Van Andel adds an important postscript to his paper in the December ANTIQUITY

The phenomenon of cattle-depositions in Central Europe (c. 3500-2200 BC) provides an opportunity to explore distinctions between sacrifice, burial and grave goods. Waggon models, sun-symbols and buried pairs of cattle suggest additional ideas about the religious beliefs and behaviour of Neolithic societies in central Europe.

Analysis of knapped obsidian and flint artefacts from the early ceramic Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük has shown that there were several strategies used for the production of knapped-stone tools, and that there was a profound change in the character of lithic production occurring approximately during the middle of the occupation sequence. This paper outlines the details of this technical change and, with reference to possible changes in subsistence strategies and the organization of production, offers some explanations for its occurrence.

Green foxtail (Setaria viridis) is an annual grass widely distributed over the Old World, including China, where evidence of the earliest foxtail millet domestication to date has been discovered in the Cishan assemblage, Hebei province, dated to approximately 7900–7500 BP (Institute of Archaeology CASS 1991). Isozymic analysis and interspecific cross between S. viridis and S. italica (domesticated foxtail millet) demonstrated that S. viridis is the progenitor of domesticated foxtail millet (Gao & Chen 1988; Li et al. 1945). Yet little is known about the process of millet domestication, and even less about either the botanical characteristics of S. viridis or its cultural significance regarding human domestication.

Museums across the USA are busy carrying out their new obligations under NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. There is more to the mood than some change in how human remains are curated in archaeological and anthropological collections.

An account from Fracisco Pizarro's expedition tells of a trading raft encountered along the coast of Ecuador. It gives a rare first-hand record of the established exchange of fine craftwork along the north-western coast of South America. The excavation in 1992–3 of a Manteño-period workshop in Manabí Province gives a corresponding archaeological view of the making of these luxury goods.

Palaeolithic people could foresee their technological future no more, or even less, than we are able to. They never said, ‘The Middle Palaeolithic has gone on quite long enough — now we'd better get on with a transition to the Upper.’ So what is one to make of those precocious lithic industries which prefigure key features of later innovations, the industries which ‘run ahead’ of their own time?

In ‘ A note on certain Agate Beads ’, printed in the Antiquaries Journal (x, 149), Mr H. C. Beck drew attention to their obscure origin. In addition to a recent distribution of 500 to 1000 roughly made agate beads, which may have come from the sale of the belongings of an old sea-captain, Mr Beck gave fourteen finds unconnected with this recent distribution, which included a comparatively small example found by Woolley at Ur in a layer confidently pronounced to date from before the ‘ Flood ’, one bead from Algeria, a string from Jerusalem, one bead from an Irish bog, a string from near Frankfort, one bead from a Merovingian grave, a string from Brittany associated with the dolmen period, others from Nantes, Orleans and elsewhere in France, and four finds from the Sudan, two being from Omdurman, where it is stated that they are occasionally dug up, and one from the 25th Dynasty treasury of Sanam at Dongola.

The Nasca lines are geoglyphs – arrays of stones forming geometric shapes constructed by ancient humans, the largest ones occupying areas of more than 1km2. The authors used optically stimulated luminescence dating of quartz buried when the stone lines were constructed to give new dates for contexts associated with geoglyphs on high mesetas near Palpa. They conclude that the stone lines at sites at San Ignacio and Sacramento were constructed between AD 400 and 650. This suggests that they were made in the later part of the Early Intermediate Period by people of the Nasca culture.

The Grottes d'Arcy, situated on the main road (RN 6) between Auxerre and Avallon, are the closest big caves to Paris (FIG. I). Between the 16th and the 19th centuries the most distinguished visitors, from Louis XI11 to M. de Buffon (1740), marvelled at the immense galleries adorned with stalactites at the Grande Grotte. The caves still attract many tourists. All nine of the Arcy caves have a generally southerly exposure, and they have been cut into-some of them through-the south flank of a Jurassic limestone massif, or promontory, around which the Cure River flows in a large bow between Saint-MorC and Arcy-sur-Cure. Actually this area is on the border between the southwestern limits of the Seine Basin and the extreme northwestern extension of the granitic massif of the Morvan, where the Cure has its source. This complex of caves lies on the left bank of the Cure just west of RN 6 some 12 km. south of (i.e. upstream from) the confluence of the Yonne and the Cure, at a distance of just over 27 km. south-southwest of Auxerre and about 17 km. north-northwest of Avallon. Here the Cure (the mean elevation of which at this

The early Neolithic in northern Central Europe ought to be the theatre in which incoming farmers meet local hunter-gatherers, with greater or lesser impact. By way of contrast, the authors use isotope analysis in a cemetery beside the Danube to describe a peaceful, well-integrated community with a common diet and largely indigenous inhabitants. Men and women may have had different mobility strategies, but the isotopes did not signal special origins or diverse food-producing roles. Other explanations attend the variations in the burial rites of individuals and their distribution into cemetery plots.

Contemporary life has become deeply entangled with the digital. Every day, huge quantities of data, or digital artefacts, are generated. To date, the archaeological study of these artefacts has been limited, its potential demonstrated by a few initial studies and, more recently, the emergence of archaeogaming. If archaeology seeks to understand human culture, however, the study of these digital artefacts must become mainstream. This will require collaboration with computer scientists to bring an archaeological sensibility to understanding the virtual. Ultimately, the aims and methods required resemble those that archaeologists have already developed, but require a change of mindset if they are to be widely deployed for the study of digital artefacts.

The Acheulean handaxe is one of the most iconic, analysed and fiercely debated artefacts from the prehistoric period. Persisting for over one million years and recovered from sites across the Old World its distinctive, often symmetrical, tear drop or ovate shape appears to be over-engineered for a subsistence function alone. Debate has centred upon trying to unravel the reasons for this form; raw material, knapping technique, subsistence function, cognition, social context of manufacture and sexual selection have all been proposed as key factors (Jones 1994; White 1998; Gamble 1999; Kohn & Mithen 1999; McPherron 2000; Gowlett 2006).

The authors describe the discovery of a Late Neolithic/Chalcolithic basalt axe factory in the Manasseh Hills in Israel and suggest it had a primary role in the region for the production of these functional and symbolic tools. The form of discarded roughouts and flakes is used to deduce the principal eventual product and its sequence of manufacture.

With the advent of relatively inexpensive image-handling computer programmes, digital image enhancement is more readily available to archaeologists. This paper describes the principles behind image enhancement and its application to rock-art in particular. Its use at a site in Torres Strait shows how it can be used successfully to reveal faded rock paintings.

During the last fifty years prehistoric archaeology has developed with extraordinary rapidity into a firmly established branch of science. A system has been constructed, the frontiers of several cultural phenomena have been laid down, and the outlines of prehistoric chronology have been formed. Hypotheses and assertions have been made concerning the ethnographical groups of prehistoric times, and lengthy ‘prehistoric’ periods have literally been transformed into ‘historic’ ones. The inscription on the medal struck for Oscar Montelius– ‘Fifty years of research have mastered millennia of human culture ’ –may serve as a short motto summarizing the results of archaeology as a whole, not merely the achievements of one man.

The method which has led to this result is that of the empiric sciences, based on the theory of evolution, namely, that of typology. The starting-point of research has for the most part been morphology. When synthesis has been the objective, the student’s instruments of research have consisted primarily of forms or shapes of objects, or ornaments and tombs and so forth, and their comparison.