Have ancestors replaces chiefs as the defining entity of prehistory? This provocative view from the Mediterranean world may provoke a little debate.

This paper employs new evidence—including new AMS dates—to support a reinterpretation of the stratigraphic and architectural phasing of Lepenski Vir, and links this new evidence with the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in the region by critiquing dominant models.

The authors present new dating evidence for a refined understanding of human presence in Central Europe between 23,000 and 14,000 BP.

During extended biographies, some artefact types may have functioned at times as heirlooms or relics. It is possible to illustrate this process by studying fragmentation, and two case-studies involving British Beaker pottery and amber spacer plate beads are presented. Wider social and chronological implications are also considered.

Historiographic revelations

Back from his famous visit to Boucher de Perthes in the spring of 1859, John Evans hastened to invite some antiquarians friends in London to examine his finds. The flint implements he had collected with Joseph Prestwich in the undisturbed gravel beds of the Somme valley were indeed. or so ho believed, altogether new in appearance and totally unlike anything known in this country [Evans 1869: 93-4):

This paper defines the potential reasons for low population levels in Oxygen Isotope Stages 6–4: climate, habitat preferences and sea level.

The site of Doel lies beside the Schelde, close to Antwerp. Excavations have uncovered the remains of two prehistoric zones, one from the Final Mesolithic and one from the Neolithic. Preliminary study suggests that current theories of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in northern Belgium require revision.

The authors propose a correlation between certain elements of Neolithic material culture — painted pottery and anthropomorphic figurines — and Y-chromosome haplotypes, suggesting a shared history of dispersal of human populations and cultural ideas.

Several menus designed as invitations/souvenirs for the de Mortillet dinners from 1898 onwards are presented here as an iconographic dossier to illustrate aspects of prehistoric archaeology. These menus are briefly discussed below, and ten of them are reproduced at appropriate locations throughout this special section (with reference to the present text).

The Chinese Palaeolithic has traditionally been divided into three distinct cultural periods: Lower, Middle, and Upper. Analysis of four stone tool criteria (raw material procurement, core reduction, retouch, and typology) to determine if a distinct Middle Palaeolithic stage existed in China suggests that very little change occurred in lithic technology between the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic. Accordingly, a two-stage progression is proposed: Early and Late Palaeolithic. The transition between these two cultural periods occurred with the development of more refined stone tool making techniques (e.g. introduction of blade and microblade technology) and the presence of other archaeological indicators of more modern human behaviour (e.g. presence of art and/or symbolism) (c. 30,000 years ago).

The current renewal of interest in the history of archaeology can be explained in several ways, and notably in view of the extraordinary extension of the discipline's objects and methods. In the last decades, the most far-flung regions of the earth have been subjected to systematic exploration, radiometric dating techniques have continually improved, DNA studies have contributed to the transformations of biological anthropology, and indeed the very process of human evolution has heen cast in new light by the changing boundaries between humanity and animality. A natural science for many founding fathers of prehistory, a social science for those who emphasize its anthropological dimensions, archaeology has remained for others a historical discipline by virtue of its proximity to ancient languages and inscriptions. At one end of the spectrum, some archaeologists see themselves as specialists in material culture, able to deal with ohjects, both ancient and modern, as simultaneously technical and semiotic systems. At the other end, there are those who will only put their faith in the detailed approach of singular, particular cultures. To put the matter in extreme terms; it seems as if there existed a universalist archaeology standing in opposition to a plethora of incompatible and irreducible vernacular archaeologies.

The authors employ examples from Chinese prehistory to demonstrate that religion could maintain and reinforce order in various aspects of social lives.

A site beside the river Tjonger near Jardinga in the northern Netherlands is shown to be a rare Late Mesolithic kill and primary butchering site. Finds consist mainly of bones from aurochs and red deer, with a few flint artefacts. Radiocarbon evidence shows that there must have been two phases of use: the first around 5400 cal BC; the second, main phase around 5250–5050 cal BC.

Recent excavations in southern Jordan have revealed the largest Early Bronze Age (c. 3600-2000 BC) metal manufactory in the ancient Near East. On-site Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses of the finds provide new evidence concerning the scale and organization of metal production at a time when the first cities emerged in this part of the Near East. Materials and lead isotope analyses of the metallurgical finds provide important data for reconstructing ancient metal processing and for identifying trade networks.

Recently a doctoral dissertation was submitted to the Department of Archaeology at IJppsala [Jniversity. The author, Michel Notelid, presented and defended a text, called Den omvanda diskursen (The Second Glance: A study of transitions in the history of archaeological discipline). This work (Notelid 2000; 2001) represents quite a new way of looking at the discipline’s past, with the serious ambition to understand the romantic approach to prehistory in its own right, and not primarily as a fumbling, imaginative and pre-scientific start of a new discipline. The archaeological community was puzzled by this work, and very few scholars were able to read and appreciate this distinctive and unexpected perspective. There were obstacles, and possibly the most difficult one was the very language used. This language was in itself a sort of romantic reconstruction, which did not clearly indicate the difference between the plain text and passages of citations.

The pig appears to have been among the earliest domesticated animals in China, with evidence for pig domestication at Cishan from 8000 BP. The authors propose a model for the development of animal domestication.