The new Dorchester by-pass is being constructed (scheduled completion in autumn 1988 through a busy landscape of later prehistoric England – and one where fieldworkers have been very active recently, especially at the Maiden Castle hillfort, and in the county town itself. Survey and excavations along the by-pass route were undertaken by the author for the Trust for Wessex Archaeology. The excavation at Flagstones House, directed together with Martin Trott, identified a late Neolithic causewayed enclosure. This note concentrates on the chalk engravings from that site, which lies to the west of Max Gate, the house of Thomas Hardy. It is perhaps apposite that the Wessex novelist built his home so close to the heart of a sacred Wessex site.

Another view is given on issues arising from the return of the Kow Swamp human remains, discussed by John Mulvaney in the March 1991 ANTIQUITY.

The cities of Greece had their own calendars, so how did they all know when the god Apollo had returned from the northern realms and it was time to consult the oracle at Delphi? The authors show that the heliacal rising of the constellation Delphinus probably provided the annual marker, and that because of the mountains it appeared to rise a month later at Delphi than elsewhere, giving would-be visitors time to travel. The landscape of Delphi was itself instrumental in creating or enhancing the cosmology of Apollo.

Survey in southwest Macedonia provides a new field record of the pattern of Neolithic settlement. It prompts a further opinion in the enduring debate about the nature of the diffusion of agriculture, discussed most recently in ANTIQUITY by van Andel & Runnels (1995).

Recent research including 781 radiocarbon dates and the excavation of Ses Arenes de Baix, has allowed a new review of the sequence of megalithic burial practice on Menorca. Rock-cut tombs, dolmens, caves with entrance-works and the famous boat-shaped houses and tombs (navetes) are placed in overlapping chronological order. The authors suggest that, while aware of contemporary developments on the continent, the Bronze Age islanders absorbed immigrants and made their own local choices of memorial architecture.

The Lower Palaeolithic has always been studied within a framework based on different types of flaked stone. Although this evidence might seem solid and unambiguous, the way it has been studied has been strongly influenced by wider social and political factors

The remarkable find of Iron Age gold torques from Snettisham (see ANTIQUITY 65: 447–65) was interpreted by the excavator, Ian Stead, as representing a treasury, ‘assigned to the earth for safe-keeping’, rather than a votive deposit. This article argues that these are not mutually exclusive categories, since no clear distinction was made in Iron Age Europe between sacred and profane.

Recent work at La Laguna in Central Mexico provides an excellent illustration of the way in which information from architecture, food remains, ceramic vessels and chemical signatures can be brought together to demonstrate communal feasting associated with specific structures and public spaces. Structure 12M-3 contained a range of evidence indicative of food preparation and consumption. Ritual effigy vessels depicted deities connected with food and fertility, and fire and the hearth. Taken together, the several lines of evidence indicate that Structure 12M-3 was a special building, located directly behind the main temple and devoted to the preparation and production of communal feasts that were held in the adjacent plaza. This provides new insights into community life in the urban centres of early Mesoamerica.

On 12 September 1940 Lascaux was discovered accidentally by four youths. They kept the secret for a few days, then decided to inform their former schoolmaster. Crowds of visitors came quickly: 1,500 during the first week. The abbC Breuil, who had moved to Brive because of the war, came on 21 September and drew up a report which was read to the AcadCmie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres on 10 October. From that point on, Lascaux received official recognition. It is quite a large cave, and the decoration starts about 25 m beyond the entrance. All of the chambers and the main galleries are decorated with figures of animals and symbols: over I 50 paintings and about 1,500 engravings are more or less well preserved, but the cave is particularly famous for the remarkable quality of the painted figures in the Hall of the Bulls and in the Painted Gallery (Diverticule Axial). Unlike most palaeolithic decorated caves, the sanctuary of Lascaux has been dated with precision. In fact, the cave was frequented in only one period, about 17,000 years ago. Its porch collapsed some time afterwards, thus sealing in the parietal figures and protecting the traces which the magdalenian artists and visitors had left behind.

Three years ago, ANTIQUITY reported a first archaeological insight into the origins of Venice. The city's historical records, famously good and full for its flourishing, say very little about the beginnings. This second report includes direct evidence from Piazza San Marco, the heart of the city.

For over thirty years, work has been in progress on the petrological examination and identification of stone implements. This work, initiated in South-Western England, has as its object the determination of ‘early trade routes and other factors of economic and social importance in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age times’ (Keiller, Piggott and Wallis, 1941). During this period, eight regional reports have been published, five dealing mainly with South- Western England (Keiller, Piggott and Wallis, 1941; Stone and Wallis, 1947; Stone and Wallis, 1951 ; Evens, Grinsell, Piggott and Wallis, 1962; Evens, Smith and Wallis, 1972), one with Yorkshire (Keen and Radley, 1971), one with East Anglia (Clough and Green, 1972) and one with Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire (Cummins and Moore, 1973). In these and other publications (e.g. Fox, 1964; Fell, 1964) distribution maps are given for the products of the various axe factories. Such maps show the extent of dispersal of the factory products, but fail, in themselves, to give much information about trade routes and other factors. Group I axes are found in Yorkshire, some 550 km. from their source in Cornwall; Group IX axes are found a similar distance from their factories in Northern Ireland; and Group VI axes are widespread up to 500 km. from their Lake District factory sites.

A newly discovered deposit of camel bones from post-medieval, Turkish Period Hungary contributes additional information on the role of camels in the Carpathian Basin. By offering an opportunity for reviewing osteological evidence from Hungary, these remains complement our recent knowledge of the history and exploitation of camels in Europe, as recently reported in ANTIQUITY for the western limit of Europe.

The new generation of aerial photographers is using different wavelengths to sense archaeological features. This is effective but can be expensive. Here the authors use data already collected for environmental management purposes, and evaluate it for archaeological prospection on pasture. They explore the visibility of features in different seasons and their sensitivity to different wavelengths, using principal components analysis to seek out the best combinations. It turns out that this grassland gave up its secrets most readily in January, when nothing much was growing, and overall the method increased the number of known sites by a good margin. This study is of the greatest importance for developing the effective survey of the world's landscape, a quarter of which is under grass.