By extracting lipids from potsherds and determining the δ13C of the most abundant fatty acids, degraded fats from ruminant animals, such as cattle, and non-ruminant animals, such as pigs, can be distinguished. The authors use this phenomenon to investigate Late Neolithic pig exploitation and find that the pig ‘signature’ was more frequently found among residues from Grooved Ware than other prehistoric pottery types.

In the latest of his periodic reviews of Celtic exhibitions in the pages of Antiquity (Megaw 1981; 1992; 1994) Vincent resumes the Grand Tour and evaluates a series of such events over the past decade.

In this study of the Murray River basin in south-eastern Australia, the author shows that Aboriginal burials are persistently attracted to specific kinds of landscape feature intermittently over long periods of time. Some attributes of burial, like body position, vary from site to site and over much shorter periods; others, like orientation, are even more local, relating only to a specific group of graves. Burial rites are thus sets of variables which may be independent of each other and change at different rates. Far from reflecting cultural arrivals and departures, in south-eastern Australia burial grounds were never formally founded and continually abandoned.

We owe Professor Tikhonov warmest thanks for this brief history of academic archaeology at St Petersburg. As well as applauding the department's many achievements, readers of our Debate section will no doubt take note of a bleak period in its eventful history, one marked by a tendency to ‘substitute socio-political subjects for specialist courses’ and ‘the growing disparagement of highly skilled researchers and teachers’. If suitably candid authors can be found, we look forward to receiving similarly instructive intellectual biographies of archaeology departments and institutes from around the world.

The Neolithic period in South India is known for its ashmounds, superseded (in its Iron Age) by megalith builders with craft specialisation. Thanks to a major radiocarbon dating programme and Bayesian analysis of the dates, the authors have placed this sequence in a new chronological framework: the ashmounds, formed by burning cattle dung, are created by a few generations of people. In many cases the mounds are then succeeded by villages, for which they may have acted as founding rituals. The new tightly dated sequence also chronicles the cultivation of particular crops, some indigenous and some introduced from Africa.

Stable isotope analysis is a new, not-so-secret weapon which promises much in mapping population movement on a regional and local scale. Lining up these movements with certain economic strategies, such as farming or foraging, with social strategies such as exogamy or with ethnicity and ranking constitutes forgivable temptation. Here our astute authors urge caution. Taking the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in south-west Germany as their example, they show that caution does not inhibit interpretation, but opens the door to more subtle, more human possibilities.

When does Neolithic life begin in Britain? The author gathered up the current evidence for radiocarbon-dated first use of cereals, distinguishing between dates from charcoal in contexts with cereals, and dates from the charred grains themselves. The charred grains begin to appear around 4000 cal BC and become prominent in settlements between 3800 and 3000 cal BC. This correlates well with the appearance of megalithic tombs (3800-3500 cal BC) and argues for a relatively rapid adoption of the Neolithic package during an experimental phase of two centuries, 4000-3800 cal BC. The early cereals reported in the pollen record (from 5000 BC) are attributed to wild species.

Here is a story to strike a chill of anxiety into the hearts of editors and their peer-reviewers. Do we, should we, need we check our submissions with greater rigour?

Neolithic northern Greece has both tell sites and extended ‘flat’ sites, with an implication that people lived differently and may have managed their animals differently on each type of site. The author investigates these differences using characteristic plant assemblages deriving from animal dung. She finds that samples from tells are rich in processed crops and wild seeds, indicating grazing on and off the fields near home. But those from the flat sites were rich in chaff and contain no wild seeds, indicating the absence of animals out grazing on the hills when the wild plants are in seed. These were seemingly two alternative categories of Neolithic farmer, the one organising grazing differently from the other.