So far, four different cultural-chronological groups of sites have been identified in the North-eastern Azov Sea and Lower Don River areas, including sites of the Rakushechny Yar culture, Matveev Kurgan culture, Donets culture, and sites of the Caspian-Ciscaucasian region. An analysis of all known dates, as well as the contexts and stratigraphies of the sites, allowed us to form a new perspective of the chronology of southern Russia, to revise the chronology of this region, and change the concept of unreliability of dates for this area.

In contemporary archaeological and anthropological research, the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East during the Early Holocene is alternatively interpreted as an over­all slow and gradual, or as a rapid process. The present reanalysis of published archaeobotanical and archaeozoological data shows that the wild-domesticate-transition (WDT) was indeed initially slow (millennial scale), but terminated at 10.2 ± 0.2 ka cal BP with an abrupt switch to herding and agriculture. The abruptness of WDT can be understood as due to amplification under positive feedback conditions (resonance) of some few biological and social factors, primarily the short and long- distance transport of domesticates, in conjunction with a synchronous, abrupt climatic switch to higher precipitation.

This paper presents archaeobotanical data from three late Neolithic Sopot Culture (c. 5200–4000 cal BC) tell sites, Sopot, Slavča and Ravnjaš, located in eastern Croatia. Tell settlements are well suited for exploring aspects of diet and subsistence, as they present a concentrated area with successive generations building upon previous occupation levels. The plant remains from the three study sites suggest a crop-based diet of mainly einkorn, emmer, barley, lentil and pea, as well as evi­dence of crop-processing activities. This diet was also probably supplemented by wild fruit from the local environment, such as cornelian cherry, chinese lantern and blackberry.

The concept of the Kama Neolithic culture was proposed by Otto Bader, but lacked ra­diocarbon dates in the 20th century. Now, we have more than 50 radiocarbon dates that can be at­tributed to the Kama Neolithic culture. The results of radiocarbon analysis of organogenic materials of the Kama culture allow us to determine its chronological limits between the second quarter of the 6th and the beginning of 4th mill. cal BC. The early phase of the Kama culture is now dated between the second quarter of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th mill. cal BC, the middle phase is dated to the first half of the 5th mill. cal BC, and the late phase is dated between the second half of 5th and the beginning of 4th mill. cal BC.

Since the 1960s, more than 250 radiocarbon dates have been obtained for materials in the Upper Western Dvina area, which cover a timeframe from the 7th to the 1st millennium BC. Ra­diocarbon dates for materials of the Dnepr-Dvina area date the appearance and decline of various cultural traditions – from the formation of the most ancient pottery among hunter-gatherer com­munities until the appearance of the first stock-breeders in the forest zone, the bearers of cultural traditions of the Corded Ware culture. Dates for materials from the Upper Dvina area show both the existence of hiatuses between some cultural-chronological groups coinciding with some sig­nificant climatic and environmental changes, and the quasi (?) co-existence of some of the groups. Could these hiatuses also be traced in material culture, or do they appear because of a lack of data?

We present two parallel and 32 000 years long trajectories of episodic ceramic technology use in Eurasian pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer societies. In eastern, Asian trajectory the pottery was produced from the beginning. Ceramic figurines mark the western, European trajectory. The western predates the eastern for about eleven millennia. While ceramic cones and figurines first appeared in Central Europe at c. 31 000 cal BC the earliest vessels in eastern Asia was dated at c. 20 000 cal BC. We discuss women’s agency, perception of containment, ‘cross-craft interactions’, and evolution of private property that that may influenced the inventions of ceramic (pyro)technology.

Among the rich and diverse archaeological finds collected at more than fifty known Neolithic sites in the entire area of the eastern Adriatic and its hinterland, ceramic spoons comprise a group of very rare and almost marginalised items. Only eight examples, discovered in the northern and central Dalmatia region (hinterland of Zadar and πibenik), at open-air Neolithic sites known to date to the Middle and Late Neolithic. Based on current research and in accordance with the available archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological data from Neolithic sites in the eastern Adriatic region, this paper poses a question about the connection of ceramic spoons with the dietary habits of Neolithic communities in the eastern Adriatic.

Was the spread of agro-pastoralism from the Eurasian founder regions dominated by demic or by cultural diffusion? This study employs simulations that unfold a complex inter-regional and time varying pattern of demic and diffusive exchange processes during the Neolithisation, and thus supports from a modelling perspective the hypothesis that there is no simple or exclusive demic or cultural diffusion, but that in most regions of Eurasia a combination of demic and cultural processes were important.

The paper focuses on the results of archaeological, palaezoological, and radiocarbon analyses of Neolithic and Eneolithic sites in the Northern Caspian and Lower Volga regions. New analyses show that only wild animal species inhabited the territory in the Neolithic. Animals were not domesticated until the Eneolithic period.

If we accept the thesis that advanced metrological systems existed in Bronze Age societies, described and analysed as weight standards by many authors, we should also consider its simple consequence; these weight standards were the successors of earlier and rather simpler systems of value that developed within Eneolithic societies. Dealing with the issue of early metallurgy in Europe, some authors have traced patterns and proliferation cycles of copper for this period that allow us to see that the introduction of metal to the main regions in Europe was the subject of growth, spread, and changing social perspectives rather than a crisis in metal production and hiatus. This is the point, I think, at which we can embed one source of Bronze Age weight standards on the one hand, and earlier simpler methods of measuring copper, on the other.