A recent court case in Australia changes the established frames under which research archaeologists, parks administrators and Tasmanian Aborigines deal with the prehistoric archaeology of the island.

The wider context to events at the World Archaeological Congress — 3, held in New Delhi late 1994, that were reported in the March 1995 ANTIQUITY.

The Côa petroglyphs, seen in the established framework of rock-art studies, belong in the corpus of west European parietal art of late Pleistocene age, as found in scores of caves and some open-air locations. One of the four researchers who this summer studied the age of the figures using ‘modern rock-art science’ summarizes the group's' conclusions, and states how they kill off the stylistic dating of Palaeolithic rock-art.

The dating studies of the ‘modern rock-art scientists’, when critically examined, are found not to show that the Côa valley petroglyphs are of recent age. Their Upper Palaeolithic characteristics, and therefore their likely late Pleistocene age, are consistent with their archaeological context.

A new study from the Dordogne decisively identifies and confirms the use of fires in a Mousterian context; and the thick ashy deposit, identified as the remains of burnt lichen, clarifies the real nature of those distinctive deposits, known from other sites of the era.

As once-colonial countries recognize the special claim of indigenous peoples to their own history, so archaeology is becoming more a partnership between researcher and community. The next step, of indigenous people directing their own archaeology, was taken long ago by the Zuni peopel of New Mexico, in a programme that is an example and model for others. The authors have worked in the Zuni programmes for over 15 years.

Late and Epi-Palaeolithic sequences are well known from field work and publications in southeast Europe and the Levant. Current research in Anatolia promises to shed new light on the vast region that connects these two areas. At Öküzini cave a detailed sequence of Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene assemblages contributes greatly to our understanding.

The settlement of mainland Australia at an early (and uncertainly known) date required a water-crossing. What about the settlement of the islands — neither numerous nor large compared with the island continent itself — that are offshore from Australia? The evidence reviewed shows a late settlement for nearly all of them, and a perplexing lack of pattern.

When was silk first brought across the steppe from far China towards the European world? There is silk from the Middle Bronze Age of Uzbekistan, in Scythian burials of Siberia and among the Hallstatt grave-goods of western Europe. Teasing out the story of silk depends on identifying the textile, and distinguishing its several varieties apart.

When a distribution map of Neolithic stone axes in Ireland was published in ANTIQUITY (Grogan & Cooney 1990), the new Irish Stone Axe Project (ISAP) was mentioned. Stone axes, it turns out, are unusually common in Ireland. Here Project progress is outlined, with special attention being given to those axes identified as having been moved across the Irish Sea.

Britain in 1995 enjoyed a dry summer, with the longest hot spell since weather records began. The air photographers enjoyed a good year. This report from the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England sketches both their own work and that of the independent fliers.

The artefact assemblages from early Upper Palaeolithic sites in eastern European Russia contain flint tools of more Middle Palaeolithic type. With these artefacts are bifacially thinned triangular forms that may represent the first use of this technology in the area, and perhaps anywhere in Europe.

Archaeological attention in Palestine, as the Holy Land, has focused on research related to the biblical story. The overlooked Ottoman period offers a special opportunity to look back from contemporary knowledge into the archaeological past, explored here in a single village settlement whose full story spans five millennia.

New work at the late Roman fort at Pevensey has recovered oak foundation piles. The precision of a tree-ring date for them is occasion to look again at the pattern of coastal forts of which Pevensey is a part.

Heavyweight civil engineering in Romanized Europe means Roman, one thinks naturally enough. A tree-ring date now identifies a timber-framed bridge pier, previously thought Roman, as dating to the first half of the 8th century AD — Mercian, and the earliest known Saxon bridge in Britain.

The bluestones of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain continue to attract controversy. New dates on Stonehenge material using the Chlorine-36 method have been reported as evidence that the bluestones were moved from their Welsh sources by human transport, not by glaciation. Here Olwen Williams-Thorpe and colleagues, who have argued for the glacial transport theory, show that the Chlorine-36 dates have been misinterpreted.

A complement to a paper early in this year's volume of ANTIQUITY reports experience with searching for blood-residue traces with the services of a commercial testing laboratory.

In this final contribution on the identification of the birds painted in the Palaeolithic Grotte Cosquer as Great Auks, it is noticed that the birds need to be seen within a Palaeolithic hunter–gatherer's view of the world, which is not the same as that of a modern natural historian or taxonomist.

Joy McCorriston's paper in the March 1994 ANTIQUITY, on acorn-eating and agricultural origins, used California ethnographies as analogues for the ancient Near East. This reply explores some issues of analogy and explanation that go beyond the important specifics of the matter.