The Lowed/Middle Palaeolithic site at Red Barns, Portchester, on the outskirts of Portsmouth (SU 608063), was re-investigated in summer 1999. Three test-pits succeeded in relocating and exposing the artefact-bearing horizon first discovered in 1973 by J.C. Draper of Fareham and last seen in 1975 when a rescue excavation took place. This excavation produced a massive (in every sense) lithic collection including seven sediment samples, 8678 flint artefacts, 2058 flint nodules and a staggering 18,423 thermally fractured flint pieces (Gamble & ApSimon 1986). Recent study of the 1975 material (Wenban Smith et al. forthcoming) has demonstrated that the site is older than previously thought, dating to at least 200,000 BP and probably to nearer 400,000 BP, and that lithic technology at the site was dominated by the production of pointed plano-convex handaxes. Study of the organizational structure of the lithic production gave an insight into the patterning of Archaic hominid behaviour, with the site serving as a locale were handaxes were regularly made, but from which they were normally removed before being used and abandoned elsewhere.

Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan has a remarkable archaeological landscape with the remains of a vast Romad/Byzantine settlement and field system, many later prehistoric sites and a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B village dating to c. 8700 radiocarbon years BP. Since 1996 we have been conducting survey and excavation within this Wadi, and especially at its confluence with Wadi Ghuwayr, to locate the precursor to the PPNB site and any earlier prehistoric activity. The most important site so far discovered has been called WF16 and is a well preserved Pre-Pottery Neolithic A settlement, dated to between 10,200 and 9400 radiocarbon years BP (FIGURE 1). Sites of this period are extremely rare in the Near East and of considerable importance for they lie right at the juncture between a hunting-gathering and farming lifestyle (Bar-Yosef & Belfer-Cohen 1989). WF16 is particularly well preserved for, unlike other PPNA settlements such as Jericho, it was not buried by a later PPNB settlement, this having been located approximately 100 m away in the lower reaches of Wadi Ghuwayr. Neither does there appear to be significant Natufian deposits at WF16 — it appears to be a pristine PPNA site and for that reason is of considerable significance.

The unresolved questions about the beginning of the Neolithic period across Europe still abound (Whittle 1996). How did the phenomenon spread? What indeed was the phenomenon, and was it the same from region to region? Who were the principal actors involved and where did they come from? Were they permanently settled? What impact did they have on their environments? What use did they make of their various subsistence resources? How quickly were changes introduced and why?

Tell el-Amarna, the short-lived capital built by the pharaoh Akhenaten around 1350 BC, remains the largest ancient city in Egypt which is still above ground. Over the last century a succession of archaeological expeditions has revealed large areas of its plan. During 1999 the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in connection with a temporary exhibition of Amarna art, commissioned a 1:400-scale model of a major part of the city, based on the survey which, in recent years, the Egypt Exploration Society has carried out. It was designed by Mallinson Architects, with advice from Bany Kemp, field director of the EES expedition to Amarna, and built by a Clapham firm of architectural modelmakers, Tetra (Andy Ingham Associates). The completed model measures 12 x 10 feet (3.7 x 3.0 metres).

Above Hallein, 14 km south of Salzburg and at 800 m above sea level, the spa village of Heilbad Dürrnberg clusters around what until recently was a centre of commercial salt production. Its prehistoric roots overlapped with the hey-day of the well-known Hallstatt site, 40 km east. From c. 750-150 BC a community of perhaps 200 provided the labour force for the mines. It was clearly dangerous work; in 1573 and again in 1616 there are contemporary records of the discovery of the wellpreserved bodies of Iron Age miners while on the Dürrnberg as again at Hallstatt there are indications of serious landslides. As in historic times, the miners probably worked part-time only, in spring and autumn tending their pigs and cattle and pasture land. The wealth of this small settlement is clearly evidenced by the clusters of graves which surrounded the various rectangular houses.

In 1999 the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) began the excavation of a 5th-century BC shipwreck off Tektaş Burnu, a rocky headland on the west coast of Turkey between the Greek islands of Chios and Samos. The site was discovered in 1996 during INA’s annual survey, which has pinpointed more than 100 ancient wrecks off southwest Turkey. Since 1960 teams under Gcorge Bass have excavated wrecks ranging in date from Bronze Age to medieval, but the high classical period of Greece remained unrepresented. Interest in the Tektas wreck was spurred by its likely date, in the third quarter of the 5th century BC; it is the only wrecked merchantman to be securely dated to these years, and is therefore shedding unique light on seafaring and trade at the height of classical Athens.

As part of a long-term project examining the Classic-Postclassic (AD 200-1520) domestic economy in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, we have completed intensive mapping and surface survey at three large, hilltop terrace sites in eastern Tlacolula: Guirún (Saville 1900; 1909), El Palmillo and the Mitla Fortress (Holmes 1897). Earlier surveys (Kowalewski et al. 1989) indicated that all three sites were craft production centres (stone working) and had extensive Classic and Postclassic occupations (Feinnian & Nicholas 1996).

The Sangro Valley Project was established in 1994 by John Lloyd, Neil Christie and Amalia Faustoferri. Its aim was to study anthropogenic change in society, economy and settlement between the Bronze Age and the Middle Ages, within the context of a Mediterranean river valley system (see Lloyd et al. 1997; Lloyd & Faustoferri 1998). Part of this research has integrated field survey between the Sangro river and Monte Pallano with excavations conducted by the Soprintendenza on the mountain itself. Monte Pallano is best known for its fine megalithic walls (Oakely 1995: 84-7), marking a putative oppidum site. Recent Italian excavations [with Anglo-American support] have aimed at clarifying the situation at a substantial public buildinghilla complex on the mountain. This work has been fruitful in its initial phases; much, however, remains to be done.

An archaeological survey of the Thracian hinterland of Constantinople led by James Crow (Newcastle University) began in 1994 and its first stage is due for completion this year (2000). The main focus of the project over the past five years has been the Anastasian Wall, a 6th-century monumental linear fortification stretching some 56 km from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and situated c. 65 km from the city itself. In places the Wall survives up to 5 m high, but for the most part it lies obscured deep within the forests of central and northern Thrace, together with its associated forts, an outer ditch and a complement of massive towers.

The transition to states in mainland Southeast Asia began during the first centuries AD, and has commonly been ascribed to the adoption of Indian religious and political ideas which arrived on the maritime silk route. Recent research on the Khmer language inscriptions dating from 611 AD has revealed strong local traditions underlying the Indic veneer. In assessing these trends to increased social complexity, however, we have lacked insight into late prehistoric culture.

Subdivided strip fields were widespread over most of lowland England before enclosure. Where datable they seem to originate in the late Saxon period and their use survived into the 19th century in some places. In East Anglia and southeast England strips were usually ploughed flat, but in most of the Midlands they were cast up to form ‘ridge and furrow’. This ridging technique was once used in a central band stretching from County Durham in the north to Somerset in the southwest.

The Romano-British settlement at Grandford lies northwest of the town of March, in the heart of the Fens of eastern England. It straddles the ‘Fen Causeway’, a Roman road that ran west—east across the Fens, and which probably originated at the legionary vexillation fortress at Longthorpe, near Peterborough, held between c. AD 48 and 61/62. Small-scale excavations between 1958 and 1968 demonstrated occupation for much of the Roman period, down to the later 4th century, beginning at least as early as c. AD 65 (Potter & Potter 1982). It was suggested on various grounds that the settlement niay have started life as a Roman fort, constructed in the aftermath of the great rebellion of AD 60-61, led by Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni (Potter 1981: 85-7).

The study of Roman urban centres in Portugal (ancient Lusitania) is now well developed, but the rural landscape has remained little known. A new collaborative European project (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität Frankfud/Main, National University of Ireland Galway and University College Dublin) is investigating the rural landscape and its economy — with the support of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation Cologne and the Instituto Portugues do Patrimonio Arquitectonico — from the Romanization of coast and hinterland, its Christianization and subsequent Islamicization.

The Folsom site (New Mexico, USA) is justly famous as the place where in 1927 four decades of sometimes bitter controversy came to an end, when it was finally demonstrated humans had been in the New World since the Pleistocene (Meltzer 1993). Folsom became the type site for the Palaeoindian period and distinctive fluted projectile point that bears its name (see Hofman 1999). Yet, as the excavations done in the 1920s by the Colorado (now Denver) and American Museums of Natural History focused initially on the recovery of Bison antiquus skeletons suitable for museum display, and latterly on documenting the association of projectile points with those bison remains, many fundamental questions of interest about the site’s stratigraphic, environmental and archaeological context were left unanswered (and often not asked).

Within the last decade the emphasis of burnt mound research has been refocused on the prehistoric landscapes in which they are set in an attempt to evade just the perennial enigma of ‘function’. In the East Midlands, gravel quarrying in the major river valleys has provided an opportunity to examine large areas that have hitherto been masked by alluvium and the resulting wealth of archaeological information has included five burnt mound sites.

In 1931 Vera Collum excavated the megalithic tomb at Tressé in Brittany, claiming that it had been built during the Roman period and was associated with the cult of the mother goddess. This article traces the course of her excavation and suggests a context for the reuse of Neolithic monuments in that area.

The Mummy Tissue Bank at Manchester Museum provides a new resource for Egyptian research. As Dr Lambert-Zazulak explains, new techniques of analysis and the spate of new questions about ancient diseases place this initiative at the front line.

Were drugs in use in prehistory? Recent claims for the use of hallucinogenic substances have been made, and caused a stir. However, new work on a Scottish Neolithic ceremonial site suggests archaeologists (and the media) may have been jumping to the wrong conclusions!

New evidence for the movement of Neolithic basalt adzes across the Taiwan Strait may indicate the beginnings of regular Austronesian voyaging. This seafaring tradition culminated in the Polynesian colonization of the Pacific.