bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Archaeological retrospect 7
Authors: De Laet Sigfried J.
Published: January 2016

Pure luck played an important part in determining my scientific career. As far as I can remember, when a schoolboy I never seriously considered devoting myself to historical studies, let alone to archaeology arid prehistory. In fact, I then had no clear predilection for any particular, well-defined field. 1 was a rather good pupil in most subjects; only physics inspired a profound dislike in me and this barred the road to the exact sciences. My father made his living as a teacher and probably without realizing it, I wanted to follow in his footsteps. The influence of a few exccllcnt teachers eventually made me decide to read classics at the University of Ghent. Soon however, I grew strongly disappointed by my chosen subject and niy professors could not kindle in me any fervent lovc for the endless rehashing of antique texts or for critical texteditions. Luckily I was attracted almost immediately by a remarkable man, Hubert \.’an de IVeerd, whose extensive courses included riot only the whole range of ancient history but also the archaeology and art history of that same period. His personal interest, however, was in Gallo-Kornan archaeology, and precisely at the time when I first met hini he had just finished the first large-scale operation undertaken in Belgium, to wit the excavation of the townwall of ‘I’ongeren, the antique Aturrtucu Tungrotmi. I xi the course of his academic career, Van de 12’eerd spent the best part of his time and efforts on the training of his students; he thus created a solid school of historians and archaeologists, the best of whom were to occupy important positions in Flemish intellectual life.
The Piltdown hoax reconsidered
Authors: Costello Peter
Published: January 2016

Ever since the revelation in 1953 that the finds at Piltdown were faked there has been very considerable speculation as to who was responsible for this astonishing fraud, and the matter has been ventilated many times in the last twenty years in our pages. Many people have thought that Charles Dawson was the forger and this seemed the answer by implication, though not specifically, in the late Professor Weiner's The Piltdown forgery. Other people, for various reasons, have tried to pin the blame, or part of the blame, on the late Father Teilhard de Chardin. Many other candidates have been put up and knocked down, and many of us have wondered whether we should ever know the truth. Now we think we do, owing to the most careful researches of Peter Costello, the biographer and literary historian based in Dublin. He has written an invaluable book setting out his complete investigations into this mystery, and coming to what we believe is the proper and final solution. In advance of the publication of his important book he has very kindly agreed to give us a short account, which we print here with great pleasure. All readers of Antiquity will look forward with avidity to reading the complete statement of his case in his published book.
Goethe and prehistory
Authors: Todd Malcolm
Published: January 2016

In this fascinating article, the Professor of Archaeology in the University of Exeter shows us that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was not only the author of Faust, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and of beautiful lyrics, ballads and love-songs, but was keenly interested in prehistory and was well abreast of the subject as it was developing in Germany in the early nineteenth century.
Paolo Orsi (1859–1935) and the prehistory of Sicily
Authors: Leighton Robert
Published: January 2016

Born in Rovereto in the North of Italy during the Risorgimento, and a student at Padua, Vienna and Rome, Orsi is best known for his work in Sicily from 1888 onwards, as inspector and then director of the Syracuse museum. His long and distinguished career began with research in the Trentino where he studied the antiquities of all periods, and his first publication (the first of over 300) appeared in I 878. The Italian archaeological establishment, and prehistorians such as Pigorini, Chierici and Strobel, soon became aware of Orsi's tireless ability as a fieldworker and scholar in his home area. His stratigraphic excavations in the rock-shelter of Colombo di Mori in 1881, his particular interest in prehistory and his early three-fold division of the North Italian Neolithic in 1882 were notable and clearly marked the beginning of systematic research in the Trentino. Orsi became a regular contributor to the Bullettino di Paletnologia Italiana from 1882 and later other journals such as the Monumenti Antichi and the Notizie degli Scavi of the Accademia dei Lincei widely publicized his discoveries in Sicily. By 1893 the editors of the American Journal of Archaeology had drawn attention to his 'immense activity in Sicily , . . By his means Sicily is becoming the part of Italy where the most interesting excavations are being carried on' (293).
Double axe testimonies
Authors: Hawkes Christopher
Published: January 2016

It is useful to know that Joanna Close-Brooks, at Edinburgh in the National Museum of Antiquities, has found its only bronze double axe to be not from Co. Antrim, Ireland, but a nineteenth-century acquisition from Attica, Greece. Her information rightly opens the review of the claims for such axes in the West, by Stephen Briggs in ANTIQUITY last December (Briggs, 1973). Those in our museums with no such Aegean provenance he makes now five, since Anthony Harding informed him that in the British Museum's Card-catalogue (formerly British Association's) another is drawn and recorded as kept–at least in the 1920s—in the Farnham, Dorset (Pitt Rivers) Museum, without a provenance at all.
Thermoluminescence and Glozel
Authors: McKerrell Hugh , Mejdahl Vagn , François Henri , Portal Guy
Published: January 2016

The advance of new scientific methods, in particular the thermoluminescence technique for analysis of ceramic objects (Aitken and Fleming, 1972; Perlman et al., 1972), have opened up new possibilities for investigation of the mysterious finds at Glozel. As a first contribution we describe in this article the thermoluminescence analysis of a number of typical Glozelian objects: inscribed clay tablets, face urns, sexual idols, small vessels (lamps) and bobines. Our results are in marked contrast with earlier assumptions of forgery: all objects investigated prove to be genuine and give a preliminary date within the period 700 BC-AD 100.
Neolithic of Northwest Africa
Authors: Gilman Antonio
Published: January 2016

For prehistorians of an earlier generation North Africa was an important staging area for the diffusion of neolithic arts into Western Europe, The light of Egyptian civilization was diffused along the southern Mediterranean until it dimly illuminated the cave dwellers of the Maghreb and Iberia (e.g. Vaufrey, 1955, Forde-Johnston, 1959). Spanish prehistorians, beginning with Bosch-Gimpera, were particularly fervent Africanists: even Martínez Santa Olalla's (1946) terms, ‘Hispanomauritano’ (for the Impressed Ware Culture) and ‘Iberosahariano’ (for the Almeria Culture), gained wide acceptance for a time. Under the influence of Tarradell (1959), Africanism has lost ground even in Spain and more recent syntheses (such as McBurney, 1960) have emphasized the continuing mesolithic tradition in North Africa. Still, the idea of close North AfricanISpanish ‘connexions’ persists even among anti-diffusionists (Renfrew, 1967). A brief review of the Neolithic of the Maghreb is appropriate, therefore, in order to indicate its true importance for Western Mediterranean prehistory.
‘Gothicism, ignorance and a bad taste’: the destruction of Arthur's O'on
Authors: Brown Iain G.
Published: January 2016

In the year 1725 William Stukeley entered into correspondence with the eminent Scottish antiquary, Sir John Clerk of Penicuik. 'It has been a frequent matter of wonder to me', wrote Stukeley in his first letter, 'that so many monuments of Antiquity as Scotland may justly boast of, should for ages past lye exposed to the sun, neglected and untouched, whilst every corner of Italy is ransacked and threadbare, we waste away immense sums of our treasure for some abject gleanings there, overlooking a rich and ripe harvest at our own doors.
Iron Age Britain retraced
Authors: Powell T. G. E.
Published: January 2016

At first glance it may seem an extravagance that two substantial books on the British Iron Age should make their appearance at virtually the same moment. On the contrary, except for the expense, this is a very fortunate accident that will oblige real enquirers in this field to formulate in a more determined manner than heretofore their own opinions, and working hypotheses. There is no question of abandoning one author for the other on all points: both must be read, and full weight given to the diversity of material evidence presented, and to the interpretations offered. This all contributes to a great stimulation of interest, of opportunity to clarify issues, and to see what next most needs to be done.
The Tal-y-llyn Hoard
Authors: Savory H. N.
Published: January 2016

The find was made in June 1963 at a alongside a steep path which climbs from the valley floor near Tal-y-llyn on the west side of Nant Cader through part of the Cader Idris Estate of Idris Ltd., the soft drink manufacturers, which has lately been made over to the Nature Conservancy to preserve its natural beauties and prevent flooding of the country around Tal-y-llyn. The finders were Mr and Mrs Arthur Jones of Llanbadarn Fawr, Aberystwyth, who were picnicking alongside the path and happened to notice some pieces of sheet-bronze which were only half-buried in a shallow deposit of silt in a small cavity beneath a large boulder which projects from the mountainside, propped up by two small boulders. Through their good offices, the pieces were examined first by members of the Royal Commission on Ancient Monuments in Wales at Aberystwyth, and finally at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. The owners of the land, Idris Ltd., have now consented to place the find on permanent loan in the National Museum of Wales.
The Knossos Tablets
Authors: Boardman J. , Palmer L. R.
Published: January 2016

At last the cards are on the table. Palmer's book was intended to present the testimonia in support of his theory about the date of the Knossos tablets. His case was a simple one, and if correct could have been presented simply. But the discussions of the last three and a half years, which have revealed so many shortcomings in his arguments, have necessitated advocacy, rather than a presentation of evidence which could stand by itself. And since the objections raised have seemed to most scholars fatal to his theory the core of the matter has been further overlaid by repetitious arguments and criticism. The present reviewer has suffered more than most since he had been alone in the position of being able to answer Palmer's unsupported arguments from knowledge of the unpublished material. From the Preface through every introduction to the quotations from the notebooks the reader is presented with Palmer's special pleading for his cause. He doth protest too much-and his anxiety leaves me, for one, with the impression that he is himself uneasy about a theory which requires so much dialectic in its support and attacks (however veiled) upon scholars who can no longer answer back.
Whither archaeology?
Authors: Neustupný Evžen
Published: January 2016

Few archaeologists (or prehistorians) would agree on a comprehensive definition of their science. There is not even a unanimous answer to the question whether it deserves the proud (or debasing?) designation ‘science’. Anyway, most of those who feel themselves concerned with modern archaeology would presumably admit that this peculiar human activity has two important aspects. First, it is connected with the study of material remains left behind by ancient man. Secondly, its aim is to recover at least some aspects of man’s past, mainly those unrecorded by written documents.
Altin-depe and the Bull Cult
Authors: Masson V. M.
Published: January 2016

On the resumption of excavation in the autumn of 1972, a funerary complex belonging to a community of priests was discovered among a group of religious buildings in the early urban Bronze Age centre of Altin-depe in South Turkmenia. All the material found there dates from the early stages of Namazga V, or, using the accepted chronology, from the end of the third millennium BC (Masson, 1973, 481). It had previously been established that the chief building of this religious group was a stepped, tower-like edifice which had clearly been built in the style of the Mesopotamian ziggurats and had been rebuilt three times in the course of its existence (Masson and Sarianidi, 1972, 117–18). The funerary complex excavated in 1972 corresponds chronologically to the first, relatively small, ziggurat and was situated southeast of it.
The Gundestrup version ofTáin Bó Cuailnge
Authors: Olmsted Garrett S.
Published: January 2016

While most observers now agree that the Gundestrup cauldron originated on the Continent within a Celtic context and dates to the period 100-50 BC (Klindt-Jensen, 1960, 50; Powell, 1971, 205; Allen, 1971, 20, 23) its fantastic motifs have, despite Hatt’s (1965) imaginative rendering, remained enigmatic to most commentators. ‘The Gundestrup artists were influenced by strangely archaic, Oriental imagery and mode of composition’ (Klindt-Jensen, 1959, 167), which is a pronounced element of this unusual piece whatever its exact geographical origin.
The beginning of iron in India
Authors: Chakrabarti Dilip
Published: January 2016

Between 1795 and 1974 early Indian iron may be said to have had three separate phases of research. The first phase lasted from 1795 to about the middle of the 19th century. There were two types of writings in this period. The first type represented the metallurgical experiments on pre-industrial Indian steel called wootz, the term which is derived from the Canarese term ukku meaning steel, having been introduced into the English language by Pearson in 1795 (Yule and Burnell, 1903).
Quanterness, radiocarbon and the Orkney cairns
Authors: Renfrew Colin , Harkness Douglas , Switsur Roy
Published: January 2016

The chambered cairns of Orkney are among the most sophisticated architectural products of prehistoric Europe. Maes Howe, since the chamber was re-entered a century ago (Petrie, 1861) has excited the admiration of all who have visited it. In Stuart Piggott’s words (1954, 244): ‘The assured competence and mastery over the building material shown at Maes Howe mark it out as a monument comparable in prehistoric Britain only to Stonehenge in its individual handling of an architectural problem. In both a contemporary existing conception—that of a chambered tomb or that of a stone circle—has been used to produce a superlative monument that by its originality of execution is lifted out of its class into a unique position.’

Quanterness has proved to be one of the best preserved of the Orcadian monuments, with four of the six side chambers still standing, very much as they were built some five thousand years ago. Much of the importance of the excavation comes from the detailed examination of the deposits within the chamber which have offered an unusual insight into neolithic burial practice, and these are fully discussed in the forthcoming final publication (Renfrewet al.,in press).
Mesoamerican civilization and the idea of transcendence
Authors: Willey Gordon R.
Published: January 2016

How do ideas, or ideologies, articulate with other cultural systems? This is a complex question, and archaeologists, in their study of the rise and growth of civilizations, have been hesitant to address it. There are obvious reasons for this hesitancy. Even in those instances where the archaeological record is text-aided it is difficult, and it is still more so where contemporaneous documentary materials are lacking or equivocal, as in Precolumbian America. Then, too, it is my impression that while many archaeologists are willing to grant ideology a role in cultural development they tend to look upon it as causally ‘secondary’. Subsistence, demography, technology, and ecology—perhaps because they are more directly susceptible to archaeological methods and inferences than are idea systems—are more apt to be seen as the seats of ‘prime cause’.
The early development of towns in Egypt
Authors: Kemp Barry J.
Published: January 2016

It may seem surprising that, after three-quarters of a century of excavation in Egypt, anyone should still feel it necessary to write an article claiming that ancient Egypt has, after all, left behind stratified town sites of the sort that have been the main source of work for the archaeoIogist in other countries ; and that, furthermore, the life which they represent can be rationally comprehended.
Critick in Antiquity: Sir John Clerk of Penicuik
Authors: Brown Iain G.
Published: January 2016

Some 300 years ago, in 1676, the year of Sir John Clerk‘s birth, Roger North, the biographer, visited Hadrian’s Wall. He was disappointed with what he saw: ‘it appeared only as a range or bank of stones all overgrown with grass, not unlike the bank of the Devil’s Ditch at Newmarket, only without any hollow, and nothing near so big’ (Birley, 1961, 9). In 1754, the year before Clerk died, William Stukeley had an audience of the Princess Dowager of Wales at Kew House.
Implications of a European radiocarbon calibration
Authors: Pilcher J. R. , Baillie M. G. L.
Published: January 2016

Clark (1975) gave a clear account to ANTIQUITY readers of the current state of the radiocarbon calibration problem. It is now 19 years since De Vries demonstrated that one of the primary assumptions of the radiocarbon dating method was in error. Since then more than 1,200 measurements have been made on samples of known-age wood and over 70 papers published on this topic (reviewed by Bermingham and Renfrew, 1972 and by Clark, 1975). In spite of this activity, at the recent radiocarbon conference in Los Angeles and La Jolla no international agreement could be reached on a single calibration or correction that could be used to convert radiocarbon measurements to calendar ages. The problems of calibration have undermined the confidence of many European archaeologists in radiocarbon dating-one hears remarks such as ‘one can’t take the dates seriously, after all they are only radiocarbon dates’. Workers attempting to reconcile calibrated radiocarbon dates with historically based chronologies have found that the agreements do not live up to their expectations based on the quoted standard deviations of the dates. In the short term the results we present here may further convince the archaeologist that radiocarbon dates will not solve his chronological problems. However, we hope to demonstrate that radiocarbon dating is ultimately capable of sufficient accuracy to be fully compatible with historical chronologies
Authors: Bergquist Anders , Taylor Timothy
Published: January 2016

Late last year, the British Museum showed a new Thracian treasure from Rogozen in Bulgaria (Fol et al. 1986), including over 150 silver-gilt vessels and a superb discovery in itself. Here the evidence of Rogozen is taken as another clue in finding the origin of perhaps the most famed single find from later prehistoric Europe.
Etton 1986: neolithic metamorphoses
Authors: Pryor Francis
Published: January 2016

Excavation of Etton, the first British neolithic causewayed enclosure with waterlogged deposits, cleared the interior by the end of 1986. As well as making a cautionary tale as to how different two halves of a seemingly homogeneous site may be, the final areas force some re-thinking of just what this, and other, causewayed enclosures actually were.
The Courtrai chest from New College, Oxford, re-examined
Authors: Hall E.T.
Published: January 2016

The first and obvious strength of AMS and other small-sample radiocarbon techniques is in the tiny quantities of material they destroy, opening the way for 14C determinations on little and precious objects – fabric and pictures, for examples – from which no curator will sacrifice a large chunk. In this case, the object is a more substantial thing, but the point still applies; and the size of its timbers has made possible a completely independent and confirming date by dendrochronology.

This paper follows the normal ANTIQUITY convention of b.p. for uncalibrated dates.
Reconstructing an agrarian system in the Alpes-Maritimes, France
Authors: Allen M.J. , Lewison Anthony
Published: January 2016

For someone accustomed to the rural intensity of settlement one still finds in northern Europe, it can be a surprise to find, in mountain France or Italy, how many are the high valleys that now have lost their people. In just one the editor happens to know, La Maglia in the eastern Alpes-Maritimes, which once supported 40 or so farms, the cultivated land, so laboriously won by terracing, is virtually all let go now to grass and scrub. But how old are the structures and fields that belong with dense settlement of these marginal lands? A study has been made at the other side of the same département of the Alpes-Maritimes, in the extreme SE corner of France.
Hominid species and stone-tool assemblages: how are they related?
Authors: Foley Robert
Published: January 2016

A fast-growing quantity of fossil material – post-cranial as well as skulls and teeth – is combining with cladistics and other new theoretical perspectives radically to change the picture of human evolution. Here, a summary of that picture is given, as the basis for a re-examination of that fundamental question of Pleistocene archaeology, the matching with the bones of the stones of the palaeolithic sequence.
The use of percussion drilling to obtain core samples from rock-shelter deposits
Authors: Bailey Geoff , Thomas Gwyn
Published: January 2016

How many excavators of deep palaeolithic sites, especially in caves or rock-shelters, dig with any clear knowledge of how deep the deposits they are working in actually are, or of the ages of the lower portions? Here an alternative is offered to the traditional approach by a ‘deep sounding’ of conventional excavation. A crucial element to the strategy at Klithi is the possibility of carbon-dating, by accelerator, samples of the small size commonly obtained from a drilled core.
Childe after 30 years
Authors: Gathercole Peter
Published: January 2016

Thirty years after his death, on 19 October 1957, V. Gordon Childe's ideas seem full of life. Peter Gathercole has watched the Childe literature grow – with three biographical studies, any number of articles and a major conference in Mexico last year (its proceedings will be reviewed in the next number) – and has contributed to it himself. ANTIQUITY invited him to make the points that seem most pertinent about Childe today.
Webb on reburial: a North American perspective
Authors: Zimmerman L.J.
Published: January 2016

A comment, following Webb's paper in the last number, comes from another place where comparable issues have arisen about reburial.
‘Indian’ metalwork in East Africa: the bronze lion statuette from Shanga
Authors: Horton M.C. , Blurton T.R.
Published: January 2016

There are few frontiers from later periods whose archaeology is more beguiling than the east African coast. To the east are the sea-routes of the Indian Ocean, to the Islamic world, to India, to Indonesia, to China. To the west are the distinctive cultures of medieval Africa. And on the coast are the settlements where the east and the west touch. This paper works towards the wider issue of circum-maritime cultures from a single find from the new excavations at Shanga which have revealed mosques of a remarkably early date.
The vapours of one entrance to Hades
Authors: Cross Toni M. , Aaronson Sheldon
Published: January 2016

The Lake Nyos disaster of 1986, when gases blew up in a Camerounian lake and the resulting gas and water vapour killed hundreds of people, prompted this examination of the effect of gases coming from underground, on a smaller but steadier scale, from a place that was reputed to be one of the entrances to Hades in ancient times.
How new is the New World?
Authors: Dillehay Thomas D.
Published: January 2016

The first settlement of the Americas is one of those research questions in which convictions have sometimes seemed as important as data. There has recently been encouragement both for True Believers, in the very early sequence of dates reported by the French from a Brazilian rock-shelter, and for True Sceptics, in the revised and more recent dates now given to some of the older finds from North America after further study by AMS carbon dating. Here, a review of a major new book is the opportunity to review the issues.
Tintagel Castle
Authors: Thomas Charles
Published: January 2016

Tintagel Castle (at NGR SS 0589) has been strangely absent from the pages of ANTIQUITY. O.G.S. Crawford missed seeing it during his Cornish trips in the 1920s. Glyn Daniel was there only in October 1986, his last visit to Cornwall, when the place was also inspected by HRH Prince Charles – apparently the first Duke or Earl of Cornwall to set foot on the Island since Richard (1209–72; the younger brother of Henry III), who built the Castle and was crowned King of the Romans at Aachen in 1257. If Tintagel shares with Maiden Castle the fate of being among the most frequently excavated of all the Duchy of Cornwall's monuments, it stands alone in being at once the most picturesque and the most enigmatic.
Bell Beakers in Spain and Portugal: working with radiocarbon dates in the 3rd millennium BC
Authors: Harrison Richard J.
Published: January 2016

The recommended Belfast/Seattle radiocarbon calibration (Pearson 1987) coming into common use gives us ‘good’ portions, where the calibration curve has a shape that aids in refining dates, and ‘sloughs of despond’ - the periods when the shape of the curve is less helpful. Two deep sloughs arefound in the last few centuries ncand in the 3rd millennium BC. Here, a series of new determinations are presented for Bell Beakers in Spain, falling in the 3rd-millennium slough, and it is shown what can and cannot be learnt from these and their calibration.
The Bush Barrow gold lozenge: is it a solar and lunar calendar for Stonehenge?
Authors: Thom A. S. , Ker J. M. D. , Burrowst T. R.
Published: January 2016

Papers in ANTIQUITY earlier this year (Kinnes et al. 1988; Shell 6. Robinson 1988) have studied evidence for the original profile-shape of the decorated gold lozenge, from Bush Barrow, in the barrow-field immediately to the south of Stonehenge. They have not addressed the pattern of the markings inscribed on the lozenge, which are here identified with the significant directions of solar and lunar events, the lozenge acting as a long-term record for prehistoric astronomers.
Human skulls from the River Thames, their dating and significance
Authors: Bradley Richard , Gordon Ken
Published: January 2016

Forgotton beside the well-known and well-studied collections of metalwork from the river Thames is a remarkable collection of human skulls; this new study dates some skulls and finds important order in their pattern of dates.
Mamluk Jerusalem
Authors: Johns Jeremy
Published: January 2016

A review of a major book on medieval Jerusalem is the opportunity also to look at the balance of attention that has been given to different aspects of the city's history.
Repainting of images on rock in Australia and the maintenance of Aboriginal culture
Authors: Mowaljarlai David , Vinnicombe Patricia , Ward Graeme K. , Chippindale Christopher
Published: January 2016

Sandra Bowdler reported in the last issue of ANTIQUITY (62: 517–23) on the controversy surrounding the recent repainting of Wandjina figures on the rocks of the western Kimberley, northwest Australia. Here is an Aboriginal Australian's view of the repainting project and its significance, along with an explication and further discussion of implications.
Tomb cult and the ‘Greek renaissance’: the past in the present in the 8th centuryBC
Authors: Morris Ian
Published: January 2016

Greek society was changing rapidly in the 8th century BC. The archaeological record reveals population growth, increasing political complexity, artistic experiments and a strong interest in the past. Because these processes resemble those at work in early modern Italy, the period has often been referred to as the ‘Greek renaissance’ (e.g. Ure 1922; Hägg 1983a; cf. Burke 1986). This paper is about the glorification of the past in the 8th century, and its relationship to the rise of thepolis, the Greek city state. I concentrate on one particular phenomenon, the spread of cults at tombs dating to the Mycenaean period (c. 1600-1200 BC). I argue that the common renaissance analogy has limited value, and that the 8thcentury Greeks created a past narrowly focussed on the persons of powerful ancient beings, from whom they could draw authority in the social upheavals which came about as the loose, aristocratic societies of the ‘Dark Age’ (c. 1200-750 BC) were challenged. Tomb cults go back at least to 950 BC, but after 750 they were redefined and used as a source of power in new ways. I have adapted my subtitle from Maurice Bloch’s well-known paper ‘The past and the present in the present’ (1977), where he argues that rituals bring the past into the present to form a system of cognition mystifying nature and preserving the social order. The argument here is slightly different. I stress the variety of the cults and the range of meanings they must have had, making their recipients highly ambiguous figures. The same cults could simultaneously evoke the new, relatively egalitarian ideology of the polis and the older ideals of heroic aristocrats who protected the grateful and defenceless lower orders, while standing far above them. Bloch's paper borrowed Malinowski’s idea of culture as a ‘long conversation’; developing the analogy, I look at the multiple meanings which any statement in such a conversation may have for the different actors.
The social context of literacy in Archaic Greece and Etruria
Authors: Stoddart Simon , Whitley James
Published: January 2016

In recent years much emphasis has been placed upon the effects of literacy in the transformation of the Mediterranean World between 800 and 400 BC. Alphabetic scripts have been seen by many, archaeologists and classicists alike, as one of the key factors that made many of the achievements of Mediterranean, particularly Greek, thought and culture possible. Alphabetic scripts encouraged widespread literacy, and widespread literacy was the necessary condition for what remains distinctive in Ancient Greek culture, namely the development of History, Philosophy and speculative Natural Science. Murray (1980: 96) is typical in his view that ‘Archaic Greece was a literate society in the modern sense.’ The work of Goody & Watt (1963) has done much to advance the view that many of the achievements of Mediterranean Society can be ascribed to, if not entirely explained by, this ‘technology of the intellect’. Their ‘autonomous model’ however, as Cartledge (1978: 37) has observed, comes dangerously close to technological determinism.
Radiocarbon accelerator (AMS) dating of Lindow Man
Authors: Gowlett J. A. J. , Hedges R. E. M. , Law I. A.
Published: January 2016

‘Pete Marsh’, the bog body from Lindow Moss in Cheshire that is properly called ‘Lindow 2’, has given remarkable research opportunities. One of these-perhaps less expected-has been the study of the considerable discrepancies in the suites of dates for the body obtained by two radiocarbon laboratories. The laboratories think this is a specific anomaly which has no implications for any other dates, but one may wonder how many other anomalies would declare themselves if more sites had so many determinations that should relate to the same event.
Aboriginal spears of Port Jackson type discovered—a bicentennial sequel
Authors: Lampert R. J. , Konecny T. A.
Published: January 2016

Notice was taken in ANTIQUITY last year of the Australian bicentennial, and in particular of the remarkable ‘art of the First Fleet’, the ethnographic record provided by the watercolour artists of the contact years around Botany Bay. This note, held over into the bicentennial-plus-one year, finds further insight by tying closer together the painter's record, the ethnographic collections, and the archaeological record.
The mills of Pompeii
Authors: Peacock D. P. S.
Published: January 2016

About half a century ago ANTIQUITY published the seminal papers of Cecil Curwen on querns. We now return to the theme of flour production and David Peacock uses a computer to analyse a major collection of rotary mills.
Intensified fishery production at Moreton Bay, southeast Queensland, in the late Holocene
Authors: Walters Ian
Published: January 2016

As the great antiquity of human settlement in Australia becomes clear, so does the distinctive character of human adaptation in the continent. In particular, the Holocene transformation of the Australian climate led to patterns of human ecology with some characteristics of their own, and some common to regions where the Holocene changes led on to agricultural societies. Here is a case-study in that Australian history.
Fungal parasites of grasses and cereals: their role as food or medicine, now and in the past
Authors: Aaronson Sheldon
Published: January 2016

With the use of grain comes a variety of parasitic fungi – some benign, others dangerous and even toxic. Here are surveyed some of the fungi to which ancient and modern grain is subject, and some of the consequences for human populations. More specifically, several parasitic fungi, Claviceps, purpurea, C. Paspali, Ustilago maydis and U. esculenta, have infested cereal grains and grasses in ancient and recent times and may have served as a source of human foods or medicine.
The bird of Chavín: a parrot?
Authors: Davenport Demorest , Schreiber Katharina J.
Published: January 2016

A key to the understanding of ancient iconography is knowing just what the pictures are pictures of. That is not always an easy question: in this case, a classic collection of Peruvian depictions, it is at least clear the pictures are of birds. But what kind of bird, and why?
Who is signalling whom? Ceramic style, ethnicity and taphonomy among the Sirak Bulahay
Authors: Sterner Judy
Published: January 2016

The pattern of pottery decoration among the Sirak Bulahay is exceptional in being most elaborate when least visible in the context of primary use. In this and related cultures of the Mandara Highlands of North Cameroon, pottery decoration is mainly used for reflexive signalling, by the users of the pots to themselves, in the form of communications with the spirit world. Information regarding ethnicity is, however, transmitted by pot morphology or even by patterns of utilization.

Passage from the behavioural to the archaeological context is subject to well-defined cultural rules, and is accompanied by major redistributions of ceramic types and attributes such that the pottery that most regularly occurs on potential archaeological ‘sites’ is a subset of that least visible in the behavioural context.
Dating the introduction of food production into Britain and Ireland
Authors: Williams Elizabeth
Published: January 2016

Opinion as to the nature of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the British Isles has varied with changing ideas about the overall pattern in northern Europe, and with interpretations of the securely dated evidence—which continues, sadly, to be both slight and ambiguous. Here a new assessment is made, by a researcher who comes to the question from an antipodean perspective.
The Hjortspring boat reconstructed
Authors: Jensen Jørgen
Published: January 2016

The Hjortspring boat, from south Denmark, is an early case of the successful excavation of a wooden boat, and its more-or-less successful conservation. Sixty years on, further conservation work has given some new observations and a radiocarbon date.
Archaeology and the Green movement: a case for perestroika
Authors: Greeves Tom
Published: January 2016

Archaeology encompasses the study of human artefacts, and the largest of those artefacts is the landscape–at least in those many countries where human settlement is old and enduring in its impact. The landscape is also the domain of natural history. Yet human history and natural history are often treated as if they inhabited separate lands, and are addressed in different terms. Here is the point of their union, through a questioning of recent approaches to archaeology.
Late Quaternary sea-level changes and archaeology
Authors: Van Andel Tjeerd H.
Published: January 2016

The oxygen-isotope curve, derived from the record of organisms stratified in the deep ocean ooze, has replaced the old pattern of four glaciations with a more complex record of cool and warm events. Since people live by their local sea-level, rather than an abstract world average, that global pattern is itself mediated by other geological forces, on several scales, before it directs the possibilities of human settlement. Here the effect of those forces is unravelled and illustrated.
Accelerator radiocarbon dating of human blood proteins in pigments from Late Pleistocene art sites in Australia
Authors: Loy T. H. , Jones Rhys , Nelson D. E. , Meehan Betty , Vogel John , Southon John , Cosgrove Richard
Published: January 2016

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.
Between Classical antiquity and the Middle Ages: new evidence of economic change
Authors: Randsborg Klavs
Published: January 2016

New archaeological evidence, principally from rural settlements, questions previous conceptions of the economic background to the transition from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages. In particular, finds from the Balkans, a geographical ‘hinge’ between North and South and East and West, is discussed. The major periods of change are both the 5th and the 7th centuries AD.
The Latin inscription on the Coppergate helmet
Authors: Binns J. W. , Norton E. C. , Palliser D. M.
Published: January 2016

The Coppergate helmet, found in central York in 1982 and of Anglo-Saxon date, bears a Latin inscription. A new reading of the inscription is offered, and a different view consequently taken of its significance.
Green in the Somerset Levels
Authors: Coles John
Published: January 2016

Tom Greeves referred to conservation and archaeology in the Somerset Levels in his Green paper (Archaeology and the Green movement, ANTIQUITY 63 (December 1989): 659–65). John Coles, who has run the Somerest Levels Project since 1973, takes issue.
Industrial archaeology: a thematic or a period discipline?
Authors: Palmer Marilyn
Published: January 2016

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.
East Indiaman Amsterdam research 1984–1986
Authors: Gawronski Jerzy
Published: January 2016

Since 1984, underwater archaeological excavations have studied the Amsterdam, a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Three annual reports (Gawronski 1985; 1986; 1987) have been published by the VOC Schip Amsterdam Foundation covering excavations and research in 1984, 1985 and 1986. Rooij – Gawronski (1989) presents a detailed account of the history, methods and results of the Amsterdam project and background information about the ship and the VOC.

The Amsterdam, built in 1748 in Amsterdam, was lost during her maiden voyage, outwardbound for Batavia, the modern Djakarta, in January 1749 near the little town of Hastings on the south coast of England (FIGURE 1). The excavations form part of an integrated historical and archaeological programme to create relevant historical models for understanding the ship and its contents. This project aims to contribute to a more detailed and realistic view of the shipping and trade of the VOC in the 18th century.
The impoverishment of the past: the case of classical Greece
Authors: Vickers Michael
Published: January 2016

‘Dear dead women, with such hair, too – what's become of all the gold’? ROBERT BROWNING, ‘A toccata of Galuppi's’ What became of most of the Classical gold and silver, argues Michael Vickers, is that it went into the melting pot, with exceptions like the Sevso treasure recently brought to public spectacle. Classical ceramics, more commonplace and with nil potential for recycling, have been luckier in their survival. Those accidents of later history need to be remembered as Classical Greece is envisaged; and it is perhaps even more important to bear in mind the reasons why many students of antiquity have until recently chosen to downplay the rôle of precious metal
Scilly's statue-menhir rediscovered
Authors: Ashbee Paul , Thomas Charles
Published: January 2016

A splendid statue-menhir of the 1st millennium BC, found, lost and now found again
Dereivka and the problem of horse domestication
Authors: Levine Marsha A.
Published: January 2016

The domestication of the horse was revolutionary in its consequences – as much so as the spread of agriculture, trade, warfare, metalwork and the other more usual subjects addressed by archaeologists studying post-Neolithic human development. For not only did it directly cause important changes in peoples' relationships to the world around them by the mobility it conferred, but also it was deeply implicated in all those other developments. In spite of that, in the past 15 years very little has been done to extend our knowledge of the subject. This study, if anything, shows that we probably know even less about the earliest domestication of the horse than we thought
The 1990s: North American archaeology with a human face?
Authors: Trigger Bruce G.
Published: January 2016

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?
National archaeology in the age of European integration
Authors: Kristiansen Kristian
Published: January 2016

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?
World Archaeological Congress 2
Authors: Fowler P. J.
Published: January 2016

After an adventurous birth bouncing from Venezuela to Colombia and back, the Second World Archaeological Congress duly and amicably took place in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, between 4 and 8 September 1990. Some 500 people attended, many of them gratifyingly young. Sadly absent were representatives from the USSR, China and the Middle East, but otherwise participants came from the Americas, North (not many), Middle (Mexico), and South (notably Venezuelans, Peruvians and Colombians); the whole of Europe (including former Eastern bloc countries but numerically mainly Britons); Africa and India, intellectually articulate and influential as ever; and Australasia. Jack Golson (Canberra) was elected new President with Larry Zimmerman (South Dakota) taking over as Secretary, and Sue Bulmer (Auckland) as Treasurer.
Summarizing a group of 14C dates on the historical time scale: with a worked example from the Late Neolithic of Bavaria
Authors: Aitchison Tom , Ottaway Barbara , Al-Ruzaiza Abdulrahman S.
Published: January 2016

There is a large gap between the fact of a radiocarbon determination and the archaeological answer to the question to which it relates. The first part of the gap is addressed by calibration, that turns a measure of 14C activity into an estimate of a calendar date. Here is a contribution to the second part, by which a set of calibrated dates is made to provide a calendar range for the archaeological events under study.

This note follows ANTIQUITY's usual convention, under which uncalibrated determinations are given in lower-case, b.p., and calibrated dates in small capitals, BP, BC or AD.
‘The Trundholm horse's trappings: a chamfrein?’ Reasons for doubting
Authors: Littauer M. A. , Crouwel J. H.
Published: January 2016

Issue is taken with the identification of marks on the Trundholm horse, from the later Bronze Age of Denmark, as depiction of a chamfrein.
Sembiran: the beginnings of Indian contact with Bali
Authors: Ardika I. Wayan , Bellwood Peter
Published: January 2016

In Classical times, the Indian continent was central to a trading network that ran west to the Mediterranean world revolving round Rome: despite its name, the Mediterranean was not the centre of the known world. Another world opened eastwards from India, and there are many obscure references to its eastern fringes, Now a series of finds from Bali, in the Indonesian archipelago, gives the elusive direct connection of Indian traders to that farther East.
Random causes with directed effects: the Indo-European language spread and the stochastic loss of lineages
Authors: Robb John
Published: January 2016

Since the beginning, studies of Indo-European have seen it as a large phenomenon necessarily having a large, usually single cause. Yet apparent pattern can arise from chance causes that need have no great historical order. In a minimalist view, set out here as a theoretical hypothesis, the pattern of Indo-European can simply arise from a kind of social Brownian motion, in which a large pattern invents itself out of countless little perturbations between adjacent language communities