Burnt mounds, found across northern Europe, are especially frequent in Ireland. Here a new review of the Irish evidence is presented, and issue is taken with Barfield & Hodder's diagnosis, published in ANTIQUITY last year, that the primary function of the burnt mounds was as bathing places.

Stable isotopes in skeletons indicate changes in diet, and a sample of humans from Classical Thebes showed an unexpected increase in nitrogen values – usually associated with increased access to protein. But from what and how? After considering the possible sources of meat, milk and manure, the authors highlight the contribution of freshwater fish, and find support in Aristophanes – where the citizens are heard clamouring for the eels of Lake Kopais.

D.E. Nelson (1993), in the last ANTIQUITY, declared doubts about an old date for rock art in northern Australia we published in 1990. T.H. Loy, another co-author of the original paper, confirms his continuing confidence in the determination.

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.

Carbonised textiles were found in a burnt down building inside a cave 30km from the far eastern coast of Russia. The textiles were made from untwisted or hand-twisted blades of sedge grass to form ropes, nets and woven mats. Dated by AMS to c. 9400–8400 cal BP these are the earliest textiles so far known from East Asia.

The advance of new scientific methods, in particular the thermoluminescence technique for analysis of ceramic objects (Aitken and Fleming, 1972; Perlman et al., 1972), have opened up new possibilities for investigation of the mysterious finds at Glozel. As a first contribution we describe in this article the thermoluminescence analysis of a number of typical Glozelian objects: inscribed clay tablets, face urns, sexual idols, small vessels (lamps) and bobines. Our results are in marked contrast with earlier assumptions of forgery: all objects investigated prove to be genuine and give a preliminary date within the period 700 BC-AD 100.

A new project aims to define the origins and dispersal patterns of the opium poppy in Neolithic Western Europe through a comprehensive programme of radiocarbon dating.

In December 1834 Athens became the capital city of the newly founded Hellenic Kingdom. King Otto, the Bavarian prince whose political and cultural initiative shaped much of what modern Greece is today, sought to design the new city inspired by the heavily idealised model of Classical Hellas (see Bastea 2000). The emerging capital was from the outset conceived as a heterotopia of Hellenism, a Foucauldian 'other space' devoted to Western Classicism in view of the Classical ruins it preserved. The Acropolis became, naturally, the focal point of this effort. At the same time, however, and as Greek nationalist strategies were beginning to unfold, Classical antiquity became a disputed topos, a cultural identity of sorts contested between Greece on the one hand and the 'Western world' on the other (see Yalouri 2001: 77–100). Archaeological sites thus became disputed spaces, claimed by various interested parties of national or supra-national authority wishing to impose their own views on how they should be managed — and to what ends (Loukaki 2008). The Acropolis was duly cleansed from any non-Classical antiquities and began to be constructed as an authentic Classical space, a national project still in progress. As Artemis Leontis has argued in her discussion of Greece as a heterotopic 'culture of ruins', the Acropolis of Athens, now repossessed by architectural renovation and scholarly interest, functions 'as a symbol not of Greece's ancient glory but of its modern predicament' (Leontis 1995: 40–66; see also McNeal 1991; Hamilakis 2007: 85–99).

In Garton Slack and Wetwang Slack, which together constitute one stretch of a dry valley to the west of Driffield, gravel extraction over 20 years has resulted in the excavation of a large part of an extensive Iron Age settlement.

Roads and ditches formed a focus for scores of buildings—roundhouses and post squares—as well as a cemetery of 446 inhumations in the ‘Arras Culture’ tradition and the first cart burial (in 1971) to be excavated under modern conditions (Dent, 1982, 1983; Brewster, 1971; 1981; Stead, 1984). Startling though many of these finds were, none exceeded the discovery of a group of three cart burials in the summer of 1984.

The first grave was discovered by the quarry manager, Mick Ward, who recognized it as a cart burial (he had seen the 1971 find, as well as numerous other burials in the valley) when the dark discolouration of the fill appeared in the quarry face and part of one tyre and the skull were exposed. He reported his discovery at once and I visited the site the same afternoon. The part of the quarry where the find was made had been stripped of topsoil a week or two earlier.

Herodotus' 5th-century BC Histories provide us with one of the earliest written accounts for the practice of cannibalism. This paper examines the references concerning cannibalism contained in Herodotus, reviews the theories proposed to account for these references, and suggests a new explanation for this cultural motif.

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?

Key locations identified with the lives of important religious founders have often been extensively remodelled in later periods, entraining the destruction of many of the earlier remains. Recent UNESCO-sponsored work at the major Buddhist centre of Lumbini in Nepal has sought to overcome these limitations, providing direct archaeological evidence of the nature of an early Buddhist shrine and a secure chronology. The excavations revealed a sequence of early structures preceding the major rebuilding by Asoka during the third century BC. The sequence of durable brick architecture supplanting non-durable timber was foreseen by British prehistorian Stuart Piggott when he was stationed in India over 70 years ago. Lumbini provides a rare and valuable insight into the structure and character of the earliest Buddhist shrines.