Whilst research has shown many faults with the Movius scheme of a Middle Pleistocene group of Chopper/Chopping tool industries in South-East Asia, it remains a fact that pebble tool industries are still the dominant characteristic of the South-East Asian record. Exploration has now revealed hundreds of Late Pleistocene and Holocene sites in Mainland South-East Asia and these are archaeologically very different from cave sites in Europe. Further problems exist with the current nomenclature of later industries, such as the Hoabinhian and the Neolithic, for there is a large amount of overlap between such assemblages. Should such factors as economy, site location, etc. be used to assist clarification of such problems?

This paper outlines some of these issues and reveals that the pebble tool tradition as it is widely known in South-East Asia is a relatively recent phenomenon dating back to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). A possible reason for the change from flake to pebble tool industrial types and in the visibility of sites is the environmental changes and rise in sea level which submerged over half the available land area in the region during the Late Pleistocene. An existing broad spectrum system of exploitation was likely to have been intensified as a result of this.

The cave site Prolom II situated in the eastern part of the Crimean peninsula has produced evidence of repeated inhabitation during the Middle Palaeolithic. The stone artefacts permit a sure cultural identification and comparison with analogous material belonging to the Ak-Kaya culture. In a broader sense the Ak-Kaya culture of the Crimea may be regarded as one of the variants of the East European Micoquian. Unfortunately we do not at present have the natural science data which would allow us to define exactly the chronological position of Prolom II. The comparative typological and technical data allow us to connect the Middle Palaeolithic layers of the cave with the pre-Brörup period of the Early Würm. This is partly supported by the faunal data. The discovery of a curved arc-like deposit consisting of bones of mammoth, horse, bison and other animals in the second layer of the site, as well as a considerable collection of bone artefacts, both add to the unique character of the site. Some of the bone artefacts cannot reasonably be explained as utilitarian and may constitute evidence of a spiritual culture of Neanderthal Man. In this connection it is possible to enumerate two fragments of diaphyses with parallel and fan-shaped engraved lines, one distal fragment of Saiga tatarica first phalange with fan-shaped engraved lines, and one horse canine with deep subparallel engravings.

Results of the excavation of two rock-shelters in the Phuthiatsana-ea-Thaba Bosiu Basin of western Lesotho, southern Africa are reported. Later Stone Age occupation at both sites was principally a feature of the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene. Analysis of the artefact assemblages shows that, while all in situ occurrences belong to the Oakhurst Industrial Complex, significant differences are apparent between those pre- and post-dating 7500 BC. A shift towards hunting smaller bovids and changes in site occupation at the regional scale are also evident at this time. Differences between the archaeological signatures at the two sites are discussed in the light of recent models of seasonal aggregation and dispersal. Comparisons are drawn with the archaeological record of neighbouring parts of South Africa and a strong contrast is suggested between terminal Pleistocene! early Holocene settlement strategies and those of the recent Holocene within the research area.

The Neothermal Dalmatia Project is an Anglo-Yugoslav collaborative project whose aims are to define and explain changes in physical environment, settlement pattern and social structure in north Dalmatia over the last 12 millennia. The Project's fieldwork included archaeological field survey, analytical survey, trial excavation of Neolithic, Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman sites, soil and land use mapping, ethnographic survey of modern villages and hamlets and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions (pollen, sediments, sea-level change, etc.). Within the long-term constraints of a limestone-dominated study region, the short-term events and medium-term agrarian and demographic cycles of the Dalmatian social groups have been studied in an inter-disciplinary manner. In this article, an attempt is made to examine the environmental and archaeological data within the frameworks of four explanatory models: the Land Use Capability (LUC) Model, the Cyclic Intensification–Deintensification (CID) Model, the Communal Ownership of Property (COP) Model and the Arenas of Social Power (ASP) Model. In the LUC model, reconstructions of past land use capabilities are used to derive postdictions of the most likely settlement patterns for successive periods (Neolithic–Roman); a high degree of postdictive success is met. In the CID model, Bintliff's model of cyclic variations in agricultural intensification and private land-holding is refined and tested against survey and excavation data. In the COP model, Fleming's model of communal land ownership is tested against similar data, with contrasting results. Finally, the ASP model is used to explain the expanded range of arenas of social power which develops from a place-based worldview in the early farming period. The conjoint use of these four explanatory models, which operate at different scales of duration, provides a broader basis for understanding changes in the prehistory of north Dalmatia in the Neothermal period than had previously been constructed.

In the autumn of 1936, a prehistoric grave was discovered near the village of Janislawice, Skierniewice Voievodom, central Poland, by two local farmers whilst digging for gravel. The grave was located on the north bank of the Lupia River (a tributary of the Bzura River), 13m above the river valley and 159 m above OD. It was dug into gravelly-sandy fluvioglacial deposits of the penultimate glaciation, on the slope of a kame hill (fig. 1). Although the grave was partially damaged in the discovery, in April of the following year the site was investigated by K. Jazdzewski, from the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw. A stratigraphic sequence was recorded, and the skeleton and a variety of grave goods were excavated.

The single skeleton had been placed in a sitting position, the legs outstretched and the back leaning against the wall of the grave pit. Red ochre powder was also probably present in small quantities in the fill. The skeleton was that of a man, aged about 30, having a ‘robust’ build and showing craniometrical similarities to modern Lapp populations (Steslicka-Mydlarska 1954).

The Suazoid period lasted some three hundred years (c. AD 1100–1400) in a small geographic area in the Lesser Antilles from Tobago to Southern Martinique. Defined by a relatively narrow ceramic series, the people represented by this material are still poorly understood. Deriving from peoples from mainland South America, they evolved a marine-based settlement area of some 35,000 square miles including six main islands and many smaller ones. This paper discusses the economic basis for one Suazoid group based on evidence from test-pitting an extensive site at Heywoods, Barbados. Formerly a mangrove swamp, the site yielded extensive evidence for a marine-based economy. In addition, the first evidence on Barbados for an Archaic presence (c. 2000 BC) was located, together with Saladoid (c. 2.00 BC–AD 650) and Troumassoid (c. AD 650–1100) activity.

Research on the late Pleistocene and Holocene environment and archaeology of the upper Kennet valley, north Wiltshire, is described. In concentrating the work in the valley bottom, the main aims were: (1) to see if there was a record of environment and archaeology there, and if so to detail it; and (2) to redress brasses in research towards the visible archaeology of slopes and plateaus and their environmental record.

Soils and sediments with biological and archaeological materials covered the late Pleistocene to the present and, with dating by 14C and thermoluminescence, enabled a history of environment and human activity to be established.

The distinction in hydrology and environment between the valley floor and slopes/plateaus varied with time. In the upper part of the study area at Avebury, there was no stream in the earlier Holocene: woodland covered the valley floor which in some areas was similar to that of the slopes/plateaus in being dry while in other areas it was marshy. In the lower part of the study area at West Overton there was also an earlier Holocene land surface but there were locally streams and swamps, represented by the North Farm Formation. During the earlier Neolithic there was woodland clearance and some cultivation of the valley floor which initiated minor hydrological changes, namely paludification at Avebury and alluviation at West Overton. Dry grassland later developed which was little different from that of the slopes and plateaus. There was no woodland regeneration during the later Neolithic in contrast to the situation in monument ditches on the valley slopes and plateaus. Throughout the study area there was a major episode of alluviation in open country, represented by the West Overton Formation, which was probably initiated in the Beaker period and carried on until the early Iron Age. This, while not putting the valley floor out of use and indeed perhaps enhancing its fertility, provided a very different environment from that of the slopes and plateaus. Another period of alluviation, represented by the Arion Clay, took place in post-Medieval times.

The main Holocene deposits were not wholly allochthonous or made up solely of clastic material derived from slopewash incorporated into the river. Calcium carbonate precipitation accounted for much of the North Farm and West Overton Formations while the Arion Clay may derive from flocculated material redistributed from watermeadow channels in the course of their management. On the other hand, periods of arable activity in the area, often close to the river valley floor, notably in Iron Age, Roman and Medieval times, have no signal in terms of alluvium.

Archaeology, although concealed, is abundant and significantly extends the local record of slopes and plateaus. Mesolithic flints, Neolithic flints and pottery, two lines of probably later Neolithic/Beaker sarsen boulders, later Bronze Age sarsen structures, pottery and a cremation are present on the valley floor, concealed by deposits of the West Overton Formation. Medieval activity, represented on the valley sides as earthworks, extends on to the valley floor where it is concealed by Arion Clay and earthworks of watermeadows. The visible distribution of archaeology presents a pattern which may be of more than local significance for chalkland areas.

Excavations at the Easton Down long barrow were part of a wider programme of research into the Neolithic sequence and context of the Avebury area in north Wiltshire. The short barrow, on high chalk downland to the south-west of Avebury and the upper Kennet valley, and containing only a few inhumations according to Thurnam's 19th-century investigation, dates to the later 4th millennium BC. Test pits around the barrow produced very little struck flint, and virtually no colluvium in the adjacent dry valley to the west. The mound covered a thin calcareous turfline above a rubbly soil, probably formerly cultivated. The pre-barrow molluscan fauna, soil micromorphology and other environmental data indicate a clearance adjacent to woodland. In the secondary fill of the flanking ditches there is a succession from renewed woodland to open conditions in the Late Neolithic.

The Easton Down monument falls relatively late in the regional sequence of long barrow construction. Its setting was probably one of scattered, non-permanent clearances in woodland. Woodland was still widespread on the higher downland of the region in the middle of the Neolithic. Renewed and bigger-scale clearance towards the end of the Neolithic may be connected with the construction of very large monuments elsewhere in the region. The later prehistoric landscape became both more open and less diverse.

Taking grave and non-grave pottery together, five summary regional groups of beaker pottery are proposed for Britain and Ireland: Group A, Ireland; Group B, north Britain and eventually widespread; Group C, north and to some extent south Britain; Group D, south Britain; and Group E, East Anglia and south-east England. It is anticipated that further discoveries and research will enable these groups to be refined regionally.

These groups are set in a quarter-millennium calendrical chronology, which suggests that they may all have appeared around or near the mid-3rd millennium BC, and that many of their aspects were long enduring, some surviving to the 2nd quarter of the 2nd millennium BC.

Decorative features especially are related to bell-beaker pottery in western Europe, to Single Grave pottery across the North Sea, and to native Late Neolithic pottery. In presenting the chronology of these relationships, it is argued that a widely held view that bell-beaker pottery evolved in north-west Europe requires modification.

The interpretation of prehistoric rock art has posed some intractable problems, but recent studies have sought to integrate it within a more broadly based landscape archaeology. They emphasise the special character of this material, not only as a system of distinctive motifs, but also as a source of information employed by people engaged in a mobile pattern of settlement. This paper investigates the character of the rock art of south-west Scotland, comparing the positions of the petroglyphs with two series of control samples in the surrounding landscape. The carvings seem to have been situated at viewpoints. They may have been directed towards the coastline and the Galloway hills and commanded a significantly wider field of vision than locations in the surrounding area. There is some evidence that differences in the size and complexity of the motifs are related to their placing in the local topography, with the simpler carvings around the edges of lowland ‘territories’ near to the shoreline, and the more complex compositions in upland areas, especially around shallow basins and waterholes. The changing character of the designs may reflect differences in the composition of the audience who viewed them.

This paper evaluates traditional and current interpretations of the Dorsey, a large earthwork and timber piled enclosure in Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland. It casts doubt on the interpretation of the site as a frontier defence and, on the basis of parallels with other Irish sites such as Navan Fort, suggests that it may have been a focus of ritual activity. Although concentrating on a single site, specific features are identified which may, with further analysis, provide an alternative and enhanced understanding of a range of Iron Age sites in Ireland.

W. F. Grimes excavated a rectangular earthwork in advance of airport construction in 1944, at Heathrow, Middlesex, and found a timber building of unique ‘concentric-rectangle’ plan, together with penannular house gullies; all these features were thought to be part of the same settlement except for two Neolithic pits. Now it can be seen that a Late Bronze Age occupation attested by scattered pottery and small finds but next to no identifiable structures, was followed by 11 Middle Iron Age round houses, and one or two features that may be Late Iron Age. The rampart of the earthwork overlay at least some of the houses. The rectangular building may be Middle or Late Iron Age: though other Iron Age rectangular buildings are now known, its concentric plan remains unique in Britain and resembles that of some Romano–Celtic temples. The precise chronological relationship of the strong earthwork, the round houses and the rectangular building remains uncertain.

Excavation and survey has revealed evidence of activity around the long cairn, Caravat Barp during the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages. A series of three hearth complexes comprising stone-built hearths within an ash/charcoal spread associated with post-holes and pits were the earliest features on the site. A large sub-rectangular stone enclosure was built soon after peat had begun developing over the area. When the peat had developed to a thickness of 0.2 m another fence line was laid down, apparently utilizing the earlier enclosure. Finally, a small cairn was formed just west of the long cairn. Palynological work was carried out to establish the nature of the contemporary environment while the macrofossil record was analysed in terms of wood use and the foodstuffs available.

This report describes a group of distinctive earthworks in the north-east of the North York Moors (fig. 1) that, prior to investigation by the RCHME, had been categorised as double pit-alignments. The earthworks consist of two or three pairs of pits, with the spoil from the pits spread into parallel enclosing banks. The orientation of the segments is fairly consistent along an axis north-west to south-east; in each case there seems to be a tangential alignment on burial mounds, putatively Bronze Age in date, which may give a clue as to their age and function.

I am very grateful to Geoff Clark for his comment on my ecological interpretation of Palaeolithic art (PPS 58, 107–109, see Mithen 1990, 1991). I had no idea that it was a ‘post hoc accommodative argument’ with an ‘underaxiomatised’ theoretical framework and ‘unwieldy systematics’. I suppose this means he doesn't like it. Clark says that my interpretation reminds him of a Chinese meal — initially satisfying but not ‘sticking with you’ for very long. In 1992 Clark wrote that ‘Mithen's … work goes a long way to explaining the art of this period’ (Lindly & Clark 1990, 61) — he seems to have taken two years to digest the Chinese meal of my interpretation.

Clark's main objection is that I tried to develop a theoretical framework around individual decision making and then attempted to use this to interpret the variability and patterning in Palaeolithic art and other elements of the archaeological record. He objects to this on paradigmatic grounds, seeing no rationale for models of individual agency, but primarily on operational grounds, arguing that individuals cannot be monitored in the archaeological record.

The calcite figurine of a human couple in coitus said to be from Ain Sakhri in Judea has been interpreted as a symbol of fertility reflecting the economic and social concerns of the Natufian period. This paper presents a critical history surrounding its discovery, an evaluation of its archaeological context and a description of the piece itself, in order to address the broader issues surrounding its interpretation.