This text concerns tangible and sensory aspects of petroglyph production with a primary focus on south Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art. The core of the study is based on an experimental trial of making a cupmark, a circle motif, and a shallow boat motif on a small granite outcrop. The aims were to measure time expenditure, the impact of water on the process, evaluate sensory aspects (e.g. colour, sound, and smell), and measure the visibility of the petroglyphs over time. The direct results of the experiment show that a cupmark can be produced within 12 minutes and a circle within an hour, using a direct technique with a small pointed hammerstone. The shallow boat motif took only seven minutes to make and was almost as visible (white) as the deeper circle motif, even without leaving any measurable depressions in the rock. The results of the present study are related to other published trials concerning Bronze Age rock art. This paper concludes that petroglyphs are probably less about making illustrative or communicative imagery but more about producing petrofacts: ritual devices with physical abilities, such as producing mineral dust or gathering and channelling water or other liquids.

Previous attempts at explaining how geographically distant and disparate Bronze Age polities, like the chiefdoms of northern Europe and the urban states of the Mediterranean, were connected have focused on exchange networks. By combining insights from political science with archaeology, this article sets out to do two things. First, to reintroduce system thinking to model interconnectivities in the Bronze Age world, using an old trope in international relations studies as a lens and analytical tool. Second, to argue that diplomacy and war must be treated on a par with trade as institutions of such a system, of major importance for understanding international relations during the Bronze Age. The authors discuss the so-called Amarna system’s scope in time and space, exploring whether and how Bronze Age polities in the far north of Europe, as outsiders, can be plausibly construed as constitutive ‘others’.

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.

High-resolution archaeometallurgical analysis of production debris offers a direct means of reconstructing ancient metalmaking traditions, yet remains underexplored relative to the study of finished artefacts. By integrating slag morphology, microstructure and compositional data from Late Bronze Age Taldysai, this study reconstructs, for the first time in Eurasian Steppe archaeology, a continuous 300-year tradition of copper-alloy production. The results reveal technological continuity alongside innovation, including advanced furnace designs, shared metallurgical knowledge and episodes of experimentation. The authors state that these findings position local semipastoralist communities not as peripheral adopters but as active innovators at the heart of Bronze Age Eurasian metallurgical developments.

Although thousands of prehistoric standing stones have been recorded across Iberia, the lack of associated detailed contextual data allows ongoing debate about their possible functions. Following the chance discovery of a ‘diademated’ stela in 2018, excavations at Las Capellanías (Cañaveral de León, Huelva), in south-west Spain, led to the discovery of two more stelae and facilitated the compilation of vital contextual information. Here, the authors explore the association between these stelae, Bronze and Iron Age burials and an ancient routeway, revealing reuse, temporal persistence, geographical connectivity and cultural hybridisation in the widening networks of prehistoric Iberia.

Excavations at Xiaeryamakebu, located in the Qaidam Basin of north-west China, have uncovered a large Bronze Age settlement that includes residences and cemeteries. The site provides crucial insights into the Nuomuhong culture, its mortuary practices and local adaptation to the Tibetan Plateau.

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 deep history of weaving is attested by spindle whorls and loom weights, so the evolution of techniques may be tracked through changes in these durable artefacts; however, wooden looms rarely preserve. Here, the authors document a series of loom weights and associated charred timbers and fibres that represent the remains of a Bronze Age warp-weighted loom, uncovered at the settlement of Cabezo Redondo in south-eastern Spain. Based on the number, weight and size of the weights, hypothetical reconstructions of loom setup and resultant textile products are proposed, revealing possible diversification of weaving processes in the mid-second millennium BC.

A truncated conical-shaped building constructed using the cyclopean technique, called Talayot 1 or East Talayot, is conserved in the Talayotic settlement of Sant Agustí Vell. The monument has an internal chamber with two polylithic columns and a pilaster that helps holding up a roof made of large stone slabs, below which three well-conserved wooden beams can be seen, as well as the remains of two other beams, only one end of each is conserved. The study of a sample of each of these beams extracted from the outer rings of the trunks enable us to determine that all the beams come from the Olea europea L. (olive tree) species. The radiocarbon dating of the samples suggest that the trees from which the trunks come were felled between 1259–1123 cal BC. It was the first time that construction elements of a Menorcan talayot could be dated.

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.

The ability of urban centres to grow and persist through crises is often assessed qualitatively in archaeology but quantitative assessment is more elusive. Here, the authors explore urban resilience in ancient Mesopotamia by applying an adaptive cycle framework to the settlement dynamics of the Bronze and Iron Age Khabur Valley (c. 3000–600 BC). Using an integrated dataset of settlements and hollow ways, they identify patterns of growth, conservation, release and reorganisation across six periods, demonstrating the value of coupling archaeological data with resilience theory and network analysis to understand the adaptive capacities of complex archaeological societies.

This study of red ochre in mortuary contexts in Neolithic to Iron Age sites in Thailand reveals regional and temporal variation. Used extensively at Neolithic Khok Phanom Di, often as body paint, the material was absent at contemporaneous inland sites. Its reappearance in the Bronze Age signalled a symbolic shift in practice, with pieces of ochre incorporated into elaborate funerary rituals. These patterns suggest differing cultural origins and evolving rituals. By the Iron Age, ochre use declined, coinciding with the spread of new mortuary ideologies. The authors highlight how ochre is a powerful marker of identity, belief and cultural change.

Between 2011 and 2017, excavations by a joint German-Georgian team at the Tabakoni settlement mound in the Colchis lowlands of western Georgia uncovered complex wooden constructions preserved in the waterlogged soils. Combined radiocarbon and dendrochronological dating, the first undertaking of its kind in Colchis, reveals that construction on a stable foundation for the site began in the twentieth century BC and identifies early evidence for the cultivation of millet. Subsequent occupation phases saw the careful levelling of previous structures and the addition of backfill, gradually building up the mound until it was ultimately abandoned in the second half of the first millennium BC.