How can study of material objects be employed to develop archaeological explanation? Recent finds suggest that past views on the date and distribution of doorknob spearbutts need to be revised with consequent effects on the interpretation of their cultural significance.

Large area excavation at Cuddie Springs has revealed that the Pleistocene sediments have remained undisturbed. This eliminates the possibility that stone artefacts found in association with megafauna may have been introduced by disturbance from higher levels and indicates an overlap of megafauna with humans of at least 10,000 years.

This further comment on Geoffrey Wainwright's retrospective ‘Time please’ (ANTIQUITY 74: (2000): 909–43) is written from the perspective of someone who has been actively involved in professional archaeology since the creation of the first county ‘units’ in 1973, who helped to promote a professional institute and its codes of contractual behaviour, and who has directed an independent Trust through the transition from state funding to private funding.

Shuidonggou is unique within the Chinese Palaeolithic sequence and its assemblage is reminiscent of Upper Palaeolithic core-and-blade technologies in Mongolia and southern Siberia. Limited chronological controls have prevented evaluation of this technology in both the Chinese and greater Eurasian Palaeolithic. Dating of recently discovered hearths at Locality 2 places Shuidonggou firmly at 29,000–24,000 BP, and suggests the spread of the Eurasian large blade technology was primarily from north to south. The concurrent production of small microblade-like bipolar bladelets at the site may also presage the development of a microlithic industry.

A recent series of accelerator mass spectrometry dates from the earliest excavated deposits at Çatalhöyük has allowed the origins of the site to be more precisely dated. These dates also provide a reliable basis for the construction of an overall intra-site chronological sequence.

A new series of radiocarbon measurements on three sewn-plank boats from North Ferriby, Yorkshire, has provided consistent new dating for these craft, which suggests that the appearance of such boats may fall in the early Bronze Age.

The authors present preliminary results of geophysical and palynological reconnaissance at the Tell El Dabaa, eastern Nile Delta. The geophysical survey reveals the presence of floodbasins, levees and channel deposits. Low palynomorph concentrations probably result from the high sedimentation rate and mean that further work is needed on the methods for palynological study in the region.

Stratigraphic and palynological evidence from trenches at Wollaston, Northamptonshire, suggest viticulture was extensively practised at this Roman site. It is argued that the apparent lack of viticultural tools and wine presses in the archaeological record in Britain is not reliable evidence for the absence of viticulture at that time.

Fasting was an important element of early Christian behaviour in Egypt. In spite of a wealth of Late Antique monastic sources describing acts of fasting, the reality must be that food was consumed at regular intervals. To date, discussion of monastic dietary practice has been largely a historical debate. Although we do not discount this approach and will use it ourselves, this paper departs from this academic tradition by incorporating new archaeobotanical evidence from the recent excavations of the 5th–7th-century AD monastery at Kom el-Nana. Middle Egypt into the study of monastic diet. It is our belief that the use of independent forms of evidence (in this case written sources on attitudes to fasting and archaeobotanical evidence) is the best way forward to answering fundamental questions about what monastic diet was like in Late Antique Egypt.

The historically documented burial samples of the Babenberg and Habsburg dynasties allow a detailed analysis of the circumstances that led to dismemberment, evisceration, disturbance, exhumation and reburial over a millennium. The results may provide deeper and more broadly applicable insights into relevant cultural formation processes of élite burials.

With the advent of relatively inexpensive image-handling computer programmes, digital image enhancement is more readily available to archaeologists. This paper describes the principles behind image enhancement and its application to rock-art in particular. Its use at a site in Torres Strait shows how it can be used successfully to reveal faded rock paintings.

For most archaeologists across the globe, mention of Africa in the context of archaeological research will probably bring to mind the important discoveries of early stone tools and hominid remains in eastern and southern Africa, the spectacular stone-walled enclosures and other structures at Great Zimbabwe, and images of ‘tribal’ culture, subsistence practices, artefacts and housing that, to some Western eyes at least, can seem reminiscent of a more distant non-African past. For some, the architectural and artistic splendours of Egyptian civilization may also form part of this image of archaeology on the continent, although for complex geopolitical, historical and academic reasons the study of Egyptian archaeology, in all but a few instances, continues to be regarded as distinct from that of the rest of Africa. While accepting that the preceding sentences are something of a caricature of the non-Africanist’s understanding and perception of the work of archaeologists on the continent, and that general introductory texts on archaeological methods and theory nowadays give wider coverage of African case-studies than was the case even a decade ago (e.g. Renfrew & Bahn 1991; Fagan 1995), the level of awareness of the breadth of African archaeology, current discoveries and research issues, as well as the many problems that practitioners and managers face on a daily basis, remains abysmally low.