Textiles are powerful indicators of technology and contact, as the authors show for the peoples of the Bronze Age central Asian steppes. In this case the textiles are mainly missing, but have left their imprints on the surface of the inside of pots, captured when otherwise redundant cloths were used to paddle or jacket the clay before hardening and firing. A good supply of old cloths seems to have been part of a potters' equipment and some were used several times. The authors analyse and date the fibres and weaves to give an indication of changing cultural context through the Bronze Age.

During the war and in the immediate post-war period the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force undertook a considerable air survey programme covering Burma, Siam and French Indo-China. In Siam the initial cover was restricted to large-scale (1:15,000 and better) photographs of towns, airfields and communications. Later a more ambitious programme of survey cover (scales 1 : 50,000 and 1 : 25,000 with a few towns and beaches at larger scale) was undertaken, and practically the whole of the country has been covered by air photographs of one scale or another.

It has been my privilege to serve with the R.A.F. in Siam on both ground and flying duties and, more recently, to be in a position to examine most of the photographs taken. A very considerable number of archaeological sites have come to light, many being noted for the first time ; and it is my intention in this initial paper to comment briefly on one particular type of earthwork which appears to have a limited distribution in eastern Siam. The air photographs are reproduced with the sanction of the Air Ministry.

It must be emphasized that although Siam, the meeting place of Indian and Chinese cultures, is rich in archaeological sites very little systematic work has yet been undertaken. On the one side the natural reluctance of the Siamese to disturb ancient sites and, on the other, comparative absence of trained archaeological research workers have been contributory factors. Detailed ground information generally is lacking and it follows that these notes are based on air photographic evidence, in most cases without ground checking, an impropriety of which the writer is only too well aware.

The island of Cyprus was a major producer of copper and stood at the heart of east Mediterranean trade networks during the Late Bronze Age. It may also have been the source of the Red Lustrous Wheelmade Ware that has been found in mortuary contexts in Egypt and the Levant, and in Hittite temple assemblages in Anatolia. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) has enabled the source area of this special ceramic to be located in a geologically highly localised and geochemically distinctive area of western Cyprus. This discovery offers a new perspective on the spatial organisation of Cypriot economies in the production and exchange of elite goods around the eastern Mediterranean at this time.

Building floor plans are frequently recovered by archaologists. A common first sorting of the shapes of small domestic buildings is between round houses and rectangular houses. What do these differences mean? Why do social groups change their building form from one to the other? An ethnoarchaeological study from northern Cameroon illustrates how four ethnic groups in a single community use building shape to blur or define group boundaries for political self-interests.

The activities of hunter-gatherers are often captured in rockshelters, but here the authors present a study of a riverside settlement outside one, with a rich sequence from 1300 BC to AD 800. Thanks to frequent flooding, periods of occupation were sealed and could be examined in situ. The phytolith and faunal record, especially fish, chronicle changing climate and patterns of subsistence, emphasising that the story here is no predictable one-way journey from hunter-gatherer to farmer. Right up to the period of the famous nineteenth-century rock paintings in the surrounding Maloti-Drakensberg region, adaptation was dynamic and historically contingent.

The first radiocarbon determinations for a large prehistoric cemetery in Karelia, USSR, have been obtained using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) of several organic fractions from prehistoric human bone samples. These determinations suggest an age of c. 7500 b.p. for the burials, definitely within the Mesolithic period. Additional information from skeletal and isotope evidence confirm Olenii ostrov as a very important Mesolithic site in northern Europe.

Bone points of two types, the one thin and poisoned and the other robust and not poisoned, are examined in this study of impact fractures. The bone points seem to have had similar experiences to stone points, producing fractures of a similar kind. Most of the fractures in the historical collection examined were caused by impacts. However, this early twentieth-century collection is not thought to be representative of contemporary fracture frequencies that occurred in hunting.

The tooth of a tiger shark, perforated to make a pendant, was lost in New Ireland, New Guinea between 39500 and 28000 years ago. The author argues that this has to be the work of anatomically modern humans, and implies the use of symbolic language not only across the former continent of Sahul, but also Eurasia.

It has long been known that irrigation agriculture played a significant role in the history of civilization in the Near East, and it is not surprising, therefore, that many researchers have concentrated their efforts on the study of problems connected with early irrigation, based both on the evidence of literary sources (Jacobsen, 1960), and that provided by archaeology and palaeogeography. Probably the most interesting work of this kind is the systematic research which has been carried out in the Diyala river basin, which covers a wide chronological range (Adams, 1965). However, the thick sedimentary deposits in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, and on the foothill plains and intermontane valleys in many regions of the Near East, have resulted, in most cases, in the ancient irrigation systems lying deeply buried and inaccessible. Very recently, as a result of joint archaeological and palaeogeographical investigations in southern Turkmenia, we have succeeded in discovering very early irrigation constructions in the region, where, in the 6th-2nd millennium BC were situated sites belonging to the painted pottery cultures-the Dieitun culture (Berdyev, 1965) and the so-called Anau culturewhich comprise the northern limits of the Near Eastern cultural world (FIG. I) (Pumpelly, 1908; Kuphtin, 1954; Masson, 1962, 1966 ; Sarianidi, 1965; Khlopin, 1963).

Finds of perforated Homalopoma sanguineum from Tito Bustillo add to the evidence of long-distance contact between Magdalenian groups. The new finds are placed in their European context.

We are very pleased to present a summary account of the People's Republic of China's project on the Origins of Chinese Civilization. It has focused on Late Neolithic and early Bronze Age sites of the Central Plains – the cultural heartland of the first three dynasties of Xia, Shang and Zhou. Particularly notable is the emphasis of methodology which was driven almost entirely by the archaeological sciences.

In a recent article, Parcak et al. (2016) presented the results of a study in which they used satellite imagery to evaluate looting and other damage at over one thousand heritage sites in Egypt. Assessing imagery dating between 2002 and 2013, their results indicated an increase in visible damage to sites during this period caused by looting and encroachment, which by Parcak et al.’s definition “includes building development, cemetery growth, agricultural expansion and intentional damage through targeted destruction” (2016: 190). Their findings support the work of previous authors who have documented an increase in looting and other damage to archaeological sites connected with increasing nationwide economic and political instability (e.g. Ikram 2013; Ikram & Hanna 2013).

There is a large gap between the fact of a radiocarbon determination and the archaeological answer to the question to which it relates. The first part of the gap is addressed by calibration, that turns a measure of 14C activity into an estimate of a calendar date. Here is a contribution to the second part, by which a set of calibrated dates is made to provide a calendar range for the archaeological events under study.

This note follows ANTIQUITY's usual convention, under which uncalibrated determinations are given in lower-case, b.p., and calibrated dates in small capitals, BP, BC or AD.

The early mosque at Jarash is reconstructed by archaeological excavation and survey and attributed to a wave of urban renewal in the reign of caliph Hisham (AD 724-743).