Evidence for the early Postglacial use of upland environments in the Mesolithic in various parts Britain has been known for a long time. However, until relatively recently such evidence had been remarkably absent from upland south Wales, which includes some of the highest mountain ranges in southern Britain. In this paper we report on new work at the upland location of Waun Fignen Felen which consists of discrete Early and later Mesolithic artefact scatters on the edge of a former lake basin. In describing this example, we focus on the timing of Mesolithic movements into the interior uplands and examine the relationship between humans and the landscape, particularly in respect to the long distance transport of materials and factors likely to have influenced the choice of site location. Some comparative observations are made on the use and perception of landscapes by ethnographic hunter-gatherers.

The work on which this study is based was originally undertaken with a view to examining the cultures of the geographical area usually comprised in the term ‘Wessex’ in the period immediately following the Beaker phase. For a great many years a remarkable series of grave-groups have been known, incorporating elements (often spectacular in their implication of material wealth) which were peculiar to the area under discussion, and loosely assigned to the Middle Bronze Age. It was clear from the outset that a study of these groups would throw a great deal of light on trade relations, both internal and overseas, and it also seemed likely that in them might be found a culture equivalent chronologically to the Food Vessel phase of northern England, intervening (in a ceramic sense) between the beakers and the cinerary urns and forming a final phase of the Early Bronze Age—a phase which had already been postulated in the typological series of bronze implements, but which had not reached the dignity of a definite culture.

The evidence examined in this paper supports the existence of such a culture in Wessex in the final phases of the Early Bronze Age. It is a highly individual culture whose origin lies in an actual ethnic movement from N. France. The nature of the evidence,—finds from the richly-furnished graves of chieftains—presents us with a view of the material equipment of an aristocratic minority. The basic folk culture appears, from the slight evidence available, to have been similar to the food-vessel culture of the greater part of Britain north of the Thames at this time, but it becomes clear that in Wessex there was; superimposed on this somewhat uninteresting and unenterprising substratum, an intrusive ruling class whose delight in barbaric finery led them to open trade connections not only with their Breton homeland, but with central Europe and Scandinavia, and whose imports of bronze tools and almost certainly of actual craftsmen laid the foundations of the peculiarly individual metallurgical achievements of the British Middle Bronze Age.

This paper sets out the detailed stratigraphy and chronology of the palaeolithic rockshelters of Asprochaliko and Kastritsa excavated in the 1960s, the methods used by the original investigators in excavation and classification of the finds, and the general characteristics of the stone industries and fauna. Methods of estimating the density of finds are discussed. Estimates of time density — the number of specimens accumulated per unit area per unit time — are applied to the upper palaeolithic deposits at both sites and reveal major differences in the rate of discard of material, indicating more intensive occupation at Kastritsa. Inter-site differences in the proportion of faunal species and artefact types are analysed in the light of the time-density evidence, and the various factors that could have influenced the pattern of inter-site variation are discussed.

The middle palaeolithic open-air site of Far'ah II was discovered and tested by the British Western Negev Expedition during the years 1972–73 (Price Williams 1973; 1975). After the British team concluded its field programme in 1976, the Archaeological Division of Ben Gurion University of the Negev in collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem took over. For three seasons during 1976, 1977, and 1978, the site was excavated under the direction of I. Gilead.

A preliminary report of the results of the 1977 season described the basic aspects of the flint technology and typology (Gilead 1980). It is the intention of this article to discuss new data acquired during the field season of 1978 and to present a more detailed analysis of the flint artefacts and animal remains and of their spatial distribution on the archaeological surfaces.

The earliest copper alloy of the British Bronze Age is arsenical copper, a material relatively short-lived when compared with the succeeding tin bronze but of no little importance when tracing the stages and progress of prehistoric metal working. Like tin, arsenic functions as a mild deoxidant and confers the useful property of work-hardening upon the metal. Copper-arsenic alloys need to be strengthened by cold working, and it was probably this requirement as much as any other that would have led to their eventual disuse and replacement by cast tin bronzes. The normal source of arsenic for such alloys is generally agreed as a constituent of the copper ore actually smelted, usually the grey tetrahedrite tennantite mineral (Coghlan and Case, 1957; Tylecote, 1962), although other suggestions have been made (Charles, 1967).

This paper discusses the evidence for pyre sites, debris, and technology associated with the disposal of cremated human remains in Bronze Age ‘barrows’. The use of the terms such as ‘cremation’, ‘cremation burial’, and ‘cremation-related feature’ are examined. The types of evidence for the remains of cremation-related activities which survive on archaeological sites are described with examples and compared with the results of modern experimental data. It is concluded that a wealth of information may be recovered in relation to the funerary rites and rituals of cremation and that Bronze Age barrows hold a potentially unique position in being able to provide evidence of various aspects of the funerary activity under one ‘mound’. While the archaeological components within different types of cremation-related features are often the same, it is the relationship between the various components within the deposit which have the potential to assist in our understanding of aspects of procedure, rites, and rituals attendant on the disposal of the dead by means of cremation.

The site at Hurst Fen in the parish of Mildenhall, Suffolk, was first brought within the cognizance of prehistorians by Lady Grace Briscoe, F.S.A., whose investigations, published in 1954, were sufficient to make it a type site of the East Anglian group of the British primary Neolithic settlement. Thanks are due to Lady Briscoe for most generously encouraging more extensive excavations and to the Crowther-Benyon Fund administered by the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Cambridge for providing the necessary funds. The assistance is also gratefully acknowledged of undergraduate and other members of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge and of a number of friends without whose combined labours the fine and repeated scraping of some 20,000 square feet of sub-soil could hardly have been accomplished. Mr E. S. Higgs, Assistant in Research in the Department, undertook much of the supervisory work during the last two seasons, as well as contributing an arduous metrical analysis of the flints and most notably of the scrapers from this and other sites. Mr I. H. Longworth has contributed the description of the pottery and in so doing has devised means for demonstrating its character quantitatively as well as qualitatively, a task too infrequently attempted in this field. To the Curator of the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology and his assistant staff a deep debt is owed for a number of essential services, both in connection with the field-work, but principally in the treatment of the finds, notably in the reconstruction and photography of the pottery. Finally, thanks are returned to all those who offered advice about the archaeological material or who contributed the expert identifications incorporated in the following report.

This paper presents a review of prehistoric shell midden sites (‘Køkkenmøddinger’) in Denmark. The form and structure of these sites, their contents, distributions, cultural associations, and chronology are discussed. It is concluded that they are not a unique type of coastal settlement but represent coastal, homebase settlements characterised by a dominance of shellfish in the cultural deposits. This is the only aspect by which they differ from the rest of the coastal habitation system. Shell midden sites seem to flourish in periods characterised by a rich marine biotope and coastal habitation can be seen as a direct reflection of variations/changes in the marine biotope.

This paper discusses the development of pottery styles in southern and eastern England during the first half of the first millennium B.C. The region discussed is Hawkes' Southern Province (1959, fig. 1), and excursions will also be made into the Eastern Province (fig. 1).

The discussion of settlement sequences, and the dating of individual sites, is still largely dependent upon ceramic refuse derived from such sites. The analysis of settlement patterns for the earlier part of the first millennium B.C. thus rests upon our understanding of the ceramic traditions of that period, and this has led to considerable confusion. Two problems must be isolated at the outset. The first results from the re-evaluation of British Bronze Age chronology which took place in the 1950's, leading to Hawkes' 1960 scheme and then to Burgess' rather rigid reading of the evidence nine years later (Butler and Smith 1956; Smith, M. A. 1959; Smith, I. F. 1961; Hawkes 1960; Burgess 1969). The main effect, if we are to follow Burgess, was to draw Beakers, Food Vessels and most Urn forms back into an early Bronze Age the end of which, around 1400 B.C., was marked by the end of the Wessex grave series. As for the Middle and Late Bronze Age Burgess concluded that ‘over much of the British Isles there are no settlements, burials, defended sites, pottery, or other non-metallic cultural material which can safely be assigned to the Middle or Late Bronze Age. There are a few localized exceptions such as the Deverel-Rimbury culture and Flat-rim ware’ (Burgess 1969, 29).

The Bronze Age was the first epoch in which societies became irreversibly linked in their co-dependence on ores and metallurgical skills that were unevenly distributed in geographical space. Access to these critical resources was secured not only via long-distance physical trade routes, making use of landscape features such as river networks, as well as built roads, but also by creating immaterial social networks, consisting of interpersonal relations and diplomatic alliances, established and maintained through the exchange of extraordinary objects (gifts). In this article, we reason about Bronze Age communication networks and apply the results of use-wear analysis to create robust indicators of the rise and fall of political and commercial networks. In conclusion, we discuss some of the historical forces behind the phenomena and processes observable in the archaeological record of the Bronze Age in Europe and beyond.

Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain is one of the most impressive British prehistoric (c. 3000–1500 BC) monuments. It is dominated by large upright sarsen stones, some of which are joined by lintels. While these stones are of relatively local derivation, some of the stone settings, termed bluestones, are composed of igneous and minor sedimentary rocks which are foreign to the solid geology of Salisbury Plain and must have been transported to their present location. Following the proposal of an origin in south-west Wales, debate has focused on hypotheses of natural transport by glacial processes, or transport by human agency. This paper reports the results of a programme of sampling and chemical analysis of Stonehenge bluestones and proposed source outcrops in Wales.

Analysis by X-ray-fluorescence of fifteen monolith samples and twenty-two excavated fragments from Stonehenge indicate that the dolerites originated at three sources in a small area in the eastern Preseli Hills, and that the rhyolite monoliths derive from four sources including northern Preseli and other (unidentified) locations in Pembrokeshire, perhaps on the north Pembrokeshire coast. Rhyolite fragments derive from four outcrops (including only one of the monolith sources) over a distance of at least 10 km within Preseli. The Altar Stone and a sandstone fragment (excavated at Stonehenge) are from two sources within the Palaeozoic of south-west Wales. This variety of source suggests that the monoliths were taken from a glacially-mixed deposit, not carefully selected from an in situ source. We then consider whether prehistoric man collected the bluestones from such a deposit in south Wales or whether glacial action could have transported bluestone boulders onto Salisbury Plain. Glacial erratics deposited in south Dyfed (dolerites chemically identical to Stonehenge dolerite monoliths), near Cardiff, on Flatholm and near Bristol indicate glacial action at least as far as the Avon area. There is an apparent absence of erratics east of here, with the possible exception of the Boles Barrow boulder, which may predate the Stonehenge bluestones by as much as 1000 years, and which derived from the same Preseli source as two of the Stonehenge monoliths. However, 18th-century geological accounts describe intensive agricultural clearance of glacial boulders, including igneous rocks, on Salisbury Plain, and contemporary practice was of burial of such boulders in pits. Such erratics could have been transported as ‘free boulders’ from ‘nunataks’ on the top of an extensive, perhaps Anglian or earlier, glacier some 400,000 years ago or more, leaving no trace of fine glacial material in present river gravels. Erratics may be deposited at the margins of ice-sheets in small groups at irregular intervals and with gaps of several kilometres between individual boulders.

‘Bluestone’ fragments are frequently reported on and near Salisbury Plain in archaeological literature, and include a wide range of rock types from monuments of widely differing types and dates, and pieces not directly associated with archaeological structures. Examination of prehistoric stone monuments in south Wales shows no preference for bluestones in this area. The monoliths at Stonehenge include some structurally poor rock types, now completely eroded above ground. We conclude that the builders of the bluestone structures at Stonehenge utilized a heterogeneous deposit of glacial boulders readily available on Salisbury Plain. Remaining erratics are now seen as small fragments sometimes incorporated in a variety of archaeological sites, while others were destroyed and removed in the 18th century. The bluestones were transported to Salisbury Plain from varied sources in south Wales by a glacier rather than human activity.

‘Corded Ware’ in central and eastern Europe is an archaeological phenomenon that has generated multiple ideas and myths about the origins of the Indo-European language, large scale migrations from the eastern Steppes and radical ideological turnovers after 3000 bc. These ideas have been fostered in large part by the over-emphasis placed by successive generations of archaeologists on its extraordinarily large geographical extent and on the seemingly uniform pattern of Corded Ware material culture. The traditional model is characterised by the presence of an early phase, the so-called A-horizon, showing pan-European unity in material culture, and a successive phase characterised by increasing regional variability. However, over the last 15 years, a number of new studies, especially those focusing on the rigorous radiocarbon dating of Corded Ware contexts, bring into question several of the fundamental aspects of this old model. New results strongly suggest that the different components of the Corded Ware A-horizon emerged in several different regions, and that the previously claimed cultural uniformity is instead due to the co-occurrence of some special elements, while regional variability stands out as being much more prominent than hitherto assumed throughout all Corded Ware phases. Here, a new interpretation built on the diversity and regional variability of material culture and burial practices is proposed, one that challenges the view of Corded Ware as an expression of a social totality. This new model argues that several interlinked networks facilitated the flow of new practices and symbols into very diverse regional settings. Rather than viewing the Corded Ware phenomenon as representing a singular identity, ideology, or tradition, it may be more appropriate to regard it as a set of symbols and practices that were selectively incorporated into, and transformed by, local societies; it is this which produced the diversity attested for in the archaeological record

The Cuddie Springs site in south-eastern Australia provides the first evidence of an unequivocal association of megafauna with humans for this continent. Cuddie Springs has been known as a fossil megafauna locality for over a century, but its archaeological record has only recently been identified. Cuddie Springs is an open site, with the fossil deposits preserved in a claypan on the floor of an ancient ephemeral lake. Investigations revealed a stratified deposit of human occupation and fossil megafauna, suggesting a temporal overlap and an active association of megafauna with people in the lead up to the Last Glacial Maximum, when conditions were more arid than the present day. Two distinct occupation phases have been identified and are correlated to the hydrology of the Cuddie Springs lake. When people first arrived at Cuddie Springs, sometime before 30,000 BP, the claypan on the lake floor was similar to a waterhole, with five species of megafauna identified. Flaked stone artefacts were found scattered through this level. After the lake dried, there was human occupation of the claypan. The resource base broadened to include a range of plant foods. Megafauna appear to be just one of a range of food resources exploited during this period. A return to ephemeral conditions resulted in only periodic occupation of the site with megafauna disappearing from the record around 28,000 BP. The timing of overlap and association of megafauna with human occupation is coincident with the earliest occupation sites in this region. The archaeological evidence from Cuddie Springs suggests an opportunistic exploitation of resources and no specialised strategies for hunting megafauna. Disappearance of megafauna is likely to be a consequence of climatic change during the lead up to the Last Glacial Maximum and human activities may have compounded an extinction process well under way.

The Mesolithic settlement at Morton lies some six miles north-north-west of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland (fig. 1). The area around the site, north-eastern Fife, is surrounded on three sides by water, and projects as a blunt peninsula into the North Sea. The river Eden and the Firth of Tay serve as southern and northern boundaries of this peninsula, which consists today principally of the wind-deposited sands of Tentsmuir. The area of Tentsmuir, now afforested, is one of the relatively few regions in Britain where land is building up into the North Sea, and this process has been in action for many centuries (Sissons, 1967).

The Tentsmuir Sands are a prolific source of later prehistoric and early historic finds, the earliest yet known being of the late third millennium B.C. In February 1957, while searching for such material on Tentsmuir, Mr R. Candow of Tayport collected some flints from molehills and other exposures on the high ground of the ‘Old Quarry’ field at Morton Farm (National Grid Reference NO 467257). Surface collections continued to be made until 1963 when excavations of the site were undertaken by Mr Candow in collaboration with Dundee Museum and Art Gallery (Candow, 1966). A total of 41 trenches were excavated between May 1963 and April 1967, and these are shown on the plan of site A (fig. 4, no. 1–41). In November 1967, site B in the same field was discovered and partially excavated (fig. 29, no. 51), before work was suspended and the writer was invited to continue the investigations.

During the Last Interglacial Middle Palaeolithic industries of Crvena Stijena-type rich in side-scrapers with Levallois technique of recurrent type are specific to the Balkans. These industries have analogies in Anatolia and the northern part of the Middle East (Zagros-Group), but are different from industries typical of the middle Danube basin (Taubachian) and northern Central Europe (Moustero-Levalloisian). In the period preceding and immediately following the Lower Pleniglacial the Balkans were dominated by typical Mousterian and Moustero-Levalloisian, frequently with leaf points, similar to the industries of the lower Danube and Dniester basins, but unknown in western Anatolia. During the same period Eastern Micoquian developed in the middle Danube basin and northern Central Europe. Moustero-Levalloisian with leaf points persisted until the Early Interpleniglacial, but only in exceptional cases developed some Upper Palaeolithic features, and always without typical Aurignacian forms. The Aurignacian, unless it appears as a first Upper Palaeolithic culture in the Balkans with earliest dates in Europe (>40,000 years BP), seems to be an intrusive unit without any roots in the local Middle Palaeolithic. After 30,000 years BP, parallel to the Late Aurignacian, the first industries with backed blades appear. In the early stage these developed independently from those of Central Europe. Only after 26,000/24,000 BP were they followed in the eastern Balkans by assemblages strongly linked both morphologically and by raw materials to the Gravettian of the middle Danube basin. In the western Balkans, after 20,000 years BP, assemblages with shouldered points appeared, also probably of middle Danube origin. During the Last Interglacial and Interpleniglacial the territory of Balkans played an important transitional role between Anatolia and Central Europe; in the two Pleniglacials of the Würm this territory became some kind of cul-de-sac as the refugium for population groups from the middle Danube and northern Central Europe.

One of the unsolved ‘paradoxes’ in prehistoric archaeology is that of the gap between the considerable advances in human biological and cultural evolution during the Lower Palaeolithic period, and the over one million years of ‘stagnation’ of the Acheulean handaxe. Most of the research on this topic has focused on innovation – why it was delayed or failed to take place – while overlooking the fact that innovation had occurred in many other fields during the same period. We suggest that practical, social, and adaptive mechanisms were in force in certain areas of human behaviour and led to enhanced innovation, while conservatism was preferred in handaxe technology and use. In this study we emphasise the dependency of Acheulean groups on calories obtained from large mammals, and especially megafauna, as well as the central role of handaxes in processing large carcasses. It is our contention that the handaxe’s role in Acheulean adaptation was pivotal and it thus became fixed in human society, probably through the psychological bias towards majority imitation, which subsequently became a social norm or tradition. In brief, we suggest that the technological persistence of the Acheulean handaxe played an adaptive role that was based on a preferred cultural conservatism and led to the successful survival of Lower Palaeolithic populations over hundreds of thousands of years in the Old World.

Fieldwork in Australian prehistory began in the opening year of Australia's history; the first excavation was directed by the Colonial Governor. In an official despatch dated 15 May 1788, less than five months after the landing at Sydney Cove, Governor Arthur Phillip recorded the results of his excavation.

Phillip's early despatches were ‘compiled’ for publication by J. Stockdale. The influence of 18th-century English Antiquarianism is evident in the ‘rude’ remains in Stockdale's revised version, and his comment that ‘Phillip caused some of these barrows to be opened.’

Despite this auspicious excursion into aboriginal prehistory, Australia remains the dark continent of prehistory even after the passage of 170 years: it will be many years before the publication of a Pelican Archaeology of Australia becomes a practicable possibility. This contribution is intended as a preliminary sketch of present problems and a résumé of existing evidence. If it were restricted to a study of archaeological stratigraphy, it would be little more than a brief note; as its scope is broader, limitations of time and space impose a selective approach to the literature.

The inception of the Neolithic has always been one of the more vexed questions of British prehistory. As an issue, it has been obscured by a number of conceptual difficulties. Not least amongst these is that the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic coincides with the point at which two different and opposed approaches to prehistory and its teaching meet. The first of these, which dominates the study of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, is concerned with human behaviour in terms of adaptive responses to environmental pressures. The latter, more common in the Neolithic and later periods, is more likely to consider human beings as purposive subjects, acting in pursuit of socially-defined goals. As a result, the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition represents not merely a change of lifestyle, but also a point at which our perception of the past changes. It is the boundary between two models of man.

This study uses two novel archaeobotanical techniques – crop carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis and functional weed ecology – to determine directly how the intensity of agricultural practice changed from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age in south-west Germany, with the emergence of fortified hilltop settlements (Fürstensitze or chiefly seats) regarded as the first urban centres in central Europe. The crop isotope and functional weed ecological evidence suggest that surplus cereal production in the Early Iron Age was achieved through sustained use of manure combined with expansion in arable cultivation, both developments that are connected with more widespread use of animal traction. The increased scale of cultivation is broadly apparent across rural as well as fortified hilltop centres in the Early Iron Age, and considerable variability in manuring intensity is consistent with agricultural decision-making at a local level rather than centralised control. Additionally, the more intensive manuring of hulled six-row barley, used in beer production, demonstrates that the political importance of drinking and feasting in Early Iron Age society was reflected in crop husbandry practices. In terms of animal husbandry, faunal isotope data reveal a radical decrease in forest cover, potentially reflecting an expansion in the scale of herding accompanying that of arable cultivation. Site-specific patterning points to a range of herding strategies, from specialised herding of cattle at the Heuneburg to generalised patterns of livestock management at rural sites.

Since aDNA research suggested a marked gene influx from Eastern into Central Europe in the 3rd millennium bc, outdated, simplistic narratives of massive migrations of closed populations have re-appeared in archaeological discussions. A more sophisticated model of migration from the steppes was proposed recently by Kristiansen et al. As a reaction to that proposal, this paper aims to contribute to this ongoing debate by refining the latter model, better integrating archaeological data and anthropological knowledge. It is argued that a polythetic classification of the archaeological material in Central Europe in the 3rd millennium reveals the presence of a new complex of single grave burial rituals which transcends the traditional culture labels. Genetic steppe ancestry is mainly connected to this new kind of burials, rather than to Corded Ware or Bell Beaker materials. Here it is argued that a polythetic view on the archaeological record suggests more complicated histories of migration, population mixtures and interaction than assumed by earlier models, and ways to better integrate detailed studies of archaeological materials with a deeper exploration of anthropological models of mobility and social group composition and the molecular biological data are explored.