Reinvestigations of the cave of Lene Hara in East Timor have yielded new dating evidence showing occupation from before 30,000 BP. These will further fuel the debates on early colonization of the region.

Finds of perforated Homalopoma sanguineum from Tito Bustillo add to the evidence of long-distance contact between Magdalenian groups. The new finds are placed in their European context.

New survey in the Chitral Valley has doubled the number of recorded Gandharan Grave culture sites in the region and extended their geographical range. The numbers and location of sites indicates that the Gandharan Grave culture was well established in the Chitral valley, suggesting that the valley may have been central to this cultural development, rather than marginal.

New radiocarbon dates from four Moravian and Bohemian sites are presented and linked to previous work on the depositional contexts of human fossils at similar sites in the region. Whilst dates from Mladeč confirm its early Upper Palaeolithic age, the chronologies of the other three sites require revision.

Samples from three charcoal pictographs at Ignatievskaya Cave, in the southern Ural Mountains of Russia, have been radiocarbon dated. An advanced antiquity was expected, with some paintings thought to be more than 10,000 years old, as suggested by the imagery. One charcoal painting, for example, resembles a mammoth. The radiocarbon date of that motif, however, dates only to 7370±50 BP. If that motif actually represents a live mammoth, it places mammoth extinction in the Urals nearer to the present than is currently accepted. A charcoal pigment sample, a drawing of lines radiating from a central focus, has also been dated; its age was a few hundred years older than the ‘mammoth’: 7920±60 BP. A charcoal line has been dated with an age of 6030±110 BP. Although radiocarbon analysis was attempted on a red-pigmented painting of a woman, there was not enough organic material in the paint sample to obtain a viable date. Radiocarbon dates on pictographs in Ignatievskaya Cave obtained so far suggest that the paintings may be more recent than has been supposed.

Six seasons of excavation, survey and test pitting in the Peak District National Park, England, were conducted by the Park Authority and the Department of Archaeology & Prehistory, University of Sheffield, on a moorland rich in features surviving from Prehistoric use and occupation of the area. Investigated features include a Neolithic rubble-built enclosure bank, Bronze to Iron Age cairnfields and settlements and cup-and-ring rock art. From this work a long-term landscape narrative of the area is being produced.

The authors discuss the first evidence for the use of birch-bark tar on Late Neolithic pottery from Greece. This appears to have been used for two different purposes, to seal a fracture and to line the interior walls. The authors also discuss other possible uses.

For nearly half a century, the Radiocarbon Lab at the British Museum was at the forefront of helping to develop and in applying this fundamental dating method. Thousands of samples were processed, and innumerable sites and objects dated. Now the lab has closed, and Sheridan Bowman, the Keeper of the Department of Scientific Research, assesses the lab's contributions.

This paper focuses on the 5th-millennium BC shift from short-term habitations to permanent tell settlements in southern Romania: from the Criş, Dudeşti and Boian to the Gumelniţa Cultures. Archaeological and geomorphologic data suggest that changes in river stability conditioned shifts in settlement and economies.

This paper is a first study of duration of breastfeeding using bone stable isotopes in infants in a British palaeopopulation, from the deserted Mediaeval village of Wharram Percy, England. Nitrogen stable isotope analysis suggests cessation of breastfeeding between 1 and 2 years of age. Comparison with Mediaeval documentary sources suggests that recommendations of physicians regarding infant feeding may have influenced common practice in this period.

A study of the differential preservation of the famous Côa engravings, in the light of the site of Fariseu, place the distribution of the art in a chronological setting, which is in turn placed within the context of lithic raw material procurement.

Recent results of radiocarbon analyses from sites in Ukraine suggest that a revision of the chronology of the Late mesolithic and early Neolithic is required. The subsequent Neolithic period up to the beginning of the Early Bronze Age (c.3000 cal BC) should be divided into two separate periods, the Neolithic and Neo-eneolithic.

Military aircraft crash sites are currently being reviewed by English Heritage's Monument Protection Programme. The aims are reviewed in a paper that shows the increasing interest in modern archaeology.

The authors recount their personal experience of the recent assessment of archaeology teaching in the United Kingdom.