In the period 1970–85, tree-ring research in Europe had resulted in the production of long oak chronologies for both Ireland and Germany going back over 7000 years (e.g. Brown et al. 1986; Leuschner & Delorme 1984). In England, there was a network of regional chronologies covering the historic period, and almost no chronological coverage for the prehistoric. For the archaeologist this meant that, provided a site from the historic period produced a replicated site chronology, the chances of dating by dendrochronology were very high. The chances of this happening for a prehistoric site were poor by comparison, although some sites were successfully dated, for example the Iron Age causeway from Fiskerton in Liricolnshire and the Hasholme log boat found in North Humberside (Hillam 1987).

The period 1985–88 saw an intense effort to outline a prehistoric oak tree-ring chronology in England (Baillie & Brown 1988). This work centred on sub-fossil oaks from East Anglia and Lancashire and built on a previous chronology from Swan Carr, near Durham which spanned 1155–381 BC (Baillie et al. 1983). The approach to chronology-building was to produce wellreplicated chronology units which could be located precisely in time against the existing Irish (Pilcher et al. 1984) and North German (Leuschner & Delorme 1984) chronologies.

The Formative in the northern Andes

The northern Andean regions, encompassing northernmost Peru, all of Ecuador and the southern provinces of Colombia, remain archaeologically very poorly known. Although the past 30 years have witnessed an increasing number of archaeological projects in coastal zones, especially the Santa Elena Peninsula, work in the highlands outside of the greater Quito commute zone has lagged sadly behind. Southern Ecuador, in particular, has had little investigation since earlier this century when first Max Uhle, then Donald Collier, John Murra and, finally, Wendell Bennett, demonstrated the existence of ‘Formative’ cultures in Ecuador through their investigations at sites along the Tomebamba and Paute rivers of Azuay province and at Cerro Narrío, just to the north in the Cañar Valley (Uhle 1922; Collier & Murra 1943; Bennett 1946; FIGURE 1).

A close relationship between the archaeology of Korea and that of China’s northeast or Dongbei region (formerly known as Manchuria) is frequently postulated (e.g. Kim 1986). Korean models of East Asian prehistory tend to look toward the Dongbei, and beyond into Siberia, for the source of populations that migrated into the Korean peninsula (e.g. Kim 1986: 23). On the Chinese side, the Dongbei is often seen as the recipient of impulses from the middle Huang He (e.g. Chang 1986: 238). By the latter reconstruction, settlement spread to the northeast from a nuclear area around the Huang He where millet cultivation, domesticated pigs, and painted pottery of complex shapes had arisen. These two models of migration and diffusion are not mutually contradictory, but they direct the interpretation of Dongbei Neolithic in different ways. New data from the Neolithic in the Dongbei and Korea do indicate connexions, but not of the simple sort implied by the migrationist and diffusionist models.

Writing in 1968, archaeologist William Mulloy rightfully called Easter Island (Rapa Nui) an ‘outdoor archaeological museum of unique significance’. Indeed, the potential value of the island’s archaeological sites and their import for the island’s tourist economy meant that sites were touted as museum displays worthy of preservation, restoration and curation (Mulloy & Figueroa G.-H. 1966; Mulloy 1968: iii). That value encouraged successful funding appeals by Mulloy for restoration of several ceremonial sites at Tahai, Ahu Akivi and elsewhere.

These restorations, first and foremost, ‘produced archaeological information bearing on the reconstruction of the local prehistoric culture’, while at the same time ‘the restorations are expected to serve as exhibit materials in relation to presently developing plans for a tourist industry’ (Mulloy 1968: iii).

Towards the end of 1989, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Chairman of English Heritage, announced that detailed planning had started on a visitor centre at Stonehenge. For someone not touched by the generations of wrangling over this site, or spared the depressing squalor with which a visit deftly obliterates any preconceptions of mystery or romance, what could be more appropriate than good visitor facilities at one of the world’s top heritage attractions? What could be simpler to construct in an open landscape of not particularly valuable farmland?

Of course, Stonehenge is not like that. This small group of standing stones by a road has provoked one of the most complex, bitter, and long-running archaeo-political stories of all time. It will run and run – make no doubt about that – but Lord Montagu’s announcement has a real significance for anyone with an interest in our past. Someone is actually trying to do something about the place.

A thematic or a period discipline?

Industrial archaeology has generally been defined as a thematic discipline, concerned with only one aspect of man’s past activity. Although the term ‘archaeology of industry’ was used in the 19th century, it was Michael Rix who used the phrase ‘industrial archaeology’ in print for the first time (Rix 1955). He later defined industrial archaeology as ‘recording, preserving in selected cases and interpreting the sites and structures of early industrial activity, particularly the monuments of the Industrial Revolution’ (Rix 1967: 5). The emphasis on the term ‘industrial monument’ followed a need to define an industrial class of Ancient Monument so that some examples would be scheduled. Industrial archaeology, then, grew from the need to record and preserve standing structures threatened with demolition rather than an inherent desire to understand more about the historical period of the monuments. It was perhaps felt that understanding of the industrial revolution period was more readily arrived at by other means, particularly written historical evidence. During the ‘rescue’ years of the 1960s and 1970s, archaeology was one of the two areas of fastest university expansion and very popular in extra-mural teaching. But none of the archaeology departments took up industrial archaeology, although many of the extra-mural departments did; it is largely as a part-time, amateur interest that industrial archaeology has flourished ever since. The author’s post as an industrial archaeologist in the Leicester archaeology department is one of the first occasions on which the specialism has been given a place in full-time undergraduate archaeology courses.

Introduction

Ships and the sea were an omnipresent theme of Greek and Roman art and life. Shipwreck was a well-recognized risk, and an essential ingredient of ‘lost and found’ stories in novels and comedies. Conversely, safe arrival in harbour, the successful end of a journey, was a frequent motif, especially of Roman art. These ideas were obviously underpinned by economic facts: the need for metals, the sea-girt nature of Greece, Rome’s central position in the Mediterranean, and the constant threat of food shortage in the cities of the Mediterranean world generally, necessarily involved transport and trade by sea.

Into this scene has stepped, still less than 50 years old, a new character, namely underwater archaeology. Since 1945, over 1000 ancient and medieval shipwrecks have been reported in the Mediterranean, and the roll continues to grow at an unslackened pace. This rapid increase in archaeological resource has been due, of course, mainly to the widespread use of compressed-air diving gear for sport, so that most of the known wreck sites lie in inshore waters, and in popular diving areas. However, recent developments in offshore position-fixing and in underwater communications and robotics have made it possible to explore much deeper sites; the deepest so far to have been surveyed under archaeological direction (by A.M. McCann) is a late Roman wreck at 800 m deep between Sicily and Sardinia.