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The subsistence practices of Holocene communities living in the Nile Valley of Central Sudan are comparatively little known. Recent excavations at Khor Shambat, Sudan, have yielded well-defined Mesolithic and Neolithic stratigraphy. Here, for the first time, archaeozoological, palaeobotanical, phytolith and dental calculus studies are combined with lipid residue analysis of around 100 pottery fragments and comparative analysis of faunal remains and organic residues. This holistic approach provides valuable information on changes in adaptation strategies, from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to Neolithic herders exploiting domesticates. A unique picture is revealed of the natural environment and human subsistence, demonstrating the potential wider value of combining multiple methods. Multidisciplinary research at the KSH1 site was funded by a grant from the National Science Centre, Poland (grant 2015/17/D/HS3/01492). The authors thank the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2016-115) for funding ‘Peopling the Green Sahara? A multi-proxy approach to reconstructing the ecological and demographic history of the Saharan Holocene’, and NERC 771 (reference: CC010) and NEIF (www.isotopesuk.org) for funding and maintenance of the instruments used for this work.

Evidence for both basket weaving and salt production is often elusive in the prehistoric archaeological record. An assemblage of Middle–Late Chalcolithic pottery from Provadia-Solnitsata in Bulgaria provides insight into these two different technologies and the relationship between them. The authors analyse sherds from vessels used in large-scale salt production, the bases of which bear the impression of woven mats. This analysis reveals the possible raw materials used in mat weaving at Provadia-Solnitsata and allows interpretation of the role of these mats in salt production at the site. The results illustrate how it is possible to see the ‘invisible’ material culture of prehistoric south-eastern Europe and its importance for production and consumption.

Lidar reveals the presence of a precinct at the Classic Maya city of Tikal that probably reproduces the Ciudadela and Temple of the Feathered Serpent at the imperial capital of Teotihuacan.

Human responses to catastrophic natural events form an important research theme in archaeology. Using excavation and radiocarbon data, this article investigates the socio-cultural impact of the mid-first-millennium AD Tierra Blanca Joven eruption at San Andrés, El Salvador. The data, along with an architectural energetic analysis of the Campana structure at San Andrés, indicate that survivors and/or re-settlers made considerable efforts to construct monumental buildings immediately following the eruption, using volcanic tephra as construction material. Such re-building played important religious, social and political roles in human responses to the eruption. The study contributes to discussions about human creativity, adaptation and resilience in the face of abrupt environmental change.

The hunter-fisher-gatherers of fourth- to third-millennium BC north-eastern Europe shared many characteristics traditionally associated with Neolithic and Chalcolithic agricultural societies. Here, the authors examine north-eastern European hunter-fisher-gatherer exchange networks, focusing on the Russian Karelian lithic industry. The geographically limited, large-scale production of Russian Karelian artefacts for export testifies to the specialised production of lithic material culture that was exchanged over 1000km from the production workshops. Functioning both as everyday tools and objects of social and ritual engagement, and perhaps even constituting a means of long-distance communication, the Russian Karelian industry finds parallels with the exchange systems of contemporaneous European agricultural populations.

Debate response to AYCOCK, J. 2021. The coming tsunami of digital artefacts. Antiquity 95: 1584 - 1589 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2021.84