The Nebra disc is one of the most sensational European discoveries of the decade. It appears to carry symbols of the sun, moon and stars wrought in gold on a flat bronze disc just over a foot across (320mm). It is not only very strange, but, famously, appears to be winking, initially raising the suspicion that it may be a hoax. Scholars have, however, claimed it firmly for the Bronze Age, and the debate now moves to the matter of its meaning. Here the authors offer a subtle interpretation that sees it as the shamanistic device of a local warrior society.

Six years ago we reported the discovery of a central place at Uppåkra in southern Sweden which promised to be unusually rich and informative (Hårdh 2000). At 40ha it already stood out as the largest concentration of residual phosphate in the whole province of Scania, with surface finds of Roman and late Iron Age metalwork (second-tenth century AD). Following this thorough evaluation, the project moved into its excavation phase which has brought to light several buildings of the first millennium AD, among them one that has proved truly exceptional. Its tall structure and numerous ornamented finds suggest an elaborate timber cult house. This is the first Scandinavian building for which the term ‘temple’ can be justly claimed and it is already sign-posting new directions for the early middle ages in northern Europe.

The authors have identified starch grains belonging to wild plants on the surface of a stone from the Gravettian hunter-gatherer campsite of Bilancino (Florence, Italy), dated to around 25000bp. The stone can be seen as a grindstone and the starch has been extracted from locally growing edible plants. This evidence can be claimed as implying the making of flour – and presumably some kind of bread – some 15 millennia before the local ‘agricultural revolution’.

New dates by which modern humans reached East Timor prompts this very useful update of the colonisation of Island Southeast Asia. The author addresses all the difficult questions: why are the dates for modern humans in Australia earlier than they are in Island Southeast Asia? Which route did they use to get there? If they used the southern route, why or how did they manage to bypass Flores, where Homo floresiensis, the famous non-sapiens hominin known to the world as the ‘hobbit’ was already in residence? New work at the rock shelter of Jerimalai suggests some answers and new research directions.

Two new examples of decorative art have turned up at the Gravettian site of Předmostí, dating to the twenty-sixth to twenty-fifth millennium BP: rectilinear grid patterns are executed on one side of flat bones, probably of reindeer. The authors speculate that the two pieces may have come from a single larger decorated object. The grids themselves join a growing repertoire of patterns known from Upper Palaeolithic society, but their role remains enigmatic: counting, calendars or ornament? Art or science?

A classic exposition of the difficulties of dating a major monument and why it matters. Silbury Hill, one of the world's largest prehistoric earth mounds, is too valuable to take apart, so we are reliant on samples taken from tunnels and chance exposures. Presenting a new edition of thirty radiocarbon dates, the authors offer models of short- or long-term construction, and their implications for the ritual landscape of Silbury and Stonehenge. The sequence in which monuments, and bits of monuments, were built gives us the kind and history of societies doing the building. So nothing matters more than the dates…

Medieval ‘new towns’ seem to echo Roman towns in having a grid of streets associated with a fortress, and have often been credited with a standard plan applied by the hand of authority. Here the authors analyse the new towns founded by Edward I in Wales and find some highly significant variations. Rediscovering the original layouts by high precision survey and GIS mapping, they show that some towns, founded at the same time and on similar topography, had quite different layouts, while others, founded at long intervals, had plans that were almost identical. Documentation hints at the explanation: it was the architects, masons and ditch-diggers, not the king and aristocracy, who established and developed these blueprints of urban life.

We are privileged to publish this interim report on the discovery of open settlement sites of the early Palaeolithic in the Paris basin. The early occupation areas were defined beside the river Yonne at Soucy during gravel-quarrying, which were to produce flint bifaces and débitage and the bones of elephant, rhinoceros, horse and a wealth of other mammals. The sites differed from each other, both in their assemblages and in their location with respect to the old river channels. In the author's analysis this demonstrates signs of subsistence strategy and spatial organisation in the buried valley between 365 and 345 000 years ago.

The author argues for a significant social and cognitive transition between the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic in Europe. Between about 300 000 and 200 000 years ago, early Neanderthals developed stone working techniques which combined methods that were previously discrete, began to occupy high-relief terrain and to settle systematically the highly seasonal environments of central and eastern Europe – skill-sets here termed the ‘incorporation of difference’. These findings make us rethink the competence of pre-modern hominins and to review, in the author's words, ‘the boundaries we erect to police the uniqueness of humanity’.

Humans had reached Tasmania by 35 000 years bp and were in residence at the peak of the last ice age. Curiously, the settlements in the coldest period are concentrated in the highest and most southerly places, and the colder the weather became, the more sites were occupied. The author deduces that early people specially sought out the rock shelters of the highlands to combat wind chill.

A sickle, 21 flint lunates for tipping spears and evidence of the hunted quarry – gazelle bones – lay together by the wall of a Natufian building. The author deduces that these objects were contained in a bag and constituted the versatile working equipment of a hunter-gatherer.

Houses burnt down at the Neolithic site of Dikili Tash in northern Greece preserved the remains of wild grapes and figs. The charred shapes showed that there was a pile of grape pips with skins – clear evidence for the extraction of juice. The authors argue that the juice was probably used to make wine – towards the end of the fifth millennium BC the earliest so far from the Aegean. The occupants of the houses also had two-handled cups, providing another clue to consumption of a special kind.

The exploratory investigation of two sites in Kenya throws new light on the transition from a ‘stone age’ to an ‘iron age’. The model of widespread cultural replacement by Bantu-speaking iron producers is questioned and instead the authors propose a long interaction with regional variations. In matters of lithics, ceramics, hunting, gathering, husbandry and cooking, East African people created local and eclectic packages of change between 1500BC and AD500.

An Aboriginal man done to death on the dunes 4000 years ago was recently discovered during excavations beneath a bus shelter in Narrabeen on Sydney's northern beaches. The presence of backed microliths and the evidence for trauma in the bones showed that he had been killed with stone-tipped spears. Now we know how these backed points were used. A punishment ritual is implied by analogies with contact-period observations made in the eighteenth century AD.

An opportunity to investigate in advance of new construction led to the discovery of five Mesolithic hazel fish traps some 6.3m below mean sea level in the River Liffey. Closely paralleled on the continent of Europe they imply a well organised community that knew how to catch fish using the tide, to make wattle-work and baskets and who undertook coppicing on an eight year cycle in about 6100-5700 cal BC. The likelihood of more Mesolithic remains under European towns that have remained attractive to fishers and settlers has considerable implications for Cultural Resource Management. Do we always know how to find and access such delicate and important traces?

The tooth of a tiger shark, perforated to make a pendant, was lost in New Ireland, New Guinea between 39500 and 28000 years ago. The author argues that this has to be the work of anatomically modern humans, and implies the use of symbolic language not only across the former continent of Sahul, but also Eurasia.