The authors present the musical properties of well-preserved bone flutes recently recovered from Jiahu, an early Neolithic site in central China with a sequence beginning in the seventh millennium BC (Antiquity 77: 31–44). Tonal analyses of five of the flutes indicate a gradual development from four-tone to seven-tone scale. By adding more holes to the pipe, structuring the pitch intervals closer to each other, and by alternating the keynote, the prehistoric musicians could play increasingly expressive and varied music. In addition, the flutes became progressively standardised in pitch, presumably so they could play in harmony. The study shows that the Jiahu flute makers and their musicians became progressively familiar with acoustics and developed a cognitive scheme of music comparable to that of modern times.

The recent discovery of a cache of 70 groundstone axe-heads at the Grossmann site, near Cahokia, in the Mississippi valley prompts a new interpretation of the commemorative and ritual value of such deposits. The makers of these axe-heads seem to belong to a community of specialists who had a contributory role in the foundation of the Cahokia polity.

The authors demonstrate that a temple examined at the Classic Maya site of Aguateca, Guatemala, was still in the process of construction when it was attacked and abandoned at the beginning of the ninth century AD. Study of the ruin has provided valuable information on Maya building methods and processes, as well as guidance on how unfinished buildings may be identified.

Is ecology or agency the principal imperative of the formation of complex societies? Using new survey data, the author shows how both interest in the development of the riverside settlement area of the American Bottom and how the different modern histories of the northern (industrial) and the southern (agricultural) American Bottom, have affected the survival of evidence and how this in turn has favoured a different emphasis in interpretation for each.

Palaeoecologists using pollen to map vegetation since the last ice age have noted numerous changes – which they feel increasingly obliged to blame on humans. These changes, such as deforestation or the dominance of certain plants, may happen suddenly or take place over thousands of years. The authors study the pollen record in Colombia, identify plants diagnostic of cultivation or disturbed ground (“degraded vegetation”) and use them to map human activities by proxy. They show how the people move and the landscape changes between 5000 BP and the present day, from the coast inland, and from the lowlands up into the Andes.

This review of the evidence for early agriculture in New Guinea supported by new data from Kuk Swamp demonstrates that cultivation had begun there by at least 6950–6440 cal BP and probably much earlier. Contrary to previous ideas, the first farming in New Guinea was not owed to SouthEast Asia, but emerged independently in the Highlands. Indeed plants such as the banana were probably first domesticated in New Guinea and later diffused into the Asian continent.

The authors report an unusual denture, fashioned from elephant ivory and designed for someone who had probably lost their teeth. It was found in a latrine pit together with pottery and tobacco pipes, indicating that it had belonged to a wealthy tea-drinker of the early eighteenth century.

An international team of researchers show how high-precision radiocarbon dating is liberating us from chronological assumptions based on Biblical research. Surface and topographic mapping at the large copper-working site of Khirbat en-Nahas was followed by stratigraphic excavations at an ancient fortress and two metal processing facilities located on the site surface. The results were spectacular. Occupation begins here in the eleventh century BC and the monumental fortress is built in the tenth. If this site can be equated with the rise of the Biblical kingdom of Edom it can now be seen to: have its roots in local Iron Age societies; is considerably earlier than previous scholars assumed; and proves that complex societies existed in Edom long before the influence of Assyrian imperialism was felt in the region from the eighth – sixth centuries BC.

Remote mapping is painting in the context and filling the gaps of some of the best known archaeological places. Here Helen Fenwick shows what can be done to understand the ‘blank’ part of the great site at Tell el-Amarna using a differential GPS.

Investigation of a partially waterlogged Neolithic site, on an islet in a Scottish Hebridean loch, showed that early strategies of exploitation were already environmentally damaging. Loss of soil fertility through intensive ploughing is well-documented, but stripping the turf can be equally damaging to the environment. Working on the lake settlement of Eilean Domhnuill in North Uist, the authors show that turf was cut for building material and used as fuel and that this practice contributed to a rapid degradation of the land surface through erosion.

The authors report a reconstruction of the palaeogeography around the Harappan town of Lothal, major port of the Indus civilisation, using multispectral satellite imagery and environmental analysis. Key results include the identification of a broad tidally influenced palaeochannel adjoining the western part of Lothal and a former estuary towards the east. Micropalaeontological analyses show that Lothal developed over a tidal salt marsh and was subsequently left high and dry as the sea level dropped.

The innovative and gregarious Viking scholar and former director of the British Museum contemplates his travels in the changing landscape of early medieval Europe.

Two exhibitions, in England and France, are showing different ways to promote interest in archaeology and history from regions afar. Sudan: ancient treasures is a lavish and elegant show at the British Museum, London. In Auch, Le crépuscule des dieux, on the Americas, is imaginative but penurious. The first raises an ethical worry, the second a couple of technical principles.

Sudan displays some 350 exhibits, from an Acheulian handaxe to Medieval inscriptions, all from the Sudan National Museum, celebrating its centenary. Most are clearly arranged in chronological sections, and amplifying the narrative are an effective introduction and sections on goldwork, pottery and burials. The exhibition is completed by photographs of the multinational Meroe Dam Archaeological Salvage Project, which (it is claimed) has enhanced knowledge of the Sudan’s northern Nile. My visit was amidst a steady flow of highly attentive visitors from the world over and an excited but also attentive school party.