The area of Ounjougou consists of a series of gullies cut through Upper Pleistocene and Holocene formations on the Dogon Plateau in the Sahel at the south edge of the Sahara Desert. Here the authors have chronicled a stratified sequence of human occupation from the tenth to the second millennium BC, recording natural and anthropogenic strata containing artefacts and micro- and macro- palaeoecological remains, mostly in an excellent state of preservation. They present a first synthesis of the archaeological and environmental sequence for the Holocene period, define five main occupation phases for Ounjougou, and attempt to place them within the context of West African prehistory.

A new field is opening up in biological archaeology, as it is found that ancient DNA and other bio-molecules may–under the right conditions–survive over the long term. Is the same true of blood residues on stone tools?

The Lapita ceramics that define the ‘Lapita’ cultural complex of the southwestern Pacific are named for the type-site of Lapita, on the south Melanesian island of Nouvelle-Calédonie (New Caledonia). The island archipelago's early sites are central to shaping what Lapita is, and — if Lapita is not alone — to how it meshes with the other precocious ceramics made by voyagers of the western Pacific. Varied radiocarbon determinations need to be collated, and some stratigraphic complications resolved.

The burnt sacrifice of bare (defleshed) bones, described in Homer's Odyssey and well documented from Archaic and Classical Greece, is now clearly attested by burnt faunal remains from the ‘Palace of Nestor’ at Mycenaean Pylos. This evidance is of great importance for understanding both the historical role of sacrifice in Greek religion and the significance of fensting in Mycenaean palatial society.

A small group of exotic obsidian blades supplied from over 600km distant reached a particular area of the East Mound at Çatalhöyük in the Early Ceramic Neolithic (7000-6300 cal BC). The authors explore a variety of explanations and contexts, including changes in technology, agricultural expansion, gift exchange, bride-wealth and incomers from the east.

The authors examine the role of horses as expressed in assemblages from settlement sites and cemeteries between the Eneolithic and the Bronze Age in Kazakhstan. In this land, known for its rich association with horses, the skeletal evidence appears to indicate a fading of ritual interest. But that's not the whole story, and once again micro-archaeology reveals the true balance. The horses are present at the funeral, but now as meat for the pot, detected in bone fragments and lipids in the pot walls.

The authors assess the potential contribution of lidar surveys to national inventories of archaeological resources (‘Historic Environment Records’), and compare the relative costs and sensitivity of lidar and aerial photography.

Investigating the use of land during the medieval period at the celebrated ceremonial area of Angkor, the authors took a soil column over 2.5m deep from the inner moat of the Bakong temple. The dated pollen sequence showed that the temple moat was dug in the eighth century AD and that the agriculture of the immediate area subsequently flourished. In the tenth century AD agriculture declined and the moat became choked with water-plants. It was at this time, according to historical documents, that a new centre at Phnom Bakeng was founded by Yasovarman I.

What happened at the sites of prehistoric burial mounds after they were erected? In the southern highlands of Brazil and Argentina the pre-Hispanic mounds of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries AD are surrounded by large circular enclosures with avenues leading to their centre. The authors discovered that the banks of the surrounding enclosure were built up over several generations of time, accompanied by a succession of ovens. Ethnohistoric observations of more recent peoples in the same region suggested an explanation: the cremation of a chief was followed by periodic feasts at his mound, where meat was steamed and maize beer prepared at the edge of the gathering.

Various methods of analysing the dating of the late Glacial suggest various interpretations. Here, in answer to a paper from 1997, radiocarbon dates are calibrated and used to reconsider the dating of this contentious period.

Zvelebil here rejoins to Ammerman's criticisms, published in the March issue, of his earlier paper on Indo-European languages and the dispersal of agriculture into Europe, and takes the opportunity to make a broader statement about the character of Neolithic settlement on the full continental scale.

A new study of Kamares ware, integrating stylistic and petrographic analysis, suggests that Protopalatial Knossos was a centre of ritual consumption rather than production, obtaining some of its specialized vessels for drinking and feasting ceremonies from production centres elsewhere in central Crete.

What do we know about the effects of the transition to agriculture on human biology? A literature has grown up that gives us the impression that we know a great deal about what happened to bones and teeth when people became sedentary farmers. A review of the sources of these ideas and the evidence supporting them, especially based on work in Portugal, reveals that a reconsideration of the biological consequences of farming in Europe is overdue.