Archaeology is increasingly shaped by institutional pressures that privilege speed, monumentality and tourist appeal. At Comana, Türkiye, the Covid-19 pandemic created an opportunity to adopt a slower, more deliberate pace of investigation. Here, the author reflects on how practices adopted during this period promoted a deeper engagement with ritual landscapes through embodied interaction with the land and local community. This experience is used to support the argument that slowing down can resist institutional pressures and renew the discipline’s capacity for thoughtful, contextually grounded understanding; slow archaeology could be seen as a form of best practice under conditions of institutional acceleration.

Civil war in Sudan has created what the UN called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and has endangered cultural heritage through damage and looting. Partnering with the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, the authors present details of a collaborative project to digitally preserve and disseminate Sudanese heritage currently at risk.

Excavations at Koskarlı Cave in Türkiye’s eastern Black Sea region (Trabzon) have identified in situ Epipalaeolithic (c. 12 900–12 000 cal BC) occupation. As the first systematic investigation of this period in this region, Koskarlı provides a new reference point for exploring the lifeways of Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers and their regional connections.

Archaeological research conducted by a Lao-Australian team at the Hintang (standing stone) sites in Houaphanh Province, Laos, has permitted the geolocation of standing stone groups and the recovery of excavated archaeological remains from one site, including earthenware ceramics, a decorated perforated schist disc and stoneware fragments.

Recent research is highlighting the archaeological significance of the Loess Highland of north-central China. Here, the authors report on some of the findings from Zhaigou, in Shaanxi Province, where excavations have so far revealed monumental architecture, elite burials and evidence of craft production, indicating marked social stratification and networks of interaction with the Shang capital of Anyang on the Central Plain. Rather than an extension of the Shang state, the authors argue that Zhaigou and other highland sites existed as peer polities within which the local elites arose and wielded limited power through their control of access to prestige goods.

Museum collections represent a vast archive of archaeological objects and the excavations from which they were recovered. The research presented here stems from re-examination of spear-throwers excavated in the 1970s from Caleta Huelén 42, located on the Atacama Desert coast (northern Chile). Direct dates from two specimens, reported for the first time in this article, reveal that these are the oldest currently known examples of this technology in the Andes. Comparing the morphological and technological attributes of these artefacts with other known examples, the authors propose that spear-throwers and their use formed part of a shared tradition of land hunting.

Throughout the Syrian conflict (2011–2024), cultural heritage was both a deliberate target and an incidental casualty. Damage to the complicated relationships between communities and local and regional heritage has a much longer lineage. This article draws on oral histories conducted during the recent conflict to explore the relationship between the major archaeological site of Dura-Europos and local communities and stakeholders. It argues that some foreign-led excavations have had negative impacts upon Middle Eastern communities and their relationships with heritage, and that historic and ongoing community relationships to archaeological heritage need to be considered with increased attention and care.