The authors report on investigations at quarrying sites on Mount Pua, Israel. they suggest that the area shows a degree of industrial organization from the late Lower Palaeolithic with a resultant impact on the landscape.

The authors provide the first report of a Middle Palaeolithic assemblage from Romania. The data suggest short-lived occupation and intriguing evidence of the use of ochre.

The authors present new dating evidence for a refined understanding of human presence in Central Europe between 23,000 and 14,000 BP.

The site of Doel lies beside the Schelde, close to Antwerp. Excavations have uncovered the remains of two prehistoric zones, one from the Final Mesolithic and one from the Neolithic. Preliminary study suggests that current theories of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in northern Belgium require revision.

The authors propose a correlation between certain elements of Neolithic material culture — painted pottery and anthropomorphic figurines — and Y-chromosome haplotypes, suggesting a shared history of dispersal of human populations and cultural ideas.

The authors employ examples from Chinese prehistory to demonstrate that religion could maintain and reinforce order in various aspects of social lives.

The pig appears to have been among the earliest domesticated animals in China, with evidence for pig domestication at Cishan from 8000 BP. The authors propose a model for the development of animal domestication.

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.

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.

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.

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

By far the commonest absolute date estimates come from radiocarbon ages converted to dates by comparing them with the ages of tree rings of known date. There are still many problems with the technique. The quoted errors attached to most of the dates obtained between 1950 and around 1982 have to be increased by factors between 1.4 and 4 (Baillie 1990; Ashmore et al. 2000). There are plateaux in the calibration curve which mean that some ages correspond to an unacceptably wide range of calendar dates. Many archaeological sites contain pieces of charcoal much older than the main period of activity on them. Many charcoal dates obtained before about 1999 were from bulk samples and some demonstrably reflect mixing of charcoal of very different age, providing a meaningless date somewhere in between (Ashmore 1999a). There is now fairly abundant evidence that dates from poorly preserved bone, whether buried or cremated, can be centuries out. The marine effect, which has been assumed to make all Scottish shell dates 405 years too old, may fluctuate (Harkness 1983; Cook & Dugmore pers. comm.). The bones of people who ate food from marine sources show the marine effect and calculation of the required change to an age measured by a laboratory depends on a measurement of the strength of the marine effect at the time the person lived (Barrett et al. 2000). Some dates from residues on pots seem to represent accurately the time they formed; others for unknown reasons do not.

Introduction

The value of dendrochronology as a precise dating tool is well established (Ashmore, this volume) and this paper concentrates on other aspects of its value to Scottish archaeology and history. Timber in Scotland has been a resource under pressure for a long time, and consequently the history of timber trade and woodland exploitation is particularly interesting. Scotland now has very restricted semi-natural woodland, representing about 1% of land cover. While the extent of semi-natural woodland has undoubtedly shrunk in recent centuries, pollen evidence indicates that much of Scotland has been characterized by open landscapes since later prehistory (Tipping 1994).

Since 1991, the Archaeology Department of the National Museums of Scotland (NMS) has been undertaking programmes of AMS radiocarbon dating of organic items in its collections, particularly wetland finds. This work was initially stimulated by the success of Caroline Earwood’s research on dating bog butter containers and other wooden vessels from the National collections (Earwood 1990; 1993a; 1993b; 1997), which demonstrated among other things that the practice of bog butter deposition in Scotland extended at least as far back as the early centuries AD.

The Treasure Trove system in Scotland operates to protect portable antiquities and ensure their preservation in perpetuity for the benefit of the nation. A broad interpretation is taken of ‘portable antiquities’, encompassing those items of past material culture to which archaeological, historical and/or cultural importance may be attached. Objects which are ‘museumworthy’ might be another way of expressing this, though ‘worthiness’ applies not just to items with obvious display potential but also to those likely to reside in study collections as reference material.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. ELIOT

Introduction

Think of Scotland. The chances are that what springs to mind is a picture of mountains, lochs, glens and coasts — an outstanding natural heritage which uplifts the spirit and overflows the pages of the tourist brochures. Paradoxically, though, modern Scotland has an urban heart, with its people, the lifeblood of its economy and its cultural centres all concentrated in the towns and cities. Scotland is fortunate in the quantity and quality of its historic towns, with a preponderance of small and medium-sized towns, many of which escaped the insensitive 1960s and 1970s redevelopment so eloquently lamented elsewhere. Even Scotland’s cities are small by English standards; the population of Glasgow, our largest city, was about 650,000 in the 1991 census, and Dundee, the smallest (before Inverness’s elevation), only about 165,000. Today some 80% of the total population of around 5,000,000 live and work in towns and cities.