What was burned in lamps in the prehistoric Mediterranean? Olive oil, as one would first suppose? Analysis of absorbed lipids preserved in the fabric of lamps and conical cups from the Minoan site of Mochlos in eastern Crete shows for the first time that beeswax was used as an illuminant.

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Archaeological interpretations of ancient economies have been strengthened by chemical analyses of ceramics, which provide the clearest evidence for economic activity, and comprise both the objects of exchange and its means. Pottery is often manufactured from local materials, but its compositional diversity typically prevents significant patterns of resource utilization from being identified. Centrally located and positioned on traditional shipping routes, Cyprus maintained ties with and supplied a variety of distinctive ceramic products to the major commercial centres in the eastern Mediterranean throughout Antiquity. We analysed two Cypriot fine wares and a variety of utilitarian pottery, as well as samples of extant Cypriot clays to determine source provenance. These chemical analyses provide an objective indication of the origins of ancient (Bronze Age and Roman) ceramics manufactured on Cyprus. The distribution of the probable clay sources and the links between pottery style and the material environment also afford a perspective on the spatial organization of large-scale pottery production on the island. Compositional analysis provides the means to assemble geographies of pottery production and to unravel the interregional system of exchange that operated in Antiquity, but the ability to accomplish these tasks is predicated on systematic analyses of ceramic products and raw materials that are found far beyond the bounds of individual archaeological sites.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The inaugural appearance of yet another "newsletter" of recent archaeological discoveries, reflecting AJA's historic and ongoing commitment to such reviews, is both auspicious and somewhat daunting.' Late 20th-century science-here viewed in its more narrow sense as the natural sciences-is now making its share of discoveries in Old World archaeology, a field that some consider a rather esoteric pursuit, divorced from the modern world. A review of this kind might then simply be seen as a long-overdue response to our headlong plunge into a technological present and future. Computers and other "black boxes" are no longer just the province of a few scientific wizards, but are now part of everyone's life, including the archaeologist's, whether we like it or not and whether it produces worthwhile results in our research or not. Since there is no turning back, we all need advice on how best to cope with this revolution and perhaps even come to enjoy it a little more. Such a review can be as daunting to its author as to its readers. How does one launch an endeavor that has few if any precedents,2 and which even its practitioners cannot decide among themselves what to call? A roundtable discussion on "Future Directions in Archaeometry,"3 held in conjunction with the 1981 Archaeometry symposium at Brookhaven National Laboratory, highlighted the fact that "archae-ometry" had no precise definition (it has yet to be made an entry in Webster's or the Oxford unabridged dictionary), and that it was too narrowly focused on the physical sciences and connoted too great a concern for precise measurements ("-metry"). Archaeologists might justifiably claim that their measurements, if not so precise, are at least better suited to cultural interpretation and broader issues of why things developed the way they did, how these developments are expressed in the modern world, and whether any predictive value can be attached to such findings.The phrase "archaeological science" has fared somewhat better, but raises the hackles of both archaeologists (archaeology itself being viewed by many as a social science) and natural scientists, who do not view this as a well-developed discipline. Since "Science and Archaeology" is a similarly infelicitous juxtaposition, I have settled on "Science in Archaeology" as the title for this review. This phrase implies that science of whatever variety (social, biological, physical, etc.) has found its way into archaeology, and it is for us to decide whether it is producing worthwhile results.This review is not intended, however, to cover every scientific approach or application in archaeology, but rather, to present a selected range of viewpoints I Publication of this review has ...