bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The First Towns?
Authors: Wheeler Mortimer
Published: January 2016

‘Gunpowder, Printing and the Protestant Religion’, said Thomas Carlyle in 1827, are ‘the three great elements of modern civilization’. I wish we could be as contentedly concise about the more ancient varieties. What indeed are the primary qualities of urbanity? At what definable point did Man step across that thin borderline between rus and urbs ? The question matters; the moment at which Man first became something more than a brigand or a hind (without necessarily losing either of those characters) was a climactic one. It counts for a great deal in our estimate of human achievement.
'Im'adiya and Beihan, Aden Protectorate
Authors: Perowne Stewart
Published: January 2016

‘Im’Adiya lies about eight thousand feet above sea level, on the plateau known as the dhahir, near the precipice, four thousand feet in height, which separates it from the plain on the southern or seaward side. It lies within the territory of the ’Audhala tribe, near the Yemen border. It is ninety miles from Aden as the crow flies, or four days by camel. The nearest inhabited centre is Mukeiras, from which it is about three hours distant on foot, to the east. At Mukeiras the Royal Air Force maintains a landing ground and a rest-house, and the Government has a wireless telegraph station there.
A Mesopotamian Trilogy
Authors: Mallowan M. E. L.
Published: January 2016

I. La Civilisation d’Assur et de Babylone. By Dr G. Contenau, Conservateur des Antiquités Orientales au Musée du Louvre. Paris: Payot, 1937. 30francs.

Fouilles de Telloh: sous la direction de H. de Genouillac. Vol. II, Époques d’Ur IIIe Dynastie et de Larsa. Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1937. Vols. I and II. 400francs.

The Music of the Sumerians. By F. W. Galpin. Cambridge University Press, 1937. 18s.

These three works, all published in the same year, form a trilogy with the Tigris and Euphrates as a background. The Land of the Two Rivers, as historians have aptly called it, was from the beginning of the fourth millennium B.C. a focus on which man converged from the cardinal points of western Asia. The earliest settlements were composed of farmers and hunters: in the south their pottery and the art of painting suggest that they were predominant with the Syrian hinterland and eastern Anatolia. Sometime before 3000 B.C. the invention of the wheel, of metal-working and writing produced an industrial revolution, which brought the young civilization of these early farmers to maturity. The beautiful painted pottery of A1 ‘Ubaid and Tall Halaf died out, partly because, as de Genouillac says, the invention of cuneiform writing made the pictorial writing of clay vases obsolete, and no doubt caused the skilful artisans of painted ceramic to apply themselves to the more paying craft of metallurgy, much as in western Europe in the first quarter of this century a horde of stable hands left the paddock for the garage and forsook the horse for the motor car.
The Winding Road
Authors: Roe F. G.
Published: January 2016

It has often appeared to the writer to be a really remarkable circumstance, during the long and sometimes acrimonious controversies of the nineteenth century concerning the various physical, social, and ‘technical’ phenomena (methods, etc.) characterizing the Saxon settlement of Britain and its more immediate antecedents, that among the various protagonists of the first rank, none seems to have thought it worth while to visit those lands where an essentially similar environment still prevailed, and to see for himself what they might yield. To make such a statement concerning archaeological students of today would certainly be to invite questions in return, which are not easily answered. Whatwasthe (physical) environment of early Saxon England; and where shall we find its ‘essentially similar’ counterpart? But at the time of which I speak, such doubts may almost be said to have been non-existent. Whatever opinions were held concerning Roman centuriation, or Teutonic three-field systems, the old ‘traditional’ view of England as ‘a land of forests’, ‘one great wood’, etc., seems hardly to have been questioned. Under such conditions, virtually any forest country occupied by settlers of European birth or descent would serve the required purpose.
Avebury. Summary of Excavations, 1937 and 1938
Authors: Keiller Alexander
Published: January 2016

The reasons for selecting the northwest sector for the beginning of the excavations within the circles of Avebury, scheduled to last for at least a decade, by the Morven Institute of Archaeological Research (with the permission and cordial co-operation of H.M. Office of Works) was twofold. First, the conditions of indescribable squalor and neglect prevailing over most of the area of this section surpassed, if comparison is possible, those existing in any other part of the circle; indeed the tangle of rusty pig-wire, the accumulations, to a depth of nearly three feet, of old tins and broken bottles, around two of the standing stones, to say nothing of the refuse-heaps which filled part of the ditch almost flush with its edges, contributed ungenerously towards rendering the once majestic site of Avebury what it has been for centuries, the outstanding archaeological disgrace of Britain. Secondly, the presence of a veritable jungle of trees and undergrowth not only perpetually menaced the safety of this part of the monument, but had already done dama e to the preservation of the all-important features below ground-level.
Bossed Bone Plaques of the Second
Millennium
Authors: Evans John D.
Published: January 2016

EVER since, in 1893, Paolo Orsi published
and described a group of these objects from the
necropolis of Cava della Signora, Castelluccio,
they have E been generally regarded as of the
highest importance for the study of W.
Mediterranean prehistory. Orsi himself immediately
recognized the parallel with those which had then
been recently unearthed by Schliemann at Troy, and
since his time the validity of this parallel has
been generally admitted by archaeologists. All who
have since then treated of the chronological
problems of Sicily and the Western Mediterranean
lands have accepted them as imports from Troy and
a basis for synchronisms between the cultures of
the Eastern and Western basins. Despite this,
however, no study has as yet been published of
these objects in which the Trojan and Sicilian
groups have been treated together and closely
compared. In 1939 a useful critical analysis of
the evidence relative to the three Trojan plaques
was published by Bittel, but he did not go on to
make a similar study of the Sicilian
ones.
The Earliest Fire-makers
Authors: Oakley Kenneth
Published: January 2016

Flying across Africa to attend the
Pan-African Congress on Prehistory in Livingstone
in July of last year I was frequently reminded of
how characteristic of man is his continual use of
fire, not only in cities but in the primitive open
spaces. There were few moments in the course of
the whole journey when signs of fire or artificial
light were not somewhere visible. As we passed
over the sparsely inhabited bush and savannah
country of south-central Africa one could
sometimes count up to a dozen columns of smoke
rising from the landscape spread out below. Some
of these were deliberate bush-fires which the
native farmers start early in the dry season as a
safeguard against the disastrous spread of
uncontrolled fire at the end of that season when
the vegetation is like tinder.

At the Livingstone Congress there were
several communications bearing directly or
indirectly on the question of how long has man,
particularly in Africa, had fire at his
disposal.
Earliest Jericho
Authors: Kenyon Kathleen M.
Published: January 2016

The five seasons of excavations which had taken place up to 1956 had very greatly extended the knowledge of the Neolithic of Jericho which had been obtained by Professor Garstang’s excavations of 1935-6. The type of well-built houses with rectangular rooms and burnished plaster floors had been found to extend all over the mound in a settlement at least the equal in size of the successive Bronze Age towns, and to have been defended, at a stage midway through its existence, by a massive stone wall. A Carbon-14 dating of c. 5850 B.C. ± was suggested by material from the immediately preceding fill. Earlier than this settlement, which it is claimed is worthy of the title of a town, was another, also of urban character, separated from the later by a complete stratigraphical break, with houses of a curvilinear plan, and with associated flint and bone industries of an entirely different type.
Mottes: A Classification
Authors: Renn D. F.
Published: January 2016

In 1878, General Pitt Rivers excavated the motte and bailey castle on the downs behind Folkestone and published the results with characteristic promptness and accuracy. Today, over three-quarters of a century later, only four excavations, all in the past ten years, have advanced our knowledge further. While these have solved many problems, they have posed others, for few mottes are adequately documented (Old Aberystwyth is an honourable exception) and the dating of results can only be approximate.
The Oppidum of Manching
Authors: Krämer Werner
Published: January 2016

Only a few decades after the conquest of Gaul by Caesar the power of the free Celtic tribes in central Europe collapsed as a consequence of their finding themselves placed, during the course of the 1st century B.C., in an insecure position between the Romans and the Germans pressing down from the North. The victorious Alpine campaign of Drusus and Tiberius in 15 B.C. sealed the fate of, among others, the Vindelicians who occupied the south German area north of the Alps as far as the Danube. Here, still today, mighty hillforts bear witness to the power of those nameless Celtic chieftains who caused them to be erected. Contemporary literary sources tell all too little about the history of this area and about the cultural connections of its inhabitants before the Roman occupation. Therefore modern research relied upon Caesar’s description of the Gallic tribes in drawing parallels between the large late La Tène hillforts in central Europe and the city-like tribal centres of the Gauls in France, which Caesar called ‘oppida’ or even ‘urbes’.
A Celtic Mirror from Great Chesterford
Authors: Fox Cyril
Published: January 2016

The mirror is likely to have come from a lady’s grave: no details of the find are available. There is in the parish a well-known cemetery dating from the beginning of the Early Iron Age.

The overall length of the mirror with its handle (PLATE XXVI) is 23·5 cm. (11·75 in.); the diameter of the plate is 16·3 cm. (8·15 in.). This has a delicate incised line round its circumference, close to the edge, back and front, as the photographs show.

The face of the mirror is smooth and glossy: the piece suffered some damage when disclosed—probably by a plough-share. It is thus slightly bent at the top (losing, here, its smooth reflecting surface), and the handle has been wrenched, causing a crack in the plate to the right and above it. It should be noted that there is no loss of detail of the pattern on the mirror-back resulting from this crack: the dark strip on the photograph (PLATE XXVII) is, in part, a shadow cast by lateral displacement.
New Light on Ancient China
Authors: Tê-k'un Chêng
Published: January 2016

During and immediately after the 1939-45 war archaeology in China was practically at a standstill. With the world quietening down once more, the study of the human past began again to make a tremendous spurt forward. From Siberia through Western Asia and Africa to Central America excavation began everywhere. China, where the culture of Eastern Asia was born, was no exception. Before the war there was only a handful of archaeologists in the Chinese field. They were either enthusiasts from abroad or graduates of Harvard or London who worked on a few limited sites or some ancient tombs which had been discovered by accident. In the last fifteen years the situation has been greatly altered. Hundreds of young archaeologists have been trained in the universities as well as in permanent quarters erected close to the important sites under the direction of the Institute of Archaeology. They are organized into field teams that can be sent to any part of the country to co-operate with local workers. They work in the field and produce their reports by group discussion.
The Origins of American Agriculture
Authors: MacNeish R. S.
Published: January 2016

When prehistoric cultural developments in the Old and New World are compared, one difference is outstanding. The American Indian domesticated an inordinately large number of plants. This is even more remarkable when one considers that the prehistoric population of the Americas was very much less than that of the Old World and, also, that the development of American civilization began very much later.

During the last 25 years, archaeological investigations in the New World have revealed considerable information about prehistoric plant domestication and agriculture. Although this data is far from complete, it is now possible to establish some hypotheses, not only about the origin and spread of several American domesticates, but also about the effect of plant domestication, and later agriculture, upon cultural development and process in the New World.
Marxism and Culture
Authors: Thompson M. W.
Published: January 2016

It will be useful first of all to recall some dates: 1848—the Communist Manifesto; 1859—Contribution to a Criticism of Political Economy, in the introduction to which Marx made his clearest definition of the materialist conception of history. It was also the year of Origin of Species and the authentication of Boucher de Perthes’ handaxes. ‘Relics of bygone instruments of labour possess the same importance for the investigation of extinct economical forms of society as do fossil bones for the determination of extinct species’ . This quotation is from the first volume of Capital published in 1867, which Marx had wished to dedicate to Darwin; Darwin declined the honour. We know from the chapter ‘The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man’ in Engels's Dialectics of Nature, written in the 1870s but published posthumously 40 years later, that Engels had been thinking about prehistoric man, although he evidently had not got very far beyond Marx's description of labour in Capital.
Wayland's Smithy
Authors: Atkinson R. J. C.
Published: January 2016

The chambered long barrow known as Wayland's Smithy lies a little south of the crest of the Berkshire Downs, about a mile west of the Uffington White Horse, within an oval plantation of beech trees. The excavation here described was carried out during II weeks in 1962 and 1963 under the direction of Professor Stuart Piggott and the writer. The barrow has now been restored to its appearance in antiquity, so far as the surviving features allow.

Before excavation, the site appeared as a long low mound, much flattened by cultivation and erosion, with a length of about 200ft. and a maximum height of about 4ft. above the surrounding surface. At the south end were the ruined remains of a cruciform burial-chamber constructed of large sarsen slabs, in front of which was a line of four large fallen stones, evidently parts of a massive fayade similar to that of the West Kennet long barrow. To the east, a row of four smaller sarsens, still upright, marked the line of the kerb of slabs which had once delimited the mound. A sketch made by John Aubrey in the mid-17th century shows that apart from the presence then of additional visible kerb-stones the appearance of the site has altered little in the last 300 years.
Fishbourne, 1961–4
Authors: Cunliffe Barry
Published: January 2016

Fishbourne lieswithin the present-day boundaries of the City of Chichester, about one mile west of the City Cross. The village, situated at the head of the now-silted Chichester harbour, has long been recognized to lie above a Roman site, for finds of Roman material are plentiful. In 1805 a black-and-white mosaic, 13½ ft. wide, was discovered during road widening, by 1869 the remains of a bath and pavement had come to light nearby, and the local inhabitants say that in 1936 children digging in a garden uncovered a further black-and-white mosaic. These discoveries are now thought to belong to one large masonry building, but other finds scattered widely about the village suggest that Roman occupation covered an extensive area around the harbour end of the site.
The Origins of Writing in the Near East
Authors: Pope Maurice
Published: January 2016

On the periphery of the cuneiform using area there was in use in the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. a number of non-cuneiform scripts of apparently independent character and purely regional use (see map, FIG. I). My purpose in this article is to speculate on the possibility of their common origin. I shall not apologize for this as I believe hypothesis-making to be a useful occupation, but I must in fairness warn the reader that not only am I myself an outsider since my special interest concerns only one of the writing systems I shall be discussing (the Aegean), but so is the horse I am going to back. Diffusionism is out of favour, and despite a recent series of articles by Brice [I] pointing out the similarities between the Cretan and proto-Elamite accounting tablets, the odds currently offered are decidedly against my choice.* But I think the bookmakers are wrong, and my purpose in this article is to say why.

First I must explain that my fancy has not been taken by external markings. These are unreliable. The number of simple linear designs is limited, and it is nowadays generally agreed that a small proportion of apparent identities between the signs of different scripts can tell us nothing. The descent of our alphabet from Phoenician is not proved by the close resemblance of our capital i to their zed, nor is the common form of the Russian cursive d to our cursive g any argument for the common ancestry of our two scripts. Conversely the different appearances of, say Armenian printing, Pompeian graffiti, and Gothic handwriting are no disproof of cousinhood. The only observations from the outward look of scripts that can usefully be made are those that have reference to the structure of the writing system as a whole.
Strip Lynchets
Authors: Taylor C. C.
Published: January 2016

The study of strip lynchets is one which has been sporadically carried out by many people for the last 70 to 80 years. Recently there has been an increase of interest in this field with the result that much more is now known about their purpose and construction. However all this work has not produced any general agreement on their date. There is no dispute that they were cultivated in the medieval period, but while some workers have seen them as medieval, others have suggested their origins lie in the Roman or Iron Age period.
God in the Machine
Authors: Hawkes Jacquetta
Published: January 2016

Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves-or desires. I lectured on this subject long ago. It always provoked cries of delight from a general audience when I contrasted pictures of the wildly jagged stones seen by romantic eyes with others showing the smooth stones and regular form of the Roman temple of the Tuscan order apparent to the classical vision. I ended my lecture with Stonehenge as it appeared to our scientific age-but I did not at that time dream that our greatest prehistoric monument would actually be taken over by astronomers and recognized as a celestial observatory and calculating machine.
Impressions of the Past
Authors: Mallowan M. E. L.
Published: January 2016

The collection of over 1,100 cylinder seals and impressions on clay, now housed in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is, after that of the British Museum, the richest of the kind in England. Here we have memories of Oxford Worthies beginning with the Reverend Greville Chester, who a hundred years ago travelled afar and brought home many antiquities. But it is appropriate that the first seal to be illustrated in this comprehensive catalogue is a boldly carved, prehistoric specimen purchased in Aleppo, in 1913, by T. E. Lawrence of Arabia, quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, friend and protCgC of D. G. Hogarth who was then Keeper of the Museum. To these two men we must add a third, no less famous, namely Leonard Woolley who was then directing the British Museum's excavations at Carchemish: the extensive travels of this trio not only in north Syria, but also throughout the Levant, enabled them to acquire from the peasantry these delectable little souvenirs of personal identity. Carved cylinder seals, sometimes worn as amulets, were often made for the purpose of registering ownership to property. There must have been much competition to acquire them, for Lawrence writing from Carchemish in a letter dated ‘End of February [1913]’ says to Hogarth: ‘Seriously, this last half-dozen, bought by me on the fringe of Abu Galgal, is very good. I rushed back, and have not been down again, because some villains began a dig at Deve Hüyük.… I got some good fibulae which are yours, and not Kenyon's this time at all events…’. Nonetheless, the British Museum was not forgotten and was moreover acquiring some share of the spoils from Carchemish (PL. XXXII).
Silbury Hill
Authors: Atkinson R. J. C.
Published: January 2016

Silbury is the largest ancient man-made mound in Europe. It stands beside the Bath Road (A4) in north Wiltshire, about six miles west of Marlborough. It forms a regular truncated cone, with a flat top 100 ft. (30.5 m.) in diameter and 130 ft. (40 m.) high above the surrounding meadows. The base covers about 5.25 acres (2.1 hectares). A little below the top the profile is broken by a marked step or terrace; and there are traces of what may have been similar terraces lower down, on the north and east sides. It may be that the mound was built originally in the form of a stepped cone.
Myth America
Authors: Brogan Denis
Published: January 2016

I’m pleased with the news of the discovery of a runic record of a Norwegian expedition to Oklahoma in the 11th century. Why it should have gone round the Carolina coast and Florida and up to Oklahoma, not the most attractive of American states, I cannot imagine. But the Vikings were an odd people. The deciphering of the runes seems to have been extremely ingenious; and the fact that the runes are in code is also extremely interesting. Why the bishop put his record into cryptograms is even harder to understand than why Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, concealed his authorship of the plays attributed to Lord Oxford by Mr Looney. (I am no expert in Shakespearian cryptography, relying on the lucid description of it in Dr P. G. Wodehouse’s work, The Mulliner Omnibus, pp. 234 ff.)
The Lindisfarne Gospels
Authors: Henry Françoise
Published: January 2016

I Seem to remember Mr Bruce-Mitford telling me that when he was in the Laurentian Library in Florence, he asked to have that monster of all manuscripts, the Codex Amiatinus, weighed for him. I do not know what the result of the operation was. But perhaps he will forgive me if I say that, when faced with the impressive text codex which comes as a companion to the facsimile of the Lindisfarne Gospels, I was seized with the same awed curiosity, so that my first impulse was to put it on the scales. The net result is: eleven and a half pounds. No need to say that such a formidable array of letterpress is difficult to grasp in its entirety, and that only some aspects of it can be dealt with in a short article-perhaps of necessity those closest to the personal preoccupations of the present writer.
The Wilsford Shaft
Authors: Ashbee Paul
Published: January 2016

Excavation of the pond barrow at Normanton Gorse, Wilsford, disclosed the weathered top of a circular and vertical shaft which proved to be nearly 100 ft. in depth. Its fill, the result of natural silting processes, contained pottery in the upper part and, at the waterlogged bottom, broken wooden vessels and other objects, besides a mass of rotted wood, seeds, leaves and other organic remains. The dished and funnelled top of the shaft as well as the uneven sides were, for more than a third of their depth, the product of natural weathering. Below here distinctive antler-pick marks and the clear traces of a broad-bladed metal axe showed that the shaft had been dug in short sections, checked by template and plumbline. No positive trace of how the prehistoric engineers moved up and down their sophisticated shaft remained. Archaeological excavation, beyond the preliminary stages and under exacting and claustrophobic conditions, demanded lighting and mechanical aids. Communication and all-round control posed especial problems.
The Tien Culture of South-west China
Authors: von Dewall Magdalene
Published: January 2016

Only a few years ago scholarly attention was drawn to the area of Lake Tien (also called Lake Kun-ming) in Yunnan Province, where from a group of princely tombs at Shih-chai-shan a strikingly expressive Late Bronze Age culture came to light [I]. With the discovery, in a tomb untouched by later disturbances, of a golden seal bearing the Chinese inscription ‘Seal of the King of Tien’, it was evident beyond doubt that the spade had struck the cemetery of the royal household or clan of Tien.

Even without this find the ethnohistorical identification of the burial site would have been possible from its geographical situation (FIG. I). According to historical tradition, from the Late Chou period onward the fertile plain around the shores of Lake Tien was known to have been occupied by the people of Tien, who gave the lake its name. No reference is made in the earliest records to either the actual extension of Tien’s sphere of influence or the state of civilization it may have attained.
Man, settlement and urbanism
Authors: Willey Gordon R.
Published: January 2016

This monumental volume consists of eighty-six separate papers (including an ‘Introduction’ and a ‘Conclusion’) and represents the work of about that many individual authors. (Some participants presented more than one paper, but this is balanced by a few instances of joint authorship.)
The primitive Anglo-Saxon calendar
Authors: Harrison Kenneth
Published: January 2016

When the Anglo-Saxons invaded England, about the middle of the fifth century, they came as barbarians in the proper and Roman sense of the word, illiterate and unpolished. At the beginning, too, their religion was a paganism at variance with imperial Christianity. Yet they cannot have been the blundering creatures they are sometimes taken for: within a few generations this assortment of tribes had produced scholarship of European standing, in the persons of Aldhelm and Bede, and as to the decorative arts their jewelry and illumination of manuscripts—not forgetting Irish influence—were a match for anyone in the western world. Fierce and warlike at first, guilty of unprovoked aggression, most of them soon settled down to become peaceful farmers.
Wooden Figures from the Source of the Seine
Authors: Martin Roland
Published: January 2016

The Gallo-Roman sanctuary of Sequana is situated in the little wooded valley where the Seine rises, some 35 km. north-west of Dijon. It has been excavated at regular intervals from the middle of the 19th century onwards, and for over a century attention has been drawn to the many and varied finds made there [I]. After the excavations of 1953 it was decided, in conjunction with the Service des Monuments historiques, to undertake a complete and systematic study of the whole site with a view to its restoration. We planned to engage workmen to clear and restore the foundations of the two temples already known, to re-establish the line of the old terraces around the sanctuary, and to organize the river Seine itself, which, in the first few hundred yards of its existence, had become wayward in the extreme.
Brochs and the Hebridean Iron Age
Authors: MacKie Euan W.
Published: January 2016

In prehistoric times the Western Isles and the and the west coast of Scotland north of the Firth of Clyde seem to have formed a geographical and cultural unit quite distinct from the central and southern mainland but closely connected with the far north, with the counties of Sutherland and Caithness and the Orkney and Shetland Isles. Together all these territories form a highland and island zone which has recently been designated as one of the four main natural regions of Iron Age cultures in Scotland and called the Atlantic Province [I]. The distinctiveness of the cultures which occupied this maritime province not only in the Iron Age but at all periods emphasizes the effectiveness of the mountain barriers which hinder contact with the south and central mainland and also, by contrast, the relative ease with which it was colonized by sea. The spread of Neolithic chambered tombs in the 3rd millennium B.C. and the Norse settlements of the 9th century A.D. onwards show how seaborne migrants from distant regions could quickly occupy the province, and a similar series of immigrations seems to have taken place in the Iron Age.
Excavations at Knowth, Co. Meath, 1968
Authors: Eogan George
Published: January 2016

The 1968 excavations were a continuation of the investigations that have been in progress at Knowth since 1962. In brief, this work is establishing that there is a cemetery of Passage Graves at Knowth. This consists of the large tumulus (Site I) with a number of smaller tombs in its immediate vicinity. This group is situated on a low hill that on the west overlooks the River Boyne at a point a couple of miles downstream from Slane where the river takes a sharp turn to the left [I]. MAIN MOUND At Knowth a tract of land that is close to a halfmile in length and one fifth of a mile in greatest width (c. 800 m. x 340 m.) is above the 200-ft. contour (60 m.) but even the highest part of this is only slightly over the 200-ft. mark. The large mound is situated towards the north-western extremity of this ridge and the smaller tombs are
Radiocarbon Dates and the Scottish Iron Age
Authors: MacKie Euan
Published: January 2016

Within the past two years the chronology of the later prehistoric period in Scotland has been given a new precision by no less than 24 C14 dates obtained from nine different sites, most of which are conventionally assigned to the pre- Roman Iron Age. Previously the identification and dating of the cultures and sites of this period had depended almost entirely on various exotic bronzes and the time that they and other traits were estimated to have reached Scotland from further south in Britain and from the Continent. The last phase of the Late Bronze Age was fairly confidently assigned a start in the mid-6th century BC on the basis of links with the continental Halstatt Iron Age [I] but the bronzes concerned are nearly all stray finds or from hoards and cannot be tied to any contemporary structures or material cultures except at Covesea and, tenuously, at Traprain Law. The same is true of the various examples of decorated Celtic metalwork which have been found in Scotland: these can be given rough dates on stylistic grounds but were stray finds and unconnected with other aspects of the contemporary material cultures. The dating of hillforts and domestic sites of late pre-Roman times has had to rely on the rare examples
The Indus Script Deciphered?
Authors: Clauson Gerard , Chadwick John
Published: January 2016

The Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies was founded as recently as 1967 with a governing body of distinguished scholars appointed by the four contributing countries. With this, its first publication, it has got off to a flying start. Ever since the first specimens of the Indus script were published nearly 40 years ago, it has constituted a standing challenge to scholars with a bent for cryptography. Several attempts have been made to decipher it, but as Sir Mortimer Wheeler remarked, before the publication of this monograph, in The Indus civilization (3rd edition, Cambridge, 1968, p. 107, footnote 2), 'the published attempts to do so are invalid'. This judgement is now due for drastic reconsideration.
Bits and Pieces
Authors: Littauer Mary Aiken
Published: January 2016

A number of relatively recent works concerned entirely or incidentally with early horse gear call attention to the fact that various features of this are still imperfectly understood. At the same time, new discoveries have shed new light (Anderson, 1961; Childe, 1954; Hančar, 1955; Jope, 1956; Karageorghis, 1962, 1965, 1967; Nagel, 1966; Potratz, 1966; Salonen, 1956). J. A. H. Potratz, notably, despite great familiarity with bit material, fails to recognize the functional or genetic implications of some of its details.
The Ship of Odysseus
Authors: Tilley A. F.
Published: January 2016

The Siren Vase, an Attic red-figure stamnos by the Siren painter (PL. xvra), was made between 490 and 480 BC, and is now in the British Museum. Odysseus is shown bound by his own order to the mast of his ship, the only man to hear the Sirens’ irresistible song and to survive it. Their ears stopped with beeswax, his crew row stolidly on.
Archaeology and the Luddites
Authors: Agrawal D. P.
Published: January 2016

The views of Jacquetta Hawkes give vent to the uncomfortable feelings that many older archaeologists have been harbouring against the ‘intrusion’ of science into their exclusive domain of ‘humanistic’ archaeology. I am not so bothered here about the protests of the ‘passing generation’ which is ‘suffering from universal decay’ (using her own words) as with the problems of the two cultures, the methods and meaning of archaeology, its relation with other sciences and the direction towards which it is heading.
Industrial Archaeology: Retrospect and Prospect
Authors: Buchanan R. A.
Published: January 2016

There is no agreed definition of industrial archaeology. My own preference is that it is a field of study concerned with investigating, surveying, recording, and, in some cases, with preserving industrial monuments. An ‘industrial monument’ in this context iis any relic of an obsolete phase of an industry or transport system, but in practice it is useful to confine attention to the monuments of the last 200 years, both because earlier periods are dealt with by more conventional archaeological or historical techniques, and because of the sheer mass of material dating from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
The case for Neanderthal survival: fact, fiction or faction?
Authors: Shackley Myra
Published: January 2016

It is a truism to state that human evolution is a frighteningly complex subject. It is all too easy to yield to the temptation to construct ever more elaborate 'family trees' even though the fossil record is fragmentary and chronologically inexact. The supposed fate of Neanderthal man (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and the origin of modern man (Homo sapim sapim) have recently received a good deal of attention—most of which serves to emphasize the gaps in our knowledge without coming much nearer to a solution. This review presents some of the conflicting arguments which have been put forward, stressing a need to keep an open mind about the possibility of Neanderthal survival.
A hundred volumes of ‘A. P. & P.’
Authors: Fagan Brian M.
Published: January 2016

Like so many other great things, the Ancient Peoples and Places Series started as a result of a casual conversation between an author and a publisher, this one about a massive tome on the archaeology of Sardinia. Thames & Hudson decided not to translate the Sardinian book, but launched an entire series of archaeological books instead. The first, Geoffrey Bushnell's Peru, appeared in 1956 to enthusiastic reviews. Everyone admired the striking design and magnificent photographs, the clear exposition of an archaeological topic little known outside the narrow confines of Americanists. But few people realized they were witnessing a revolution in archaeological publishing. Now, 5,000,000 words and 15,000 illustrations later, we celebrate the hundredth 'A. P. & P,' appropriately A Short History of Archaeology by the General Editor himself.
The coming of modern man
Authors: Gowlett J. A. J.
Published: January 2016

In March 1987, Paul Mellars and Chris Stringer organized a conference in Cambridge on ‘The Origins and Dispersal of Modern Man’. This review, prompted by the conference, gives a viewpoint on the body of ideas currently circulating, based mainly on recent publications by the participants, and some others whose work is too significant to ignore.
The practice of archaeology in China today
Authors: Olsen John W.
Published: January 2016

In the new opening-up of China to the outside world that has taken place in the last decade, archaeology and history has a major role. A walk on the Great Wall seems obligatory for visiting monarchs and presidents, while the jade princesses have themselves come to Europe. The excavation of the ‘terracotta army’ exemplifies the scale of active archaeological research, and its exposure to public view. But why is there such concern for the past, and its artefacts, in China today?
The early farmers of France
Authors: Bender Barbara , Phillips Patricia
Published: January 2016

In the sixth millennium the more open soils of France were peopled by Tardenoisian hunters and gatherers. In the north there were groups along the coasts, particularly in Picardy and Brittany, and inland on the sandy soils of the Plain of Flanders and the Ile de France and on the granitic soils of the Armorican massif. Such groups continued to exist alongside farming groups until well into the third millennium.
New aerial research in Picardy and Artois
Authors: Agache R.
Published: January 2016

Aerial surveys of Picardy have brought to light numerous systems of graves and in-filled ditches, generally protohistoric, as well as Roman camps, and even some trench diggings in the historical period.
Zambujal
Authors: Sangmeister E. , Schubart H.
Published: January 2016

Zambujal is c. 40 km. NNW of Lisbon, 11.5 km. from the Atlantic coast. A farmhouse (casal) of this name is situated on a steep inland promontory above the Ribeira de Pedrulhos. This stream flows into the Rio Sizandro near its mouth. The location of the settlement is one of easy access from the coast; at the same time it is far enough from it to be safe from surprise attacks from that direction. When approached from the coast or along the valley, the casal is not immediately visible. Its position on the mountain ridge was presumably advantageous for the fortified settlement too. From the site itself one has an excellent view of the region, including the approach routes and a strip of the coast.
The ‘new archeology’ of the 1960s
Authors: Watson Richard A.
Published: January 2016

In the United States, prehistoric archeologyas distinct from Classical Archaeology-has been taught primarily in Departments of Anthropology. A predictable outcome of this is that students so trained have attempted to give archeology-often minimally characterized as mere excavation technique-a strong anthropological orientation. This movement culminated in the 1960s. The following brief review of books published in that decade that illustrate the viewpoint of the ‘ew archeology’ is not meant so much to be critical of as introductory to a literature.
A Maya metal-worker's tool from Belize
Authors: Bruhns Karen Olsen , Hammond Norman
Published: January 2016

The civilizations of prehispanic America never advanced technologically beyond the early bronze age: although both the Inca and the Aztec had tools and some weapons of cast bronze, the warriors that fought Cortes used swords edged with obsidian blades. The Classic Maya, who flourished in the first millennium AD, had only a casual acquaintance with metal until the ninth century (Bray, 1977) and raised the great temples of Tikal with an engineering capability no greater than that of the builders of Stonehenge.
The tabula Contrebiensis
Authors: Fatás Guillermo
Published: January 2016

The inscription was found badly damaged and distorted by fire, and affected by various corrosive patinas which had to be treated by a specialized laboratory in the Museum of Barcelona. The plaque measures 44 × 21 cm and has six perforations (visible on the photograph) to fix it to a backing (PL. II).
Archaeological retrospect 5
Authors: Piggott Stuart
Published: January 2016

It has long been a source of pleasure to us both that the author of the first of these Archaeological Retrospects, Charles Phillips, should share with me independent boyhood contacts with the Vale of White Horse, then in Berkshire but since 1974 in Oxfordshire (Phillips, 1980). Piggotts had been around in Marcham, Hatford and West Challow since the early seventeenth century, and the families died out or slipped quietly downhill to the status of farm labourers or at best small peasant farmers. My great-grandfather was one of these, in Uffington beneath the famous hill-figure, and my grandfather at the age of 10 was taken up to the last of the traditional festive 'scourings' in 1857 by Thomas Hughes of Kingston Lisle, best known as the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, who wrote up the event as The Scouring of the White Horse (1859). Among the festivities were wrestling and back-sword play: these sports 'were kept up there perhaps as long as in any portion of Middle England' wrote the son of a rector of Childrey, a village a few miles from Uffington, who came there in 1882. 'The Childrey schoolmaster', he goes on, 'when he was a boy at Uffington, could throw all his schoolfellows' (Cornish, 1939, 80). The schoolmaster was my grandfather, and my father was born in the village in 1874.
Home sapiensorCastor fiber?
Authors: Coles J. M. , Orme B. J.
Published: January 2016

Following the development of pollen analysis in the earlier part of this century, much effort was devoted to unravelling the sequence of vegetational change during and after the retreat of the last European ice-sheets. The outlines established, questions of causation came to the fore, and the debate focused on factors such as climatic change, rate of species migration from glacial refuges, and natural vegetational succession. In more recent decades, a further factor has been widely investigated, namely the possible influence of humans on the landscape, principally as farmers and smiths. The development and modification of hypotheses is well illustrated by the Elm Decline of the Atlantic period, where climate (Iversen, 1941) or man (Troels-Smith, 1960) and occasionally disease (see refs in Simmons & Tooley, 1981, 134) have been held responsible for a widespread but by no means straightforward decline in elm pollen.
Schliemann's ‘discovery’ of ‘Priam's Treasure’
Authors: Traill David A.
Published: January 2016

In 1972 Wm. M. Calder III pointed out that Schliemann's autobiographical writings are riddled with false claims and fictitious episodes (Calder, 1972). Subsequent research has confirmed and extended his findings. The purpose of this article is to show that Schliemann's mendacity was not confined to details of his personal life. The focus of our inquiry will be the famous incident towards the end of his 1873 excavations at Troy-the discovery of what he called 'Priam's Treasure'.

Schliemann described this momentous occasion in about a dozen different places. We shall restrict ourselves to four of the earliest versions. It will be convenient to refer to these early accounts as A, B, C, and D. A and B are two versions of Schliemann's 31 May report to his publishers, Brockhaus of Leipzig.
Chariots in late bronze age Greece
Authors: Littauer M. A. , Crouwel J. H.
Published: January 2016

The long-standing debate on the military use of chariots in Late Bronze Age Greece was joined in 1973 by P. A. L. Greenhalgh. In his provocative book, he argued that Mycenaean warriors using thrusting spears had fought at speed from massed chariots. At the same time he rejected as unrealistic Homer's descriptions of chariots as conveyances for warriors who dismounted to fight on foot.

These opinions were recently briefly restated in ANTIQUITY, where Dr Greenhalgh reaffirms his theory, using the well-known metal panoply from chamber tomb 12 at Dendra as additional evidence (Greenhalgh, 1980). In doing so, he disregards the objections that have been raised against his position (Littauer, 1977; Anderson, 1973; 1975).
Hodder Westropp: nineteenth-century archaeologist
Authors: Nicholson Paul T.
Published: January 2016

Hodder Westropp wrote what is probably the first Handbook of Archaeology ever produced, added to Petrie's work on Irish Round Towers, and defined the term Mesolithic. Yet he is virtually unknown and is given only a brief mention in modern scholarship (Daniel, 1967, 260; Wilkins, 1959, 130–1). The purpose of this article is to provide a brief biography of this remarkable figure and to look in greater detail at some of the major events of his career.

I chose to look at the work of Hodder Westropp for my BA dissertation. This proved to be quite a challenge since the usual channels—the British Library Catalogue, Index to theTimesNewspaper and Citation Indices—were soon exhausted.
A century of research on the Peu-Richardien
Authors: Scarre Chris
Published: January 2016

Peu-Richard is the name of a low hill in rollingchalkland overlooking the marshland which hasformed where the River Seugne meets the RiverCharente, a little way to the south of Saintes. It washere in 1882 that a farm labourer came across tracesof a fortified enclosure rich in prehistoric material.The landowner, Baron Eschasseriaux, was anamateur archaeologist and when told of the discoveryimmediately arranged an excavation. A totalof 106 trenches was opened in the course of thiswork, and a good idea of the complexity of the sitelayout, with its multiple ditches, was obtained (FIG.I). A recent aerial photograph has contributedsome further details (PL. va). Eschasseriaux describedthe discovery of rock-cut ditches, remains ofstone ramparts and traces of gateways. Potsherds,animal bones and flints were collected in abundanceand some examples were illustrated in the report,though few details were given (Eschasseriaux,1882). This material included quantities of decoratedsherds of the type which came to be known as'Peu-Richardien'.
Orthostat walling in Brittany
Authors: Meirion-Jones Gwyni
Published: January 2016

Attention has recently been drawn to the existence of ‘vaccary’ walling at Wycoller, Lancashire (Antiquity, LVI, 1982, 163, Pl. xviib). Upright stones, or orthostats, occur in both field boundaries and the construction of buildings in Brittany where they are to be found in three widely-separated parts of the Province. Known areas of orthostat walling have recently been mapped in southern Finistère, between Concarneau and Pont-Aven; in southern Côtes-du-Nord between Rostrenen, Saint-Nicolas-du-Pélem and Mur-de-Bretagne; and in a large area stretching across northern Loire-Atlantique into eastern hlorbihan as far as Rochefort-en-Terre, and also into south-western llle-et-Vilaine (FIG. I).