For our new project Lessons from the past, policy for the future?, which complements and extends our current work, we are establishing a series of small working groups based at the various institutions with which we are networked, each to deal with a different set of questions, and each will focus on key sub-elements of the comparative historical/archaeological research. At a first stage this will concentrate on a range of historical socio-cultural systems dating from the late Neolithic on, including several Anatolian cultures attested only through archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data; the ‘small world system’ of the late Bronze Age Mediterranean; the late Roman state and its medieval successor, Byzantium; the Ottoman state; the Norse N. Atlantic, esp. Viking Greenland colonies; Angkor; Tang China and early medieval Japan; the pre-Classic and Classic Maya; Cahokia.