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

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).

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.

Recent excavation of Scottish Iron Age Brochs and wheelhouses enables new discussion of the development, dating and economic interpretation of these impressive structures. Here, Gilmour & Cook assess the work at Dun Vulan, South Uist, in the Western Isles.

N&B, incorrectly attributing variability in these assemblages as representing strategies in lithic reduction, give as an example the differentiation between the Mushabian and the Geometric Kebaran complexes. Their thinking the microburin technique was used by the Geometric Kebarans but is masked by retouch on these trapeze/rectangles (sic!) suggest to me they have either never seen Geometric Kebaran and Mushabian microliths (although I understand that Neeley visited Goring-Morris' laboratory) or they cannot recognize microburin scars when they see them. In my original publication on the Mushabian (Phillips & Mintz 1977), they would see microburin scars on lamelles scalènes which were partially retouched in the Mushabian. Having recently analysed 12 Mushabian sites from Gebel Maghara, containing over 5000 microliths and 3000 microburins, and three new Geometric Kebaran sites from Sinai, containing over 800 trapeze/rectangles and no microburins, I can attest to the differences between these two assemblages in terms of reduction sequences, style of debitage, and the morphology of geometric and non-geometric microliths.

A goldsmith's toolkit found in an Iberian tomb reveals ground-breaking details about the manufacture of the gold ornaments for which this culture is renowned. Two blowpipes for joining gold with a high precision jet of air unlock the techniques of brazing, granulation and filigree. The authors go on to propose that the buried man was no ordinary craftsman, but a member of the warrior class in control of producing the treasures of the age.

This paper argues that Indian identity, as built within the colonial Indological framework of race, language and culture and its Aryan–non-Aryan dichotomy, is unacceptable to modern India and Indians. It is unacceptable because of its emphasis on the notion of Aryan invasion and the subjugation of, and interaction with, the native population. This notion, the key element of ancient Indian history, culture and archaeology, keeps a vast segment of Indian population away from a sense of positive participation in the country's past. Further, the key ingredient of this notion is the Indian Vedic literature, which thus makes it primarily a textual notion, and as long as it persists, the Indian upper castes, who ipso facto are given a place in the Aryan ruling order, have no particular reason to seek a primarily archaeologybased past for themselves. However, before we examine these twin formulations in some detail, it might be useful to look at how the question of identity is emerging as a major phenomenon in India in current years.

The long-standing debate on the military use of chariots in Late Bronze Age Greece was joined in 1973 by P. A. L. Greenhalgh. In his provocative book, he argued that Mycenaean warriors using thrusting spears had fought at speed from massed chariots. At the same time he rejected as unrealistic Homer's descriptions of chariots as conveyances for warriors who dismounted to fight on foot.

These opinions were recently briefly restated in ANTIQUITY, where Dr Greenhalgh reaffirms his theory, using the well-known metal panoply from chamber tomb 12 at Dendra as additional evidence (Greenhalgh, 1980). In doing so, he disregards the objections that have been raised against his position (Littauer, 1977; Anderson, 1973; 1975).

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.

The first person to introduce these bowls to the archaeological world as a group, and with appropriate comment, was that profound student of Celtic art, the late Mr J. Romilly Allen; subsequently, Mr Reginald Smith set himself the task of making a complete list of all the bowls, or parts of bowls, that were known, and he has since placed us further in his debt by the care he has taken in seeing that every new example, as it came to light, was adequately recorded. Since Mr Allen wrote his paper, however, we have not made very much headway with the main problem of deciding their position in the cultural history of this country; even the recent discovery of the beautiful Winchester bowl, that excited us so much in 1930, was allowed to pass without any revision and revaluation of the really astonishing material that had been collected by Mr Smith, and it seemed that the chief interest aroused by the bowls was for ever to be focussed on the apparently insoluble problem of their use. But last year my friend Mr J. D. Cowen published a paper that constitutes in many respects a very important advance; it was the stimulating kind of article that often provokes other people into rival activities, and I hope it will not be counted against him if I admit that one of his results was an immediate decision on my part to put into print the notes I had collected on this same subject. It is Mr Cowen's distinction that he is the first to isolate and appreciate the ‘heater’ group of bowls, to which I shall refer below, and there are several other points in his very vigorous paper that strike me as being valuable and sagacious observations. But what I have to say here and now is that if Mr Cowen is right throughout, much that I am going to say below is completely wrong.

How did the Neolithic begin and develop in Southeast China? The author uses a highly detailed sequence of changes in sea-level, climate and vegetation to provide the back-drop – and some explanations – for the distinctive maritime community of the Taiwan Strait, whose descendants are thought to have colonised the Pacific.

The current received view is that the economy of the Bronze Age of northern Europe was based on gift exchange rather than trade. This paper, based on a comparative analysis of three groups of Scandinavian bronze and gold artefacts – bronze statuettes of ‘goddesses with necklets’, golden ‘oath rings’ and Fårdrup bronze axes – suggest that there were one or more standard weight systems in use in Bronze Age Scandinavia. The author uses these data to state a case for a trade economy, reminiscent of the Mycenaean world.

The social complexities underlying imperial control are manifest in the material culture of everyday life encountered at archaeological sites. The Yavi-Chicha pottery style of the south-central Andes illustrates how local identities continued to be expressed in practices of pottery manufacture during the process of Inka expansion. The Yavi-Chicha style itself masks a number of distinct production processes that can be traced through petrographic analysis and that relate to the different communities by whom it was produced and consumed. The dispersion of pottery fabric types in this region may partly be attributable to the Inka practice of mitmaqkuna, the displacement and relocation of entire subject populations.

Aerial survey in a country with restricted overflying can be frustrating. Armenian and British archaeologists solved the problem by acquiring a two-person paramotor and photographing with a digital camera at 300m. Here are some of the first aerial pictures of the rich tapestry of Armenia’s archaeology.