Five wooden sculptures from the pre-contact Caribbean, long held in museum collections, are here dated and given a context for the first time. The examples studied were made from dense Guaiacum wood, carved, polished and inlaid with shell fastened with resin. Dating the heartwood, sapwood and resins takes key examples of ‘Classic’ Taíno art back to the tenth century AD, and suggests that some objects were treasured and refurbished over centuries. The authors discuss the symbolic properties of the wood and the long-lived biographies of some iconic sculptures.

By examining their rock sources and mode of manufacture, the author offers a new interpretation for the Neolithic polished axe blades found in the western Alpine region. The dominant examples were made from rock extracted on the Italian side of the Alps (eclogitic) and finished in workshops on the French side. These first appeared as large blades with symbolic status, as part of the Neolithic expansion in North Italy. By the middle Neolithic the blades were reduced in size, but enjoying their widest distribution, creating a cultural zone on the left bank of the Rhône, more than 200 km from their source. In the late Neolithic, although the zone of influence was still large, the eclogites in the Rhône Valley were giving way to more local rock sources and copper. The fluctuations in this supply are interpreted as reflecting the varied political relations of Alpine communities.

How useful is the archaeology of the present? In this tour de force the author takes an iconic structure of modern times – the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank – and reveals the conjuncture of its origins and its subsequent parallel lives in science, war, politics and the imagination. The modern example allows us to get behind the scenes and under the covers – into the mentality of monumentality, as it has probably always been, proxy for the zeitgeist. Sceptics should read on…

Industrial archaeology has traditionally concentrated on the recording and study of technological and engineering survivals — hence the name ‘industrial’ as, often, a near-synonym for ‘post-medieval’ in naming the archaeology of early modern capitalism. This study of three mundane industrial buildings draws upon building and documentary evidence as aids to understanding working structures not distinguished by technological or engineering innovation.

Recent research at the great Irish passage tomb of Knowth has revealed new decorated stones, which were apparently recycled from an earlier tomb. Here, George Eogan describes the finds and discusses the implication of an early phase of tomb building pre-dating the major passage tombs of the Boyne Valley.

Man has been defined in many ways, as the talking animal, the religious animal, and so on, but the most satisfactory definition from the scientific point of view is probably Man the Tool-maker. One might ask, why bother to define man, considering his uniqueness and self-evident characteristics? But from the standpoint of students of evolution, particularly those concerned with the interpretation of fossil remains of early man and his possible ancestors, to define man is of practical importance.

There is some truth in the assertion that the greatness of Britain, as displayed to the world at the Great Exhibition of 1851, should be ascribed as much to the favourable juxtaposition of iron andoal as to any qualities inherent in the British people : it can hardly be disputed that the re-eminence in Prehistoric Archaeology once enjoyed by France was due in large measure to therchaeological richness of the caves and rock-shelters of the Dordogne and the Pyrenees. But, if we must deplore the backwardness of France in fields where other countrie are as richly endowed by history, it is only fair to acknowledge that her archaeologists succeeded in systematizing. the cultures of Upper Palaeolithic man in western Europe, at a time when the Neolithic was still chaotic in many countries and a ' hiatus ' separated the two epochs. The exploration of the French caves began in the sixties of the last century and may be said to have already reached its culminating point by 1912, when Breuil put forward his famous classification at the Geneva Congress (Breuil, 1912). It is eloquent of the advanced stage reached by Upper Palaeolithic cave research in western Europe before the Great War that, after the lapse of a quarter of a century, Breuil has felt able (in 1937) to re-print his original lecture with only minoralterations.

The reactions to the N&B essay tell more about epistemological concerns (or lack thereof) than they do about construals of pattern and of what pattern might mean in Levantine Epipalaeolithic archaeology.

In 1967 the regional museum for prehistory at Halle (Saale) began an excavation in the field known as the Schalkenburg, near Quenstedt, which lies in Hettstedt district, on the eastern edge of the Harz mountains, about 50 km north-west of Halle, in the south-west of the German Democratic Republic (PL. xxva). The excavations were carried out annually in the months of July and August (Behrens & Schröter 1980), and their aim was to investigate a settlement of the neolithic Bernburg culture.

Archaeology in Brazil shares many empirical similarities with Latin American and North American research but, as a social science, it has remained isolated from mainstream theoretical and methodological advances. The large size of the country, the lack of resources and government support, the difficulties of working in tropical environments, the lack of monumental architecture, and Brazil's being neither a Spanish- nor an English-speaking country have all been thought of as shaping Brazilian archaeology and its failure to integrate into a larger, Latin American or international context.

John Oakley defends the legacy of Beazley in response to James Whitley's recent analysis of Beazley and his followers (ANTIQUITY 72: 40–47). The debate demonstrates how influential some past figures of archaeological methodology still are, and how diverse are the approaches of modern scholars in interpreting and using their legacy.

A final season of excavation of the site at Mycenae called the Citadel House by Professor Wace (referred to as ‘Wace’s House’ by Mylonas and also known as ‘The House with the Idols’) was carried out in 1969. The following is a brief account of the finds and their context as revealed by the 1968 and 1969 excavations”.

Geophysical techniques now available to archaeology have the potential to provide large-scale survey data that can map the buried structures of extensive and complex sites. Recent work at two Late Bronze Age hilltop fortresses in the mountainous volcanic terrain of Armenia provides an excellent illustration of their potential. Magnetometry revealed an unknown residential complex at Tsaghkahovit. Across the plain at Gegharot, where magnetometry was less successful, ground-penetrating radar identified terracing extending down the western slope of the hill below the fortress, greatly increasing the size of the occupied area. Combined with targeted excavations, these geophysical approaches are providing novel insights into the unusual political relations between fortress-based sovereigns and mobile subjects in central Armenia.

The nomadic peoples of central Eurasia are famous for their elaborate burial customs — both as those are known ethnohistorically and evident in the frozen tombs of Pazyryk. The Mongolian chambered grave reported here is of the 9th century AD. To that era the ethnohistorical record may have relevance in inferring its ceremony, alongside a considered knowledge in experimental spirit of just what must have taken place at the grave in order to create the certain pattern seen on excavation.

The cumulative power of botanical and chemical analysis is demonstrated here by our authors, who succeed in opening a window on Europe's most obscure period, in the south as in the north, the time after the Roman and then the Byzantine empire lost its hold. The emphasis here is on the rise in production and trade of cash crops in the eighth century as detected by survey, pollen, charcoal and residues. Taken together, the new data show a community well on the road to economic recovery after two centuries of recession and monetary failure.

The Avebury region has been given World Heritage status for its complex of Neolithic sites - Avebury itself, Silbury Hill, the West and East Kennet long barrows, and others. New fieldwork reveals a further complex of sites on the edges of the Kennet valley bottom.