hole at one end (for the bee) and a removable lid at the other (for the bee keeper). These beehives, the earliest found in the Near East, were identified by analogy with examples pictured on Egyptian tombs and in use by traditional peoples. The suggested identification was confirmed by chemical analysis.

This study explores bedrock geology, topographic setting, compass orientation, soil profile and plant cover at 84 temples of Classical (480-338 BC) mainland Greece, several Aegean islands and Cyprus. A striking pattern emerges: the soil and vegetation matches the dedications to particular deities, suggesting an economic basis for particular cults.

Meticulous survey of the banks, channels and reservoirs at Angkor shows them to have been part of a large scale water management network instigated in the ninth century AD. Water collected from the hills was stored and could have been distributed for a wide variety of purposes including flood control, agriculture and ritual while a system of overflows and bypasses carried surplus water away to the lake, the Tonle Sap, to the south. The network had a history of numerous additions and modifications. Earlier channels both distributed and disposed of water. From the twelfth century onwards the large new channels primarily disposed of water to the lake. The authors here present and document the latest definitive map of the water network of Angkor.

This paper addresses the cause of the Viking episode in the approved Viking manner – head-on, reviewing and dismissing technical, environmental, demographic, economic, political and ideological prime movers. The author develops the theory that a bulge of young males in Scandinavia set out to get treasure to underpin their chances of marriage and a separate domicile.

When a monument is excavated it removes a piece of cultural property from the landscape. So modern thinking in field archaeology rightly includes the maintenance of monumentality in its initial design. Better still if that value is enhanced. Reconstructing their excavated tumulus in Albania, the authors found they could leave the monument in place and give it added value from the new knowledge of its relevance to local people, not to mention the revival of a dying craft: the making of mud-brick.

Techniques for identifying organic residues in pottery have been refined over the years by Professor Evershed and his colleagues. Here they address the problem of radiocarbon dating these residues by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) which in turn dates the use of the pot. Fatty acids from carcass and dairy products cooked in the pot were isolated from early Neolithic carinated bowls found at the Sweet Track, Somerset Levels, England, and then dated by AMS. The results were very consistent and gave an excellent match to the dendrochronological date of the trackway. The method has wide potential for the precise dating of pottery use on sites.

Forty years after they were originally acquired for intelligence purposes, declassified US photographs from the KH-7 GAMBIT photo reconnaissance satellite programme, together with contemporary declassified intelligence reports, are being used to shed light on Cold War sites in the former Soviet Union. The method should have a great future for understanding the changes to the landscape in Europe over the last 60 years. The material impact of the Cold War was no less fundamental than other wars hotter in nature.

CORONA satellite imagery, preserving an account of the earth's surface from 40 years ago, is a most important archaeological survey tool and we have often sung its praises. Here the authors use new procedures to extend the competence and revelations of CORONA even further. Stereo pairs derived from images taken from fore and aft of the satellite give three dimensional images of landscapes and even individual sites. Techniques of modelling and rectification restore the sites to their original shape without recourse to survey on the ground – in many cases no longer possible since the sites have been buried, inundated or erased. The ingenuity shown here indicates that results from CORONA are only going to get better.

In this ingenious co-operative case study, archaeologists and Indigenous peoples use geophysical survey to scan suitable places for the reburial of repatriated human remains. The process is also building a procedure for the low impact and respectful research of early Indigenous burial locations.

The Acheulean handaxe is one of the most iconic, analysed and fiercely debated artefacts from the prehistoric period. Persisting for over one million years and recovered from sites across the Old World its distinctive, often symmetrical, tear drop or ovate shape appears to be over-engineered for a subsistence function alone. Debate has centred upon trying to unravel the reasons for this form; raw material, knapping technique, subsistence function, cognition, social context of manufacture and sexual selection have all been proposed as key factors (Jones 1994; White 1998; Gamble 1999; Kohn & Mithen 1999; McPherron 2000; Gowlett 2006).

Evaluating theories and testing hypotheses that relate to the no-longer observable behaviour of hominin species which have no close analogue in the modern world is an obvious challenge. Machin argues that Kohn & Mithen (1999) did not do so in a sufficiently rigorous manner concerning their so-called 'Sexy Handaxe Theory' (SHT). She is right, of course. Indeed how could it be otherwise when there is always room for improvement by subjecting previously published ideas to newly available data-sets and new types of critical thinking. Machin provides some valuable arguments, bringing together a probably unparalleled breadth of knowledge about the archaeological record, evolutionary theory and sexual selection. Ultimately, however, I am not persuaded that she makes handaxes any less sexy than they had previously appeared.

The British Museum and the National Museum of Wales have lent the finds from Kendrick's Cave, in Llandudno, north Wales, for display and storage at Llandudno Museum; and the British Museum has sent the famous body from Lindow Moss, near Manchester, to be shown at the Manchester Museum, 100km away in England. How should metropolitan or national museums relate to provincial museums? Should there be more such loans? The exhibition in Manchester deliberately raises another question too: how – if at all – should human remains be displayed?