bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Tartaria Tablets
Authors: Hood M. S. F.
Published: January 2016

The inscribed clay tablets (PL. XVIa) found in a 'Neolithic' context at Tartaria (FIG. 1) in Romania in 1961 have already aroused a certain amount of interest here. The signs on the tablets are comparable with those of the script of the Late Predynastic (Uruk III Jemdet Nasr) period in Mesopotamia, as Dr Vlassa who excavated them has noted. It seems unlikely however that the tablets were drafted by a Sumerian hand or in the Sumerian language of early Mesopotamia. The shapes of the tablets and some of the signs are paralleled in the Minoan scripts of Crete, but the tablets do not seem to be Cretan. There are indications that a similar use of signs, if not actual writing, was practised in the rest of the Aegean and in Western Anatolia before the end of the 3rd millennium B.C. A knowledge of writing, or the use of signs derived from it, may have spread to these regions and to the Balkans from Mesopotamia through Syria. This was perhaps one aspect of a common inheritance of religious or magical beliefs and practices.
Byzantines, Berbers and Arabs in 7th-century Libya
Authors: Goodchild R. G.
Published: January 2016

The extraordinary rapidity of the Arab conquest (FIG. 1) of the north African coastlands between Alexandria and Tripoli has often evoked comment, even in an age which has seen modern armies advancing still more rapidly over the same route. One recent writer, exceptionally well qualified to discuss Arab warfare, has affirmed that ‘the welcome offered to the Arabs in the Western Desert and Barqa seems to suggest that the people in this area were themselves partly Arab’.
Sutton Hoo Excavations, 1965–7
Authors: Bruce-Mitford R. L. S.
Published: January 2016

The first aim of this new excavation was to complete the study of the largest of the mounds. It was not known what the original shape of the mound was, whether oval or circular, what its height had been before excavation, whether it was surrounded by a ditch, or what structural or ritual features it might possess. It was also an aim to obtain more information about the site in general by cutting away the grass and bracken and making a fresh and sensitive survey of the surface features. In the process the number of barrows recognizable rose from 11 to 16. It was also an aim to sound the flat ground between and near the barrows to see whether ordinary burials, whether cremation or inhumation, could be located, and to establish the nature of the Neolithic-Bronze Age occupation plentifully attested on the site by stray finds.
The British Museum and British Antiquities
Authors: Francis Frank
Published: January 2016

Professor Hawkes’s important article on ‘The British Museum and British Archaeology’ in the December number of ANTIQUITY is based on an intimate knowledge of the Museum and a sympathetic understanding of the disabilities which have beset it since the war. It may be that he is not fully aware of the changes in work and tempo that have markedly developed since he himself left the staff in 1946, but we know well that his article reflects a widespread impatience to see an end of the disabilities and the problems which have developed as the direct result of the war; and above all to see created in the National Museum an organization for dealing with British archaeology and antiquities which will be equal to the great advance of the subject that has taken place in this century, and with dramatic acceleration in the post-war years. No one is keener to see this development than the staff of the Department of British Antiquities who are entirely alive to what is required. We fully recognize, therefore, the importance of what Professor Hawkes has to say, but he does seem to be in some danger of falling into the mistake that many other less well-informed and less well-intentioned critics have made—of assuming that the honourable scars which still disfigure the British Museum and the overcrowding which was the inevitable concomitant of an informed and successful collecting policy in the Museum’s many departments, are being complacently lived with and that nothing has been done to bring about the speedy disappearance of these obstacles to our service.
A ‘Persian Gulf’ Seal from Lothal
Authors: Rao S. R.
Published: January 2016

Lothal is an important harbour-town of the Indus Civilization at the head of the Gulf of Cambay on the west coast of India (FIG. 1). During the recent excavations there, a circular steatite seal has been found which is neither wholly Indian nor Sumerian in workmanship (PL. IX). On the other hand, it closely resembles the seals from the Persian Gulf islands found by the Danish expedition led by Professor Glob and Dr Bibby. Sir Mortimer Wheeler has named them 'Persian Gulf' seals which, according to him, 'appear to have been made at the various entrepôts (such as Bahrain itself) of a cosmopolitan Persian Gulf trade of the kind which has been analyzed by A. L. Oppenheim from Larsa tablets' (note I). Commenting on these seals, the late Col. D. H. Gordon wrote: 'The problem of Bahrain is a very interesting and important one, and it is possible that these seals may help to solve it. Some day such seals may come to light in India, but so far they have not; Bahrain may have been Dilmun and it was almost certainly an entrepôt on the trade route to India, and so it is possible that seals of this kind were carried on to the Indus or to ports in Kathiawad and will some day be found in those localities, though this will not necessarily make them Indian or even of Indian style' (note 2). The hope expressed by Gordon has now been fulfilled by the discovery of a 'Persian Gulf' seal at Lothal, thus providing the first real evidence of trade contacts between India and the Persian Gulf.
The Egyptian 1st Dynasty Royal Cemetery
Authors: Kemp Barry J.
Published: January 2016

Around 3100 B.C. the kingship of Egypt, a country probably united already for over a century, passed into the hands of a family which tradition states originated from the Thinite nome in Upper Egypt. At about the same time the keeping of written records was begun and these first historic kings have come to form what we know as the 1st Dynasty. This was clearly a crucial and momentous period for under their rule Egyptian civilization began to take on that peculiarly characteristic form which was to last so long. It is obviously a matter of some consequence to be able to locate the tombs of these kings but here archaeology has provided a puzzle. For two quite separate sites have been identified as the royal cemetery of the period [I].
Pre-Roman Silver Miners at Riotinto
Authors: Blanco Antonio , Luzón J. M.
Published: January 2016

The name Riotinto has something of a magical connotation in the world of mining. It has been called the geologist’s paradise because at almost no other place on the earth has nature exposed in one spot such richness and variety of minerals. The floor of the bed of the richest areas in Riotinto is made up of a mass of porphyry and pyrites overlain by an oxidised cap. At the zone of contact between the two levels is an enormous deposit of silver, gold and other metals which today, as in ancient times, supports a flourishing industry.
The Ipswich Gold Torcs
Authors: Owles Elizabeth
Published: January 2016

The site where the torcs were found is just above the 100-ft contour (30.5 m.) on high land 3.2 km. east of the town centre (TM 13684273). The torcs were lying on the west flank of a hill overlooking a tributary of the Belstead Brook; this tributary has now been filled in and underlies Bridgwater Road. The hill is pasture land adjoining Fir Tree Farm and, being steepsided, is unlikely ever to have been ploughed. It was decided to cut back the hill at its foot to provide larger gardens for the houses of Holcombe Crescent. The flank was removed by bulldozing in 3-m. swathes, the width of the machine. When Mr Tricker walked past the spot he saw an almost vertical cliff some 4-5 m. high; the bulldozer, which was removing the second swathe, was working, as a safety precaution, about a metre from the edge; the spine of earth which was left was falling down the slope, loosened by the vibration. Projecting from this loose earth, some 2 m
A Sample of French Hill-forts
Authors: Hogg A. H. A.
Published: January 2016

To British archaeologists, the hill-forts in France are likely to be second in interest only to those in this country; they also form natural attractions when touring. For the southern sixsevenths of the country, however, information about these sites is very sparse, while plans or detailed directions for access are almost entirely lacking. In these circumstances the following notes may be of use. The accompanyingplans, save where noted, are merely pace-and-prismatic sketches, but give a better indication of the character of the remains than would be possible by description alone; for ease in comparison, they are reproduced to 1/2500 or some simple multiple. They are believed to be fairly correct representations, but it must be noted that many of the sites are very thickly overgrown. It must be emphasized that this is in no way a systematic study of French hill-forts, but merely the results of a brief tour made in 1966 to gain some personal knowledge of what the sites are like, supplemented by a few additional notes made during other visits.
A New Epoch in Radiocarbon Dating
Authors: Neustupný Evžen
Published: January 2016

The first phase of development of the radiocarbon dating method covers the first two decades since its beginning in 1949. During this period it was characterized by the fact that many of the assumptions on which it had been based remained outside the effective control of the scientists. Although it was clear that its principles were basically sound and, consequently, that it could yield reliable dates within certain limits, it was not yet able to persuade all the archaeologists who should have been the first to benefit from its success. In fact, especially in Europe, most archaeologists did not give it a very favourable reception.
The Neolithic of Auvernier, Switzerland
Authors: Suess Hans , Strahm Christian
Published: January 2016

The Neolithic settlement of Auvernier on the shores of Lake Neuchltel in Switzerland, first described in 1854 (Keller), is archaeologically dated by imports from the Schnurkeramik civilization (‘corded’ complex) (JCquier and Strahm, 1965).
Mons Craupius = Duncrub?
Authors: Feachem Richard
Published: January 2016

When 0. G. S. Crawford investigated a length of bank and ditch in Kincladie Wood near Dunning, in Perthshire, he observed that ‘the possibility that it might be a fragment of a Roman camp cannot be excluded’ (1948, 59). Kincladie Wood is 2 km. from the hill at Duncrub, a locality that has been equated philologically with the early historical Dorsum Crup (Watson, 1926, 56). We are assured by philologists that Mons Craupius, too, can be added to the equation.* The case which follows for identifying the hill at Duncrub with Mons Craupius, in which the philological proposition is supported by archaeological evidence, is offered to mark the 50th anniversary of Crawford’s appointment as first Archaeology Officer in the Ordnance Survey.
Archaeology in Britain: a Marxist View
Authors: Klejn L. S.
Published: January 2016

Many scientific journals throughout the world have marked these anniversaries with papers on various aspects of Marxism and its significance, written from various viewpoints. The journal ANTIQUITY, showing itself, as usual, more active and alert than the others, commissioned an article in 1965 from M. W. Thompson on ‘Marxism and Culture’ (1965, 108–116). However, Dr Thompson’s review of the significance of Marxism for archaeology is quite contrary to my own and amounts, in fact, to a completely negative appraisal. I feel, therefore, that it would be appropriate to answer Dr Thompson’s article in celebration of the anniversaries not only because my basically positive appraisal is more suited to the jubilee mood (1 well understand that this anniversary is interpreted in different ways in various circles), but also to clear up certain misunderstandings, and to help readers to form a more objective opinion of Thompson’s article by listening to the other side.
Prehistory and Marxism
Authors: Childe V. Gordon
Published: January 2016

In volume III of ‘The Cambridge Journal’ (1949, 131–47) the present Editor of ‘Antiquity’ wrote an article entitled ‘A defence of prehistory’ in which he referred to ‘the environmentalist school of Fleure and Fox, the hyperdiffusionist school of Elliot Smith, Parry, and Raglan, or the Marxist school of Childe’. Professor Childe wrote a rejoinder which Michael Oakshott, the Editor of ‘The Cambridge Journal’, could not find room to publish. Childe did not publish it elsewhere; there is now a great and continuing interest in his method and theory, and it seemed worth while publishing it at last, 30 years after it was written. Childe died in 1957; ‘The Cambridge Journal’ was short-lived: begun in 1947, it died in 1953.
The North American periphery of Antique Vermont
Authors: McKusick Marshall
Published: January 2016

Dr Marshall McKusick is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, USA. He and others have been concerned with the rise of antiquarian speculation in the United States, which is historically comparable to mound-builder theories of a century ago that gained great popular currency. Professor McKusick's book on the subject of the various speculations Atlantic voyages to prehistoric America, will be published early next year by the Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale.
How old is the city of Taxila?
Authors: Allchin F. R.
Published: January 2016

The city of Taxila, more properly Takṣaśilā, was one of the most important in ancient India. It is frequently mentioned as one of the two great cities of Gandhara (approximately the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan), along with its neighbour Puṣkalāvatī (modem Charsada north of Peshawar) some 80 miles (130 km) to the west. It was first identified in modern times by Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1863, after he had visited the extensive series of mounds lying near the village of Shah Dheri, east of Hasan Abdul, in the Punjab province of Pakistan (Cunningham, 1871). His identification was soon confirmed by the discovery there of early inscriptions referring to Taxila by name.
Analytical excavation
Authors: Reynolds Nicholas , Barber John
Published: January 2016

Antiquity in 1957, in the midst of an ‘Evolution Number’, published a bold article by Professor Richard Atkinson on ‘Worms and weathering’. Often quoted since, but all too little absorbed, its message at the time was clear: ‘All of us recognize . . . that a site consists of a sequence of deposits, some formed deliberately and usually rapidly by man, and others more slowly by nature; and that some of the processes of formation, such as erosion and filling by the plough, are still continuing today. But there seems to be a widespread assumption (though it is difficult to be sure of this, since such things are seldom discussed) that once a constituent layer of a site has been formed, and sealed by another layer above it, it becomes immediately fossilized . . .’ Professor Atkinson spoke of his own post-Darwinian observations as ‘shots in the dark’, which ‘may not always be very accurate; but at least they serve to wake sleepers from their beds’.
Understanding the archaeological record
Authors: Sabloff Jeremy A. , Binford Lewis R. , McAnany Patricia A.
Published: January 2016

Next year will mark the twentieth birthday of the ‘New Archaeology’, whose founding texts – Binford & Binford's New perspectives in archaeology in the USA and Clarke's Analytical archaeologyin Britain – both appeared in 1968. Nearly two decades on, some fundamentals are not yet resolved, which may indicate – as Lester Embree argued in the last number of ANTIQUITY– that archaeology is a harder science than most.
Recent developments in Japanese prehistory: a review
Authors: Anderson Atholl
Published: January 2016

Japanese archaeology, in both its practice and its substantive results, has its own character. The scale of archaeological activity, especially in salvage work, is massive. The intellectual framework of study has its special concerns and aims. The cultural sequence has some exceptional features. Here the pattern of Japanese archaeology is set out with particular reference to the major new synthesis, Pearson's Windows on the Japanese past (1986, Ann Arbor (MI): Center for Japanese Studies, $26 paperback).
The haunting
Authors: Lukas Mary , Lukas Ellen
Published: January 2016

In the early winter of 1953, just after the debunking of the Piltdown fossil forgery perpetrated in the early part of this century near Uckfield, Sussex, a blizzard of correspondence descended on the British Museum (Natural History). Among the letters was a fairly ominous one addressed to Kenneth Oakley. Purporting to be a message from one 'Elihu Progwhistle', a professional medium whose seances were being monopolized by a spirit 'identifying itself as the solicitor Charles Dawson', the note angrily denounced the whole investigation. It relayed the ghost's warning that it would take violent extra-legal action against the Piltdown detectives unless they gave up the search.
Archaeology in 1984
Authors: Hodder Ian
Published: January 2016

‘ . . . the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting.’ (George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Penguin, p. 31).
Three cart burials from Wetwang, Yorkshire
Authors: Dent John
Published: January 2016

In Garton Slack and Wetwang Slack, which together constitute one stretch of a dry valley to the west of Driffield, gravel extraction over 20 years has resulted in the excavation of a large part of an extensive Iron Age settlement.

Roads and ditches formed a focus for scores of buildings—roundhouses and post squares—as well as a cemetery of 446 inhumations in the ‘Arras Culture’ tradition and the first cart burial (in 1971) to be excavated under modern conditions (Dent, 1982, 1983; Brewster, 1971; 1981; Stead, 1984). Startling though many of these finds were, none exceeded the discovery of a group of three cart burials in the summer of 1984.

The first grave was discovered by the quarry manager, Mick Ward, who recognized it as a cart burial (he had seen the 1971 find, as well as numerous other burials in the valley) when the dark discolouration of the fill appeared in the quarry face and part of one tyre and the skull were exposed. He reported his discovery at once and I visited the site the same afternoon. The part of the quarry where the find was made had been stripped of topsoil a week or two earlier.
The bronze black rhinoceros from Port Vendres III
Authors: Colls D. , Descamps C. , Faure M. , Guerin C.
Published: January 2016

Like the wreck Port Vendres II the new wreck of Port Vendres III was broken in many pieces and neither the form of the ship nor the position of its cargo could be observed. The two shipwrecks were certainly caused by the same forces: a ship blown by a very strong wind (Tramontane) from the nearby mountains sought shelter in the natural harbour of Port Vendres. Once inside the harbour it would be unable to change direction and, driven on to the rocks at a place called Redoute Bear, broke up.

At present the Port Vendres III level forms a layer which averages about 10 cm in thickness and covers an area of 25 sq. m with a maximum thickness of 40 cm. This layer is not continuous and is found at depths varying between 5 and 7 m, and at a distance from 5 to 25 m from the coast. Covered by a carpet of Posidonia and sea shells of varying thickness, this site is separated in general from the Port Vendres II site by the same plants, but in places only the type of potsherd allowed us to distinguish one layer from the other as they are in direct contact (FIG. I)
The topography of Anglo-Saxon London
Authors: Tatton-Brown Tim
Published: January 2016

One of the few things to have remained very little changed in the City of London for nearly one thousand years was the position of most of its streets and lanes. Unfortunately this is no longer true, and in the past few decades large numbers of medieval streets have disappeared from the map for ever to be replaced by characterless dual-carriageways that now slice through the City. Not only do these new routes replace the earlier ones, but at the same time they swallow up and destroy all the surrounding side lanes and many of the old alignments disappear. Equally, property boundaries which may also have survived for at least 800 years now disappear for ever in very large redevelopments, and nowhere is this whole process more clearly seen than in the vast swathe cut for the new southern dualcarriageway that has replaced Thames Street. The whole of the western part of Upper Thames Street, with its adjoining side lanes, has been physically removed, to be replaced by a tunnelled dualcarriageway further to the south. For well over half a mile the central part of Thames Street is now so wide that it has engulfed properties on its north side, while the eastern end from the Custom House to Tower Hill, with its surrounding redevelopments, has had all signs of the medieval topography removed except for All Hallows church with its unique Anglo-Saxon arch (Taylor & Taylor, 1965, 39-400)
Archaeology in Britain since 1945
Authors: Hawkes Christopher
Published: January 2016

In 1932 Professor Christopher Hawkes, in collaboration with the late Sir Thomas Kendrick, produced Archaeology in England and Wales 1914-1931, a book for many years the standard and much-loved textbook for all students of ancient Britain. Here, more than half a century later he reviews Archaeology in Britain since 1945,* edited by Ian Longworth and John Cherry, published by the British Museum in conjunction with, and as a supplement to, its current exhibition, ‘Archaeology in Britain: New Views of the Past’ (Editorial, p. 169).
A salon science?
Authors: Snodgrass Anthony
Published: January 2016

We asked Professor Anthony Snodgrass, Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology in the University of Cambridge, and adviser on such matters for this journal, to review for us seven books* in his field which have been published in the last few months. He has chosen as the title for his review article, ‘A salon science?’, which he now explains.
Palaeolithic Discoveries in the Grotta Paglicci
Authors: Zorzi F.
Published: January 2016

The first objective in this area was the Grotta Paglicci (FIG. I), a cave opening into the cretaceous limestone on the south side of the great karstic plateau, just below the village of Rignano. Here, in 1957, three of the author's colleagues, Professors A. Pasa and S. Ruffo, and Sig. Messena collected bone and stone artifacts of Palaeolithic date from the tip of a vast excavation which a mad treasure hunter had been carrying out in the cave for several years. When I visited the site in 1960 to make the preparations for a proper excavation, I discovered to my dismay that in the meantime this same treasure hunter, in spite of dissuasion, had been continuing his devastation with the help of explosives and had caused the fmal collapse of the entrance to the cave, completely obscuring its natural morphology. With meagre hopes of finding any part of the deposit intact, a start was made in the following April 1961 patiently to clear the mouth of the cave to see what could be saved. Fortunately an area of undisturbed deposit was found sealed below some large blocks of the fallen roof and furthermore a passage was cleared through the treasure hunter's debris towards the interior of the cave.
Archaeology in Sulawesi, Indonesia
Authors: Mulvaney D. J. , Soejono R. P.
Published: January 2016

Alfred Russel Wallace visited southern Celebes in 18567. Captivated by its unique natural history, particularly its colourful butterflies, he concentrated upon collecting in the rugged limestone mountains around Bantimurung waterfall, east of Maros. Observing that the high, precipitous, cliffs were heavily vegetated, Wallace (1890, 181) wrote words of archaeological allurement—‘their surfaces are very irregular, broken into holes and fissures, with ledges overhanging the mouths of gloomy caverns’. He also made an incidental comment (1890, 165) of relevance a century later to Australian archaeologists, when he noted that his Makassarese servant had voyaged to the north Australian coast on several occasions to collect trepang (bêche-de-mer).
Gussage All Saints—a chronology
Authors: Wainwright G. J. , Switsur V. R.
Published: January 2016

In order to obtain a good site chronology the radiocarbon measurements must be carried out on samples having a firm archaeological basis and high probability of association with the event or structure the date of which is required. Patently the radiocarbon date can be no better than the sample provided for measurements, and any missassociation at this stage cannot subsequently be rectified. Often discordant radiocarbon dates are explained away by supposing that the sample was ‘contaminated’ with earlier or later material. Calculations based on these surmises may often disclose that excessively large amounts of contaminants must be postulated to secure a given result.
Early Brittany
Authors: Fleuriot Léon , Giot Pierre-Roland
Published: January 2016

Who are the Bretons and where do they come from? This is a question with not only historical and ethnological implications, but even political ones which sometimes tend to cloud the landscape.

Professor Léon Fleuriot teaches Celtic i n the second University at Rennes (Université de Haute-Bretagne) . He is a specialist in Old Breton (Le vieux Breton : éléments d'une grammaire, Paris, 1964; Dictionnaire des gloses en vieux Breton, Paris, 1964), a language barely known from glosses in Latin manuscripts from the scriptoria of the oldest Breton monasteries, from place-names and surnames in the cartularies of these monasteries. This has made him more interested still in the history and culture of the people speaking Old Breton, and he has revised all the evidence about them. Part I of this article is a version of the introduction to a large work on this subject not yet published.

Dr P.-R. Giot, specialist in Brittany, well known to the readers of Antiquity, is head of the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie–Prehistoire–Protohistoire et Quaternuire Armoricains in the first University at Rennes (Université de Rennes) . From the study of the dry bones of the old inhabitants of the country he has got involved in their history and archaeology.
Aborigine and settler: archaeological air photography
Authors: Connah Graham
Published: January 2016

Australian students of archaeology could be excused for thinking that aerial photography is a technique with little archaeological application in their own country. Archaeological text books usually draw their examples of the uses of aerial photography from Europe or the Americas; even the pages of Antiquity, graced for many years by the work of J. K. St Joseph and others, suggest a similar geographic limitation. It is also a fact that there are not many published aerial photographs of Australian archaeological sites. In particular, the great tradition of low-level oblique photography with hand-held camera seems to have had comparatively little impact on Australian archaeology. There have been notable exceptions: for instance Bill Webster, of the University of New England, has taken low-level oblique infra red photographs of the Moore Creek Axe Quarry near Tamworth, New South Wales (Binns and Mc- Bryde, 1972; McBryde, 1974); Jim Bowler of the Australian National University provided photography of Lake Mungo (Mulvaney, 1975, P1.47), and Judy Birmingham of Sydney University has published an aerial photograph of the Irrawang Pottery (Birmingham, 1976)
Bronze age mead
Authors: Dickson James H.
Published: January 2016

The discovery of three bronze age cist burials at Ashgrove, Fife, was unusual in revealing highly decomposed macroscopic plant debris in cist I, which was excavated by Professor R. J. Adam, Mrs Mary Adam and Professor L. H. Butler. Miss A. Henshall (1964) states that the liberal clay luting of the side slabs and cover of cist I had been so effective as to keep the interior dry and free of soil. She also reports that 'Over the skeleton and cist floor there was a thin deposit of black crumbly matter which formed a deep deposit nearly I ft across in the area between the forearms and upper arms, i.e., in the vicinity of the chest' (p. 167) (PL. xva). Miss C. A. Lambert (now Mrs C. A. Dickson), in an appendix to Henshall's paper, found that 'The plant material consisted of abundant dicotyledonous leaf fragments, bark, twigs, wood charcoal (two tiny fragments), plant tissue with crystalline copper salts adhering to it and fairly abundant sphagnum moss. The leaf fragments were several layers thick but their poorly preserved condition prevented their separation and identification.
The invasion hypothesis in Irish prehistory
Authors: Waddell John
Published: January 2016

A glance at the archaeological literature of the last dozen years demonstrates all too clearly that the popularity of the 'invasion hypothesis' in Irish archaeology is quite undiminished. An almost incessant stream of immigrants appears to have tramped ashore from the Mesolithic period to the Iron Age. Even reckoning those pre-eminent invaders, the Beaker Folk, as merely a single influx, over a dozen significant prehistoric population movements are claimed by a variety of writers. The general picture presented suggests that Ireland throughout much of her prehistory was, if not an archaeological Ellis Island, at least a desirable landfall for the land-hungry, the dispossessed and the adventurous of most of the rest of Western Europe. Major changes and innovations in the archaeological record-in monument or artifact typemay conceivably be the result of either independent invention, or diffusion or of a combination of the two. The occurrence of megalithic tombs in very different cultural and chronological contexts in Western Europe, India and Japan, for example, is an instance of independent invention.
The mechanics of the obsidian trade: a suggestion
Authors: Crawford Harriet
Published: January 2016

Our knowledge of the obsidian trade makes it an unique phenomenon in the prehistory of the Middle East. We know more about it than about any comparable exchange network. A great deal of work has now been done on the chemical composition of obsidian and on the location of its sources, on quantitative analyses, and on the spatial distribution of the material. The two major areas of supply, Central Anatolia and the area west of Lake Van have been extensively explored and individual sources pinpointed. It has been possible to reconstruct the movement of obsidian to sites as far away as Beidha in South Palestine and to Ali Kosh in South-West Iran. The distances involved are well over 1,600 km as the crow flies. Comparatively little work has been done on the mechanism of the trade, on the processes by which the obsidian changed hands, probably because such processes are difficult and sometimes impossible to determine from the archaeological record. In order to attempt such a task it is necessary to broaden our conceptual basis for studying data bearing on trade. To quote Adams (1974, 241) 'What is needed for this broadening to occur is a much more substantial awareness of ethnohistoric, historic and ethnographic studies of trade.
The Paute Valley Project in Ecuador, 1984
Authors: Hammond Norman , Bruhns Karen Olsen
Published: January 2016

South American archaeology is a field which ANTIQUITY all too rarely embraces, and we are glad to have this report (originally planned for volume 59, 1985) on a new project studying trans-Andean contacts between the Pacific coast and the Amazon jungles.
Burnt mounds as saunas, and the prehistory of bathing
Authors: Barfield Lawrence , Hodder Mike
Published: January 2016

The physical scale of buildings like the Baths of Caracalla give the clearest indication of the importance of bathing in the classical order of things – though whether what Romans did in the bath was always clean and decent may be an open question. But what about the prehistory of bathing, and particularly of bathing in steam? An answer is given here which links the historical and ethnographic record to burnt mounds, among the more common and puzzling types of north European site.
What price the man-made heritage?
Authors: Fowler Peter
Published: January 2016

British archaeology and British archaeologists now live in a fast-changing world. There are new administrative agencies and frameworks, major reviews of monument protection (above, this issue) and of university archaeology (last issue), a fundamental shift in the economics of the countryside (current issues passim), and a new mood in which an entrepreneurial ‘heritage industry’ has become conspicuous.

In 1986 the Environment Select Committee of the House of Commons investigated historic buildings and ancient monuments. Peter Fowler here reports the attitudes it brought to its study of archaeology and history, and the assessments of their value that it made.
A Scandinavian wagon construction
Authors: Sleeswyk André Wegener
Published: January 2016

Some fundamental problems in the design of wheeled animal-drawn vehicles result from the inescapable mechanical forces the vehicle deals with. Here, one of those problems is explored, with ethnohistorical information from recent Europe as a starting-point.
General Pitt-Rivers, Captain Lukis and Channel Island prehistory
Authors: Patton Mark A.
Published: January 2016

Many of the provenances of material in the great 19th-century collections have been lost. Here is one re-discovered, with the artifacts to which it relates.
Early tool-making in Asia: two-million-year-old artefacts in Pakistan
Authors: Dennell R.W. , Rendell H. , Hailwood E.
Published: January 2016

For the last half-century, the story of very early hominids, and their stone industries, has been almost exclusively ‘in Africa’. This first report of a very early industry takes the story ‘out of Africa’ and into the Indian sub-continent – that is, in a geographical direction towards the early industries of eastern Asia.
The phonetic decipherment of Mayan glyphs
Authors: Houston Stephen D.
Published: January 2016

The complete decipherment of Mayan glyphs is an event that neither we, nor perhaps our children, shall ever see: the script is tortuously complicated, as many hieroglyphic writing systems are, and hardly susceptible to rapid and unequivocal ‘codebreaking’. Nevertheless, good progress has been made towards reading the glyphs, with many solid achievements in reconstructing the genealogies and political interaction of royal dynasties of the Classic period (e.g. Berlin 1959; Proskouriakoff 1960). The focus of the present paper is another, more controversial feature of Mayan glyphs: a set of ‘phonetic’ or syllabic units used in spelling Mayan words. Virtually all glyph specialists now accept the validity of these units, but the path to consensus has been difficult and acrimonious. We shall examine here why many good scholars resisted ‘phoneticism’ in Mayan script, and why additional evidence so impressively confirms its existence.
A new look at Maya statecraft from Copan, Honduras
Authors: Fash William L.
Published: January 2016

The revelations in the study of the Ancient Maya made possible by the revolution in hieroglyphic decipherment have not occurred in isolation. Archaeological investigations within the last three decades have produced a much broader vision of Maya society during the Classic Period than previously possible. Particularly, the study of settlement patterns in conjunction with environmental studies has opened new vistas onto the size and organization of the populations which supported the rulers in their civic-ceremonial centres (Ashmore 1981; Culbert & Rice n.d.). The challenge for the present, and future, is to combine the archaeological record with the studies of inscriptions and politico-religious symbolism, to build a more complete and incisive reconstruction of the past. Where the two records are particularly clear and abundant, we may also aspire to explaining the past.
The worms of Roman horses and other finds of intestinal parasite eggs from unpromising deposits
Authors: Jones Andrew K.G. , Hutchinson Andrew R. , Nicholson Colin
Published: January 2016

The preservation of organic remains and environmental indicators in those soft, damp and colourful deposits that visually indicate ancient excreta is familiar. This note reports a horse parasite, and draws attention to preservation of valuable material in deposits much less promising in nature.
Provenance of local ceramic industry and the characterization of imports: petrography of pottery from medieval Yemen
Authors: Mason Robert B. , Keall Edward J.
Published: January 2016

Recognition of distinctive ceramics by visual inspection is the norm in surface survey - especially when ceramic types are as varied and colourful as those of Islamic medieval pottery. Here petrographic analysis is used successfully to define the ceramic categories and the contributions of local and imported wares.
The cicada on theomphalos: an iconological excursion
Authors: Hoffmann Herbert
Published: January 2016

Chartres is made of stone and glass. But it is not just stone and glass; it is a cathedral, and not only a cathedral, but a particular cathedral built at a particular time by certain members of a particular society. To understand what it means, to perceive it for what it is, you need to know rather more than the generic properties of stone and glass and rather more than what is common to all cathedrals. You need to understand also – and, in my opinion, most critically – the specific concepts of the relations among God, man and architecture that, since they have governed its creation, it consequently embodies. (Geertz 1973: 50.)
Human Pleistocene adaptations in the tropical island Pacific: recent evidence from New Ireland, a Greater Australian outlier
Authors: Allen Jim , Gosden Chris , White J. Peter
Published: January 2016

The late Pleistocene colonization of Greater Australia by humans by c. 40,0130 b.p. is now generally accepted. This landmass, which comprised at periods of lower sea levels Tasmania, Australia and Papua New Guinea, has now produced sites with rich and diverse sequences extending towards or now mainly beyond 30,000 b.p., in the present arid country of western New South Wales (Barbetti & Allen 1972), in southwest Western Australia (Pearce & Barbetti 1981), in the Papua New Guinea Highlands (Gillieson & Mountain 1983), and recently even in Tasmania (Cosgrove 1989).

Prior to 1985, with the exception of an 11,000 b.p. date for occupation in Misisjl Cave on New Britain (Specht et al. 1981), the tropical lowlands of Papua New Guinea and its attendant nearer Melanesian island chain had remained a blank on the region’s map of Pleistocene human expansion.
The dating of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic: an attempt at chronometric hygiene and linguistic correlation
Authors: Spriggs Matthew
Published: January 2016

As with conventional definitions of the Neolithic anywhere, the concept in this region relies on there being an agricultural economy, the traces of which are largely indirect. These traces are artefacts interpreted as being linked to agriculture, rather than direct finds of agricultural crops, which are rare in Island Southeast Asia. This definition by artefacts is inevitably polythetic, particularly because many of the sites which have been investigated are hardly comparable. We can expect quite different assemblages from open village sites as opposed to special use sites such as burial caves, or frequentation caves that are used occasionally either by agriculturalists while hunting or by gatherer-hunter groups in some form of interaction with near-by agricultural populations. And rarely is a full range of these different classes of sites available in any one area.
The Rose reviewed: a comedy(?) of errors
Authors: Biddle Martin
Published: January 2016

The identification, partial excavation, and covering-up again of the Rose Theatre in London this summer roused public interest unparalleled since the discovery of the Temple of Mithras 35 years ago. How is it that the future of an archaeological site of such importance has still to be resolved under threat in a flurry of direct action, injunctions, and media attention? Martin Biddle was almost the only archaeologist not directly involved who was prepared publicly to explore the issues in the press and on radio and television. Here he sets out his views of the lessons of the Rose.
Voyaging by canoe and computer: experiments in the settlement of the Pacific Ocean
Authors: Irwin Geoffrey , Bickler Simon , Quirke Philip
Published: January 2016

There is no expansion of human settlement to match the colonization of the Pacific islands, from Island Southeast Asia right across to Hawaii, Easter Island and down to New Zealand. The expansion is given an extra interest by the new finding that it began as early as the Pleistocene. The settlement of the remote Pacific began after 3500 BP and computer modelling and analysis of inter-island transits explains not just how settlement was possible-but how it must have followed from the controlled navigation of directed voyages and strategies for survival.
Excavations at Pirincay in the Paute Valley of southern Ecuador, 1985–1988
Authors: Bruhns Karen Olsen , Burton James H. , Miller George R.
Published: January 2016

The Formative in the northern Andes

The northern Andean regions, encompassing northernmost Peru, all of Ecuador and the southern provinces of Colombia, remain archaeologically very poorly known. Although the past 30 years have witnessed an increasing number of archaeological projects in coastal zones, especially the Santa Elena Peninsula, work in the highlands outside of the greater Quito commute zone has lagged sadly behind. Southern Ecuador, in particular, has had little investigation since earlier this century when first Max Uhle, then Donald Collier, John Murra and, finally, Wendell Bennett, demonstrated the existence of ‘Formative’ cultures in Ecuador through their investigations at sites along the Tomebamba and Paute rivers of Azuay province and at Cerro Narrío, just to the north in the Cañar Valley (Uhle 1922; Collier & Murra 1943; Bennett 1946; FIGURE 1).
The Neolithic of northeastern China and Korea
Authors: Nelson Sarah M.
Published: January 2016

A close relationship between the archaeology of Korea and that of China’s northeast or Dongbei region (formerly known as Manchuria) is frequently postulated (e.g. Kim 1986). Korean models of East Asian prehistory tend to look toward the Dongbei, and beyond into Siberia, for the source of populations that migrated into the Korean peninsula (e.g. Kim 1986: 23). On the Chinese side, the Dongbei is often seen as the recipient of impulses from the middle Huang He (e.g. Chang 1986: 238). By the latter reconstruction, settlement spread to the northeast from a nuclear area around the Huang He where millet cultivation, domesticated pigs, and painted pottery of complex shapes had arisen. These two models of migration and diffusion are not mutually contradictory, but they direct the interpretation of Dongbei Neolithic in different ways. New data from the Neolithic in the Dongbei and Korea do indicate connexions, but not of the simple sort implied by the migrationist and diffusionist models.
Progressive gradualism, imperialism and academic fashion: Lower Palaeolithic archaeology in the 20th century
Authors: Dennell Robin
Published: January 2016

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
The foundation of Ribe
Authors: Bencard Mogens , Jørgensen Lise Bender
Published: January 2016

The sorting-out of stratigraphy, a precise date by dendrochronology from the first years of the 8th century AD and recent excavations give a new picture of the founding of one of northern Europe's earlier medieval towns
Ceramic practice and semantic space: an ethnoarchaeological inquiry into the logic of Bantu potting
Authors: Krause Richard A.
Published: January 2016

What links the action of making a pot, an action in the world as live human beings experience it, to the pot, as the archaeologist observes it in a mass of old, static fragments? And what links the classifications by which the archaeologist arranges those fragments to the pot's ordered place in the world of its maker?
Analytical perspectives on Japanese archaeology
Authors: Barnes Gina L.
Published: January 2016

Aikens & Higuchi’s Prehistory of Japan (1982) made Japanese archaeology accessible to a wide readership. Japanese data are increasingly incorporated into mainstream analytical works by western archaeologists not directly involved in the area (e.g. Price 1981; Rowley-Conwy 1984; Rouse 1986). The year 1986 marked a further watershed in publishing Japanese archaeology, with Windows on the Japanese past edited by R. Pearson et al. and Prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Japan edited by Akazawa & Aikens. Instead of syntheses or overviews of the country’s cultural (pre-)history, they provide diverse research articles which assume some familiarity with the Japanese sequence and its problems. Both are, nevertheless, specialist publications, offered through university institutions.
The origins of horseback riding
Authors: Anthony David W. , Brown Dorcas R.
Published: January 2016

The horse is ridden by means of the bit, and the bit leaves its trace on the horse's teeth. The beginnings of horse-riding are here identified by defining and detecting microscopic bit wear on equid teeth, using comparative samples from 4 countries and 25,000 years of prehistory. Scanning electron microscope analysis demonstrates that bit wear is clearly distinguishable from other tooth damage. It first occurs in the Ukraine, USSR, at about 4000 BC. Soon thereafter, mobility became a cultural advantage that transformed Eurasian societies. Riding now appears to be the first major innovation in land transport, pre-dating the wheel.
The archaeology of language origins–a review
Authors: Davidson Iain
Published: January 2016

Language is a feature to distinguish the ‘human’ from the ‘animal’ that has seemed a more enduring diagnostic character than some. But how is the breath of words to be made visible in the stony traces of the Pleistocene?
Archaeology and the destruction of the later Athenian acropolis
Authors: McNeal Richard A.
Published: January 2016

The focal point of many of the world's cities is a natural stronghold, or fortress, which may also be a religious sanctuary. The Acropolis, the great rock which stands above the ancient and modern city of Athens, is one such place. Why is it once again a place of pilgrimage? And how is its present form the result of its later history?
Building the tower and spire of Salisbury Cathedral
Authors: Tatton-Brown Tim
Published: January 2016

Although - or because - the 19th century saw great archaeological interest in the standing buildings of medieval England, the early legislation to protect British ancient monuments expressly excluded church buildings that were still in use. A new measure, just come into force, gives cathedral archaeology a formal place, and makes this a timely moment to see what kind of work which the archaeology of a standing cathedral can now amount to.
A late Neolithic complex at West Kennet, Wiltshire, England
Authors: Whittle Alasdair
Published: January 2016

The Avebury region has been given World Heritage status for its complex of Neolithic sites - Avebury itself, Silbury Hill, the West and East Kennet long barrows, and others. New fieldwork reveals a further complex of sites on the edges of the Kennet valley bottom.