Sir John Beazley (1885-1970), founder of the modern and archaeological study of Classical vases, was a master of method. Is the Beazley method just that, a well-judged method fitting to the material under study? Or does that considered method in truth amount to a considered theory, held and used by a consciously most untheoretical archaeologist?

Modern research in the Caucasus involving both obsidian artefact characterisation and sourcing enhances our knowledge of the early exploitation and exchange of this raw material (Le Bourdonnec et al. 2012; Montoya et al. 2013; Chatainger & Gratuze 2014; Doronicheva & Shackley 2014; Frahm et al. 2014; Pleurdeau et al. 2016).

As Mesolithic people living on the Baltic coast began to adopt farming in the later fifth millennium BC, imports of a new type and quality started to reach them from the south — highly decorated pots and then copper axes from the Hungary-Serbia area. With new excavations at the site of Dąbki 9 in northern Poland, the authors are able to show how high quality thin-walled shiny black vessels are travelling over 1000km in the early fourth millennium BC, bringing prestige cups and jugs to the Baltic shore.

Round and rectangular buildings with grain silos at a Copper Age site in Israel suggested social stratification to the excavators. Using micromorphology, the author demonstrates that while the rectangular building was occupied by people, the round ones had contained animals, perhaps as providers of milk, and dung for fuel. While this removes the direct indication of social variance, it strengthens the argument that animals, as well as grain, formed the basis for the creation of surplus.

In the eighteenth to nineteenth century West Africa was the scene of the infamous Atlantic trade in ivory and slaves. The authors' researches show a different situation in the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, when the people of Ghana were engaged in the indigenous procurement, manufacture and trade in ivory with neighbours across the Sahara

Rings and buttons and beads cut from the marine shell, Spondylus gaederopus, are among the most distinctive exchange items of Neolithic Europe. From sources on the coast of the Mediterranean, these highly valued objects were widely distributed across central Europe. A re-examination of the nature and contexts of shell objects and manufacturing waste at Dimini, a key late Neolithic site on the coast of northern Greece, explores their social role within a Spondylus-working community.

The Magdalenian stage of the Upper Palaeolithic is renowned for its ‘art’, both in the form of portable objects and of motifs and depictions on cave walls. Many of these portray animals, with human imagery playing a relatively minor role. Systematic analysis of human images from three separate zones of south-western France demonstrates that different styles of image were chosen by different communities. The evocative power of the human form, and the conceptual importance of the human image as a depiction of the self, highlights the significance of these Magdalenian representations. Particular attention is drawn to the realistic styles of portrayal employed in some parts of the region. This, it is argued, betokens the arrival of the individual, and the regional styles illustrate the presence of separate Magdalenian territories, occupied by communities that were in contact with one another but that chose different approaches to the human form as expressions of group identity.

Roman Sicily has long been known from classical sources for its agricultural fertility, but little archaeological research has been conducted on the rural economy. The Campanaio project is uncovering a wealth of information about a small (3 ha) hellenistic and Roman rural settlement and its economy, 25 km west of Agrigento. Excavations (1994-95,1997-98) have revealed seven principal phases. Activity started c. 200 BC, and was intensive for two centuries in the central part of the site. A complex of buildings underwent two complete reconstructions between 200 BC and AD 25; in its last phase (c. 50 BC) it comprised an Lshaped building some 17 m long and 8.40 m wide, with dry-stone walls, earth floors and mud-brick superstructure (FIGUR1E

The authors examine critically MacKie's long-standing contentions concerning Neolithic Britain — theocratic control of society, the relationships between monuments and sunrise or sunset on significant days of the year, the use of an ‘elaborate and accurate’ solar calendar and its survival into the Iron Age and into modern times.

Views of the Late Roman period in England have changed considerably in the past few years, with a tendency towards acceptance of a survival or resurgence of economic and political organization despite earlier decline. Traditional evidence provides some insights into the differential nature of these changes. Here it is argued that ‘environmental’ (in this case biological) evidence can provide unique insights into economic systems, and that bones and insects from late 4th-century AD Lincoln indicate continuity of complex systems into this period.