FLINT PROCUREMENT AND NEOLITHIC AXE PRODUCTION ON THE SOUTH DOWNS: A RE-ASSESSMENT

Summary. This paper reviews the evidence for Neolithic flint axe production on the South Downs in the light of recent chemical analysis of axes and the author's own research involving surface flint collections. The organisation, status and chronology of the Sussex flint mines is discussed and the distribution of flint axes described. Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age settlement is shown to concentrate on the clay-with-flints which is also a major flint source. It is argued that the production of axes from mined flint was replaced by utilisation of surface deposits in the later Neolithic and case studies are presented.     

THE OLIVE IN THE PREHISTORIC AEGEAN: THE EVIDENCE FOR DOMESTICATION IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE

Summary. In 1972 Colin Renfrew suggested that the rise of Mycenaean civilization may have been made possible by the development of a polycultural triad of wheat, vine and olive in the Early Bronze Age. A careful examination of the botanical and archaeological evidence for the domestication of the olive lends little support to this aspect of the thesis. The palynological evidence from various points in Greece is inconclusive, but for most areas it would seem to suggest that the intensive cultivation of olive began in the Late Bronze Age or even later.
No conclusive archaeological evidence for processing or storage of olive oil exists for any period in the Bronze Age. The question of when olive domestication took place must remain unanswered until more data are available from Early and Middle Bronze Age contexts and more conclusive botanical data have been collected.     

THEORY AND ESSENTIALISM IN MARXIST GEOGRAPHY

Many Marxist geographers are involved in the current attempt within human geography to create nonessentialist forms of social explanation. This project has been carried forward with great, though uneven, success. I argue that the concept of ‘theory’ is an area of our discourse where essentialism tenaciously persists. I explore some essentialist meanings of ‘theory’ in Marxist geography and offer a nonessentialist alternative meaning, embedded within an explicitly nonessentialist Marxism.