A recent study has suggested that the decorated Bronze Age metalwork of South Scandinavia depicted the path of the sun through the sky during the day and through the sea at night. At different stages in its journey it was accompanied by a horse or a ship. Similar images are found in prehistoric rock art, and this paper argues that, whilst there are important differences between the images in these two media, they also signal some of the same ideas.

We present the authentication and analysis of these beautiful Dacian bracelets of the first century BC, originally pillaged by treasure hunters and recovered thanks to an international crime chase. They were originally fashioned from gold panned from the rivers or dug from the mines of Transylvania and hammered into the form of coiled snakes. The lack of context is the greatest loss, but a votive purpose is likely given their proximity to the great sacred centre at Sarmizegetusa Regia.

The Lower Palaeolithic has always been studied within a framework based on different types of flaked stone. Although this evidence might seem solid and unambiguous, the way it has been studied has been strongly influenced by wider social and political factors

On 12 September 1940 Lascaux was discovered accidentally by four youths. They kept the secret for a few days, then decided to inform their former schoolmaster. Crowds of visitors came quickly: 1,500 during the first week. The abbC Breuil, who had moved to Brive because of the war, came on 21 September and drew up a report which was read to the AcadCmie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres on 10 October. From that point on, Lascaux received official recognition. It is quite a large cave, and the decoration starts about 25 m beyond the entrance. All of the chambers and the main galleries are decorated with figures of animals and symbols: over I 50 paintings and about 1,500 engravings are more or less well preserved, but the cave is particularly famous for the remarkable quality of the painted figures in the Hall of the Bulls and in the Painted Gallery (Diverticule Axial). Unlike most palaeolithic decorated caves, the sanctuary of Lascaux has been dated with precision. In fact, the cave was frequented in only one period, about 17,000 years ago. Its porch collapsed some time afterwards, thus sealing in the parietal figures and protecting the traces which the magdalenian artists and visitors had left behind.

A newly discovered deposit of camel bones from post-medieval, Turkish Period Hungary contributes additional information on the role of camels in the Carpathian Basin. By offering an opportunity for reviewing osteological evidence from Hungary, these remains complement our recent knowledge of the history and exploitation of camels in Europe, as recently reported in ANTIQUITY for the western limit of Europe.

Recent work at La Laguna in Central Mexico provides an excellent illustration of the way in which information from architecture, food remains, ceramic vessels and chemical signatures can be brought together to demonstrate communal feasting associated with specific structures and public spaces. Structure 12M-3 contained a range of evidence indicative of food preparation and consumption. Ritual effigy vessels depicted deities connected with food and fertility, and fire and the hearth. Taken together, the several lines of evidence indicate that Structure 12M-3 was a special building, located directly behind the main temple and devoted to the preparation and production of communal feasts that were held in the adjacent plaza. This provides new insights into community life in the urban centres of early Mesoamerica.

The remarkable find of Iron Age gold torques from Snettisham (see ANTIQUITY 65: 447–65) was interpreted by the excavator, Ian Stead, as representing a treasury, ‘assigned to the earth for safe-keeping’, rather than a votive deposit. This article argues that these are not mutually exclusive categories, since no clear distinction was made in Iron Age Europe between sacred and profane.

Survey in southwest Macedonia provides a new field record of the pattern of Neolithic settlement. It prompts a further opinion in the enduring debate about the nature of the diffusion of agriculture, discussed most recently in ANTIQUITY by van Andel & Runnels (1995).

Three years ago, ANTIQUITY reported a first archaeological insight into the origins of Venice. The city's historical records, famously good and full for its flourishing, say very little about the beginnings. This second report includes direct evidence from Piazza San Marco, the heart of the city.

For over thirty years, work has been in progress on the petrological examination and identification of stone implements. This work, initiated in South-Western England, has as its object the determination of ‘early trade routes and other factors of economic and social importance in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times’ (Keiller, Piggott and Wallis, 1941). During this period, eight regional reports have been published, five dealing mainly with South- Western England (Keiller, Piggott and Wallis, 1941; Stone and Wallis, 1947; Stone and Wallis, 1951 ; Evens, Grinsell, Piggott and Wallis, 1962; Evens, Smith and Wallis, 1972), one with Yorkshire (Keen and Radley, 1971), one with East Anglia (Clough and Green, 1972) and one with Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire (Cummins and Moore, 1973). In these and other publications (e.g. Fox, 1964; Fell, 1964) distribution maps are given for the products of the various axe factories. Such maps show the extent of dispersal of the factory products, but fail, in themselves, to give much information about trade routes and other factors. Group I axes are found in Yorkshire, some 550 km. from their source in Cornwall; Group IX axes are found a similar distance from their factories in Northern Ireland; and Group VI axes are widespread up to 500 km. from their Lake District factory sites.

The new generation of aerial photographers is using different wavelengths to sense archaeological features. This is effective but can be expensive. Here the authors use data already collected for environmental management purposes, and evaluate it for archaeological prospection on pasture. They explore the visibility of features in different seasons and their sensitivity to different wavelengths, using principal components analysis to seek out the best combinations. It turns out that this grassland gave up its secrets most readily in January, when nothing much was growing, and overall the method increased the number of known sites by a good margin. This study is of the greatest importance for developing the effective survey of the world's landscape, a quarter of which is under grass.

Another view is given on issues arising from the return of the Kow Swamp human remains, discussed by John Mulvaney in the March 1991 ANTIQUITY.

Long characterised as merchants in pursuit of metals, the Phoenician settlers on the Iberian peninsula are here given an alternative profile. The author shows that a new aristocracy, visible in the archaeology of both cemeteries and settlements, was engaged in winning a social advancement denied it at home in the east. In particular, the Egyptian alabaster vases found in Spain, far from being the products of pillage or trade, were appreciated as prestige objects which often ended their days as receptacles for high status cremations.

Recognition of distinctive ceramics by visual inspection is the norm in surface survey - especially when ceramic types are as varied and colourful as those of Islamic medieval pottery. Here petrographic analysis is used successfully to define the ceramic categories and the contributions of local and imported wares.

A very wide field of African rock art, both paintings and engravings, is covered in Burchard Brentjes: African rock art, with special reference to South Africa, Rhodesia, the Sahara, North Africa and Egypt. Because of the general nature of the book, there is little attempt to be comprehensive or conclusive, the aim being more to foster an appreciation and awareness of the art than to solve problems or place it in an archaeological context.