Volume 121 of the Proceedings contains 12 lectures delivered at the British Academy in 2002.

This is the first volume to address directly the question of the speciation of modern Homo sapiens. The subject raises profound questions about the nature of the species, our defining characteristic (it is suggested it is language), and the brain changes and their genetic basis that make us distinct. The British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences have brought together experts from palaeontology, archaeology, linguistics, psychology, genetics and evolutionary theory to present evidence and theories at the cutting edge of our understanding of these issues.
Palaeontological and...

These ten essays are concerned with theoretical and empirical analyses of trust and distrust in post-Communist Europe after the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989. The contributors come from different disciplines, ranging from history, economics and political science to social psychology and sociology. They are all specialists on the countries about which they write, and they show above all that the Soviet 'bloc' was in fact a rich spectrum of different countries with diverse histories, cultures and traditions, and--not surprisingly--with different expectations for the future.
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Volume 124 of the Proceedings of the British Academy contains 19 obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the British Academy.

Volume 125 of the Proceedings of the British Academy contains 15 lectures delivered at the British Acaademy in 2003.

Urban life as we know it in the Mediterranean began in the early Iron Age: settlements of great size and internal diversity appear in the archaeological record. This collection of essays offers for the first time a systematic discussion of the beginnings of urbanization across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus through Greece and Italy to France and Spain. Leading scholars in the field look critically at what is meant by urbanization, and analyze the social processes that lead to the development of social complexity and the growth of towns.
The introduction to the volume focuses on the...

Eleven obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the British Academy: Isaiah Berlin; Christopher Hill; Rodney Hilton; Keith Hopkins; Peter Laslett; Geoffrey Marshall; John Roskell; Isaac Schapera; Ben Segal; John Cyril Smith and Richard Wollheim.

The topical issues debated in this volume include the patenting of AIDS drugs, the future pensions crisis, Britain's universities, and Pan-Islam.There are studies of Shakespeare, Pope, Montaigne, Robert Graves, and William Faulkner. And there are lectures on the Inquisition, empires in history, and the journey towards spiritual fulfilment.

These essays survey the range of historical sources from the peoples who collided with the Byzantine Empire during this period of dramatic upheaval. They give an overview of this often difficult material, and provide detailed bibliographies. Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Slavonic, Georgian, Armenian and Syriac sources are all discussed.

This volume brings together two of the most popular, innovative, and controversial fields of historical study: cultural history, and the history of nationalism. Eleven lively chapters discuss the public sphere, music, the visual arts, political culture, literature, the role of the state, and national languages of Europe.