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In the Iron Age, the Neo-Assyrian empire (c. 900–600 BC) conquered territory across southwest Asia and established regional capitals along its borders to secure its gains. Governors at these centers oversaw resource extraction and craft production for shipment to the imperial heartland in modern-day northern Iraq. Metals and textiles were the crafts most carefully managed by the administration. We know less about centralized control over ceramic production but hypothesize that fineware production and distribution would have been of interest to imperial administrators. A fineware type known as Palace Ware has been found throughout the empire and is considered an indicator of elite Assyrian dining traditions. Excavations at one regional capital, Ziyaret Tepe (ancient Tušhan) produced pottery of various skill levels used by residents. In this study neutron activation analysis (NAA) was used to characterize and compare the fabrics used to make Palace Ware vessels with more common wares to see if the former vessels were imported from the imperial heartland. Palace Ware is macroscopically distinct, but this does not always indicate an import. Chemical composition of the samples fell into four main groups, and both Palace and common ware were found to have similar compositions. Comparison of these data with those from contemporary sites showed that the two main Ziyaret groups matched the chemical composition of pottery from the Assyrian capitals of Nimrud and Nineveh. Our conclusions show that there is considerable homogeneity in the clays of the upper Tigris river valley in Turkey and the lower Tigris in northern Iraq. Given this similarity, it is possible that Palace Ware at Tušhan was produced locally, imported, or both. If it was manufactured locally, as has been shown at the urban center of Tell Sheikh Hamad, potters in the imperial peripheries may have produced fineware pottery independent of direct imperial control. 

The Darkveti multi-layered site in the Imereti region of Georgia offers valuable insights into prehistoric human activity. Despite extensive research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s by Lamara Nebieridze, certain aspects of the site's chronology and inhabitants' mobility remained unclear. This study aims to address these gaps through collaborative, interdisciplinary research involving Georgian and foreign scientists. The primary objective is to precisely date the cultural layers belonging to the Mesolithic and Neolithic epochs using absolute dating methods. By combining archaeological evidence with palaeontological, geoarchaeological, and palaeobotanical data, this study aims to reconstruct the palaeoenvironment and subsistence strategies of the Darkveti inhabitants. Additionally, the analysis of stone tools and lithic raw materials will shed light on technological developments and possible connections with neighbouring regions. The findings will contribute to a better understanding of the cultural dynamics, mobility patterns, and adaptations of prehistoric communities in the Imereti region and the wider Caucasus. 

The Ajara region holds a significant position on Georgia’s prehistoric territory, boasting important archaeological sites discovered through field excavations along the Black Sea coastline. Recent interdisciplinary research in the villages of Kobuleti and Khutsubani has provided deeper insights into the living conditions, mobility, and primary activities of ancient inhabitants. Particularly noteworthy is the establishment of a series of absolute dates, which addressed a crucial gap in the chronology of Georgia’s prehistoric archaeological sites. As a result of collaborative research efforts involving Georgian and international experts, a comprehensive study of the Khutsubani population was conducted, marking the first such investigation since 1968. This paper presents the overarching conclusions drawn from their collective research endeavors. 

Abstract Never before has the detection and characterization of exoplanets via transit photometry been as promising and feasible as it is now, due to the increasing breadth and sensitivity of time domain optical surveys. Past works have made use of phase-folded stellar lightcurves in order to study the properties of exoplanet transits because this provides the highest signal that a transit is present at a given period and ephemeris. Characterizing transits on an individual, rather than phase-folded, basis is much more challenging due to the often low signal-to-noise ratio of lightcurves, missing data, and low sampling rates. However, by phase folding a lightcurve we implicitly assume that all transits have the same expected properties, and lose all information about the nature and variability of the transits. We miss the natural variability in transit shapes, or even the deliberate or inadvertent modification of transit signals by an extraterrestrial civilization (for example, via laser emission or orbiting megastructures). In this work, we develop an algorithm to search stellar lightcurves for individual anomalous (in timing or depth) transits, and we report the results of that search for 218 confirmed transiting exoplanet systems from Kepler. 

Abstract The SETI Ellipsoid is a strategy for technosignature candidate selection that assumes that extraterrestrial civilizations who have observed a galactic-scale event—such as supernova 1987A—may use it as a Schelling point to broadcast synchronized signals indicating their presence. Continuous wide-field surveys of the sky offer a powerful new opportunity to look for these signals, compensating for the uncertainty in their estimated time of arrival. We explore sources in the TESS continuous viewing zone, which corresponds to 5% of all TESS data, observed during the first 3 yr of the mission. Using improved 3D locations for stars from Gaia Early Data Release 3, we identified 32 SN 1987A SETI Ellipsoid targets in the TESS continuous viewing zone with uncertainties better than 0.5 lt-yr. We examined the TESS light curves of these stars during the Ellipsoid crossing event and found no anomalous signatures. We discuss ways to expand this methodology to other surveys, more targets, and different potential signal types. 

Abstract Spatiotemporal techniques for signal coordination with actively transmitting extraterrestrial civilizations, without the need for prior communication, can constrain technosignature searches to a significantly smaller coordinate space. With the variable star catalog from Gaia Data Release 3, we explore two related signaling strategies: the SETI Ellipsoid, and that proposed by Seto, which are both based on the synchronization of transmissions with a conspicuous astrophysical event. This data set contains more than 10 million variable star candidates with light curves from the first three years of Gaia’s operational phase, between 2014 and 2017. Using four different historical supernovae as source events, we find that less than 0.01% of stars in the sample have crossing times, the times at which we would expect to receive synchronized signals on Earth, within the date range of available Gaia observations. For these stars, we present a framework for technosignature analysis that searches for modulations in the variability parameters by splitting the stellar light curve at the crossing time.