The formative period of Maya civilization has been the subject of recent attention, both in discussion (e.g. Adams, 1977) and in excavation; several projects have been established specifically to investigate the processes that led to the Classic Maya florescence in the first millennium AD. Among these has been the Cuello Project, a joint venture of the British Museum, the National Geographic Society and Rutgers University; this article summarizes the results of the third and final season of the project’s excavations at Cuello, Belize (Fig. I), which took place from January to March, 1980. The terminology for excavated features, structures etc. is detailed in Hammond (1978).

The site was discovered during extensive surveys in 1973–4 (Hammond, 1974, Fig. I), and its potential for the study of the Preclassic or Formative period which preceded the rise of Classic Maya civilization led to a test excavation in 1975. The sequence of building levels and pottery preserved by the growth of Platform 34, a large flat construction with a small superincumbent pyramid (Str. 35) (PL. XXVIa), lying to the southwest of the main part of the site (Donaghey, et al., 1976, Fig. 2), showed that the uppermost floors on the platform had been laid in the Late Formative (conventionally 300 BC–AD 250 ), over structures of the Middle Formative (1000–300 BC). Below these were earlier deposits associated with pottery of pre-Middle Formative date which was assigned to the Early Formative (2000–1000 BC).

A convincing case has now been made out for linking [the cursus, avenues, alignments, henges and circles] with a remarkable store of engineering, mathematical and astronomical knowledge’ (Burgess, 1974, 195)

… it is fantastic to imagine that the ill-clad inhabitants of these boreal isles should shiver night long in rain and gale, peering through the driving mists to note eclipses and planetary movements in our oft-veiled skies’ (Childe, 1930, 164).

Over the last decade many claims have been made that early prehistoric Britain was the focus of a scientifically learned society whose mathematical, geometrical and astronomical discoveries anticipated those of the Babylonians and Greeks, and some of whose megalithic observatories survive for us to examine.

The heavy metal collar or neck-guard of the Dendra panoply (PL. XXXIIc; Verdelis, 1967; Åström, 1977; also Catling, 1977; Cassola Guida, 1973,52ffr)a ises a simple question which may have important implications for the study of Greek warfare in the Late Bronze Age. Pictorial and verbal representations reveal the neck as a highly vulnerable target in infantry warfare throughout the whole millennium which spans the Late Bronze Age and the classical period. Mycenae’s Shaft Grave warriors of the sixteenth century are frequently shown either aiming sword-thrusts downwards at an enemy’s throat over the top of his body-shield or thrusting upwards at his neck with a lance (e.g. Karo, 1930, Pl. 24, nos, 35, 116, 241; pp. 59, 177, Figs. 14, 87; Lorimer, 1950, 140–4, Figs. 2, 5, 6, 8; Cassola Guida, 1973, pl. I, Figs. 2–5; Furtwangler & Loeschcke, 1886, Pl. E, 30; and even lions get it in the neck: e.g. Evans, 1921–36, IV (2), 575, Fig. 556). The very differently accoutred Mycenaeans of the late thirteenth-century Warrior Vase and Stele march with spears poised for a downward thrust into their enemies’ necks (Furtwangler & Loeschcke, 1886, PI. 43; EA, 1896, P1. I; Lorimer, 1950, Pls. 3.1a; 2.2; Cassola Guida, 1973, Pls. 32,1 and 2; Verdelis, 1967, Beil. 32,2; Astrom, 1977, P1. ‘31,2). And the seventh-century hoplites do exactly the same on the Chigi Vase (CVA, Italy, I, P1. I; ABSA, XLII, 1947, 81, Fig. 2; Snodgrass, 1964, PI. 36).

The recent radar mapping discovery of widely distributed patterns of intensive agriculture in the southern Maya lowlands provides new perspectives on classic Maya civilization. Swamps seem to have been drained, modified, and intensively cultivated in a large number of zones. The largest sites of Maya civilization are located on the edges of swamps. By combining radar data with topographic information, it is possible to suggest the reasons for the choice of urban locations. With the addition of patterns elicited from rank-ordering of Maya cities, it is also possible to suggest more accurate means of defining Classic period Maya polities.