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Conservation of fragile and fragmented archaeological remains can be essential to their preservation and study. Here, the authors use the example of the approximately 75 000-year-old Shanidar Z Neanderthal to illustrate the importance of appropriate conservation from excavation to the laboratory, and of the detailed documentation of this process, for enabling anatomical and taphonomic research.

Białowieża Forest in eastern Poland preserves a landscape largely unaffected by recent human activity. A multidisciplinary study combining airborne and surface surveys, excavations and palaeoenvironmental analysis confirms episodic human activity in the area over the past 10 000 years, providing a methodological foundation for future research and heritage conservation.

Since 2017, the Samtskhe-Javakheti Project has identified about 168 archaeological sites in the highlands of southern Georgia and conducted excavations at Meghreki Fortress and Baraleti Natsargora. These sites reveal complex occupational sequences, fortification strategies and decorative practices, highlighting the region’s role as an interactive cultural frontier between highlands and steppes.

Despite the survival of some historical records, little is known about water management in Urartu. This project focuses on the fortress of Argishtikhinili in the Araks Valley, Armenia, employing satellite imaging and remote sensing data to identify 1019km of water-management features, including a potential 134.6km of ancient canals.

Excavations at the Jizhong site in eastern China reveal the agricultural and horticultural range of the ancient Yue state, uncovering rice, gourds and fruit seeds, and the integration of proto-urban foodways with state development. This suggests that increasing dietary complexity and urban-rural integration were inherited by the subsequent Qin-Han dynasties.

The ‘Costumes of Authority’ project (2022–2024) investigated how clothing expressed secular and religious authority in Christian Nubia (ninth–fourteenth centuries). Experimental reconstruction of five representative costumes (two kings, two royal mothers, one bishop) based on iconographic and textile evidence highlights the physical impact and visual effect of these garments.

‘The Castles’ project was completed in late 2025 (https://castles.unisi.it) and its innovative, multidisciplinary approach is revealing a revised chronological and typological sequence for the phenomenon of incastellamento in Italy. The results show an earlier appearance of large stone structures and a much later appearance of fortified stone-built villages around seigneurial centres than previously thought.

This study investigates Escuadrón 41, a former colonial battery turned detention and torture centre, to examine the material and mnemonic afterlives of state violence in Cuba. Through excavation, archival research and oral histories, it reveals how ruins, memory and erasure intersect, positioning archaeology as critical engagement with difficult pasts.

Excavations on Letná Hill uncovered a forgotten 1950s labour camp linked to Prague’s Stalin Monument. Preserved architecture and artefacts reveal the daily life of workers, driven less by physical violence than by ideological pressure and social consequences, shedding new light on forced labour and material culture in communist Czechoslovakia.

Spanning 760km2 and identifying 603 sites covering thousands of years of (pre)history, the Mariwan Archaeological Survey provides a comprehensive examination of settlement history in north-western Iran. By employing advanced survey methods and targeting previously unexplored regions, evidence and understanding of Mariwan’s cultural dynamics and historical interactions is substantially enhanced.

The 2022–2023 Pleistocene and Early Holocene Archaeological Surface Survey in Mardin Province, south-eastern Türkiye, identified prehistoric settlements, including Şika Rika 5, that provide new insights into the early stages of settlement in the Northern Khabur Region.

The WEAR project is developing integrative methods to analyse and predict use-related shape transformation of Neolithic stone tools from Central Europe through experimental archaeology and computational modelling.

Adapting to a global urban future requires diverse, long-term perspectives on urbanism. URBank supports this by bringing together global deep-time urban datasets in a modern open-science computing platform. Its design eschews checklist definitions of cities, representing the variability of past urbanism and enabling systematic comparative spatiotemporal research.

This article examines a monumental structure in the North Pontic Steppe that was repurposed as a burial mound in the late fourth millennium BCE. The authors argue that this repurposing reflects a pattern of Yamna appropriation of ritual spaces, conceptualised as a ‘continuity of sacred spaces’.

This project investigates archaeological material collected from north-west China in the 1920s and housed at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm. Finds and archival materials are examined and catalogued to learn about prehistoric cultural interactions and to reconnect discoveries with the original excavation contexts and excavators.

Excavations at Kalat-e Yavar offer new insights into prehistoric connectivity between the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia. Stratified deposits yielded ceramics and burials from the third/second millennia BCE, alongside architectural remains, pits, faunal/botanical assemblages and a kiln, marking the Bojnord Plain as a cultural contact zone.

Newly discovered open-air sites along the Dorps River in the arid Karoo (South Africa), a region with uneven archaeological coverage, demonstrate multiple visits to this favoured habitat in the late Holocene Later Stone Age (c. 3000–2000 BP).

A geophysical survey at Cahal Pech, Belize, identified one of the earliest securely dated lithic caches from the Maya lowlands. Linked to Middle Preclassic (800–400 cal BC) monumental architecture and communal ceremonial events, this find demonstrates the effectiveness of gradiometry for detecting ritual deposits.