This volume contains papers from twelve authors who were invited to speak at the Prehistoric Society's conference on Palaeolithic Art held at the Oxford University Department for External Studies in November 1989. Such conferences are a regular feature of the Society's activities and are organized to review and debate important themes in prehistory. In this instance interest in Palaeolithic art had already been heightened through the Society's study tours to the Dordogne (in 1980) and Northern Spain (in 1987). Despite this interest, no major conference on the theme had been organized in Britain since the Society's London Conference of April 1967 on ‘Prehistoric Art in the Western Mediterranean to the Second Millennium BC’. Unfortunately, the papers of that conference were not published and it is difficult now to assess their contribution to the subject. By contrast, some of the Society's subsequent conferences have been published by commercial houses (for example, Mellars 1978; Chapman, Kinnes and Randsborg 1981; Champion and Megaw 1985; Coles and Lawson 1987). This volume marks a different approach, namely for the Society to publish the proceedings of its own conference. Hopefully, this will enable members who were unable to participate in the conference to benefit from the expertise of the authors, and encourage others with an interest in prehistory to join the Society.