The authors report on radiocarbon data derived from carefully selected organic material from Late Minoan IA and IB contexts. The results suggest that the accepted chronology of the period should be revised by 100 years and that the eruption of Thera/Santorini most likely occurred c. 1650–1620 BC.

The significance of zebu, or humped. cattle as potential indicators of episodes of aridification in the Bronze Age of western Asia is explored through study of figurines and faunal remains from Mesopotamia, the Levant and Anatolia.

The two decades from 1860 to 1880 were one of the most formative periods in the emergence of modern attitudes to scientific inquiry in England, in what were later to become the specialized disciplines of the natural and human sciences. At this high point of Victorian prosperity a small group of scholars established both the principal questions for future research, and the character of the institutions which were to pursue them, in increasingly professional ways, during the following century. Most of the men (for it was an overwhelmingly male community) who were involved with these developments had independent means, either as inherited wealth or as a result of their own involvement in business affairs; and in consequence they were less restricted in pursuit of their interests than many of their successors who occupied paid positions in scientific institutions and universities (Levine 1986; cf. Chapman 1998).

This article shows that full-coverage regional survey is an effective tool for understanding change over time in regional settlement patterns in north China. Five seasons of survey in the Rizhao area of southeastern Shandong demonstrate a nucleated pattern of settlement around the Longshan site of Liangchengzhen and a clear settlement hierarchy, with distinctly different patterns for later periods.

The authors examine the spatial distribution, use-wear patterns and surface residue of bone tools from al-Basra, concluding that they were likely to be have been used by Islamic metalworkers. The presence of bone tools and butchery waste in an urban metalworking context underscores the close economic ties that existed between artisans and food producers in a pre-industrial urban centre in the western Mediterranean.

Introduction

On August 3, 1908, two young French clergymen with a passion for prehistory, the brothers Amédée and Jean Bouyssonie, discovered in a cave near the village of La Chapelle-aux-Sains (Department of Corréze) an almost intact Neanderthal skeleton. Recognizing both the importance of their find and their own inexperience with such fossils, they handed the skeleton to Marcellin Boule, professor of palaeontology at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris.

In February 1944 Mortimer Wheeler, having resigned his duties with the British 8th Army after the Salerno landings, was bound for India. Aboard the City of Exeter, in convoy to Bombay, Wheeler was planning another campaign —to sort out the ‘scientifically deplorable’ state of India’s archaeological survey. Even before he had set a foot on Indian soil, Wheelcr already had a plan. Like all good Officers, colonial and otherwise, Wheeler had determined his plan of attack beforc landing. It is no good to reach a foreign field of a battle and just see what happens. This he had learned from his idol, Lt. General Lane Fox Pitt Rivers; that you must always begin with a plan of attack.

Although trails are widely recognized as an important element in the shaping of social and economic space, poor preservation and complex interpretations have meant that they are rarely the subject of systematic archaeological analysis. Ancestral Pueblo trails of New Mexico's Pajarito Plateau, in contrast, are both well-preserved and easily identified, providing an opportunity to study patterns of movement through the landscape during the 500 years prior to Spanish colonization. This study discusses the broader issues of analysing archaeological trails with specific reference to the Pajarito case.

Dr Venclová is well known to readers of ANTIQUITY as the excavator of the site of Mšecké Žehrovice in Bohemia, find-place of the most famous example of Iron Age human representation. What she presents here is a provocative theory — that the Mšecké Žehrovice stone head represents a Celtic druid!

Introduction

In recent years, considerable attention has been dedicated to the involvement of archaeology (and most notably prehistory) with nationalism. The probable causes of this recent fashion1 need not concern 11s here, but the movement itself is ccrtninly welcome, testifying to the reflection of archaeologists on their own practices and those of their predecessors. For historians, this trend is quite welcome insofar as it contributes to a general renaissance of interest in the past of the discipline. However, a more careful examination of this historiography leads us to some caution about its significance.

Important new insights about long-term changes in human behaviour are gained when cultural landscapes rather than focal points or ‘sites’ are studied. The abundance of obsidian artefacts preserved on easily recognized, well-defined and short-lived ground surfaces makes Garua Island an excellent setting for monitoring the changing patterns of human behaviour through time and within cultural landscapes. The results raise questions about traditional interpretations of settlement and land use in Near Oceania, particularly during the time of Lapita pottery.

Introduction

From the Parliamentary Union with England of 1707 until the establishment of the new devolved parliament (although still within the Union) in Edinburgh in 1999 under the terms of the Scotland Act 1998, Scotland was a nation with a ‘capital’ and its own legal system; neither a colony nor sovereign: an active participant in rather than a victim of 19th-century imperialism (Davidson 2000). Since the Union the writing of the history of Britain has been a more or less political process (Ash 1980: 34), the viewpoint of the historian depending on the individual’s position on the meaning and consequences of the Union and on the process of securing the creation of ‘North Britain’ and ‘South Britain’ — ‘the wider experiment to construct a new genuine British identity which would be formed from the two nations of Scotland and England’ [Finlay 1998). A small country sharing a small island with a world power will never have a quiet life (as Pierre Trudeau described Canada’s relationship with the USA — ‘being in bed with an elephant’).

Introduction

Throughout the 20th century there were many notable developments in Irish archaeology, both academically and administratively. Already by the middle of the century considerable change had taken place, that was a time when new attitudes and initiatives were underway. It was also a time of economic development and social adjustments in the wake of World War II. The changes that took place in archaeology during the following half-century were extensive and varied and involved most aspects of the subject. The year 1950 is, therefore, a reasonable starting-point for commencing this review but this does not imply that a new and altered archaeology had emerged. On the contrary established personnel and institutions continued to play a major role, while some longstanding research projects continued. What is offered in this paper is a brief historical review largely considered from the academic point of view, it is selective and is not intended to provide detailed information about all aspects of research and other developments that have taken place over the past half-century. However, an attempt will be made to review the causes and influences that brought about such developments, but it is not a potted history, neither is it a review of intellectual developments.

Chauvinist reactions were rife in late 19th-century France, following the 1870 defeat to Prussia, the unification of Germany and the annexation of Alsace and part of Lorraine to the new empire. Besides their political manifestations, as in the creation of the Ligue des patriotes in 1882, these reactions also received intellectual expression. For most of the cultivated elites, the revelation of Prussian militarism came to negate the prevailing image of Germany as the cosmopolitan heartland of philosophy and of amodel university system. The French military defeat was interpreted as a sign of the political and moral weakness of the regime of Napoleon I11 (Renan 18711, but also as a wider symptom of intellectual inferiority, itself due to the inadequacies of the French educational and university structure. There ensued in intellectual circles a veritable ‘German crisis of French thought’ (Digeon 1959).