A single pit containing a mixed assemblage of charred plant remains, including broomcorn millet, was discovered during excavation of a Middle–Late Bronze Age settlement at Old Catton, Norfolk. Radiocarbon dating of this assemblage dates it to the Late Bronze Age—including a date of 910–800 cal BC for the millet itself—making this the earliest securely dated use of broomcorn millet in Britain.

Dating of ancient permafrost is essential for understanding long-term permafrost stability and interpreting palaeoenvironmental conditions but presents substantial challenges to geochronology. Here, we apply four methods to permafrost from the megaslump at Batagay, east Siberia: (1) optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz, (2) post-infrared infrared-stimulated luminescence (pIRIR) dating of K-feldspar, (3) radiocarbon dating of organic material, and (4) 36Cl/Cl dating of ice wedges. All four chronometers produce stratigraphically consistent and comparable ages. However, OSL appears to date Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 to MIS 2 deposits more reliably than pIRIR, whereas the latter is more consistent with 36Cl/Cl ages for older deposits. The lower ice complex developed at least 650 ka, potentially during MIS 16, and represents the oldest dated permafrost in western Beringia and the second-oldest known ice in the Northern Hemisphere. It has survived multiple interglaciations, including the super-interglaciation MIS 11c, though a thaw unconformity and erosional surface indicate at least one episode of permafrost thaw and erosion occurred sometime between MIS 16 and 6. The upper ice complex formed from at least 60 to 30 ka during late MIS 4 to 3. The sand unit above the upper ice complex is dated to MIS 3–2, whereas the sand unit below formed at some time between MIS 4 and 16.

The synthesis of paleoclimatic archives provided by loess and alluvial sequences of central Argentina has been hindered by the lack of a cohesive lithostratigraphic framework extending across the Chaco–Pampean plains and catchments of the Rios Desaguadero, Colorado, and Negro. This condition originates in part from the dearth of absolute chronological controls. The occurrence of discrete tephra layers across this region may provide an opportunity to address this deficiency if a tephrochronological framework can be established. The potential of such a project is assessed within the context of a pilot study constrained within alluvial sequences of central western Argentina proximal to potential source vents in the Southern Volcanic Zone. The intersite discrimination and correlation of tephra layers on a geochemical basis is examined, with indirect chronological control for the eruption of each generated by optical dating. Alluvial sediments on either side of each of five tephra units at a type site were dated using the optically stimulated luminescence of fine-silt-sized quartz, thus providing an age control on each tephra (ca. 24,000, 30,000, 32,000, 39,000, and 48,000 yr). The geochemical composition of each tephra was derived. Using these data, tephra layers at other sites in the study area were geochemically analyzed and in instances of statistical concordance in major oxide structure, correlated to the type site and therefore ascribed ages. This methodology identified a further sixth volcanic event between ca. 24,000 and 30,000 yr not registered by type-site tephras. The extension of this initial tephrochronological framework beyond the alluvial sequences of central western Argentina is encouraged by the occurrence of geochemically distinct tephra verified and dated in this study.

The field properties, micromorphology, grain-size, geochemistry, and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages of two late Quaternary sections have been used to reconstruct the sequence of pedosedimentary processes and to provide insights into landscape evolution in part of the Northern Pampa of Argentina. Paleosols developed in paludal sediments adjacent to the Paraná river at Baradero and in loess at Lozada can both be correlated and linked to other sites, thus enabling for the first time the tentative recognition and tracing of a diachronous soil stratigraphic unit that probably spans the equivalent of at least part of marine oxygen isotope stage (OIS) 5. The paleosol at Lozada was truncated and buried beneath fluvial sediments during the time span of OIS 4 and 3. Eolian gradually replaced paludal inputs at Baradero over this period, and there were also two clearly defined breaks in sedimentation and development of paleosols. The period corresponding to OIS 2 was marked by significant loess accumulation at both sites with accretion continuing into the mid-Holocene only at Lozada. The more developed nature of the surface soil at Baradero probably reflects a combination of a moister climate and a longer soil-forming interval.

This article analyses monodic reperformance of epinicians in the fifth century BC and argues that the musical and ethical dimensions of such performances were mutually reinforcing. Reperformances by solo singers would have strongly foregrounded the agency of the individual performer, while also enacting his understanding of musical conventions. This relationship forms a structural parallel with the function of ethical statements in epinicians, which are usually conventional in terms of their conceptual content and yet also emphasize the agency of individuals in responding to them. I argue that the parallelism between ethics and monodic reperformance is an important thematic strand in Nemean 4 and Isthmian 2, and prefigures the responses that the poems elicit from audiences.

At Iliad 13.751-3, Hector heeds Polydamas' advice to rally the Trojans by gathering their best fighters together and debating their next move (13.736-47). The speech is followed by a simile that has puzzled some commentators, in which Hector is compared to a snowy mountain as he moves through the Trojan ranks. The passage runs as follows:

‘Πουλυδάμα σὺ μὲν αὐτοῦ ἐρύκακε πάντας ἀρίστους,
αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ κεῖσ’ εἶμι καὶ ἀντιόω πολέμοιο·
αἶψα δ’ ἐλεύσομαι αὖτις ἐπὴν εὖ τοῖς ἐπιτείλω.’
ἦ ῥα, καὶ ὁρμήθη ὄρεϊ νιφόεντι ἐοικὼς
κεκλήγων, διὰ δὲ Τρώων πέτετ’ ἠδ’ ἐπικούρων. 755
οἳ δ’ ἐς Πανθοΐδην ἀγαπήνορα Πουλυδάμαντα
πάντες ἐπεσσεύοντ’, ἐπεὶ Ἕκτορος ἔκλυον αὐδήν.

This paper argues that the final couplet of Horace, Epode 13 alludes both to the description of Achilles playing the lyre in Iliad 9 and to ancient scholarly debate about the Homeric passage. Horace's reworking of the Iliad underlines his transfer of epic material to a sympotic setting, and the scholarly allusion reinforces Horace's presentation of himself as a symposiastic speaker by drawing on the tradition of symposia as sites of learned conversation. This dual engagement with Homer encourages readers to see their own responses to Horace's poem as part of a continuum of literary debate.

The importance of music for epinician, as for all other types of choral performance in Archaic and Classical Greece, has long been recognized, but the exiguousness of the evidence for the compositional principles behind such music, and for what these poems actually sounded like in performance, has limited scholarly enquiries. Examination of Pindar's texts themselves for evidence of his musical practices was for a long time dominated by extensive and often inconclusive debate about the relations between metres and modes. More recently scholars have begun to explore Pindar's relations to contemporary developments in musical performance, and in doing so have opened up new questions about how music affected audiences as aesthetically and culturally significant in its own right, and how it interacted with the language of the text. This article will investigate the performance scenarios of two of Pindar's epinicians, arguing that in each case the poems contain indications of specific musical accompaniments, and use these scenarios as a starting point for engaging with wider interpretative questions. The self-referential dimension of these compositions will be of particular importance; I shall argue that Pindar deployed a type of musical intertextuality, in which his compositions draw on pre-existing melodic structures, utilizing their cultural associations for the purposes of his own pieces, a process crucial to the dynamics of performance of the poems concerned. By doing so I shall attempt to reach a better understanding of the roles played by music in epinician performance and of Pindar's place in relation to the musical culture in which he worked.

This study compares age estimates of recent peat deposits in 10 European ombrotrophic (precipitation-fed) bogs produced using the 14C bomb peak, 210Pb, 137Cs, spheroidal carbonaceous particles (SCPs), and pollen. At 3 sites, the results of the different dating methods agree well. In 5 cores, there is a clear discrepancy between the 14C bomb peak and 210Pb age estimates. In the upper layers of the profiles, the age estimates of 14C and 210Pb are in agreement. However, with increasing depth, the difference between the age estimates appears to become progressively greater. The evidence from the sites featured in the study suggests that, provided aboveground plant material (seeds, leaves) is selected for dating, the 14C bomb peak is a reliable dating method, and is not significantly affected by the incorporation of old carbon with low 14C content originating from sources including air pollution deposition or methane produced by peat decomposition. 210Pb age estimates that are too old may be explained by the enrichment of 210Pb activity in the surface layers of peat resulting from a hypothesized mechanism where rapidly infilling hollows, rich in binding sites, may scavenge 210Pb associated with dissolved organic matter passing through the hollow, as part of the surface drainage network. Until further research identifies and resolves the cause of the inaccuracy in 210Pb dating, age estimates of peat samples based only on 210Pb should be used with caution.

Renewed in-depth multi-disciplinary investigation of a large coastal mound settlement in Peru has extended the occupation back more than 7000 years to a first human exploitation ~13720 BP. Research by the authors has chronicled the prehistoric sequence from the activities of the first maritime foragers to the construction of the black mound and the introduction of horticulture and monumentality. The community of Huaca Prieta emerges as innovative, complex and ritualised, as yet with no antecedents.

Changes in the geological interpretation of the history of the ancient Solent river basin have focused attention on the handaxes discovered in the Corfe Mullen area during quarrying before the Second World War. Recent geological research suggests that the fluvial terrace the handaxes are associated with may pre-date the Anglian glaciation. This is important because it contributes to the question of just when the Solent basin was first occupied by hominins, and how this relates to other areas of possible contemporary pre-Anglian occupation such as the Boxgrove Marine embayment. However, the artefacts were believed to come from the bluff of the river terrace and were thus not in situ. This paper explores that question and re-examines the context from which the handaxes at Corfe Mullen were discovered.

A total of sixty surgically castrated male pigs (Large White × Landrace) weighing 31·2 (sd 4·3) kg were used in a randomised block experiment to examine the effect of added dietary inulin (0, 20, 40 and 80 g/kg) on the occurrence of swine dysentery (SD) and on fermentation characteristics in the large intestine after experimental challenge with the causative spirochaete Brachyspira hyodysenteriae. The pigs were allowed to adapt to the diets for 2 weeks before each pig was challenged orally four times with a broth culture containing B. hyodysenteriae on consecutive days. Increasing dietary levels of inulin linearly (P = 0·001) reduced the risk of pigs developing SD; however, eight out of fifteen pigs fed the diet with 80 g/kg inulin still developed the disease. The pH values in the caecum (P = 0·072) tended to decrease, and in the upper colon, the pH values did decrease (P = 0·047) linearly with increasing inulin levels in the diets, most probably due to a linear increase in the concentration of total volatile fatty acids in the caecum (P = 0·018), upper colon (P = 0·001) and lower colon (P = 0·013). In addition, there was a linear reduction in the proportion of the branched-chain fatty acids isobutyric acid and isovaleric acid in the caecum (P = 0·015 and 0·026) and upper colon (P = 0·011 and 0·013) with increasing levels of dietary inulin. In conclusion, the present study showed that a diet supplemented with a high level of inulin (80 g/kg) but not lower levels reduced the risk of pigs developing SD, possibly acting through a modification of the microbial fermentation patterns in the large intestine.