Did the banana, yam and taro arrive in Australia at the hands of Europeans or come across the Torres Strait 2000 years before? Reviewing the evidence from herbaria histories and anthropology, the authors propose a ‘hierarchy of hypotheses’ and consider a still earlier option, that these food plants were potentially grown in Australia at least 8000 years ago, while it was still joined to New Guinea. This hypothesis, first proposed by Jones and Meehan in 1989, locates early horticultural experiments among peoples too often seen as inveterate hunter-gatherers.

The transition from Palaeoindian to Archaic societies in North America is often viewed as a linear progression over a brief but time-transgressive period. New evidence from the Wilson-Leonard site in Texas suggests social experimentation by Palaeoindians over a 2500-year period eventually resulted in Archaic societies. The process was neither short nor linear, and the evidence shows that different but contemporaneous lifeways existed in a variety of locales in the south-central US in the Early Holocene.

Australia and the Americas provide the two case-studies of the late human settlement of a continent by, it seems, Homo sapiens sapiens. At one time the corollaries of first occupation of the Americas, at perhaps 12,000 b.p., were a similarly late settlement of Australia and the need for a land-bridge across the Bering Straits. But now the pattern of occupation in New Guinea and its offshore islands proves that a long sea-crossing was made there before about 40,000 b.p. Here an Australian researcher looks across the Pacific to the evidence that has been offered for a Pleistocene occupation in south America, of a date comparable with that in Sahul.

Archaeological research in the Auckland Islands, south of New Zealand, has disclosed earth ovens, middens and flaked stone tools dating to the thirteenth–fourteenth centuries AD. This is the first site of prehistoric settlement in the outlying islands of the Subantarctic. Polynesians and their dogs survived on seals and seabirds for at least one summer. The new data complete a survey of colonisation in the outlying archipelagos of South Polynesia and show that it occurred contemporaneously, rapidly and in all directions from mainland New Zealand.

The Neolithic settlement of Auvernier on the shores of Lake Neuchltel in Switzerland, first described in 1854 (Keller), is archaeologically dated by imports from the Schnurkeramik civilization (‘corded’ complex) (JCquier and Strahm, 1965).

The editor of ANTIQUITY remembers travelling, as a child, on the main A1 highway to see relatives in southeast England, watching the banks of sharp-nosed Bloodhound missiles ranged close by the road – pointing east, to meet incoming Soviet bombers. The obsolete monuments of the Cold War, and before that of the Second World War, are history now, famously the Berlin Wall (Baker 1993 in ANTIQUITY). Many, like the concrete runways of the airfields, are so solidly built they are not lightly removed. These remains of England's 20th-century defence heritage are not well understood. However, and contrary to popular belief, they do have a large documentation; and it is this, the authors argue, that should form the basis for systematic review.

Recent excavations at the Kulpi Mara Rockshelter in the Palmer River catchment of central Australia have produced radiocarbon determinations spanning an archaeological sequence of 30,000 years. These results enable re-assessment of models addressing the how, where and when of arid zone colonisation, and human adjustments to environmental change in the later Pleistocene. Whilst the evidence supports early occupation of the central arid zone during wetter conditions, doubts are raised about the continuity of occupation during the height of glacial aridity.

This article shows that full-coverage regional survey is an effective tool for understanding change over time in regional settlement patterns in north China. Five seasons of survey in the Rizhao area of southeastern Shandong demonstrate a nucleated pattern of settlement around the Longshan site of Liangchengzhen and a clear settlement hierarchy, with distinctly different patterns for later periods.

About half a century ago ANTIQUITY published the seminal papers of Cecil Curwen on querns. We now return to the theme of flour production and David Peacock uses a computer to analyse a major collection of rotary mills.

The boat-grave cemetery at Abydos has provided the world's oldest sewn planked hulls, and vivid evidence for the way early Egyptian wooden boats were built. As well as sailing on the Nile, they were designed to be dismantled for carriage over land to the Red Sea. By the mid-fourth millennium BC the ship was a major technical force in the Egyptian political economy as well as an iconic force in ceremonial burial.

The motifs, techniques and stylistic features of Upper Palaeolithic art offer enormous potential for the investigation of social and cultural interactions in south-western France and northern Spain during the later stages of the last ice age. The key regions of Aquitaine, Cantabria and the Pyrenees clearly share an overall family resemblance, but detailed analysis of horse heads on portable objects of bone, antler and stone from Magdalenian contexts reveal that particular features can be attributed to different regions at different periods. Furthermore, the patterns of interconnection are structured very differently in the Upper Magdalenian than in the Middle Magdalenian, perhaps as rising temperatures in the latter period led to territorial expansion and social realignment.

This report of the discovery of low walls running across the slopes east of the Dead Sea presents an important landmark in the history of farming, for these were terrace walls put in place to conserve soil and control water around 6000 cal BC. The authors point to some of the implications of what they see as early landscape modification at the scale of a small community or household.

A new wall has joined the classics of history, the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall. This story of the central monument of 20th-century European history is a remarkable case-study in the meaning of a single item of material culture, showing the richness of confused meaning that must also envelop the older walls of arcaheological concern.

In case readers are wondering whether this paper is written tongue in cheek — or with tongue sticking out — it is worth recalling that modern archaeology includes recent periods in its remit, and uses recent materiality to help understand more ancient times as well as a critique on modernity itself. Here the authors find graffiti left by a notorious group of popular musicians and probe it for social meaning as earnestly as students of cave art. Their archaeological study finds an underlying driver that is part political, part personal and therefore also part (anti-)heritage.

A massive Late Bronze Age fortified settlement in Central Europe has been the subject of a new and exemplary investigation by excavation and site survey. This prehistoric enclosure, nearly 6km across, had a complex development, dense occupation and signs of destruction by fire. It can hardly be other than a capital city playing a role in the determinant struggles of its day — weighty and far reaching events of the European continent now being chronicled by archaeology.