Not every first footstep on a virgin shore leaves enduring trace, nor every first human settlement an enduring deposit that chances to survive, and then chances to be observed archaeologically. Good environmental evidence from Mangaia Island, central East Polynesia, gives — it is contended — a fairer picture of the human invasion of remote Oceania than the short and sceptical chronology recently published in ANTIQUITY.

Recent excavations on the Gwent Levels, in the wetlands of the Severn Estuary, south Wales, have recovered substantial remains of a waterlogged boat, of probable late 3rd- to early 4th-century AD date.

Across the rocky landscapes of Egypt lies evidence for pharaonic quarrying and mining; fresh fieldwork at neglected sites, such as the Hatnub travertine quarries and the Wadi el-Hudi amethyst mines, now tells us more. The surviving remains of quarrying and mining settlements suggest subtle adaptations in versatile response to changing economic and geographical parameters.

Salvage archaeology in anticipation of destruction is an accepted response to a site in the way of a pipe-line or other development. But is it right in principle? — a ‘full and fair’ record is not quite the same as survival of the actual site. And if techniques to protect a site during construction work are well designed, may they not also be cheaper?

A new find at Knowth, the site in eastern Ireland famous for its complex of Neolithic passage-tombs, of a wooden structure associated with that enigmatic later Neolithic material, Grooved Ware.

Another step has started in trying to figure out just what the collected archaeology of England amounts to — this time, with its change in mind.

The civil war in the former Yugoslavia, the largest conflict in Europe for half a century, is more than incidentally about objects from the past and proofs of past possession. Here is a report on some of the specifics and some of the generalities.

The growing story of early settlement in the northwest Pacific islands is moving from coastal sites into the rainforest. Evidence of Pleistocene cultural layers have been discovered in open-site excavations at Yombon, an area containing shifting hamlets, in West New Britain's interior tropical rainforest. These sites, the oldest in New Britain, may presently stand as the oldest open sites discovered in rainforest anywhere in the world.

The genetic history of wheat is the story of the world's temperate staple food. Arcahaeologically, charred grains are the common way wheat is preserved. Study of burnt spelt wheat from the British Iron Age shows DNA is present, and begins to shows the wheat's character.

A first notice of the mushy element in the subsistence base of the Maya realms.

Excavation of an Early Bronze Age cist cemetery at West Water Reservoir, Peeblesshire, has uncovered a unique two-strand necklace, with one string of cannel coal disc beads and another of lead beads, buried around the neck of a young child. This is the earliest evidence for the use of metallic lead in Britain and Ireland.

The team that has been dating early Australian sites by luminescence methods replies to Allen's (1994) view of the continent's human chronology, published in the June ANTIQUITY (68: 339–43). They argue the strength of the long chronology with their new optical dates.

Great Zimbabwe, most celebrated monument in the country that is named after it, is a large challenge not just in its technical conservation, but in how it is to be made alive for its country's citizens.

Albania, isolated from Europe for nearly half a century, was closed to absolute archaeological dating during that time. New dates from an unusual large cave-site in southern Albania go beyond the single first radiocarbon date published for the country in ANTIQUITY in 1991, and permit the establishment of a radiocarbon and archaeomagnetic sequence.

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.

There is more to a cremation than the human bone — turned white and blue-grey by the fire, enough to fill a fair-sized hat — because so much may go on the pyre with the corpse.

Palaeolithic people could foresee their technological future no more, or even less, than we are able to. They never said, ‘The Middle Palaeolithic has gone on quite long enough — now we'd better get on with a transition to the Upper.’ So what is one to make of those precocious lithic industries which prefigure key features of later innovations, the industries which ‘run ahead’ of their own time?

The acid rocks and soils of northwest France are not kind to preservation of organic material. Radiocarbon dating has mostly depended on charcoal, for want of a better dating medium that survives. In Brittany, Finistère can sometimes contribute to the dating of early passage-graves from human bones.

The September 1993 editorial (ANTIQUITY 65: 44–5) made comment on recent Australian dates, by luminescence techniques, significantly older than radiocarbon determinations from elsewhere in Australia and New Guinea, which formed a single continent in the late Pleistocene. (There are hints also from the Americas of a discrepancy between dates by the two methods.) The period involved, c. 30-60,000 years ago, is crucial also in the Old World mainland, where the beginning of the European Upper Palaeolithic is usually set at c. 35,000 years ago by radiocarbon determinations.

A note in the 1990 ANTIQUITY volume dealt with four issues crucial to the successful use of radiocarbon in archaeology (Bowman & Balaam 1990): selection and characterization of material and context; determination of the radiocarbon result and error term; interpretation and publication; and strategic resourcing. Since then much has been published, particularly on quality control of radiocarbon measurements (‘determination’), and on the calibration of radiocarbon results (‘interpretation’). Here is an update.