Discussion about a possible African origin of modern humans is hampered by the lack of Late Pleistocene skeletal material from the Nile valley, the likely passage-way from East Africa to Asia and Europe. Here we report the discovery of a burial of an anatomically modern child from southern Egypt. Its clear relation with Middle Palaeolithic chert extraction activities and a series of OSL dates, from correlative aeolian sands, suggests an age between 49,800 and 80,400 years ago, with a mean age of 55,000.

Few archaeological projects set out with the intention of running for decades. The committee of the Experimental Earthwork project, however, developed an elaborate programme from 1960 until well into the 3rd millennium AD, designed to study the long-term processes of earthwork construction and change. Paul Ashbee and the late Peter Jewell present their personal view of the aims, experiences and some results of this project.

Sadly Peter Jewell died on 23 May 1998, and this paper is a fitting tribute to his major role in the enterprise.

Many claims have been made linking ancient languages with genetically identified prehistoric and modern populations. There is much new ‘evidence’ and intense debate on the validity and appropriateness of such interdisciplinary work. Here Patrick Sims-Williams provides a timely comment on linguistics and the quest for ancient populations.

The application of van Gennep's Rites of Passage structure to iconography and mortuary contexts in the Late Moche period of Peru offers an original means of exploring prehistoric concepts of death.

T.J. Dunbabin's book The western Greeks was published 50 years ago. In it he modelled the development of the Greek cities of Italy on the British Empire of the 1930s. Here Franco De Angelis explores the problem of faulty and distorting analogies.

The discovery of an ancient Chinese seal in an Oxfordshire garden three centuries ago still provokes interest. This note examines how the seal came to be published by Dr Robert Plot, and what it might have represented.

Recent availability of declassified satellite images of landscapes and ancient cities in Turkey offer new and valuable material for archaeolgical research. Here David Kennedy explains the significance and use of some images in the Euphrates Valley.

The re-evaluation of artefacts sometimes reveals a long history of misinterpretation. Here Peter Woodman re-assesses stone tools from western Ireland which have important lessons for how our personal biases influence our interpretation of lithic assemblages.

Archaeology in Brazil shares many empirical similarities with Latin American and North American research but, as a social science, it has remained isolated from mainstream theoretical and methodological advances. The large size of the country, the lack of resources and government support, the difficulties of working in tropical environments, the lack of monumental architecture, and Brazil's being neither a Spanish- nor an English-speaking country have all been thought of as shaping Brazilian archaeology and its failure to integrate into a larger, Latin American or international context.

There is a preconception among American archaeologists that the late Pleistocene (c. 12,000-10,000 hap.) and early Holocene human occupation of the Americas would have had highly formalized and diagnostic technologies (Bryan 1986), as seen in bifacial fluted projectiles (Clovis and/or Folsom points) or Palaeoarctic microblades. This bias carries with it two presumptions which have no reason to exist:

• Clovis and related industries had to be diffused throughout the Americas; and

• there should be a ‘big-game hunting’ horizon in South America.

Sambaqui is the name given to a certain type of archaeological evidence left by fisher/hunter/gatherer groups who inhabited large expanses of the Brazilian coast. The word is of Tupi etymology, tamba meaning shellfish and ki a piling-up (Prous 1991: 204). The Tupi were a horticultural/potter group who lived on the Brazilian coast at the time of the first European arrivals; they coined the term which describes the main characteristic of the sites — the accumulation of great quantities of mollusc shells (FIGURE 1) .

At the beginning of the Christian era, potterymaking groups started occupying the southern region of Brazil (the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná: FIGURE 1), their origins closely related to former inhabitants, mainly hunters and gatherers. Two major groups are recognized, from the hundreds of identified sites. Vestiges of the first, dispersed in settlements in the southernmost area and in the low savanna landscape, show that settlers of mounds — cerritos — were nomadic, their economy based on hunting, fishing and gathering. In the second, dispersed in the plateau and along adjacent coastal plains, settlers depended on gathering; at least in a few areas and in more recent periods they were sedentary, with the rudiments of more complex social and political patterns. The two settlement systems are in very different environmental, cultural and temporal contexts. Current research takes a normative view of culture, in which pottery has a place of honour and is classified by archaeological ‘traditions’ and ‘phases’. Yet both groups present pottery industries rather matched in time and space, obscuring evidence of internal differentiation or cultural change processes.

This paper presents a brief overview of Amazonian archaeology in Brazil in the last two decades, a fitting span since 1997 marked the 20th anniversary of the PRONAPABA — Programa Nacional de Pesquisas Arqueológicas nu Bacia Amazônica — created by Clifford Evans, Betty Meggers and Mário Simões with the co-operation of several Brazilian archaeologists.

In contemporary archaeology of the Brazilian Amazon, rapidly increased knowledge about the early pre-ceramic and ceramic occupation has not been matched by an understanding of the socio-political dynamics of native Amazonian societies during the last two millennia, notably immediately before the 15th century AD.

Agricultural productivity and Amazonian settlement

The nature of Pre-Columbian agricultural systems in Amazonia has stimulated considerable debate, specifically: can one or another cultigen — maize or manioc — provide a stable agricultural base for sedentism and population growth (eg. Carneiro 1961; 1986; Gross 1975; Meggers 1996; Roosevelt 1980)? Certain ecological factors are generally seen to limit production and intensification of those subsistence resources that can support sedentary or densely distributed populations. Low agricultural productivity, characteristic of many Amazonian soils, and the generally low density and patchy distribution of terrestrial game are commonly cited as limiting factors (Gross 1975; 1983; Johnson 1982; Meggers 1954; 1996; Ross 1978; Sponsel 1989). It has become accepted that the highly restricted váirzea regions, primarily the floodplain settings of the major ‘white-water’ rivers (the Amazon and its Andean-derived tributaries), did not impose these environmental constraints on demographic or economic growth due to their fertile soils and higher concentrations of rich aquatic resources (e.g. Brochado 1984; 1989; Carneiro 1986; 1995; Denevan 1996; Lathrap 1968; 1970; 1987; Lathrap et al. 1985; Meggers 1996; Moran 1993; Roosevelt 1980; 1989; 1994).

Interest in explaining scientifically the enormous territorial expansion of the Tupi has been an issue since 1838, now with a consensus: a common centre of origin existed, from which the Tupi fanned out, differentiating through distinct historic and cultural processes whilst keeping several common cultural features. But there is no consensus as to where the centre was located and where passed the routes of expansion.

Scholars have often asserted this hypothesis, but contributed very little scientific proof. Since 1960, archaeological (site location, radiocarbon and thermoluminescent dating) and linguistic data (glottochronology, relationships among languages) have been brought to the scene.

Bororo and cultural continuity

Cultural continuity and discontinuity is a fascinating issue in archaeological investigation, especially in regions where native populations are still present, as in the case of southeastern Mato Grosso. Since there is no necessary correlation between archaeological cultures and self-conscious ethnic groups (Hodder 1978; 1982; Jones 1997), research in areas where a link between ethnographically andlor ethnohistorically known groups and the archaeological record can be established presents a significant challenge for the study of processes involved in cultural continuities, ruptures, and the maintenance or abandonment of stylistic boundaries. This is especially true in a context of colonial impact on native populations, as in the case of the Bororo society.