The timing and nature of Southeast Asia's Neolithic and Bronze Ages have been the source of global archaeological intrigue, scepticism (on occasion) and even notoriety for some five decades (e.g. Muhly 1981). Being asked to review an account of what has been an emotive topic provoked a personal response, which I hope may contribute to highlighting the impact of Charles Higham's work and that of his many colleagues.

Ling and Stos-Gale (above) present some hitherto little-known rock art motifs from various locations in Sweden, and offer an intriguing interpretation for them that ties in with the recent realisation that some of the copper used in the earlier Bronze Age of southern Scandinavia may have originated from Cyprus.

Many of the components of this argument can be seen as a matter of debate; for example, the occurrence at sites in north-east Thailand of indisputably Bronze Age flexed burials contradicts Higham's contention that flexed graves represent earlier indigenous hunter-gatherer populations. The occurrence of tin-bronze artefacts in ordinary graves at other sites in north-east Thailand belies the proposed scenario that bronze was necessarily a ‘prestige valuable’ that generated a competitive milieu, particularly as the early metal artefacts at Ban Non Wat are unalloyed copper. It is my view that although the argument may initially appear convincing, it is based on selected, simplified and flawed data chosen to fit pre-determined social and chronological models.

The University of Pennsylvania Museum's Tikal Project of 1958–1968 was one of the great Maya investigations of the twentieth century. It was the most ambitious study of a Maya city so far undertaken, with scores of staff, graduate students and local workers engaged in a range of activities from mapping the site core and its surrounding settlement, to stripping the tropical forest from the colossal temple-pyramids and restoring them, to establishing an occupation history that eventually showed an origin for Tikal in the mid-first millennium BC and abandonment more than sixteen centuries later at the end of the Classic period. The impact of the project's results, publications and cadre of trained Mayanists moving out into the academic world was substantial and led to several decades of a Tikal-centric view of ancient Maya civilisation.

Ling and Stos-Gale (above, p. 206) end their study on a safe, if rather vague, note: “[w]e could, perhaps, consider the maritime-themed rock art depictions [of ships and copper oxide ingots] as records of travellers’ tales, where representations of reality mingle with myths, magic and sailors' stories”. Yes, perhaps we could, since at least two of the ingot depictions (Kville 156:1 at Torsbo, Norrköping) look strikingly similar—as the authors note—to the ‘pillow ingots’ (Kissenbarren) known from the Mediterranean world. Or, perhaps, we could remain more cautious before even broaching the idea of interconnectedness between Late Bronze Age Scandinavia and the eastern Mediterranean. Such a suggestion requires a lot more faith in the basic arguments of Kristiansen and Larsson (2005)—namely, that Europe and the Mediterranean formed a massive, open network through which warrior elites and others travelled at will—than I am able to muster. For Kristiansen and Larsson, cultural contact and cultural change ultimately still flow ex oriente—thus, they return whence Childe began. Yet whereas their work is an attempt at synthesis, not analysis, Ling and Stos-Gale have a stab at analysis, of the lead isotope variety. The question is how well they succeed.

Maya archaeology is flourishing; across three millennia, four countries and an impressive range of intellectual and practical approaches, the eight books under review here make that point well. One is the ninth edition of a deservedly successful book for a general readership, one the catalogue of the first Maya exhibition to be held in Britain in nearly half a century. A further volume deals with sites in the northern Maya lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula, another with those in the eastern lowlands, the former British colony of Belize. Two are site-specific: the major city of El Perú-Waka’ in the southern lowland Maya heartland of El Petén, Guatemala, and the idiosyncratic élite centre of Cacaxtla in central highland Mexico where Maya influence on the famous murals is both striking and puzzling. Finally, two have a scientific bent: collections of papers on bioarchaeology/population studies and archaeoastronomy respectively. All draw their evidence, and their illustrations, largely from the Classic Period (AD 250–900), although there are forays into both the Preclassic (1200 BC–AD 250) and Postclassic (AD 900–1500+).

Archaeologists who employ regional landscapes as an organising principle tend to be more concerned about how landscapes—natural, built and imagined—reflect cultural values than how landscapes shape human relations and community perspectives. As the authors of these two volumes skilfully demonstrate, communities deploy landscapes to materialise, and even to naturalise, claims to political authority and power. They reveal how the study of landscape at multiple scales spurs narratives and counter-narratives about how people experience the world and vie for control of it. Together, J. Cameron Monroe and James Delle advance the inherent possibilities of space and scale in historical archaeology.

It is rare for authors to be able to read comments on their paper by leading colleagues and to have the chance to respond before its publication. We would like to thank the editor of Antiquity for providing this opportunity. The comments express both acceptance of, and doubts about, interconnectedness between the eastern Mediterranean and Scandinavia in the Bronze Age. Kaul's comments demonstrate a deep insight into how Nordic archaeology reveals this interconnectedness; that is clearly expressed in his latest publication on the topic in Antiquity (Kaul 2013). Moreover, both Kaul and Sognnes, who accept these interconnections, have an excellent understanding of Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art. In fact, most of the reviewers’ comments express a positive attitude to the interpretation of the rock art images as possible representations of oxhide ingots.

The principal point of my debate paper was to stress the importance of anchoring the chronology of the Neolithic to the Iron Age cultural sequence in north-east Thailand by applying Bayesian analysis to large, third-generation sets of radiocarbon determinations. Three of my respondents agree not only with this proposition, but also with the results of the AMS dating of bone, shell and charcoal from the five prehistoric sites in question.

It is true that in Europe when it comes to writing broad-based surveys of their archaeology some countries have been more equal than others. The United Kingdom and Ireland probably hold the record, closely followed by the Low Countries. The Czechs also have a long tradition of publishing surveys in one or other of the major European languages, commencing with three slender but well-illustrated volumes with texts in French by the prehistorian Albín Stocký (1924, 1928, 1933). Then in 1961 appeared Czechoslovakia before the Slavs (Neustupný 1961), the English edition of the overview written by the father and son team of Evžen and Jiří Neustupný and published in the previous year (Neustupný & Neustupný 1960). In 1978 appeared a massive single-volume prehistory of Bohemia with a brief summary and captions to the illustrations in German (Pleiner & Rybová 1978). Most recently, from 2007 to 2008 the eight volumes of Archeologie pravěkých Čech appeared—and then disappeared; in a matter of months the entire print run had been sold.

The pursuit of higher social rank by possessing artefacts of rare skill or distant origin is a familiar principle (Binford 1962; Helms 1993). Signes de richesse (‘Signs of wealth’) is an exhibition of evidence for this practice during the Neolithic period in France. It opened in June 2015 at the French National Museum of Prehistory, Les Eyzies, where the usual fare is Palaeolithic archaeology (Chancerel et al. 2015: 13). The exhibition's main concepts and some of its data spring from the great ‘Jade Project’ on the acquisition, manufacture and distribution of ‘big axes’ (Pétrequin et al. 2012). The display is alluring, but the underlying argument is flimsy because the conceptual principles remain implicit. For whom, then, was Signes designed?