Perched above Windwick Bay on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, the site known as The Cairns has been under continuous excavation by the Archaeology Institute of the University of the Highlands and Islands for several years. Although best known for its Iron Age broch (see CA 275), it seems that the area continued to be used even after this structure fell into ruin around the mid-2nd century AD. Recent radiocarbon dates are now shedding new light on this post-broch occupation, particularly on how it reflects the shifting social structure of late Iron Age Scotland.

Researchers at the University of Southampton have undertaken the mammoth task of mapping the complex network of merchant trading routes and ports that operated during the late medieval and Tudor periods. The project team analysed 50,000 ship movements between more than 600 ports in England and Wales from AD 1400-1580, scouring heaps of data from custom accounts, navy payrolls, and national ship surveys.

A Neolithic causewayed enclosure has been unearthed at Riding Court Farm, near Datchet. Lying within the Middle Thames Valley, a stone’s throw from Windsor Castle, it forms part of a well-populated Neolithic landscape that is already known to be home to a plethora of cursus monuments, timberframed houses, and middens. The discovery was made by Wessex Archaeology as part of an archaeological programme for CEMEX UK (a cement and aggregate supplier).

Two sites in Stirling are revealing new evidence of the castle and burgh’s inhabitants over the decades, from the medieval period through to the modern day, thanks to post-excavation analysis by GUARD archaeology. more than 2,000 artefacts – ranging from medieval pottery and 17th-century clay tobacco pipes to a more modern iron knife and a First World War Austrian army belt buckle – provide a snapshot of the town and castle through the years.

The application of proteomics, or the analysis of proteins, to archaeology is a fairly recent phenomenon – it only became viable thanks to developments in high-throughput, high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry – and archaeological scientists are only just beginning to scratch the surface of the many ways in which this technique might be used. Its potential is exciting, however.

Recent excavations in a field near the ruins of Deer Abbey in Aberdeenshire have provided the most compelling evidence so far for the remains of the monastery where the 10th-century Book of Deer may have been written and illuminated.

The nearly 10,000-year-old skeleton who came to be known as ‘Cheddar Man’ was found in 1903, in Gough’s Cave at Cheddar Gorge, Somerset. In more recent times, his remains have been on display in the Human Origins Hall at the Natural History Museum. Despite his fame, until recently little was known about this individual. Now a team from UCL and the Natural History Museum has successfully sequenced his DNA for the first time, revealing a wealth of details about his physical appearance – with dramatic implications for our understanding of how inhabitants of Mesolithic Britain looked.

Ancient DNA analysis of an Anglo-Saxon woman from East Anglia, afflicted with leprosy, has indicated that there could be a link between the spread of the disease and squirrels. The discovery adds to the already comparatively high number of medieval leprosy cases from the region.

Archaeological analysis has revealed what is being called a Mesolithic ‘crayon’. It came from the ancient Lake Flixton – now covered in peat – in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire. It is an area rich in prehistory, not least the famous occupation site of Star Carr (see CA 282). Now, a collaborative project between the Universities of York, Chester, and Manchester, studying ochre objects from the lake, has provided new evidence of how our ancestors may have coloured their animal skins and artwork.

A Bronze Age barrow cemetery has been uncovered in Hampshire, along with a connected mortuary enclosure and other possible ritualistic features. After an earlier evaluation by Wessex Archaeology and a geophysical survey by GSB revealed ring ditches, the site’s potential archaeological significance was flagged – and with the area selected for development, Cotswold Archaeology began a 2ha excavation last November, targeting the areas highlighted during the initial investigation.