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.

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.

Our knowledge of the obsidian trade makes it an unique phenomenon in the prehistory of the Middle East. We know more about it than about any comparable exchange network. A great deal of work has now been done on the chemical composition of obsidian and on the location of its sources, on quantitative analyses, and on the spatial distribution of the material. The two major areas of supply, Central Anatolia and the area west of Lake Van have been extensively explored and individual sources pinpointed. It has been possible to reconstruct the movement of obsidian to sites as far away as Beidha in South Palestine and to Ali Kosh in South-West Iran. The distances involved are well over 1,600 km as the crow flies. Comparatively little work has been done on the mechanism of the trade, on the processes by which the obsidian changed hands, probably because such processes are difficult and sometimes impossible to determine from the archaeological record. In order to attempt such a task it is necessary to broaden our conceptual basis for studying data bearing on trade. To quote Adams (1974, 241) 'What is needed for this broadening to occur is a much more substantial awareness of ethnohistoric, historic and ethnographic studies of trade.

Horses were status symbols in central-west Africa in the last millennium. Here, the importance of some very early horse bones is discussed in the context of emerging African society.

Three prehistoric sites in the Upper Mun River Valley of north-eastern Thailand have provided a detailed chronological succession comprising 12 occupation phases. These represent occupation spanning 2300 years, from initial settlement in the Neolithic (seventeenth century BC) through to the Iron Age, ending in the seventh century AD with the foundation of early states. The precise chronology in place in the Upper Mun River Valley makes it possible to examine changes in social organisation, technology, agriculture and demography against a background of climatic change. In this area the evidence for subsistence has been traditionally drawn from the biological remains recovered from occupation and mortuary contexts. This paper presents the results of carbon isotope analysis to identify and explain changes in subsistence over time and between sites, before comparing the results with two sites of the Sakon Nakhon Basin, located 230km to the north-east, to explore the possibility of regional differences.

The vivid engravings on vertical rocks at the desert site of Nag el-Hamdulab west of the Nile comprise a rock art gallery of exceptional historical significance. The authors show that the images of boats with attendant prisoners, animals and the earliest representation of a pharaoh offer a window on Dynasty 0, and depict the moment that the religious procession of pre-Dynastic Egypt became the triumphant tour of a tax-collecting monarch.

Early in 1854, in the townland of Ballinrees, about three and a half miles west of Coleraine, county Londonderry, Ireland, a labouring man unearthed from a considerable depth in peaty soil one of the most remarkable hoards of Roman silver ever found in our isles. Though no trace remained of any urn or other container, it was apparent, both from the depth of the deposit and from the closeness with which the whole was packed together, that it was indeed a hoard, no mere chance series of deposits.

The technical and aesthetic qualities of the many varieties of Polish flint utilized from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age are analysed and assessed, and show how different flints were selected for different purposes.

Forty years after they were originally acquired for intelligence purposes, declassified US photographs from the KH-7 GAMBIT photo reconnaissance satellite programme, together with contemporary declassified intelligence reports, are being used to shed light on Cold War sites in the former Soviet Union. The method should have a great future for understanding the changes to the landscape in Europe over the last 60 years. The material impact of the Cold War was no less fundamental than other wars hotter in nature.

Theory in archaelogy has largely been an anglophone enterprise, and perhaps too inbred for its own good. The main French school, known particularly from the work of Alain Gallay and Jean-Claude Gardin, was well represented at a CNRS—NSF conference on ‘Symbolic, structural and semiotic approaches in archaeology’, held at Indiana University, Bloomington (IN) in October 1987, where a small group of American, British, French and Swiss archaeologists met to confront their theoretical views. Here Alain Gallay sets out the fundamentals of the ‘logicist’ position.

Introduction

If maritime archaeology, ‘the scientific study of the material remains of man and his activities on the sea’ (Muckelroy 1978: 4), is to be regarded usefully as a subdiscipline, then a major unifying factor must be the existence of common methodologies applicable to the study of shipwrecks irrespective of their date and location. The special conditions of work underwater are by themselves inadequate grounds for distinction, as has now long been recognized (Bass 1966). Instead it is in aspects of analysis and explanation of wreck data that the subject may be set apart.

Consideration of the nature of ships and shipwrecks suggests the groundwork for a unitary methodology. Ships as structures, or as ‘self-regulating machines’ (Muckelroy 1978: 216–19), present universal features of construction and design; common environmental and technological parameters explain the closely similar development of nautical technologies in disparate societies and seas. The usual reasons for seafaring, for trade, travel, warfare, and fishing, can be seen to create standardized assemblages of shipboard material, of comparrable forms and lading arrangement. And fundamental regularities occur in the event of shipwreck and the underwater process of site formation. As the basis for analytical tools, the models allowed by these characteristics should clearly be open to more refinement as one concentrates on the data of particular maritime activities and regions.

The metal-detector is an electronic instrument; it is incapable of any independent act of free will. It is outside the reference of a system of good and evil : it is neither benign nor malign, ethical nor unethical, as neutral in such matters as a stone. It is capable merely of indicating the presence of certain objects on or below the soil. It bears no responsibility for human action consequent upon such indications. If this appears to be superfluous comment, it must be borne in mind that the very mention of the words ‘metal-detector’, with no reference at all to the machine's user, is guaranteed to raise the hackles of many archaeologists. Readers of this journal are surely aware of the wide range of archaeological opinion on metaldetecting; the issue of the relationship between orthodox archaeology and nietal-detecting has been aired at considerable length over the last few years and does not directly concern us here. Rather we intend to examine the practical application of the instrument to archaeological procedures.

Molecular biology is prompting a renewed interest in genetic histories of ancient peoples. What are the old ‘ethnic units’ of these modern studies?

To those of us who wish there was no commercial trade in antiquities, colleagues — and those themselves active in the market — say there always has been one and always will be. Since concern largely arises from destruction of context and loss of information, may there be a way forward that both permits the trade and preserves the context?

Indian Rouletted Ware pottery is the iconic marker of the overseas reach of the subcontinent at the turn of the first millennium AD. In the mid twentieth century this was naturally seen as prompted by the contemporary Roman Empire, while the later post-colonial discourse has emphasised the independence and long life of Indian initiatives. In this new analysis the author demonstrates a more complex socio-economic situation. While Greyware is distributed long term over south India, Rouletted ware is made in at least two regional centres for coastal communities using a new ceramic language, one appropriate to an emerging international merchant class.

The megalithic chambered mound of Gavrinis, in the Morbihan department of southern Brittany, with its world-famed engravings, was re-excavated from 1979 to 1984 by the author of this article who is Directeur des Antiquités de Bretagne. The results, here summarized, included the discovery that the capstone, hidden for four thousand years, bore engravings which show that it was originally part of a large menhir, another part being now the capstone of La Table des Marchands, four kilometres away.