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Decades of conflict in the Gaza Strip have contributed to widely documented cultural heritage destruction, demonstrating a need to monitor vulnerable sites and enhance the empirical base. This article describes how the Gaza Maritime Archaeology Project (GAZAMAP 2022–2023) was developed to monitor coastal and near-coastal sites, collaboratively. Owing to the unprecedented destruction of heritage since October 2023, GAZAMAP's scope has fundamentally shifted.

Despite its key role in out-of-Africa hominin dispersals, little is known about Pleistocene human occupation of north-eastern Africa outside the Nile Valley and desert oases. A survey in Wadi Abu Subeira aims to help fill this gap and attests to the repeated occupation of the Eastern Desert during the Pleistocene.

Prior to this work, no Palaeolithic field survey had been conducted in the central region of the northern Iranian Central Desert. This article is the first account of the presence of Pleistocene hominins in Eyvanekey, Semnan Province, and reports the recovery of lithics that date to at least the Middle Palaeolithic.

The authors present results from a new research project focusing on the prehistory of the area surrounding a vast flint outcrop in Mongolia, called Tsakhiurtyn Hundi, in the borderland between the Gobi-Altai Mountains and Gobi Desert. They present the discovery of a cave and the results of its exploration, confirming its use by Pleistocene hunter-gatherers.

This project in southern Chile's Lake Region analysed late Pleistocene human–environment interactions. Two field seasons in 2020 and 2022 provided a new lithic collection dating to around 17 300–12 800 cal BP, which indicates human presence in north-western Patagonia prior to the Younger Dryas period.

This project investigates the prehistoric coastal site of Kalba on the Gulf of Oman in the context of exchange networks between maritime waterways and land-based caravan routes on the south-eastern Arabian Peninsula. In addition to favourable environmental conditions, raw-material procurement strategies were important for the economy of this multi-crafting community.

Tappe Takhchar-Abad, near Birjand in south Khorasan, is a recently discovered and excavated almost circular adobe building with six towers, dating to the Achaemenid period. This article suggests that the architectural tradition of circular buildings and sites in the late Iron Age/Achaemenid period, in Greater Khorasan, apparently originated from Bactria in which most such sites have been reported.

The project ‘Last Neanderthals at the Crossroads of Central Europe and the Mediterranean’ (NECEM) combines lithic analyses of previously excavated material with new sampling for dating and environmental DNA. New radiocarbon dates from Vindija, presented here, help clarify the chronology of late Neanderthal and early modern human occupations in South-eastern and Central Europe.

Excavations at Yeghegis-1, a rockshelter in southern Armenia, reveal long-term human habitation from the late fifth to mid-fourth millennia BC. Here, the authors present a preliminary overview of the materials recovered from the site and highlight the potential of ongoing research to shed light on Chalcolithic human lifeways in the region.

PEPAdb (Prehistoric Europe's Personal Adornment Database) is a long-term, open-ended project that aims to improve access to archaeological data online. Its website (https://pepadb.us.es) publishes and analyses datasets about prehistoric personal adornment, drawing on the results of various research projects and bibliographic references.

In 2023, prospection of a dried-out lake near Papowo Biskupie in north-central Poland identified substantial deposits of bronze artefacts. Excavation revealed further deposits and dozens of human skeletons that date from 1000–400 BC, suggesting that the site held particular significance as a place for sacrificial offerings in the Lusatian culture.

Excavations at the site of Tell el-Retaba since 2007 have revealed an extensive settlement and associated material culture dating from the Third Intermediate Period (1070–664 BC). This work represents the only large-scale investigation into domestic archaeology from this period in Egypt and the results offer important insights into aspects of urban life for an under-studied phase of Egyptian history.

Social inequalities and marginality often go unrecognised in the Nordic welfare states. This project examines the effects of neoliberalism and intersectional inequality in Finland from a contemporary archaeology perspective; the case study is a Second World War German military camp turned into a working-class community occupied until the 1980s.

Previous archaeobotanical research in Southwest Asia focused on the Neolithic ‘founder crops’. The Founders project revisits this concept and the economic role these species played in the development of agriculture. To achieve this aim, archaeological food remains are studied and culinary practices of the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers are evaluated.

This terrestrial and underwater archaeological research project around a Mediterranean islet identifies that it was a commercial centre during the fifth century AD. The results shed light on Late Roman island occupation dynamics.