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The ancient southern Levantine city of Gezer is well-known from Egyptian, Biblical and Assyrian sources, associated with power struggles, conquests, and intriguing tales involving figures such as Milkilu and Amenhotep III, Merneptah, the Philistines, Solomon and his unidentified pharaonic father-in-law, and Shishak / Sheshonq I. Since the identity of Gezer with "Tell Jezer" is quite literally 'set in stone' by some dozen boundary inscriptions, along with impressive Bronze and Iron Age remains, research at this site provides a unique opportunity to compare text and archaeology, as well as bring to light the undocumented everyday lives of the city's inhabitants. In this endeavour, independent scientific dating is crucial for anchoring the remains chronologically. This paper presents the first substantial radiocarbon dataset and Bayesian chronological analysis for Gezer spanning the last part of the Late Bronze Age (LBA; LB IIB) through Iron Age II. The dataset derives from an essentially continuous stratigraphic sequence exposed in recent years by the Tandy expedition along the central-southern edge of the site. The results allow us for the first time to independently determine the site chronology, test the viability (from a chronological perspective) of proposed historical correlations, and contribute to debates on Philistine and Iron Age chronology., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2023 Webster et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

CT scans of an unnamed mummified adult from Egypt, now in the Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney (NMR.27.3), reveal it to be fully sheathed in a mud shell or carapace, exposing a mortuary treatment not previously documented in the Egyptian archaeological record. The carapace was placed between layers of linen wrappings thus it was not externally visible. Radiocarbon dating of textile samples provide a range of c.1370-1113 cal BC (95.4% probability), with a median date of 1207 cal BC. When assessed against mummification techniques of the era, the individual is placed in the late 19th-20th Dynasty, at the later end of this date range. Multi-proxy analysis including μ-XRF and Raman spectroscopy of carapace fragments from the head area revealed it to consist of three layers, comprising a thin base layer of mud, coated with a white calcite-based pigment and a red-painted surface of mixed composition. Whether the whole surface of the carapace was painted red is unknown. The carapace was a form of ancient conservation applied subsequent to post-mortem damage to the body, intended to reconfigure the body and enable continued existence of the deceased in the afterlife. The carapace can also be interpreted as a form of elite emulation imitating resin shells found within the wrappings of royal bodies from this period., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

This paper explores the explanations for, and consequences of, the early appearance of food production outside the Fertile Crescent of Southwest Asia, where it originated in the 10th/9th millennia cal BC. We present evidence that cultivation appeared in Central Anatolia through adoption by indigenous foragers in the mid ninth millennium cal BC, but also demonstrate that uptake was not uniform, and that some communities chose to actively disregard cultivation. Adoption of cultivation was accompanied by experimentation with sheep/goat herding in a system of low-level food production that was integrated into foraging practices rather than used to replace them. Furthermore, rather than being a short-lived transitional state, low-level food production formed part of a subsistence strategy that lasted for several centuries, although its adoption had significant long-term social consequences for the adopting community at Boncuklu. Material continuities suggest that Boncuklu's community was ancestral to that seen at the much larger settlement of Çatalhöyük East from 7100 cal BC, by which time a modest involvement with food production had been transformed into a major commitment to mixed farming, allowing the sustenance of a very large sedentary community. This evidence from Central Anatolia illustrates that polarized positions explaining the early spread of farming, opposing indigenous adoption to farmer colonization, are unsuited to understanding local sequences of subsistence and related social change. We go beyond identifying the mechanisms for the spread of farming by investigating the shorter- and longer-term implications of rejecting or adopting farming practices., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Archaeological excavations at Bindjarran rockshelter in Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, have revealed evidence of human settlement on the East Alligator River floodplain from the terminal Pleistocene through to the twentieth century. This excavation report summarises the archaeological, ethnographic and rock art research from the site, focusing on dated distributions of stone artefacts. The findings from Bindjarran conform to archaeological findings from previously investigated sites in the region and contribute to a greater understanding of Aboriginal society in this region during the Big Swamp phase, Freshwater phase and in the last 600 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying arboriculture and agroforestry in Polynesian Societies has usually relied heavily upon the ethnographic record in the absence of direct archaeological evidence. In this paper we outline a multi-proxy research design, including ethnography, palynology, anthracology, archaeology and a high precision chronology to evaluate arboriculture and agroforestry as components of Moriori subsistence practices before the arrival of Europeans in 1791. The colonisers of Rekohu brought with them a mainland New Zealand endemic tree, Corynocarpus laevigatus, and the technology to propagate the tree in a less than ideal climate and to process its drupe into a storable source of carbohydrate in what was a difficult environment for Polynesian cultivation practices. We also present a conceptual model of forest change due to Moriori fuel selection practices which suggests that Moriori were actively managing these forest spaces for food, fuel, medicine, construction material and as a habitation space, therefore making agroforestry an important component of Moriori subsistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: On the basis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of human remains, this paper provides evidence for the retention of hunter–gatherer economies among coastal inhabitants in northern Chile during the late Holocene – at the same time that inland populations were adopting agricultural economies. Coastal diets from the Caleta Vitor region of the Atacama Desert were dominated by marine-based foods, predominantly from upper trophic levels. The focus on reliable marine food resources is interpreted as a risk minimisation strategy in this marginal arid environment. Although these coastal hunter–gatherers adopted other goods and traditions from agricultural populations, their participation in this larger interregional exchange network did not affect their basic subsistence economies. Associated new radiocarbon dates from the site are also discussed. Skeletal remains and artefacts associated with the Caleta Vitor shell middens generally originate from sites with dates ranging from c. 9000–476 BP. However, the human remains that are the subject of this research cover the time period c. 4000–476 BP. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Direct dating of stone-walled fishtraps has been a methodological challenge in archaeology and is generally considered insurmountable. Dating is usually associative, linking traps to local archaeological sites and geomorphological features of known age. Limited excavation of sediments burying the lower sections of stone-walled fishtrap features has been previously undertaken with limited success. Recent fine-grained excavation and comprehensive AMS dating and analysis of channel in-fill sediments associated with an elaborate freshwater fishtrap complex at Lake Condah, western Victoria, yields reliable insights into the phased construction and use of the feature. An early phase of basalt bedrock removal to create a bifurcated channel was subsequently in-filled with flood sediments incorporating stone artefacts and charcoal dated to c.6600 cal BP. After a hiatus, basalt blocks were added to the sides of the channel to create multi-tiered walls within the past 600–800 years. This site provides the first direct insights into the antiquity of the elaborate fishtrapping and aquaculture system developed by Aboriginal people in the Lake Condah region, and may represent one of the world’s oldest known fishtraps. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]