IN 1962, Australian prehistory stretched back a mere 9000 years, its legacy
little more than an array of stone tools. But this was the year John Mulvaney
announced that Kenniff Cave, which he was excavating in Queensland, was of late
Pleistocene age, with an archaeological sequence that dated back 16 000 years.
The find was decisive. More were to follow: within seven years, seven other
Pleistocene sites had been discovered. Now there are a good 150鈥攁nd the
number is expected to rise.

Until Mulvaney came on the scene, Australian prehistory hardly qualified as a
subject. He was the first to teach it鈥攁nd has doubled its scope in time in
his 50 years of work. With Johan Kamminga, Mulvaney has produced a bigger and
richer edition of Prehistory of Australia. Its scale underlines the
immense blossoming of our knowledge of every aspect of Australia鈥檚 remote past
from its incredible wealth of rock art and what it can tell us of prehistory to
detailed coverage of stone tools, many of which were used on long-vanished
organic materials鈥攑lant and animal. They also consider environmental
aspects and the importance of ethnography, history, linguistics and genetics to
the field.

Kamminga and Mulvaney are certain that there was a human presence in
Australia 40 000 years ago, and regard the evidence for an earlier arrival as
unproven. Mulvaney鈥檚 readers have come to expect sensitivity to the history,
rights and feelings of Australian Aborigines, and this is still here in
abundance, finely balanced with his other concern鈥攑romoting the virtues of
archaeological research.

Although it was written between 1995 and 1997, this book is remarkably up to
date. A few important events have inevitably, taken place since. Richard
Roberts, for example, has published evidence that the art and occupation at
Jinmium is 10 000, not 176 000, years old
(see 快猫短视频, 30 May 1998, p 27).
Not surprisingly, Mulvaney and Kamminga anticipated this. Amino
acid dates from eggshells of Genyornis suggest that this giant bird
disappeared suddenly about 50 000 years ago, in a time of moderate
climate鈥攁nd perhaps this is attributable to human predation
(快猫短视频, 1 May 1999, p 38).
Most significantly, the skeleton of 鈥淢ungo Man鈥�
has been dated to between 56 000 and 68 000 years ago
(快猫短视频, 29 May 1999, p 13).

Clearly, there is already scope for another edition of this outstanding and
invaluable survey of a continent at the cutting edge of prehistoric research.

ANYONE can be a cognitive archaeologist. Pick up an ancient carved stone and
wonder what it was for and why it was made. Here鈥檚 the hard part鈥攚hat was
the maker thinking when they made it or used it? What did they plan to do with
it? Figuring out what you do with a stone spindle whorl doesn鈥檛 take a genius,
but a gold spindle found in a prehistoric grave is another thing again.

Because our understanding of the past is shaped by our present, we
鈥渦nderstand鈥� that stone spindle whorl. People still spin, spindle whorls like
this still exist, but the story, the thinking behind the golden spindle may for
ever lie beyond our reach.

If a spindle causes trouble, what about God? Some of the worst wars in
history have been fought between passionate advocates of different gods, and
between monotheists versus polytheists. Here, the physical evidence is even
harder to read. An early Christian church, for example, may be easy to identify,
but what can we say about the beliefs and rituals of the earliest religions,
with their scant and ambiguous artefacts? Even the presence of a written script,
for example, in Pharaonic Egypt or among the Maya, may offer only clues. This is
complex stuff, but curiously little of this work has yet found its way out of
the academic literature and into popular books unlike the hard questions of
physics and cosmology.

Brian Fagan, one of the world鈥檚 foremost popularisers of archaeology, sets
out to change this in From Black Land to Fifth Sun, with 12 case
histories drawn from Europe, Africa, the Near East, and North and Middle
America. Fagan has visited these places, so this a personal, passionate account
of fascinating problems.

His clearest exposition of how and why archaeologists describe a site as
sacred comes in his account of Colin Renfrew鈥檚 excavations at Phylakopi, on
Melos in the Cyclades, where he uncovered buildings unlike others on the site.
They contained unusual objects, such as figurines and seal stones, and had stone
platforms and niches set in the walls. One niche contained a female figurine,
which 鈥渉ad a conical stem painted like a long skirt, a bulbous body with small
breasts, a painted brown chin and staring eyes, her eyebrows, and hair outlined
in brown鈥�. The rooms had been carefully tended and arranged in such a way as to
impress a visitor. Renfrew believed he had evidence make a case for a town
shrine, a place for 鈥渢he performance of expressive actions of worship and
propitiation by human celebrants towards a transcendent being or beings.鈥� Other
examples supported his case: in 鈥淕ournia, Gazi, and Knossos, the female figure
with upraised arms came from a special location鈥�.

Here, the evidence Renfrew uncovered allows him to spell out his reasoning
clearly, while the book as a whole warns that there is a fine line between
rigorous science and a kind of bungee jump into the land of fantasy, though one
or two of its examples, most notably that of the 鈥渁ltered state of
consciousness鈥� theory as applied to rock art and cave art, leap over that line
in cavalier fashion.

This is an important book. It is vital to make archaeology popular. Sadly,
some researchers have vowed never to write for anyone outside academia, sneering
arrogantly at the genre, forgetting that by doing so they are refusing to convey
the results of their research to those who footed the bill and paid their
salaries.

It is supremely difficult to strike a happy balance between depth and
superficiality, between boring data and lively description. Nobody does this
kind of book better than Fagan, who is a master of the fluent, readable and
informative account of archaeological investigation.

They had better get in quickly, because archaeological sites around the world
are falling victim to vandals, souvenir hunters and development. In England
alone, 22 500 ancient monuments have been destroyed over the past half century.
They are now disappearing at the rate of one a day. In The Monuments at Risk
Survey of England (MARS), the world鈥檚 first audit of ancient monuments,
English Heritage warns that another 4500 sites鈥攁bout 2 per cent鈥攆ace
serious damage or destruction in the next three to five years.

England has special problems because many of its sites are subtle. If you are
driving or walking somewhere in the country and you notice a differently
coloured strip of grass or a few fragments of worked stone on a muddy path, you
might be looking at an ancient monument. These are not all grand structures of
marble or stone; they are the common fabric of the past. A monument, says a
spokesman for English Heritage, 鈥渋s an archaeological site, evidence of human
occupation鈥�. This includes ancient pollens lying in a fen, the faint parallel
stripes in grass or cereal fields that reveal medieval ridge-and-furrow plough
marks鈥攁nything up to a Second World War pillbox.

And there are sites at risk all over the world. The culprits include those
who love too much: popular 鈥渉oneypot鈥� sites have so many visitors that they
damage the very thing that they have come to see. Even something as innocent as
a gasp of wonder at a wall painting in a pharaoh鈥檚 tomb or a prehistoric cave
can endanger its existence鈥攚ater vapour in exhaled breath can cause
paintings to flake off walls. Flash photography fades pigments. And picking up a
tiny chip of marble from around the Acropolis might once have seemed harmless
until the site itself began to disappear.

Some sites become targets for looters seeking antiquities to sell.
Clandestine excavation and thefts from sites and museums all feed the insatiable
appetites of collectors willing to pay huge sums for art objects stripped of all
information about context or provenance.

Builders of roads, airports and housing developments rarely respect
archaeological sites. A few countries deal well with these kind of problems:
Switzerland has laws that compel road builders to undertake archaeological
surveys in advance, then fund excavations where necessary. But even where sites
are well protected, there can be arguments about access. In North America and
Australia, some groups are now protesting because their sacred sites are on
cultural tourist trails. They want to exclude visitors and scientists from these
places, keeping them private and unrecorded.

This conflict of interest reveals a more fundamental difficulty: the
conflicting claims of scientists and the public. Ideally, the public should have
the right to see all antiquities and visit all sites because they are part of a
shared inheritance. But archaeologists may decree otherwise: Europe鈥檚 Ice Age
caves are difficult to enter safely and so vulnerable to destruction that tight
restrictions for visits have to be imposed.

Perhaps we could have predicted these dangers to monuments. The real shocker
in MARS was that the most dangerous threat to ancient sites is the plough. With
this information in hand, archaeologists and public can begin to act. They need
to make themselves heard鈥攖o become caretakers, not consumers, of the
past.

One remedy lies on the statute books of Europe: when farmers apply for
agricultural subsidies, they can ask to set aside land, taking it out of
production in return for a grant. According to English Heritage, archaeological
sites are taken into account in the schemes for farmers. There is a hitch: there
has never been a concerted effort to integrate archaeological interests with
those of the agricultural-environmental lobby. English Heritage intends to
change this. Imagine archaeology adopting the headline-catching tactics of the
environmentalists鈥攖he past just might be saved for the future.

Glyphbreaker by Steven Roger Fischer, Copernicus/Springer Verlag,
拢15.50/$25, ISBN 0387982418

AT first glance, a dense volume devoted to the esoteric world of Easter
Island鈥檚 enigmatic script is an unlikely candidate for a good read. But
Rongorongo is a breathtaking triple tour de force by the
American-born New Zealander Steven Fischer. As he traces the rediscovery of the
Easter Island script from its first mention by the European missionaries of the
1860s, he treats us to a feast of information. This is without doubt one of the
most erudite pieces of research on Easter Island鈥檚 history and culture since the
monographs of the Norwegian expedition of the 1950s鈥攁nd those were the
work of many authors.

Fischer, who is now director of the Institute of Polynesian Languages and
Literatures in Auckland, appears to have seen and read every available document
and consulted every source. Even the most advanced specialists in Easter Island
studies will learn a great deal from his rich, succinct chapters and their
scholarly footnotes.

He also presents the fullest and most accurate data compiled so far on the
script itself, which currently survives as rows of incised motifs on only 25
pieces of wood, scattered through the world鈥檚 museums. Fischer personally
examined almost all of these objects, and was prevented from seeing the specimen
in Tahiti only by the cost of travel, and the two specimens in Washington鈥檚
Smithsonian Institution by the museum鈥檚 refusal to grant him access, for which
bizarre conduct it should hang its head in shame.

Perhaps the most important outcome of his work is that in the course of
documenting the script, Fischer, an eminent epigrapher who knows numerous
languages, managed to unravel its structure (鈥淐racking the Easter Island code鈥�,
快猫短视频, 15 June 1996, p 36). While he is still far from being
able to read the script, it is serious progress. He has revealed the key to its
structure, which constitutes a decipherment. Jean-Fran莽ois Champollion,
for example, first unlocked the structure of Egyptian hieroglyphics and was
hailed as their decipherer before the hieroglyphics were all read. Fischer has
shown islanders read the script, not using it merely as a device to recall
memorised texts, and used it for creative writing.

This is not to say that Fischer鈥檚 achievement has been greeted with universal
praise. Since his claim was first published and publicised, others who had
devoted many years to the same challenge have issued objections, some with
scholarly politeness, others with malevolence. To his credit, Fischer discusses
what he considers to be the shortcomings of his colleagues鈥� approaches in a very
detached fashion, displaying great generosity even to his most vitriolic
critics.

He does, however, give short shrift to the lunatic fringe who have always
found the Easter Island script a fertile playground for their imagination,
seeing links between it and the Indus Valley script (used 4000 years earlier,
and at the other side of the globe), as well as even more tenuous ties to Egypt,
Cornwall, Dalmatia or Zimbabwe. It seems that most 鈥渄ecipherments鈥� of rongorongo
proposed in the past were no more than simple guesswork, as his account makes
devastatingly clear.

Where Fischer鈥檚 own work is concerned, he feels confident that most of the
surviving examples of the script are cosmogonies: chants explaining the wide
variety of fanciful copulations that led to the creation of everything in the
natural world. It is worth noting that in 1994, at the first presentation of his
claim during an international conference on Austronesian linguistics in the
Netherlands, he received the overwhelming backing of his peers. Thomas Barthel,
the universally respected doyen of rongorongo studies who died last year, sent
him a letter declaring 鈥渦nlimited endorsement鈥�.

If you turn to Glyphbreaker, the rongorongo story makes up only the
final section of the book. This is a far shorter and more readable account, this
time dealing with Fischer鈥檚 own life and career. The bulk of the book covers his
earlier decipherment of Europe鈥檚 oldest known script, the enigmatic markings on
Crete鈥檚 Phaistos Disc of 1600 BC, a large, carved stone disc found in the ruins
of a palatial dwelling in the south of the island. When my article on Fischer
and rongorongo appeared in 快猫短视频, there was only space for a
brief mention of his work on the Phaistos Disc. In spite of this, almost all the
letters which arrived in response to the feature were inquiries about this
earlier work on the disc, a tantalising challenge to many minds for decades.

So, for all those who have been unable to obtain a copy of Fischer鈥檚 small
1988 book on the decipherment, Glyphbreaker provides a step-by-step
account of how he cracked this code, proceeding with the utmost care and
objectivity, constantly modifying and improving his method, and gradually
filling in the blanks.

He arrived at the unsuspected conclusion that the Phaistos Disc was inscribed
with an ancient Minoan language that was closely related to Mycenaean Greek. It
constituted a call to arms, to repel the Carians, piratical invaders from
Anatolia (present-day Turkey). Fischer achieved a thoroughly believable
translation which was rewarded with a congratulatory reception from the National
Geographic Society in Washington DC.

Once again, however, his claim to have deciphered a challenging script met
with a mixed response from epigraphers. Indeed, he describes the reaction by
some as 鈥渁 rude slap in the face鈥�. Yet his work later found telling support in
the discovery that Thucydides, the 5th-century BC Greek historian, also claimed
Minos of Crete had driven the Carians out of the Cyclades, an event of such
importance in Helladic history that it was obviously passed down for a thousand
years or more.

The most impressive aspect of Glyphbreaker is not so much that this
remarkable man has cracked two entirely different scripts, a feat unique in the
history of epigraphy, but rather that he has done so despite tremendous
privations in his life. With the good fortune to have a supportive and devoted
wife, Fischer has endured years of financial difficulty鈥攖imes when he
could not afford a telephone and even stamps for letters to colleagues had to be
carefully rationed. His efforts and dogged persistence have paid off, twice, if
not financially then certainly in the satisfaction of achieving a solution to
two tremendous puzzles.

Regardless of the eventual validity of Fischer鈥檚 solutions鈥攁nd
certainly to a nonlinguist who does not know a grapheme from a glyph, his
method, as painstakingly explained here, appears logical, objective and
impeccable鈥攐ne cannot but admire the selfless and single-minded dedication
with which he has pursued his goal.

VERY few books can be said to mark a crucial turning point in the history of
their discipline, especially in the esoteric world of archaeology. But this
second volume on the open-air settlement at Monte Verde, Chile, settles a bitter
row. It hammers the last nail into the coffin of the 鈥淐lovis First鈥� view of
American prehistory, the belief that the first people to enter the New World did
so between 11 000 and 12 000 years ago and were the big-game hunters of the
Clovis culture.

Many researchers had abandoned this view as preliminary results from Monte
Verde and other South American sites became available, but there remained a rump
of hardline sceptics. They insisted on unbelievably high standards from the
excavators and interpreters of the South American material before they would
consider changing their minds.

Tom Dillehay has worked on the site since 1977. Now, in this enormous
monograph, he delivers the goods. He covers every conceivable aspect of this
important site in such detail that all but the most fanatical doubters have
thrown in the towel. They have now declared that there were people in the
Americas before the Clovis hunters. The evidence uncovered by Dillehay in Monte
Verde reveals that they had reached southern Chile by at least 12 500 years
ago鈥攁nd quite possibly 33 000 years ago.

Monte Verde follows a smaller 1989 volume on the site鈥檚
palaeoenvironmental context, and appears after a long-awaited visit to the site
by a 鈥渟ceptics鈥� delegation鈥� last January. That event reportedly left the
visitors deeply impressed by the site and by the quality of the work done
there.

The monograph, the result of more than 15 years鈥� excavation and analysis, has
22 chapters and 16 appendices, most of them written or coauthored by Dillehay in
a tour de force that sets new standards in archaeological reporting,
since it involves more than 70 scientists from a score of disciplines.

The site preserved a wide range of perishable materials such as wooden tools,
the remains of nearly 70 species of plant (including chewed leaves), and bits
and pieces of meat and hide. The picture that emerges is of an advanced
community of hunter-gatherers, living in a dozen timber structures, carrying out
domestic tasks and eating a varied diet.

Had it been found in any other part of the world, Monte Verde would be a site
of enormous importance for its period, thanks to the quality and range of
the remains that have been revealed. But its location in Chile and its discovery
in the 1970s have together ensured that it is the site which broke down a
long-standing barrier. Monte Verde and Dillehay鈥檚 account of the evidence it
held at last enables studies of early American prehistory to proceed on a more
realistic footing. But general readers should remember that this is a monograph:
the expert on Monte Verde writing for other experts in his field. The price
alone will deter most buyers. Here is the raw material on which a popular
account will be based.

BOOKS about archaeological excavations tend to be either dull accounts of
finds and struggles against harsh conditions and inadequate funding, or
irritatingly Blytonesque: 鈥溾�業 say, chaps, look what I鈥檝e found鈥�, he exclaimed
breathlessly.鈥� Fairweather Eden has moments when it falls into both of these
traps, but on the whole it strikes a judicious balance that makes it highly
readable and enjoyable.

Some elements are a bit baffling. Take the title, for example. Unless you
know that archaeologists have made exciting discoveries at Boxgrove in Sussex,
you might be tempted to think the book is a romantic novel. The subtitle
explains all, 鈥淟ife in Britain Half a Million Years Ago as Revealed by the
Excavations at Boxgrove鈥�. On the title page, you鈥檒l find a drawing of a
three-spined stickleback鈥攁 curiosity until you realise that every chapter
is headed by a drawing of one of the myriad species whose bones have been
recovered from the site.

When you get to the text you discover that its structure takes getting used
to. There are 56 chapters, some of them extremely short鈥攁lways a good ploy
because you feel you are making rapid progress as they fly past. Overall, they
alternate between general themes in the history of fossil hominid and
environmental studies and accounts of the Boxgrove project. The constant jumping
back and forth in time and topics can be disconcerting, but the book settles
down into a more fluid account of the people, the problems and the results of
this unique excavation.

And here鈥檚 the reward for persistence: Boxgrove is a world-class palaeolithic
site that sheds dazzling light on many unknown or misinterpreted aspects of
human life half a million years ago. The work began in the early 1980s as a
small-scale project, struggling for financial support.

Gradually, parts of a beautifully preserved fossil landscape in the depths of
a gravel quarry were uncovered. The abundant flint tools and rich diversity of
animal bones were in an excellent state. Nowhere else in Europe has such a
tremendous quantity of flint knapping waste and tools (especially hand axes)
from such a remote period been discovered. Indeed, the very date of the site has
revolutionised studies of the period in Britain. Originally assigned to about
200 000 years ago, it proved to be more than twice as old.

The authors, apparently staunch supporters of the 鈥渟hort chronology鈥� for
Europe, which suggests that people occupied the continent no earlier than half a
million years ago, are consequently highly sceptical of the earlier dates for
the Dmanisi jaw in Georgia and, especially, for their 鈥渞ival鈥� site at Atapuerca
in northern Spain.

Ironically, the early dates鈥攎ore than 780 000 years ago鈥攆or
Atapuerca received further massive media attention just weeks ago
(快猫短视频, Science, 7 June, p 16)
with the announcement of a new species of fossil hominid.

During its first 12 years, the Boxgrove dig attracted little press coverage.
All that was to change through the discovery of a single, gnawed human
bone鈥攁 massive tibia.

The site was about to be abandoned, but the director Mark Roberts decided to
have one last look. In the last of his test pits the bone turned up, on a Friday
the 13th.

The bone, presented in Nature in May 1994, but announced to the
world by The Times shortly before, changed everything. The press
coverage was predictably chauvinistic and bombastic: front pages proclaimed that
the first European was English and a big strong man, to boot. The find put
Boxgrove and sponsor English Heritage on the map, leading to generous funding
for two more seasons of excavation. The site became one of the biggest
archaeological operations in Britain.

The media waited in vain for the rest of this early Englishman to turn up,
but the only other human remains recovered were two incisors from a lower level
of the site.

Even if Boxgrove did not prove rich in human remains, its real treasure lies
in what its occupants left behind and what this tells us about their lives.
Below the tibia, for example, Pedersen found seven hand axes in mint condition,
heaped together. The 1995 season alone uncovered at least 150 more, many of them
apparently discarded.

The areas where axes were made, conversely, have few or no abandoned tools,
just the waste flakes in the knapping areas. The Boxgrove flint is not easy to
work, but modern experiments established that the toolmakers had been sitting
with the flint nodule held over the right leg. One was left-handed. Some of the
flakes were still stuck vertically in the ground as they had landed after being
struck. In one area, pieces of flint cortex show that a hand axe was made from
scratch on the spot from a complete nodule. These tools can be made in a few
minutes by a skilled knapper, so it is not surprising that so many of them have
been found and that they were abandoned after use rather than carried
around.

But what were all these hand axes for? Numerous suggestions have been put
forward, but Boxgrove has revealed strong new evidence. First, examination of
the wear on the edges of 40 axes excavated last year has revealed characteristic
meat and bone polish from butchery. One of the book鈥檚 most interesting chapters
gives an account of a modern professional butcher dismembering a deer carcass
with a series of Boxgrove-type tools and finding them surprisingly efficient for
the task.

A further revelation at Boxgrove was that manufacture of the axes, even at
this remote period, involved not only hard hammers (pebbles and stones), but
also soft hammers of bone and antler. The use of soft hammers provides important
evidence for technological sophistication, suggesting that these early humans
planned their tasks and prepared implements accordingly. One of the soft hammers
is made from the antler of Megaloceros, the extinct giant deer, and
constitutes the only known artefact made from that animal.

Boxgrove鈥檚 other major contribution to our knowledge of early humans derives
from its evidence for butchery and hunting. Cuts on animal bones were first
noticed here in 1986. Gradually archaeologists discovered them on the remains of
many more large animals, indicating the systematic and skilful removal of muscle
from creatures such as a horse and a rhino. Moreover, any marks of carnivore
teeth on the bones occur on top of the cut marks, proving that the humans were
there first. Finally, a horse鈥檚 shoulder blade displays part of a circular
perforation which pathologist Bernard Knight found to be consistent with a blow
from a thrown spear.

In the 1980s a view became fashionable that, before the Upper Palaeolithic,
humans were not hunters at all, but primarily scavengers. Their supposed wooden
spears, discovered in Clacton, Essex and Lehringen, Germany were likely to have
been snow-probes or digging sticks. The recent discovery of the spectacular
long, wooden spears from Sch枚ningen, Germany, dating to about 400 000 years
ago, comes as a timely confirmation of what the Boxgrove finds had already
suggested鈥攖hat these early humans were hunters of large, fit, mature
animals. They also carried out the butchery of the carcasses in an unhurried,
efficient and cooperative manner.

In demolishing those myths of the 1980s鈥� together with equally bizarre
ideas such as hand axes being accidental by-products of making flint flakes, or
a complete absence of cooperative behaviour or spoken language in this
period鈥� Boxgrove has already made an immense contribution to prehistory.
Yet evaluation of its data has barely begun.

The authors have produced a fascinating book, all the more precious because
much of the information is presented here for the first time, in advance of
detailed academic publication.