Mediterranean uplands often appear archaeologically poor, yet their surface record is shaped by geomorphic and post-depositional processes that vary over short distances. The 2025 Archaeological Landscape Survey at Rascino Plateau (ALSRaP) in Italy combines non-site survey and geoarchaeology to reconstruct the formation, preservation and visibility of the archaeological record in mountain landscapes.

New results from the 2025 excavations at Aguas Buenas (fourth–ninth centuries CE), central Nicaragua, combine soil-profile descriptions and luminescence profiling to reconstruct mound-building sequences and their temporal rhythms. Here, the authors explain how this helps to shed light on communal forms of monumentality in southern Central America.

Ongoing archaeological research at Lacroix Inlet, in Franklin Bay on Isla de los Estados, part of the Atlantic-Pacific sailing route since the early seventeenth century, has provided new information on shipwreck remains and a temporary camp possibly linked with the schooner brig Espora (1873) of the renowned Argentine sailor Luis Piedra Buena.

Excavations at the site of Łysa Góra in north-eastern Poland have revealed La Tène artefacts such as a Berru-type helmet. Functioning as a fortified settlement, production centre and ritual site, Łysa Góra was a key hub on the amber trade route, facilitating long-distance exchange and interaction.

Historical accounts of Otto of Bamberg’s twelfth-century Christianisation mission in Pyrzyce, Poland, have inspired archaeological excavations, which in turn influenced anthropological research into contemporary religious imagery. Archaeological investigations at Pyrzyce’s early medieval stronghold thus inform broader scholarly recognition of the past religious landscape and its present transformation.

The Good Shepherd of Miseeda project investigates remains in a section of the Mahas region in northern Sudan. Centred on a church built around an ancient petroglyph, integrated archaeological survey and ethnographic research trace millennia of cultural interaction, continuity and transformation that shaped the sacred and social landscape.

The Coptic Project explores monastic landscapes and long-distance exchange in Late Antique Egypt (third–seventh centuries AD). Combining archaeological, textual and spatial data, it investigates the relationship between Christian communities, mobility systems and regional networks of exchange, offering new perspectives on connectivity and landscape development.

The Miaodongyingdongnan lithic assemblage, dated to c. 70–100 ka, features a core-and-flake technocomplex that incorporates both simple and planned technologies. Distinct from the Early and Middle Pleistocene assemblages in the Lower Yangzi region, it signals a technological shift toward small-flake debitage and retouch systems during the Late Pleistocene.

The Alta Murgia Archaeological Project investigates pre- and protohistoric settlement dynamics along the southern edge of the Murge plateau (south-eastern Italy). Surveys conducted between 2023 and 2024 revealed intensive exploitation of ecosystems at the interface between the lowlands and the plateau, and highlighted significant shifts in settlement patterns.

Excavated in 2025 at Ursoaia, north-eastern Romania, a Chalcolithic (fifth–fourth millennia BCE) bicameral kiln sets a new benchmark for prehistoric pyrotechnology. Its large working surface exceeds known Cucuteni–Trypillia and most Eurasian Chalcolithic examples, suggesting an intensification of ceramic production and an early shift towards craft specialisation in south-eastern Europe.

The Bronze Age monument known as Hagbard’s Gallows in Sweden is a combination of monumental standing stones, rock art and mounds. A new research project uses optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon dating techniques to investigate the monument’s chronology.

An altar-shaped name stamp from the workshop of Avillius was found in a mid-first-century CE context at the site of Podere Marzuolo (Tuscany, Italy). Among the known repertoire of name stamps on Italian terra sigillata, this stamp stands out both in terms of size and complexity.

The SHIPs project examines ancient harbours from a maritime perspective, analysing integrated harbour systems across contrasting environments in the Mediterranean region. Application of standardised analyses demonstrates that extra-basin anchorage zones played a decisive role in determining harbour capacity and enables more robust evaluation and comparative ranking of ancient ports.

In the past decade, a wave of archaeological initiatives has targeted some of the major archaeological sites in northern Iraq, the Assyrian capitals. As of summer 2025, the Nimrud Lower Town Archaeological Project focuses on exploring Assyrian urbanism from the perspective of the empire’s longest-standing capital.

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.

New dates from Mujina pećina, obtained through optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), provide the earliest radiometric dates yet recorded from an archaeological site in Dalmatia, Croatia. Associated Mousterian artefacts indicate that humans were present in this part of the Adriatic region c. 30 000 years earlier than previously believed.

Field surveys in the Esfarayen Plain, north-eastern Iran, documented evidence of hominin occupations at 24 localities in Northern Khorasan. These findings help transform our understanding of Palaeolithic populations in north-eastern Iran and underscore the importance of this region in the dispersal of hominins into the interior of Asia.

Through autoptic examination, macrophotography and comparative palaeography, this study identifies changes in sign forms, engraving techniques and associated iconography in a corpus of Urartian inscribed bronze bowls. Evolving scribal practices, and the transformation of monumental cuneiform into portable media, highlight the role of inscribed metal vessels in expressing Urartian kingship.