Recent excavations in southern Jordan have revealed the largest Early Bronze Age (c. 3600-2000 BC) metal manufactory in the ancient Near East. On-site Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses of the finds provide new evidence concerning the scale and organization of metal production at a time when the first cities emerged in this part of the Near East. Materials and lead isotope analyses of the metallurgical finds provide important data for reconstructing ancient metal processing and for identifying trade networks.

The Teouma site, on Efate in central Vanuatu, was uncovered during quarrying in 2003 and has proved to be one of the most significant discoveries to date for the colonisation of Remote Oceania. Not only did it bring to light a fine assemblage of the famously diagnostic Lapita ceramics, but a cemetery of more than 25 individuals along with the pots. The skeletons offer an opportunity to investigate the origins of the ‘Lapita people’ who first appeared in the Bismarck archipelago around 3300 years ago and rapidly moved through island Melanesia and Western Polynesia over the next few centuries.

Detailed excavation and analysis of a brush hut from Ohalo II, Jordan Valley, Israel, provides an extraordinary view of camp construction 19,000 years ago. This report offers an important contribution to studies of Palaeolithic camp sites.

For many years the author has been tracking the spread of the Neolithic of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and its extension eastwards into the western Pacific, as a proxy for dating the spread of the Austronesian (AN) languages across that same vast area. Here he recalls the evidence, updates the hypothesis and poses some new questions.

New excavations in ravines at Ounjougou in Mali have brought to light a lithic and ceramic assemblage that dates from before 9400 cal BC. The authors show that this first use of pottery coincides with a warm wet period in the Sahara. As in East Asia, where very early ceramics are also known, the pottery and small bifacial arrowheads were the components of a new subsistence strategy exploiting an ecology associated with abundant wild grasses. In Africa, however, the seeds were probably boiled (then as now) rather than made into bread.

Chance discoveries of weapons, horse bones and human skeletal remains along the banks of the River Tollense led to a campaign of research which has identified them as the debris from a Bronze Age battle. The resources of war included horses, arrowheads and wooden clubs, and the dead had suffered blows indicating face-to-face combat. This surprisingly modern and decidedly vicious struggle took place over the swampy braided streams of the river in an area of settled, possibly coveted, territory. Washed along by the current, the bodies and weapons came to rest on a single alluvial surface.

By extracting residues from pottery sherds the authors show that it is possible to say whether they had contained dairy or carcass fat residues. Correlation with faunal assemblages showed a good match between the incidence of dairy fat in pottery which implied a strong dairy fraction in the diet and a milking herd implied by the animal bones. They also show that dairy fat was more likely to be found in the smaller pots while carcass fats occurred in the larger ones. The method has demonstrated dairying in England from the fifth millennium BC, and offers a novel way of studying economies with pottery but few animal bones.

Domesticated rice (Oryza sativa) is one of the five major crops in the world and a staple food for more than 30% of the world population. Yet the question of where, when, why and how the domestication of rice originated has been, and still is, a question under debate. However, as more archaeological and archaeobotanic discoveries have recently come to light, the question of the origin of rice cultivation now seems less elusive than it was a few decades ago. To date, both archaeological and archaeobotanic discoveries seem to indicate that rice cultivation first began in the middle Yangzi Valley by 8500–8000 years BP, and subsequently expanded to south China and Southeast Asia.

The authors identify natural bitumen on stone implements dating to 70 000 BP. It is proposed that this represents residue from hafting, taking the practice back a further 30 000 years from the date previously noted and published in Nature. The bitumen was tracked to a source 40km away, using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and carbon isotopes.

This year, as it seems every year, news comes from China of another spectacular archaeological discovery. What is the framework of ideas and research that studies these treasures? And how does the special character of Chinese history, with its long, near-continuous record of dynasties, written sources and encyclopaedic texts, give archaeology a different place, whether higher or lower, among the other historical and social sciences?

As it is written in site reports today, the modern language of archaeology is not a handsome tongue, efficient though it may be at conveying neutral data (another horrid word). Are there lessons to be found in the beguiling style of site reports from a couple of centuries ago? And is there more to their charm than antiquarian romance?

The events to do with peopling the New World archaeologically represented by ‘Clovis’ and ‘Folsom’ have been — tantalizingly — beyond the range of radiocarbon calibration. Now calibration extends further, one can ask if the aburptness of Clovis, of Folsom, and of the transition between them are realities. A calibrated chronology for those sites where the stratigraphic security is best shows these in truth are rapid human affairs.

In this paper we use osteological data to evaluate theories about the rise of chiefdoms in southern California. To do this, we examine skeletal evidence for changes in diet, disease and violence in Santa Barbara Channel area populations. These collections date from before and after the development of large, sedentary coastal villages and a political system that facilitated inter-village economic interaction. Our data show that the health consequences of the development of these chiefdoms are comparable to those seen with the development of complex agricultural societies. They also provide insights into the causes of social complexity in non-agricultural societies.

Shuidonggou is unique within the Chinese Palaeolithic sequence and its assemblage is reminiscent of Upper Palaeolithic core-and-blade technologies in Mongolia and southern Siberia. Limited chronological controls have prevented evaluation of this technology in both the Chinese and greater Eurasian Palaeolithic. Dating of recently discovered hearths at Locality 2 places Shuidonggou firmly at 29,000–24,000 BP, and suggests the spread of the Eurasian large blade technology was primarily from north to south. The concurrent production of small microblade-like bipolar bladelets at the site may also presage the development of a microlithic industry.

First generation modelling of cultural systems, as applied in archaeology, frequently invoked linear, deterministic relationships as well as privileging concepts such as stability and an assumed cumulative evolution towards increasing complexity. But can the world of human affairs with its numerous reversals and unintended consequences really be captured by such models? Recent advances in the natural sciences have demonstrated the central role of non-linear phenomena, discontinuities and unpredictable breaks from established patterns and events. It is argued that such findings can form the basis for a new theoretical framework, human ecodynamics.

Have ancestors replaces chiefs as the defining entity of prehistory? This provocative view from the Mediterranean world may provoke a little debate.