Understanding the prehistoric narrative of a region requires good dating, and in recent years good dating has moved increasingly from models drawn from types of artefacts to a framework provided by radiocarbon sequences. This in turn is bringing a change in the way events are described: from broad cultural histories to a network of local sequences. In this case study, the authors apply this rethinking to the Copper Age in a key region of Europe, the Great Hungarian Plain in the Carpathian Basin. They replace the traditional Early and Middle Copper Age, defined by pottery types, with an 800-year sequence in which six cemetery and settlement sites experience different trajectories of use, and the pottery types make intermittent and often contemporary appearances. In this new chronology based on radiocarbon, the variations in pottery use must have some other explanation.

Great Zimbabwe is one of the most iconic sites in southern Africa and indeed the world, but like so many famous monuments it has suffered from the attention of early excavators who have destroyed key categories of evidence. Chronology is crucial to understanding the development of the various elements of Great Zimbabwe and its relationship to other important regional centres such as Mapungubwe. A number of radiocarbon dates are available, however, and in this study they have been combined with the limited stratigraphic information and with datable imports to provide a Bayesian chronology of the site and its structures. Construction of the stone walls probably began at the end of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century AD, reaching its peak in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, although occupation continued up to at least the sixteenth and probably into the seventeenth century AD. These results indicate that occupation at Great Zimbabwe must have overlapped with that at Mapungubwe, and argue for a polycentric model of sociopolitical complexity in this region of southern Africa during that crucial formative period.

The new generation of aerial photographers is using different wavelengths to sense archaeological features. This is effective but can be expensive. Here the authors use data already collected for environmental management purposes, and evaluate it for archaeological prospection on pasture. They explore the visibility of features in different seasons and their sensitivity to different wavelengths, using principal components analysis to seek out the best combinations. It turns out that this grassland gave up its secrets most readily in January, when nothing much was growing, and overall the method increased the number of known sites by a good margin. This study is of the greatest importance for developing the effective survey of the world's landscape, a quarter of which is under grass.

Calculating the volume of ceramic vessels found whole or in fragments on archaeological sites is a key analytical endeavour that can have implications for economic and social activity, including storage and feasting. Established methods for estimating volumes are mostly based on the assumption that vessel shapes approximate to a circular form in plan-view. This new study shows that such an assumption may not be warranted and that methods that assume circularity produce less accurate volumetric estimates than approaches which accept that a less regular elliptical shape may be closer to reality. Statistical analysis allows the accuracy of the different methods to be compared and evaluated.

Reassessment of archives, early publications and the auditing of museum collections have often led to the discovery or rediscovery of long-forgotten specimens (e.g. Hollmann et at. 1986: 330; Fainer & Man-Estier 2011: 506, 520). The combination of initial poor recognition, insufcient scientic analysis and inadequate storage conditions, can cause the loss to science of important archaeological specimens. New analytical techniques may allow reconsideration of previous interpretations (e.g. P illon 2008: 720, 723-24; Hello et aZ. 2011; Higham et aZ. 2011: 522, 524) but in some cases it is the scientific value of a specimen that is not recognised at the moment of its discovery (e.g. Rosendahl et aZ. 2003: 277; Kaagan et aZ. 2011). Particularly revealing examples are those where the specimen found is the first of its kind. This was the case with the first handaxe recognised as manufactured by humans (Gamble & Kruszynski 2009: 468-70) or the rst two sets of Neanderthal fossil remains found respectively at Engis in 1829-30 and Gibraltar in 1848, which were not recognised as an early human species until after the 1856 discovery of _Neanderthal 1 at the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte in the Neander Valley near DUsseldorf, Germany (Stringer & Gamble 1993: 13). Similarly, lack of recognition caused the near loss of an engraved antler from the Magdalenian site of Neschers (France), possibly one of the first examples of Palaeolithic portable art.

The recent article on the Carthage Tophet infants by Schwartz et al. (2012) takes issue with our paper (Smith et al. 2011) that claims the Carthaginians practiced infant sacrifice. Both studies were carried out on the same sample of cremated infant remains excavated by the ASOR Punic project between 1975 and 1980 (Stager 1982). We examined the contents of 334 urns while Schwartz et al. (2012) examined the same sample plus an additional fourteen urns (N = 348). We differed, however, in our conclusions regarding the age distribution of the infants and the extent to which it supported or refuted claims that Tophet infants were sacrificed. This note explains why we think that Schwartz et al. (2012) erred in their age assessments and introduces additional evidence to show that the age distribution of the Tophet infants supports our contention of infant sacrifice.

In a recent study, Hardy et al. (2012) identified compounds from two non-nutritional plants, yarrow and camomile, in a sample of Neanderthal dental calculus from the northern Spanish site of El Sidrón. Both these plants are bitter tasting and have little nutritional value but are well known for their medicinal qualities. Bitter taste can signal poison. We know that the bitter taste perception gene TAS2R38 was present among the Neanderthals of El Sidrón (Lalueza-Fox et al. 2009), and their selection of yarrow and camomile was hence probably deliberate. With few nutritional benefits, reasons must be sought for why the Neanderthals collected and ingested these plants. They could have consumed them as flavouring, but this presupposes a degree of complexity in cuisine for which there is little evidence. The widespread evidence for animal self-medication, or zoopharmacognosy, however, offers an attractive behavioural context.We propose, indeed, that these plants were selected and ingested deliberately for the purpose of self-medication.Here, we investigate the implications of this new finding for Neanderthal knowledge of plants and we offer a context for plant knowledge and self-medication among early human and hominin populations.

Archaeological interest in the study of the acoustics of important historic buildings is currently gaining in importance, and there are several areas where research is conducted. Among these I include music archaeology, archaeology of sound, archaeomusicology and archaeoacoustics (Watson & Keating 1999; Scarre & Lawson 2006; Knight 2010: 1). Research on acoustic space can, in principle, be divided into two types of project: the measurement of acoustic parameters and the storage of acoustics as audio heritage.

Textiles and clothing are among the most visible aspects of human social and symbolic behaviour and yet they have left all too few traces in the archaeological record and it is easy to overlook their importance. Luxury textiles such as silk can additionally provide evidence of long-distance contact, notably between Europe and China during the Han dynasty and the Roman empire. But can these connections be projected back in time to the prehistoric period? The late Irene Good proposed a number of identifications of silk in Iron Age Europe and was instrumental in bringing the issue to wider attention. Closer examination reported here, however, calls those identifications into question. Instead, the case is put that none of the claimed Iron Age silks can be confirmed, and that early traffic in silk textiles to Europe before the Roman period cannot be substantiated.

Even if the foundation, rise and eventual demise of Carthage and its overseas territories in the West Mediterranean occurred in much the same space and time as the glory days of Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Greece and Rome, there is no doubt that the Phoenicians and their Punic successors (to use the conventional terms) have rarely been regarded as fully signed-up members of the ancient world. Reduced to walk-on cameos as skilled silversmiths, agricultural experts, shrewd traders or military strategists, Phoenician and Punic representations tend to be rather stereotypical (Prag 2010, with earlier bibliography), which perhaps should not come as a surprise, as nearly all these portraits have been sketched by outsiders; they certainly do not add up to a coherent ethnographic or political description.

The Tea Party, the Arab Spring and the _Occupy movements may seem to have little in common. They respond to very different circumstances, and they are fuelled by very different ideologies. Furthermore, they do not represent homogeneous movements and each of them amalgamates very different groups with very different interests. Stripped of their most obvious traits, however, they share a common dissatisfaction with the nature of power in the present world, and each has opened a debate on the nature and legitimacy of current power structures.

The first settlement of Australia over 40 000 years ago provides evidence of the maritime capabilities of early modern humans. Did they also take to the sea to fish? Recent analysis of fish remains from sites in Timor-Leste and on islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea have been held to include deep sea species that must have been obtained through pelagic fishing. Here Atholl Anderson takes issue with the evidence, arguing that inshore fishing is a more likely scenario, and that deep sea fishing was beyond the scope of Pleistocene communities. Despite the early settlement of Australia, advanced boat technology was developed only during the Holocene. His reassessment is followed by responses from Sue O'Connor and Rintaro Ono, Geoff Bailey and Jon Erlandson, and finally by Atholl Anderson's reply to those comments.

The argument that shamanism is the key that unlocks the hidden meaning of rock art continues to provoke debate over three decades after it was first proposed. In a recent article in Antiquity (86: 696–706), David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce defend the argument that nineteenth-century ethnographies provide evidence for a trance dance and shamanic healing that are vital to understanding southern African rock art. In this reply, Anne Solomon challenges the claim that the ethnographic evidence describes shamanism and trance healing and argues that elision of southern San (/Xam) and Kalahari San practices in a single narrative has obscured important differences. The author suggests that there is no evidence that dances or trance states were connected with healing in /Xam society. These confusions, it is argued, undermine key aspects of the shamanistic interpretation of rock art.

In the last 25 years the individual has increasingly come to the fore in archaeology, for example in phenomenology, agency and somatic archaeology, and more recently we have been encouraged to be reflexive in our methodology, and to hear multiple accounts of the past by other ‘stakeholders’ such as local communities. Alongside this focus on the individual in the past there has been a concomitant growth of interest in the history of archaeologists themselves (Murray 1999b: 871), most recently, for example, in the work of the Archives of European Archaeology Project (AREA n.d.), or the oral history of archaeology (Smith 2010). In the non-academic world the search by individuals and communities for a sense of identity in the remnants of the past has become a major issue in the fields of heritage, nationalism and identity studies (Hamilakis & Anagnostopoulos 2009).

Several recent articles in Antiqui (Barker et al. 201 la; Hung et al. 2011; Spriggs 2011), discuss the validity of, and revise, portrayals of an Austronesian farming-language dispersal across Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) during the mid-Holocene (approximately 4000-3000 years ago) . In conventional portrayals of the Austronesian dispersal hypothesis (e.g. Bellwood 1984/85, 1997, 2002, 2005; Diamond 2001; Diamond & Bellwood 2003) , and its Neolithic variant (e.g. Spriggs 2003, 2007), farmer-voyagers migrated out of Taiwan approximately 4500-4000 cal BP to colonise ISEA from 4000 cal BP (Bellwood 2002) and the Mariana Islands and Palau by c. 3500-3400 cal BP (Hung et al. 201 1). The descendants of these voyagers subsequently established the Lapita Cultural Complex in the Bismarck Archipelago by c. 3470-3250 cal BP (Kirch 1997; Spriggs 1997) and became the foundational cultures across most of the Pacific from c. 3250-3100 cal BP (Kirch 2000; Addison & Matisoo-Smith 2010; dates for Lapita in Denham et al. 2012). A major problem with this historical metanarrative is the absence of substantial archaeological evidence for the contemporaneous spread of farming from Taiwan (Bulbeck 2008; Donohue & Denham 2010; Denham 2011 ).

The first settlement of Australia over 40 000 years ago provides evidence of the maritime capabilities of early modern humans. Did they also take to the sea to fish? Recent analysis of fish remains from sites in Timor-Leste and on islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea have been held to include deep sea species that must have been obtained through pelagic fishing. Here Atholl Anderson takes issue with the evidence, arguing that inshore fishing is a more likely scenario, and that deep sea fishing was beyond the scope of Pleistocene communities. Despite the early settlement of Australia, advanced boat technology was developed only during the Holocene. His reassessment is followed by responses from Sue O'Connor and Rintaro Ono, Geoff Bailey and Jon Erlandson, and finally by Atholl Anderson's reply to those comments.

For one who is so intent on factual accuracy and precision in others, Anderson is surprisingly lenient on himself, and misrepresents our arguments. Some points of clarification are required before we proceed to address the more substantive issues regarding Pleistocene fishing and fishing technology. In the introduction to his critique, Anderson (above) states that "in regard to Wallacea, O'Connell et al. (2010: 60) cite" the evidence for fishing at Buang Merabak and Kilu Cave (Papua New Guinea), and Jerimalai (Timor-Leste) and that they conclude that "these data are best read to indicate angling from boats well offshore". Firstly, as outlined in O'Connor et al. (2011) Wallacea is a strictly defined biogeographic region which comprises the Indonesian Islands lying to the east of Sundaland and to the west of Sahul and Near Oceania. Kilu Cave and Buang Merabak are in Near Oceania, not in Wallacea, and while the two island regions share depauperate terrestrial faunas the biota of the two are very different.

The earthquake that struck Japan on 11 March 2011, named the Great East Japan Earthquake by the Japanese government, was one of the largest seismic events the world has seen for generations. Akira Matsui reported his experience of visiting the areas devastated by the earthquake and tsunami soon afterwards, outlining the initial assessment of damage caused to museums and cultural heritage assets, and the plans for their rescue (Kaner et a/ 2011; Matsui 201 I a). The present contribution reports how far the implementation of these plans has been successful, the prospects for the future, and situates all of this in a broader context of archaeological response to earthquakes.