The Central Mediterranean Penal Heritage Project (CMPHP) employs remote-sensing techniques to study and preserve archaeological remains of human confinement. Within this larger project, digital photogrammetry was used to document part of the castle prison in Noto Antica to identify and digitally preserve graffiti depicting galleys and gameboards.

Direct physical evidence for violent interpersonal conflict is seen only sporadically in the archaeological record for prehistoric Britain. Human remains from Charterhouse Warren, south-west England, therefore present a unique opportunity for the study of mass violence in the Early Bronze Age. At least 37 men, women and children were killed and butchered, their disarticulated remains thrown into a 15m-deep natural shaft in what is, most plausibly, interpreted as a single event. The authors examine the physical remains and debate the societal tensions that could motivate a level and scale of violence that is unprecedented in British prehistory.

At Ollantaytambo, in the Cusco region of Peru, the Inka (c. AD 1400–1532) built an elaborate anthropogenic landscape to facilitate intensive agriculture. After the 1532 Spanish invasion of the region, this landscape was reshaped by the introduction of new plants and animals, colonial land-management practices and demographic transformations. Here, the author employs botanical data from a derelict Inka-era reservoir to evaluate the timing and character of colonial transformations to the local agroecology. These transformations, they argue, tended towards agricultural deintensification, but this process did not begin until decades after the Spanish invasion.

Enclosed rectangular farmsteads from the Hallstatt period in Central Europe are often cast as the seats of high-status farmers, whose land and social standing could be inherited and consolidated. Excavations at Landshut-Hascherkeller in Bavaria reveal the developmental trajectory of one such site through the stratigraphic disentanglement of its numerous ditches. Here, the authors argue that the coalescence of two rectangular farmsteads into a larger settlement complex at Hascherkeller reflects the union of neighbouring families and the resultant massing of status. The article situates this process in a segmented social system that counterpoints the typified Hallstatt hierarchy, suggesting that two social structures coexisted in the Hallstatt culture.

Identification of the origins of maritime-traded porcelain, though key to unravelling ancient production and trade dynamics, remains challenging. The authors present a pioneering micro-provenance analysis of Dehua-style porcelain from the late-twelfth-century Nanhai I shipwreck, recovered from the South China Sea. By pinpointing the origins of porcelain subtypes, including those bearing ink inscriptions, this study provides greater nuance in understanding spatial patterns of production and the impact of buyer/seller choice in maritime trade. The findings further highlight the effectiveness of portable x-ray fluorescence as a high-precision provenancing analysis and offer insights into porcelain production timelines in south-east China.

The emergence of early cities required new agricultural practices and archaeobotanical crop-processing models have been used to investigate the social and economic organisation of urban ‘consumer’ and non-urban ‘producer’ sites. Archaeobotanical work on the Indus Valley has previously identified various interpretations of labour and subsistence practices. Here, the authors analyse a large archaeobotanical assemblage from Harappa, Pakistan (3700–1300 BC), questioning some of the assumptions of traditional crop-processing models. The ubiquity of small weed seeds, typically removed during the early stages of crop processing, is argued to result from dung burning. This additional taphonomic consideration adds nuance to the understanding of Harappa's labour organisation and food supply with implications for crop-processing models in other contexts.

During the fourth millennium BC, public institutions developed at several large settlements across greater Mesopotamia. These are widely acknowledged as the first cities and states, yet surprisingly little is known about their emergence, functioning and demise. Here, the authors present new evidence of public institutions at the site of Shakhi Kora in the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq. A sequence of four Late Chalcolithic institutional households precedes population dispersal and the apparent regional rejection of centralised social forms of organisation that were not then revisited for almost 1500 years.

Ancient geographers and travellers of the early nineteenth and twentieth centuries described localities on the northern coast of Egypt, including the Hellenistic-Roman town ruins known today as Darazya. Impressive Second World War structures are also scattered there. Research initiated in 2021 will broaden insights into the history of the region.

The fragmentation of the archaeological record presents methodological challenges: as researchers analyse and construct models, they do not (and in most cases cannot and will not) know what is missing. Here, the author argues that these gaps are one of the field's greatest strengths; they force practitioners to be reflective in their understanding of, and approach to, studying the material traces of past people's lives and to make space for ways of being foreign to present reality. The uncertainty of a past in ruins is a place of possibility that empowers us all to imagine and to work towards a better future.

The Roman army was a vast military machine that demanded huge amounts of material and complex supply mechanisms. A 14kg hoard of mail armour from near the Roman legionary fortress of Bonn, Germany, offers insight into the organisation of recycling and repair on Rome's northern frontier. Computed tomography reveals there are at least four garments and suggests a likely date. The authors explore the hoard's context and motivations for its deposition and non-retrieval, arguing it formed a collection of ‘donor’ mail for repairing other mail garments. Its discovery in a settlement outside the military fortress indicates the involvement of local craftworkers. The settlement was abandoned in the mid-third century AD.

During the Late Neolithic, a series of short-lived, monumental-scale farmhouses were constructed across southern Scandinavia. The size of these structures is often taken as a tangible manifestation of the elite status of the inhabitants. Here, the author explores the architecture and associated material culture of the six largest known examples, drawing attention to general parallels with smaller farmhouses in the region. The comparison highlights similarities in spatial organisation and function indicating that, despite their size, these monumental houses served the same roles as dwellings and centres of agricultural production. Attention to function rather than size emphasises the importance of food production and control of surpluses in the emergence of social elites at the end of the Neolithic.

Broad cultural similarities are apparent between Neolithic sites across the Middle Nile Valley, yet local variation may also be witnessed. The dearth of well-preserved skeletal assemblages in this region means that biological connections between populations, and thus potential modes for the transmission of material culture, are not well understood. Here, the authors compare dental morphological traits in five Neolithic cemeteries (c. 5600–3800 BC) and 14 time-successive sites to explore biological relatedness along the Middle Nile Valley. Their findings parallel the artefactual evidence, suggesting that the spread of the Nubian Neolithic may have been as nuanced as the populations who practised it.

Limited research exists on preceramic sites in south-central coastal Peru. Systematic survey and excavations at Pampa Lechuza, Ica, now confirm a Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene Paiján (13 000–9000 cal BP) occupation and identify Quispisisa-sourced obsidian Paiján points, which are the only examples currently known to use this raw material.

Cultural landscapes affiliated with the Indigenous Sámi of the northern boreal forests are laden with cognitive elements of social and religious significance. Here, the authors focus on trees bearing incised markings and use an archaeological and ethnohistoric interpretive framework to explore the significance of such trees in Sámi landscapes. Intensive forestry is destroying culturally modified trees at an alarming rate, and their significance as the bearers of culture and history is being stripped from forest landscapes. As a step towards understanding their importance, this work makes a plea for the documentation, interpretation and protection of the remaining trees.

While a clear human presence may be recognised in the Andes by 12 000–11 000 cal BP, most archaeological research has focused on occupation of the Andean highlands. To understand the initial occupation of inland areas of South America, the authors consider regional connections and spatial exploitation strategies of hunter-gatherers highlighted in a recent survey of Andean sites. Focusing on north-central Chile, artefacts and radiocarbon dates from three rock shelters suggest sporadic and brief occupation during the Terminal Pleistocene–Early Holocene. Co-occurrence of marine and montane resources, the authors argue, demonstrates a strategy of high mobility and local adaptation in early Andean occupation, using rock shelters as landmarks to navigate and learn new landscapes.