bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Three Hill Forts in Eastern Spain
Authors: Hemp W. J.
Published: August 2016

The mountain known as Mongó is an isolated mass of limestone, rising to a height of over 2500 feet above the level plains which border the sea in the neighbourhood of Denia in the ancient territory of the Contestani and the modern province of Alicante (pl. I). Standing free, as it does, from the main mass of mountains, it is the most conspicuous landmark on the promontory which stretches eastwards towards the Balearic Islands. The views from its summit cover a wonderful expanse of country; south and westwards to the mountains, northwest across miles of orange groves to the coast leading to Valencia and beyond (pl. 6), while eastwards the Isle of Ibiza is clearly visible 70 miles away.
Assam Megaliths
Authors: Hutton J. H.
Published: August 2016

Assam is one of the very few remaining areas in which rude megalithic monuments are still erected and, like the most notable of the others—Madagascar—is on the fringe of the diffusion area of Indonesian civilization. Far apart as the two countries are, rough stone monuments are in both associated with a cult of the dead; both areas have cultural connexions with the Pacific. This paper, however, deals only with Assam, and its purpose is to give a brief account of the megalithic work existing there and thus to throw some light, perhaps, on the purposes and methods which may have been responsible for similar work in the prehistoric past of other countries.
The Prehistoric Remains of the Maltese Islands
Authors: Zammit T.
Published: August 2016

So little has been published about the prehistoric remains of Malta and Gozo that archaeologically the islands are hardly known. Visitors are numerous, but attention is usually concentrated upon Hajar Kim or some other megalithic building to the exclusion of other interesting remains. Thus a meagre impression is usually obtained of the profusion of neolithic relics which still exist. Even standard works on archaeology, treating of the early periods of the Mediterranean civilization, give only a small space, if any, to Maltese monuments.
The Uffington White Horse
Authors: Piggott Stuart
Published: August 2016

The White Horses cut in the turf of the Wessex Downs are familiar to most people who have wandered over the hills of western England, and many have no doubt paused to look at one or another of them and perhaps to ‘hazard a wide solution’ as to its antiquity or origin. But of the fifteen White Horses in Wiltshire and the adjoining counties, only one can be attributed to a date before the eighteenth century. This, the sire of them all, is cut on the north slope of the Berkshire Downs, above the village of Uffington, and gives its name to the fertile plain of mid-Berkshire-the Vale of the White Horse. Camden in writing of the Vale was wholly contemptuous of the Horse, saying that the inhabitants named the district ‘I wotte not from what shape of a white horse, imagined to appeare in a whitish chalky hill’. But despite Camden's scepticism, the Uffington White Horse very definitely exists, and has been cited as a landmark since the eleventh century, when the cartulary of Abingdon abbey records that one Godfric was possessed of Sparsholt juxta locum qui vulgo mons Albi Equi nuncupatur. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Horse is several times mentioned in connexion with the tenure of lands near it. Mr T. H. Ravenhill has recently drawn attention to an early fourteenth century manuscript in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, entitled Tractatus de mirabizibus Britanniae, in which the White Horse is given second place among the Marvels, Stonehenge being first.
Kharga Oasis
Authors: Caton-Thompson G.
Published: August 2016

These brief notes, written shortly after our return from a first season’s work on the prehistory and geology of the Kharga Oasis under the aegis of the Royal Anthropological Institute, are no more than a background for the illustrations (figs. I-II), due to our good fortune in being the first expedition in Egypt to have the use, for a whole fortnight, of an aeroplane placed without restriction for scientific service in field-work.
Two Greek Fortresses in Sicily
Authors: Collingwood R. G.
Published: August 2016

The two fortifications, which I propose to describe are together unique in the history of military architecture. They are very like each other, but nothing else like them exists. The first of them, Euryalus at Syracuse, has been carefully planned and published by a professional engineer, Signore Luigi Mauceri, in an excellent monograph (Il Castello Eurialo, Roma, 1928) ; but this is difficult to procure-I only know of it, and have seen it, thanks to the kindness of Sig. Dott. Giacomo Caputo, of the Syracuse museum-and there is no other adequate description of the place, though no doubt Pauly-Wissowa's article on Syracuse will contain one when it appears. Moreover, in examining the remains I seemed to see evidences of afterthoughts and changes of plan which Sig. Mauceri has missed or interpreted in ways that I find hard to accept; and therefore, though my hasty inspection and rough plans are far inferior to his careful and skilful work, it ma be worth while to place my surmises on record.
Bee-hive Dwellings of Apulia
Authors: Bark Lancelot G.
Published: August 2016

Any traveller in South Italy who finds himself in that tract of bleak and desolate country which is intersected by the Bari-Brindisi railroad, will not fail to observe many odd-looking structures in the fields. At a distance they appear to be quaint little conical-shaped huts, some 8 or 9 feet in height, fashioned after the manner of round bee-hives, and composed of flat stones, loosely piled together. They are used, so the natives will explain, as shelters for the cattle, as barns, or as store-houses for the fishermen’s nets.

But further enquiry will elicit some stranger information about them—to the effect that these structures date from time immemorial, and that they are called ‘trulli’, although nobody seems to know the reason why, or what the term really means. The traveller will also be told that if he is enterprising enough to make the adventure into the remoter parts of Apulia, he may see a whole city of ‘trulli’, a city of some 12,000 souls, who live in what must surely be regarded as among the strangest human habitations on earth.
The Age of the British Flint Mines
Authors: Clark Grahame , Piggott Stuart
Published: August 2016

There were two main sources of supply of flint available to early man,–superficial deposits whether in the form of river gravels, sea or lake beaches, or nodules incorporated in surface soils, and deposits beneath the surface of the ground for which it was necessary to mine or quarry. While it is generally true to say that mined flint was of superior quality and more easily worked than the superficial variety it must not be forgotten that the magnificent honey-coloured flint of Grand Pressigny, which in the dawn of the first age of metal was traded to Switzerland, North France, Brittany, Belgium and even Wessex, occurs naturally in the form of surface nodules. In passing it may be observed that the so-called livres de beurre, the most typical product of these Chalcolithic workshops, are technically no more nor less than elongated tortoise-cores from which were struck long flakes with faceted butts. In view of the play that has been made with the presence of ‘Mousterian’ technique in our British mines this is not without its significance.
Is Prehistory Practical?
Authors: Childe V. Gordon
Published: August 2016

In 1933 it can hardly be alleged that Prehistory is a useless study, wholely remote from and irrelevant to practical life. In one great country at least, interpretations of supposed facts of Prehistory, imperfectly apprehended by an untrained mind of undoubted genius, have revolutionized the whole structure of society. No one who has read Mein Kampf, or even the extracts therefrom in The Times, can fail to appreciate the profound effect which theories of the racial superiority of ‘Aryans’ have exercised on contemporary Germany. In the name of these theories men are being exiled from public life and shut up in concentration camps, books are being burned and expression of opinions stifled just as, in the name of religious ideas, they were during fifteen long centuries of darkness.
Megalithic Grave-Monuments in the
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and other parts of East
Africa
Authors: Evans-Pritchard E. E.
Published: August 2016

This note describes megalithic
grave-monuments among the Mise tribe to the west
of the Nile in Amadi District of Mongalla
Province, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. I visited this
tribe in the early part of 1927.

The megalithic monuments described are
typical of Mise country. They may be found
occasionally among other members of the southern
group, the Oggi and Endri, but there possibl they
mark the graves of Mise who have died out of their
count . The Kederu have probably adopted the heaps
of stones and carveTwooden posts which they and
their neighbours set up over graves.
Mathematics in Antiquity
Authors: Hogben Lancelot
Published: August 2016

In a stimulating lecture recently
published in ANTIQUITY (1933, VII, 410–18) Gordon
Childe raises the question : is Prehistory
practical ? He suggests that the disastrous social
consequences of applying ethnological hypotheses
based on flimsy foundations of fact are sufficient
justification for insisting on the scientific
study of prehistory and archaeology as an
essential part of the intellectual equipment of a
civilized person in our generation. Current events
certainly sustain the justice of his plea. Still
it may be argued that there is an even stronger
reason, and one which is perhaps more durable, for
asserting the claims of such studies to occupy a
pivotal position in twentieth - century culture.
The publication of Neugebauer‘s
Vorlesungen ueber Geschichte der
antiken mathematischen
Wissenschaften is a timely reminder
of the contribution which students of prehistory
and archaeology working together can make to the
solution of one of the great intellectual issues
of our own time.
The Horn of Ulph
Authors: Kendrick T. D.
Published: August 2016

The Horn of Ulph is one of the principal treasures of York Minster. It is exhibited in the Chapter House, and is well-known to visitors; but in spite of its fame this celebrated antiquity cannot be studied quickly and conveniently away from the Minster,l and the Dean of York has therefore rendered an important service to scholars by allowing Mr C. J. P. Cave to take the fine photographs reproduced here (PLATES I-V).

The horn is one of the so-called ‘oliphants’, i.e. horns made from tusks of elephant-ivory, and it is a particularly noble example, being both large and handsome, with a maximum length of 2 feet 4 inches and a mouth 5 inches in diameter. The ivory has coloured to a warm orange brown with rich cloudings and gradations in tone, the sunken fields in the carved zones having darkened almost to black; but though it is thus venerable in appearance, the horn is excellently preserved, and the unimpaired lustrous gIeam of the figures in relief and of the unornamented surface does much to enhance the mellow beauty of this magnificent piece. The shaft is faceted on the top and bottom with a gentle ribbing, as soft as the ‘bone’ of a good Malacca cane; but the flanks are rounded, and the section near the mouth is a natural oval. The metal fittings are silver-work of the 17th century, and consist of a plain rim and two inscribed bands to which are fastened the ends of the chain. The Latin inscription on the mounts states that the horn, having been given [to the Minster] by Ulph, a chieftain of western Deira, with all his lands, was subsequently lost or stolen, and afterwards restored and re-mounted by Henry Lord Fairfax in 1675.
The Ruined Towns of Somaliland
Authors: Curle A. T.
Published: August 2016

Periodical reference to the ‘Mysterious Ruined Cities of Somaliland’, citing them as an ‘unsolved riddle of Africa’, have appeared in books and articles from time to time. The majority of these ruined towns lie in the west of British Somaliland, within the present administrative district of Borama, or across the frontier in the adjacent areas of Ethiopia, roughly half way between the ancient port of Zeila and the walled town of Harar. The Somalis of today can throw no light on their history.

A series of investigations were carried out by Captain R. H. R. Taylor and myself during the week-ends available in 1934. The sites of ten ruined towns were already more or less vaguely known, while eleven new sites, off the beaten track and overgrown with bush, in both Ethiopia and British Somaliland, were one by one traced and visited as leave permitted. Circumstances did not permit of excavation beyond the clearing out of two houses and the sinking of a trial trench across a refuse heap, but notes were made and a careful record kept of all surface finds. The representative collection of relics brought home and presented to the Department of Ethnology of the British Museum amounted to several thousand items, mostly fragmentary. The numerous types of objects were classified and made it possible to assign the period of occupation of the towns to the 15th and 16th centuries.
The Church of St. Martin at Angers. Roman, Merovingian, and Carolingian Constructions
Authors: Forsyth George H.
Published: August 2016

Although situated in the heart of Angers a few squares behind the Cathedral, the disused church of St. Martin lies so completely hidden by encroaching modem structures that a view of its tower may only be had from one side street. Likewise an undeserved obscurity has descended upon its past history. Known before its dissolution in 1790 as one of the most venerable religious foundations of Angers, whose canons received their appointment from the king himself, the ancient College has left almost no records of its activities and vicissitudes. Nearly all its documents have perished at the hands of the revolutionists and the book-binders. Even archaeologists have left the church in relative neglect; for in spite of the fact that it has been known and casually referred to since the days of de Caumont as an interesting example of Romanesque and pre-Romanesque architecture, it has hitherto been surveyed only once, by Gailhabaud in 1848. Even his handsome engravings (in Monuments Anciens et Modernes) quite omit the twelfth century choir and apse which so adequately mirror the power and growth of that fertile Anjou whose counts could step to the throne of England. The structure received no adequate attention until Canon Pinier acquired it in 1903, saved it from imminent ruin, and by excavations under the crossing revealed the importance of the site.
The Hebrides: a Cultural Backwater
Authors: Curwen E. Cecil
Published: August 2016

In our efforts to reconstruct the life of vanished peoples and cultures we often find ourselves making comparisons with the implements and customs of modern primitive peoples. This practice seems, with due safeguards, reasonably sound, for similar cultural conditions may produce similar cultural phenomena. Our comparative material is usually sought among the backward races of the tropics, less frequently in parts of Europe that are off the beaten track; but it is not generally realized that we have in Britain itself a populous region which, owing to its remoteness, did not emerge from the Iron Age until the end of last century. By ‘the Iron Age’ we mean that simple state of culture that is found in peasant communities in southern Britain between, say, 500 B.C. and A.D. 1000, extending in a variable degree into the Middle Ages. This stage of cultural development is distinguished from more advanced stages by the prevalence of selfsupporting communities which are necessitated by difficulty of communications, and in this respect the culture of the Hebrides as late as the middle of the nineteenth century was more like that of the pre-Roman Iron Age in southern England than any succeeding phase.
The Prehistoric Craniology of Britain
Authors: Howells W. W.
Published: August 2016

The racial prehistory of Great Britain, while incomplete, has been brought to a provocative stage in its reconstruction. What follows is an attempt to set forth the framework of present knowledge, with its major lacunae, for the particular scrutiny of the archaeologists, on whom the anthropologists must largely rely for the testing of its stresses and strains.
The Parthian Structures at Takht-i-Sulayman
Authors: Wilber Donald N.
Published: August 2016

A recent survey of the fortified site of Takht-i-Sulayman situated some distance south of Tabriz and near the northwest comer of Iran has brought to light architectural remains of the Parthian, Sasanian and Islamic periods? A plan of the entire area is given in FIG. 2. Among the numerous ruined structures are two buildings of the Parthian period; the larger of them has already received brief mention by earlier visitors to the site. These two buildings can now be described in detail and an attempt be made to establish their place in the history of architectural development.
The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial. VIII. Who Was He?
Authors: Chadwick H. Munro
Published: August 2016

I WAS unfortunately not able to be present at the inquest held on 14 August, but I understand that no satisfactory evidence of identity was offered. Indeed the prevalent view now seems to be that the tomb never contained a body—that it was constructed as a cenotaph.

For cenotaphs in the Anglo-Saxon period I do not know of any good evidence. But we can hardly say with certainty that any of the cemeteries previously known were royal—apart from St. Augustine’s, Canterbury. It is not impossible therefore that a cenotaph may have been constructed for a king who lost his life at sea or on some distant expedition, from which his body could not be brought home.
Beginnings of Civilization in Eastern Asia
Authors: Bishop Carl Whiting
Published: August 2016

To understand the beginnings of civilization in the Far East, we must view them in the light of the laws that govern cultural progress everywhere. Especially must we consider the region’s geographical position and relationship to other lands. As a glance at a map, or better still a terrestrial globe, will show, it occupies a marginal portion of the Eurasiatic continent taken as a whole. That this fact carries with it certain implications, the study of culture-building in general abundantly shows.
The Boat of the Dead in the Bronze Age
Authors: Grinsell L. V.
Published: August 2016

In many parts of the world and at many periods the practice has prevailed of depositing boats, or models or other representations of them, with the dead, either as a means of facilitating his supposed voyage to another world, or as a symbol of his maritime activities during his lifetime.

That the former is generally the correct explanation of the custom there can be no doubt. This is shown by the evidence of the belief in a voyage to a future world, and the customs to which it has given rise, among living primitive peoples in the Pacific Islands and elsewhere, so well collected and presented by the late Sir J. G. Frazer. It is shown also by traditions such as that of our own king Arthur's journey by barge to ‘the island valley of Avilion, where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow’ It is shown also by the ancient Greek and Roman custom of placing a coin in the mouth of the dead to pay Charon's fee for ferrying him across the Styx.
The Double-ended Fire-dog
Authors: Peate Iorwerth C.
Published: August 2016

In the first published description of the Capel Garmon fire-dog (PLATE, p. 64), J. Evans quotes a view concerning its use: ‘I would suggest that this instrument is intended to hold the spits for roasting fowls, game or other small animals. … The loops on the side are evidently intended for that purpose, and it is probable that the horns of the two heads are intended for supporting a larger one’.

On the other hand, in the latest description of the same fire-dog, it is suggested that this fire-dog formed one of a pair: ‘The evidence of the Welwyn and other finds suggests that two fire-dogs was the normal equipment of the Celtic (central) hearth, whether secular or sacred, and it needs little imagination to appreciate the effect of a pair of “Capel Garmon” fire-dogs with flaming logs between’.
Deraheib Gold Mines
Authors: NewBold Douglas
Published: August 2016

Deraheib is the name of an ancient site in the Wadi Allagi in lat. 21°57’, long 35°81′, i.e. just within the Sudan political frontier. The name is undoubtedly Beja in form but may be derived from the Beidawi ‘d‧ir’ ‘to build’ or the Arabi ‘Deir’ which is used in Egypt for monasteries or other ancient buildings. Possibly, these two words are connected with each other. It should be noted that there is a place called ‘Dereheib Baanet’, 40 miles north of Deraheib, with ruins of a tomb, and the famous Assarema Deraheib ‘The Seven Buildings’, in Khor Gamarota 20 miles inland from Akik.
The Kivik Cairn, Scania
Authors: Grinsell L. V.
Published: August 2016

The incised slabs of the rectangular cist in the cairn at Kivik rank with the Hagia Triada sarcophagus in being among the most important discoveries so far made of evidence bearing on the funeral rites of the Bronze Age in Europe, and it seems certain that pending further discoveries these two monuments form the foundation on which our study of Bronze Age funeral customs must be built.

Before discussing the Kivik cairn itself it is well to glance at the archaeological setting of Kivik and the surrounding country, for on this the correct interpretation of the Kivik slabs depends.
The Antiquity and Function of Antler Axes and Adzes
Authors: Childe V. Gordon
Published: August 2016

The inhabitants of the wooded plain of northern Europe that in early post-glacial times extended almost uninterrupted from the Pennines to the Urals were distinguished from their meso-lithic contemporaries, the Azilians and Tardenoisians, as well as from their best-known palaeolithic precursors, by the possession of a kit of heavy tools suitable for wood-working. This distinctive equipment was an adaptation and response to the dominant feature of the northern environment of those days—the great Boreal forest. So I have termed the cultures characterized thereby (Duvensee, Maglemose, Kunda, Broxbourne, etc.) the Forest Cultures. From this point of view the most significant diagnostic traits in all of them are not their fishing and hunting tackle that form the most spectacular among their relics, but their heavy tools of bone, antler and stone. In 19311 I discussed the development of this heavy industry in the central area round the Baltic as an adaptation to the forest environment, a manifestation of a distinctively woodland culture-pattern, to use an American expression. In 1937, thanks to fresh discoveries in England, Esthonia and the U.S.S.R. I was able to trace the same wood-working equipment throughout the whole woodland-zone from Russia to England. But all these studies of adaptation were in fact inspired by a hint from Dr Schwantes (then of Hamburg); for to him belongs the credit of first recognizing the antler objects I discussed as wood-worker’s implements.
Rotary Querns on the Continent and in the Mediterranean Basin
Authors: Childe V. Gordon
Published: August 2016

In his two articles on querns (1) Dr Cecil Curwen has given us a really epoch-making contribution to prehistory and history. Not only has he provided the prehistorian with a new instrument for the establishment of chronology, but he has drawn the attention of excavators to a revolutionary but curiously neglected advance in technology. For the rotary mill is the first major application of rotary motion since the invention of the potter's wheel and the lathe in the remote Oriental Copper Age; it led on directly to the invention of geared machinery and the water-wheel and so to the first employment of inanimate motive power apart from the harnessing of the winds to the sail. Though this invention took place in the full light of history, the sole evidence for its origin, apart from a single reference in a writer so late as Pliny (2), is purely archaeological. Unfortunately it is still rather thin; excavators of classical and barbarian sites have generally been too preoccupied with statuary and art-objects on the one hand, with types accepted as chronologically significant on the other, to provide the historian of science with the data he craves. Truhelka for instance, generally so scrupulous in the full publication of all his finds, does not illustrate nor even describe a single quern from Dolja Dolina in Bosnia where he found plenty (3).
Field-names
Authors: Wainwright F. T.
Published: August 2016

Field-Names, the common and convenient term for minor names which have not achieved the status of place-names, often preserve information important to the historian and to the archaeologist. Their value is well recognized by specialists but not always clearly understood by others. Since field-names are generally found in local, as distinct from national, records, local historians are especially qualified to help in the accumulation of a collection of such names. After a few sentences of advice to secure uniformity of method and to ensure co-ordination, the members of any local historical society, acting as a group or even singly, may build up a valuable collection of field-names. Such work, pursued on systematic lines, would be a real contribution to scholarship, and is already in progress in one or two areas. The following notes attempt to illustrate how the study of field-names may contribute to historical knowledge. They do no more than outline the possibilities and they are confessedly written in the hope that more non-professional Societies will add the formation of a field-name collection to the list of their activities.
Coinage of the Dark Age in Britain
Authors: Mattingly Harold
Published: August 2016

It is perhaps best at the beginning of this paper to clear away an illusion that readily I besets us, as we look back on the Dark Age that followed the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain-the illusion that there was something unique in the fate of our island. ‘The barbarians thrust us into the sea, the sea thrusts us back to the barbarians’,—and Aetius, the Roman Patrician, turns a deaf ear. As a matter of fact, Britain only suffered the fate that befell Dacia in the 3rd century, and Gaul, Spain, the Alpine and Balkan districts in the 4th to the 5th. One after another the provinces, once Roman, were overwhelmed under the barbarian tide. The only unique point in the case of Britain is her position as an island—twenty miles interval by sea may well be equated to a much greater distance by land. History, however, sometimes compenesates its blows. Britain, the lost island of the West, attracted the fatherly attention of the Popes of Rome earlier than some continental districts nearer home. She began to regain from Pope Gregory the Great what she had lost through Aetius.
Dating the Hissar Sequence—the Indian Evidence
Authors: Piggott Stuart
Published: August 2016

In a recent number of ANTIQUITY (1) Prof. V. Gordon Childe discussed Mr Donald I McCown's study of the Iranian prehistoric sequence published last year by the Oriental Institute of Chicago (2), and in his article raised the question of the dating of the Hissar settlements, for which McCown argues a higher antiquity than that hitherto assigned. The dating of such a site must necessarily depend ultimately on correlations made with the centres of civilization to the southwest, but I hope to show that synchronisms and parallels may usefully be made from the opposite direction, and from that viewpoint in which the Middle East has to be studied as geographically the Middle West.

Apart from the Harappa Culture of the Indus Valley and the Punjab, with its famous brick-built cities, its undeciphered script and its individual glyptic art, the prehistory of western India and the Iranian borderlands has been an uncomfortable enigma to the majority of archaeologists owing to the combined causes of insufficient excavation, inadequate publication, and the inaccessibility of the actual finds to the western world, concentrated as they are in local site-museums or in the Central Asian Museum in New Delhi (3). The accident of war has enabled me to study most of this material at first hand, and in the notes which follow certain points bearing on McCown's thesis and Childe's commentary are given, with the arguments, especially those concerned with stylistic considerations, necessarily in an abbreviated form. Full publication of the evidence for the Indian sequence, and a detailed examination of the relations between prehistoric India and the lands to the west must await the end of the war.
Grim's Bank, Padworth, Berkshire
Authors: O'Neil B. H. St. J.
Published: August 2016

The immediate environs of Silchester consist of fields, which are either now under plough or else have been arable for many years in the recent past. Consequently there are few, if any, traces there of the Roman roads which led from the various gates to Dorchester, Speen and Cirencester, Sarum, Winchester, and London. A mile or more to the north and northwest of the Roman town, however, there is a belt of land, which is largely heathland except where trees have been planted. Here there are clear indications of the line of two Roman roads, one from the west gate, west-northwest to Speen and Cirencester, the other from the north gate to Dorchester (Oxon.)

The road to Speen (FIG. I) was formerly thought to follow closely the modern road along the northern side of Silchester Common and thence to run along the straight county boundary between Berkshire and Hampshire. In recent years, however, Mr O. G. S. Crawford has shown that the road, instead of following this traditional line, ran west-northwestward to cross the river Kennet near Brimpton Mill. It is traceable as a raised camber or a deep hollow way from Catthaw Lands Copse, about half-a-mile from the west gate of Silchester, to the western side of Hungry Hill. Further west, in Decoy Plantation, and again beyond the road from Padworth Common, i.e. in Keyser's Plantation, it is clearly seen as a broad cambered way (o.s. 641-1. Berkshire XLIV, SE, Hampshire IV, SE). Beyond this point the present writer has not followed it, but Mr Crawford has noted its continuation.
The Silchester Region in the 5th & 6th centuries A.D.
Authors: O'Neil B. H. St. J.
Published: August 2016

Until a few years ago it was customary amongst many historians to suppose that the towns of Roman Britain ceased to exist in or very soon after A.D. 410. Records such as that of Pevensey, admittedly a fort rather than a town, which was not taken until A.D. 491, had always suggested a modification of that View, and more recently efforts have been made to demonstrate that life of some sort continued unbroken in certain of the towns throughout the Dark Ages. Dr R. E. M. Wheeler has argued thus particularly in the case of London.
The Development of the Cruck Framework
Authors: Walton James
Published: August 2016

The use of pairs of straight or curved timbcrs to support the ridge-pole of a primitive Td welling affords one of the most fundamental of all house types. In England, Scotland and Wales, it developed into the complex cruck framework which, although it has many close analogies in north-western Europe, is a unique feature of peasant architecture, Detailed studies of the cruck buildings of northern England have been made by Addy (1), Innocent (2) and, more recently, by the writer of the present paper (3)) whilst Sigurd Erixon has published an excellent comparative study of analagous types (4). The object of this paper is primarily to trace the evolutionary stages through which the cruck building and its allied forms passed.
Ninety Years Ago
Authors: Evans Joan
Published: August 2016

No one, so far as I know, has as yet made any particular study of the many local learned societies that were founded up and down France in the years after the French Revolution, and of their effect upon contemporary thought. These Sociétés d’Émulation differed from the local archaeological and historical societies of England in being more all-embracing ; they included in their scope pure literature, philosophy and science as well as the history and antiquities of the district, and often developed a philanthropic side as well. At the time of their foundation they were often of a free-thinking colour ; but as the balance of French life came to be restored after the Revolution this element was forgotten, and the more learned priests of the neighbourhood were often included among their members.

These societies fostered a peculiar polymathic quality among those who regularly attended their frequent meetings. They were to a great extent self-supporting in the provision of papers and communications, and it would have been pure selfishness for any member with any claim to versatility to specialize too deeply. Their standards, too, were not those of the Metropolis, where a new professionalism was bringing higher and more exact criteria into every branch of knowledge and speculation. Rather, we can see in the Sociétés d’Émulation of the nineteenth century the continuance of the amateur spirit that in the eighteenth century had flourished in the aristocratic circles of Court and château : a spirit surviving in a less polished form among the lesser gentry of the provincial towns.
Moas and Man (PART I)
Authors: Duff R. S.
Published: August 2016

When we remember that the Maoris volunteered no traditional information about the extinct moa (Dinornis) until Europeans had unearthed its bones, said nothing about the Chatham Islands until after their discovery by Europeans, only recalled dim memories of inhabitants before the Fleet of A.D. 1350 in response to persistent questioning by Europeans, and could not tell us whether Hawaiki was Tahiti or Samoa, we realize the always supine rôle of Maori tradition in aiding the researches of the culture historian.

However the sheer mass and variety of these orally transmitted traditions prevented the student from realizing how irrelevant they were to his theme, and caused him to believe that the Maori purpose in transmitting traditions was like his—to satisfy an essentially academic curiosity about the past. The gradual cessation of the output of published traditions has given students the leisure to realize the limitations of those already recorded, and sobered us against the expectation that a Maori tradition current in the 19th century might include a description of a bird which lived perhaps in the 13th, or go into detail over the appearance and habits of the tribes whom his Fleet ancestors dispossessed in the 14th.

Fortunately the need for the family to maintain its status within the clan, the clan within the tribe, and the tribe as against other tribes, did involve the careful transmission of family trees (Whakapapa). By comparing the number of generations in many lines back to a Fleet ancestor, the arrival of the Fleet was placed in the mid-14th century. By a brilliant application of the method beyond New Zealand, Percy Smith found a three generation name sequence immediately prior to the Fleet arrival common to Hawaii, the Society Islands, the Cook Islands and New Zealand. This established with reasonable certainty that the movement which brought the canoes of the Fleet to New Zealand originated in the Society Islands and simultaneously sent migrants to the Hawaiian and Cook groups. Traditions in New Zealand recorded with a significant unanimity the names of the canoes of the Fleet migration, their landing places, and the tribes which sprang from each. They noted the introduction by the immigrants of the sweet potato (kumara), the taro (Colocasia antiquorum), the gourd (Lagenaria), and the yam (uwhi), both by means of references to incidents of the voyage or by accounts of subsequent return trips to Hawaiki to fetch these plants.
The Restoration of the Monastery Church of Debra Damo, Ethiopia
Authors: Matthews Derek H.
Published: August 2016

I Was enthusiastically received by the monks of Debra Damo who gave me every help and encouragement in the project of restoring their church, the most ancient surviving in Ethiopia. The scheme was first mooted by Mr D. R. Buxton, who visited the church and found it in a state of collapse. The efforts of Mr O. G. S. Crawford, the Society of Antiquaries, and the British Council, resulted in the Emperor’s agreeing to spend up to £5,000 on the works, and in my being appointed architect in charge of the restoration. I had the unique opportunity of entering parts of the building not hitherto seen and recorded by Europeans, and during the process of partial demolition I was able to discover the exact method of construction, this knowledge throwing light on ancient Axumite building methods.

It is not known exactly how old the church is. It is certainly the most ancient and perfect of the early Ethiopian churches, and an important example of an early manner of building in that country.

The method of construction is unusual (FIG. 1) ; the walls consist of tile-like stones set in earth mortar, strengthened with longitudinal beams which are themselves fixed to the walls with cross-pieces, projecting, and called ‘monkey-heads’ by the Ethiopians. Such a method of construction has been used in countries as far apart as Crete, Asia Minor, and Tibet. It also seems to have been the normal constructional method of the Axumite builders, who translated the pattern of horizontal timber, monkey-head and window framing into the decoration of the storied obelisks of Axum, nearby. This is yet another example of timber forms being translated into stone, a common architectural trend. Even today, the tradition is still alive, and modern church builders in this part of Ethiopia still use timber in a similar way to stabilize their walls.
A second fixed point in the Chronology of the Harappa Culture
Authors: Stone J. F. S.
Published: August 2016

Fixed points in the chronology of the Harappa Culture are not abundant and such as exist tend rather to emphasize the earlier phases of that remarkable civilization. Evidence for close contact with Akkad about 2300 B.C., based primarily on stamp-seals, has been the subject of review by Piggott, and much clearer light has been forthcoming as a result of excavations at Harappa by the Archaeological Survey of India during 1946 under the direction of Professor R. E. M. Wheeler. These excavations included cuttings through the rampart of the citadel, and investigations of the later cemeteries superimposed on the culture. Whilst accepting the evidence for the earlier fixed point Wheeler faces up to the problems raised by these cemeteries and is strongly inclined after reviewing the facts available, and certain passages in the Rigveda, to agree with Childe that the ‘Cemetery H intruders “may belong to Aryan invaders”, the conventional date for whose first incursion into India is the 15th century B.C.’. As a result he concludes that ‘the combined weight, such as it is, of these various indications suggests the millennium 2500-1500 B.C. as a possible inclusive date for the mature Harappa civilization, without prejudice to the still-unplumbed depths of Mohenjo-daro’.

Attention has recently been focussed by Piggott on these later phases of the civilization as a result of a study of the type and distribution of certain spiral headed and animal headed pins, and of a bronze mace-head found at Mohenjo-daro and Chanhu-daro. He here sees clear evidence pointing to trade contacts or folk movements from the West and affecting India at the end of the Harappa phase, if not indeed when it was actually defunct, probably ‘after 2000 B.C. rather than before and possibly some centuries later’. And with Wheeler he does not appear to be disinclined to accept the traditional date of about 1400 B.C. for the incursions into India ; though both are fully aware, and in fact state categorically, that the Akkadian contacts are the only well fixed chronological points.
A Technique for Surface Collecting
Authors: Alcock Leslie
Published: August 2016

It has usually been assumed that the collecting of surface material from the rich sites of Western Asia brought a harvest of knowledge at the expense of little archaeological skill; that while excavation, potentially destructive of evidence, required strict control, surface collecting was so harmless that it might be pursued indiscriminately. Recent survey work in Baluchistan has convinced the writer of the dangers of this view. This note is offered as a preliminary consideration of the problems involved in surface collecting, and the writer will be grateful for further suggestions from others more experienced than himself.
The Date of Caernarvon Castle
Authors: Taylor A. J.
Published: August 2016

Nearly forty years ago Sir Charles Peers read a paper of outstanding importance on Caernarvon Castle. The description he then gave of the various buildings of which the castle is composed is printed in the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society. It will never be bettered, combining as it does a mastery of detail with a simple and lucid presentation of a most complicated structure. It is prefaced by an analysis of contemporary documents bearing on the original work of construction, on the gradual progress of building and on the castle's subsequent history. On the strength of these records a concise building sequence is established, and this has in its turn been adopted as the basis of all subsequent writings on the castle. A dated ground-plan, setting out this sequence in graphic form, accompanied the printed account, and has since been widely reproduced.
Irregular Earthworks in Eastern Siam: an air survey
Authors: Williams-Hunt P. D. R.
Published: August 2016

During the war and in the immediate post-war period the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force undertook a considerable air survey programme covering Burma, Siam and French Indo-China. In Siam the initial cover was restricted to large-scale (1:15,000 and better) photographs of towns, airfields and communications. Later a more ambitious programme of survey cover (scales 1 : 50,000 and 1 : 25,000 with a few towns and beaches at larger scale) was undertaken, and practically the whole of the country has been covered by air photographs of one scale or another.

It has been my privilege to serve with the R.A.F. in Siam on both ground and flying duties and, more recently, to be in a position to examine most of the photographs taken. A very considerable number of archaeological sites have come to light, many being noted for the first time ; and it is my intention in this initial paper to comment briefly on one particular type of earthwork which appears to have a limited distribution in eastern Siam. The air photographs are reproduced with the sanction of the Air Ministry.

It must be emphasized that although Siam, the meeting place of Indian and Chinese cultures, is rich in archaeological sites very little systematic work has yet been undertaken. On the one side the natural reluctance of the Siamese to disturb ancient sites and, on the other, comparative absence of trained archaeological research workers have been contributory factors. Detailed ground information generally is lacking and it follows that these notes are based on air photographic evidence, in most cases without ground checking, an impropriety of which the writer is only too well aware.
The Apulia Expedition: An Interim Report
Authors: Bradford J. S. P.
Published: August 2016

The first (1949) season of archaeological reconnaissance on the Foggia Plain in South Italy has confirmed, in the most striking manner, the existence of one of the densest concentrations of ancient sites to be identified in Europe in an area of comparable size. For readers of ANTIQUITY, their nature had already been foreshadowed in these pages.

These discoveries were first made from British air photographs taken in June 1945, which revealed the plans of settlements, farms, roads and field-systems existing below the surface of the ground or clearly visible to the air camera. They were distributed across 3000 years of Italian history, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, and illustrate from the archaeological record three principal stages in the rise of a European peasantry. This is a theme that affords ideal ground for the conjunction of Archaeology and Ethnology ; and it is appropriate that the Expedition should be based on the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford, which was founded on this very principle.

Now, thanks to the Apulia Committee, set up under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries and representing the University of Oxford and learned societies, it has been possible to proceed to the second and fundamental stage:—namely, to carry out the first systematic programme of archaeological investigation based on air photographic data ever conducted in Italy. This also included the first British excavations there for a number of years, with the permission and helpful co-operation of the Italian authorities, and the support of the British School at Rome.
Cupola Tombs in the Aegean and in Iberia: a criticism of a recent theory
Authors: Myres John
Published: August 2016

The religions of pre-Indo-European Europe are a large and difficult subject; but a sufficiently wide survey turns out to be less complicated than might seem possible. For full perspective, however, account has to be taken both of Western Asia and of Northern Africa as far as the Guinea Coast and Ethiopia. On the other hand, Indo-European peoples have intruded so far, and also have in turn been overlaid so deeply that it is not always easy to recognize Indo-European survivals at all; wide regions have been stripped—by Islam especially—not only of Indo-European but of the earlier cultures as well.
The Tholos Tomb in Iberia
Authors: Piggott Stuart
Published: August 2016

At the end of the last war it became known to archaeologists in this country that there had been published in Germany in 1943 the first part, itself in two massivevolumes, of a monumental survey of the Spanish chambered tombs by Dr and Frau Leisner. Die Megalithgraber der Iberischen Halbinsel-I Der Suden was sponsored and produced by the Romisch-Germanische Kommission, and for the first time the results of the excavations of Siret, Bonsor and others were presented to scholars in a manner which set a new standard in the publication of such material. The work is noteworthy not only for its detailed and informed discussion of the tombs and their contents, but for its scheme of total presentation of the evidence in visual form and to uniform conventions of scale and draughtsmanship, supported by photographs where necessary.
Edward Simpson, alias ‘Flint Jack’. A Victorian Craftsman
Authors: Blacking John
Published: August 2016

The Victorians were great collectors. They fortified themselves by collecting other men's land and its products ; glorified themselves with collections of children, relations and pompous civic buildings ; and justified it all with a series of facts collected from the Family Bible, and from accounts of primitive men and Evolution. Their attitude to everything was captative ; and only in moments of extreme distraction were they oblative. Those who had recently ‘ arrived ’ loaded glass-fronted cabinets with sets of china—never used, for fear that they would be broken. They could fill their drawing-rooms with hideous statuettes, and cover their mantelpieces with stupid bric-àbrac and an occasional palaeolith—because there was at least one parlourmaid to dust them. Even more intelligent men, less anxious to impress their families and friends, were afflicted with the same disease : their motives were acquisitive rather than artistic or truly scientific; and if there was any philosophy other than that of mere gain, underlying their systematic collection of curios, it was the philosophy of Evolution, and with it the complacent belief in progress from Palaeolithic Man with his pathetic flint scrapers, to the Victorian Superman, with his eighty-bladed Sportsman's knife.