The development of geophysical survey remains a spearhead-priority for new research and cultural resource management alike – since geophysics can find and map sites without destroying them. However, there are current weaknesses of sensitivity and resolution – the instruments cannot easily “see” small features like graves and post-holes of which so many ancient sites are principally composed. Great hopes have been invested in caesium vapour magnetometers, which the Centre for Archaeology has been promoting in England – perhaps nowhere with such dramatic success as at Stanton Drew, Somerset. Here, geophysical techniques have brought to light the lines of broad circles belonging to a previously unrecognised henge monument, and the caesium magnetometer showed these circles to be composed of individual pits about 1.4 m in diameter. The fine focus achieved for these buried features augers well for the discovery and preservation of similar sites and monuments in the future.

Wood charcoal from stratified layers at Akrotiri is helping to map the ecology of the island of Santorini before the volcanic eruption in the second millennium BC which brought Bronze Age settlement to an end. Far from being treeless like today, the island had a relatively moist and cool climate with diverse vegetation including open oak woodland. Olive cultivation can be traced back to the Early Bronze Age. Cedar, yew and beech were also imported from Lebanon, Cyprus and Anatolia as artefacts, or for building.

The Smithsonian Institution Press (with a patience one no longer expects of a scholarly publisher) early this year issued the second volume of Tom Dillehay's monograph on Monte Verde, in far southern Chile — 8 years after the first volume (Dillehay 1989; 1997). What is the standing of the site? Is it the long-sought-after proof of a ‘pre-Clovis’ human presence in the Americas? And if it is, why is it by the southern tip of the Western Hemisphere, rather than close to its northern portal from Siberia?

The impact of the human presence on the fauna of a Pacific island is often immediately archaeologically visible in the slaughter of its land birds seen in the bones. The impact on vegetation is less distinct archaeologically, and many of the Pacific cultigens have soft tissues which rarely preserve. So a study of prehistoric agriculture on one of the high Micronesian islands largely involves pollen and charcoal.

The authors examine a sample of olive stones from Egyptian contexts and show that from the first millennium BC, if not before, some of them relate to cultivars originating from the Levant. But equally prominent and just as early is another variety, of unknown origin and currently peculiar to Egypt. The method used is geometrical morphometric analysis – essentially classifying the olive stones by their shape.

Did Mesolithic people regard the woodland as a wilderness or park? Previous models have portrayed the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic as in tune with nature and making use of clearings to attract game. Using equally valid analogies, the authors propose a more hostile landscape that was conceived and managed with clearings and paths to help allay its menacing character.

The inner mechanics of Mongol empires are revealed through recent surveys by an American-Mongolian team. The large political confederations of high mobility which traditionally characterise the great Mongol empires of the first and second millennia AD are shown to have made use of highly sophisticated urban places which feature advanced planning and design, and impressive monumentality serving a variety of specific functions. Planning included open spaces within the walls reserved for the erection of tents.

The essays in this special section on early settlement in Island Southeast Asia may be puzzling to readers of Antiquity who are uninitiated to the ways and concerns of archaeologists working in the Pacific. Some of these authors appear almost reluctant to draw conclusions from the evidence they survey. Others champion their own interpretations unequivocally. What is going on here?

It may be, as some say, that academics are by nature a quarrelsome lot. Even so, why is the Lapita cultural complex ‘ever a hot source of debate’ (Bellwood & Koon, above, p. 613)? The essays published here may lack the direct cantankerousness of face-to-face confronat international symposia and professional meetings, but they reinforce the suggestion made in Antiquity a year ago that archaeologists in the Pacific today have come to a crossroads where we often find ourselves talking past each other because we are no longer in general agreement on what is interesting about Pacific prehistory and why (Terrell 1988).

Archaeologists have more opportunities than ever to disseminate their research widely—and the public more opportunities to engage and respond. This has led to the increasing mobilisation of archaeological data and interpretations within the discourses of nationalism and identity politics. This debate piece introduces the Brexit hypothesis, the proposition that any archaeological discovery in Europe can—and probably will—be exploited to argue in support of, or against, Brexit. Examples demonstrate how archaeological and ancient DNA studies are appropriated for political ends, and a series of recommendations and strategies for combatting such exploitation are proposed by the author.

The analysis of rich bone assemblages from an Epipalaeolithic site in Jordan show that wing feathers were being extracted, probably for ornamental or ceremonial purposes, from eagles and buzzards. These raptors were perhaps caught by luring them with tortoises, evident from smashed shells in the same assemblage. The authors speculate on the symbolic value of eagles' wings among these pre-Neolithic people.

Researchers in the High Andes in northern Chile report the study of a fine cave sequence, supported by 19 radiocarbon dates. The initial occupation at c. 11 500 cal BP represents the earliest human occupation known at this altitude. The toolkit suggests a hunting (logistical) camp used to take advantage of the animals gathering in the rich wetland of the neighbourhood.

Using the behaviour of related primates to provide analogies for early humans has a long tradition in archaeology. But these primates too have a past, and experienced particular contexts for the adoption of tool-using. In this pioneering review, the author explores distinctions among chimpanzees in ecology, diet and innovation, sets a wider agenda for a prehistory of primates and explains how archaeology could serve it.

The aurochs was a type of wild cattle not extinct in Europe until the mid-second millennium BC – so they must have co-existed for centuries with the domestic cattle which were to supplant it. Here the authors use stable isotope analysis to show what form that co-existence took: the domestic cattle grazing on the pasture, and the aurochs lurking in the forests and wet places.

This paper employs new evidence—including new AMS dates—to support a reinterpretation of the stratigraphic and architectural phasing of Lepenski Vir, and links this new evidence with the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in the region by critiquing dominant models.

Petroglyphs weather at varying rates, compared tothe unengraved host rock into which they are carved. Most petroglyphs are significantly harder or significantly softer than surrounding rock, depending on the nature of weathering. Variability and intensity of weathering probably introduces error into radiocarbon, rock varnis and micreoerosion dating methods.