New Zealand was the last substantial landmass to be colonized by prehistoric people. Even within Oceania, where there are much smaller and more remote islands, such as Pitcairn and Easter Island, New Zealand stands out as the last-settled archipelago. Its prehistory promises, therefore, better archaeological evidence concerning prehistoric colonization of pristine land-masses than is the case anywhere else, as is apparent in the extinction of megafauna (Anderson 1989a). But much depends on the precise antiquity of human colonization and this, following a long period of consensus, is now a matter of sharp debate.

The Deccan Chalcolithic and its sites

Systematic archaeological research began in the Deccan after 1950 when a Chalcolithic settlement was discovered at Jorwe near Sangamner in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra state. The Deccan, which includes the present states of Maharashtra, (except for the western coast and some parts of Vidarbha in the east) and northern Karnataka, falls in a semi-arid zone with a precipitation ranging between 400 and 900 mm. There are three major river valleys in the Deccan, the Tapi in the north, the Godavari in the centre and the Bhima in the south. Microecological variations in each valley have considerably affected the settlement patterns of the early farmers. Altogether 150 Chalcolithic settlements have so far been discovered in this part of India. The Tapi valley in the north, considered to be one of the most fertile tracts in the country and well watered by the Tapi and several of its perennial tributaries, was extensively occupied, for over 100 Chalcolithic settlements have so far been discovered there (Shinde in press). It was also observed that there was a general tendency to locate a settlement away from the main river because of the danger posed by the severe monsoon floodings. Most of the settlements were located along the banks of its tributaries, which are safe. In the Godavari and Bhima basins, on the other hand, because of the inadequate perennial water supply and limited availability of fertile soil, there were sporadic settlements (Shinde 1989) (FIGURE1 ). On the basis of environmental studies, surface finds, site location, the extent and thickness of habitation deposits, the Chalcolithic sites in the Deccan have been divided into different categories such as a regional centre, a farming village, a farmstead, a herding unit, and a camp to exploit localized resources (Shinde in press).

A recent and significant improvement in radiocarbon dating has been the increased ability of the radiocarbon laboratories to provide results combining precision with accuracy. This improvement has been accompanied by increasing recognition that the information must be expressed on the calendar, rather than on the radiocarbon, time-scale. Despite the attempts of Ottaway (1987) and Pearson (1987), archaeologists are not sufficiently aware of the statistical problems involved in the transformation from one scale to the other: ‘Some of the trouble lies in the ignorance of radiocarbon consumers; the many attempts to educate them can have only limited success when radiocarbon study depends on statistical concepts and methods far beyond the average archaeologist’s innumerate grasp’ (Chippindale 1990: 203).

In a characteristically stimulating recent article in ANTIQUITY, Barry Cunliffe has touched on many of the most important issues concerning the publication of ‘rescue’ excavations in Britain in the 1990s (Cunliffe 1990). The purpose of the present article is to follow up some the points which Cunliffe has raised.

Publication, and the dissemination of information, is the lifeblood of any academic discipline, and questions of what is published (and of what is read!), where, how and by whom are of central importance for archaeology. Over the past two decades in Britain, and particularly in England where the volume of work has been greatest, there has been a recurrent concern with the problem of how to publish the results of ‘rescue’ archaeology. Rescue excavations can generate very large quantities of data, collected for reasons which are often largely beyond archaeological control, and the problems (both intellectual and practical) of publishing this material are considerable. In Britain the issues have been the subject of expert examination on two occasions since 1970 -the Frere (1975) and Cunliffe (1983) reports - and now in the 1990s the topic is firmly on the archaeological agenda again. This paper is intended as a contribution to the continuing debate.

My age-fellows and I, whose professional careers over the past 50 years or so have been devoted to college teaching in the USA and whose fieldwork was conducted mainly in Mediterranean countries, will scarcely see the opening of the next century. Perhaps the most useful contribution veterans like us can now make to the overall discipline – not just to our own ‘wing’ — is to outline certain problems that have particularly disturbed us during our active careers. Younger colleagues – the new decisionmakers – can then judge whether our criticisms are well founded and, if so, what can (or should) be done to alter present practices and attitudes If our concerns are reasonable and our recommendations for remedial action are constructive, we can at least hope that useful discussion will result – particularly in the disciplinary subdivision with which we have been most closely associated.

Over the last hundred years there have been many publications on the animal remains from the Swiss Neolithic lake sites, ranging from the first descriptions of Rütimeyer (1861) to the detailed analyses of Boessneck et al. (1963) and Becker (1981). During the 1970s I had the privilege to work on one of these faunal assemblages, retrieved by rescue excavation at the site of Yvonand IV on the shore of Lake Neuchätel in the canton de Vaud (Clutton-Brock 1990).

The rôle played by humans in the extinction of late Pleistocene vertebrate fauna is a controversial topic (Diamond 1989; Grayson 1989; Martin & Klein 1984), and actual archaeological data for a human factor are quite rare. Recent multidisciplinary excavations in Cyprus, however, suggest that people were at least partially responsible for the extinction of local endemics, primarily pygmy hippopotamus (Phanourios minutus).