Further work inside the Grotte Cosquer, the Palaeolithic painted cave near Marseilles only accessible by a deep-water dive, improves our knowledge and makes it clear there can be no artificial entrance made to create a dry-land access.

The phenomenon of cattle-depositions in Central Europe (c. 3500-2200 BC) provides an opportunity to explore distinctions between sacrifice, burial and grave goods. Waggon models, sun-symbols and buried pairs of cattle suggest additional ideas about the religious beliefs and behaviour of Neolithic societies in central Europe.

Museums across the USA are busy carrying out their new obligations under NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. There is more to the mood than some change in how human remains are curated in archaeological and anthropological collections.

We are pleased to present here a preliminary account of the first discovery of Palaeolithic cave art in Britain.

On 14 April 2003 we made the first discovery of Palaeolithic cave art in Britain. Since portable art of the period has long been known in this country (Sieveking 1972; Campbell 1977: vol. 2, figs 102, 105, 143), it has always seemed probable that parietal art must also have existed. We knew that we were most unlikely to discover paintings, since these are generally quite visible; but as far as we knew, nobody with a trained eye and advantageous lighting had combed the British caves in search of engravings, which are often extremely difficult to see. Such was the purpose of our initial survey and, sure enough, we rapidly encountered engraved marks in a number of caves, which we will be investigating more fully and systematically in the near future. At the well-known sites of Creswell Crags, in Derbyshire, we found both figurative and non-figurative engravings of the period. What follows is a brief, preliminary announcement of a discovery soon to be further amplified in print following systematic investigation.

The Grottes d'Arcy, situated on the main road (RN 6) between Auxerre and Avallon, are the closest big caves to Paris (FIG. I). Between the 16th and the 19th centuries the most distinguished visitors, from Louis XI11 to M. de Buffon (1740), marvelled at the immense galleries adorned with stalactites at the Grande Grotte. The caves still attract many tourists. All nine of the Arcy caves have a generally southerly exposure, and they have been cut into-some of them through-the south flank of a Jurassic limestone massif, or promontory, around which the Cure River flows in a large bow between Saint-MorC and Arcy-sur-Cure. Actually this area is on the border between the southwestern limits of the Seine Basin and the extreme northwestern extension of the granitic massif of the Morvan, where the Cure has its source. This complex of caves lies on the left bank of the Cure just west of RN 6 some 12 km. south of (i.e. upstream from) the confluence of the Yonne and the Cure, at a distance of just over 27 km. south-southwest of Auxerre and about 17 km. north-northwest of Avallon. Here the Cure (the mean elevation of which at this

Across the rocky landscapes of Egypt lies evidence for pharaonic quarrying and mining; fresh fieldwork at neglected sites, such as the Hatnub travertine quarries and the Wadi el-Hudi amethyst mines, now tells us more. The surviving remains of quarrying and mining settlements suggest subtle adaptations in versatile response to changing economic and geographical parameters.

Palaeolithic people could foresee their technological future no more, or even less, than we are able to. They never said, ‘The Middle Palaeolithic has gone on quite long enough — now we'd better get on with a transition to the Upper.’ So what is one to make of those precocious lithic industries which prefigure key features of later innovations, the industries which ‘run ahead’ of their own time?

The remains of a hunting site dated to 15000 years ago, captured in an ice wedge, included woolly rhinoceros, horse and arctic fox. Also present were 30 flint plaquettes with curvy feminine outlines. The authors show that these unworn flint profiles can be assigned to a canon of Magdalenian art that extends over much of northern Europe.

The early Neolithic in northern Central Europe ought to be the theatre in which incoming farmers meet local hunter-gatherers, with greater or lesser impact. By way of contrast, the authors use isotope analysis in a cemetery beside the Danube to describe a peaceful, well-integrated community with a common diet and largely indigenous inhabitants. Men and women may have had different mobility strategies, but the isotopes did not signal special origins or diverse food-producing roles. Other explanations attend the variations in the burial rites of individuals and their distribution into cemetery plots.

An account from Fracisco Pizarro's expedition tells of a trading raft encountered along the coast of Ecuador. It gives a rare first-hand record of the established exchange of fine craftwork along the north-western coast of South America. The excavation in 1992–3 of a Manteño-period workshop in Manabí Province gives a corresponding archaeological view of the making of these luxury goods.

Contemporary life has become deeply entangled with the digital. Every day, huge quantities of data, or digital artefacts, are generated. To date, the archaeological study of these artefacts has been limited, its potential demonstrated by a few initial studies and, more recently, the emergence of archaeogaming. If archaeology seeks to understand human culture, however, the study of these digital artefacts must become mainstream. This will require collaboration with computer scientists to bring an archaeological sensibility to understanding the virtual. Ultimately, the aims and methods required resemble those that archaeologists have already developed, but require a change of mindset if they are to be widely deployed for the study of digital artefacts.

Introduction: turns and returns

When politicians engage in archaeology, it is convenient for all concerned to say that they ‘turn’ to it: for both parties, this move confirms that the discipline itself is essentially neutral and independent from extrinsic considerations. Already subject to much suspicion, this comforting conception can be further undermined with the case of Field-Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870-1950), for half a century South Africa's leading soldier, statesman and intellectual, as well as a driving force behind the setting up of the Commonwealth and the LJnited Nations (FIGURE 1).

In recent decades, the Eurasian Middle–Upper Palaeolithic (M–UP) transition has been a topic of major interest among palaeoanthropologists. Great progress has been made in several domains, particularly palaeogenetics, which have revealed the complex ancestry of early Eurasians. This progress—including the identification of a ghost lineage of Eurasians in the Middle East—is providing important new biogeographical hypotheses. A key region for such topics is the Iranian Plateau—an area that has so far not been subject to intensive research.

Most archaeology and anthropology departments are grouped as Humanities or as Social Sciences in university organizations. Where does that place the archaeometrists who approach the materials with the methods of physical and biological sciences? And where does it place the archaeologists themselves — especially when archaeometric studies have a large place in contract archaeology?

With the advent of relatively inexpensive image-handling computer programmes, digital image enhancement is more readily available to archaeologists. This paper describes the principles behind image enhancement and its application to rock-art in particular. Its use at a site in Torres Strait shows how it can be used successfully to reveal faded rock paintings.

The Acheulean handaxe is one of the most iconic, analysed and fiercely debated artefacts from the prehistoric period. Persisting for over one million years and recovered from sites across the Old World its distinctive, often symmetrical, tear drop or ovate shape appears to be over-engineered for a subsistence function alone. Debate has centred upon trying to unravel the reasons for this form; raw material, knapping technique, subsistence function, cognition, social context of manufacture and sexual selection have all been proposed as key factors (Jones 1994; White 1998; Gamble 1999; Kohn & Mithen 1999; McPherron 2000; Gowlett 2006).