The presence of an archaeological site on Kosipe Sacre Coeur Mission was first noted in 1960, when axes and waisted blades were found by Father L. Willem during excavations for church foundations. Word of the site was sent to Mr W. Tomasetti, then Assistant District Officer, Department of Native Affairs, Tapini, and he informed White of it. Excavations were made there in June 1964 (White, 1965, 41–3; 1967). In 1966 the site was visited by Crook who collected further carbon and soil samples and in August 1967 White and Ruxton carried out further archaeological and geomorphological investigations. This report covers the entire history of excavations at the site.

Kosipe lies about 135 kilometres north of Port Moresby and 20 kilometres north northwest of the Woitape Sub-District office, Central District, Papua, at 147° 16′ E, 8° 21′ S (fig. 1). The area around Kosipe has not yet been the object of a reconnaissance geological survey. Observations by Crook along the Woitape-Kosipe road, south of Kosipe and on the Kosipe-Tanipai track northwest of Kosipe along the Ivane River indicate that the oldest rocks are slates and other low grade metamorphics of unknown age with steeply dipping foliation. These are overlain, probably sub-horizontally, by several hundred feet of basic volcanics, probably largely basalt. The volcanics are probably of late Tertiary or early Quaternary age; they are strongly dissected and are not obviously related to any centres of extrusion.

This paper accepts the position that the European Aurignacian should be seen as a reflection of behaviour connected to a modern human dispersal. A two-phase dispersal model (‘Pioneer’ and ‘Developed’ fades) is proposed to explain the variations in artefactual diversity and spatio-temporal patterning, enacted by directional, rapid movement across the continent rather than by a ‘Wave-of-Advance’. Presumed behavioural signatures of this population dispersal, notably what is here termed ‘behavioural flexibility’, are also explored.

The paper describes the initial results from renewed investigations at Niah Cave in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, famous for the discovery in 1958 of the c. 40,000–year old ‘Deep Skull’. The archaeological sequences from the West Mouth and the other entrances of the cave complex investigated by Tom and Barbara Harrisson and other researchers have potential implications for three major debates regarding the prehistory of south-east Asia: the timing of initial settlement by anatomically modern humans; the means by which they subsisted in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene; and the timing, nature, and causation of the transition from foraging to farming. The new project is informing on all three debates. The critical importance of the Niah stratigraphies was commonly identified – including by Tom Harrisson himself – as because the site provided a continuous sequence of occupation over the past 40,000 years. The present project indicates that Niah was first used at least 45,000 years ago, and probably earlier; that the subsequent Pleistocene and Holocene occupations were highly variable in intensity and character; and that in some periods, perhaps of significant duration, the caves may have been more or less abandoned. The cultural sequence that is emerging from the new investigations may be more typical of cave use in tropical rainforests in south-east Asia than the Harrisson model.

A comparative study of four Late Pleistocene sites — Il'skaja (Russia), La Borde and Mauran (France), and Wallertheim (Germany) — was undertaken. The sites are considered to be kill and/or habitation sites, showing bovid dominated faunal assemblages which have already independently been described as resulting from hominid hunting activities. In this synthetic paper it is discussed whether these archaeological records reflect a distinct mode of procurement. Focusing on the faunal remains, similarities and differences are demonstrated between the varying bovid assemblages in terms of the body profiles, and age and sex structures, and evidence of hominid bovid carcass exploitation is examined. Physical, taphonomical, and hominid behavioural implications of the different variables compared are treated in a problem-oriented discussion. The results indicate focussed and selective hunting strategies in parts of Europe during the Middle Palaeolithic, emphasising that during the period an enormous variation of subsistence options existed, some of them quite similar to those of the Upper Palaeolithic.

This paper explores social customs of cooking and dining as farming emerged in the earliest villages of Palestine and Jordan (12,650–6850 cal BC). The approach is a spatial analysis of in situ hearths, pits, bins, benches, platforms, activity areas, caches, and ground stone artefacts. Mortars, pestles, and bowls first appear in significant numbers in base camps of semi-sedentary Natufian hunter-gatherers. Elaborate and decorated, these artefacts imply a newly formal social etiquette of food-sharing. They were used within houses, near hearths, and in outdoor areas. The earliest farmers of the Khiamian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic A used simple, mostly undecorated, ground stone tools. One-room houses were often fitted with a hearth and a small mortar in the centre, features that also occur in outdoor areas. In the Early and Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, firepits, milling stations, and storage features were placed on porches and outdoor areas near house doors. These areas formed a transition zone between house and community, where food preparation provided opportunities for social contacts. The most private rooms in houses were supplied with benches, platforms, and decorated hearths, and probably sheltered household meals. In the Late PPNB, when some villages grew to unprecedented sizes, storage, and cooking facilities were placed in constricted, private spaces comparatively hidden from community view. Numerous milling tools and multiple milling stations in individual houses suggest intensification of production of prepared foods. It is argued that adult women bore the brunt of the increased labour and that these activities placed them under new restrictions of daily activity and visibility in relation to village communities.

In the history of west Mediterranean contacts and communications, obsidian has a special place, being the first traded commodity documented in the archaeological record. The commercial contacts which it reveals precede those of the Mycenaeans by more than three millennia. The general outlines of this trade and the principal sources exploited have previously been documented by trace element analysis undertaken by optical emission spectrography. The present article presents the data obtained by a different trace element approach—neutron activation analysis—and sets out to compare and evaluate the results obtained by the two methods. One important new archaeological outcome is the significance of the Sardinian sources, and the extent to which southern France participated in the contacts of the time. Regional and temporal trends now becoming apparent have a wide significance for Mediterranean prehistory and clarify the role of interregional contacts within it. No direct contacts with the east Mediterranean or Aegean are documented over the time range studied, nor do obsidian finds suggests that southern Iberia was in close touch with the west-central Mediterranean during the neolithic period. Four zones of interaction, each with a natural source of obsidian as focus, may be identified.

Britain's geographical status has fluctuated between an island and a peninsula of Europe several times over the past 500 kya, as sea-levels rose and fell in response to global climate change. In this paper, we outline the currently available lithological and biological evidence for these fluctuations and use it to help construct an heuristic biogeographical framework of human colonisation, settlement, and abandonment, proposing mechanisms that are coupled with both regional palaeogeographical evolution and global climatic change. When used as a means of interpreting the archaeological record, the implications of this framework suggests not only that large-scale socio-culturally relevant patterns may indeed exist in the lithic record, but that these may possibly be understood as part of the ebb and flow of different regional populations, measured against the backdrop of changing climates and landscapes. It is suggested that the Clactonian and Acheulean may represent separate pulses of colonisation, possibly by different European populations, following abandonment during the height of glacial periods: the Clactonian reflecting an early recolonisation event during climatic amelioration, the Acheulean representing a second wave during the main interglacial. This phenomenon is recurrent, being observable during the first two post-Anglian inter glacials. Other patterns in the lithic record are argued to reflect specific endemic technological developments among insular hominid populations during periods of isolation from mainland Europe. These represent some of the few patterns in the British Acheulean that cannot be interpreted more parsimoniously in terms of raw materials.

The site of Nahal Oren is 10 km south of Haifa in the Wadi Fellah at its junction with the old Tel Aviv-Haifa road, Israel.

The first excavations at Nahal Oren were made by Professor Stekelis in 1941, when the cave was emptied; a Natufian industry was found (Stekelis 1942). In 1954–9 there were further excavations in front of the cave (Stekelis and Yisraeli 1963). Numerous fine artefacts indicated the presence of two phases of the Kebaran, Natufian and ‘pre Pottery Neolithic A and B’ industries. The well known complex of house foundations on artificial platforms or terraces was exposed during this work.

The industrial succession indicated that the site was suitable for the study of late Palaeolithic cultures and their associated economies. The recent excavations, supported by the British Museum and carried out by Cambridge University and the Israel Museum, had the following objectives: to attempt the total collection of artefacts from restricted areas, to establish the relevant stratigraphy, and to collect a broad spectrum of organic remains, by methods developed by the British Academy's Major Research Project, the History of Early Agriculture.

The recognition by archaeologists over the last fifteen years or so that even a discipline as down to earth as prehistory requires a theoretical basis has led to a diversity of research objectives. Essentially this has been a move away from the delineation of chronology and culture narrative towards an understanding of the behaviour of prehistoric man, requiring the development of theories relating to his ecological adaptation, his social organization, and his cognitive behaviour. The reassessment of archaeology has largely been at an explanatory or interpretative level. To some extent this has of course been paralleled by the increasingly sophisticated scientific and analytical techniques that are now available to aid in the interpretation of archaeological data. However, whilst archaeologists are more rigorous than ever before, and have developed a whole range of concepts for tackling the problems of prehistory, the actual data base employed by archaeologists has remained remarkably static. Field theory and methodology is essentially that of the earliest archaeologists. As Clarke (1973, 10) has commented, ‘harnessing powerful new methodological horses to rickety old conceptual carts has proved to be a powerful but drastic way of improving archaeological constructs by elimination’. Equally, though, the gleaming, streamlined conceptual chariots of the 1980s will go no further nor faster unless some attempt is made to update the roads over which they are expected to travel. What is necessary is a reassessment of what archaeological field data represent, i.e. how is the archaeological record formed?

The object of the present communication is to demonstrate the relationships which, in the light of present knowledge, appear to exist between the various Pleistocene and Holocene deposits in the Lower and Middle Thames Valley. For this purpose two cross-sections of the valley have been drawn indicating the relative positions of the deposits which occur at various localities as though they were all present in two localities, one in the Lower, and one in the Middle Thames.

As many of the more important deposits in the Lower Thames are represented to the north and south of the river in the Dartford area, we have drawn the one section as if our ideal locality occurred in that neighbourhood. In this section, therefore, the relative altitudes of the various beds above and below present river level are those which are found in that part of the Thames basin. In tributary valleys, or in other parts of the main valley these altitudes are not of course necessarily maintained. In cases where deposits belonging to a particular stage have not been preserved in the Dartford area, but occur in a neighbouring part of the valley, or in a tributary valley, their position in the composite section has been roughly gauged by a process of extrapolation. Similarly when dealing with the Middle Thames, we have drawn our ideal section as though all the deposits occurred in one section of the valley in the neighbourhood of Iver.

The first season of an on-going project focused on Leskernick Hill, north-west Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, entailed a preliminary settlement survey and limited excavation of a stone row terminal. Leskernick comprises a western and a southern settlement situated on the lower, stony slopes of the hill and including 51 circular stone houses constructed using a variety of building techniques. Walled fields associated with these houses vary in size from 0.25–1 ha and appear to have accreted in a curvilinear fashion from a number of centres. Five smal burial mounds and a cist are associated with the southern settlement, all but one lying around the periphery of the field system. The western settlement includes ‘cairn-like’ piles of stones within and between some houses and some hut circles may have been converted into cairns. The settlements may have been built sequentially but the layout of each adheres to a coherent design suggesting a common broad phase of use. The southern settlement overlooks a stone-free plain containing a ceremonial complex.

The paper presents a narrative account of the work and considers not only the form, function, and chronology of the sites at Leskernick but also seeks to explore the relationships between people and the landscape they inhabit; the prehistoric symbolic continuum from house to field to stone row etc, and to investigate the relationship between archaeology as a discourse on the past and archaeology as practice in the present. It considers how the daily process of excavation generates alternative site histories which are subsequently abandoned, forgotten, perpetuated or transformed.

The acheulian site at Boxgrove contains one of the most extensive areas of in situ fauna and flintwork yet discovered in Britain. This material is found in a complex sequence of sediments which represent depositional conditions from a 42 m sea level rise to the onset of a full periglacial climate. Excavation of the archaeological horizon has been accompanied by a programme of multidisciplinary research examining site formation processes, palaeolandscape and palaeoecological development, using sedimentological and environmental reconstruction techniques. Dating of the site is tentative as no absolute dates are available at present. However, comparative analysis with other British sites would suggest a position for the Boxgrove sequence within the Middle Pleistocene. The archaeological horizon is interpreted as being deposited towards the latter part of an interglacial or an interstadial period.

Ten years have now elapsed since the death of V. Gordon Childe, whose great achievement it was to relate the many disparate elements of European prehistory into a single coherent whole. These ten years have seen not only the sustained application of radiocarbon dating to the south-east European Neolithic (Quitta, 1967; Kohl and Quitta, 1966), but the publication of important stratigraphic sequences, especially that of the great tell at Karanovo in Bulgaria (Georgiev, 1961). Both these advances put in question one of the essential elements in Childe's structure for the chronology of Europe: the chronological equation between Troy I and the Vinča culture of Jugoslavia (Childe, 1929, 32; 1927; 1939).

This is the cornerstone for the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of much of Europe, and to remove it would cause widespread changes both in chronology and culture history.

The crucial importance of this point has been well expressed by Professor Clark (1938): ‘Thanks to the synchronisms established between Troy and Iberia and the western Mediterranean on the one hand, and central and northern Europe on the other, any important alterations in the absolute dating of the successive “cities” is bound to affect the dating of every culture in Europe of the period, much in the same way as fluctuations in the price of certain key commodities are felt in the exchanges of the whole world’. Today, of course, it is not so much the absolute dating of Troy which is in question, but the synchronisms with Europe: the effect, however, is the same.

Evidence relating to the ‘Mousterian’ period in the Périgord and adjacent areas of south-west France has increased strikingly—both in quantity and quality—during the past two decades (note 1, p. 166). New sites have been excavated (and old sites re-excavated) with the aid of much more refined techniques for separating the different strata and recording the finds than those employed hitherto; faunal remains have been subjected to closer and more systematic examination (Bouchud, 1966; Bordes and Prat, 1965); and the application of detailed palynological and sedimentological analyses has provided a relatively clear and firmly-established picture of the climatic and ecological conditions under which the Mousterian communities lived (Bordes et al., 1966; Bonifay, 1964; Laville, 1964a, etc.).

Perhaps the most impressive advances, however, have been made in studies of the Mousterian industries themselves. Extensive application of the quantitative techniques of analyses devised by Professor F. Bordes and M. Bourgon (1951b) has permitted for the first time an objective appraisal of the full range of typological and technical variability which the Mousterian assemblages of this region embrace. On the basis of these analyses it has been possible to divide the industries into a number of relatively well-defined taxonomic groups (Bordes, 1953, 1957b, 1961a, 1968, 98–105 etc.). Although based initially on a very small body of data (Bordes and Bourgon, 1951b; Bordes, 1953), subsequent analysis of a much larger number of industries has provided strong support for at least the major features of this taxonomic scheme (Mellars, 1967, 97–145).

In 1965 the investigations described in the first paper of the series were resumed in Epirus. The excavation of the rock shelter of Asprochaliko was continued, and further geological observations made it possible to establish a continental sequence extending from the Last Interglacial to the present day.

The geological succession and its associated artifacts was worked out in the Louros valley (fig. 1) and confirmed in other parts of Epirus. It consists of the following three main formations:

3. Valley-floor Alluvium (pl. 1, upper). 2. Red Beds. 1. Tufa.

There are also extensive sheets of unconsolidated scree on the valley sides, as Hey has noted. These overlie the Red Beds, but as their relationship to the Valley-floor Alluvium is not known, and as the extent of contemporary scree formation (if any) is not yet clear, they cannot at this stage be placed in the succession.

The widespread alliance systems of Australian Aboriginal society had an economic and survival value in harsh environments, but in resource-rich areas such as South-east Queensland it is more a question of strategies for increasing regional carrying capacity. Recent archaeological results in the area, with evidence of increases in site numbers and artefact deposition rates and diversification of subsistence resources to include small-bodied species, show the development of new patterns of technology, economy and demography following major environmental changes in the post-Pleistocene period. Widespread changes in Australian prehistory around 4000 years ago may have been triggered in certain key areas such as South-east Queensland.

In the second article of this series, brief mention was made of a cave at Kastritsa, near Lake Ioannina, whose talus had yielded an industry reminiscent of the last phase at the shelter of Asprochaliko. The evidence for an increase in the size of Lake Ioannina during the Last Glaciation was also outlined. The purpose of this paper is to consider the concomitant environmental changes in relation to the evidence for human occupation.

Lake Ioannina lies at 469 metres above sea-level. To the north-east stands the Mitsikeli ridge, with a maximum elevation of 1,810 metres and separated from the Pindus range by the gorge of the upper Arakhthos (fig. 1). To the south-west lies the Tomarokhoria plateau, which in places rises to over 1,900 metres. The basin, a typical polje, is cradled by limestones which range in age from the Upper Triassic to the Upper Eocene. The Flysch of the Pindus borders it on the south-east. The lake lies along the axis of the Perama syncline, which runs north-west-south-east parallel to the Mitsikeli anticline and the Stavraki anticline; faulting is common. The basin would seem to owe its existence primarily to structural factors, although solution doubtless contributed to its present form.

The Lower Palaeolithic site at Elveden, Suffolk, was the subject of new excavations from 1995–1999. Excavations around the edge and in the centre of the former clay-pit revealed sediments infilling a lake basin that had formed in Lowestoft till, overlying Chalk, the till being attributed to the Anglian glaciation (MIS 12). The lake sediments contain pollen that can be assigned to pollen zones HoI and HoIIa of the early Hoxnian (MIS 11). Overlying grey clays contain ostracods, molluscs, vertebrates, and carbonate concretions. Together they are indicative of a fluvial environment in a temperate climate. AAR ratios (amino acid racemisation) on the molluscs also suggest correlation with MIS 11. Further indications of a fluvial context are indicated by thin spreads of lag gravel along opposite sides of the clay-pit, marking the edges of a channel. The gravel forms the raw material for the human industries which consist of handaxes, flake tools, flakes, and cores. Further artefacts are found in the overlying black clay, which is interpreted as a palaeosol that formed with the silting-up of the channel. The basin was further infilled with colluvial ‘brickearths’, which also contain artefacts that are probably derived from the underlying gravel. Further evidence of soil formation was identified in the ‘brickearth’. Coversands with periglacial involutions overlie the ‘brickearth’ at the top of the sequence. These probably formed in the last cold stage, the Devensian (MIS 5d-2).

‘It is the slippery assemblages and the social traditions they represent, that we are trying to precipitate from the mass of beaker data’. Clarke 1970, 33

The pottery we collectively call ‘Beakers’ is united by the thread of a potting and style tradition, Wrapped up in that tradition are also expressions concerning what such a pot is for and who it may represent. Both style and those embedded meanings mutate through the long currency of British Beakers. Indeed, the newly emerging chronology for Beaker grave groups suggests that there was one critical point of rapid mutation in both pot form and associated artefacts. This phase is referred to as a fission horizon, c. 2250–2150 cal BC, and it underlines the difficulties that past schemes of steady evolution have run into.

In reviewing the continental background for Beaker-carrying cultures, a corridor of Bell Beaker/Corded Ware fusion is perceived along the southern flanks of the Channel. This created a modified spectrum of Beaker culture which stands at the head of the insular phenomenon. The long ensuing currency of Beaker pottery and Beaker graves in Britain does not hold up as a unified, steadily evolving entity. Instead, three ‘phases of meaning’ can be suggested: 1) Beaker as circumscribed, exclusive culture; 2) Beaker as instituted culture; 3) Beaker as past reference. The fission horizon initiates phase 2.

The disappearance of an archaeologically visible burial rite at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age has puzzled archaeologists for some years yet has never formed a specific focus of research. This paper aims to look at the problem in detail for the first time. A corpus has been compiled listing sites from which human remains dating to this period have been recovered. The contexts in which these remains are found are documented and discussed; these include, for example, finds from settlements, hoards, and wet places. It is argued that many of the sites do not represent the residues of ‘normal’ mortuary rituals but may instead result from other ritual practices or from refuse disposal activities. It is concluded from contextual patterning in the data that human remains were used in situations where concepts of liminality, identity, continuity, and renewal needed to be highlighted. The potential of human remains for symbolising these themes was drawn upon in activities during which concerns central to Late Bronze Age communities were confronted. The nature of these concerns is discussed in relation to wider developments that occur over the Late Bronze Age. It is argued that the ways in which human remains were deposited were intimately related to the development of new discourses within society as the basis of socio-political power changed from practices surrounding the consumption and exchange of bronze to the control of agricultural production and human and agricultural fertility. The symbolic themes dealt with during the deposition of human remains in specific locations relate to these changing concerns and allowed individuals to situate themselves within a changing society and to negotiate their relationships with others.