A new wall has joined the classics of history, the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall. This story of the central monument of 20th-century European history is a remarkable case-study in the meaning of a single item of material culture, showing the richness of confused meaning that must also envelop the older walls of arcaheological concern.

The recent publication of cuneiform texts relating to Babylon allows a reassessment of the city's topography, and sheds light on the remains discovered by Robert Koldewey and more recent excavators. A comparison of the archaeological and documentary evidence relating to selected structures of the city provides examples of the ways in which archaeology and philology can successfully complement each other.

Consistent to most views of Indo-European in later European prehistory is a genetic focus. The blanket of related languages across Europe marks an equal human spread – whether of steppe warriors, Beaker burialists or slashing-and-burning farmers. What if the languages are reconstructed using other premisses than this ‘genealogical’ view?

Very little is known of the Upper Palaeolithic of Portugal, although it has been assumed to have the same general characteristics as elsewhere in southwestern Europe. New evidence suggests clear technological distinctions between Portugal and other areas of southwestern Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum, c. 18,000 (uncalibrated) years ago, and allows an initial synthesis for Portuguese Late Glacial prehistory, 16,000-8500 b.p.

In watery places people prefer to live where they can keep their feet dry, and an elevation of a metre or two can make a difference. The simple distinction between humanly created middens and naturally built features does not easily apply in the Australian tropics, where the natural causes include cyclones, shellfish die-off and the building of mounds by scrub turkeys, and where foragers are not directed in where they choose to camp by concern for the classification by which tidy-minded archaeologists may want to order mounds in the wetlands.

The recent great exhibition in Venice of Celtic art and artefacts showed once again the intriguing attraction of the Celtic traditions, so influential in our view of old Europe, both western and central. But what about the Celts in the east, and specifically in the region to the north and west of the Black Sea? And what is the relation between that artefactual evidence, Celtic artefacts in the west, and the evidence from the documents?

The great cast bronzes of China are today deservedly celebrated for their splendour and sheer size. By looking behind that surface impression, and into the characters of their find-contexts, one can - as for any class of artefact - see behind what they are for us towards what they were in their own time.

Later in this number of ANTIQUITY is a review, page 930, of our knowledge, direct and often indirect, about chariots and wagons in the Europe of 2000 years ago. How much greater is our knowledge in China, where sacrificial burials of vehicles with their horses and drivers may give evidence of chariots by the fleet!

This year, as it seems every year, news comes from China of another spectacular archaeological discovery. What is the framework of ideas and research that studies these treasures? And how does the special character of Chinese history, with its long, near-continuous record of dynasties, written sources and encyclopaedic texts, give archaeology a different place, whether higher or lower, among the other historical and social sciences?

The modernizing of China brings up once more the twin needs to sweep away that which is old and bad, and to hold on to that which is old and good. A report illustrates the particular issue and some outcomes.

New radiocarbon determinations from northwest France further contribute to the proposition - 25 years old now – that the megaliths of the region are astoundingly early in the west European Neolithic sequence.

Old carpets, as informative material objects, are therefore the proper stuff of archaeology. Aspects of the carpet world offer food for thought as to how entities we recognize among the debris of antiquity come to be recognized and valued. Here James Mellaaart's recorded paintings from Çatal Hüyük, which ‘surfaced’ a generation after the dig was completed, have now come to have an unexpected role.

An analysis of the Roman coins lost on different types of site within Roman Britain shows strong chronological and geographical trends, as well as providing a critique for the current classification of sites.

It is more than 70 years since O.G.S. Crawford, founder of ANTIQUITY, was given air photographs from southern England which led him to realize their potential for archaeology. Leo Deuel's book Flights into yesterday was translated into Czech in 1979, providing a first impetus to the new programme of work in Bohemia presented here, a programme made possible by the new freedom to fly and photograph that followed the revolution of 1989.

Our special section on heritage in the June issue took the conventional current view that excavation is destruction. A more creative vision is offered.

A site dated well back into the Pleistocene in Western Australia yields modified shells, seen as a further evidence of the attributes of modern humans from an early Australian context.

Age-distributions of perinatal infants from Romano-British sites and a medieval site are different and may reflect different major causes of death. Whilst the medieval infants probably represent natural deaths, the Romano-British infants, from both cemetery and non-cemetery sites, may mainly represent victims of infanticide.

A further contribution on art, history and archaeological attitude in South Africa.

D.E. Nelson, radiocarbon scientist in the group which reported early dates for rock-art at two Australian sites in ANTIQUITY 64 (1990), reports a further study which leads him to withdraw the published date for one, at Laurie Creek (Northern Territory). As he notes, is co-authors in the 1990 paper are not all in agreement with his present view. The other site dated in 1990, Judds Cavern (Tasmania), is not addressed in this further report.