Urban communities on the medieval East African coast have been previously discussed in terms of ethnicity and migration. Here assemblages from coastal towns and from surface survey in the interior are used to paint a different picture of urban (Swahili) origins. The author shows that coast and interior shared a common culture, but that coastal sites grew into ‘stonetowns’ thanks to the social impact of imports: the material culture structured the society.

In this paper the author assembles the evidence for Mesolithic dwelling places surviving as posts, floors and assemblages. This evidence can be used to show how space was organised, where men and women slept, and how some of the implied family relationships anticipated Neolithic practice.

The African origins of Egyptian civilisation lie in an important cultural horizon, the ‘primary pastoral community’, which emerged in both the Egyptian and Sudanese parts of the Nile Valley in the fifth millennium BC. A re-examination of the chronology, assisted by new AMS determinations from Neolithic sites in Middle Egypt, has charted the detailed development of these new kinds of society. The resulting picture challenges recent studies that emphasise climate change and environmental stress as drivers of cultural adaptation in north-east Africa. It also emphasises the crucial role of funerary practices and body decoration.

The study of stable isotopes surviving in human bone is fast becoming a standard response in the analysis of cemeteries. Reviewing the state of the art for Roman Britain, the author shows clear indications of a change in diet (for the better) following the Romanisation of Iron Age Britain—including more seafood, and more nutritional variety in the towns. While samples from the bones report an average of diet over the years leading up to an individual's death, carbon and nitrogen isotope signatures taken from the teeth may have a biographical element—capturing those childhood dinners. In this way migrants have been detected—as in the likely presence of Africans in Roman York. While not unexpected, these results show the increasing power of stable isotopes to comment on populations subject to demographic pressures of every kind.

There can be no doubt that isotopic studies have made a huge contribution to archaeology in recent years, so much so that isotope archaeology is now seen as an essential subdiscipline of archaeology in much the same way as isotope geochemistry is a key subdiscipline of geochemistry. Ignoring for current purposes the contribution made by the measurement of a particular radioactive isotope of carbon (14C) since 1950, we can date the beginnings of isotope archaeology to the mid 1960s with the first measurements of lead isotopes in archaeological metals and slags by Brill and Wampler (1965, 1967). This was followed by carbon stable isotopes in human bone collagen in the late 1970s, building on previous work measuring σ13C in archaeological bone for radiocarbon determinations (Vogel & Van der Merwe 1977; Van der Merwe & Vogel 1978). Other isotopes followed rapidly, such as nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur and hydrogen for archaeological, palaeoecological or palaeoclimatological purposes and, more recently, the heavier radiogenic isotopes of strontium and neodymium for determining the provenance of organic and inorganic materials (Pollard & Heron 2008).

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.

It is a common assumption that archaeological deposits with well-defined bands of ‘undisturbed’ sediments possess absolute stratigraphic integrity and hence that discrete cultural events are sealed within them. This cautionary tale, based on the excavation of a sandstone shelter site in Queensland, shows that this precise stratigraphic and chronological resolution can no longer be taken for granted. Conjoin sets (stone flakes struck from the same core) demonstrate substantial vertical artefact migration between layers, with consequent implications for interpretation.

Diet and ethnicity are strongly related. Recent work on fish-bone ratios and stable carbon isotopes suggest that the Vikings increased the fish contribution to the diet of Orkney and Shetland by a greater investment in deep-sea fishing.

Raised field agriculture in the Basin of Mexico was a highly sustainable farming method that did not depend upon centralised political control. Study of the chinampa system around the Early and Middle Postclassic city of Xaltocan through a combination of remote sensing, GIS, targeted excavation and AMS dating has revealed an extensive area of raised fields that was abandoned when Xaltocan was conquered by an alliance of powerful neighbours during the fourteenth century AD. The rise and abandonment of the chinampa system were thus directly linked to the political economy of the city-state. The failure to revive the raised field systems in the following Aztec period can also be attributed to the impact of political, economic and ecological factors.

Tells famously capture the historical sequences of the earliest farmers—but digging them is not easy. With a depth of strata of 17m at Dikili Tash, the earliest occupation was out of reach of a trench. But our researchers got there by coring, extending the date of the first occupation back 1000 years, and deducing, from small samples, the changing environment and possible connections with Anatolia.

In the course of their research campaign in Siberia, Ghent University archaeologists have developed a simple and cost effective method for the rapid 3D imaging of rock art, standing stelae and surface monuments. Their procedure will undoubtedly have a big role to play in archaeological research in advance of the oil pipeline expected soon.

The Lapita ceramics that define the ‘Lapita’ cultural complex of the southwestern Pacific are named for the type-site of Lapita, on the south Melanesian island of Nouvelle-Calédonie (New Caledonia). The island archipelago's early sites are central to shaping what Lapita is, and — if Lapita is not alone — to how it meshes with the other precocious ceramics made by voyagers of the western Pacific. Varied radiocarbon determinations need to be collated, and some stratigraphic complications resolved.

When does Neolithic life begin in Britain? The author gathered up the current evidence for radiocarbon-dated first use of cereals, distinguishing between dates from charcoal in contexts with cereals, and dates from the charred grains themselves. The charred grains begin to appear around 4000 cal BC and become prominent in settlements between 3800 and 3000 cal BC. This correlates well with the appearance of megalithic tombs (3800-3500 cal BC) and argues for a relatively rapid adoption of the Neolithic package during an experimental phase of two centuries, 4000-3800 cal BC. The early cereals reported in the pollen record (from 5000 BC) are attributed to wild species.

A new field is opening up in biological archaeology, as it is found that ancient DNA and other bio-molecules may–under the right conditions–survive over the long term. Is the same true of blood residues on stone tools?

The burnt sacrifice of bare (defleshed) bones, described in Homer's Odyssey and well documented from Archaic and Classical Greece, is now clearly attested by burnt faunal remains from the ‘Palace of Nestor’ at Mycenaean Pylos. This evidance is of great importance for understanding both the historical role of sacrifice in Greek religion and the significance of fensting in Mycenaean palatial society.

The authors examine the role of horses as expressed in assemblages from settlement sites and cemeteries between the Eneolithic and the Bronze Age in Kazakhstan. In this land, known for its rich association with horses, the skeletal evidence appears to indicate a fading of ritual interest. But that's not the whole story, and once again micro-archaeology reveals the true balance. The horses are present at the funeral, but now as meat for the pot, detected in bone fragments and lipids in the pot walls.

The area of Ounjougou consists of a series of gullies cut through Upper Pleistocene and Holocene formations on the Dogon Plateau in the Sahel at the south edge of the Sahara Desert. Here the authors have chronicled a stratified sequence of human occupation from the tenth to the second millennium BC, recording natural and anthropogenic strata containing artefacts and micro- and macro- palaeoecological remains, mostly in an excellent state of preservation. They present a first synthesis of the archaeological and environmental sequence for the Holocene period, define five main occupation phases for Ounjougou, and attempt to place them within the context of West African prehistory.