A bone deposit found in a round barrow overlying a rich Beaker-period burial in Northamptonshire (England) contained at least 184 domestic cattle skulls and one aurochs skull, but very few other cattle bones or bones of other animals. Most of the cattle were young adults. The relative scarcity of premolars suggests that they were deposited on the cairn some time after death. The paper discusses archaeological and ethnographic parallels for this unusual deposit.

Intensive work in the La Mancha region of Spain has revealed a hitherto unknown density of Bronze Age settlement. It is based on large, permanent, fortified settlements associated with intensive agriculture of modern Mediterranean type. Their sudden abandonment in the mid 2nd millennium BC is interpreted as evidence of the establishment of stronger political control by local rulers.

A generally accepted model identifies a causal relationship between the appearance and development of metallurgy in western Europe and increasing social complexity, with metals being assigned the determinant role. This multidisciplinary study of the Vera region of southeast Spain suggests that metal production in the region was small-scale and of secondary importance in generating social and cultural changes.

Absolute dating of prehistoric rock paintings is an exciting archaeological pursuit. Sophisticated sample collection, handling and pretreatment methods and new analytical equipment and techniques are minimizing contamination and permitting identification of trace amounts of organic substances in prehistoric paints. Radiocarbon dating using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is producing dates for minute residues of blood, charcoal and plant fibres, either accidentally or deliberately incorporated in paintings. Carbon-bearing laminations, such as oxalate-crusts and silica skins, which have accumulated under and over rock art, have also been recently dated.

In the early Middle Ages there was a short period when prehistoric burial mounds were reused and new barrows constructed over much of western Europe. This is interpreted as an expression of opposition to the new Christian ideology, in a time of social changes in the distribution of power and property.

Archaeology is notoriously vulnerable to the ideological pressures of authoritarian regimes. This paper charts the political influences that shaped archaeology in Spain for some 40 years. Following the Civil War Spanish archaeologists were isolated from mainstream theoretical evolution, a situation that was exacerbated by the exile of some leading figures. The centralizing authoritarianism of the Franco régime stifled regional autonomy in administration and research, and key archaeological appointments went to committed supporters of the régime.

Whilst there is no evidence that human representations in Palaeolithic art are an accurate reflection of contemporary social demography, they can yield valuable data on Palaeolithic populations and their social organization. The paper analyses a group of Palaeolithic figures which show that women seem to have been accorded a privileged role in hunter-gatherer society, based on their physiological functions as mothers and sexual and social partners.

Recent work at the important Neolithic site of Bylany (Czechoslovakia) has shifted from the large-scale open-area excavations of the 1960s to intensive field survey and selective excavation. The 1991 investigation concentrated on the so-called ‘Rondel’, a multivallate enclosure with entrances at the cardinal points. Analysis of the internal structures revealed suggests that the main function of these features was ceremonial.

The first major season of field operations at this major Lowland Maya site, located on the eastern edge of the Classic Maya core area, has revealed a great deal of information about the layout of the site and also demonstrated that its history was a long one.

Like the Sardinian nuraghi, which they closely resemble, the stone-built towers on the Balearic Islands known as talayots have been the subject of considerable research in recent years. The present paper analyses a series of radiocarbon dates from the Son Ferrandell Oleza settlement and discusses the implications for Balearic prehistory.

It has been suggested that the bright green fluorescence shown by the hair of Lindow Man II is due to the use of copper-based pigments for body decoration. However, scientific analysis shows that this fluorescence is due to a natural reaction of the hair keratin with acid in the peat in which the body was buried.

The surviving author of ‘The myth of long-distance megalith transport’ (ANTIQUITY 65: 64–73) stresses the support given by megalithic sites in the Channel Islands to the exposure of this persistent myth.