After years of discussion and argument, the fate of Stonehenge and its landscape has been decided. As Professor Geoffrey Wainwright (former Head of Archaeology at English Heritage) describes, there is at last political will to ensure a better future for the monument.

Australia has usually played a supporting role in the story of human evolution — regarded as a place at the edge of the inhabited world where modern humans arrived relatively late and then remained largely isolated from subsequent developments. However, new dates for a human burial at Mungo, New South Wales (Thorne et al. 1999) may not only force revision of views about the peopling of Australia, but also have a wider impact on ideas about modern human origins.

Aerial photography is so fundamental an instrument of modern archaeology that we often take it for granted. But its methods are surprisingly specific and its most important experimental theatre was probably the territory of the Levant—and especially the rocky terrain of Jordan. The author, a prominent aerial archaeologist of our own day, takes time off to review the achievements of the pioneers, serving officers who established routes over the desert to deliver mail between Egypt and Iraq. The fabulous ancient landscape they discovered could only be appreciated through the low-level window provided by these slow-moving rickety machines and their intrepid pilots. In these days of jet travel, the precious basalt landscape is in danger of slipping off the agenda again—both for researchers and conservers.

Exploratory expeditions in 1834, sponsored by the newly independent state of Guatemala, researched on sites such as Copan, Iximche and Utatlan. The political, literary and social climate was such that a pre-Hispanic past was eagerly sought. This paper offers an intriguing insight into early Latin American archaeology.

Double infant burials in unusually high numbers occurred at Khok Phanom Di during a phase associated with immigration and some evidence of early agricultural practices. A study of their stratigraphic context and relative ages led to the interpretation that these were twins. Through an exploration of the medical and anthropological literature of twins, and in conjunction with their mortuary context, the authors conclude that these babies died of natural causes at, or soon after, birth.

Instances of cultural interaction between Norse and native American have long been accepted. But current archaeological research recognises that the indigenous peoples of the north were themselves diverse and had diverse histories. Here the author shows that the culture of one of them, the Dorset people, owed nothing to the Norse and probably had no contact with them.

Since her death almost 30 years ago, researchers interested in the life and work of one of the greatest prehistorians of her generation have searched, largely in vain, for material additional to Dorothy Garrod's published work. It seems they need search no longer.

The question of human contacts between Africa and the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle and Upper Pleistocene is of key interest in research of human origins. Discussion continues to focus on whether the sea gap separating the landmasses proved an effective barrier to cultural interchange and population movements. At its narrowest point the Gibraltar Strait is no more than 14 km wide and at times of lower sea level in the Pleistocene the gap would have been considerably reduced by the exposure of several offshore islands. Such sea crossings were apparently well within the capabilities of early human colonizers, as shown by the 800,000-year-old occupation of islands in the Indonesian archipelago. Despite these observations, many archaeologists have pointed to the ostensible lack of evidence for human interactions between Europe and North Africa until some time in the Upper Palaeolithic. This is surprising, given the presence of populations in both areas from the Lower Palaeolithic onwards. Such an ‘isolationist’ view is emphasized by the recent work of the Gibraltar Caves Project (Barton et al. 1999; Stringer et al. 2000) which has shown that Neanderthal populations with Middle Palaeolithic technology lived there until at least 32,000 years ago uncal, at a time when anatomically modern humans were already present elsewhere in Europe and Africa. Until now, no evidence of Neanderthals has been found in North Africa but the dating and nature of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in this region remains poorly understood.

Kristian Kristiansen takes issue with Cornelius Holtorf's vision of a people-driven archaeology; and the popular context replies in kind.

One question fundamental to the interpretation of the elaborate sceptre found at Sutton Hoo is why whetstone should have been chosen as its material. Too heavy for convenience, yet neither rare nor intrinsically beautiful, why was this substance thought appropriate for such an important item of regalia? The interpretation so far has been that it symbolized the king as war-leader, ‘the forger, giver and master of the swords of his followers’. While this is undoubtedly an attractive and appropriate interpretation, it lacks literary confinnation; I would therefore like to put forward an alternative (or supplementary) hypothesis based on the evidence of certain passages in Old Icelandic writings where whetstones are mentioned in a mythical context, or are described as being used in non-realistic circumstances suggestive of ritual. Despite their late date, Icelandic sources have often cast valuable light on Germanic religion.