Among the postglacial changes in human diet is the larger place for cereals that led on to full plant agriculture. Here, a specific trace is found in human osteology of the new kind of labour that the grinding of cereal seeds required.

Greek society was changing rapidly in the 8th century BC. The archaeological record reveals population growth, increasing political complexity, artistic experiments and a strong interest in the past. Because these processes resemble those at work in early modern Italy, the period has often been referred to as the ‘Greek renaissance’ (e.g. Ure 1922; Hägg 1983a; cf. Burke 1986). This paper is about the glorification of the past in the 8th century, and its relationship to the rise of the polis, the Greek city state. I concentrate on one particular phenomenon, the spread of cults at tombs dating to the Mycenaean period (c. 1600-1200 BC). I argue that the common renaissance analogy has limited value, and that the 8thcentury Greeks created a past narrowly focussed on the persons of powerful ancient beings, from whom they could draw authority in the social upheavals which came about as the loose, aristocratic societies of the ‘Dark Age’ (c. 1200-750 BC) were challenged. Tomb cults go back at least to 950 BC, but after 750 they were redefined and used as a source of power in new ways. I have adapted my subtitle from Maurice Bloch’s well-known paper ‘The past and the present in the present’ (1977), where he argues that rituals bring the past into the present to form a system of cognition mystifying nature and preserving the social order. The argument here is slightly different. I stress the variety of the cults and the range of meanings they must have had, making their recipients highly ambiguous figures. The same cults could simultaneously evoke the new, relatively egalitarian ideology of the polis and the older ideals of heroic aristocrats who protected the grateful and defenceless lower orders, while standing far above them. Bloch's paper borrowed Malinowski’s idea of culture as a ‘long conversation’; developing the analogy, I look at the multiple meanings which any statement in such a conversation may have for the different actors.

The Baden culture, like others in central Europe, has long been assumed to be the material indication of a people. In a searing analytical deconstruction, the author shows that ‘Baden’ pottery has no equivalence with other cultural practices, and is itself an amalgam of a number of different pottery fabrics and styles, many of them regionally diverse. Singled out among them is the early Boreláz fine ware which is actively spread in central Europe, perhaps accompanied by a knowledge of the first wheeled vehicles.

Since 1950, the attention of the Czechoslovak Archaeological Institute has been focused on the study of the Early Neolithic in Czechoslovakia, and since 1960 the investigation of Neolithic society in all its aspects has been one of the principal assignments of the Academy of Sciences in the field of social sciences.

In the years 1950-1952 a survey of a Neolithic site of the Danubian I or Bandkeramik, and Late Lengyel cultures, at Postoloprq in NW Bohemia, was undertaken and its results are now in the press. This investigation has shown, however, that NW Bohemia belongs to a peripheral region and that thus any findings made there have a local validity only. Unless they are taken in conjunction with evidence from a less peripheral region, they present a very distorted picture. For this reason a suitable site was looked for in eastern Bohemia, where it could be assumed (on the basis of an analysis of earlier finds in local museums) that particularly suitable localities could be found in the region.

The later Palaeolithic sites on the East European plain are celebrated for their solid buildings constructed of mammoth bones. Were these permanent settlements, occupied all the year round? Or were they seasonally occupied, in a land where winters are harsh? Stratigraphic explorations at Mezhirich, and excavation of the empty space between the buildings, leads to a decisive interpretation.

The fascicules of the final report on Franchthi Cave in the Argolid, the key Aegean sequence for the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition, are starting to appear, along with the publications of the Stanford survey of the region. Here, those reports prompt a wider review of existing explanations for the emergence of Greek social complexity, and the identifying of a new and major impetus as the basis for a revised model.

The Dalmatian province of Yugoslavia, lying between the limestone mountains of the Dinaric range and the Adriatic Sea, is an important zone for early European agriculture, as both its neighbouring regions are precocious in their development. New information on the nature and chronology of first Dalmation farming is presented.

Mesolithic sites are rare in the Aegean, and Mesolithic burials are uncommon throughout Europe. The Mesolithic human remains from Franchthi Cave, that remarkable, deeply stratified site in southern Greece, offer a rare glimpse into the burial practices of early Holocene hunter-gatherers of the Mediterranean.

The quantity and quality of material from the late Mesolithic/early Neolithic in southern Scandinavia has dominated the study of this important period in northwest Europe. Recent evidence from the west of Scotland suggests that, despite a rich and varied resource base similar in many ways to that in southern Scandinavia, a very different process of change occurs. The evidence suggests a very gradual transformation, with selected parts of the farming socio-economy being being adopted at varying rates. This situation is compared with that in various parts of Europe and is considered to fit in well with a pattern of great regional diversity in the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic.

There is a body of theory, most clearly delineated in recent years by V. Gordon Childe, concerning the importance of the appearance of Food-Production as a basic economic revolution. The domestication of plants and animals assured a stable food supply. Proper village life now came into being, and with it a completely new kind of technology. This latter depends on the fact that time now became available for pursuits other than that of simply collecting food. The theory holds it to be no coincidence that such crafts as architecture, pottery, weaving, and presently metallurgy make their appearance with the establishment of Food-production. These crafts make use of materials constructively, and in some cases actually change the physical or chemical properties of the materials. Such a technology was not characteristic of the preceding Food-gathering stage. The Food-producing revolution and the type of technology which attended it were at least the economic prerequisite for the appearance of civilization (in any useful sense of that word).

The classic image of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe envisages them hunting large mammals in largely treeless landscapes. That is partly due to the nature of the surviving archaeological evidence, and the poor preservation of plant remains at such ancient sites. As this study illustrates, however, the potential of Upper Palaeolithic sites to yield macrofossil remains of plants gathered and processed by human groups has been underestimated. Large scale flotation of charred deposits from hearths such as that reported here at Dolní Vӗstonice II not only provides insight into the variety of flora that may have been locally available, but also suggests that some of it was being processed and consumed as food. The ability to exploit plant foods may have been a vital component in the successful colonisation of these cold European habitats.

Interpretation of archaeological landscapes has developed within two main disciplines. Social theory has provided a foundation for understanding cultural landscapes, and palaeoecology has provided techniques for understanding physical landscapes. Despite their potentially complementary nature, the two approaches remain polarized, and as described here, result in the incomplete studies of past landscapes.

Resin preserved on New Kingdom vessels from Amarna in Middle Egypt provides evidence for incense burning and trade. Here Margaret Serpico & Raymond White describe a new interdisciplinary research project.

Introduction

Processes of acculturation and assimilation in contact situations have been the subject of considerable interest to North American and Japanese prehistorians alike. In the latter case, research has emphasized the transition, beginning about 1000 BC, to the wet-rice-focussed Yayoi (Akazawa 1981, 1986) (see TABLE1 for plant nomenclature used in this paper). The spread of agriculture to northeastern Japan is usually viewed as a northeastward progression of a frmtier that reached northern Tohoku by the Middle Yayoi (FIGURES 1 & 2). However, the situation is more complex than this, in our view, and involves a spatial and cultural dichotomy between Hokkaido and northern Tohoku on the one hand and southern Tohokusouthwestern Japan on the other. Furthermore, we interpret Ainu culture (as distinct from the Ainu biological population) of Hokkaido and Sakhalin to be an outcome of a long period of social interaction along this boundary.

Understanding the prehistoric narrative of a region requires good dating, and in recent years good dating has moved increasingly from models drawn from types of artefacts to a framework provided by radiocarbon sequences. This in turn is bringing a change in the way events are described: from broad cultural histories to a network of local sequences. In this case study, the authors apply this rethinking to the Copper Age in a key region of Europe, the Great Hungarian Plain in the Carpathian Basin. They replace the traditional Early and Middle Copper Age, defined by pottery types, with an 800-year sequence in which six cemetery and settlement sites experience different trajectories of use, and the pottery types make intermittent and often contemporary appearances. In this new chronology based on radiocarbon, the variations in pottery use must have some other explanation.

The settlement of mainland Australia at an early (and uncertainly known) date required a water-crossing. What about the settlement of the islands — neither numerous nor large compared with the island continent itself — that are offshore from Australia? The evidence reviewed shows a late settlement for nearly all of them, and a perplexing lack of pattern.

As once-colonial countries recognize the special claim of indigenous peoples to their own history, so archaeology is becoming more a partnership between researcher and community. The next step, of indigenous people directing their own archaeology, was taken long ago by the Zuni peopel of New Mexico, in a programme that is an example and model for others. The authors have worked in the Zuni programmes for over 15 years.

Electron spin resonance (ESR) provides a dated sequence for a classic site in a classic Palaeolithic region, a sequence that covers that difficult period for absolute dating which has often proved too old for radiocarbon and too young for other radiometric methods.