I hope you had a wonderful festive period – but even as we look forward to what 2019 might bring, the past still has plenty to reveal.

This month’s cover feature takes us deep into the Neolithic, where we consider evidence for whether sites that were monumentalised during this period were also considered ‘special’ during the Mesolithic.

Some of these sites are home to enigmatic ‘curated’ objects – items that were already a century or more old by the time they were consigned to the ground – and unusual buried collections of artefacts also form the focus of our second feature. Anglo-Saxon iron hoards are often overshadowed by their more glamorous gold and silver cousins, like the Staffordshire Hoard, yet these unassuming assemblages can be equally illuminating.

Iron may have been valued in antiquity for its transformative powers – and the Liverpool Calder stones are no strangers to transformation either. In the 19th century, the remains of a c.5,000-year-old tomb were rearranged into a small stone circle, and in the 1950s the monument was moved once more. Now its six uprights have travelled 200 miles south to London for expert conservation, before they are returned home and redisplayed in a form much closer to their original design.

Our fourth feature travels to the outskirts of Airth, to join the hunt for the remains of one of James IV of Scotland’s royal dockyards.

Finally, it is not too late to have your say in the Current Archaeology awards, nor to book your place at our annual conference – turn to p.58 to find out more.

Carly Hilts