High resolution satellite photographs offer a new picture of the tracks along which the Easter Island giant statues were hauled from the central quarry to the exhibition sites. The survey traced 32 km of seven major roads, confirmed by features on the ground, where their current condition gives reasons for concern. The authors suggest that the radial pattern implies social division into small groups.

When did people start to eat small seeds, and what drove them to it? New investigations and dating at the Danger Cave in the American Great Basin show that seeds (pickleweed seeds) did not become part of the staple diet until after 8700 b.p. It was at this time that animal and plant resources had begun to seriously diminish in a shrinking wetland.

Road systems in the service of empires have long inspired archaeologists and ancient historians alike. Using etymology, textual analysis and archaeology the author deconstructs the road system of the Khmer, empire builders of early historic Cambodia. Far from being the creation of one king, the road system evolved organically to serve expeditions, pilgrimages and embedded exchange routes over several centuries. The paper encourages us to regard road networks as a significant topic, worthy of comparative study on a global scale.

Phytoliths — the microscopic opal silica bodies inside plant tissue that often survive well in archaeological deposits— are becoming a larger part of the world of human palaeobotany. They give a new view of early rice in southeast Asia.

Ideas and theories in prehistory often seem to have a life of their own, surviving and flourishing quite independently of the evidence upon which they might be supposed to rest. The biblical Lost Tribes, the Etruscan migrations of Herodotus, and the Phoenician merchants of Strabo, for example, served for centuries as a model for the explanation of Europe's remote past, unsupported in many cases by any evidence whatsoever.

The discovery of a perforated cave-bear femur from the Neanderthal levels at Divje Babe has been interpreted as the oldest musical instrument in Europe. Here we present the current discussion on the ‘flute’ and its implications for other similar bone finds from early prehistory.

The excavated site termed Yana RHS is dated to about 28000 BP and contained a stunning assemblage of ornamented and symbolic objects—the earliest art to be excavated in the Arctic zone. Decorated beads, pendants and needles connect the site to the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic; but other forms and ornaments are unparalleled. Shallow dishes and anthropomorphic designs on mammoth tusks find echoes among hunting practice and shamanistic images of the indigenous Yukaghir people recorded in the early twentieth century.

Concrete fortifications have long served as battle-scarred memorials of the Second World War. The forests of north-west Europe, meanwhile, have concealed a preserved landscape of earthwork field fortifications, military support structures and bomb- and shell-craters that promise to enhance our understanding of the conflict landscapes of the 1944 Normandy Campaign and the subsequent battles in the Ardennes and Hürtgenwald forests. Recent survey has revealed that the archaeology surviving in wooded landscapes can significantly enhance our understanding of ground combat in areas covered by forest. In particular, this evidence sheds new light on the logistical support of field armies and the impact of Allied bombing on German installations.

The concepts of style and function are theoretically defined from a neo-Darwinian perspective and the expected spatial-temporal distributions of each kind of trait outlined. Fish-hook assemblages from Aitutaki, Cook Islands, are examined using this framework and related to previously studied collections. Emerging stylistic patterns support notions of interaction between certain East Polynesian archipelagos around the 14th century AD.

On Tongatapu the central place of the rising kingdom of Tonga developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries AD. Marked out as a monumental area with a rock-cut water-carrying ditch, it soon developed as the site of a sequence of megalithic tombs, in parallel with the documented expansion of the maritime chiefdom. The results of investigations into these structures were achieved with minimum intervention and disturbance on the ground, since the place remains sacred and in use.

The human capacity for recognizing categorical forms and their defining characterstics extends to a recognition of natural forms and shapes that may suggest these categories. The issue is raised below by the analysis of an archaic figure from the Levant in which a natural form was apparently intentionally modified to produce an enhanced human image.

Specialists in Greek literature have long argued about how Homer's epics were formed and just what they represent. The question is a pressing example of the larger general case – the relationships between archaeology, history and oral literature in many periods and places. E.S. Sherratt, in offering an archaeological perspective on Homer, sets out to establish the stratigraphy of its text and its history

Despite decades of extensive study of ancient Maya ceramics, a few basic questions still vex the archaeologist: What were the actual uses of the distinct types of Maya vessels? How can we determine the precise function of some pottery forms? How can we understand the classification the Maya themselves had for their pots? This brief note, using a recently-discovered vessel from Río Azul, Guatemala, as an illustration, will show that such questions can be addressed using combined data from different analytical approaches. Here I also wish to emphasize the notion that some of the most important sources of information on these issues are the hieroglyphic texts painted or carved on numerous Maya ceramics.

Flint implements with rounded ends, excavated at several Upper Palaeolithic sites in Denmark and Holland, are interpreted as strike-a-lights used in combination with pyrites. Experimental flints employed in this way show use-wear traces similar to those on the prehistoric specimens. It is suggested that the pyrite technique for fire production pre-dates wood-on-wood techniques, at least in Europe and in Greenland.

Given their ubiquity in dietary reconstruction, it is fitting that the story of isotopes began with a conversation over dinner. Although coined in scientific literature by Frederick Soddy (1913), the word ‘isotope’ was first conceived by Margaret Todd, a medical doctor (also known as the novelist ‘Graham Travers’, and an all-round gender-stereotype-smasher of their age). In 1912, Soddy and Todd were attending a supper in Glasgow. When talk turned to work, Soddy described the then nameless concept of elements of different masses that occupy the same place in the periodic table. Todd suggested the term ‘isotope’, from the Greek isos (‘same’) + topos (‘place’), and the name stuck (Nicol 1957; Nagel 1982).