Recent research in historical linguistics suggests that groups or ‘families’ of languages may be classed together into larger language units or ‘macrofamilies’, for which some community of origin has been argued. The Afro-Asiatic macrofamily, for instance, which includes the Semitic and Berber languages as well as Ancient Egyptian and many languages of North and East Africa, is widely accepted among linguists. More controversial is the Nostratic macrofamily (including the Indo-European, the Altaic, the Uralic languages, etc.). The implications for prehistoric archaeology of the existence of such large linguistic units is examined. It is suggested that processes of agricultural dispersal may account for the widespread distribution of some of these macrofamilies.

Analysis of the Taï plaque, the most complex Upper Palaeolithic composition, has revealed evidence of the problem-solving and visual cueing strategies involved in the accumulation of the marks. The composition consists of a boustrophedon sequence of short horizontal containing lines or sections, each of which carries irregular subsets of marks. The analysis proceeded in stages over a period of twenty years, initially with use of a microscope, but did not involve cross-sectional analysis or counting. The theoretical assumption guiding the analysis was that notations represent a cognitive form of visual problem-solving and structuring. A test of the sequence of containing lines and their subsets of marks suggested the notation on the Taï plaque was a non-arithmetic form of lunar/solar observational recording. The analysis, if validated, carries profound implications for our understanding of Upper Palaeolithic culture, and cultural features of the indigenous European population in the periods that followed.

Explicitly symbolic behaviour is usually seen as the hallmark of the behavioural transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe. It is suggested here that this new symbolic component is reflected not only in art and personal ornamentation, but also in the design and form of stone tools, and perhaps also in features such as the organization of living structures. All these new features could be argued to reflect the emergence of typically Upper Palaeolithic ‘culture’ and technology. Whether these features can be correlated directly with the transition from archaic to modern skeletal forms remains more problematic; and whether the changes need reflect any significant shift in the neurological capacities for behaviour and cognition is equally controversial.

Studies of the prehistoric landscape are best suited to the analysis of sedentary communities with enclosed resources. Studies of prehistoric art show different limitations, especially an excessive subjectivity. This paper attempts to bring these areas of research together by considering the changing content of rock art in relation to topography, the movement of people in the cultural landscape, and the operation of specialized kinds of monument. The characteristic designs found in the open air are analyzed in terms of their organization and visual impact, and the results of this pilot study are employed in a more detailed assessment of the positioning of prehistoric petroglyphs in two areas of Neolithic/Early Bronze Age Britain: Northumberland and Mid Argyll.

Over the last twenty years experimental psychology has revived interest in the Golden Section, showing it to have some influence not only in visual perception but also in a certain kind of value judgement. The findings are here tested on ancient Egyptian sources, both archaeological and textual. They lead to a discussion of how Egyptian architects designed their buildings, and also to a consideration of the cognitive processes involved in modern analyses of the plans of ancient buildings by means of diagrammatic proportional schemes.