It is a startling experience to look down a microscope at a stone tool — a real Palaeolithic artefact, not a modern thing or a replicated copy — and see on its flint surface grubby brown-red stains that look the colour of old blood. Is a consensus emerging from the archaeological scientists as to just what traces of, especially, biological materials do survive on ancient stone surfaces, where they can be reliably characterized and identified?

How and when was northern Europe reoccupied at the end of the last Ice Age? Radiocarbon dates from the earliest post-glacial contexts provide one answer: they offer a sequence in which the regions of Europe, from the Upper Rhine to Britain, saw the return of humans. The authors use Bayesian methods to model a chronology and thus arrive at a sequence with clear assessments of uncertainty.

Modern methods of analysis applied to cemeteries have often been used in our pages to suggest generalities about mobility and diet. But these same techniques applied to a single individual, together with the grave goods and burial rite, can open a special kind of personal window on the past. Here, the authors of a multidisciplinary project use a combination of scientific techniques to illuminate Roman York, and later Roman history in general, with their image of a glamorous mixed-race woman, in touch with Africa, Christianity, Rome and Yorkshire.

Considerable attention has been devoted to the architecture and art history of Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple in the last century. There has, however, been little research on the functions and internal organisation of the large rectangular enclosure surrounding the temple. Such enclosures have long been assumed to have been sacred precincts, or perhaps ‘temple-cities’: work exploring the archaeological patterning for habitation within them has been limited. The results of LiDAR survey and excavation have now revealed evidence for low-density residential occupation in these areas, possibly for those servicing the temple. Recent excavations within the enclosure challenge our traditional understanding of the social hierarchy of the Angkor Wat community and show that the temple precinct, bounded by moat and wall, may not have been exclusively the preserve of the wealthy or the priestly elite.

When, and by what route, did farming first reach Europe? A terrestrial model might envisage a gradual advance around the northern fringes of the Aegean, reaching Thrace and Macedonia before continuing southwards to Thessaly and the Peloponnese. New dates from Franchthi Cave in southern Greece, reported here, cast doubt on such a model, indicating that cereal cultivation, involving newly introduced crop species, began during the first half of the seventh millennium BC. This is earlier than in northern Greece and several centuries earlier than in Bulgaria, and suggests that farming spread to south-eastern Europe by a number of different routes, including potentially a maritime, island-hopping connection across the Aegean Sea. The results also illustrate the continuing importance of key sites such as Franchthi to our understanding of the European Neolithic transition, and the additional insights that can emerge from the application of new dating projects to these sites.

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.

The role and place of children is frequently overlooked in archaeology. Here Robert Park presents an intriguing analysis of the toys of childhood found in Inuit societies in Canada and Greenland, and assesses how such objects inform on the role of children in Arctic societies.

Previous research has documented textile and basketry production at Moravian Upper Palaeolithic sites, c.27,000 BP. Recent research extends these technologies to Russia and Germany, and amplifies information on perishable fibre artefacts from France. Collectively, these data illustrate the ubiquity of perishable technologies across the late Pleistocene world.

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.

Maya Blue is a colour that is more than a pigment; it had roles in status, ritual and performance, being daubed onto pots and people before sacrifice. Here researchers use experimental and historical evidence to discover how it was made, including direct scientific analysis of Maya Blue on a pot thrown into the sacred well at Chichén Itzá. The results indicate that the formation of the colour was actually part of the ritual.

AMS and other dating methods have been applied to the problem of Upper Palaeolithic occupation in Central Europe. The results from the excavations at the Rhineland site of Wiesbaden-Igstadt provide an opportunity for comparison and discussion of whether central Europe was really subject to abandonment at various times during Glacial/Pleniglacial episodes.

Analysis and dating of new Upper Palaeolithic sites suggest that microblades emerged in the Transbaikal after 18,000 years ago. These findings encourage review of earlier assertions that such technologies developed in northeast Asia prior to the last glacial maximum.

Continued discussion of the timing and intensity of earliest human occupation of Europe takes little account of the wider patterning of mammalian dispersions between Africa and Eurasia as guide. Viewed as a palaeontological event, the maximum period of such movement appears to be of latest Pliocene age, while conditions during the Early Pleistocene seem to have been particularly unsuited to dispersions through the Levant.

Spatial organization is a central issue in Palaeolithic archaeology, since it reflects the behavioural capabilities of human groups. We present an analysis of the lithic spatial distribution in a Middle Palaeolithic site, the Abric Romaní. Discussion of these data provides some insights on the variability of settlement patterns among the Neanderthals.

The site of Tell Sabi Abyad in Syria offers a superb stratified sequence passing from the aceramic (pre-pottery) to pottery-using Neolithic around 7000 BC. Surprisingly the first pottery arrives fully developed with mineral tempering, burnishing and stripey decoration in painted slip. The expected, more experimental-looking, plant-tempered coarse wares shaped by baskets arrive about 300 years later. Did the first ceramic impetus come from elsewhere?

This paper presents twelve new radiocarbon dates from copper mines at Monte Loreto in Liguria, northwest Italy, which indicate that extraction began around 3500 cal BC, making these the earliest copper mines to be discovered in Western Europe so far. The dates are placed in their regional context, with a discussion of results from Libiola and other sites associated with early copper mining.

A lake-sediment sequence from Marcacocha in the central Peruvian Andes provides a well-dated and continuous vegetation record from an area rich in Inca and pre-Inca remains over the last 4000 years. Climatic changes in this record at AD 1–100 and AD 900–1050 seem to be broadly contemporaneous with major arid events from Lake Chichancanab, Mexico, affecting the Maya civilization and corroborated by the Quelccaya and Huascaran ice cores in Peru.