The rock-shelter of Jinmium in the Northern Territory of Australia hit the headlines a year-and-a-half ago when TL dates suggested human occupation might date from 116,000 years ago. Such dates were much earlier than any previously obtained for Australia, and thus suggested the continent was colonized at a very early stage in human dispersal around the Pacific. However, some TL dating is notoriously difficult to interpret, and here Nigel Spooner has re-assessed one of the later dates in the Jinmium sequence. His interpretation calls into doubt some of the earlier claims.

The rôle played by humans in the extinction of late Pleistocene vertebrate fauna is a controversial topic (Diamond 1989; Grayson 1989; Martin & Klein 1984), and actual archaeological data for a human factor are quite rare. Recent multidisciplinary excavations in Cyprus, however, suggest that people were at least partially responsible for the extinction of local endemics, primarily pygmy hippopotamus (Phanourios minutus).

Recent prehistoric and palaeoanthropological debate is focusing new interest on the peopling of the Americas — an old and difficult research-case. Proponents of new sites need to submit their putative 'new and revolutionary' discoveries to a wider judgement, mainly contra sceptics and partisans of more conservative theories. Such a review is helpful, and we are grateful to our colleagues for their considered assessment of the evidence proposed in our Brazilian research. Nevertheless their view of the Pedra Furada evidence has gaps, misunderstandings and ambiguities.

New incised bone and limestone Natufian objects discovered during the 1997 season of excavations at Hayonim cave (Western Galilee, Israel), as well as a bone object found earlier in Kebara cave (Mount Carmel), indicate direct connections between the two sites. The incised pattern on the slab is interpreted as supportive evidence for emerging territoriality among Natufian communities in the Levant.

Two fundamentals for the place of the individual in society are age and gender; well-studied cemeteries can provide an good archaeological base for their study. This examination of the Copper Age site of Tiszapolgár-Basatanya, Hungary, explores the relationship between age and gender though the course of prehistoric lives and how it might be possible to distinguish sex from gender in archaeological contexts.

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA; c. 9600–8500 cal BC) period in the Levant provides the earliest confirmed evidence for plant cultivation anywhere in the world, marking a significant escalation in the human management of plants towards fully fledged agricultural food production. Until now, the majority of PPNA sites have been documented in the Jordan Valley, the Wadi Araba and farther north along the Upper Euphrates (e.g. Mureybet, Jerf el-Ahmar, Djade). By contrast, few PPNA sites have so far been reported from the semi-arid to arid eastern part of the Levantine interior. Among these is El Aoui Safa (Coqueugniot & Anderson 1996) and sporadic flint scatters elsewhere in the Harra. Recent fieldwork in the Qa’ Shubayqa area in the Harra has produced the first evidence for a more substantial settlement site in this region.

This paper presents the recent discovery of extensive and intensive middle Bronze Age exploitation of the marshland along the northeastern bank of the River Thames and its tributaries within a wider regional context. It also develops a site location model, and explores reasons for the presence of these sites.

The site of Doel lies beside the Schelde, close to Antwerp. Excavations have uncovered the remains of two prehistoric zones, one from the Final Mesolithic and one from the Neolithic. Preliminary study suggests that current theories of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in northern Belgium require revision.

The author presents new radiocarbon dates for chariot burials found in the region between Europe and the Urals, showing them to belong to the twentieth-eighteenth centuries BCE. These early dates, which pre-empt the appearance of the war chariot in the Near East, are transforming the ancient history of Eurasia and the early Mediterranean civilisations, pointing to the Volga-Ural area as an important centre of innovation for early Europe.

The earthquake that struck Japan on 11 March 2011, named the Great East Japan Earthquake by the Japanese government, was one of the largest seismic events the world has seen for generations. Akira Matsui reported his experience of visiting the areas devastated by the earthquake and tsunami soon afterwards, outlining the initial assessment of damage caused to museums and cultural heritage assets, and the plans for their rescue (Kaner et a/ 2011; Matsui 201 I a). The present contribution reports how far the implementation of these plans has been successful, the prospects for the future, and situates all of this in a broader context of archaeological response to earthquakes.

The astronomical significance of Stone- henge has been the subject of intermittent debate and speculation ever since 1740, when Stukeley [I] first observed that the axis of the sarsen structure and of the Avenue pointed at least approximately to the sunrise at the summer solstice. Apart from Sir Norman Lockyer [z], however, few professional astronomers concerned themselves with this question, until the appearance in,Nature of the two articles by Gerald S. Hawkins, Professor of Astronomy at Boston University, in 1963 and 1964 [3]. The first of these claimed the discovery of a number of additional alignments of astronomical significance, marked by pairs of stones and other features of the site; and the second suggested that the Aubrey Holes had been used as a neolithic 'computer' for the prediction of movements of the moon and of eclipses. Subsequently these theories received much wider publicity, in Britain as well as in the United States, through a CBS television programme, The Mystery of Stonehenge, which provided a superb example of partiality and tendentiousness in the presentation of an academic controversy.

Professor Hawkins has now elaborated his ideas in a book whose title, Stonehenge Decoded, leaves no doubt of his confidence in the rightness of his conclusions-a confidence explicity echoed in his text. 'There can be no doubt that Stonehenge was an observatory; the impartial mathematics of probability and the celestial sphere are on my side' (p. vii). 'I think I have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the monument was deliberately, accurately, skilfully oriented to the sun and the moon' (pp. 146-7). 'I think I have put forward the best theory to account for the otherwise unexplained holes' (p. 147). 'I think there is little else in these areas that can be discovered at Stonehenge'(p. 147).

During the war and in the immediate post-war period the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force undertook a considerable air survey programme covering Burma, Siam and French Indo-China. In Siam the initial cover was restricted to large-scale (1:15,000 and better) photographs of towns, airfields and communications. Later a more ambitious programme of survey cover (scales 1 : 50,000 and 1 : 25,000 with a few towns and beaches at larger scale) was undertaken, and practically the whole of the country has been covered by air photographs of one scale or another.

It has been my privilege to serve with the R.A.F. in Siam on both ground and flying duties and, more recently, to be in a position to examine most of the photographs taken. A very considerable number of archaeological sites have come to light, many being noted for the first time ; and it is my intention in this initial paper to comment briefly on one particular type of earthwork which appears to have a limited distribution in eastern Siam. The air photographs are reproduced with the sanction of the Air Ministry.

It must be emphasized that although Siam, the meeting place of Indian and Chinese cultures, is rich in archaeological sites very little systematic work has yet been undertaken. On the one side the natural reluctance of the Siamese to disturb ancient sites and, on the other, comparative absence of trained archaeological research workers have been contributory factors. Detailed ground information generally is lacking and it follows that these notes are based on air photographic evidence, in most cases without ground checking, an impropriety of which the writer is only too well aware.

Using a new approach that combines high-quality coring with AMS dating, the authors are mapping the start of the Neolithic in Aegean Thrace – a missing link in the arrival of agriculture in Europe. The method also revealed the edge of the marine transgression dating to some 2900 years ago, implying that sites located near the coast in early Neolithic times have in all likelihood been lost to the sea.

Textiles are powerful indicators of technology and contact, as the authors show for the peoples of the Bronze Age central Asian steppes. In this case the textiles are mainly missing, but have left their imprints on the surface of the inside of pots, captured when otherwise redundant cloths were used to paddle or jacket the clay before hardening and firing. A good supply of old cloths seems to have been part of a potters' equipment and some were used several times. The authors analyse and date the fibres and weaves to give an indication of changing cultural context through the Bronze Age.

It has long been known that irrigation agriculture played a significant role in the history of civilization in the Near East, and it is not surprising, therefore, that many researchers have concentrated their efforts on the study of problems connected with early irrigation, based both on the evidence of literary sources (Jacobsen, 1960), and that provided by archaeology and palaeogeography. Probably the most interesting work of this kind is the systematic research which has been carried out in the Diyala river basin, which covers a wide chronological range (Adams, 1965). However, the thick sedimentary deposits in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, and on the foothill plains and intermontane valleys in many regions of the Near East, have resulted, in most cases, in the ancient irrigation systems lying deeply buried and inaccessible. Very recently, as a result of joint archaeological and palaeogeographical investigations in southern Turkmenia, we have succeeded in discovering very early irrigation constructions in the region, where, in the 6th-2nd millennium BC were situated sites belonging to the painted pottery cultures-the Dieitun culture (Berdyev, 1965) and the so-called Anau culturewhich comprise the northern limits of the Near Eastern cultural world (FIG. I) (Pumpelly, 1908; Kuphtin, 1954; Masson, 1962, 1966 ; Sarianidi, 1965; Khlopin, 1963).

Bone points of two types, the one thin and poisoned and the other robust and not poisoned, are examined in this study of impact fractures. The bone points seem to have had similar experiences to stone points, producing fractures of a similar kind. Most of the fractures in the historical collection examined were caused by impacts. However, this early twentieth-century collection is not thought to be representative of contemporary fracture frequencies that occurred in hunting.

The activities of hunter-gatherers are often captured in rockshelters, but here the authors present a study of a riverside settlement outside one, with a rich sequence from 1300 BC to AD 800. Thanks to frequent flooding, periods of occupation were sealed and could be examined in situ. The phytolith and faunal record, especially fish, chronicle changing climate and patterns of subsistence, emphasising that the story here is no predictable one-way journey from hunter-gatherer to farmer. Right up to the period of the famous nineteenth-century rock paintings in the surrounding Maloti-Drakensberg region, adaptation was dynamic and historically contingent.

Building floor plans are frequently recovered by archaologists. A common first sorting of the shapes of small domestic buildings is between round houses and rectangular houses. What do these differences mean? Why do social groups change their building form from one to the other? An ethnoarchaeological study from northern Cameroon illustrates how four ethnic groups in a single community use building shape to blur or define group boundaries for political self-interests.