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Geochemical and isotopic analysis of bitumen lining potsherds from the al-Qusur monastery (second half of the 7th c. CE and the middle of the 9th c. CE), at the central part of Failaka Island (Kuwait Bay), confirms the presence of two distinct compositional categories that can be matched to contemporary sources from two different areas of Iran: the Kermanshah province on one side, and the Khuzestan–Fars–Busher provinces on the other side. Potsherds comprise different types: TORP-S amphorae, TORP-C amphorae, SPORC storage jar, turquoise alkaline-glazed jar (TURQ.T), and CREAC jar. There is no relationship between the type of potsherd and the origin of bitumen. The bitumen coating SPORC jar, first identified as a kind of juice strainer to filter the «garum-like juice», was examined in greater details to try to identify traces of fish sauce mentioned in the Arabic kitchen books as ‘murri’, and quite similar to the Roman garum. The mineralogical analysis exhibits the classical minerals of archaeological mixtures (quartz, calcite, dolomite) and no halite. Hydrocarbons, alcohols, and methyl esters show a typical biodegraded bitumen signature but no fatty acids and terpenoids. It seems that the bitumen matrix has not adsorbed any molecules from the presumed «garum» filtered in the basin.

The ancient (archaeological) and modern potsherds sourced from Deccan basaltic soils and sediments at selected sites in the Bhima and Godavari river basins of the western Maharashtra, India, show characteristic mineral magnetic properties. High magnetic susceptibilities (χ lf) for the Deccan-sourced sherds enable their distinction from other sources in the region. The modern pottery sourced from Deccan soils shows significant lower χ lf than ancient pottery in the region, which further shows lower χ lf than the associated soils (/sediments) due to successive removal of detrital grains as a function of improvement in the preprocessing techniques. The ancient and modern potteries show higher superparamagnetic content that is otherwise absent in the source, suggesting its neoformation during firing. High hematite content in modern pottery relative to ancient pottery further indicates higher oxidative firing in the former. Based on close examination of Isothermal Remanence Magnetization (IRM) acquisition rates, we suggest the ratios: IRM1.8 mT/IRM0.3–0.025 mT and HIRM/SoftIRM along with other routine mineral magnetic parameters to estimate the relative degree of oxidative heating, source discrimination and the levels of pre-processing of raw material amongst the Deccan-sourced pottery. The present approach being rapid and economic, a large quantitative database can be generated from the potsherds for detailed characterization of these archaeological materials.

Detecting surface potsherds using low-altitude remote sensing is challenging due to severe class imbalance and limited training data. This study develops and validates a semi-automatic detection methodology that adapts threshold-optimized boosting classifiers (AdaBoost, XGBoost) to maximize ceramic detection recall under extreme class imbalance in the Western Megaris archeological landscape, Greece. Models were trained on only 15% of the available data to simulate realistic field conditions. Evaluation emphasized recall-oriented metrics (precision, recall, F1-score, AUC) for the minority class, addressing the accuracy paradox where high overall accuracy masks poor rare-class performance. Threshold optimization enabled AdaBoost and XGBoost to achieve substantially improved recall compared to baseline methods, with detection-to-ground-truth ratios of 2.5 and 3.2, respectively, reflecting deliberate prioritization of recall over precision for exploratory survey purposes. The results demonstrate that this methodological framework provides archeologically interpretable screening tools for identifying high-probability ceramic locations, supporting more efficient field survey design and heritage documentation workflows in Mediterranean landscapes.

The archaeological site of Tingambato is one of the few evidences of the populations that settled in western Mexico during the Classic and Postclassic periods, before the development of the great Tarascan empire. Therefore, its study is fundamental to know both the characteristics of the culture that preceded the empire, as well as the phenomena that led to its formation. During the last decade, efforts have increased to reveal the history of this site. Thanks to the recent excavations, different archaeological materials belonging to the three construction phases of the place are available, which have served to define their main characteristics. In the present investigation, the magnetic characterization and dating of different archaeological materials belonging to the last occupational stage of Tingambato were carried out using archaeomagnetic methods. Some of these materials show evidence of exposure to fire after their elaboration. According to archaeological investigations, the ancient city of Tingambato was burned before being abandoned, so the ages obtained for four of the analyzed potsherds represent the first available dating for the abandonment of the site. Finally, these ages allow us to propose interpretations about the probable causes that led to its abandonment.

Mapping surface ceramics through systematic pedestrian archaeological survey is considered a consistent method to recover the cultural biography of sites within a micro-region. Archaeologists nowadays conduct surface survey equipped with navigation devices counting, documenting, and collecting surface archaeological potsherds within a set of plotted grids. Recent advancements in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and image processing analysis can be utilised to support such surface archaeological investigations. In this study, we have implemented two different artificial intelligence image processing methods over two areas of interest near the present-day village of Kophinou in Cyprus, in the Xeros River valley. We have applied a random forest classifier through the Google Earth Engine big data cloud platform and a Single Shot Detector neural network in the ArcGIS Pro environment. For the first case study, the detection was based on red–green–blue (RGB) high-resolution orthophotos. In contrast, a multispectral camera covering both the visible and the near-infrared parts of the spectrum was used in the second area of investigation. The overall results indicate that such an approach can be used in the future as part of ongoing archaeological pedestrian surveys to detect scattered potsherds in areas of archaeological interest, even if pottery shares a very high spectral similarity with the surface.

In Ostraca from the Temple of Millions of Years of Thutmose III, Fredrik Hagen publishes a range of texts from recent excavations at Thebes. Although fragmentary, it is one of the richest corpora that have come to light for a generation, in terms of both the number of ostraca and the different types of texts represented, and provides essential new data for anyone interested in ancient Egyptian temples, religion, priests, and social history. The texts shed light on many aspects of life in an Egyptian temple, including the building of the temple, the daily operations of its cult, the organisation and size of the priesthood, types and quantities of offerings, as well as the broader cultural issues of literacy and the transmission of literature.

The main purpose of this preliminary study is to establish the relationship between the mineralogical and chemical homogeneity of Iron Age pottery vessels from Jneneh In North-Central Jordan and Tell Abu Al-Kharaz In North-West Jordan, as well as to Investigate the technological level of production of these vessels found at the two sites. Potsherds were subjected to examination using X-Ray diffraction (XRD), Polarized light microscopy (PLM) and X-Ray fluorescence (XRF), In order to determine the major and minor elements, as well as the mineral content of these potsherds. The results showed high homogeneity in chemical and mineralogical composition in Jneneh potsherds, and this indicates that the mother pottery vessels were manufactured using the same source of raw materials and the manufacturing techniques were not altered with time. Contrarily, high differences in chemical and mineralogical compositions were observed in Tell Abu Al-Kharaz potsherds, leading to the expectation that Tell Abu Al-Kharaz samples were manufactured using different sources of raw materials. The presence of primary Calcite crystals may indicate that the initial firing temperature of all the samples from the two sites did not exceed 800 °C. In addition, in all the samples, Quartz and Chert were crushed before being intentionally added to the clay used for the pottery production. For the purpose of increasing the clay plasticity and decreasing the shrinkage upon drying, bone fragments (Fluorapatite) were added. Some samples from Tell Abu Al-Kharaz Indicated that the source of raw materials used for making pottery vessels came from the Upper Cretaceous deposits based on the presence of Foraminifer microfossils, Planulina Nacatochensis. Furthermore, the occasional presence of basalt-forming minerals such as Augite and Plagioclase in some samples from Tell Abu Al-Kharaz indicates that basaltic grinding tools were possibly utilised for preparing the raw materials of pottery vessels.

Background and aims - Prior to European colonisation of Central Africa, human populations were dispersed through the forests, where they practiced slash-and-burn cultivation. From the 19th century they were progressively concentrated in villages along roads, leaving large areas of forest derelict. In south-western Cameroon, and elsewhere in Central Africa, forest canopy is dominated by long-lived light-demanding tree species, suggesting a possible role of human disturbance. The aim of this study was to bring new insights into the possible effect of historical human disturbances in terms of timing and spatial extent on the current forest composition. Location - Wet evergreen littoral forest in south-western Cameroon. Methods and key results - A combined vegetation sampling and archaeobotanical survey were conducted. Potsherds, oil-palm endocarps, and charcoal were found throughout the study area, suggesting generalised human occupation and anthropogenic fire. Human occupancy occurred in two periods: between 2200 and 1500 BP, and, more recently, beginning three centuries ago. High frequency of fire and the presence of Elaeis guineensis both dated recently (between 260 and 145 BP) suggest slash-and-burn shifting cultivation practices. These human-induced disturbances may coincide with the age of the current emergent light-demanding species, the age of which can be estimated around 200 years, or with the phases of drying climate recorded in the Central African forest in the early 18th century. Conclusions - These results support the idea that historical human disturbances are one of the major factors that shaped the current forest composition in Central Africa.