We have invited an active prehistorian from Sicily to set two important events in context: the first conference on Sicilian prehistory held at Corleone and the important exhibition held in Palermo over the last year. Sicily is one of the richest regions of the world for archaeological remains and yet has not received the attention it deserves. This is especially true for prehistory, which has suffered from devaluation by ancient historians such as Moses Finley (1979: 13) — ‘… the Greek settlers found wives among the natives, and also a labour force. Other than that, however, the lasting effects of the pre-Greek populations would not seem to have been very significant’—and where it has often been assumed that everything of worth came from outside. Enrico Giannitrapani presents the emerging consciousness of Sicilians that their island was not founded by the Greeks.

At the beginning of the Christian era, potterymaking groups started occupying the southern region of Brazil (the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná: FIGURE 1), their origins closely related to former inhabitants, mainly hunters and gatherers. Two major groups are recognized, from the hundreds of identified sites. Vestiges of the first, dispersed in settlements in the southernmost area and in the low savanna landscape, show that settlers of mounds — cerritos — were nomadic, their economy based on hunting, fishing and gathering. In the second, dispersed in the plateau and along adjacent coastal plains, settlers depended on gathering; at least in a few areas and in more recent periods they were sedentary, with the rudiments of more complex social and political patterns. The two settlement systems are in very different environmental, cultural and temporal contexts. Current research takes a normative view of culture, in which pottery has a place of honour and is classified by archaeological ‘traditions’ and ‘phases’. Yet both groups present pottery industries rather matched in time and space, obscuring evidence of internal differentiation or cultural change processes.

Most writers, ancient and modern, represent all Vikings as enemies of Christianity. It seems to be still believed that wherever they went, and at all periods, they sacked churches, massacred monks and nuns, and played havoc with civilization. That was certainly the view of politicians and chroniclers from Alfred to William the Conqueror. Even recent historians repeat the charge, sometimes with quite unnecessary emphasis.

In this article it is not proposed to whitewash the race in all respects—that would be impossible—but to bring forward certain scraps of evidence, not generally recollected, to set off against the too universal chorus of reprobation. In a word, there were such people as Christian Vikings; that is to say the immigrant Danes and Norse of that turbulent age, though always pirates on occasion, softened their manners as time went on, long before their general conversion to organized Christianity. Strange to say, some of the churches that are still with us owe their foundation to the Viking settlement in Britain.

We are grateful to Chris Evans for convening and introducing this imaginative archaeological tribute to the work of Charles Darwin, 150 years after the publication of his On the origin of species – the inspiration for an evolutionary concept of history in so many fields. June 2009 is also the 150th anniversary of a yet more momentous event in the history of archaeology, the endorsement of the antiquity of human tool-making by observations in the Somme gravels. Clive Gamble and Robert Kruszynski reconstruct the occasion and publish the famous axe for the first time. Chris Evans returns to present us with the bitter-sweet spectacle of the Darwin family as excavators and Tim Murray rediscovers a suite of pictures made for John Lubbock which show how prehistoric life was envisaged in polite society at the time. Lastly we are grateful to Colin Renfrew for his own reflections on the anniversary.

Using the World Wide Web is not unlike visiting an unfamiliar place to look at the archaeology. You want to know if there is anything interesting to see, so you start in the library, looking for information; you read books and articles from journals; perhaps you contact colleagues who can tell you about the place; you want to know how to find the sites and to get to them; and once you are there, you want to visit the museums as well as the monuments, and to locate people who are working there, whether they are from academic institutions, government archaeological bodies or local societies. You will want to check that access arrangements have not changed since the last published information; you also want to ensure that as far as possible the information you have is accurate, so that you do not waste time looking at sites which are not relevant to your interests.