Antiquity 80 (309)

The authors describe newly discovered Palaeolithic engravings and paintings from the site of Margot Cave, Mayenne, and suggest that there are chronological and stylistic grounds for considering this and other examples from England, Germany and northern and central France as part of a cultural group dating to the end of the Upper Palaeolithic.

Article on the impact of ploughing as a major agent of attrition to archaeological sites world-wide, and in particular on the need for resource managers to know how quickly a particular field is eroding, so that negotiation and protection is then possible. A new procedure presented which shows how variation in the concentration of the radioisotope 137Cs can be used to monitor soil movements over the last forty years. The measurements allow a site's `life expectancy' to be calculated, and there are some dividends for tracking site formation processes.

In a contribution to the debate on the restoration of Newgrange, and in particular of the vertical revetment wall, the author places the reconstruction work in a wider context, offers a different interpretation of the stratigraphic sequence from that suggested by Palle Eriksen (2004) and the role of the quartz/granite layer and comments on the consequences of the quartz wall for archaeological and public interpretation of Newgrange (see also Eriksen's response, pages 709--710, same issue).

Three colleagues offer their personal recollections of Andrew Sherratt.