Homo erectus leaving Africa a million years ago ought to have passed through the area that is now Turkey, and the authors report a first certain sighting of human activity of this date in a lignite quarry near Konya. The remains of rhino, hippo and horse were found with 135 modified quartz implements in layers dated by palaeomagnetic reversal to between 0.78 and 0.99 million years ago.

New excavations in ravines at Ounjougou in Mali have brought to light a lithic and ceramic assemblage that dates from before 9400 cal BC. The authors show that this first use of pottery coincides with a warm wet period in the Sahara. As in East Asia, where very early ceramics are also known, the pottery and small bifacial arrowheads were the components of a new subsistence strategy exploiting an ecology associated with abundant wild grasses. In Africa, however, the seeds were probably boiled (then as now) rather than made into bread.

The authors describe three splendid and newly discovered objects from the Upper Palaeolithic in northern Spain: an engraved scapula, a possible spearthrower and a decorated stone pendant. As well as adding to the corpus of iconic artefacts from the period, these new finds have the special virtue of being meticulously excavated and recorded in context.

At a hill-top site in the Korrannaberg, where there is a water source and a sandy arena embraced by a rocky ridge, the author persuasively evokes a lively prehistoric ritual centre, with rock gongs, reverberating echoes, dancing and trance.

Stonehenge continues to surprise us. In this new study of the twentieth-century excavations, together with the precise radiocarbon dating that is now possible, the authors propose that the site started life in the early third millennium cal BC as a cremation cemetery within a circle of upright bluestones. Britain's most famous monument may therefore have been founded as the burial place of a leading family, possibly from Wales.

The authors report new understanding of the prehistoric monuments of Hadramawt (Yemen) using archaeological fieldwork, linguistic terminology and ethnography. The stone tombs, platforms and alignments are shown to have experienced particularly interesting life histories. Passing travellers add stones and bury camels, shrines are reconditioned and dismantled to construct goat pens. It is clear that only this kind of multi-disciplinary expertise can hope to define the prehistoric sequence in an arid and rocky mountain landscape in which non-literate pastoral peoples have left few other traces. An online photo essay accompanies the article at http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/mccorriston/index.html

Western Sahara has one of the last remaining unexplored prehistories on the planet. The new research reported here reveals a sequence of Holocene occupation beginning in a humid period around 9000 bp, superceded around 5000 bp by an arid phase in which the land was mainly given over to pastoralism and monumental burial. The authors summarise the flint and pottery assemblage and classify the monuments, looking to neighbouring cultures in Niger, Libya and Sudan.

This newly discovered and excavated site defines an Upper Palaeolithic activity unit consisting of a roasting pit at the centre of an area 5m across. Although the main task was the processing of two mammoths, there were numerous other wild animals in the assemblage. The occupants used flint knives, made bone tools and modelled in baked clay – on which they left their fingerprints, along with imprints of reindeer hair and textiles. Pavlov VI offers an exemplary picture of the basic living unit that made up the settlement clusters of the Gravettian people in Central Europe.

Particular stones found on Epi-Palaeolithic sites in the Levant are thought to be for grinding vegetable matter and to be essential instruments in the development of food processing. Finding an assemblage of these tools in a burial cave, the authors ask a harder question: could they have been used for processing hides with ochre? Use-wear analysis allows a positive verdict, and so the tools take their place in the ritual apparatus associated with burial.

Backed artefacts, otherwise microliths or backed bladelets, are key indicators of cultural practice in early Australia – but what were they used for? The authors review a number of favourite ideas – hunting, scarification, wood working – and then apply use-wear analysis and residue studies to three prehistoric assemblages. These showed contact with a wide range of materials: wood, plants, bone, blood, skin and feathers. These results are unequivocal – the backed artefacts were hafted and employed as versatile tools with many functions.

The Greater Cursus – 3km long and just north of Stonehenge – had been dated by a red deer antler found in its ditch in the 1940s to 2890-2460 BC. New excavations by the authors found another antler in a much tighter context, and dating a millennium earlier. It appears that the colossal cursus had already marked out the landscape before Stonehenge was erected. At that time or soon after, its lines were re-emphasised, perhaps with a row of posts in pits. So grows the subtlety of the discourse of monuments in this world heritage site.

In this ground-breaking study the author looks at three consecutive styles of rock art, placing them in the social context in which they were produced. Although necessarily succinct, the argument shows that as hierarchy increased and functioned over longer distances, rock art could perform as the organ of pastoralist authority, or the badge of marginalised hunters or, most often, as the imagery of consensus masking social inequality.

The authors report and describe the remarkable grain silos discovered at Tel Tsaf in the southern Levant. These tall, white, barrel-shaped towers seem to mark the first appearance of monuments of demonstrative surplus.

Dating and examination of plaster floor sequences by micromorphology at a tell site in Greece shows when they were made and how they were composed. While numerous informal floor surfaces using recycled rubbish were put in place, as and when, by the occupants, formal floors rich in plaster seem to have been re-laid at regular intervals in reflection of a communal decision – even if the actual floors followed a recipe determined by each household. The authors rightly champion the potential of the technique as a possible indicator of social change at the household and settlement level.

Is a cemetery that has been robbed and pillaged for generations worthy of systematic research? It certainly is, given the application of a well conceived and executed project design. The authors show that the precise investigation of tomb architecture and identification of residual pottery can allow the detailed mapping of funerary practice over large areas of space and periods of time. Here they develop a narrative of increasing population and funerary investment through the Bronze Age in central north Cyprus. And having recorded 1286 pillaged tombs they call attention to the value of what still remains and the dangers that such monuments still face. The fact that a cemetery has been damaged is no reason to sacrifice it to the bulldozer.

Did the banana, yam and taro arrive in Australia at the hands of Europeans or come across the Torres Strait 2000 years before? Reviewing the evidence from herbaria histories and anthropology, the authors propose a ‘hierarchy of hypotheses’ and consider a still earlier option, that these food plants were potentially grown in Australia at least 8000 years ago, while it was still joined to New Guinea. This hypothesis, first proposed by Jones and Meehan in 1989, locates early horticultural experiments among peoples too often seen as inveterate hunter-gatherers.