The physical size of China – with a land area 20 times the size of France and a third larger than the continental United States – is matched by an archaeological record that is longer than most and as intricate as any. This review article discusses four massive volumes of abstracts, which provide a summary guide to Chinese archaeology.

Dr Webb, as a physical anthropologist working in Australia, is one of the professionals whose work would most directly be affected by reburial of human skeletal remains. He gives here, at the invitation of the editor, his impressions of reburial issues in Australia; the opinions expressed here are strictly his own and may not reflect those of his colleagues.

With the European settlement of Australia yet to reach its bi-centennial, historical archaeology in the country is young, both in what it studies and how long it has been established. A special interest, explored here, is the range of patterns of European settlement which results from the varied national traditions of the settlers.

One of the livelier issues in world prehistory on which there is a distinctive view from Australia and Sahul is the variety of pathways to intensification and a social complexity, not necessarily following expectations that derive from precedents in the Zagros or the Mayan forests. This may be more than a function of different ecologies or potential domesticates, for this paper, developing evidence from Victoria already known from Harry Lourandos's work, Sees the crucial impulses as more social in origin than environmentally determined.