In a recent ANTIQUITY article (65: 767–95) Atholl Anderson presented a detailed analysis of radiocarbon dates to show that the settlement of New Zealand occurred later than previously thought. In this paper Anderson teams up with another proponent of ‘chronometric hygiene’, Matthew Spriggs (see ANTIQUITY 63: 587–613), to examine the dates for the colonization of the rest of East Polynesia. Once again the generally accepted dates for initial settlement are found wanting and a later chronology is suggested.

It is more than forty years now since the first radiocarbon dates began the reconciliation of conventional and absolute chronologies for later prehistory. This pioneering radiocarbon chronology for the Bronze Age sequence in Central Europe brings that process nearer to a close, by filling the last major gap in the radiocarcbon chronology of the European continent.

Linguistic, ethnographic, archaeological and technical evidence demonstrates the mythological and ceremonial importance of the swordfish in Chumash culture. From at least the 1st century AD, there existed among the Chumash of the Santa Barbara region, California, a productive fishery for swordfish (Xiphias gladius) by harpoon. The probability is that a shamanistic cult was intended to bring this great ‘master of the sea’ within reach of fishermen and to persuade it occasionally to drive whales ashore, making their meat available. Evidence from a number of world-wide sources shows that this Chumash belief was, indeed, founded in fact.

Since 1835 travellers and scholars have been looking at, and ‘reading’, a strange painting of apparently fish-tailed figures at Ezeljagdspoort, in the southern part of the Cape Province, South Africa. Each reading has been made within some external frame-of-reference, whether supposed histories of racial conflict or Jungian archetypes of child-like primitive insight. These set aside, a surer route to an ‘inside’ reading may be based on our knowledge of Bushman shamanism.

Tectonic movements – continuously re-moulding the surface of the earth over the inexorable activity of underlying plate motions – are rarely taken into account when assessing landscape change, except as an exotic hazard to human life or a temporary disruption in longer-term trends. Active tectonics also create and sustain landscapes that can be beneficial to human survival. The tectonic history of northwest Greece shows Palaeolithic sites located to take advantage of tectonically created features at both local and regional scales.

Excavation of a cropmark in northeast Scotland revealed a substantial timber hall of the general form one expects from the early medieval period. Yet it turned out to be Neolithic in date! The structure produced copious quantities of charred cereal grains from contexts intimately associated with its destruction. Accelerator dates confirm the integrity of selected species with the period of use of the building. Hexaploid wheat and cultivated flax were both identified.

In 1989 ANTIQUITY published a special section of papers on the archaeology of the steppe zone, to notice the special role of that great sweep of land that links the northern fringes of early prehistoric agriculture in Europe and Asia. A new international team has now returned to Jeitun, the key early agricultural site in Turkmenistan, on the edge of the Kara Kum desert.

The relationship between archaeology and history is not just an abstract theoretical question: it is one which determines the practical organization of archaeological activity and the publication of its results. It is a general problem of archaeology in Europe, where the subject has had to differentiate itself from the historical study of a long series of literate cultures; and it is especially acute in the former Soviet bloc, where a Marxist orthodoxy of historical science formerly prevailed. Leo Klejn is Russaian archaeology's most distinguished theoretician. Here he discusses in his own words both the academic sociology of the historical sciences and the role which he sees for archaeology within them.

Ground radar investigates shallow archaeological features in burial mounds of the Kofun Period (300-700 AD) in Japan. A variety of analytical methods – time slices, synthetic radargrams simulated from model structures, and 3-D depth constructions – are used to interpret the profiles, to reveal the location, depth and shapes of buried features.

During the late Holocene, Aboriginal rock painters in north Queensland selected and combined various natural inorganic and organic materials in paint recipes – possibly to increase the longevity of their paintings. The organic materials make direct radiocarbon dating possible.

Shellfish-gathering is the stuff of many a hunter-gatherer economy. It is technically hunting – the beasties are animals – but they conveniently sit in the mud and on the rocks ready to be gathered. A new means of studying growth-rings in clam shells gives insight into shellfish-gathering and the seasonal pattern of life-ways in southern New England.

In Europe the tradition of building in wood, which has roots reaching back into antiquity, is now mostly lost. Wooden architecture does, however, survive in parts of Eastern Europe, particularly in Romania. In addition to their architectural interest, the buildings contain a rich legacy of folk-art.

Recent decades have seen remarkable finds of metal objects from Irish soil – and equally remarkable consequences when some of those objects have surfaced on the open antiquities market.

The Excavation Index, a national index of excavations compiled by the Royal Commission, makes it possible to generate some statistics on the changing pattern of English archaeology, as reflected in the number and periods of sites dug.

A review of the scattered evidence for climate change in Bohemia and its Bohemia and its region shows the importance as well as the difficulty of plotting a better history. Newly identified phases, both dry and wet hint at other fluctuations as yet only guessed at.

A place named Wot-a-emi has been associated by the Andaman Islanders with the origins of their ancestors. How does this myth square with archaeological findings?

The need for dynamic management of the archaeological heritage, aptly if somewhat ponderously described as "a non-renewable cultural resource’, was first recognized in the USA in the early 1970s following the passage of the Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act (still fondly known to veterans of the struggles that led up to its enactment as "Moss-Bennett’ after its sponsors in the House of Representatives). The message spread slowly across the world and into the consciousness of international bodies.

It is widely recognized that a knowledge and understanding of the origins and development of human societies is of fundamental importance to humanity in identifying its cultural and social roots.

In January 1992, 20 States signed the European Convention on the Protection of the Archneological Heritage (Revised) which is intended to replace the original Convention of 1969. Signature indicates that States agree on the actual text that was before the meeting where the Convention was considered, in this case the Third European Conference of Ministers Responsible for the Cultural Heritage. It obliges States not to do anything actively contrary to the provisions of the Convention. However, States are not bound by the Convention until they ratify it. As at June 1992 no States had yet ratified the Revised Convention, but this is understandable as it usually takes at least six months for such a process to be completed even by the most enthusiastic of States.