Spatial analysis has enjoyed a considerable vogue in archaeological studies over the past two decades, though usually applied in prehistoric contexts. The paper applies well tried techniques to the analysis of complex high-status medieval buildings and demonstrates their superiority in terms of data (especially when used in parallel) on social function and status over subjective analysis based on notions of symbolic or functional characterization.

The human settlement of Australia falls into that period where dating is hard because it is near or beyond the reliable limit of radiocarbon study; instead a range of luminescence methods are being turned to (such as thermoluminescence at Jinmium: December 1996 ANTIQUITY). Ngarrabullgan Cave, a rock-shelter in Queensland, now offers a good suite of radiocarbon determinations which match well a pair of optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates — encouraging sign that OSL determinations can be relied on.

The Fertile Crescent of the Ancient Near East is well known for its early cities in irrigated farming regions. Here the authors describe the recent discovery and investigation of a planned, circular, mid/late–third millennium BC city beyond the limit of rain-fed cultivation in the arid zone of inner Syria. Founded on the initiative of an unknown power and served by pastoralists and cultivators, the research at Al-Rawda demonstrates how environmental constraints were overcome in order to establish and sustain new centres in demanding regions at a time of maximum urbanisation.

Living at high altitude carries risks, so settlement there can be thought marginal. Its success or failure ought to be dependent on the environment and the climate. But recent fieldwork in the French Alps shows that exploitation was not coincident with climatic conditions: Mesolithic people found the hunting good; in the climatic optimum of the Roman period the high altitudes were said to be uninhabitable and apparently were; while in the Little Ice Age of the fourteenth century and later, the high Alps were at their busiest. The author hypothesises that social control and perception, rather than climate, were the determinant factors.

This study addresses the lack of chronometric research on the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) to establish precisely the timing of its adoption and spread across the northern Eastern Woodlands of North America. Bean and directly associated maize samples were subjected to accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating. The results show that the common bean apparently spread rapidly upon its introduction to the region, becoming archaeologically visible from the Illinois River valley to southern New England in the calibrated late 13th century AD, some 200–300 years later than previously thought.

There is a preconception among American archaeologists that the late Pleistocene (c. 12,000-10,000 hap.) and early Holocene human occupation of the Americas would have had highly formalized and diagnostic technologies (Bryan 1986), as seen in bifacial fluted projectiles (Clovis and/or Folsom points) or Palaeoarctic microblades. This bias carries with it two presumptions which have no reason to exist:

• Clovis and related industries had to be diffused throughout the Americas; and

• there should be a ‘big-game hunting’ horizon in South America.

Multi-spectral imaging (MSI), which was developed to explore the surface of the earth and other planets from space, has been adapted to read and record faded or burnt manuscripts. The authors show how MSI achieved new readings from carbonised and damaged fragments of papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum, Petra and the Judean Desert. The method has potential for investigating the degraded ornamental surfaces of other artefacts.

One of the livelier issues in world prehistory on which there is a distinctive view from Australia and Sahul is the variety of pathways to intensification and a social complexity, not necessarily following expectations that derive from precedents in the Zagros or the Mayan forests. This may be more than a function of different ecologies or potential domesticates, for this paper, developing evidence from Victoria already known from Harry Lourandos's work, Sees the crucial impulses as more social in origin than environmentally determined.

Arguing from the overall settlement plan and the form of buildings, the authors present a persuasive case that the Late Postclassic city of Tlaxcallan and its near neighbour Tizatlan constitute the central elements of a republican state. This is an unusual political prescription, not only in Mesoamerica but further afield.

In a recent study, Hardy et al. (2012) identified compounds from two non-nutritional plants, yarrow and camomile, in a sample of Neanderthal dental calculus from the northern Spanish site of El Sidrón. Both these plants are bitter tasting and have little nutritional value but are well known for their medicinal qualities. Bitter taste can signal poison. We know that the bitter taste perception gene TAS2R38 was present among the Neanderthals of El Sidrón (Lalueza-Fox et al. 2009), and their selection of yarrow and camomile was hence probably deliberate. With few nutritional benefits, reasons must be sought for why the Neanderthals collected and ingested these plants. They could have consumed them as flavouring, but this presupposes a degree of complexity in cuisine for which there is little evidence. The widespread evidence for animal self-medication, or zoopharmacognosy, however, offers an attractive behavioural context.We propose, indeed, that these plants were selected and ingested deliberately for the purpose of self-medication.Here, we investigate the implications of this new finding for Neanderthal knowledge of plants and we offer a context for plant knowledge and self-medication among early human and hominin populations.

Across Atlantic ice: the origin of America's Clovis culture (Stanford & Bradley 2012) is the latest iteration of a controversial proposal that North America was first colonised by people from Europe rather than from East Asia, as most researchers accept. The authors, Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley, argue that Solutrean groups from southern France and the Iberian Peninsula used watercraft to make their way across the North Atlantic and into North America during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). According to Stanford and Bradley, this 6000km journey was facilitated by a continuous ice shelf that provided fresh water and a food supply. Across Atlantic ice has received a number of positive reviews. Shea (2012: 294), for example, suggests that it is “an excellent example of hypothesis-building in the best tradition of processual archaeology. It challenges American archaeology in a way that will require serious research by its opponents”. Runnels (2012) is equally enthusiastic.

Marvellous preservation of organic materials at the Neolithic site of La Draga in north-east Iberia include a range of wooden harvesting tools. The authors examine the wood and flint to describe a range of the earliest harvesting techniques and their diverse applications.

By common consent the spread of Neolithic culture has been one of the first objectives of radiocarbon dating in north-western Europe. This is due primarily to the intrinsic historical importance of this process, but the fact that the inception of husbandry has left clear indicators in the palaeobotanical record means that decisive samples are readily available. In the present paper an account will first be given of the reinvestigation of the site on Peacock’s Farm, Shippea Hill, Cambridgeshire, a locality where in 1934 Neolithic pottery had been found stratified in a vertical sequence between Mesolithic and Early Bronze Age remains, each in deposits with fossil pollen. In view of the stratigraphical importance of the site it may be appropriate in this same context to review the radiocarbon dates for the inception of Neolithic culture in the British Isles as a whole. The excavations were undertaken during June, 1960, by the Cambridge University Department of Archaeology and Anthropology with the support of the Crowther-Beynon Fund. Samples were collected for pollen analysis and radiocarbon age determination and the laboratory work was carried out in the University Sub-department of Quaternary Research at Cambridge.

A survey of the Easter Island landscape has resulted in the recognition of numerous lithic mulched household gardens and fields. It is proposed that lithic mulching was a technological innovation introduced to enhance the moisture retention capacity of the excessively drained island soils, and was an innovation incorporated into élite managed field systems which arose in the early 15th century to meet the demands for surplus production.

Recent excavations at the Neolithic site of Cerro Virtud (Almería, southeast Spain) have produced new information about the development of metallurgy that may change ongoing research not only in the Iberian Peninsula but also in the rest of western Europe. The discovery of metallurgy in this region in the first half of the 5th millennium BC poses serious challenges to the interpretation of how this industry developed and spread, given that the nearest European region with similar evidence is the Balkans. This study presents the archaeological context of the discovery and the various analytical techniques (XRF, SEM, 14C) that have been applied to it.

Australia, with its wide continental shelves, is a difficult region for the study of coastal adaptations over the Transition, as so much land was drowned by the post-glacial sealevel rise. What can be discerned has a place in a larger and longer-term pattern of adaptation.