An Aetites may be defined as any hollow stone containing loose matter, a smaller stone or sand, which rattles when shaken. Such objects are of little interest to the modern geologist, who usually breaks them open in order to examine the interior for crystals or impressions of fossils. Their importance to the archaeologist and student of folk-lore may be gauged by the fact that they are mentioned by Dioscorides about A.D. 69 and in the fourteenth edition of Quincey's Pharmacopoeia, published in 1769. A series of at least a hundred references between these dates could be compiled ; only those necessary to elucidate the history of the Eagle-stone need be given.

Leather, hide and fur were probably the preferred material for all kinds of equipment (tents, bags, pots and drinking vessels) and clothing in prehistory. It is therefore remarkable that our knowledge of this material is so restricted, and its survival even in suitable circumstances very limited. Palynological data and experimental methods attempt to explain this phenomenon.

The authors report a reconstruction of the palaeogeography around the Harappan town of Lothal, major port of the Indus civilisation, using multispectral satellite imagery and environmental analysis. Key results include the identification of a broad tidally influenced palaeochannel adjoining the western part of Lothal and a former estuary towards the east. Micropalaeontological analyses show that Lothal developed over a tidal salt marsh and was subsequently left high and dry as the sea level dropped.

This study compares the results of space syntax analysis of houses in Babylonian Ur with similar analyses on modern households in Baghdad and among the Ashanti. The social organisations identified were then compared with the written evidence for Ur surviving on site in cuneiform tablets. This opportunity to examine spatial, ethnographic and documentary evidence together offers a deep reading of Ur society.

A deposit of dismembered and cooked human remains from Ana Manuku in the Cook Islands, Polynesia, provides evidence for ritual practices c. AD 1390–1470.

The purpose of this paper is to present some facts that appear to have been under-estimated or overlooked in the consideration of the graves of the Early Bronze Age in the Wessex region, that is, the material remains of the ‘Wessex culture’. We are not concerned in this paper with the evidence or non-evidence for connexions between the Wessex region and Mycenae (Renfrew, 1968), nor do we consider that anything new can be stated about the ‘radiocarbon age’ or the calendar year age for he Wessex graves, particularly in view of the fact that no radiocarbon dates are available for this material. What we intend to show is that the division of the Wessex graves into a traditional Early Bronze Age I and 2, and the duration of these presumed episodes, are open to question.

This paper shows the remarkable level of social history that can be drawn from the high quality excavation and analysis of a well-preserved stratigraphic sequence. A Bronze Age settlement in Cyprus could be defined as a series of households, comprising dwellings, outbuildings and courtyards that were established, extended, replaced or abandoned over some 500 years. The authors' interpretation offers intimate access to the private lives of the inhabitants over a period in which their settlement grew from a village to a town and then reverted to a deserted ruin.

In the parish of Britford SW of Sailisbury are two enclosures which were discovered as the result of a chance aerial photograph. The larger settlement was called Woodbury and to avoid confusion, the smaller settlement 500 m. to the east was named Little Woodlbury. The latter was selected by the Prehistoric Society as the site for a research excavation because its size made feasible a total exploration.

Flint quarries in the Rohri hills supplied stone to the city of Mohenjo-Daro, out on the silty river-plain and lacking local supply. A new survey has identified workshop sites and an extraordinary scale of production.

Ploughing is probably the greatest agent of attrition to archaeological sites world-wide. In every country, every year, a bit more is shaved off buried strata and a bit more of the past becomes unreadable. On the other hand, people must eat and crops must be planted. How can the fields be best managed to get the best of both worlds? Perhaps the most pressing need for resource managers is to know how quickly a particular field is eroding: negotiation and protection is then possible. Up to now that has been difficult to measure.

The new procedure presented here, which draws on the unexpected benefits of nuclear weapons testing, shows how variation in the concentration of the radioisotope 137Cs can be used to monitor soil movements over the last 40 years. The measurements allow a site's ‘life expectancy’ to be calculated, and there are some promising dividends for tracking site formation processes.

In this penultimate contribution to our series in which archaeologists look back at archaeology in their time, John Mulvaney, formerly Professor of Prehistory and head of the Department of Prehistory and Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts, Australian National University, Canberra, speaks of his work as a teacher, writer, researcher and archaeological politician. More than anyone he has taught the world about Australian prehistory and the Australians about their own past—and the need to preserve it, culminating in the triumphal campaign to save the Franklin River region of SW Tasmania. He resigned from professional commitment to Australian archaeology at the early age of sixty. His retirement will allow him more time for writing, reading and, perhaps, recreation (the Production Editor treasures the gift of his book, ‘Cricket Walkabout’, in 1967: an account of the Aboriginal Cricket Tour of England, 1867–8).

The interest of the State in the ancient monuments and civilizations of Britain is recent in origin and limited in extent. It is the purpose of this paper to trace in outline the growth of State interest, the limits of State control at the present time, and the main lacunae which appear to exist in the mechanism for the preservation of our national antiquities. Before embarking on this topic it might be well to point out the two chief reasons why, before 1882, the State undertook little or no responsibility within a sphere now generally recognized as the proper concern of any civilized state. In the first place the study of British Archaeology has only within the last fifty years reached a degree of accuracy and discipline worthy of the expenditure of public funds; it is of the utmost significance in this connexion that the first scientific British archaeologist, General Pitt-Rivers, was appointed as first Inspector of Ancient Monuments under the Act of 1882.

Later in this number of ANTIQUITY is a review, page 930, of our knowledge, direct and often indirect, about chariots and wagons in the Europe of 2000 years ago. How much greater is our knowledge in China, where sacrificial burials of vehicles with their horses and drivers may give evidence of chariots by the fleet!