The Greater Cursus – 3km long and just north of Stonehenge – had been dated by a red deer antler found in its ditch in the 1940s to 2890-2460 BC. New excavations by the authors found another antler in a much tighter context, and dating a millennium earlier. It appears that the colossal cursus had already marked out the landscape before Stonehenge was erected. At that time or soon after, its lines were re-emphasised, perhaps with a row of posts in pits. So grows the subtlety of the discourse of monuments in this world heritage site.

It is a pleasure to present this vivid account of elite tombs on China's Northern Frontier, together with a closely argued case for cultural hybridity within the postcolonial paradigm. This incisive exposition of political interaction on a frontier will resonate with all of us who work with ‘imperial-barbarian’ relations—on any continent.

A new survey and spatial analysis enables the author to argue that inland examples of Easter Island’s famous stone statues were not in transport to the coast but mark out ancient territories proposed by ethnologist Katherine Routledge in 1919.

The primary objective of sustainable archaeology is to maintain the profession of archaeology—that is, to sustain itself. An effort to rebrand the discipline as virtuous, sustainable archaeology is self-serving and reflects larger institutional anxieties around an unethical past and an uncertain future. An example of futurist rhetoric and doublespeak, sustainable archaeology exists because archaeology is unsustainable.

In the 2nd century AD Pausanias (i.2.4-15.1) walked through the agora at Athens describing some of the statues and naming the artists; at least 35 of the statues were of bronze, yet not a single one survives intact today (Mattusch 1982: 8-9). Thinking only of the extant marble sculpture does an injustice to the civic art of Athens. This problem is commonplace; almost any classical site has numerous stone bases for bronze statues which have long gone into the melting-pot. Yet so often in modern scholarship stone sculpture is given a privileged position. Although modern histories of Greek art pay much attention to the marble sculpture of the Parthenon, ancient authorities were not so impressed; Pausanias (i.24.5-7) provides the briefest of descriptions to the marble sculpted pediments and omits to mention the frieze. For many scholars today the frieze has become an example of what ‘unlimited money can do’ (Ashmole 1972: 116), yet, as R. Osborne has recently pointed out, it merely helped the viewer to process to the east end of the temple where he or she would have been confronted by the great chryselephantine cult-statue of Athena: ‘this is what the temple was built to display, this is the object towards which worship is directed, and this is what the procession was all about’ (Osborne 1987: 101). And this is what Pausanias describes in detail, the great work of art and expression of Athens’ wealth which no longer survives.

The whipworm, Trichuris trichiura L., is one of the most common human intestinal parasites worldwide, yet little is known of its origin and global spread. Archaeological records for this nematode have all been of Neolithic or later date, suggesting a possible association between the spread of pastoral farming and human acquisition of whipworm. This paper reports the discovery of eggs of the genus Trichuris in late Mesolithic deposits from south Wales, indicating that whipworm was present in Europe before the arrival of agriculture. This raises the possibility that human infection by Trichuris arose through contact with wild animals in parts of the landscape frequented by both human and animal groups.

Dated and stratified potsherds excavated at Nabta Playa belong to the earliest phase of pottery-making in the Sahara – relatively sophisticated bowls decorated with a toothed wheel. The authors explore the origins of post-Pleistocene settlers in the Sahara and the Nile Valley and discuss what prompted them to make pottery.

Introduction

The European oak chronologies were completed back to 5000 BC during the 1980s, with demonstrable replication between Ireland and Germany using stepwise correlation through long English bog-oak series (Pilcher et al. 1984; Baillie 1995). Longer German oak chronologies extend the annual record back to 10,430 BP (Friedrich et al. 1999). This suite of chronologies, and their consti tnent site chronologies, even individual trees, can he analysed for changes in common response to the environment through time and of course can be cornpared with other well-dated time series from around the world.

How far are settlement patterns affected by imperial systems of administration and control? The prototype city state consisted perhaps only of the population centre and its surrounding hinterland, but large territorial states, and still more empires, required complex systems of government and defence. Historical sources tell of the Chinese imperial system of ‘commanderies’ or provinces, and ‘county seats’ or subordinate centres, but this may conceal a range of local variations and development histories that only detailed archaeological survey can reveal. In this study, devoted to the Northern Zone of the Han Empire close to its border with the troublesome Xiongnu, a four-fold hierarchy of walled settlements is presented which varies in its character, origins and development even within this single zone. Many of its special features can be attributed to the pressures and insecurities of the border setting, and are the direct result of Han imperial planning.

One of the problems that students of Maltese archaeology have to face is the meaning of the numerous cart-tracks furrowing most of the barren rock-surfaces. These tracks are scarce on Gozo and non-existent on the islands of Comino and Filfola.

They consist of pairs of parallel grooves running for long distances on the hard coralline limestone patches, now straight and now curved as if avoiding an obstacle or having to change their direction. The grooves are mostly v-shaped, usually from 10 to 20 inches wide (25–50 cms) on the surface, and about 4 inches (10 cms) at the bottom. Between the two grooves, measured at the middle part, the distance is nearly always 4 feet 6 inches (1.37m). Naturally the depth of the grooves varies with the lie of the ground; if there is a strong tilt sideways, one of the grooves is shallow whilst the other is very deep.

The importance of the part played by agriculture in the economic history of our country is sometimes apt to be forgotten, for its place has, during the past hundred years, been largely taken by manufacture. Down to the beginning of the nineteenth century the bulk of the population still made a living by tilling the fields, just as their fathers had done from time immemorial. It becomes, therefore, a matter of great interest to trace the beginnings and growth of agriculture in our country before the dawn of history.

Agriculture may be taken in its broadest sense to signify the artificial growth of plants for human use, as opposed to the gathering of wild products, but the term may also be narrowed down to cover only the cultivation of farinaceous seeds which we call cereals. It is chiefly in the latter sense that the subject will be discussed here, but it must be remembered that the nature of the evidence does not altogether allow of such a distinction.

Indian Rouletted Ware pottery is the iconic marker of the overseas reach of the subcontinent at the turn of the first millennium AD. In the mid twentieth century this was naturally seen as prompted by the contemporary Roman Empire, while the later post-colonial discourse has emphasised the independence and long life of Indian initiatives. In this new analysis the author demonstrates a more complex socio-economic situation. While Greyware is distributed long term over south India, Rouletted ware is made in at least two regional centres for coastal communities using a new ceramic language, one appropriate to an emerging international merchant class.

We are privileged to offer a summary of the massive campaign of excavation and survey conducted by the author and his team from Japan in northern Egypt and the neighbouring coast of Sinai. Over the last few years they have excavated a large sector of al-Fustat (the early Islamic settlement on the outskirts of modern Cairo), mapped the early Christian monastery at Wadi al-Tur (sixth–twelfth century AD), recorded early Islamic rock inscriptions on Mt Naqus eighth–twentieth century AD), mapped the port and mosque at Raya (originating in the sixth–twelfth or thirteenth century AD) and investigated on a large scale the fourteenth–twentieth-century sequence at al-Kilani (al-Tur). Among the objects unearthed at al-Kilani were 4000 fragments of manuscripts. The work is throwing new light on early Islam, its development of social and commercial networks, and its relation with Christian, Coptic and Byzantine cultures.