Issue 413 - October 2026

Deglaciation of the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet (c. 8000 BC) opened the mountainous areas of inland southern Norway for human habitation, but topographic barriers prevented the migration of fish into upland watercourses. Dates from four fish traps found in the exposed bed of Lake Tesse, within the central mountainous region of Norway, are reported here, with the earliest (at around 5000 BC) indicating that Mesolithic hunter-fisher-gatherers were exploiting fish that could have been present within the lake only through human-mediated introduction. These results help illuminate an early example of environmental management, and perhaps even a form of food production, among hunter-fisher-gatherers.

Earthquakes and the destruction they wreak on communities and landscapes are regular features of both modern news output and historical accounts. Archaeology can add to our understanding of such disasters, demonstrated here in the discussion of architectural damage noted during recent excavations at Panaztepe, an Early Bronze Age settlement in Western Anatolia. Distinct destruction horizons illustrate the primary and secondary impacts of two earthquakes during the third millennium BC: the first was followed by reconstruction and adaptation, the second by abandonment. By focusing on evidence of seismic activity, the authors examine the resilience of communities inhabiting this geologically fragile region.

Mohenjo-daro was a major city of the Indus Civilisation (c. 2600–1900 BC), with excavations revealing evidence for public infrastructure, civic amenities and hundreds of residences. Archaeologists traditionally assume that urbanism is accompanied by economic stratification, but, at Mohenjo-daro, qualitative evidence of inequality is absent. Drawing on early excavation data, the authors here calculate Gini coefficients of residence area, providing a quantitative proxy of economic inequality. Their results indicate that Gini coefficients, and thus inequality, declined over time, coinciding with increased prosperity and the development of the city’s street plan, indicating that governance likely helped limit economic inequality.

Although thousands of prehistoric standing stones have been recorded across Iberia, the lack of associated detailed contextual data allows ongoing debate about their possible functions. Following the chance discovery of a ‘diademated’ stela in 2018, excavations at Las Capellanías (Cañaveral de León, Huelva), in south-west Spain, led to the discovery of two more stelae and facilitated the compilation of vital contextual information. Here, the authors explore the association between these stelae, Bronze and Iron Age burials and an ancient routeway, revealing reuse, temporal persistence, geographical connectivity and cultural hybridisation in the widening networks of prehistoric Iberia.

The polymetallic origins and non-linear development of metallurgy have only relatively recently attracted more scholarly attention. Within this framework, the identification of three lead-smelting slag nodules in early second-millennium BC contexts at Minferri (Catalonia, Spain) provides what is currently the earliest direct evidence of lead smelting in Iberia. These materials are linked to previous indirect evidence of lead smelting in the area from the early third millennium BC. Despite the persistence of lead smelting across the Pyrenees in southern France, it was abandoned in north-east Iberia after the mid-second millennium BC, highlighting divergent sociotechnological pathways even in areas of close cultural contact.

High-resolution archaeometallurgical analysis of production debris offers a direct means of reconstructing ancient metalmaking traditions, yet remains underexplored relative to the study of finished artefacts. By integrating slag morphology, microstructure and compositional data from Late Bronze Age Taldysai, this study reconstructs, for the first time in Eurasian Steppe archaeology, a continuous 300-year tradition of copper-alloy production. The results reveal technological continuity alongside innovation, including advanced furnace designs, shared metallurgical knowledge and episodes of experimentation. The authors state that these findings position local semipastoralist communities not as peripheral adopters but as active innovators at the heart of Bronze Age Eurasian metallurgical developments.

Before Navan Fort became the mythological capital of the Irish province of Ulster, construction of the monumental Haughey’s Fort around 1200 BC marked the foundation of an important prehistoric centre. Here, the authors report on research integrating remote sensing, excavation and archival reassessment in the exploration of this Bronze Age landscape. Indicators of long-distance exchange and craft production of high-status artefacts, together with the presence of 204 possible structures and a ceremonial avenue leading towards a unique ritual pool, help elucidate the site’s social, economic and ritual importance, while identification of a 109ha enclosure underlines the exceptional scale of activities.

Until recent decades, the monastery of Lios Mòr (Lismore) in Argyll, Scotland, established by Saint Mo Luóc in the sixth century, was attested only via historical references and local traditions. Community-led investigations have now revealed an early medieval cemetery, sophisticated craftworking of international importance and early structures around the island’s parish church. These discoveries underscore the site’s status as a high-ranking ecclesiastical centre of the Insular north-west and elucidate its significance and integral role within the early Christian networks of Dál Riata, offering insights into the material traces of early medieval monasticism in northern Britain in the first millennium AD.

Mortuary traditions offer a wealth of insights into the social landscapes of human communities. Here, the author examines anthropomorphic representations in the decorated tombs of Kyushu Island, Japan, dating from the Late Kofun period (sixth–seventh centuries AD). The consistently subordinate scale, strategic architectural placement and systematic anonymity of these figures suggest that they did not function as portraits of the dead but were likely symbolic agents embodying a collective rather than individual identity. By demonstrating that the human figure is not consistently the protagonist in these funerary contexts, this study reframes our understandings of Late Kofun deathways.

Maya glyphic texts from the Classic period (250–900 CE) typically chronicle the exploits of historical or divine characters; everyday or functional records are rare. Here, the authors offer a reconstruction and transcription of a ‘microtext’ painted on an interior wall of Structure 10K-2 at the site of Xultun, Guatemala. The text records a unique astronomical formula that concludes with a name, attributing the work to an individual named Sak Tahn Waax (‘White-chested Fox’). To date, this is the only known example of a Classic Maya mathematician directly credited for their work, attesting to the value of its intellectual authorship.

Despite descriptions in tenth-century-AD written accounts, direct evidence for early brass production in China is scarce. The discovery of crucibles and a furnace dating to the ninth–tenth centuries in Guangzhou, southern China, is therefore a key find. Analysis of metal residues found within these crucibles, presented here, confirms the end-to-end processing of raw materials and production of brass via cementation. The authors argue that this find provides a new perspective on the transmission of brass-making knowledge and technology, highlighting the potential roles of institutionalised industry and maritime routes in the emergence of localised brass production in medieval southern China.

Before Catholicism was officially adopted in AD 1387, the Lithuanian city of Vilnius was assumed to be largely pagan. Identification of Christian burials within a large medieval cemetery (late thirteenth–fourteenth centuries) in the city was therefore unexpected. Here, the authors employ multiproxy isotopic analyses of bone collagen, dentine and enamel to examine the origins of 15 individuals from the cemetery. Based on the results, the authors argue that males were more socially mobile than females, with one male possibly having immigrated from south-eastern Europe, supporting historical accounts of a multiethnic founder community including immigrant Orthodox Christians and local converts.

Despite common associations with plague pits and mass graves, many individuals who succumbed to the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century AD, and to the numerous subsequent outbreaks of plague, were buried in parish cemeteries. This limits the usefulness of contemporaneous cemetery assemblages for the establishment of comparative, non-catastrophic (or ‘attritional’) demographic profiles for medieval populations in Britain. Drawing from three earlier cemeteries, this study reveals similarities in age-at-death and survivorship profiles for adults, offering a characteristic pre-Black Death profile that helps reinforce the distinctiveness of the over-representation of individuals aged 15–24 years among plague burials.

Central governments have controlled cultural heritage management in most African countries since colonial times. Focusing on Tanzania, the authors here argue that heritage sites are at risk from the institutions tasked with managing them, citing an institutional reluctance to protect threatened sites, delegation of responsibility to unqualified organisations, inappropriate development of sites as income-generating entities and a resistance to working with and recognising local community initiatives. The deleterious impacts of such management are explored through four case studies, which the authors hope will help sound an alarm in the international community and provoke calls for a national review of policy.

Field surveys in the Esfarayen Plain, north-eastern Iran, documented evidence of hominin occupations at 24 localities in Northern Khorasan. These findings help transform our understanding of Palaeolithic populations in north-eastern Iran and underscore the importance of this region in the dispersal of hominins into the interior of Asia.

First excavated in 1928 by Dorothy Garrod, Hazar Merd represents the earliest documented Palaeolithic site in the Zagros Mountains and a landmark in regional archaeological research. Nearly a century later, renewed investigations are refining the site’s stratigraphy and cultural sequence, providing a more nuanced understanding of its long-term occupation.

New dates from Mujina pećina, obtained through optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), provide the earliest radiometric dates yet recorded from an archaeological site in Dalmatia, Croatia. Associated Mousterian artefacts indicate that humans were present in this part of the Adriatic region c. 30 000 years earlier than previously believed.

From 2022–2025, the Curaçao Cultural Landscape Project conducted archaeological and palaeoecological investigations of Rif Sint Marie and Jan Thiel, Curaçao, to reconstruct long-term landscape history. Results reveal a 5700-year settlement history, strategic adaptations enacted by diverse cultural groups and the legacy of past human activities within the contemporary landscape.

Excavations at Xiaeryamakebu, located in the Qaidam Basin of north-west China, have uncovered a large Bronze Age settlement that includes residences and cemeteries. The site provides crucial insights into the Nuomuhong culture, its mortuary practices and local adaptation to the Tibetan Plateau.

Through autoptic examination, macrophotography and comparative palaeography, this study identifies changes in sign forms, engraving techniques and associated iconography in a corpus of Urartian inscribed bronze bowls. Evolving scribal practices, and the transformation of monumental cuneiform into portable media, highlight the role of inscribed metal vessels in expressing Urartian kingship.

Forced population resettlement constituted a strategic instrument in the territorial expansion of the Roman Empire. Survey and geophysical data from Macchia di Circello (Campania) offer novel evidence on the settlement of a forcibly relocated community, the Ligures Baebiani, transferred from Liguria to Samnium in the second century BC.

Photographed over more than two decades, alterations to the Alto Caramucho geoglyphs in the Atacama Desert show the unfolding of a heritage disaster. This article presents research that integrates new digital technologies (photogrammetry and artificial intelligence) for the evaluation and documentation of the deterioration of the geoglyphs.

In 2021, submissions to an art contest on Margarita Island, Venezuela, showcased Guaiquerí identity. Archaeology was largely absent from the artworks, but areas for meaningful future contributions connecting with existing identity narratives were identified. Intangible heritage, especially the Virgen del Valle and fishing, emerges as central to Indigenous identity formation.