The discovery of an ancient Chinese seal in an Oxfordshire garden three centuries ago still provokes interest. This note examines how the seal came to be published by Dr Robert Plot, and what it might have represented.

How different are the intellectual traditions of Continental and of Anglo-American archaeology, and how is each changing? Counting papers in the standard journals which address aspects of hunter-gatherer archaeology may show.

‘Hunstanton Woman’, a skeleton found in 1897 within glacial gravels at Hunstanton on the east English coast, has now been carbon-dated. She turns out to be yet another intrusive burial, rather than an ‘Ice Age’ person.

Forgeries of ancient seals have been found in modern times, but there has been little previous analysis of how much security ancient seals might have offered. In this paper, we demonstrate four different vulnerabilities of clay seal impressions using attack methods and materials that were available thousands of years ago. The success of these attacks suggests that ancient stamp and cylinder seals may have been highly vulnerable to spoofing.

It is rare for authors to be able to read comments on their paper by leading colleagues and to have the chance to respond before its publication. We would like to thank the editor of Antiquity for providing this opportunity. The comments express both acceptance of, and doubts about, interconnectedness between the eastern Mediterranean and Scandinavia in the Bronze Age. Kaul's comments demonstrate a deep insight into how Nordic archaeology reveals this interconnectedness; that is clearly expressed in his latest publication on the topic in Antiquity (Kaul 2013). Moreover, both Kaul and Sognnes, who accept these interconnections, have an excellent understanding of Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art. In fact, most of the reviewers’ comments express a positive attitude to the interpretation of the rock art images as possible representations of oxhide ingots.

The Book of Aneirin, which contains all the verses that go to make up the Gododdin, is a manuscript written on vellum about the year 1250. It is incomplete, ending at the bottom of folio 38 and at least three or four folios are missing. The condition of the manuscript suggests that the existing folios have been re-arranged. The various later copies of the poem on paper are not worth further study, for they are not evidence of better texts, but of the carelessness of copyists. The manuscript is in two different handwritings, which may be called-A and B. The body of the work is in A and was written first. As well as the Gododdin verses, it contains four other poems, the last of which is attributed to Taliesin. The verses in the second handwriting B were added afterwards on the empty pages of the manuscript, and are nearly all variant versions of ones already given in A.