It is a startling experience to look down a microscope at a stone tool — a real Palaeolithic artefact, not a modern thing or a replicated copy — and see on its flint surface grubby brown-red stains that look the colour of old blood. Is a consensus emerging from the archaeological scientists as to just what traces of, especially, biological materials do survive on ancient stone surfaces, where they can be reliably characterized and identified?

As was noticed in the December 1995 ANTIQUITY, the present surroundings of Stonehenge — premier monument of European prehistory — are unhappy. Geoffrey Wainwright, head of archaeology at English Heritage, reports the current proposals to make a fit setting for Stonehenge, and what may happen now.

Stonehenge is a small site (its central stone setting just 30 m across) standing in an open landscape where archaeological concerns can direct land management. Its twin hengesite in a joint World Heritage designation, a little distance away on the south English chalk, is Avebury. It is a larger site, the great stone circle 350 m across. And the prehistory is embedded in the modern village of Avebury.

Both the state agency English Heritage and the voluntary association the National Trust own parts of each site. English Heritage is taking the management lead at Stonehenge, the National Trust at Avebury. The Trust has announced the creating of a ‘virtual reality’ show in the Great Barn by the village centre.

Knowledge of Avebury archaeology grows: also reported in this issue of ANTIQUITY is a new feature within the great circle first spotted on air photography: pages 639–46.

One hundred and thirty-two years after a first survey of their archaeology appeared, the Phoenicians remain the forgotten people of the ancient Mediterranean world. The October 1995 Cádiz conference provides occasion to review Phoenician studies then and now.

Kate Fielden, archaeologist and free-lance editor, has taken an active interest in planning at Stonehenge and Avebury since moving to Wiltshire in 1988.

ANTIQUITY invited a member of the Research Assessment panel for archaeology in British universities to write about the exercise. He declined; as the matter was sub judice, he must be silent. Perhaps that phrase defines the colleague as judge, rather than as peer-reviewer.

Fortunately, Barry Cunliffe, chairman of the archaeology review panel (and of ANTIQUITY'S trustees), made public his views in his Presidential Anniversary Address to the Society of Antiquaries of April 1995 —before the current assessment got under way. We reprint it with permission. Professor Cunliffe starts with a brisk reminder—overlooked by our coverage in the March ANTIQUITY—of the real benefits of asking just what researchers do for their money in the supposedly tranquil and desirable échelons of our universities.

Molecular biology is prompting a renewed interest in genetic histories of ancient peoples. What are the old ‘ethnic units’ of these modern studies?

The end of the Cold War in 1989 prompted the opening of central European skies that had been closed to archaeological air photography for decades. The occasion of a summer school in 1996 provided the opportunity to record some results from Hungary.

The rock-art of the Pecos River region, on the Texas-Mexico border, is deservedly celebrated for its very large and inspiring human depictions, convincingly interpreted as images of shamanism. Study of plant remains in associated middens gives a new aspect to understanding of the images.

Christopher Gingell, archaeologist, is Property Manager for the National Trust at Avebury.

The judgements shaping archaeology and every subject in British universities (see remarks in the Editorial above) are based on certain presumptions about how research and teaching can best be done. Some of these premisses are noted.

The well-protected walls and floors of deep caves are some of the few places where human markings on soft materials — sands, muds, clays — survive archaeologically. Since 1979, a special group of caves in the eastern United States has been reported with ‘mud-glyphs’ or prehistoric drawings etched in wet mud. Here, the seventh of these mud-glyph caves is described; once again, its iconography connects it to the ‘Southern Cult’ or ‘Southeast Ceremonial Complex’ of the Mississippian period.

The nature and date of the human colonization of Australia remains a key issue in prehistory at the world scale, for a sufficiently early presence there indicates either Homo sapiens sapiens arriving precociously in a place remote from a supposed African origin, or a greater competence in sea-crossing than has been expected of archaic humans. Stratigraphic integrity, the new science of luminescent dating and the recognition of worked stone and of rock-engraving are immediate issues in this report from far northwestern Australia.

A further contribution on the issues raised by modern genetics, and on their relationship to the material evidence offered by archaeological remains.

The criteria used in the British universities' current assessment of research quality prompt the question: how would Gordon Childe have fared, if assessed that way?

Trustworthy dates on charcoal from the classic European painted caves have given a sharper view of images and their making in the later Palaeolithic. The new Grotte Chauvet has its own original themes, revealing a striking and an unexpected Aurignacian art with — again — dates from charcoal in which one can have confidence.