We asked Sarah Colley, who teaches Aboriginal archaeology and heritage management at the University of Sydney, Australia, to give an account of the 3rd World Archaeological Congress, held at New Delhi, India, 4–11 December 1994, as she experienced it.

There is more to a cremation than the human bone — turned white and blue-grey by the fire, enough to fill a fair-sized hat — because so much may go on the pyre with the corpse.

Since 1992, on-going excavations of the Early to Middle Jomon period Sannai Maruyama site (3500-2000 BC) have uncovered the large size and complexity of this prehistoric hunter-gatherer settlement.

Perhaps the greatest handicap in trying to visualize life in prehistoric Britain is the exiguity of domestic remains, especially on the architectural side. The dwellings themselves were normally of perishable materials so that only their outlines survive, and of their furniture not even that can be said. An exceptional conjunction of circumstances has, however, preserved in Orkney a whole village belonging to a belated Stone Age, with its huts and their fixtures reasonably complete. The huts were built of stone; they had been packed in refuse and were eventually buried by sand, and so the walls still stand to a height of from 8 to 9 feet. The timber shortage prevailing on the wind-swept isle necessitated the translation into stone, and therewith the immortalization of articles such as beds, usually manufactured of ephemeral wood. The village is indeed a highly specialized adaptation to a particular environment so that deductions from it can only be generalized with reservations. Again, though the villagers used only stone and bone tools, they probably lived at a time when bronze, and perhaps even iron, were current in less isolated localities. Still we get here so vivid a picture of Stone Age life in our islands that a summary of the results of four seasons' work may be of interest even to the general reader.

A Late Palaeolithic amber figurine has been skilfully recovered and reassembled from a ploughed open site in northern Germany. Dated between 11 800 and 11 680 cal BC it occupies a key point between the Magdalenian and the Mesolithic. The authors show that the figurine represents a female elk which was probably carried on the top of a wooden staff. They argue for continuity of art but change of belief in this crucial transition period.

The current renewal of interest in the history of archaeology can be explained in several ways, and notably in view of the extraordinary extension of the discipline's objects and methods. In the last decades, the most far-flung regions of the earth have been subjected to systematic exploration, radiometric dating techniques have continually improved, DNA studies have contributed to the transformations of biological anthropology, and indeed the very process of human evolution has heen cast in new light by the changing boundaries between humanity and animality. A natural science for many founding fathers of prehistory, a social science for those who emphasize its anthropological dimensions, archaeology has remained for others a historical discipline by virtue of its proximity to ancient languages and inscriptions. At one end of the spectrum, some archaeologists see themselves as specialists in material culture, able to deal with ohjects, both ancient and modern, as simultaneously technical and semiotic systems. At the other end, there are those who will only put their faith in the detailed approach of singular, particular cultures. To put the matter in extreme terms; it seems as if there existed a universalist archaeology standing in opposition to a plethora of incompatible and irreducible vernacular archaeologies.

Background

The Mesolithic occupation of Scotland began soon after the end of the last glaciation, between 10,000 and 9000 years ago. Considerablc research has been undertaken in the past two decades (Mithen 2000; Pollard & Morrison 1996; Woodman 1989; Young 2000); much has been published, more is awaited, and work continues apace. Mesolithic sites occur throughout Scotland, though recent archaeological activity has been concentrated on the western seaboard.

The coastal nature of much of the Scottish Mesolithic has long been recognized, although the contribution of inland sites is becoming more apparent. The relationship between shell middens and lithic scatters and the nature of the midden sites themselves are slowly becoming clearer (Bonsall 1996; Finlayson 1998), though the make-up of the material culture remains vague, as known early sites with preservation of organic materials are few and far between and specialists remain divided over their interpretation. More widely, it is generally recognized that the Mesolithic occurred during a time of dynamic enviromnental change although the impact on the human population remains to be documented.

International exhibitions in the 19th century were used as showcases for scientific and technological advances, but also often included exhibits of objects from the past, including prehistoric times. Three Expositions Universelles held in Paris in 1867, 1878 and 1889 are examined to see how archaeological artefacts were presented to the public and how they influenced the development of the subject of prehistoric archaeology at that period.

In the rough and rugged country of the Lesotho highlands, rock-paintings and archaeological deposits in the rock-shelters record hunter-gatherer life-ways; at Sehonghong, a long sequence runs from recent times to and through the Last Glacial Maximum. Survey of the region's Middle and Later Stone Age sites shows a pattern of concentrations that likely applies to other parts of the Lesotho highlands.

An important step in our knowledge of the British Lower Palaeolithic has been the finding that its two recognized components, ‘Clactonian’ and ‘Acheulean’, are not ranged into a simple sequence; the exact relationship between the two is the subject of much debate. What does this do to interpretations of Swanscombe, classic site of the Lower Thames Valley, which has been studied in terms of stratigraphic succession?

The extraordinary rapidity of the Arab conquest (FIG. 1) of the north African coastlands between Alexandria and Tripoli has often evoked comment, even in an age which has seen modern armies advancing still more rapidly over the same route. One recent writer, exceptionally well qualified to discuss Arab warfare, has affirmed that ‘the welcome offered to the Arabs in the Western Desert and Barqa seems to suggest that the people in this area were themselves partly Arab’.

Excarnation – the exposure of a corpse for stripping and possible dispersal by birds and animals – is a burial rite known from ethnographic analogy. Detecting its occurrence in the past is another matter. Here the author proposes the marking of bones by dogs and other canids as evidence of excarnation, using a British Neolithic case study.

The essence of historical research is the search for the cause of a major event. The same applies to prehistoric research, except that the documents cited in evidence lack written records and may require greater speculation.

One of the major events in the history of Greece was the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, which occurred about 1200-1100 BC and ushered in the Greek Dark Ages, when populations in the former Mycenaean lands were small and political organization dispersed. Although falling, strictly, within the historic period, thanks to the recent decipherment of Mycenaean written documents, the available records merely illustrate some of the business transactions of several flourishing kingdoms they give no clues to the cause for the abrupt demise of the culture.

It is on this subject, with its paucity of direct evidence, that Professor Rhys Carpenter introduces some speculations drawn from natural science-the notion that climatic change in southern Greece caused repeated failure of crops and the consequent breakdown of the Mycenaean economy.

According to current thinking, the peopling of South America involved a coastal as well as an inland exploitation. Here the authors describe a camp that may denote a transition between the two. As indicated by bifacial tools, the investigation shows that people began to move inland and hunt mammals around 8500 cal BP, perhaps in association with a change in the climate.

Excavations at Flixborough, Lincolnshire (1989–91) revealed an important Anglo-Saxon settlement. Here the various interpretations are discussed, ranging from monastic to ‘magnate’.

Playing mancala-type games was an addictive pastime of antiquity and leaves its archaeological imprint on steps and ledges in the form of rows of little scoops. Here the author examines the traces of the game at Palmyra and shows that the Roman game of the third century (with five holes a side) was superseded when Palmyra's Temple of Baal was refashioned as a fort in the seventh century or later. The new Syrian game, with seven holes a side, was played obsessively by the soldiers of an Arab or Ottoman garrison on the steps and precinct wall of the old temple.

A further report on what is being snatched away of the antiquities of Mali. The usual story the world over is of export to cash-rich western collectors, and this is something different, the archaeological site as quarry of recycled materials that are treated by another scale of values.