Since the mid-twentieth century, the study of designs on seals has often focused on exotica and elite items. The PLOMAT project investigates visual and material communication outside of elite exchange networks during the Late Bronze Age in western Eurasia. The authors present results from plotting flows of ‘commonplace’ cylinder seals and those classified as ‘Common-Style Mittani’.

A dearth of published archaeobotanical data from the Late Bronze Age of western Anatolia limits our understanding of agricultural production in this key area. Recent excavations at Çine-Tepecik provide insights into farming and the political economy in the kingdom of Mira within the lands of Arzawa. Archaeobotanical assemblages indicate that farming was structured to meet both domestic and institutional consumption; the former utilising a wide range of crop species while the latter focused on cereals. Plant remains provide further evidence for a ‘hybrid’ suite of farming practices across western Anatolia and contribute to debate around the spread of broomcorn millet cultivation.

Across more than seven centuries (c. 1350–600 BC), the Assyrian Empire established political dominance and cultural influence over many settlements in the Ancient Near East. Assyrian policies of resource extraction, including taxation and tribute, have been extensively analysed in textual and art historical sources. This article assesses the impact of these policies on patterns of wealth within mortuary material—one of the most conservative forms of culture, deeply rooted in group identity. The author argues that a trend of decreasing quality and quantity of grave goods over time supports models emphasising the heavy economic burden of Assyrian administration on its subjects.

In 2023, prospection of a dried-out lake near Papowo Biskupie in north-central Poland identified substantial deposits of bronze artefacts. Excavation revealed further deposits and dozens of human skeletons that date from 1000–400 BC, suggesting that the site held particular significance as a place for sacrificial offerings in the Lusatian culture.

The discovery of a major archaeological complex at Faughan Hill, County Meath, was first reported on in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society in 2015. Comprising a series of large hilltop enclosures, probable burial sites, and associated features, the character and scale of the complex marked this out as an important focal centre in a region populated with some of Ireland’s largest and most spectacular monument ensembles, not least at the Hill of Tara, 15 km to the south-east. A more complete picture of the site has since been revealed through further geophysical survey followed by test excavations by the Discovery Programme’s Tara Research Project. Two trenches excavated across the hilltop enclosures in 2017 yielded evidence of four discrete phases of activity spanning some 3000 years, from the mid-4th to mid-1st millennia bc. During the Middle Neolithic the hilltop was encircled by a fenced enclosure (3635–3380 cal bc) possibly associated with the production of stone tools. At 250 m in projected diameter it is one of the largest enclosures of the 4th millennium known in Ireland. This was superseded in the Late Bronze Age by a far more substantial, 400 m diameter multivallate enclosure (1280–920 cal bc) representing the only excavated hillfort of its type in Meath. The hill was the focus of renewed activity during the Early Iron Age (800–520 cal bc) and later became central to the political ambitions of aspiring, early Uí Néill kings of Tara, achieving particular reknown as the burial place of their eponymous ancestor, Niall of the Nine Hostages. Developments at Faughan are illuminated further by a wealth of prehistoric settlement and ritual sites in the surrounding area, as well as early documentary sources, and, collectively, speak to a regional centre and gathering place with long-lived social, symbolic, and political significance.

The lack of radiocarbon measurements of funerary contexts is a major shortcoming of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age of the Eastern Carpathian Basin, especially in the Banat region. The present batch of samples tries to address these drawbacks, by detailing sampling strategies, employed pre-treatment and by providing a robust and coherent dataset of radiocarbon measurements. Implications of the new radiocarbon dates is discussed from a supra-regional perspective, while keeping aspects of typo-chronology, circulation of goods, and social nuances of employment of Bronze Age bronzes in the forefront. Ten burials were selected from four Banatian burial grounds according to the occurrence of metal finds in the funerary inventories. Beyond establishing a broad frame of absolute chronology for these sites of interment, the radiocarbon data provide reliable arguments for the precise attribution of metal discoveries. In addition, the data allow us to challenge some previously stated chronological assignments.

Radiocarbon (14C) data for 2nd millennium BC urban sites in northern Mesopotamia have been lacking until recently. This article presents a preliminary dataset and Bayesian model addressing the Middle and early Late Bronze Age (Old Babylonian and pre/early Mittani) strata of Kurd Qaburstan—one of the largest archaeological sites on the Erbil plain of Iraqi Kurdistan. The results place the large, densely occupied and fortified Middle Bronze Age city in the first part of the 18th century BC, an outcome consistent with the site’s tentative identification as ancient Qabra. A long occupation gap (up to two centuries) probably ensued, before a smaller town confined to the high mound and part of the northeastern lower town resumed in the late 16th and early 15th centuries BC, possibly before this region became part of the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Mittani.

Paradigms such as the coexistence of incineration and inhumation funerary practices in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Bronze Age are supported by the association of human remains with elements of material culture as guiding fossils. One example is the association established by Salvador Vilaseca in 1939 between the human remains and grooved pottery discovered in the Cova de Marcó in Tivissa (Ribera d’Ebre, Catalonia). This association has been accepted until today and even become a paradigm for the mixing of autochthonism (inhumation rites) with the introduction of material novelties such as grooved pottery and incineration rites during the first period of the Late Bronze Age. Direct radiocarbon (14C) dating of human remains from the Cova de Marcó shows that the remains originate from the Chalcolithic period. This indicates that there is no relationship between the sepulchral episode and the grooved pottery associated with it and used to date it. This disputes the paradigm regarding the coexistence of these two funerary practices during the Late Bronze Age and invites scholars to conduct a critical review using absolute dating techniques directly on the human remains of similar cases in order to verify or disprove the paradigm’s validity.

In the spring of 2017, amateur metal detectorists discovered a Late Bronze Age hoard near the village of Kaliska, Poland. Comprising over 120 artefacts, it is one of the most impressive Bronze Age finds within Pomerania. The authors discuss the hoard's contents and context, as well as its chronology.

Bjerre 7 is a modest Late Bronze Age house in Thy, Denmark. Excellent preservation and full-recovery techniques provided comprehensive evidence of farm self-sufficiency, local exchange, and amber collection for trade. Spatial analyses of ceramics, lithics, plant macrofossils, and amber identified distinctive activity areas at both ends of the house and outside. Routines are discussed for refuse disposal, ceramic use in everyday activities, ad hoc knapping and use of flint tools, plant processing, and amber storage. The household was economically generalized and largely self-sufficient, with limited specialization. Located close to the North Sea, the householders collected raw amber for trade. Metal was obtained from outside for a small-scale, household industry. Although some division of labour is likely, it seems that the whole household engaged in the diverse activities identified on site.

The origin of alphabetic script lies in second-millennium BC Bronze Age Levantine societies. A chronological gap, however, divides the earliest evidence from the Sinai and Egypt—dated to the nineteenth century BC—and from the thirteenth-century BC corpus in Palestine. Here, the authors report a newly discovered Late Bronze Age alphabetic inscription from Tel Lachish, Israel. Dating to the fifteenth century BC, this inscription is currently the oldest securely dated alphabetic inscription from the Southern Levant, and may therefore be regarded as the ‘missing link’. The proliferation of early alphabetic writing in the Southern Levant should be considered a product of Levantine-Egyptian interaction during the mid second millennium BC, rather than of later Egyptian domination.

Excavations undertaken at Uşaklı Höyük in Turkey during 2018 revealed a mosaic stone floor associated with a large building of Hittite date. This unique discovery raises new questions about the origin of mosaic flooring in Near Eastern public architecture of this period.

This paper attempts to resituate the Irish so-called ‘Royal’ sites within our vision of the Iron Age by challenging current understanding of their function as primarily situated in a ceremonial or ritual realm. While the evidence from these sites speaks to the complexity of their function, conceptualisation, and symbolic relevance, it is argued here that they are integral focal points of settled landscapes. Their architecture is suggested to address very specific concerns of the agrarian communities that built them and, in its very distinct change over the course of the Iron Age, to reflect broader societal developments, namely the emergence and decline of new society formations. Artefacts and ecofacts, architecture and landscape context of these sites contain a wealth of information on the activities that were taking place on and near them. It is argued that, freed from a binary ritual/profane interpretational framework, this evidence becomes readable as a record of Iron Age society and its dramatic changes over time.

Little is known about the types of intestinal parasites that infected people living in prehistoric Britain. The Late Bronze Age archaeological site of Must Farm was a pile-dwelling settlement located in a wetland, consisting of stilted timber structures constructed over a slow-moving freshwater channel. At excavation, sediment samples were collected from occupation deposits around the timber structures. Fifteen coprolites were also hand-recovered from the occupation deposits; four were identified as human and seven as canine, using fecal lipid biomarkers. Digital light microscopy was used to identify preserved helminth eggs in the sediment and coprolites. Eggs of fish tapeworm (Diphyllobothrium latum and Diphyllobothrium dendriticum), Echinostoma sp., giant kidney worm (Dioctophyma renale), probable pig whipworm (Trichuris suis) and Capillaria sp. were found. This is the earliest evidence for fish tapeworm, Echinostoma worm, Capillaria worm and the giant kidney worm so far identified in Britain. It appears that the wetland environment of the settlement contributed to establishing parasite diversity and put the inhabitants at risk of infection by helminth species spread by eating raw fish, frogs or molluscs that flourish in freshwater aquatic environments, conversely the wetland may also have protected them from infection by certain geohelminths.