We try (most of us) to be logical in our work. We listen to arguments (most of us) and try to be persuaded by that argument which is better – because it is more logical, because it is more reasonable, because it fits the facts better. But how reliably does one tell which is better – except by illogical intuition? Computer-aided study of the structure of arguments may help

One of the splendours of early Chinese history is the sudden apparent rise of a skilled bronze metallurgy in the Shang period, and a correspondingly vital research question is to locate the centre of that technology. New discoveries from Sanxingdui, within China, reported here, question the primacy of north China in the late 2nd millennium BC

The Eastern Sahara – an arid waste since Neolithic times – is one of the very few regions where one can find, by simple surface survey, little clusters of stone artefacts lying just where they fell 5000 and more years ago. They offer rather direct and specific information about how stone was moved, used and left behind by mobile pastoralists in a marginal environment.

Towards the end of 1989, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, Chairman of English Heritage, announced that detailed planning had started on a visitor centre at Stonehenge. For someone not touched by the generations of wrangling over this site, or spared the depressing squalor with which a visit deftly obliterates any preconceptions of mystery or romance, what could be more appropriate than good visitor facilities at one of the world’s top heritage attractions? What could be simpler to construct in an open landscape of not particularly valuable farmland?

Of course, Stonehenge is not like that. This small group of standing stones by a road has provoked one of the most complex, bitter, and long-running archaeo-political stories of all time. It will run and run – make no doubt about that – but Lord Montagu’s announcement has a real significance for anyone with an interest in our past. Someone is actually trying to do something about the place.

The identification by excavation of a small shepherd's hut within an enclosure at Graig Fechan and its radiocarbon dating suggests parallels with Dartmoor and the Peak District, when a few centuries of milder climate seem to have favoured upland farming

The English reviewer for Nature (Renfrew 1990) declared that Bruce Trigger's new history of archaeology will become the standard account of our subject's history, and the French reviewer for ANTIQUITY also has a warm view (this issue, page 960). Having looked to the past, what does Trigger see for the future of archaeology in North America, as the reaction comes to the view of archaeology as, primarily, science that has dominated these last decades?

Who first used a word for the idea of ‘prehistory’? Chippindale, in a paper published last year, tried to clear up this old confusion once and for all. He failed. Here are more answers to the question — a matter of real historical importance since the invention of a prehistoric past was so central to the 19th-century development of archaeology.

A thematic or a period discipline?

Industrial archaeology has generally been defined as a thematic discipline, concerned with only one aspect of man’s past activity. Although the term ‘archaeology of industry’ was used in the 19th century, it was Michael Rix who used the phrase ‘industrial archaeology’ in print for the first time (Rix 1955). He later defined industrial archaeology as ‘recording, preserving in selected cases and interpreting the sites and structures of early industrial activity, particularly the monuments of the Industrial Revolution’ (Rix 1967: 5). The emphasis on the term ‘industrial monument’ followed a need to define an industrial class of Ancient Monument so that some examples would be scheduled. Industrial archaeology, then, grew from the need to record and preserve standing structures threatened with demolition rather than an inherent desire to understand more about the historical period of the monuments. It was perhaps felt that understanding of the industrial revolution period was more readily arrived at by other means, particularly written historical evidence. During the ‘rescue’ years of the 1960s and 1970s, archaeology was one of the two areas of fastest university expansion and very popular in extra-mural teaching. But none of the archaeology departments took up industrial archaeology, although many of the extra-mural departments did; it is largely as a part-time, amateur interest that industrial archaeology has flourished ever since. The author’s post as an industrial archaeologist in the Leicester archaeology department is one of the first occasions on which the specialism has been given a place in full-time undergraduate archaeology courses.

Carvings made of elephant ivory are a characteristic, though uncommon, artefact of the later Bronze Age in Greece and the islands. Where did the raw material for them come from — Syria to the east, or Africa to the south and southwest?

The Cape York peninsula, in tropical Queensland, shows distinct regional pattern in its recent rock art. And there is regional pattern also in the exchange networks of ethnohistorical times. Do these patterns bear a relationship?

While lively debate has gone on about the meaning and function of Palaeolithic parietal art, the intractable and essential questions of its dating have been less in the foreground. With Leroi-Gourhan's interpretations goes his identification of styles and their chronology, published in 1965. Now one period, the Late Magdalenian of his Style IV, is looked at closely with chronology in mind

Specialists in Greek literature have long argued about how Homer's epics were formed and just what they represent. The question is a pressing example of the larger general case – the relationships between archaeology, history and oral literature in many periods and places. E.S. Sherratt, in offering an archaeological perspective on Homer, sets out to establish the stratigraphy of its text and its history

The Lower Palaeolithic has always been studied within a framework based on different types of flaked stone. Although this evidence might seem solid and unambiguous, the way it has been studied has been strongly influenced by wider social and political factors

Absolute dating of rock paintings has always used an indirect means, generally by dating material in strata sealing or overlying the pictures. AMS dating of very small carbon samples now allows direct determination of the age of an organic portion in the matter of the picture itself.

The context

Archaeologists of the 1990s are confronted with an apparent paradox: our legal and economic framework is based upon the preservation of the national heritage, while our research objectives and research methods are rather defined by larger regional, European or even international frameworks. In fact this is nothing new – we have always been serving both the present and the past, and will continue to do so. The question that is raised in this context, therefore, is whether the 1990s will see a changed balance between the interests of the present, and what effect that may have upon the working conditions of archaeologists. Will national archaeology be strengthened or can we hope that it will begin to merge into a coming European perception of history?

Antiquity reported, three years ago, a grape pip securely dated to the British Neolithic. Here are brought together reliable finds of grape pips from the Neolithic of Scandinavia — yet further from the Mediterranean warmth where the vine is comfortable. How they got to the north — by an early passion for viticulture in an unpromising climate? in a precocious long-distance exchange of sultanas? — is an intriguing question

Stone axes are numerous in Ireland, where there are important porcellanite sources in the northeast. Now there is a first clear idea of just how many Irish axes there are and what their pattern of distribution is