The temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia is one of the most famous monuments in the world and is noted for its spectacular bas-relief friezes depicting ceremonial and religious scenes. Recent work reported here has identified an entirely new series of images consisting of paintings of boats, animals, deities and buildings. Difficult to see with the naked eye, these can be enhanced by digital photography and decorrelation stretch analysis, a technique recently used with great success in rock art studies. The paintings found at Angkor Wat seem to belong to a specific phase of the temple's history in the sixteenth century AD when it was converted from a Vishnavaite Hindu use to Theravada Buddhist.

Megaw & Megaw, in the December 1988 ANTIQUITY, published a new study of the carved stone head from Mšecké Žehrovice. Here the excavator of the site adds new information about the archaeology of this remarkable find-spot.

Recent revision of the radiocarbon calibration curve for the early Holocene has implications for the ‘absolute’ date of Mesolithic sites such as Star Carr, and for their relationship to the timescale of early Holocene environmental change.

Investigation of a partially waterlogged Neolithic site, on an islet in a Scottish Hebridean loch, showed that early strategies of exploitation were already environmentally damaging. Loss of soil fertility through intensive ploughing is well-documented, but stripping the turf can be equally damaging to the environment. Working on the lake settlement of Eilean Domhnuill in North Uist, the authors show that turf was cut for building material and used as fuel and that this practice contributed to a rapid degradation of the land surface through erosion.

The inscribed clay tablets (PL. XVIa) found in a 'Neolithic' context at Tartaria (FIG. 1) in Romania in 1961 have already aroused a certain amount of interest here. The signs on the tablets are comparable with those of the script of the Late Predynastic (Uruk III Jemdet Nasr) period in Mesopotamia, as Dr Vlassa who excavated them has noted. It seems unlikely however that the tablets were drafted by a Sumerian hand or in the Sumerian language of early Mesopotamia. The shapes of the tablets and some of the signs are paralleled in the Minoan scripts of Crete, but the tablets do not seem to be Cretan. There are indications that a similar use of signs, if not actual writing, was practised in the rest of the Aegean and in Western Anatolia before the end of the 3rd millennium B.C. A knowledge of writing, or the use of signs derived from it, may have spread to these regions and to the Balkans from Mesopotamia through Syria. This was perhaps one aspect of a common inheritance of religious or magical beliefs and practices.

New research fields and areas of scientific specialization often bring division and disciplinary divides. Here Brown & Pluciennik discuss the impact of genetic research on archaeology.

Combining history and ethnography with a survey on the ground, the author shows how the megalithic monuments of Cameroon were the remains of many different kinds of site. Some were house platforms, others places for washing dishes. Others are certainly ceremonial, for family and kin-group meetings. The memory and opinion of current residents adds a fascinating aside to the function of these monuments, probably introduced four centuries ago, and their subsequent rôles in society.

Examining the earliest grand mortuary monuments of the Neolithic, the authors question the assumption that they mark the resting place of society's higher ranks. Using the skeletal remains, the grave goods and the burial rites, they find no great differences in commemoration between the monumental cemeteries, with their long barrows, and the flat graves, without structures. In this analysis, the children proved to be the most vivid players: while the very young are largely excluded, some toddlers were selected to carry hunting equipment, a distinction shared with selected adult males. Some children were also laid to rest in the long barrows, with some adults. Thus hunting has a spiritual value for these agriculturalists, and whether inherited or marked at birth, the children signal something more variable and subtle than linear rank.

The authors report new understanding of the prehistoric monuments of Hadramawt (Yemen) using archaeological fieldwork, linguistic terminology and ethnography. The stone tombs, platforms and alignments are shown to have experienced particularly interesting life histories. Passing travellers add stones and bury camels, shrines are reconditioned and dismantled to construct goat pens. It is clear that only this kind of multi-disciplinary expertise can hope to define the prehistoric sequence in an arid and rocky mountain landscape in which non-literate pastoral peoples have left few other traces. An online photo essay accompanies the article at http://antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/mccorriston/index.html

After 10 years of pursuing sexy handaxes it is probably time to put these coquettish creatures to bed. Readers wishing to continue the debate are courteously directed to our Project Gallery.

The archaeological site of Al-Ashoosh is a third-millennium BC settlement located in the Rub al-Khali Desert (or Empty Quarter), 70km south of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) (Figure 1). This site provides an excellent example of the type of occupation of the inland deserts of the Oman peninsula during the period following the Holocene Climatic Optimum. Between November 2015 and May 2016, the Dubai Municipality and the Sanisera Archaeology Institute conducted excavations at the site of Al-Ashoosh. This site was discovered during two seasons of survey in 2002–2003. This survey work, undertaken by the Dubai Municipality and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, identified 33 archaeological sites ranging in date from prehistory to the late Islamic period. In 2006–2007, more-detailed archaeological investigations of the area of Al-Ashoosh were conducted, including survey, excavation and geological sampling (Casana et al. 2009; Herrmann 2012; Contreras & Carcacer 2016).

Pottery has sometimes been compared to a living organism in its cycle of birth, life and death or discard. A biographical approach to an unusual assemblage of pottery from the Late Bronze Age site of Pico Castro in central Spain suggests that they had been used together at a communal feast. The shared social memory that they acquired thereby conferred on them a special status that resulted in their eventual placement in the pit, fine wares and coarse wares together. Thus the varied biographies of the individual vessels—and the individual sherds—eventually converged not only in their discard but in the episodes that preceded it.

During the decade before last the majority of archaeologists stepped aboard the good ship Radiocarbon on a voyage of discovery, some hesitatingly, some with enthusiasm. Once under way the engine room staff were usually too busy to be questioned, for it was a new device having complex technical problems that had to be solved as the ship went along. For the most part the voyagers were content to accept the daily information bulletins; but there were some that questioned whether the peripheral islands could have been reached by the route the navigators claimed and there were some that said the islands seemed to be much further away than they could possibly be. Eventually the engine room staff got its problems sorted out and there was time to talk to the passengers; after lengthy discussions it came to be agreed (by nearly all) that the motion of the ship was more affected by ocean currents than had been assumed, and a way of correcting for this was worked out.

Ruth & Vincent Megaw questioned the motivation behind the current critique of the use of the term ‘Celtic’ for the La Tène Iron Age in ANTIQUITY (1996: 175–81). They explained it is a nationalist reaction derived from insecurity about modern English identity. Here we have a reply to their paper, which rejects these interpretations.