While hunting scenes are well attested in Indian rock art, only two depictions of butchering are known from sites in India, and are very rare globally. Here, the authors present the discovery of a rare depiction of deer butchering, found at Maser in the Raisen District of Madhya Pradesh, India.

It is often claimed that changes in material culture signify adaptations to changing environments. Deploying novel conceptual models and computational techniques, research funded by the European Research Council seeks to reconstruct the patterns and processes of cultural transmission and adaptation at the turbulent transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene.

The discovery of eight biface lithic artefacts at Kashiwabara in Japan demonstrates the use of lithic reduction strategies, and suggests that mobile hunter-gatherers on the Japanese Islands were caching artefacts during the Incipient period of Jomon (c. 15–11 500 cal BP). This has parallels with hunter-gatherer behaviour in North America, and indicates that caching strategies may not have been unique to Palaeoindians.

In the nineteenth century, two Neolithic axe-heads were reported from the Michelsberg enclosure system at Kapellenberg. The recent identification of an unusually large tumulus, from which the axe-heads were almost certainly once recovered, reveals that socio-political hierarchisation, linked to the emergence of high-ranking elites in Brittany and the Paris Basin during the fifth millennium cal BC, may have extended into Central Europe.

A review of Minoan frescoes and artefacts suggests interactions with two primate groups in sacred and leisure contexts, respectively. This demonstrates the early exchange of iconography and knowledge of monkeys between the Aegean and North Africa.

The ‘Landscapes of (Re)Conquest’ project investigates the dynamics of medieval frontier societies in South-west Europe through the lens of the cultural landscape. It compares diverse regional borderlands in Spain, created by successive waves of Islamic and Christian conquests, with the Pyrenean frontier on either side of the Albigensian Crusade and aims to reconnect the castles of frontier authorities with their associated territories from a heritage perspective.

Drawing upon new evidence emerging from Kenya's Cherangani Hills, this research project furthers current understanding of the archaeology of Late Iron Age forest-dwelling communities in East Africa, focusing on a series of intriguing earthworks deep inside forest environments that are reminiscent of the ‘Sirikwa’ tradition.