The silex blond or honey-coloured (Bédoulien) flints which originate in the Vaucluse are distributed over a wide area of the south of France and beyond. Examination of the features of cores and blades shows that a variety of supply systems were in use: in some cases the raw material was transported as blades, in others as heated preforms to make it easier to knap. Different places were targeted with different products. The paper is dedicated to Patricia Phillips who beat a path through to this more sophisticated, more diverse Neolithic world.

Specialists in Greek literature have long argued about how Homer's epics were formed and just what they represent. The question is a pressing example of the larger general case – the relationships between archaeology, history and oral literature in many periods and places. E.S. Sherratt, in offering an archaeological perspective on Homer, sets out to establish the stratigraphy of its text and its history

The recovery of animal and plant remains from the site of Cahal Pech provides data on early diet and subsistence practices in the Belize Valley region of the Maya lowlands. Analysis of the material remains suggests that the Middle Preclassic Maya were practising a mixed subsistence economy relying on agricultural foodstuffs, local terrestrial game species, freshwater fish and shellfish and marine reef fishes. Isotopic analysis of human bone is used to aid in the reconstruction of actual food consumption.

When did people start to eat small seeds, and what drove them to it? New investigations and dating at the Danger Cave in the American Great Basin show that seeds (pickleweed seeds) did not become part of the staple diet until after 8700 b.p. It was at this time that animal and plant resources had begun to seriously diminish in a shrinking wetland.

In recent years research has been directed to looking for the origins of agriculture and to finding the causes of the transition from hunting and gathering to food production and the domestication of plants and animals. From these studies it has become apparent first, that the transition occurred several times and in several places in prehistory; secondly, that the mechanisms underlying the transition are quite complex; and thirdly that the transition occurred in some regions but not in others, in spite of the prevalence of similar environmental conditions and patterns of exploitation.

High resolution satellite photographs offer a new picture of the tracks along which the Easter Island giant statues were hauled from the central quarry to the exhibition sites. The survey traced 32 km of seven major roads, confirmed by features on the ground, where their current condition gives reasons for concern. The authors suggest that the radial pattern implies social division into small groups.

New discoveries across the steppe zone of eastern Europe, and new dates relating to those discoveries, keep that oldest of archaeological puzzles, the Indo-European question, happily unanswered. A version of this paper was given at a 1994 meeting, on ‘Language, culture and biology in prehistoric central Eurasia’—its title a reminder that the biological view of Indo-European may again be a growing interest.

The commensal rats — notably the black rat Rattus rattus and the brown R. norvegicus — are among mankind's most destructive and dangerous enemies, and have spread relentlessly with humans across the globe. A decade after an important ratty meeting at the Natural History Museum, London, in 1981, this noxious rodent pest is again reviewed.

Phytoliths — the microscopic opal silica bodies inside plant tissue that often survive well in archaeological deposits— are becoming a larger part of the world of human palaeobotany. They give a new view of early rice in southeast Asia.

Intensive survey and initial excavations have succeeded in pushing back the Neolithic human occupation of Cyprus to the earlier ninth millennium cal BC. Contemporary with PPNA in the Levant, and with signs of belonging to the same intellectual community, these were not marginalised foragers, but participants in the developing Neolithic project, which was therefore effectively networked over the sea.

Ideas and theories in prehistory often seem to have a life of their own, surviving and flourishing quite independently of the evidence upon which they might be supposed to rest. The biblical Lost Tribes, the Etruscan migrations of Herodotus, and the Phoenician merchants of Strabo, for example, served for centuries as a model for the explanation of Europe's remote past, unsupported in many cases by any evidence whatsoever.

The discovery of a perforated cave-bear femur from the Neanderthal levels at Divje Babe has been interpreted as the oldest musical instrument in Europe. Here we present the current discussion on the ‘flute’ and its implications for other similar bone finds from early prehistory.

The excavated site termed Yana RHS is dated to about 28000 BP and contained a stunning assemblage of ornamented and symbolic objects—the earliest art to be excavated in the Arctic zone. Decorated beads, pendants and needles connect the site to the Eurasian Upper Palaeolithic; but other forms and ornaments are unparalleled. Shallow dishes and anthropomorphic designs on mammoth tusks find echoes among hunting practice and shamanistic images of the indigenous Yukaghir people recorded in the early twentieth century.

The human capacity for recognizing categorical forms and their defining characterstics extends to a recognition of natural forms and shapes that may suggest these categories. The issue is raised below by the analysis of an archaic figure from the Levant in which a natural form was apparently intentionally modified to produce an enhanced human image.