The authors deconstruct the basis for dating the Palaeolithic cave paintings of France and find it wanting. Only five per cent are directly dated and the remainder belong to a stylistic framework that has grown organically, and with much circularity, as new paintings were brought to light. Following a constructive bouleversement, the authors recommend a new chronometric foundation based on chains of evidence anchored by radiocarbon dates. The story so far is striking: it brings many of the themes and techniques thought typical of the later painters into the repertoire of their much earlier predecessors.

Introduction

The European oak chronologies were completed back to 5000 BC during the 1980s, with demonstrable replication between Ireland and Germany using stepwise correlation through long English bog-oak series (Pilcher et al. 1984; Baillie 1995). Longer German oak chronologies extend the annual record back to 10,430 BP (Friedrich et al. 1999). This suite of chronologies, and their consti tnent site chronologies, even individual trees, can he analysed for changes in common response to the environment through time and of course can be cornpared with other well-dated time series from around the world.

In the 2nd century AD Pausanias (i.2.4-15.1) walked through the agora at Athens describing some of the statues and naming the artists; at least 35 of the statues were of bronze, yet not a single one survives intact today (Mattusch 1982: 8-9). Thinking only of the extant marble sculpture does an injustice to the civic art of Athens. This problem is commonplace; almost any classical site has numerous stone bases for bronze statues which have long gone into the melting-pot. Yet so often in modern scholarship stone sculpture is given a privileged position. Although modern histories of Greek art pay much attention to the marble sculpture of the Parthenon, ancient authorities were not so impressed; Pausanias (i.24.5-7) provides the briefest of descriptions to the marble sculpted pediments and omits to mention the frieze. For many scholars today the frieze has become an example of what ‘unlimited money can do’ (Ashmole 1972: 116), yet, as R. Osborne has recently pointed out, it merely helped the viewer to process to the east end of the temple where he or she would have been confronted by the great chryselephantine cult-statue of Athena: ‘this is what the temple was built to display, this is the object towards which worship is directed, and this is what the procession was all about’ (Osborne 1987: 101). And this is what Pausanias describes in detail, the great work of art and expression of Athens’ wealth which no longer survives.

The primary objective of sustainable archaeology is to maintain the profession of archaeology—that is, to sustain itself. An effort to rebrand the discipline as virtuous, sustainable archaeology is self-serving and reflects larger institutional anxieties around an unethical past and an uncertain future. An example of futurist rhetoric and doublespeak, sustainable archaeology exists because archaeology is unsustainable.

González-Ruibal et al. raise challenging issues that seem frightening in their implications. In both their specificity and their wider theoretical contexts, I had previously given these issues little thought, and some I had not even recognised. I share fully the authors’ concern that archaeologists must seek ways to engage people influenced by ‘reactionary populism’, people who “are diverse, fragmented and complex”, and who may be “greedy, patriarchal, xenophobic or uninterested in the past” (González-Ruibal et al. above). The authors find fault with the multi-vocal, multi-cultural approaches of epistemic populist archaeologies that tend to exclude most of those who fit this description. I could object to some of the details of the authors’ critiques of epistemic populism and heritage studies, but their core arguments are mostly correct and powerful. At the same time, at least within a North American context, I think that archaeologists have generally reacted to the various populist pressures of the past century and that we have already started to do what the authors suggest.

Using a detailed excavated sequence and a broad range of south Andean sites, the authors show that changes in the bones of camelids and in the lithic assemblages offer an account of how animals were intensively exploited and ultimately domesticated between the sixth and fourth millennia BP.

Some years ago, in a short review of some of the major questions concerning agricultural efficiency in Roman times, I pointed out that we do not possess the materials on which to base an accurate computation. In attempting to make an assessment of agricultural efficiency we should require as a minimum basis a body of statistical information on the following points: first, the numbers of persons engaged; second, average yields per acre of certain crops for comparison with average yields in other producing countries; and third, statistics of output measured in man-hours according to recognized methods of determining the productivity of labour. The type of dficulty mentioned here is not confined to research in ancient agriculture; lack of records, and paucity of precise information, make investigation difficult in almost every department of ancient economic history. But lack of precise information has not deterred historians from making rough analyses and generalizations. The evidence on wheat-yields showed, inter alia, that it is not legitimate to use Columella’s general average return on Italian wheat of four-fold as evidence of a generally low standard of productivity in cereals (De Re Rust., III, iii, 4). So far as crop-yields are concerned, the common postulate of a low level of agricultural technique cannot be upheld.

The name of St. Alban, the protomartyr Angliae, occurs for the first time in the Life of Bishop Germanus of Auxerre which Constantius of Lyons wrote about 480. Germanus and his colleague Lupus of Troyes had been sent to Britain in 429 to fight against the Pelagian heretics; having succeeded, they visited the tomb of St. Alban to offer their thanks for the victory (c. 16, in Mon. Germ, hist., Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum VII, 262) : Conpressa itaque perversitate damnabili eiusque auctoribus confutatis animisque omnium fidei puritate conpositis, sacerdotes beatum Albanum martyrem, acturi Deo per ipsum gratias, petierunt. The genuine text of the Life does not tell anything more of the martyr, who evidently could be presumed to be known to the reader. The uneventful return of the bishops to Gaul too is attributed to the intercession of the saint (c. 18, p. 265) : Tranquillam navigationem merita propria et intercessio Albani martyris paraverunt, quietosque antestites suorum desideriis felix carina restituit.

This paper addresses how the rulers of the Classic Maya sought to promote polity cohesion and to maintain power. New information is presented on scribe capture and its importance in reinforcing the power and importance of the king.

The principal fact to emerge in recent years is the antiquity of the first neolithic cultures in the western Mediterranean. Listed below (Table I) are radiocarbon dates from sites with impressed ware (occasionally, in southern Italy, associated with painted pottery).

There are thus quite a number of dates available. The three seventh-millennium dates are questionable: the Coppa Nevigata date (6200 bc) has often been criticized; the Cap Ragnon date (6020 bc) is certainly too early; and the Velderpino date (6000 bc) remains to be confirmed. The same is true of the Camprafaud date (5950 bc). The sixth-millennium dates are more numerous and come from southern Italy, Corsica, Provence, Languedoc and even Spain (Los Grajos). But without doubt the main bulk is provided by the fifth-millennium dates which convince by their sheer numbers (more than 50). The fifth millennium was the Golden Age of the impressed ware groups of the West Mediterranean.

The few indications that have come down to us of ancient sea-traffic between the countries lying around the shores of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean are so fragmentary and obscure that it is extremely difficult to reconstruct any definite picture of their character and extent. In spite of this handicap study of the meagre evidence available compels the belief that movement by sea, although of a fluctuating character and confined for the most part to coastwise voyaging, was far more active and advanced in parts of this area in very early times than is generally realized. Had it been otherwise how could we interpret the signs graven on the rocks of the ravines of the Egyptian desert, and the transport by sea of great blocks of stone to Sumer in the time of Gudea of Lagash?

The earliest evidence at present available comes from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, though it does not follow that either area is the cradle of sea-faring. It consists of :—

(A) innumerable prehistoric and predynastic petroglyphs of ships engraved upon the rocks of the eastern desert of Egypt, particularly those in the Wadi Hammamat region;

(B) the discovery on Sumerian sites of diorite statues, stated specifically to have been brought by sea from foreign lands early in the third millennium B.C.;

(c) the presence in the ruins of Ur, Kish, and Lagash of artifacts cut from the shell of the sacred Indian chank (Xancus pyrum);

(D) historical records of trading expeditions sent by sea from Egypt to Somaliland extending from the Vth to the XIIth Dynasties, and repeated in the XVIIIth Dynasty.

Over half of Leo Klejn's monograph-length article constitutes what might be described as an ethnography of Western archaeology; more particularly an armchair ethnography written from the perspective of Leningrad. Western archaeologists will inevitably react to it in much the same manner as native peoples react to ethnographic studies of their cultures. They may admire the industriousness and intelligence of the ethnographer and grudgingly admit that he perceived things about them of which they were unaware. Yet they remain convinced that in some significant way he failed to comprehend the inner spirit of their culture or to appreciate sufficiently its merits. At its healthiest, this feeling constitutes a challenge to understand one's own culture better. Klejn's monograph surveys developments in theory and method in archaeology between 1960 and 1973 in the Soviet Union, Central and Western Europe, and the United States. No attempt is made to consider trends in China, Latin America, or elsewhere in the Third World. Klejn's aims are three-fold : bibliographical, historical, and critical. Although he denies that his presentation is sufficiently detailed to constitute genuine scientific criticism, his evaluations of recent trends in the development of archaeological theory influence his historical interpretations and enhance the interest and value of the entire study.

The context

Archaeologists of the 1990s are confronted with an apparent paradox: our legal and economic framework is based upon the preservation of the national heritage, while our research objectives and research methods are rather defined by larger regional, European or even international frameworks. In fact this is nothing new – we have always been serving both the present and the past, and will continue to do so. The question that is raised in this context, therefore, is whether the 1990s will see a changed balance between the interests of the present, and what effect that may have upon the working conditions of archaeologists. Will national archaeology be strengthened or can we hope that it will begin to merge into a coming European perception of history?