Monumental construction is commonly associated with the rise of complex societies and frequently supported the ceremonies and ideologies that were instrumental in the creation of the new social order. Recent fieldwork at Heketa in eastern Tongatapu recorded stone-built platforms for houses and seats, and a three-tiered tomb and trilithon. Tongan tradition and archaeology combine to show that these were the setting for new ceremonies instituted by the emergent Tu’i Tonga lineage in the fourteenth century AD as they laid the foundations of the early Tongan chiefdom. Key to their success were activities that emphasised the sacred origins of the living Tu’i Tonga, including the drinking of kava and the presentation of first fruits to the chiefs.

In a characteristically stimulating recent article in ANTIQUITY, Barry Cunliffe has touched on many of the most important issues concerning the publication of ‘rescue’ excavations in Britain in the 1990s (Cunliffe 1990). The purpose of the present article is to follow up some the points which Cunliffe has raised.

Publication, and the dissemination of information, is the lifeblood of any academic discipline, and questions of what is published (and of what is read!), where, how and by whom are of central importance for archaeology. Over the past two decades in Britain, and particularly in England where the volume of work has been greatest, there has been a recurrent concern with the problem of how to publish the results of ‘rescue’ archaeology. Rescue excavations can generate very large quantities of data, collected for reasons which are often largely beyond archaeological control, and the problems (both intellectual and practical) of publishing this material are considerable. In Britain the issues have been the subject of expert examination on two occasions since 1970 -the Frere (1975) and Cunliffe (1983) reports - and now in the 1990s the topic is firmly on the archaeological agenda again. This paper is intended as a contribution to the continuing debate.

Continuing our focus on the Hebridean Mesolithic, this paper describes new dating on the human bone from Oronsay, showing that late Mesolithic occupation may coincide with the coming of the Neolithic.

Is archaeology a social science? Most archaeologists would probably agree that the goal of our discipline is to learn about the people, societies and cultures of the past. Thus there should be little objection to labelling archaeology a ‘social’ field of study. We study both people and society, but what about the ‘science’ part? This label is more controversial. Many archaeologists reject the notion that archaeology is, can be or should be a science. Others assume that archaeology is indeed a science and get on with their work, not worrying much about epistemology or definitions of science. Still others pursue decidedly non-scientific goals yet borrow scientific techniques from other disciplines and call it ‘archaeological science’.

The remains of a hunting site dated to 15000 years ago, captured in an ice wedge, included woolly rhinoceros, horse and arctic fox. Also present were 30 flint plaquettes with curvy feminine outlines. The authors show that these unworn flint profiles can be assigned to a canon of Magdalenian art that extends over much of northern Europe.

Scattered throughout North Britain, from Aberdeenshire to Northumberland and westward to Cumberland and Kirkcudbrightshire, is a group of long cairns which, from field inspection, lack the usual stone chamber or chambers normally associated with such long cairns. Some of these sites might still have chambers preserved beneath their covering mounds. At others, where the cairn has been robbed, the former or present existence of stone chambers seems unlikely.

Across the rocky landscapes of Egypt lies evidence for pharaonic quarrying and mining; fresh fieldwork at neglected sites, such as the Hatnub travertine quarries and the Wadi el-Hudi amethyst mines, now tells us more. The surviving remains of quarrying and mining settlements suggest subtle adaptations in versatile response to changing economic and geographical parameters.

The authors report on radiocarbon data derived from carefully selected organic material from Late Minoan IA and IB contexts. The results suggest that the accepted chronology of the period should be revised by 100 years and that the eruption of Thera/Santorini most likely occurred c. 1650–1620 BC.

We live, most of us, in agricultural societies; our food comes from the farm. We make gardens, many of us, and we eat some of the plants that we grow there. That farming is not the same as gardening we see in the responses of western observers when they made contact with societies whose food came more from the garden than the farm. A gardener's view of food makes its own story.

A ‘heritage manager’ who wishes a quiet and an orderly life may hope their heritage place is culturally dead; whatever meaning it once had, now it is an archaeological site, an ancient monument, a tourist attraction. But many sites are not dead. Chaco Canyon, the celebrated complex in the desert of the US Southwest, is of continuing value to Native Americans of its region; and the place has become a focus for New Age ceremony — itself in part inspired by Native American knowledge.

It is now recognized that during the Pleistocene, or even duringa later prehistoric period, there were in northern Africa human races related to the existing Bushmen and the Hottentots of the south. The shape of the skull in some of the early Egyptians, indeed, suggests relationship to the Bushmen. The discovery in the Anglo- Egyptian Sudan of a new type of fossil human skull with several resemblances to that of a Bushman, is therefore of great interest. The specimen was found in February 1924 by Mr W. R. G. Bond, who was then Governor of the Fung Province of the Anglo-Egyptia Sudan. It was embedded in a limestone concretion, which lay a few feet above low-stage river level on the foreshore of the Blue Nile at Singa about 200 miles south of Khartoum. I have to thank Mr G. W. Grabham, then Government Geologist, for the opportunity of studying the fossil.

Excavations at the salt-making village of Kibiro, on the Ugandan shore of Lake Albert in East Africa, suggest that an important part of the economy of the Kingdom of Bunyoro originated early in the present millennium. The predominance of roulette-decorated pottery, in particular the use of carved roulettes, indicates that Kibiro was first occupied by people with northern affinities, possibly from the upper Nile region or further west. Collectively, these findings provide important clues concerning the origins of the Kingdom of Bunyoro.