Antiquity 70 (267)

Presents an evaluation of the use and misuse of genetic studies given that genetics is currently the focus of much research and funding. It is argued that modern genetic studies are unable to distinguish on genetic grounds between possible movements of people and consequent distribution of genes over a period of four millennia and that geneticists have revived the culture equals people hypothesis, with archaeological assemblages treated as if defining people in a way archaeology has found unreasonable for decades. Further, modern genetic and linguistic data may inform about very large-scale distributions and extremely long-term patterns, but it is not history or ethno-history in any of the normal senses of the words. In addition, necessarily gross models from both genetics and linguistics simply squeeze out history and difference, where many geneticists are actually unaware of the transitory nature of ethnic identity. It is agreed that there should be unrestricted pursuit of knowledge, with the proviso that there be a broad and informed debate on the results and meanings of the pursuit of scientific knowledge. A multi-disciplinary approach to the construction of histories necessitates a self-critical awareness of the world both of and beyond genetics in order to make the data useful.

Assesses the current climate in academic funding and questions whether present-day priorities, if applied in the past, would enable the likes of Gordon Childe to be employed in the first place.

New fieldwork at the broch of Dun Vulan, on South Uist in the Western Isles, prompts reappraisal of the geographical and social context of the brochs, by developing untapped sources of social evidence.

A skull excavated from a second-century AD~pit shows evidence for violent injury and displays cut marks which seem to indicate deliberate defleshing. The find appears to be without close parallel in Roman Britain.

A paper exploring the bases of research into the provenance of prehistoric bronzes from the Mediterranean and thus evaluating what the findings are able to convey of the place of metal as it moved in the ancient world.

Further comment on the origin of the ancient skulls is prompted by comparison with the skulls from the London Thames tributary, the Walbrook.