A very wide field of African rock art, both paintings and engravings, is covered in Burchard Brentjes: African rock art, with special reference to South Africa, Rhodesia, the Sahara, North Africa and Egypt. Because of the general nature of the book, there is little attempt to be comprehensive or conclusive, the aim being more to foster an appreciation and awareness of the art than to solve problems or place it in an archaeological context.

The Pleistocene to Holocene transition is both a reality of climate history, and a notion of the prehistorian. A century of approaches to Australian archaeology guides the frameworks of the issue today.

The replacement, for the most part, of native American populations by immigrants in the centuries after 1492 is one of the great demographic shifts of the modern world. It is fundamental for American archaeology, of course, and makes the background for acute moral and ethical issues, which will become more visible as the 500th anniversary of the Columbus landfall nears

The Lakshadweep Islands lie on the sea route between west Asia and Africa on the one hand and south Asia and the Far East on the other. In maritime history, these islands have played a vital role by providing shelter, fresh water and landmarks to navigators through the ages. Recent discoveries made during marine archaeological exploration and excavations in the Lakshadweep have revealed evidences of early settlement and shipwrecks. The findings suggest that the islands had been inhabited much before the early historical period.

More than a century ago the publications of Gdouard Lartet laid the foundations for the nomenclature and stratigraphy of the French Upper Palaeolithic. Academic debate arising from Lartet's work continued until the 1930s by which time the framework and classification of the period were fixed. They have remained fairly static ever since. Indeed, the French system appeared unimpeachable, so that scholars strove to apply it, unchanged, to widely differing areas. Since the 1930s most work on the French sequence has been designed to confirm the results of old and 'untrustworthy' excavations, and to shore up an original framework with additional information. The situation is much the same for the way of life of palaeolithic man: the standard textbook description of savage hunters eking a living from a harsh environment was in vogue for a very long time, and one might be forgiven for believing that this hypothesis had always been dominant; this is not the case. It is little-known fact in this country that during the latter part of the nineteenth century there were major arguments in academic circles concerning the way of life in the Palaeolithic, and in particular the question of domestication during that period. Were it not for the demise of Piette and the subsequent dominance of Breuil, it is possible that the present orthodox account of the Upper Palaeolithic might be very different

Viet Nam has a long tradition of scholarly concern with its own past, born out of 900 years of resistance to Chinese political domination.

With changes in political structures, a pan-European dimension is increasing in importance for many archaeologists, because of cultural policy and funding from the Council of Europe and, especially, the European Union. Although nationalist frameworks are currently more important, archaeologists should keep a critical eye on European developments.

The rondels – circular earthworks of late Neolithic Europe – have a repeated form highly suggestive of deliberate design and symbolism. The concentric ditches are cut by two, three or most often four causeways at right angles. Here the authors investigate the orientation of the causeways in 51 rondels belonging to the Lengyel culture and conclude that they correlate well with the sunrise. The idea of a solar cult receives some corroboration from patterns on contemporary pottery.

In his most valuable and stimulating work on The Personality of Britain, Dr Cyril Fox has assembled a large body of archaeological data and has presented an interpretation of the several successive distributions based upon essentially geographical considerations. This theme covers a wide range of topics which interest workers in other fields, none more than geographers. One of the geographer’s main interests lies in the study of Regions, and he may well claim to have been afforded by Dr Fox a most valuable addition to his data, which enables him to push back his study of regional distinctness into earlier periods than those with which history deals. In return, he may hope to contribute something to the interpretation from his own field which embraces analysis of regional physique in all its aspects.

The Pacific Coast of Colombia has a complex history of change and upheaval. How is one to reach to it, with the variety of its human experiences? And how to grasp it from the diverse and often fragmentary sources that are its archaeology?

The discovery of Palaeolithic wall paintings and engravings in a cave whose entrance lies below the present sea-level near Marseilles has created considerable interest – and no little controversy. The paper describes and analyses the remarkable find, with special attention to its authenticity.

During the Pleistocene there were large variations in sea-level under the influence of glaciations and inter-glacial warm episodes. During the Late Wurm glaciation in the Upper Palaeolithic the sea-level dropped to 110–120 m below its present level (Lumley 1976: 311). At that time the Lerins islands, the Hyeres islands and the Frioul archipelago and the islet of Planier off Marseilles were linked with the coast, and much of the Golfe du Lion was occupied by a vast plain.

The Šventoji site in western Lithuania is of considerable importance in understanding prehistoric settlement in the east Baltic area, not least because of the exceptional preservation conditions present. The data obtained show that prehistoric populations in the area were remarkably stable over a considerable period.