A Rich Bell Beaker Burial from Wellington Quarry, Marden, Herefordshire

An intact Bell Beaker grave was discovered in February 1996 at Wellington Quarry, Marden, Herefordshire. The unmarked flat grave had no signs of a ditch or barrow, but may have been timber lined. It contained a tanged copper knife, a shale wristguard fragment, four barbed and tanged arrowheads, three arrowhead blanks, three flint knives, two triangular points or small daggers and four flint flakes. The adult male inhumation was accompanied by a complete, Maritime (AOO) Bell Beaker and may be dated to 2750–2500 BC (Late Neolithic). It belongs to Case's Group D. A notable feature of the grave goods is their different states of wear and completeness, varying from pristine to old, and including a fragment of a wristguard.     

The first record of a Maastrichtian ammonite from the Perth Basin,Western Australia,and its biostratigraphical significance

The first known ammonite from the Maastrichtian of the Perth Basin, a single, incomplete specimen of Grossouvrites gemmatus (Huppé, 1854), is described from core material from the Lancelin No. 1 borehole. Foraminiferal and nannoplankton evidence date the ammonite as middle Maastrichtian; its age is also assessed on the basis of dinoflagellate assemblages from this section, but these give a less precise dating. The position of the ammonite with respect to a mid-Maastrichtian disconformity, which probably extended along much of the Western Australian margin is discussed.     

The dry tank: development and disuse of water management infrastructure in the Anuradhapura hinterland,Sri Lanka

We identify and offer new explanations of change in water management infrastructure in the semi-arid urban hinterland of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka between ca. 400 BC and AD 1800. Field stratigraphies and micromorphological analyses demonstrate that a complex water storage infrastructure was superimposed over time on intermittently occupied and cultivated naturally wetter areas, with some attempts in drier locations. Our chronological framework, based on optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) measurement, indicates that this infrastructure commenced sometime between 400 and 200 BC, continued after Anuradhapura reached its maximum extent, and largely went into disuse between AD 1100 and 1200. While the water management infrastructure was eventually abandoned, it was succeeded by small-scale subsistence cultivation as the primary activity on the landscape. Our findings have broader resonance with current debates on the timing of introduced ‘cultural packages’ together with their social and environmental impacts, production and symbolism in construction activities, persistent stresses and high magnitude disturbances in ‘collapse’, and the notion of post ‘collapse’ landscapes associated with the management of uncertain but essential resources in semi-arid environments.     

Anthropology and the covert: Methodological notes on researching military and intelligence programmes (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article reflects upon the methodological challenges posed by the study of secretive organizations and programmes. In particular, it examines the question: when participant‐observation is not a feasible option, what techniques can anthropologists use to shed light upon covert military and intelligence agencies and the corporations that they contract? After reviewing anthropological research on secret societies from the late 18th and early 19th century, the author turns to contemporary anthropological work on bureaucratic institutions and initiatives that operate in secret. The author's own research into the US Army's Human Terrain System serves as an illustration. By adapting Laura Nader's suggestions for ‘studying up, down, and sideways’, the article suggests that documentary analysis (of both openly accessible and classified documents), interviews, and ‘self‐analysis’ provide a fruitful combination of methods for an anthropology of the covert.