This richly illustrated book contains 24 scientific articles on plants and molluscs written by 38 colleagues and former students of Wim Kuijper. The majority of these articles deal with one or a few species found on archaeological excavations, from corncockle via Glycymeris shells to forget-me-nots. A member of staff of the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University for 40 years, Wim has supervised students and advised colleagues in the fields of plant and mollusc remains with great enthusiasm and success. They are very grateful for this help and this compilation is the result. The book contains both Dutch and English text. English contributions have a Dutch summary and Dutch articles have an English summary. All captions are in Dutch and English.

In the Dutch archaeological community, the Roman Villa of Maasbracht has become famous for the beautiful remains of murals that have survived to this day. Almost all of this material was found in the infill of the stone cellar, a veritable time capsule that has been excavated with much patience and care. The first field campaign in 1981 consisted of some four trial trenches excavated by members of the local archaeological society. These yielded amongst others foundation trenches of walls and floors of mortar and rubble from the Roman period. This was in 1982 cause for the State Service for Archaeological Research to join forces and to begin a full scale excavation covering 0.8 ha. The most important result was the uncovering of a stone main building of a Roman villa complex. After the excavations, the villa has been left on the shelf as one of the investigations of interest from Roman times with the prospect of one day being further analysed. The opportunity at last presented itself and this has resulted in the present volume. The names of the chapters are self-explanatory: settlement traces and structures, pottery, the building material, the wall painting fragments, animal remains and bone artefacts, glass and jet, the metalwork and of course a synthesis. The part of the book that appeals most to the imagination is of course the chapter on the wall paintings, beautifully illustrated with 58 colour figures.

In the Dutch archaeological community, the Roman Villa of Maasbracht has become famous for the beautiful remains of murals that have survived to this day. Almost all of this material was found in the infill of the stone cellar, a veritable time capsule that has been excavated with much patience and care. The first field campaign in 1981 consisted of some four trial trenches excavated by members of the local archaeological society. These yielded amongst others foundation trenches of walls and floors of mortar and rubble from the Roman period. This was in 1982 cause for the State Service for Archaeological Research to join forces and to begin a full scale excavation covering 0.8 ha. The most important result was the uncovering of a stone main building of a Roman villa complex. After the excavations, the villa has been left on the shelf as one of the investigations of interest from Roman times with the prospect of one day being further analysed. The opportunity at last presented itself and this has resulted in the present volume. The names of the chapters are self-explanatory: settlement traces and structures, pottery, the building material, the wall painting fragments, animal remains and bone artefacts, glass and jet, the metalwork and of course a synthesis. The part of the book that appeals most to the imagination is of course the chapter on the wall paintings, beautifully illustrated with 58 colour figures.

In 2012 it was 50 years ago that the initial independent core of the Faculty of Archaeology was founded. On the occasion of this 50th anniversary the Board of the Faculty of Archaeology has asked the editors of the Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia to produce a special volume of Analecta and open its pages not only for Prehistoric research but to all Archaeological disciplines. The editors invited the permanent staff of the Faculty to provide a contribution. The End Of Our Fifth Decade is the result. The subjects offered are very diverse and provide the reader with a written Tableau de la troupe, as it was intended to be. The first contributions are about the present. They deal with the problem of preserving archaeology in situ, the evaluation of twenty years of the Malta convention and the current variety of approaches in archaeology. However the rest of the book is about the past. This volume is organised in such a way that you go back in time and as good archaeologists we start from the top and dig our way into the past. The part about the past starts in the 17th century AD in the Caribbean and end with research on a 300 000 years old site from Germany."