Archaeologists have long sought appropriate ways to describe the duration and floruit of archaeological cultures in statistical terms. Thus far, chronological reasoning has been largely reliant on typological sequences. Using summed probability distributions, the authors here compare radiocarbon dates for a series of European Neolithic cultures with their generally accepted ‘standard’ date ranges and with the greater precision afforded by dendrochronology, where that is available. The resulting analysis gives a new and more accurate description of the duration and intensity of European Neolithic cultures.

Ever since Wheeler's triumphant discovery of Roman pottery at Arikamedu in the 1940s, it has been appreciated that the east coast of India was in reach of the Roman Empire. Tracking down the finds of Roman pottery on the Indian sub-continent reported since then, the author discovered that many of the supposed Roman amphorae were actually ‘torpedo jars’ from Mesopotamia. Here the areas of influence of these two great imports, probably of wine, are mapped for the first time.

The conventional chronology of the Aegean Late Bronze Age was challenged by P.J. James and his co-workers in Centuries of darkness (1991). The present paper is an exhaustive and critical re-examination of radiocarbon dates from a number of key sites in the region using the technique of probabilistic computer archaeological wiggle matching which concludes that the conventional arhcaeological chronology still holds good (whatever the flaws in its original construction) on the basis of the independent radiocarbon evidence.

Previously considered a Bronze Age lacuna, the Northwest Xinjiang region of China has new archaeological finds, showing significant relationships between it and Kazakhstan and Kirghizia. The new Bronze Age culture of Xinjiang shows close affiliation with the Andronovo culture.

A new research project has revealed a fully specialised copper industry in south-west Iberia at the beginning of the third millennium BC. The settlement is rife with hierarchy: on the slopes of the hill copper-workers smelt and cast and have their own residential zone, while an incipient aristocracy occupies a small fortification at the summit and commands all the imports and means of transport. The author sees this social system as endemic to the new industry.

The archaeology of early agriculture in Britain was succinctly summarized five years ago (Bowen, 1961). Since then, and largely stimulated by that publication, further work has produced some useful results, not only in the new and continuing field surveys which the author sought mainly to encourage but also by experiment and excavation. Our concern here is primarily with the application of excavation techniques and subsequent molluscan analysis to the study of early fields (cf. Tubbs and Dimbleby, 1965), our discussion arising largely from work carried out since 1961 and in particular from our own excavations in 1966.

An element in the changing pattern of Australian archaeology has been the filling-in of great blanks on the archaeological map, once survey and excavation has begun to explore them. The dry lands of the great central and western deserts of Australia, a hard place for humans to this day, have in the last couple of decades come to find a large place in the transitional story.

Finds of metalwork always raise the question of why they were deposited: a smith's collection, a concealed hoard or a votive offering? Findspots in water suggest offerings, since they would be awkward to retrieve. But understanding the context of deposition means knowing the prehistoric environment. The Fenland area of England has many Bronze Age sites, and deposits of metalwork and a well-mapped ancient environment too. Putting all three together the authors begin to assemble a grammar of deposition: swords and rapiers in rivers, some mixed collections placed in still water and others on once-dry land with burnt mounds.

Tadmekka, a town at the southern edge of the Sahara desert, has produced good evidence for making gold coins in the ninth–tenth century AD, the first concrete proof of coinage in pre-colonial West Africa. These were produced by melting gold dust or nuggets in ceramic moulds, similar to those used for the first pellet-like coinage of the European Iron Age. The authors suggest these coins were not political statements, but were probably blank and intended to facilitate the busy early Islamic caravan trade to destinations north, south or east. On arrival at the Mediterranean coast, these blank pieces would have been melted down or converted into inscribed coins by the local authorities.

The authors present a unique long record of inner bark use by the Sami people of northern Scandinavia extending back to 2800 BP. Consistent patterns with respect to the direction and size of bark peeling scars shows that common values and standards were early applied. They further conclude that inner bark was important as a regular food and a vitamin C source at these northern latitudes. Bark-peeled trees as biological artefacts in forests also provide important data to understand subsistence strategies and spatial patterns of land use unique to areas with long winter seasons.

The prehistoric shell middens of Atlantic Europe consist of marine molluscs, but the eastern Baltic did not have exploitable marine species. Here the sole recorded shell midden, at Riņņukalns in Latvia, is on an inland lake and is formed of massive dumps of freshwater shells. Recent excavations indicate that they are the product of a small number of seasonal events during the later fourth millennium BC. The thickness of the shell deposits suggests that this was a special multi-purpose residential site visited for seasonal aggregations by pottery-using hunter-gatherer communities on the northern margin of Neolithic Europe.

The Romans brought the mortarium to Britain in the first century AD, and there has long been speculation on its actual purpose. Using analysis of the residues trapped in the walls of these ‘kitchen blenders’ and comparing them with Iron Age and Roman cooking pots, the authors show that it wasn't the diet that changed — just the method of preparing certain products: plants were being ground in the mortarium as well as cooked in the pot. As well as plants, the mortars contained animal fats, including dairy products. The question that remains, however, is why these natural products were being mixed together in mortaria. Were they for food, pharmaceuticals or face creams?

The halberd – a famous weapon of prehistoric Europe – is thought by some to have had a symbolic rather than a functional purpose. To find out if, and how, it might have worked as a weapon, the author tested a replica on a number of sheep's heads, finding it highly effective in administering killer blows. Studies taking off from these experiments show that the halberd probably performed both in fighting and ritual, and in ritualised fighting, during its predominance in the Early Bronze Age.

The domestication of the horse was revolutionary in its consequences – as much so as the spread of agriculture, trade, warfare, metalwork and the other more usual subjects addressed by archaeologists studying post-Neolithic human development. For not only did it directly cause important changes in peoples' relationships to the world around them by the mobility it conferred, but also it was deeply implicated in all those other developments. In spite of that, in the past 15 years very little has been done to extend our knowledge of the subject. This study, if anything, shows that we probably know even less about the earliest domestication of the horse than we thought

The authors present a synopsis of research on the remarkable early Neolithic cemetery near Lake Baikal known as “The Lokomotiv” which was first discovered by the constructors of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1880s. A current campaign of research is beginning to understand the great variety of the burial rites and their contexts. The rites include communal burials, burial in pairs head to toe and decapitation before burial, the position of the skull being sometimes taken by a carved object. Among the earliest graves was one containing a Tundra wolf.

The authors describe the first recognition of briquetage in Europe and the subsequent appreciation of the great prehistoric salt industry. Central to Iron Age production was the site of Briquetage de la Seille, where broken salt containers survive in mounds 12 metres high and half a kilometre long. New techniques map the source of brine, the workshops and the boilers. Salt production here knew two boom periods: the eighth to sixth and the second to first centuries BC.

A few years ago Professor Ole Klindt-Jensen, in publishing the results of his excavations of Migration Period sites on the island of Bornholm, described a remarkable find from the Sorte Muld settlement. Here, just outside the entrance to Building II, was a small pit containing the skull of a horse, its severed fore-legs, and a pelvic bone, accompanied by a few bones of sheep, pig and dog, and sherds which dated the pit to the main occupation phase of the site, in the 5th century A.D.(FIG. 2, 1).