The astonishing architectural density and diversity of megalithic monuments along the coastline of the bay of Quiberon and in the gulf of Morbihan have permitted French and foreign archaeologists to establish continually improved classifications. The paper, based on the Morbihan Neolithic data, presents a coherent and dynamic evolutionary sequence of funerary structures from between 5000 and 3000 BC.

A new wall has joined the classics of history, the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall. This story of the central monument of 20th-century European history is a remarkable case-study in the meaning of a single item of material culture, showing the richness of confused meaning that must also envelop the older walls of arcaheological concern.

In a recent ANTIQUITY article (65: 767–95) Atholl Anderson presented a detailed analysis of radiocarbon dates to show that the settlement of New Zealand occurred later than previously thought. In this paper Anderson teams up with another proponent of ‘chronometric hygiene’, Matthew Spriggs (see ANTIQUITY 63: 587–613), to examine the dates for the colonization of the rest of East Polynesia. Once again the generally accepted dates for initial settlement are found wanting and a later chronology is suggested.

A bone deposit found in a round barrow overlying a rich Beaker-period burial in Northamptonshire (England) contained at least 184 domestic cattle skulls and one aurochs skull, but very few other cattle bones or bones of other animals. Most of the cattle were young adults. The relative scarcity of premolars suggests that they were deposited on the cairn some time after death. The paper discusses archaeological and ethnographic parallels for this unusual deposit.

Most archaeological interest in the story of European social evolution has looked to the grand picture, as the bands combine and climb at last to achieve states and empires. What about the structure of European Neolithic as it was experienced at home, when the OX, the pig, the sheep and the goat came to live in the domestic unit of the single household?

The recent publication of cuneiform texts relating to Babylon allows a reassessment of the city's topography, and sheds light on the remains discovered by Robert Koldewey and more recent excavators. A comparison of the archaeological and documentary evidence relating to selected structures of the city provides examples of the ways in which archaeology and philology can successfully complement each other.

Intensive work in the La Mancha region of Spain has revealed a hitherto unknown density of Bronze Age settlement. It is based on large, permanent, fortified settlements associated with intensive agriculture of modern Mediterranean type. Their sudden abandonment in the mid 2nd millennium BC is interpreted as evidence of the establishment of stronger political control by local rulers.

It is more than forty years now since the first radiocarbon dates began the reconciliation of conventional and absolute chronologies for later prehistory. This pioneering radiocarbon chronology for the Bronze Age sequence in Central Europe brings that process nearer to a close, by filling the last major gap in the radiocarcbon chronology of the European continent.

Consistent to most views of Indo-European in later European prehistory is a genetic focus. The blanket of related languages across Europe marks an equal human spread – whether of steppe warriors, Beaker burialists or slashing-and-burning farmers. What if the languages are reconstructed using other premisses than this ‘genealogical’ view?

Linguistic, ethnographic, archaeological and technical evidence demonstrates the mythological and ceremonial importance of the swordfish in Chumash culture. From at least the 1st century AD, there existed among the Chumash of the Santa Barbara region, California, a productive fishery for swordfish (Xiphias gladius) by harpoon. The probability is that a shamanistic cult was intended to bring this great ‘master of the sea’ within reach of fishermen and to persuade it occasionally to drive whales ashore, making their meat available. Evidence from a number of world-wide sources shows that this Chumash belief was, indeed, founded in fact.

Excavation of a site not just of the ‘contact period’ but of contact itself gives a new view of those darkest years around 1840 when the remaining free Tasmanian Aboriginal people were tracked down and transported to death in exile.

A generally accepted model identifies a causal relationship between the appearance and development of metallurgy in western Europe and increasing social complexity, with metals being assigned the determinant role. This multidisciplinary study of the Vera region of southeast Spain suggests that metal production in the region was small-scale and of secondary importance in generating social and cultural changes.

Since 1835 travellers and scholars have been looking at, and ‘reading’, a strange painting of apparently fish-tailed figures at Ezeljagdspoort, in the southern part of the Cape Province, South Africa. Each reading has been made within some external frame-of-reference, whether supposed histories of racial conflict or Jungian archetypes of child-like primitive insight. These set aside, a surer route to an ‘inside’ reading may be based on our knowledge of Bushman shamanism.

Investigations in the 19th century demonstrated that Scottish crannogs, the distinctive waterlogged settlements in the shallow waters at the edge of lochs, were very rich in organic remains of all types. Have the crannogs survived, years after so many of the lakes were drained? Are there organic remains left? A new survey and new excavations at the Buiston crannog shows how much has gone, and the great value of what remains.

Absolute dating of prehistoric rock paintings is an exciting archaeological pursuit. Sophisticated sample collection, handling and pretreatment methods and new analytical equipment and techniques are minimizing contamination and permitting identification of trace amounts of organic substances in prehistoric paints. Radiocarbon dating using Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is producing dates for minute residues of blood, charcoal and plant fibres, either accidentally or deliberately incorporated in paintings. Carbon-bearing laminations, such as oxalate-crusts and silica skins, which have accumulated under and over rock art, have also been recently dated.

Very little is known of the Upper Palaeolithic of Portugal, although it has been assumed to have the same general characteristics as elsewhere in southwestern Europe. New evidence suggests clear technological distinctions between Portugal and other areas of southwestern Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum, c. 18,000 (uncalibrated) years ago, and allows an initial synthesis for Portuguese Late Glacial prehistory, 16,000-8500 b.p.