The origins of anatomically modern humans, modern behaviour and the Aurignacian form one of the most dynamic fields of European research. Conard & Bolus (2003) opened a new debate by proposing that the Aurignacian arose from the migration of modern humans. Reviewing the data from the Swabian Jura, the author shows that radiocarbon dating cannot of itself presently support models of the primacy of art, industries or the arrival of modern humans at a particular place.

Several recent reconstructions of the social and economic development of non-Mediterranean Gaul after c. 200 BC have argued for the development of complex societies, characterized by the appearance of centralized political entities with urban – or at least urbanizing – communities. The emergence of such ‘Archaic States’ is often considered as having been restricted to a broad zone running eastward from the Atlantic façade through the northern Massif Central to the Swiss plateau. Five certain such states are usually claimed: Bituriges cubi, Aedui, Arverni, Sequani, Helvetii; and three probable: Pictones, Lemovices and Lingones. The constitutents of this zone were originally recognized by Dr Daphne Nash (1976; 1978a; 1978b; 1981), and her view has since been adopted in Britain by Champion and his collaborators (1984), Bintliff (1984) and, most recently, Cunliffe (1988: figure 38). Essential to the formulation of this hypothesis was a wide-ranging consideration of three domains of protohistoric evidence on Gaul: literary, most conspicuously Julius Caesar’s de Bello Gallico; numismatics; and the settlement record of the late La Tène and its more shadowy antecedents. Among more recent commentators, a primary interest in the ‘core–periphery’ relationship (Cunliffe 1988; Rowlands et al. 1987) which existed between the Mediterranean world and Central Gaul is manifest. In a minimal view, this interaction may be envisaged in terms of the consequences of long-distance trade and subsequent military conquest spurring socio-political change. The unspoken by-product of this perspective is that differential development within non-Mediterranean Gaul is simplistically presented in terms of distance-decay from the Mediterranean littoral, with little attention being paid to the effects of physiographic diversity across this landmass.

This paper presents archaeological and palynological evidence for long continuation of the Mesolithic way of life in east-central Europe irrespective of the presence of early Neolithic farmers. The complete Neolithization of the area took place only about 3500 BC, as a consequence of long-term interactions between indigenous foragers and exotic farmers.

The authors take us to the salt lakes of Villafáfila in north-west Spain, where they have demonstrated by excavation that salt extraction had begun by the second half of the third millennium BC. The salt pans uncovered were accompanied by copious amounts of decorated Beaker pottery, for which political and symbolic interpretations are proposed.

There are several kinds of fossil sea-urchin that are the subject of folklore, the commonest in the south of England being casts in flint, derived from the Chalk, of the heart-urchin Micraster, and of the helmet-urchin Echinocorys. Both of these, but more commonly the latter, are known to the country people as shepherd's crowns or fairy loaves (PL. xxib). Formerly at least, the Essex labourer believed that so long as one of these fossil sea-urchins was kept in the house, his family would never go short of bread (Johnson 1908, 149). At a number of localities in southern England fossil echinoids are traditionally placed on dairy shelves to keep milk from going sour. This practice is clearly linked with the ancient idea that these fossils are thunderstones.

The earliest known case of fossil echinoids being used in a ceremonial burial is in the Early Bronze Age tumulus on the Dunstable Downs, where nearly IOO shepherd’s crowns, mainly Micraster, had been arranged to encircle the bodies of a woman and child (Worthington Smith 1894, frontispiece, 337-8). H. S. Toms collected evidence that up to the middle of the last century fossil sea-urchins were called thunderstones throughout Sussex, whereas they are now simply regarded as ‘lucky’ (PL. XXIIb), and if seen in the soil and not brought home, at least one should spit on the shepherd’s crown and throw it over the left shoulder. Even the idea of luck being attached to sea-urchins found on the fields has disappeared latterly from many villages. As there were still scattered traces of the thunderstone belief in Sussex in 1930, it is probable that more than a century ago the thunderstone aspect was dominant there. This idea survived longer in West Sussex than in East Sussex, and oral tradition can be traced back to 1860.

The ‘fertility symbols’ of Palaeolithic Europe run from unambiguous female effigies to shapes that may not be human at all. A view is taken of some of the forms that makes them into Mars rather than Venus.

In the new opening-up of China to the outside world that has taken place in the last decade, archaeology and history has a major role. A walk on the Great Wall seems obligatory for visiting monarchs and presidents, while the jade princesses have themselves come to Europe. The excavation of the ‘terracotta army’ exemplifies the scale of active archaeological research, and its exposure to public view. But why is there such concern for the past, and its artefacts, in China today?

It is commonly held in the existing literature that prehistoric peoples were compelled to kill off an abnormally high proportion of their livestock in autumn because of a lack of winter fodder. There is literary evidence for autumn killing in several European localities (n. 1). It is therefore a plausible assumption that earlier cultures are hardly less likely to have been more successful in overcoming this difficulty. This article is concerned to examine whether this assumption is valid.

The inference generally made about autumn killing rests almost entirely on Watson’s report on the Skara Brae bones (n. 2). By the use of Watson’s method such a claim may also be made for the Old Sleaford sheep, and this is shown here. But there are grounds for supposing that such a claim is methodologically unjustified, and we have endeavoured to set out a method by which such claims may be tested.

Bronze Age objects found in the English Channel off Salcombe, southern Britain, include an implement which has its normal home in Sicilian agriculture – perhaps as a plough shoe. The authors assemble and classify the objects and consider the web of exchange networks that brought the artefact from Sicily to Devon via France around the thirteenth century BC.

Spanish colonists imported ancient Arabic irrigation methods into Mexico. Even though historians have made little of the qanat systems, archaeological research in Jalisco has revealed their significance in the colonial economy of Mexico.

Three prehistoric sites in the Upper Mun River Valley of north-eastern Thailand have provided a detailed chronological succession comprising 12 occupation phases. These represent occupation spanning 2300 years, from initial settlement in the Neolithic (seventeenth century BC) through to the Iron Age, ending in the seventh century AD with the foundation of early states. The precise chronology in place in the Upper Mun River Valley makes it possible to examine changes in social organisation, technology, agriculture and demography against a background of climatic change. In this area the evidence for subsistence has been traditionally drawn from the biological remains recovered from occupation and mortuary contexts. This paper presents the results of carbon isotope analysis to identify and explain changes in subsistence over time and between sites, before comparing the results with two sites of the Sakon Nakhon Basin, located 230km to the north-east, to explore the possibility of regional differences.