A review of the scattered evidence for climate change in Bohemia and its Bohemia and its region shows the importance as well as the difficulty of plotting a better history. Newly identified phases, both dry and wet hint at other fluctuations as yet only guessed at.

Our special section on heritage in the June issue took the conventional current view that excavation is destruction. A more creative vision is offered.

Archaeomagnetic studies in the Lake Van region of eastern Turkey begin to provide a regional magnetic chronology.

A site dated well back into the Pleistocene in Western Australia yields modified shells, seen as a further evidence of the attributes of modern humans from an early Australian context.

A further report on what is being snatched away of the antiquities of Mali. The usual story the world over is of export to cash-rich western collectors, and this is something different, the archaeological site as quarry of recycled materials that are treated by another scale of values.

A place named Wot-a-emi has been associated by the Andaman Islanders with the origins of their ancestors. How does this myth square with archaeological findings?

The need for dynamic management of the archaeological heritage, aptly if somewhat ponderously described as "a non-renewable cultural resource’, was first recognized in the USA in the early 1970s following the passage of the Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act (still fondly known to veterans of the struggles that led up to its enactment as "Moss-Bennett’ after its sponsors in the House of Representatives). The message spread slowly across the world and into the consciousness of international bodies.

Age-distributions of perinatal infants from Romano-British sites and a medieval site are different and may reflect different major causes of death. Whilst the medieval infants probably represent natural deaths, the Romano-British infants, from both cemetery and non-cemetery sites, may mainly represent victims of infanticide.

Peter Woodman's survey-article in ANTIQUITY, ‘Filling the spaces in Irish prehistory’ (66: 295–314), was developed from his paper to the Prehistoric Society, ‘What's new in Irish prehistory?’ Was it actually new? Did it fill the spaces in the periods of earlier Irish prehistory that ANTIQUITY asked Professor Woodman to address? Gabriel Cooney offers a different perspective on Irish prehistory.

A different vision from southern Africa challenges Mazel's view of the region's archaeology, and of the place for rock art in knowing its history.

A further contribution on art, history and archaeological attitude in South Africa.

It is widely recognized that a knowledge and understanding of the origins and development of human societies is of fundamental importance to humanity in identifying its cultural and social roots.

D.E. Nelson, radiocarbon scientist in the group which reported early dates for rock-art at two Australian sites in ANTIQUITY 64 (1990), reports a further study which leads him to withdraw the published date for one, at Laurie Creek (Northern Territory). As he notes, is co-authors in the 1990 paper are not all in agreement with his present view. The other site dated in 1990, Judds Cavern (Tasmania), is not addressed in this further report.

In January 1992, 20 States signed the European Convention on the Protection of the Archneological Heritage (Revised) which is intended to replace the original Convention of 1969. Signature indicates that States agree on the actual text that was before the meeting where the Convention was considered, in this case the Third European Conference of Ministers Responsible for the Cultural Heritage. It obliges States not to do anything actively contrary to the provisions of the Convention. However, States are not bound by the Convention until they ratify it. As at June 1992 no States had yet ratified the Revised Convention, but this is understandable as it usually takes at least six months for such a process to be completed even by the most enthusiastic of States.