The dating studies of the ‘modern rock-art scientists’, when critically examined, are found not to show that the Côa valley petroglyphs are of recent age. Their Upper Palaeolithic characteristics, and therefore their likely late Pleistocene age, are consistent with their archaeological context.

St Kilda, the little group of islands far offshore from northwest Scotland, was known for its seabird subsistence in the period before its evacuation in 1930. Recent discoveries suggest that the importance of agriculture in the prehistoric period (before the 16th century AD) may have been underestimated.

The archaeological department at the University of Bradford is the only one in Britain to be called a Department of Archaeological Sciences. Its Professor–whose own background was in physics and then chemistry before archaeology–explores the relationship of archaeology to the sciences in a contribution adapted from his talk given at Harvard University on Science and archaeology.

Western Arnhem Land is a small area (by Australian standards) on the north coast where remarkable sequences of sediment illuminate its complex landscape history. Matching the enviromental succession is an archaeological sequence with lithic sites running back into the Pleistocene. The famous richness of the region's rock-art also documents the human presence, again over a great time-depth, and gives a direct report of how ancient Arnhem Landers depicted themselves. By ‘bridging’ between these three themes, a rare and perhaps unique synthesis can be built.

Some 9000 years ago the first European farmers established themselves in the empty plains of Thessaly, the only region in Greece that provided a reasonably assured harvest and was large enough for significant population growth. They flourished there and after more than a thousand years spread to the Balkans and beyond. The recognition that their success may have depended on the natural irrigation of river and lake floodplains leads us to a modified version of the wave-of-advance model of demic diffusion.

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?

Three years ago, ANTIQUITY reported a first archaeological insight into the origins of Venice. The city's historical records, famously good and full for its flourishing, say very little about the beginnings. This second report includes direct evidence from Piazza San Marco, the heart of the city.

The rise of cemeteries, extreme biological diversification, size decrease, increased violence, disappearance of megafauna, exploitation of different resources, evolution of rivers to an expanded system of microenvironments, changes in occupation. How are these features of Australian Aboriginal societies in the great river-systems of the southeast related? From evidence of geomorphology, skeletal biology and other aspects of the archaeological record, a sharp disjunction between two different and relatively stable states is seen: a transforming transition rather than a gradual change.

The Pacific Coast of Colombia has a complex history of change and upheaval. How is one to reach to it, with the variety of its human experiences? And how to grasp it from the diverse and often fragmentary sources that are its archaeology?

A new study from the Dordogne decisively identifies and confirms the use of fires in a Mousterian context; and the thick ashy deposit, identified as the remains of burnt lichen, clarifies the real nature of those distinctive deposits, known from other sites of the era.

Tasmania, at the south of the land-mass, experienced the Glacial Maximum as a properly cold affair. Recent archaeological work, some in country now difficult of human access, has developed an intricate story of changing adaptations. At the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, a major reorganization of Aboriginal adaptation strategies is seen in the archaeological record, argued to follow late-Pleistocene environmental amelioration.

An account from Fracisco Pizarro's expedition tells of a trading raft encountered along the coast of Ecuador. It gives a rare first-hand record of the established exchange of fine craftwork along the north-western coast of South America. The excavation in 1992–3 of a Manteño-period workshop in Manabí Province gives a corresponding archaeological view of the making of these luxury goods.

As once-colonial countries recognize the special claim of indigenous peoples to their own history, so archaeology is becoming more a partnership between researcher and community. The next step, of indigenous people directing their own archaeology, was taken long ago by the Zuni peopel of New Mexico, in a programme that is an example and model for others. The authors have worked in the Zuni programmes for over 15 years.

Contemporary diaries and the water-colours of artists such as the Port Jackson Painter vividly tell of Aboriginal life when the First Fleet in 1788 settled its cargo of convicts in Australia. Fishing was important around the waters of Port Jackson, whose Aboriginal inhabitants are recorded to have used the techniques of spear-fishing and angling. Were other methods also used? Fish remains from a shell midden provide an opportunity to investigate.

Mesolithic sites are rare in the Aegean, and Mesolithic burials are uncommon throughout Europe. The Mesolithic human remains from Franchthi Cave, that remarkable, deeply stratified site in southern Greece, offer a rare glimpse into the burial practices of early Holocene hunter-gatherers of the Mediterranean.

Late and Epi-Palaeolithic sequences are well known from field work and publications in southeast Europe and the Levant. Current research in Anatolia promises to shed new light on the vast region that connects these two areas. At Öküzini cave a detailed sequence of Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene assemblages contributes greatly to our understanding.

The pollen record from an archaeological site provides the environmental background, while the animal bones illuminate its economy. Wild animal bones are also ecological indicators, and faunal spectra can clarify the status of animals whose place in the human economy is uncertain or changing. The status of the fallow deer in prehistoric Greece is explored from this viewpoint.

The American Northwest Coast, famously rich as an environment for hunter-gatherers, is not an easy landscape to inhabit. Field survey of the Tebenkof Bay region, Kuiu Island, southeast Alaska, identifies the pattern of site positions. Mathematical modelling explores which considerations directed the placing of settlements in that landscape.

Stable-isotopic analyses of human bone, now an established aid to dietary reconstruction in archaeology, represent the diet as averaged over many years. Separate analysis of different skeletal components enables changes in diet and place of residence to be tracked, giving a fuller life-history for long-dead individuals.

An element in the changing pattern of Australian archaeology has been the filling-in of great blanks on the archaeological map, once survey and excavation has begun to explore them. The dry lands of the great central and western deserts of Australia, a hard place for humans to this day, have in the last couple of decades come to find a large place in the transitional story.