A relatively new way of analyzing tree rings has allowed researchers to reconstruct temperatures in Mongolia since 1269 C.E. The new reconstruction confirms that since the 1990s, summer temperatures are the warmest the region has seen in the past eight centuries.

 Burnt archaeological flints enable us to determine the strength of the Earth's magnetic field during prehistoric periods.  Information about the magnetic field in antiquity helps us understand the magnetic field today. Researchers: "the current weakening of the field is a reversible trend; Seven thousand six hundred years ago, the strength of the magnetic field was even lower than today, but within approximately 600 years, it gained strength and again rose to high levels."

The first clear example of widespread cultural diffusion occurred around 400,000 years ago, long before the rapid changes in material culture and regional traditions associated with late Neandertals and Homo sapiens. We explain the increasing visibility of fire use in the archaeological record in terms of changes in cultural learning and social networks rather than sudden invention. Not only were hominin populations in Africa and Eurasia biologically interconnected, there were cultural interactions too, evidenced by the record of early fire use and stone tool production.

After more than fifty years of painstaking bibliographic work, the Department of Geology of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country has created a database and an associated website accessible to everyone: http://www.ehu.eus/ibercron/iberlid. IBERLID is an interactive database of the results of lead isotope analyses from geological and archaeological samples in the Iberian Peninsula.

Stonehenge's sandstone blocks - sarsen stones - characterized in extensive petrological and geochemical analysis.

Meat and dairy played a more significant role in human diets in Bronze Age China than previously thought. A new analysis also suggests that farmers and herders tended to sheep and goats differently than they did their cows, unlike in other parts of the world — keeping cows closer to home and feeding them the byproducts of grains that they were growing for their own consumption, like the grass stalks from millet plants.