Sauer (1925) saw the terrestrial scene as more than a natural arena for human action. He recognized the repeated human impact on a living earth which created an ever-changing stage of landscape. Geographical conceptions of landscape have changed in the intervening 75 years. Today, geographers acknowledge the historically contingent qualities of nature and society and their inter-relationships (Zimmerer 1994).

Investigations in the 19th century demonstrated that Scottish crannogs, the distinctive waterlogged settlements in the shallow waters at the edge of lochs, were very rich in organic remains of all types. Have the crannogs survived, years after so many of the lakes were drained? Are there organic remains left? A new survey and new excavations at the Buiston crannog shows how much has gone, and the great value of what remains.

Several recent reconstructions of the social and economic development of non-Mediterranean Gaul after c. 200 BC have argued for the development of complex societies, characterized by the appearance of centralized political entities with urban – or at least urbanizing – communities. The emergence of such ‘Archaic States’ is often considered as having been restricted to a broad zone running eastward from the Atlantic façade through the northern Massif Central to the Swiss plateau. Five certain such states are usually claimed: Bituriges cubi, Aedui, Arverni, Sequani, Helvetii; and three probable: Pictones, Lemovices and Lingones. The constitutents of this zone were originally recognized by Dr Daphne Nash (1976; 1978a; 1978b; 1981), and her view has since been adopted in Britain by Champion and his collaborators (1984), Bintliff (1984) and, most recently, Cunliffe (1988: figure 38). Essential to the formulation of this hypothesis was a wide-ranging consideration of three domains of protohistoric evidence on Gaul: literary, most conspicuously Julius Caesar’s de Bello Gallico; numismatics; and the settlement record of the late La Tène and its more shadowy antecedents. Among more recent commentators, a primary interest in the ‘core–periphery’ relationship (Cunliffe 1988; Rowlands et al. 1987) which existed between the Mediterranean world and Central Gaul is manifest. In a minimal view, this interaction may be envisaged in terms of the consequences of long-distance trade and subsequent military conquest spurring socio-political change. The unspoken by-product of this perspective is that differential development within non-Mediterranean Gaul is simplistically presented in terms of distance-decay from the Mediterranean littoral, with little attention being paid to the effects of physiographic diversity across this landmass.

It is commonly held in the existing literature that prehistoric peoples were compelled to kill off an abnormally high proportion of their livestock in autumn because of a lack of winter fodder. There is literary evidence for autumn killing in several European localities (n. 1). It is therefore a plausible assumption that earlier cultures are hardly less likely to have been more successful in overcoming this difficulty. This article is concerned to examine whether this assumption is valid.

The inference generally made about autumn killing rests almost entirely on Watson’s report on the Skara Brae bones (n. 2). By the use of Watson’s method such a claim may also be made for the Old Sleaford sheep, and this is shown here. But there are grounds for supposing that such a claim is methodologically unjustified, and we have endeavoured to set out a method by which such claims may be tested.

Competitive board games, played on the ground, on the floor or on wooden boards, provide entertainment, distraction and exercise for the mind — it is hard to believe that north-west Europe was ever without them. But the authors here make a strong case that the introduction of such games was among the fruits of Roman contact, along with literacy and wine. In Britain and Ireland games were soon renamed, but belonged like children's jokes to a broad underworld of fast-moving cultural transmission, largely unseen till now.

The ‘fertility symbols’ of Palaeolithic Europe run from unambiguous female effigies to shapes that may not be human at all. A view is taken of some of the forms that makes them into Mars rather than Venus.

It is a pleasure to present this vivid account of elite tombs on China's Northern Frontier, together with a closely argued case for cultural hybridity within the postcolonial paradigm. This incisive exposition of political interaction on a frontier will resonate with all of us who work with ‘imperial-barbarian’ relations—on any continent.

In the new opening-up of China to the outside world that has taken place in the last decade, archaeology and history has a major role. A walk on the Great Wall seems obligatory for visiting monarchs and presidents, while the jade princesses have themselves come to Europe. The excavation of the ‘terracotta army’ exemplifies the scale of active archaeological research, and its exposure to public view. But why is there such concern for the past, and its artefacts, in China today?

The origins of anatomically modern humans, modern behaviour and the Aurignacian form one of the most dynamic fields of European research. Conard & Bolus (2003) opened a new debate by proposing that the Aurignacian arose from the migration of modern humans. Reviewing the data from the Swabian Jura, the author shows that radiocarbon dating cannot of itself presently support models of the primacy of art, industries or the arrival of modern humans at a particular place.

Bronze Age objects found in the English Channel off Salcombe, southern Britain, include an implement which has its normal home in Sicilian agriculture – perhaps as a plough shoe. The authors assemble and classify the objects and consider the web of exchange networks that brought the artefact from Sicily to Devon via France around the thirteenth century BC.

This paper presents archaeological and palynological evidence for long continuation of the Mesolithic way of life in east-central Europe irrespective of the presence of early Neolithic farmers. The complete Neolithization of the area took place only about 3500 BC, as a consequence of long-term interactions between indigenous foragers and exotic farmers.

How were the fine stone jars and vessels of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia made? An experimental test of materials and techniques explores the methods of early drilling.

The authors take us to the salt lakes of Villafáfila in north-west Spain, where they have demonstrated by excavation that salt extraction had begun by the second half of the third millennium BC. The salt pans uncovered were accompanied by copious amounts of decorated Beaker pottery, for which political and symbolic interpretations are proposed.