The rondels – circular earthworks of late Neolithic Europe – have a repeated form highly suggestive of deliberate design and symbolism. The concentric ditches are cut by two, three or most often four causeways at right angles. Here the authors investigate the orientation of the causeways in 51 rondels belonging to the Lengyel culture and conclude that they correlate well with the sunrise. The idea of a solar cult receives some corroboration from patterns on contemporary pottery.

The Lakshadweep Islands lie on the sea route between west Asia and Africa on the one hand and south Asia and the Far East on the other. In maritime history, these islands have played a vital role by providing shelter, fresh water and landmarks to navigators through the ages. Recent discoveries made during marine archaeological exploration and excavations in the Lakshadweep have revealed evidences of early settlement and shipwrecks. The findings suggest that the islands had been inhabited much before the early historical period.

Viet Nam has a long tradition of scholarly concern with its own past, born out of 900 years of resistance to Chinese political domination.

The discovery of Palaeolithic wall paintings and engravings in a cave whose entrance lies below the present sea-level near Marseilles has created considerable interest – and no little controversy. The paper describes and analyses the remarkable find, with special attention to its authenticity.

During the Pleistocene there were large variations in sea-level under the influence of glaciations and inter-glacial warm episodes. During the Late Wurm glaciation in the Upper Palaeolithic the sea-level dropped to 110–120 m below its present level (Lumley 1976: 311). At that time the Lerins islands, the Hyeres islands and the Frioul archipelago and the islet of Planier off Marseilles were linked with the coast, and much of the Golfe du Lion was occupied by a vast plain.

The Pacific Coast of Colombia has a complex history of change and upheaval. How is one to reach to it, with the variety of its human experiences? And how to grasp it from the diverse and often fragmentary sources that are its archaeology?

What is one to do with megaliths, now that their classification into evolutionary sequences – the mainstay of megalithic study over so many years – seems to offer insufficient insights? Yet in some regions of Europe the great stone monuments provide the major physical evidence from their period. Here is a study of one of the megalithic zones, which seeks to find new insights by asking new kinds of questions.

A site beside the river Tjonger near Jardinga in the northern Netherlands is shown to be a rare Late Mesolithic kill and primary butchering site. Finds consist mainly of bones from aurochs and red deer, with a few flint artefacts. Radiocarbon evidence shows that there must have been two phases of use: the first around 5400 cal BC; the second, main phase around 5250–5050 cal BC.

The replacement, for the most part, of native American populations by immigrants in the centuries after 1492 is one of the great demographic shifts of the modern world. It is fundamental for American archaeology, of course, and makes the background for acute moral and ethical issues, which will become more visible as the 500th anniversary of the Columbus landfall nears

Humans had reached Tasmania by 35 000 years bp and were in residence at the peak of the last ice age. Curiously, the settlements in the coldest period are concentrated in the highest and most southerly places, and the colder the weather became, the more sites were occupied. The author deduces that early people specially sought out the rock shelters of the highlands to combat wind chill.

In the course of excavation, diggers at many sites come upon a layer in the accumulated debris having such a considerable ash content as to convince them that the settlement occupying the site at that particular period had been destroyed by fire; and this supposition is of course strengthened if the ceramic forms or other cultural objects contained in the mound change at this point. While in very many instances these deductions are probably correct, it is the purpose of this paper to examine what destruction by fire entails in the way of preparation, how it is affected by the style of structures involved and whether the total destruction of villages by fire or their inhabitants by the sword is as simple a procedure as would sometimes appear to be imagined. Having taken part in the destruction by fire of a number of villages of the type that obtains, and must have obtained for centuries past, in the Indo-Afghan borderlands, I have learned by experience that the casual application of a torch will not necessarily set fire to anything.

Amongst the most striking and the most handsome of ancient Australian relics are the Bradshaw paintings of the Kimberley, in the remote northwest of the continent, uncertainly dated but seemingly most ancient. According to one published view, the Bradshaws are not so much ‘early Aboriginal’ as ‘pre-Aboriginal’. Issue is taken with that notion, in light of European attitudes to Aboriginal accomplishment over the last two centuries.

The Greater Cursus – 3km long and just north of Stonehenge – had been dated by a red deer antler found in its ditch in the 1940s to 2890-2460 BC. New excavations by the authors found another antler in a much tighter context, and dating a millennium earlier. It appears that the colossal cursus had already marked out the landscape before Stonehenge was erected. At that time or soon after, its lines were re-emphasised, perhaps with a row of posts in pits. So grows the subtlety of the discourse of monuments in this world heritage site.