Absolute dating of prehistoric rock paintings is an exciting archaeological pursuit. Sophisticated sample collection, handling and pretreatment methods and new analytical equipment and techniques are minimizing contamination and permitting identification of trace amounts of organic substances in prehistoric paints. Radiocarbon dating using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is producing dates for minute residues of blood, charcoal and plant fibres, either accidentally or deliberately incorporated in paintings. Carbon-bearing laminations, such as oxalate-crusts and silica skins, which have accumulated under and over rock art, have also been recently dated.

Two pure and opposing models exist to give historical account of the structure in modern cultural patterns. A phylogenetic account explores divergence from some shared commonality (the word ‘phylogenetic’ is from the Greek words for ‘tribal origins’). A reticulate account concentrates on a network of interactions (the word ‘reticulate’ comes via French from the Latin for ‘small net’). It follows that neither model may tell all the story. These continuing issues are explored with particular attention to the relations between histories as they are inferred from archaeological and from linguistic patterns.

New dating of several key sites in eastern Central Europe refines our view of human presence there around the Last Glacial Maximum. The author shows that, with the advancing Ice Age, this part of Europe was abandoned later than the west, and a critical environmental factor was increasing aridity rather than the dropping temperatures.

Travellers naturally prefer to use the most passable routes and establish staging points on the way. Cost surface analysis predicts the easiest routes and viewshed analysis the territory visible from a staging point or destination. Applying these GIS techniques to the Buenavista Valley Corridor, our authors write a history of travel and exchange that vividly reflects the rivalry of two polities and the rise and fall of their nodal settlements.

Archaeological, palynological and palaeolimnological evidence is combined with new AMS radiocarbon dates to shed new light on a long-known, yet only partially understood, Upper Palaeolithic occupation in southeast Europe.

The 1998 excavations at the Maya city of La Milpa have revealed important structures of the ruling élite, including several throne rooms, but also evidence for a sudden cessation of élite activity when the occupation was at its height. Extensive mapping suggests a population of some 46,000 over a short period in the 8th and 9th centuries AD.

Across Eurasia and Africa new studies are encouraging archaeologists to rethink the age of of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition. In the Lake Baikal region of southeast Siberia, new radiocarbon determinations on sites of difficult history suggest that the earliest Upper Palaeolithic emerged there as early as 39,000 years ago, 6000 years earlier than previously thought.

A generally accepted model identifies a causal relationship between the appearance and development of metallurgy in western Europe and increasing social complexity, with metals being assigned the determinant role. This multidisciplinary study of the Vera region of southeast Spain suggests that metal production in the region was small-scale and of secondary importance in generating social and cultural changes.

The discovery of what is demonstrably, on the basis of present knowledge, the earliest major assemblage of gold artifacts to be unearthed anywhere in the world is an event of some note, comparable in significance with Schliemann's find of the Great Treasure at Troy more than a century ago. The finds at Varna must be at least 1,500 years older than those of Troy 11, yet apart from the original announcement by their excavator (Ivanov, 1975), and useful, although brief, descriptions by Gimbutas (1977 a and b), the Varna cemetery has so far excited little archaeological comment. The publication by Ivanov (1978) of the first well-illustrated account of the cemetery allows an assessment of its importance. Its status as the oldest substantial find of gold emphasizes the position of south-east Europe as an early and independent centre of metallurgical innovation. But the gold is only one of several materials indicative of high status in the cemetery: what had hitherto seemed a moderately egalitarian society now displays clear evidence of salient ranking. This in turn has major implications for our understanding of the social context in which early metalworking in Europe developed and prospered.

The Paso Otero 5 site is located in the middle basin of the Quequén Grande river (Buenos Aires Province, Argentina). This site is the first recorded Pleistocene-Holocene archaeological context in the grasslands of the Interserrana Bonaerense Area at which extinct megamammals and a ‘fish-tail’ projectile point have been recovered in association from buried soil dated to c. 10,200–10,450 BP.

Curwen, writing in ANTIQUITY 60 years ago about prehistoric agriculture in Britain (Curwen 1927), found his best evidence for the fields of earliest times came from the hut-circles and enclosures of Dartmoor. Andrew Fleming has done the same in studying the large-scale land divisions made by the Dartmoor reaves. Until his work these prehistoric boundaries were thought to be of medieval date – understandably as they demonstrate not the piecemeal and local enclosing of little fields but planned land division on a medieval scale. In this paper Fleming extends his view out from Dartmoor to the wider pattern of land division on the grand scale at early dates, and to its social implications.

Desert varnish, the distinctive coating on exposed rock surfaces in arid regions, can be dated by cation ratios, providing a rare means directly to date petroglyphs. A first application of the method, much used in north America, is here reported from Australia, where it indicates minimum ages up to 30,000 years old. And it also shows that the style of figures, so often taken as a measure of chronology, is in this instance largely independent of age.

The bronze spearhead at the end of a long shaft is traditionally seen as a thrusting or throwing weapon, as seen in the movies. By examining the damage on a group of Late Bronze Age spearheads from Britain, and replicating their use in combat, the author shows that the spear was an even more versatile weapon — for throwing, thrusting and slashing (with a short shaft). The research puts a spotlight on the formidable skills developed in a Bronze Age life-time.

The Côa petroglyphs, seen in the established framework of rock-art studies, belong in the corpus of west European parietal art of late Pleistocene age, as found in scores of caves and some open-air locations. One of the four researchers who this summer studied the age of the figures using ‘modern rock-art science’ summarizes the group's' conclusions, and states how they kill off the stylistic dating of Palaeolithic rock-art.

Children are often under-represented in excavated populations due to the poor survival of their bones. Using a group of medieval burials from Serbia, our researchers examine the differential survival of children and of different parts of the body within the same terrain, and rightly urge us to take these factors into consideration before attempting demographic, ritual or social interpretations.

Using pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, the authors show that amber was imported into Late Bronze Age Syria and used for making the prestige artefacts found in a Royal tomb of c. 1340 BC. The objects included beads and a unique vessel in the form of a lion, likely fashioned in Syria from raw amber imported from the Baltic via the Aegean.