Pole-and-thatch structures built directly on the ground surface were likely common in antiquity in the Maya area as residences, kitchens, workshops, storehouses, and for other uses, although the actual wooden architecture normally decays and often leaves no mounded remains. Various estimates are made to account for these “invisible sites” in population estimates based on mound or plazuela groups. Wooden building posts and associated artifacts preserved in mangrove peat below the sea floor in Punta Ycacos Lagoon, southern Belize provide an opportunity to address population size, material wealth, and household activities at “invisible sites.” The distribution of wooden building posts and artifacts at the Ch’ok Ayin underwater site indicates it was a residential household group with several pole-and-thatch buildings around a plaza. The householders focused on salt production, with artifactual evidence of brine enrichment and brine boiling, in addition to other supporting activities, and participated in Late Classic marketplace trade for goods from varying distances. Holocene sea-level rise that flooded low-lying coastal areas also obscured ancient Maya sites, making them “invisible” in the modern landscape.

In this paper a part of a new multi-proxy results obtained from the Kotoń landslide fen deposits (the Beskid Makowski Mountains, the Outer Western Carpathians, S Poland), including loss on ignition analysis, plant macrofossil analysis and radiocarbon dating is presented. The aim of the study was to verify whether the reconstructed local palaeoecological stages of the Kotoń fen development could be correlated with the Bølling-Older Dryas-Allerød sequence and to verify whether the rarely recognised short GI-1d/Older Dryas climate cooling affected the regional and local palaeoecological record of the Kotoń deposits. Results showed that four palaeoecological stages of development (poor-in-vegetation waterbody, waterbody with aquatic succession, calcareous extremely rich fen and moderately rich fen) determined for the Kotoń landslide fen deposits between ca. 14,600–13,500 cal BP stay in agreement with the earlier pollen division of the Kotoń deposits and with the extraregional chronology of the Greenland ice cores. The influence of GI-1d/Older Dryas climate cooling on the surrounding and regional vegetation was recognised for the deposits of Kotoń and other localities in a form of open-space habitats with herbs, shrubs and sparse tree stands, e.g. steppe-tundra, reflecting the cold and dry climatic conditions. In case of local vegetation and palaeohydrological changes, the Older Dyas climatic oscillation was recorded as a shallowing of the existing palaeo-waterbodies. Although for other localities this process was attributed to the dry climatic conditions, in case of Kotoń site more detail multi-proxy research is necessary to distinguish the climatic impact from the autogenic succession.

This article concerns the interpretation of refuse dumps discovered at three abandoned Soviet tactical nuclear bases in Poland and how their analysis prompted a reassessment of archaeological remote sensing results. The study employed a range of methods to document the remnants of these secret sites, including declassified spy satellite images, aerial photographs, airborne and terrestrial laser scanning, UAV prospection, and field surveys, supplemented by CIA reports and Warsaw Pact military documents. These data bridge significant gaps in archival records, offering valuable insights into the history of these sites. However, the discovery of Cold War-era refuse dumps near the bases containing materials that do not conform to other evidence present an interpretative challenge. It exposed ‘survivorship bias’ in the dataset, prompting a re-evaluation of earlier conclusions.

Bone and tissue fractions, obtained in 2017 following hip replacement surgery on a healthy Caucasian male, born in 1944, reflect in their 14C concentrations the integrated effect of the lifetime metabolic uptake and replacement of atmospheric bomb 14C at different tissue-specific turnover rates. The 14C content of hair and nails reflects recent carbon uptake. The 14C values in healthy cartilage and bone collagen/apatite correspond to those of the “local” atmosphere during the 2005–2009 Northern Hemisphere growing seasons, while those from damaged areas of the femur head correspond to the atmosphere in 2013–2014. A simple bone growth and regeneration model used in combination with the NH atmospheric 14C concentrations indicates remodelling rates around 9% per year in the healthy bone and a doubling to tripling in the damaged area depending on the model chosen. The differences in 14C concentration observed in the fractions provide both a caveat for sample selection for the 14C dating of archaeological bones and an indication of its potential in forensics and as a diagnostic tool for turnover rates in medical studies.

In this article, the authors contend that three blades, archaeometrically identified as made of obsidian from the Nemrut Dağ source in eastern Anatolia, were recovered from bona fide archaeological contexts at two sites in Poland. This is supported by somewhat contentious contextual evidence, which is thoroughly reviewed. If the findspots are accepted as genuine, these artefacts would mark the furthest western distribution of Nemrut Dağ obsidian, approximately 2200 km away from the source, more than three times the previously recorded western distribution of this material. The known history of recovery and curation of these artefacts, their techno-typological features, and their raw material source (based on EDXRF analysis) are assessed, and an interpretation of this unusual material is offered.

Despite the clear divisions in current archaeological theories, in the last 30 years a ‘new consensus’ is emerging; this is the recognition that materials can actively shape human behaviour and cognition. While this recognition offers major opportunities for explaining changes in the archaeological record without just succumbing to individual simplistic models – such as migration or diffusion, or acculturation or convergence – there is still a need to formulate a framework that allows schematising this new consensus into our classifications and analyses of archaeological materials. Our paper aims to take a first step in this direction by formalising some mechanisms through which human behaviour and cognition can be modified by the material world. Operating at the interstices between theories about material engagement, cognition, and practice, three mechanisms of transformation are formalised, i.e., visual enchantment, mechanical degradation and obtrusion. As a further step to integrate these mechanisms, we stress the need to factor in human expectations, the changing states of materials and contingent situations into our schematisations and reconstructions of human–material relations.

Falerii Novi, in the heart of the ager Faliscus, offers an unrivalled opportunity to investigate the peri-urban landscape of a Roman town. The paper presents some of the results of a research project that has been looking at the entire peri-urban landscape of Falerii Novi through a multidisciplinary approach, including extensive geophysical surveys, pedestrian surveys, and targeted excavation. The paper focuses on the area to the south of the city, where a series of geomorphological and archaeological features have been newly detected. The results have revealed that despite the artificial and natural boundaries of the city (i.e., the city wall and the steep ravine of the Rio Purgatorio), the community's efforts in managing, exploiting, and occupying the peri-urban area were substantial. The paper presents the newly recorded evidence of the significant effort put into water management as one of the key factors in shaping the landscape, demonstrating how the geological composition of the territory conditioned the engineering solutions adopted. Finally, the discussion focuses on the discovery of an agricultural area, likely a mixed cultivation system relating to the production of a surplus by the inhabitants of a large suburban villa.

A reassessment of radiocarbon counting statistics in accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) at the Andre E. Lalonde National Facility revealed that the traditionally assumed Poisson distribution may not always apply. An extensive analysis of 2.5 years of 14C and 12C data was conducted on a MICADAS™ AMS. This study found that only 63% of results adhered to Poisson statistics, while 34.2% showed slight deviations, and 2.8% exhibited strong non-Poisson behavior. This finding challenges the classic assumption that radiocarbon AMS is inherently a Poisson process. This study recommends considering non-Poisson models, specifically quasi-Poisson and negative binomial models, to better account for internal error and improve the accuracy of the reported error. Integrating 12C current noise into error calculations is also suggested as it plays a significant role in measurement variability. We would like to ignite curiosity on other AMS laboratories to test the non-Poisson error framework with the broader aim of assessing its applicability in improving conventional statistical models, error expansion methods, and in ensuring more accurate and reliable 14C results.