The Zohreh Prehistoric Project (ZPP), a long-term archaeological research programme focused on the river valley south of the modern city of Behbahan in Khuzestan Province, was launched in April 2015 (Figure 1). The valley, which lies in close proximity to the northern coast of the Persian Gulf, was surveyed extensively during the early 1970s by Hans Nissen from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (Nissen & Redman 1971; Dittmann 1984, 1986). The ZPP aims to develop full-coverage archaeological survey of the valley, focusing on the human landscape over time, mostly in relation to settlement hierarchy and dynamics, modes of production and the emergence of regional centres at the end of the fifth and beginning of the fourth millennia BC. The focal point for the project is the principal site of the Zohreh Valley, known as Tol-e Chega Sofla (39RN1Q22108; the site was previously registered as Chogha Sofla, BZ.71 (Dittmann 1984: 110). We have changed this to reflect its local name. The digital reference is the unique Iranian archaeology map registration number.

‘Although the Greeks seem to have undertaken the founding of their cities most successfully looking for beauty and security of position, harbours, and fertile country, the [Romans] planned best those matters which the Greeks made light of, laying down roads, and bringing in water … They laid a network of roads over the countryside, adding cuttings over the hills and embankments along the valleys, so that their wagons can accommodate whole shiploads’

So says Strabo (v. 3.8), stating concisely a great deal that has since been written contrasting the beauty-loving Greeks with the practical Romans. S The justly admired roads of the Romans have long been a symbol of Rome at her best. The Greeks come off very poorly indeed when contrasted with Rome in the matter of roadbuilding—so poorly that their apologists have often felt constrained to explain it away : the mountain-terrain, and the division into unco-operative city-states were hostile to the development of road-building. Yet both these excuses are groundless, for under certain circumstances the Greeks did build roads over difficult terrain and across state boundaries. Roads from quarries to temple-sites are good examples of the first difficulty overcome, sacred roads of the second. The truth is that the Greeks could build good roads if the need for them was sufficiently compelling, but they had no sense of the ROAD, as the Romans did, and as we do to-day.

This contribution intends to present, very briefly, one of the facets of medieval archaeology in Bohemia, a land which to this day bears the marks of having belonged to ‘the other Europe’. I will focus on a short phase of Bohemian history and within it, I will take out just a small portion that is accessible via the archaeological evidence. In spite of all the material limitations, I want to show that in this theme Bohemian archaeology documents one of the components of the gradual emergence of Europe, a continent so varied and yet so internally coherent.

The following comments reflect on the present state of Peruvian-led research archaeology and its prospects for the future, from the viewpoint of a friend, colleague but notably as an outsider. As such this piece is informed by both personal experience and the informed opinions of local Peruvian investigators who, for reasons that will become apparent, have opted for anonymity. The essential premise here is that the intellectual and financial basis of archaeology in Peru is at a critical stage, and a major part of this article is to see how the next generation can negotiate this quagmire; and believe me for all the myriad problems there are important rays of light that could significantly and positively alter the state of Peruvian archaeology. With this in mind, in this brief essay I consider the research environment, the theoretical basis, and the means by which research projects and resource mitigation are carried out, and summarise some of the challenges that archaeologists living and working in Peru now face. A recent, thorough treatise of the history and state of Peruvian archaeology can be found in Shimada and Vega-Centeno (2011).

The oldest road, in the narrow sense of a built way across difficult ground, seems to be the Neolithic Sweet Track in the English Somerset Levels. But what about the oldest road, in the larger sense ofa long-distance highway with staging posts, its essential purpose in the need to administer a large empire? Here seems to be that oldest highway, astonishingly visible on the ground, as Dr Sevin's illustrations show.

The English Fenland, a million acres of drained wetlands in eastern England, is on the doorstep of Antiquity's present office. But no local excuse is needed to report once more on work in a classic region; from large-scale survey the focus has moved to assessment of what survives, and now to managing for its better future that discouragingly small proportion of its old archaeological wealth which is still with us.

In discussing contemporary wool production the Elder Pliny comments (NH, VIII, 192): 'oddments of wool from the fullers" coppers are used for stuffing bolsters-an invention of the Gauls, I think; at any rate, the process is distinguished by Gallic terms today.'

Since 1991, the Archaeology Department of the National Museums of Scotland (NMS) has been undertaking programmes of AMS radiocarbon dating of organic items in its collections, particularly wetland finds. This work was initially stimulated by the success of Caroline Earwood’s research on dating bog butter containers and other wooden vessels from the National collections (Earwood 1990; 1993a; 1993b; 1997), which demonstrated among other things that the practice of bog butter deposition in Scotland extended at least as far back as the early centuries AD.

Most large-scale excavation projects are computerized, more-or-less, now in their methods of data recording. Here is described one which is computerized with more conviction and on a larger scale than most, with reflections on what that can and should amount to.