Joy McCorriston's paper in the March 1994 ANTIQUITY, on acorn-eating and agricultural origins, used California ethnographies as analogues for the ancient Near East. This reply explores some issues of analogy and explanation that go beyond the important specifics of the matter.

Immediately to the north of Australia, the island of New Guinea forms the largest single land mass in the cultural area known as Melanesia (FIG. I). Politically the island is divided; to the west is the Indonesian state of West Irian, to the east is the Territory of Papua and New Guinea, at present administered by the Australian Government. While such political boundaries are disregarded as a matter of course in attempting to reconstruct the prehistory of the area, the development of archaeological research reflects, and has been impeded by, this artificial division.

It does not seem to have been contested, and therefore one may assume that it is generally agreed, that the discovery of the remains of a sickle in an ancient deposit is evidence that its owner knew how to grow corn. The forms that sickles took prior to the use of metal have been ably classified by M. Vayson de Pradenne in an article which was reviewed and summarized in ANTIQUITY in June 1930, and as a result of his work the characteristics of the flint flakes and of their method of hafting as sickles has come to be widely known and easily recognized.

Pottery of the Rouletted ware family belongs to India’s Early Historic period (c. 500 BC to c. AD 200) and has been found as far east as Bali in Indonesia and as far west as Berenike in Egypt. Although they appear similar to Mediterranean products, scientific tests by the authors show that Rouletted ware Arikamedu Type 10 and Sri Lankan Grey ware had a common geological origin in India. Since Grey ware at least pre-dates the arrival of Roman pottery in India, all these related wares were probably the products of indigenous communities.

From the beginning, the culture-history of the Chinese archaeological sequence has had its own character. And in a country and a civilization so vast, regional variation can also be on a grand scale. An examination of a late Neolithic culture on the southeastern coast finds jade in early contexts that give a new perspective to the traditional – and later – importance jade bears in the dynastic northern sequence.

A meteorite impact crater in the Sirente mountains, central Abruzzo has recently been dated to the four/fifth century AD. The author shows that this catastrophic event can be equated with a locally preserved legend which describes how local people saw a new star fall to earth during a pagan festival. Their conversion to Christianity was expeditiously effected … .

The recently concluded ‘People of the British Isles’ project (hereafter PoBI) combined large-scale, local DNA sampling with innovative data analysis to generate a survey of the genetic structure of Britain in unprecedented detail; the results were presented by Leslie and colleagues in 2015. Comparing clusters of genetic variation within Britain with DNA samples from Continental Europe, the study elucidated past immigration events via the identification and dating of historic admixture episodes (the interbreeding of two or more different population groups). Among its results, the study found “no clear genetic evidence of the Danish Viking occupation and control of a large part of England, either in separate UK clusters in that region, or in estimated ancestry profiles”, therefore positing “a relatively limited input of DNA from the Danish Vikings”, with ‘Danish Vikings’ defined in the study, and thus in this article, as peoples migrating from Denmark to eastern England in the late ninth and early tenth centuries (Leslie et al.2015: 313). Here, we consider the details of certain assumptions that were made in the study, and offer an alternative interpretation to the above conclusion. We also comment on the substantial archaeological and linguistic evidence for a large-scale Danish Viking presence in England.

A defined ‘Mesolithic’ era is a fixture in the cultural sequences of European prehistory — though not of other regions of the world. Why and how did the entity come to be invented, and to take just that form?

Introduction

In recent years, considerable attention has been dedicated to the involvement of archaeology (and most notably prehistory) with nationalism. The probable causes of this recent fashion1 need not concern 11s here, but the movement itself is ccrtninly welcome, testifying to the reflection of archaeologists on their own practices and those of their predecessors. For historians, this trend is quite welcome insofar as it contributes to a general renaissance of interest in the past of the discipline. However, a more careful examination of this historiography leads us to some caution about its significance.

Research at Mosu I. northern Botswana, has discovered a 10th-century AD ivory cache. Although small, this is one of the largest single concentrations of ivory recovered from southern Africa. Consideration of other occurrences suggests that ivory was prepared throughout the area and traded as finished bangles.

Every prehistorian has heard of the famous volcanic rock of the Eifel from which querns were made in prehistoric and later times. The source from which the querns came has several names, and we read of Andernach, Niedermendig and Mayen lava. Actually, Andernach is merely the Rhineland town nearest to the quarries; there is no lava there. Niedermendig has lava quarries, but they did not begin to be worked until the Middle Ages, and then the output was only about one third of that of Mayen. Since however the output of Mayen passed through Niedermendig on its way to the Rhine, the latter name got attached, and we in Britain usually write of ‘Niedermendig lava’. But all prehistoric and Roman querns came, not from there but from the Mayen quarries, which are still being worked. During a visit to Germany in July 1953, I was conducted round them by Dr J. Röder of Koblenz. The following account, though made possible by that visit, is not an original composition but is derived from an authoritative article by Dr Röder and others, which has kindly been abstracted for me in English by Mr J. D. van der Waals of Amsterdam. I wish also to thank Dr Röder for the loan of illustrations, especially the blocks for FIGS, 1 and 3.

What were the fine garments vividly painted in the Minoan frescoes made of? Fine cotton (cotton from Egypt is still prized today)? Or the yet finer fabric of silk? And if silk, where did the stuff, or knowledge of cultivating the silk-worms, come from? A cocoon from Santorini offers new evidence.

The first contacts between the prehistoric cultures of the Canary Islands and western civilization occurred in the European expansion of the late Middle Ages. Their ultimate colonization was intimately related to this expansion, driven by new economic forms, including ‘commercial capitalism’ or ‘pre-capitalism’, which affected economic and intellectual structures throughout Europe, the economic characterized from then on by innovation, risk and increasing turnover; and the intellectual by the concept of ‘profit’ in place of ‘service’.

The practical transition can be seen in the technology that supported expansion: transport (new types of ships, cartography, systems of navigation, etc.); financial systems (nonmonetary payment, insurance, commercial credit, etc.); and mercantile institutions (commercial societies, consulates, postal services, etc.).

Great Zimbabwe, most celebrated monument in the country that is named after it, is a large challenge not just in its technical conservation, but in how it is to be made alive for its country's citizens.

Do gender roles, or expectations about gender roles, affect what kind of study is pursued by the individual researcher? Has excavation been rather a man's business? And if so, have other kinds of study — regional survey, for example — rather become women's business? These issues are explored as they are illuminated by the research careers of two eminent Australian contemporaries.

In 2013, Hardy et al. offered a broad behavioural context for the hypothesis that the ingestion of non-nutritional plants (yarrow and camomile) by Neanderthals was for the purpose of self-medication. Chemical traces of these plants had been detected in samples of dental calculus from Neanderthals at the site of El Sidrón, Spain, along with traces of bitumen and wood smoke, as well as starch granules that showed evidence of roasting (Hardy et al.2012). Subsequently, the presence of traces of resin and a piece of non-edible conifer wood were also identified from these samples (Radini et al.2016). Although not rejecting our interpretation for the presence of these two non-edible plants as evidence of medicinal plant use, two recent articles offer alternative scenarios for why and how those plants may have reached the mouth and, eventually, the dental calculus of the individual concerned. Buck and Stringer (2014) suggest that the plants were not deliberately ingested, and that the traces of yarrow and camomile were in fact embedded in the chyme, or stomach contents, of herbivore prey. Krief et al. (2015) propose two hypotheses: first, they suggest that the plants could have been used to flavour meat; second, while not ruling out the possibility that they could be medicinal, they argue on a technical point that the plants were not self-administered but were provided by a caregiver. Here, we examine these suggestions and consider their probability and feasibility as alternatives to our original proposal of self-medication.

A different vision from southern Africa challenges Mazel's view of the region's archaeology, and of the place for rock art in knowing its history.