After years of discussion and argument, the fate of Stonehenge and its landscape has been decided. As Professor Geoffrey Wainwright (former Head of Archaeology at English Heritage) describes, there is at last political will to ensure a better future for the monument.

Petroglyphs weather at varying rates, compared tothe unengraved host rock into which they are carved. Most petroglyphs are significantly harder or significantly softer than surrounding rock, depending on the nature of weathering. Variability and intensity of weathering probably introduces error into radiocarbon, rock varnis and micreoerosion dating methods.

Unexpectedly early evidence for the precocious spread of farming has recently emerged in Cyprus. It is argued that the transmission occurred as a result of migration related to ecosystem stress in the Levant. So strong are the connections of the colonists with the mainland that we suggest the term Cypro-Pre-Pottery Neolithic B to describe what has hitherto been a major lacuna in Cypriot prehistory. Consistent dates from key sites and the evolution of material culture indicate that this Cypro-PPNB sequence represents the hitherto elusive ancestry for the Khirokitian.

We have invited the Director of Programmes of the AHRB and three leading archaeologists to respond to our editorial of September 1999 in the light of the consequent crisis of the funding archaeological fieldwork based in British universities.

Analysis and dating of new Upper Palaeolithic sites suggest that microblades emerged in the Transbaikal after 18,000 years ago. These findings encourage review of earlier assertions that such technologies developed in northeast Asia prior to the last glacial maximum.

This short paper will discuss the role of the archaeologist and writer Jacquetta Hawkes as filmmaker. It is set within the context of her widely ranging work — from poetry and journalism to guide books and academic papers — which made varying contributions to the communication of archaeology from the 1930s to the 1980s

Prehistoric (Bronze Age) settlement has been little explored in the Yemen. Here, we report on new research at the small, semi-urban site of Hammat al-Qa in the Dhamar region of Yemen.

Archaeological, palynological and palaeolimnological evidence is combined with new AMS radiocarbon dates to shed new light on a long-known, yet only partially understood, Upper Palaeolithic occupation in southeast Europe.

High-resolution pollen and phytolith analyses can provide direct evidence for farming in archaeological landscapes. This is demonstrated here in the analysis of two mounds at Pouerua, northern New Zealand, where evidence indicates both functional and temporal differences between the structures, and the presence of gourd Lagenaria siceraria provides direct, unequivocal evidence that this crop was cultivated and that the site was used as a garden.

In May 1939, the accomplished Palaeolithic archaeologist, Dorothy Garrod, was elected Cambridge's Professor of Archaeology — the first woman to hold a Chair at either Cambridge or Oxford. Garrod was well qualified for the position in several ways. Trained by R.R. Marett at Oxford and the Abbé Henri Breuil in France, she was renowned for her excavations in Gibraltar, Palestine, Southern Kurdistan and Bulgaria. By 1939, Garrod was one of Britain's finest archaeologists. She had discovered the wellpreserved skull fragments of ‘Abel’, a Neanderthal child, in Gibraltar, identified the Natufianculture while excavating Shukbah near Jerusalem, directed the large, long-term excavations at Mt Carmel, established the Palaeolithic succession for that crucial region and then travelled, in 1938, to explore the important Palaeolithic cave of Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria. Published reports of her excavations had appeared promptly and were very favourably reviewed. The prehistorian, Grahame Clark, who was to succeed her to the Disney Chair in 1952, described Garrod's The Stone Age of Mount Carmel (1937) as ‘pure gold’ (Clark 1937: 488).

Results of recent excavations and radiocarbon dating show that several places in Siberia and the Russian Far East, such as the Lower Amur River basin and the Transbaikal, represent independent centres of pottery invention, and all pre-date 10,000 BP. These two areas should be considered among the earliest centres of pottery origins in East Asia and the Old World. The rest of Siberia is characterized by significantly later appearance of Neolithic cultures, between c. 8000 BP and c. 4600–2600 BP.

A deposit of dismembered and cooked human remains from Ana Manuku in the Cook Islands, Polynesia, provides evidence for ritual practices c. AD 1390–1470.

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no national curriculum in schools in the United Kingdom. Instead, there are four separate curricula for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. These cover education in state-funded schools between the ages of 5 and 16. The curricula in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, whose school and university systems share the same basic framework, are structured in similar ways, use similar jargon and are statutory (they lay down the minimum that has to be taught). The Scottish school and higher education system, however, has always been distinctive. The curriculum in Scotland is structured along very different lines and takes the form of non-statutory guidelines. Differences between the curricula may well increase in future since education is part of the responsibilities being transferred to the new devolved parliament/assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The relationship between economic power and political centralization during the First and Second Palace Periods of Bronze Age Crete is a topical theme in Aegean studies. Here, two scholars argue the case for continuity in the economic base of palatial political authority.