In ANTIQUITY a year ago, Vincent & Ruth Megaw found a useful parallel between the multiple definitions of the ancient Celts, as it can be seen from varied sources, and the several ways an individual's ethnic identity is seen and defined in the contemporary world. Here the other view is stated: that the methodology and interpretations advocated by the Megaws are both false and dangerous.

Chemical analysis of the stunning Muisca metalwork shows that the alloys of copper and gold were especially composed for each offering. Traditionally, the Muisca objects have been collected and studied as works of art. Our authors show that when it comes to drawing understanding of people from the objects they have left us, context is all. The results have much to reveal to metallurgists and students of symbolic metalwork everywhere.

Post-colonial thought affects the heart of Western science. Although there is comparatively little engagement with post-colonial theory in the fields traditionally concerned with human origins or human evolution, it should be of critical importance to Palaeolithic archaeology and human evolutionary studies. Examination of recent literature dealing with so-called modern human origins highlights key neglected aspects of this discourse, namely the status of nature and rationality, and demonstrates how these aspects are entangled with ongoing political and colonial influences on the production of knowledge.

Examination of skeletal material from graves at Phum Snay in north-west Cambodia revealed an exceptionally high number of injuries, especially to the head, likely to have been caused by interpersonal violence. The graves also contain a quantity of swords and other offensive weapons used in conflict. The authors propose a context for these warriors in the struggle between emergent polities in the Iron Age before the domination of Angkor.

CC intro: The genesis of urnfield cemeteries and of Late Bronze Age culture change is often related to an economic and environmental crisis. In the Lower Rhine Basin, changes in burial rites, settlement structure and hoarding practices show a transformation of ideology, consistent with the dissolution of a society into smaller, more autonomous social units.

Most of what is heard in the West of Chinese archaeology is about the physical stuff — the astonishing string of major finds; some, like soldiers from the Terracotta Army of the First Emperor's tumulus, have been exhibited outside China. All archaeological material is excavated, described and explained by reference to some frame of ideas. This essay on the thinking of a leading Chinese archaeologist of our day, Su Bingqi, is accompanied by an article of his in translation.

Intensive work in the La Mancha region of Spain has revealed a hitherto unknown density of Bronze Age settlement. It is based on large, permanent, fortified settlements associated with intensive agriculture of modern Mediterranean type. Their sudden abandonment in the mid 2nd millennium BC is interpreted as evidence of the establishment of stronger political control by local rulers.

A suite of radiocarbon dates for a regional group of the earlier Bronze Age in Hungary provides a valuable underpinning to the absolute chronology of a key region and period.

Rapid extension of 14C-age dating into the Last Glaciation due to a rising interest in high-resolution climate events is demanding ever greater emphasis on accurate stratigraphic placement of samples relative to events or objects to be dated. This shifts the primary responsibility for date quality from the producer of dates, who is responsible for their precision, to geological and archaeological consumers, who are responsible for their stratigraphic and calibrated accuracy. It is essential that both sides accept the partial switch of mutual roles and collaborate constructively and respect the traditional freedom of choice that marks basic research.

The question of ancient artificial dwellings or huts has been the subject of lively scientific discussion recently, though notices of their discovery at various palaeolithic sites in Europe have appeared in the literature from time to time throughout the past thirty years. Most of the archaeological evidence on the subject has been collected by Soviet workers whose discoveries of traces of ancient huts (in the course of extensive excavations at several palaeolithic stations in the U.S.S.R., both in Europe and in Siberia) have extended the history of domestic architecture to the remotest times. This journal contained a detailed account of these discoveries in V. G. Childe’s article ‘Cave Men’s Buildings’ (ANTIQUITY, XXIV, 4-11). I can now report on the latest excavations at the well-known upper-palaeolithic mammoth hunters’ settlement on the Pavlov Hills near Dolni Věstonice (south Moravia, Czechoslovakia), where fresh evidence of ancient artificial human shelters has come to light during the past few years. Before doing so, I should like to point out that the identification of these hut-sites in the course of excavations is surely a sign of considerable advance in archaeology, its methods of research and principal aims. While former excavations often exploited cultural horizons with the sole object of collecting the greatest possible number of relics of ancient cultures, and particularly of rarities, recent researches have a more fundamental object: to reveal behind the mere artifact the living man and artificer himself, and thereby the conditions of his life, and the development of human society. For this reason archaeological research to-day, employing modern methods in cooperation with experts in allied sciences, endeavours first and foremost to amplify material finds by a most detailed description of the circumstances of discovery, and by a study of the inter-relation of these finds with each other and with the site. It is this that constitutes progress in archaeological science, and at the same time indicates why hut-sites were not recognized during the previous systematic excavations directed at Dolni Věstonice by Dr K. Absolon in the years 1924-38. These excavations, surely carried out in masterly fashion (for their period), are principally known through the rich collections furnished by them for the Moravian Museum at Brno, which contained many objects of considerable cultural and scientific value. The remains of huts failed however to be recognized then, although Dr Absolon expected to find evidence of dwellings of permanent construction. Dolni Věstonice is therefore chiefly known in international palaeolithic literature as the site of great accumulations of mammoth-bones, of small baked clay figurines of animals, of statuettes of women (the Vëstonice Venus, 1925), of a carved female portrait of mammoth ivory (1936), and of the oldest musical instruments.

The province (or regione) of Molise is roughly the size of Lincolnshire or Devon, and stretches from the Apennine mountains to the Adriatic coast (FIG. I). In the Roman period Molise was occupied by the Samnite peoples and by related tribes such as the Frentani (Salmon, 1967, 25, map I). The historical tradition describes the Samnites as a rustic and warlike people, whom the Romans subdued only after the long series of savage wars in the last three centuries BC. Despite this historical evidence, however, the lack of previous archaeological research in Molise until the recent past meant that the archaeological record for this period in the province prior to 1974 was essentially confined to two major town sites of the Roman period (Boiano and Sepino), and two Samnite and Roman religious sanctuaries. For the same reason practically nothing was known about earlier prehistoric settlement. In the rest of Italy the evidence for early man built up by survey and excavation usually goes back at least as far as the Middle Palaeolithic, up to some 100,000 years ago. For Molise, however, there were in 1974 only chance finds of prehistoric flint and stone artifacts in local and national museum collections, most with little or no exact information about provenance. Molise was therefore virtually a blank area on the archaeological map of Italy.

Around 3100 B.C. the kingship of Egypt, a country probably united already for over a century, passed into the hands of a family which tradition states originated from the Thinite nome in Upper Egypt. At about the same time the keeping of written records was begun and these first historic kings have come to form what we know as the 1st Dynasty. This was clearly a crucial and momentous period for under their rule Egyptian civilization began to take on that peculiarly characteristic form which was to last so long. It is obviously a matter of some consequence to be able to locate the tombs of these kings but here archaeology has provided a puzzle. For two quite separate sites have been identified as the royal cemetery of the period [I].