In this paper the Professor of Archaeology at University College Cork has undertaken a radical re-evaluation of the traditional paradigms of Irish prehistory, which were formed in the 1940s. He makes full use of the results of recent pipeline excavations and radiocarbon dates to show that early settlement in Ireland need not always be associated with monument or artefact types belonging to narrow chronological horizons.

Two notable reconstructions of Neanderthal individuals are analysed in this perceptive study of the role of visual reconstructions in archaeological debate. The author concludes that such images are more than popular by-products of academic discussion, and play a crucial role in the construction of archaeological arguments.

Out of molecular biology – the revolution of past decades in biological science – there now begins to come molecular archaeology, the study of DNA in ancient plants, animals and people to address questions of history as well as biology. Here is set out what molecular archaeology is about, how it works and what it has begun to do.

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.

Since 1980 intensive archaeological investigations have been carried out at several early sites, occupied from late preceramic through early ceramic times (4150–2950b.p.), in the Casma Valley, Peru. Preliminary results document increasing societal complexity over time as reflected in the exponential growth of monumental architecture, the acquisition of irrigation agriculture, the rise of two complex polities within the valley and the separation of religious and secular power within the ruling élite.

On ten stone tools from Tabun Cave, Israel, excavated from a layer dated to 90,000 years old, the presence of organic tool-use residues has been detected. Among them are red blood cells, collagen, resin and hair fragments identified by microscopy and biochemical analyses.

The physical form of the Elizabethan theatre, as shown by contemporary prints and engravings, has long been an important field of study for Shakespeare scholars. The discoveries in the late 1980s on Bankside of first the 16th-century Rose theatre and then the Globe have provided material remains of these structures, but at the same time posed new questions relating to design and construction, as this account of the excavation of part of the Globe site in 1989 and 1991 graphically demonstrates.

Olympias and all other trireme reconstructions have been based on a misinterpretation of the Greek terminology, according to the author, a dedicated student of ancient ship design and former naval officer.

The discovery of a colossal ‘statue group’ in the cliffs at Deir el-Bahri sheds new light on the ways in which pharaonic Egyptians experienced the dynamism of their physical environment, and made appeal to it in validation of royal legitimacy; suggests re-interpretation of the symbolic function of the memorial temple of Queen Hatshepsut; and defines a previously unrecognized tradition in rupestral architecture, spatially distributed from the Arabah to the Sudan.

Kerma is an ancient city on the Nile in Middle Nubia, long known and the subject of renewed recent exploration. Its position, at the southern limit of Egyptian control, sets it strategically on the routes to the African interior. Its environment in the arid desert results in remarkable preservation of organic remains.

In 873 the Viking Great Army took winter quarters at the Anglo-Saxon monastery of Repton in the heart of Mercia. Excavations 1974–88 found their D-shaped earthwork on the river bank, incorporated in the stone church. Burials of Viking type were made at the east end of the church, and an existing building was cut down and converted into the chamber of a burial mound containing at least 249 individuals. Here is a first account of the evidence for the Vikings at Repton in and after the campaigning season of 873-4.

All (or almost all) archaeology seeks to know the things that were by the evidence of the things that are, as battered and fragmented by centuries of collapse, decay, wear and breaking. And from the things that were, all (or almost all) archaeology seeks to know the people who were, to grasp the human meanings that were held in those things. The unthinking assumptions, common to old and new programmes for good archaeology, that go with this common framework are explored.

Spatial analysis has enjoyed a considerable vogue in archaeological studies over the past two decades, though usually applied in prehistoric contexts. The paper applies well tried techniques to the analysis of complex high-status medieval buildings and demonstrates their superiority in terms of data (especially when used in parallel) on social function and status over subjective analysis based on notions of symbolic or functional characterization.

Methodologies for learning about the past are currently at issue within archaeology. This paper considers learning from the standpoint of a ‘radical’ archaeology. One strand of a radical archaeology's approach to learning–a Marxist strand–is discussed, and its main methodological challenge identified. This challenge is the development of middle-range frameworks for recognizing what Binford and others term ‘ambiguity’ – unexpected variation in the archaeological record from which fresh insights about the past can be produced. Concepts and ideas for constructing appropriate middle-ranges for a radical archaeology are discussed.

Meroë, capital of Ethiopian kings up to the first centuries AD, is an extraordinary culture. Its inscriptions are in its own Meroitic script or in Egyptian or sometimes in Greek – a reminder of its links through Egypt to the larger Mediterranean world nearly 2000 kilometres to the north. And what about the end of Meroeë Did it collapse to barbarians? Or did it take its own course?

Dunmisk fort (Co. Tyrone), in Northern Ireland, has produced the first evidence recognized in early medieval Europe for the making/modification of glass using primary raw materials. Going beyond the evidence for glass-working – the softening of glass to form and decorate artefacts – a series of sophisticated industrial processes can be identified, and shows that not all glass was imported to Early Christian Ireland.