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Terracing is found widely in the Mediterranean and in other hilly and mountainous regions of the world. Yet while archaeological attention to these ‘mundane’ landscape features has grown, they remain understudied, particularly in Northern Europe. Here, the authors present a multidisciplinary study of terraces in the Breamish Valley, Northumberland. The results date their construction to the Early to Middle Bronze Age, when they were built by cutting back the hillside, stone clearance and wall construction. Environmental evidence points to their use for cereal cultivation. The authors suggest that the construction and use of these terraces formed part of an Early to Middle Bronze Age agricultural intensification, which may have been both demographically and culturally driven.

The burials at the Neolithic cemetery Kadruka 23 in Sudan have yielded adornments and bone and lithic artefacts that occur as distinct stages of the chaîne opératoire. This article reports on a hitherto unrecognised funerary practice that highlights the importance of craftsmanship for Neolithic communities in life and beyond. Peer reviewed

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.

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This research was supported by the following projects: AVRIFER TAGVS: Minería romana del oro y poblamiento en Lusitania (AuTagus); AVRARIA: el oro de Hispania (2019-T1/HUM-14288); LOKI: Economías locales, economía imperial: el Occidente de la Península Ibérica (siglos II a.C.–II d.C.) (PID2019-104297GB-I00); Paisajes culturales en el norte y noroeste de la Península Ibérica (NyNO) (202010E147); and IGAEDIS: da civitas Igaeditanorum à Egitânia (DGPC: 2016-2019) Taking a landscape-based approach, the Aurifer Tagus project has demonstrated the significance of gold mining in the Roman province of Lusitania. New radiocarbon dates reveal the foundation, use and abandonment of the Covão do Urso and Mina da Presa mining sites. Combined with ancient literature, this evidence sheds light on the territory's organisation and the evolution of its social structure. Peer reviewed

The history of agricultural terraces remains poorly understood due to problems in dating their construction and use. This has hampered broader research on their significance, limiting knowledge of past agricultural practices and the long-term investment choices of rural communities. The authors apply OSL profiling and dating to the sediments associated with agricultural terraces across the Mediterranean region to date their construction and use. Results from five widely dispersed case studies reveal that although many terraces were used in the first millennium AD, the most intensive episodes of terrace-building occurred during the later Middle Ages (c. AD 1100–1600). This innovative approach provides the first large-scale evidence for both the longevity and medieval intensification of Mediterranean terraces. Funding for fieldwork and analysis has been provided by grants from the Newton Fund administered by the British Academy (AF140007 & AF160103), UK Research and Innovation (AH/P005829/1 & AH/P014453/1), the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (116K829), the European Commission (H2020 657050), Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, D.C.), Seven Pillars of Wisdom Trust (UK), Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (HAR2012-35022) (Spain), Xunta de Galicia (2016 PG-065) (Spain).

The western Ethiopian borderland is remote from all centres of power in the Horn of Africa. As a result, local communities have often been regarded by scholars and state agents alike as isolated and antiquated. The picture that emerges from archaeological research, however, is more complex: borderland societies have, at different times from the mid first millennium AD onwards, embraced, reworked or rejected innovations from neighbouring polities. Indeed, borderland groups developed a type of ‘vernacular cosmopolitanism’ integrating foreign customs and artefacts. As an old multicultural borderland spanning many centuries and involving a range of state and non-state actors, the region offers important lessons for our understanding of frontier societies in Africa and beyond. Funding was provided by the Spanish Ministry of Culture/Institute of the Spanish Cultural Heritage-IPCE (Archaeology Abroad Programme) and the PIAR Programme of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).