The authors examine critically MacKie's long-standing contentions concerning Neolithic Britain — theocratic control of society, the relationships between monuments and sunrise or sunset on significant days of the year, the use of an ‘elaborate and accurate’ solar calendar and its survival into the Iron Age and into modern times.

The symbolism of the horse in Eneolithic society is explored in this paper. Recent excavations in the Eurasian steppes demonstrate the importance of horses before domestication and horse riding became common; showing they were eaten, exploited and revered.

A manuscript scroll preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, proves to be the log from the first in a series of flights undertaken by O.G.S. Crawford (1886–1957) in association with Alexander Keiller (1889–1955), which ultimately resulted in publication of their classic volume, Wessex from the Air (1928), a key work in the history of archaeological aerial photography. The roller-board on which the scroll is mounted proves equally interesting, being a cavalryman's mapping board of a type in use from the 1870s to the late 1920s. These items are placed in their respective historical contexts and an explanation is offered for their seemingly improbable conjunction.

The lack of botanical remains from farming sites in Africa remains a serious archaeological problem. This paper discusses how the indirect evidence of pottery may help to evaluate grain farming in African archaeology.

Various methods of analysing the dating of the late Glacial suggest various interpretations. Here, in answer to a paper from 1997, radiocarbon dates are calibrated and used to reconsider the dating of this contentious period.

This short paper will discuss the role of the archaeologist and writer Jacquetta Hawkes as filmmaker. It is set within the context of her widely ranging work — from poetry and journalism to guide books and academic papers — which made varying contributions to the communication of archaeology from the 1930s to the 1980s

In May 1939, the accomplished Palaeolithic archaeologist, Dorothy Garrod, was elected Cambridge's Professor of Archaeology — the first woman to hold a Chair at either Cambridge or Oxford. Garrod was well qualified for the position in several ways. Trained by R.R. Marett at Oxford and the Abbé Henri Breuil in France, she was renowned for her excavations in Gibraltar, Palestine, Southern Kurdistan and Bulgaria. By 1939, Garrod was one of Britain's finest archaeologists. She had discovered the wellpreserved skull fragments of ‘Abel’, a Neanderthal child, in Gibraltar, identified the Natufianculture while excavating Shukbah near Jerusalem, directed the large, long-term excavations at Mt Carmel, established the Palaeolithic succession for that crucial region and then travelled, in 1938, to explore the important Palaeolithic cave of Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria. Published reports of her excavations had appeared promptly and were very favourably reviewed. The prehistorian, Grahame Clark, who was to succeed her to the Disney Chair in 1952, described Garrod's The Stone Age of Mount Carmel (1937) as ‘pure gold’ (Clark 1937: 488).

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no national curriculum in schools in the United Kingdom. Instead, there are four separate curricula for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. These cover education in state-funded schools between the ages of 5 and 16. The curricula in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, whose school and university systems share the same basic framework, are structured in similar ways, use similar jargon and are statutory (they lay down the minimum that has to be taught). The Scottish school and higher education system, however, has always been distinctive. The curriculum in Scotland is structured along very different lines and takes the form of non-statutory guidelines. Differences between the curricula may well increase in future since education is part of the responsibilities being transferred to the new devolved parliament/assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The term ‘public archaeology’ can mean many things. It can be as simple as a photocopied brochure left outside a fenced-off archaeological excavation or as complex as an elaborate series of educational programmes. For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘public archaeology’ is used to describe those projects and programmes designed to enhance popular knowledge of and appreciation for archaeology.

The French have long been proud of their prehistoric sites. Lascaux and, more recently, Tautavel and la Grotte Chauvet are part of the national cultural consciousness. This interest in prehistory begins at primary school; Lascaux and Tautavel are specifically mentioned in programmes of study, even though the 1999 programmes have been pruned and ‘lightened’ (alleges). French primary school children all know who ‘Lucy’ was.

Archaeology — as a branch of anthropology in Argentina — mainly deals with the past of its indigenous peoples. This way of understanding archaeology has its roots in the organization of national scientific institutions and in the development of natural history museums of the last century (Lopes & Podgorny in press). As in Brazil (Lopes 1997), the museums were the loci for the establishment of archaeology and natural sciences as academic fields in Argentina. The collections and their classification and exhibition were tied to geographical categorization of aboriginal cultures within the national territory (Podgorny 1999a). In both Buenos Aires and La Plata museums — the first two centres to develop archaeological studies — archaeology grew from the travels of exploration that surveyed the resources of the country.

In the mid 1980s, anthropologists such as Marcus & Fischer (1986) called for a ‘repatriation’ of anthropology, bringing the tools of the discipline to bear on the ‘home’ situations of Euro-America rather than focusing on ‘alien, exotic’ traditions.

Archaeology in education has been introduced in South Africa only recently as the politics of the past precluded the application of archaeology in the classroom. This paper presents the background to South African education and educational archaeology and discusses some of the issues and studies undertaken in South Africa. It also offers comment on the factors which determine and shape educational archaeology of the present and those that may affect the discipline of archaeology in the future.

The history Curriculum for Wales is a distinctive and politically sensitive document that has attempted to highlight features which will be of cultural relevance to those in the Principality. Unlike the English curriculum, there is a clear opportunity to consider some elements of prehistory, and this has been seized with enthusiasm by schools at Key Stage 2, for children aged between 7 and 11 (Welsh Office 1991; Howell 1994). Study Unit 1, the Earliest Peoples, runs up to the Bronze Age, but it is provision for Study Unit 2, The Celts, which is of particular interest here.

Aboriginal, Historical and Maritime archaeology have been taught in Australian universities since the 1960s, and archaeology has made major contributions to our understanding of Australia's past. Yet many Australians are still more interested in archaeology overseas than in Australia itself. This partly reflects Australia's history as a former British colony which currently has a minority of indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, many of whom regard archaeology as yet another colonial imposition which at best is largely irrelevant to their own understanding of their history. Present government policies empower Aboriginal people to veto certain kinds of archaeological research they do not agree with. At minimum this may require archaeologists to engage in what can become protracted consultation, with uncertain outcomes.

The teaching of archaeology in higher education in Greece cannot be viewed in isolation from the broader realms of antiquity, archaeology and the past in modern Greek society and the context of Greek higher education. A growing body of literature has shown that archaeological antiquities have contributed substantially to the generation and perpetuation of a genealogical national myth upon which the modern nation- state of Greece was founded (e.g. Gourgouris 1996; Herzfeld 1982, 1987; Kitromilides 1989; Morris 1994; Skopetea 1988). This ideology of nationalism not only presented the nation-state as the ideal form of political organization for 19th-century Greece, but also presented the inhabitants of Greece as direct descendants of Socrates and Plato. Intellectuals and the emerging middle class merchants imported this western romantic ideology (so popular amongst the European middle-class of the time) into Greece.

It is now well accepted that archaeology and education are inextricably linked (cf. MacKenzie & Stone 1994) and that the past is often represented as mirrored by the dominant groups in a given society. The late educator Paulo Freire warned that educators ‘need to use their students' cultural universe as a point of departure, enabling students to recognise themselves as possessing a specific and important cultural identity’ (interview in MacLaren 1988: 224). Both education and archaeology deal thus with the manipulation of present and past to forge identities useful for people in power and archaeologists and educators have been active promoters of critical approaches. Critical pedagogy has been concerned with student experience, taking the problems and needs of the students themselves as its starting point and fighting for pedagogical empowerment (Giroux & MacLaren 1986: 234–8).

Stewardship, diverse pasts, social relevance, ethics and values, written and oral communication, basic archaeological skills and real world problem solving — these issues are at the very core of archaeology as an evolving, dynamic discipline, in order to understand, interpret, manage, and protect the past. The profession and the people who practice it, in all its diverse applications, are and have been influenced by shifting paradigms and changing levels of understanding. We now use, every day, terms and technology that did not exist just a few years ago, in a constantly changing discipline.