Biostratinomic analysis (processes acting between death and burial) of Lateglacial mammal bone assemblages from three caves in northern England demonstrates the value of re-examining archived assemblages. With AMS radiocarbon dating of key specimens, these assemblages shed light on the ecology of a region at the northern limit of Lateglacial human activity in Britain. During the Lateglacial Interstadial bears, wolves and humans expanded into the region, bears by around 12 500 14 C yr BP, and the earliest evidence for human presence is around 12 300 14 C yr BP. At Victoria Cave, wolf activity included predation and scavenging of large ungulates and scavenging bear carcasses apparently resulting from hibernation deaths. The scavenging of bear carcasses is possibly confined to the first part of the Lateglacial Interstadial, whereas evidence for wolf scavenging large ungulates increases later in the Interstadial, after about 11 800 14 C yr BP, perhaps reflecting changes in the productivity of the Lateglacial ecosystem, and in human subsistence patterns. The assemblage from Sewell's Cave is wolf den debris from the very end of the Lateglacial Interstadial around 10 800 14 C yr BP, whilst that from Kinsey Cave is dominated by large-bodied carnivores, and is argued to have a quite different taphonomic history.

The creation of cities is only one example in a long list of cultural evolutions invented in Iraq. Ancient cities that flourished across Mesopotamia from 3500 BCE onwards were left largely abandoned and untouched for millennia until European explorers began excavations in the early nineteenth century. International excavations between Western and Iraqi archaeologists were eventually sponsored by Western organisations and the Iraqi antiquities authorities through the years. However, the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s caused the cessation of most joint excavations. The 2003 Iraq War further compounded problems by making it almost impossible for Western cultural heritage experts to engage one on one with their Iraqi counterparts. This chapter focuses on the use of fragile archaeological sites such as the ancient city of Babylon as major US military bases. It not only documents the damage done at such sites but also argues that when such sites were converted into military bases, the United States effectively turned once-popular public spaces into zones of exclusion, thereby contravening the basic human right of Iraqis to access their own heritage.

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