bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Climate and Migrations
Authors: Curry J. C.
Published: August 2016

In separate favoured regions various kinds of men set out to domesticate and master the gifts and forces around them: to ‘live well’, in the old Greek phrase, under the given conditions of their home, or failing this, to seek and make a new one: in either event, to comply as well as to command; to conquer Nature by observance of her laws. J. L. Myres

In this wonderful century when discoveries and inventions have followed fast on one another’s heels Man seems to look dazed and half comprehendingly at the works of his own hands. So that there are some who say that he is on the brink of new andmore wonderful mastery over Nature ; others that there are no more discoveries to make ; and others again who wish to cry halt, and ask, hopelessly, for ten years’rest from the innovations and disturbances which scientific inquiry is bringing into their world.
The Sahara
Authors: Bovill E. W.
Published: August 2016

The history of North Africa is dominated by the Sahara, which has always been a vital factor in the lives of the peoples of Barbary and the Western Sudan. The cultural and economic development of both has been profoundly affected by intercourse between the two. Yet they are separated by a desert which forms one of the world's greatest barriers to human intercourse.

A slight increase in the aridity of the Sahara would so extend the waterless stages that the caravan routes would become impassable to camels and therefme to men—leaving, of course, mechanical transport out of consideration. A correspondingly slight increase in rainfall would quickly multiply the waterholes and desert pastures and render man independent of the now necessary camel. The question of climatic change in historic times is therefore a matter of importance to the student of the history of northern Africa.
Neolithic Camps
Authors: Curwen E. Cecil
Published: August 2016

It is extremely difficult to eradicate erroneous popular beliefs. Among such should be numbered the tendency hastily to attribute prehistoric hill-forts either to the Stone Age or to the Romans, most of such forts having in all probability been reared by the people of the Early Iron Age. The rapid progress of British prehistoric archaeology during the last two decades has shown this clearly, but it has also shown that the popular belief in the existence of neolithic camps is justified, though not in the specific instances that were expected.
Mr Collingwood and Mr Randall: a note
Authors: Wheeler R. E. M.
Published: August 2016

But, after all, one guess is as bad as another. Mr Collingwood guesses half a million. Mr Randall guesses . . . but on re-reading Mr Randall I find that he doesn't guess at all. He passes lightly from persuasion to persuasion and ends with x. Indeed, he loses interest in the statistical problem and concerns himself mainly with the Higher griculture or, as he would phrase it, the Agriculture of the Uplands. He bravely ends, however, with Twelve Points which he gracefully provides as 'a target for counter-attack'.
The Linking of Egypt and Palestine
Authors: Petrie Flinders
Published: August 2016

In the last four years, excavation has been going on in an untouched region, the desert border of Palestine, within a walk of the Egyptian frontier. All the district beyond Gaza was formerly raided so often from the south that it was unsafe; now we can live eighteen miles out in the wilderness, surrounded by Arabs, without any defences, and never have a single dispute or trouble. Such is the result of the Occupation. Lawrence and Woolley, with surveyors, made a map of the region down to Kadesh Barnea and, on that map, half of the names survive which are listed in Joshua as the ‘uttermost cities of Judah’.
A newly-discovered Roman Site in Cumberland
Authors: Collingwood R. G.
Published: August 2016

It has always been part of the programme of ANTIQUITY to insist on the value of air-photography as an archaeological method; and records of discoveries made by its use have often appeared in the pages of this journal. Here is another such record; the first, I think, in which air-photography has led to the discovery and excavation of an altogether unknown Roman site.
The Oxford Excavations at Hira, 1931
Authors: Rice D. Talbot
Published: August 2016

The present age, as far as archaeology is concerned, may well be termed that of excavations, and Mesopotamia is more than any other country the centre of such activity. It is work on the most ancient sites that has come most before the public eye ; but later ruins too have received some attention, both before and since the war. Samarra stands and must long stand as the classical example of an excavation of the later eriod, but the recent work at Ctesiphon is no going investigation by the Baghdad school and the Michigan University expedition and the ancient city of Kish has produced a Sasanian palace. Our work at Hira, some 50 miles to the south of ancient Babylon, now adds another name to this list, and though we made but preliminary soundings they served to show that the town of Hira was definitely an important and interesting place, the further examination of which will be without doubt well repaid. The work which we did was undertaken on behalf of Oxford University and was carried out under the joint direction of Mr Gerald Reitlinger and of the author of this paper. Most sincere thanks are due to Mr Reitlinger, who bore the entire cost of the expedition, and to Professor Langdon of Oxford, who greatly simplified our work by allowing us to become a branch of the Oxford-Field Museum expedition to Kish.
‘Fossil Tradition’ in Stone Implements
Authors: de Pradenne A. Vayson
Published: August 2016

When one speaks of tradition, that is to say, of the transmission of human knowledge from one generation to another, one implies that there are two methods by which that transmission is effected—the spoken and the written word; thus one draws a distinction between oral and written tradition.

Nowadays written tradition alone is of importance; but one recognizes that it has gradually replaced that oral tradition which alone existed, as one supposes, in prehistoric times. We wish here to call attention to yet another mode of transmission which certainly played a part, perhaps even an important part, in the Stone Ages, and disregard of which might in certain instances seriously confuse the study of prehistoric archaeology.
The Lighter Side of Archaeology
Authors: Curwen E. Cecil
Published: August 2016

Archaeology emphatically has its lighter side, though this is not always recognized by the lay public. The antiquary of the past was looked upon as a musty old bore—the reverse of entertaining company, while the modern archaeologist is apt to be depicted in the humorous press as an immature individual of either sex, dull, myopic and dowdy.
The Use of Wood in Megalithic Structures
Authors: de Pradenne A. Vayson
Published: August 2016

Long ago one of our oldest French prehistorians, Gustave Chauvet, called attention to the probable existence of a wooden framework over the structures beneath tumuli. At a Congress of the A.F.A.S. held at Nantes in 1875 he described the digging of seven tumuli at La Boixe (Charente) containing burials of the polished Stone Age. Two of them covered true dolmens; others simple rectangular or circular cellae enclosed within small dry-stone walls.
The Method of Prehistoric Archaeology
Authors: Tallgren A. M.
Published: August 2016

During the last fifty years prehistoric archaeology has developed with extraordinary rapidity into a firmly established branch of science. A system has been constructed, the frontiers of several cultural phenomena have been laid down, and the outlines of prehistoric chronology have been formed. Hypotheses and assertions have been made concerning the ethnographical groups of prehistoric times, and lengthy ‘prehistoric’ periods have literally been transformed into ‘historic’ ones. The inscription on the medal struck for Oscar Montelius– ‘Fifty years of research have mastered millennia of human culture ’ –may serve as a short motto summarizing the results of archaeology as a whole, not merely the achievements of one man.

The method which has led to this result is that of the empiric sciences, based on the theory of evolution, namely, that of typology. The starting-point of research has for the most part been morphology. When synthesis has been the objective, the student’s instruments of research have consisted primarily of forms or shapes of objects, or ornaments and tombs and so forth, and their comparison.
The Syrian City of Til-Barsib
Authors: Mallowan M. E. L.
Published: August 2016

TIl-BArsib. Par F. Thureau-Dangin et Maurice Dunand avec le concours de Lucien Cavro et Georges Dossin. Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1936. pp. 166 with Album of 53 plates and 5 plans. 200 francs.

This volume is a most important contribution to the archaeology of Syria. Tell-’Ahmar, which lies on the left bank of the Euphrates, 20 kilometres below Carchemish, marks the site of the ancient city of Til-Barsib. As long ago as 1908 the late Dr Hogarth had suggested the identification of this mound with Barsib, and in 1911 Dr Campbell Thompson proved the correctness of Hogarth’s surmise by copying and translating an Assyrian inscription which lay on the mound. After making preliminary soundings in 1927 a French Expedition under the auspices of the MusCe du Louvre set to work in 1929 and the excavations, involving a total of seven months’ work in all, were concluded in 1931. This volume, lavishly illustrated, describes in detail the remarkable results.
A 6th century German Settlement of foederati
Authors: Bersu Gerhard
Published: August 2016

In the fertile region between the Danube and the Balkans occur numerous Byzantine fortified posts, which are shown by occasional finds of coins to date mostly from the sixth century. All have a common form in that skilful use has been made of natural features of terrain, such as isolated mountain-tops or practically isolated spurs, so that with a minimum cf artificial strengthening they have considerable defensive power. A favourite situation for them is at points where narrow canyon-like valleys of the streams that flow into the Danube have afforded good natural advantages.

From the military standpoint these sites can easily be divided into two groups, A and B, according to their topographical situation. To the first belong those which occur on the great natural trade-routes, and, like a modern Sperrfort, rake the roads with a commanding view over the surrounding district. The second and much more numerous group consists of posts situated off the trade-routes, often so much concealed by the lie of the land as to be invisible from the great roads.
Early Agriculture in Denmark
Authors: Curwen E. Cecil
Published: August 2016

There is perhaps no branch of archaeology of more fundamentalimportance than the study of the rise and development of agricul ture, seeing that it has been the governing factor in the Natural History of Man from the time of its introduction down to the Industrial Era. But the study of the evidence from Britain is not enough; hence Professor Hatt’s full and clear exposition of the Danish evidence is of special importance to British archaeologists, seeing that the rich discoveries preserved in the peat-bogs of Denmark can supply details that are missing in the British picture, or at least suggest to us directions in which future research may profitably be pursued. Professor Hatt’s wide knowledge and balanced judgment-not to mention his delightful personality-have won the confidence and respect of those British archaeologists who have had the privilege of knowing him, and his recent book on Danish agriculture is far too important to be left in the relative obscurity of the Danish language. Hence a brief summary of its principal contents is attempted here.
The Modern Pottery Trade in the Aegean
Authors: Casson Stanley
Published: August 2016

Archaeologists in general and students of ceramics in A particular largely live in an ancient world of their own creation. They have built up the background of the period they study by means of the material objects available to them, and they have filled in the gaps largely by hypothesis, analogy and guesswork. This, after all, is part of the game. They have decided that they have no alternative. Rarely and with caution they draw comparisons between living and dead primitive cultures. Usually they draw back in alarm, for aboriginal Australians and Bushmen have the irritating habit of not always coming up to the desired level of similarity when comparisons are made between them and men of Neolithic or earlier cultures. And so the archaeologists are driven in on themselves. Perhaps it is just as well.
The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial. II. The Gold Ornaments
Authors: Kendrick T.D.
Published: August 2016

Ost of the gold ornaments represent the very splendid outer harness of a princely apparel, doubtless the sword-belt and baldrick, and also a purse and the straps on which it was slung. From the point of view of sheer weight of gold, the chief find was a huge and heavy buckle, inlaid with niello ; but the harness included twentyeight other pieces, all richly jewelled with garnets and, in some instances, blue and white mosaic glass. We must remember too that the sword has a jewelled gold hilt and two hemi-spherical bosses of gold, jewelled with garnet and blue glass, on the sheath (PLATE IX). There are also a number of minor fragments of gold, including one or two unornamented strap-mounts, two jewelled filigree strips of great delicacy, and a tiny mount of gold foil in the form of an animal. The excavators also found various ornamental fittings of wood or a similar material that were plated with gold.
Roses in Antiquity
Authors: Carter W. L.
Published: August 2016

One of the many pitfalls encountered in the search for evidence of roses in ancient times is the use of the word ‘rose’ in connexion with flowers having no association whatever with roses, e.g. the Rose of Jericho and the Rose of Sharon. This is particularly true of references in the Old Testament, although some of them, notably in Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom of Solomon and Esdras, undoubtedly refer to the rose and rose bushes. Wild roses flourish in Palestine, an attractive type being Rosa phoenicea, whose clusters of creamy-white bloom are sufficiently striking to invite attention. This rose would be known to the ancients, for it is found scattered in numerous localities in the Troad and Syria. It is, of course, impossible to record with reasonable certainty the full tale of roses with which the ancient world was familiar, but sufficient sources of information remain to enable a fair appraisal to be made. Some of the roses have stayed in cultivation down the centuries, and are still grown in gardens. Others, such as the ‘.twice-blooming’ roses of Paestum, have vanished, and an exact description is impossible.
Greek Board-Games
Authors: Austin R. G.
Published: August 2016

The study of Greek board-games is almost wholly inconclusive, owing to the scanty and extremely imprecise evidence available. Difficulties would in any case be inevitable, since most games are better grasped in actual play than by studying a set of written rules; and here the technicalities are expressed in a foreign language and were sometimes not clear even to their users, who cheerfully omit what they do not understand, or take it for granted that the reader is familiar with the main details. Further, the games so described by our authorities had often been long obsolete. Some of the difficulties may be realized by trying to reconstruct a game of Ombre entirely from Pope’s Rape of the Lock, or a game of cricket from Dickens’ account of All Muggleton v. Dingley Dell (even with the help of Mr A. G. Macdonell’s searching critique of that famous match). Here is an example of a rather different kind, which well shows the pitfalls of unfamiliar teiminology; it is translated from K. Silex’s John Bull xu Hause, and is an attempt to explain cricket to Germans. ‘Two teams of II men oppose each other; two “wickets” are set [how ?] in the ground at a distance of 20 metres, being three wooden sticks [how high ?], over which two rods (Stäbe) are laid [how?]. The aim is to hit the wicket with a ball [how big?] or to knock off the rods with it. One side defends the wicket, the other attacks; the defenders post before each wicket [where ?] a “batsman” with a striker (Schläger): the other side opposes him with a “bowler” who tries to hit the wicket with the ball [how?]. Two men only of the defence are in actual play, the rest wait their turn’ … etc.
Ancient Harbours
Authors: Savile Leopold Halliday
Published: August 2016

Shipbuilding and harbour engineering are two of the oldest branches of our profession as Civil Engineers. It is well established that before 3300 B.C. the Egyptians built sea-going ships and that they made voyages to far lands to procure iron, lead, silver and other materials; and it is recorded on the Palermo stone that about 3000 B.C. king Seneferu built sixty great ships to go to the Syrian coast to bring cedar-wood for his works. In the British Museum is a stone statue of Bedja, son of Ankhu, one of the great shipbuilders of his days. The terminus of these voyages was on the Canopic branch of the Nile, where was situated A-ur or the Great Door, which Mr P. E. Newberry calls ‘an ancient Alexandria of a period earlier than 3000 B.c.’ Little is known about this harbour, except that Narmer, one of the earliest kings of the First Dynasty, considered it of great importance and decided to conquer the petty kingdom of Harpoon, to which it belonged. It was an inland port and probably had the disadvantages of that type, especially as it lay on the banks of an arm of the delta. The actual site of the port is not known, but I refer to it because it is the earliest harbour of which I have found mention and because it marks the beginning of the harbour of Alexandria, which, I think, has the longest history of any harbour in the world. I propose to devote some of my article to a study of the great schemes adopted on the Alexandrian site over a period of nearly 5000 years (FIG. I). There have been four distinct harbour building periods—the harbour of A-ur, about 3000 B.c.; the great harbour of Pharos, soon after 2000 B.c.; the harbour of Alexander the Great, begun in 332 B.c.; and the modern harbour, which dates from A.D. 1870.
Problems of Maltese Prehistory
Authors: Ward-Perkins J. B.
Published: August 2016

Malta has never lacked history. That melancholy fact is indeed all too apparent today and must be held to justify the publication of the necessarily ill-digested record of a preliminary survey of its antiquities undertaken during the six months before the outbreak of war. If further excuse be needed, it must be sought in the intrinsic interest of the prehistoric remains, as well as in the important bearing which they have upon wider problems of Mediterranean archaeology. Much work still remains to be done on these remains; but a brief summary of the results achieved in the last twenty years is not perhaps out of place at the present time.
The Revival of Berber Art
Authors: Frend W. H. C.
Published: August 2016

Much has been written about the revival of Celtic art in Britain during the last century of the Roman occupation, but so far evidence for similar movements in other parts of the Roman Empire has received but little attention from British archaeologists. Yet it is now nearly half a century since M. P. Gavault, a French archi- tect, excavated a 4th-5th century Christian church at Tigzirt on the Mediterranean coast west of Port Gueydon, and drew attention to the unclassical character of the ornamentation of the supports to the clerestory arches in the church. His suggestion was that the ornamentation was inspired by pre-Roman, Carthaginian originals, and implied a popular movement away from classical design.
People without a history
Authors: Crawford O. G. S.
Published: August 2016

Many years ago I was put in charge of the excavation of an ancient mound-site at Abu Geili on the Blue Nile near Sennar. Careful records were kept, but for reasons wholly outside my control it is only recently that I have been enabled to write a full account for publication. In the course of doing so I have constantly been brought up against first principles; in the present article I propose to consider how these principles apply, as I see it, to Sudanese archaeology at the present time.
Nechtanesmere
Authors: Wainwright F. T.
Published: August 2016

In 685 Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria, led an expedition against the Picts. North of the Tay, at Dunnichen near Forfar, he was slain and his army was destroyed by the forces of Brude mac Beli King of the Picts. The battle was fought near a loch, Symeon of Durham's ‘Nechtanesmere’, which scholars of the 19th century believed to have existed in the mosslands of Dunnichen. The site of the battle is not known, the loch itself has now disappeared, and the accounts of local historians and others, neither properly checked nor fully assimilated by national historians, are not all easily accessible. Floods which followed the winter of 1946–47 temporarily restored at least part of the old loch or mere, and in the summer of 1947 the flood-marks in the fields could still be seen. It seemed worth while to try to indicate on a map the extent of the vanished loch and this, with the aid of photography and a field-survey, has been possible. It seemed worth while also to sift the meagre scraps of evidence provided by chroniclers and, often unintentionally, by local writers of the last century, for these scattered scraps deserve to be brought together and re-examined.
Sigurd in the Art of the Viking Age
Authors: Ellis Hilda R.
Published: August 2016

The youthful adventures of Sigurd the Volsung, before his fateful meetings with Brynhild and the sons of Gjuki, have given plenty of opportunities for argument and the weaving of contradictory theories. To some it has seemed that here we find ourselves with the tangled remains of a myth; to others that we are dealing with the elaborated version of a widespread folk-tale. The complex series of hypothetical lays and sagas traced out by scholars to form the ancestry of the Old Norse version of the story has become a spider’s web of bewildering possibilities, a rather depressing prologue to what at first sight seems merely a rousing story of a young hero who kills a dragon. The question of literary antecedents and the problems of textual history have been fully and ably followed up, particularly by Heusler and Schneider; in this brief study I intend to approach the subject from a different direction.
The Grey Wolf
Authors: Matheson Colin
Published: August 2016

In a previous paper (1) an attempt was made to describe the inter-relations of man and bear in Europe from early times to the present day. In many ways the influence of the wolf has been more important than that of the bear on the habits and thoughts of European man. Occasionally it has figured in a favourable light, as in the case of the she-wolf credited with suckling the twin founders of the City on Seven Hills (though even here the double meaning of lupa—applied in a transferative sense to ladies whose character would not bear close investigation—has led some authors to a conjecture which it might not have been politic to mention to any patriotic inhabitant of the grandeur that was Rome). But in general, whether in Italy or elsewhere, no animal has been so hated and feared. Among the ancient Greeks in the south—whose Lyceum at Athens and sanctuary of Apollo Lukeios at Sicyon may have originated in efforts to propitiate the wolves-as among the Letts of the north who, perhaps as late as the 17th century, sacrificed a goat each December to the wolves so that their other livestock might be spared(2) ; from Scotland where priests offered the prayer, quoted by Fittis (3) from the old Litany of Dunkeld, for deliverance ‘from robbers and caterans, from wolves and all wild beasts’, to Russia where peasants pronounced a spell on St. George's Day with the recurring plea, ‘God grant the wolf may not take our cattle‘ (4); the wolf was the great destroyer, the despoiler of flocks and herds and man's chief enemy in the animal world.
The Sailing Ship in Ancient Egypt
Authors: Hornell James
Published: August 2016

Many attempts have been made to elucidate the problems created by a critical examination of the obscure constructional methods employed by the Ancient Egyptians when building sailing craft for use on the Nile and, alternatively, at sea. None has proved entierly satisfactoy. Two reasons are chiefly responsible; the first is lack of adequate knowledge on the part of most writers of the mechanical principles governing ship designing at the present day; the other is a similar lack of any wide and intimate acquaintance with the designs followed and methods employed by peoples who retain primitive features in the construction of their sailing craft, particularly on the Nile in its upper reaches beyond the confines of Egypt. That it has been my good fortune to have had opportunities to study at first-hand the construction of sailing craft in every important quarter of the world, and, in especial, that of those in use on all sections of the Nile from its mouths to its source in Uganda, is my excuse for the present attempt to explain away some of the difficulties that have troubled or misled so many previous writers on this subject.
La date des kourganes de Trialeti
Authors: Schaeffer C. F. A.
Published: August 2016

Les étonnantesm trouvailles retirées par la mission russe de Tsalka (direction B. A. Kuftin) des grands tertres funéraires ou kourganes de la vallée supérieure de la Khram dans la province de Trialeti, Géorgie centrale, à l'Ouest de Tiflis (1), ont causé une sensation dans le monde des archéologues (2). Comme, à l'occasion d'une étude d'ensemble sur la chronologie du Bronze au Caucase (3), nous venons d'étudier ces nouvelles trouvailles, il nous paraît utile de publier ici nos conclusions relatives à la date qu‘;il convient d'attribuer au kourganes de Trialeti. La question, en effet, intéresse au plus haut point l'archéologie du Caucase.

Disons tout de suite que Mr. Kuftin considère l'époque de la quatrième tombe à fosse de Mycènes et celle de Troie vi comme le terminus post quem des plus récentes des kourganes qu'il classe à la fin du Bronze Moyen. Il ne croit pas devoir envisager pour eux une date postérieure aux xvue siècle avant notre ère, tandis que nous serions en faveur d'une attribution de l'ensemble de ces kourganes aux xvie-xve s., c'est-à-dire au début du Bronze Récent.
Cornish Fish Cellars
Authors: Pounds N. J. G.
Published: August 2016

In their annual migration from the warm waters of the North Atlantic, the pilchard shoals rarely travelled further east than the coasts of Cornwall and southwest Devon. Here they were caught in vast numbers and preserved, for export or use, in fish cellars which lay along the coast. The Cornish fish cellar was a building of highly specialized type, in which the pilchards were salted and pressed. With the gradual disappearance of the pilchard fishery during the nineteenth century the cellars were first abandoned, and then became ruinous or were converted to other uses.
Roots and Origins: a review
Authors: Taylor E. G. R.
Published: August 2016

The late Mr Thomas Burke was well known for his popular writings on London life, and the phrases employed by literary reviewers of his earlier works are precisely applicable to his English Townsman: ‘it swarms with rare and amusing pictures,’ ‘it is a mine of out-of-the-way facts.’ A man of strong prejudices, Mr Burke was accustomed to see what he expected to see, factory workers, for example, to this day commencing toil at 6 a.m. while their employers ‘roll-up in their cars at about eleven.’ Nevertheless he is concerned to emphasize the wholly laudable thesis that it is just as ‘natural’ for men to live in towns as in villages. Yet his supporting arguments are not always very happy, as when he cites the Victorian sociologist, Henry Mayhew, who had worked out (and mapped) the geographical incidence of crime. It seems that while total criminality did not vary, the townsman was addicted merely to burglary, larceny, forgery, pocket-picking and shop-lifting, while the countryman specialized in crimes ‘of the kind named unmentionable’ (which incidentally included illegitimacy). And after all, says Mr Burke ‘burglary and thieving are fairly wholesome and quite natural activities.’ Many of our towns, so he thought, were at least as old as our villages, for ‘when [man] rose from savagery it was instinctive in him to gather with his fellows for mutual protection, for the exchange of knowledge and for the sharing of experience’. Such an opinion may pass muster in a book which, in point of fact, makes very entertaining light reading. But unfortunately it is the kind of opinion that is very widespread, and in particular our Planners, like Mr Burke, have never read their Gordon Childe. Build some houses, add a so-called ‘trading-estate’ (actually a congeries of small factories), ‘decant’ the ‘over-spill’ of some growing city into the houses and ‘steer’ some industrialists (or bribe them) into the factories : there is your recipe for a New Town. The habit of studying present-day cities in their functional aspects, and of examining the relationship between function and geographical situation has not yet spread from the geographers to the borough engineers, borough surveyors and county architects who form the corps d’élite of physical Planners; still less of course do these experts probe with the archaeologist and the historian into the problem of the roots and origins of urban life. In the United States there is evidence of a wider vision, and if the young men and women reading philosophy, history and economics at Oxford together with their contemporaries reading mathematics and physics at Cambridge were even to flit through just the Syllabus and Maps of the Chicago course in Anthropology described by the Editor in the September number of ANTIQUITY, our future governing classes might be in a better position to resolve the antithesis between Plato and Karl Marx.
Problems and Policies
Authors: Wainwright F. T.
Published: August 2016

Perhaps at no time more than the present have British archaeological studies had such need of a stocktaking'. An occasional stocktaking of knowledge and techniques is essential to the successful advancement of any study, and the Council for British Archaeology has undoubtedly stimulated archaeological studies by the publication of the first part of the Survey and Policy of Field Research. Under the joint-editorship of Professor Hawkes and Professor Piggott many of Britain's archaeologists have co-operated to review the present position and the future development of British archaeological studies. The volume is divided into two chapters; the first surveys our archaeological knowledge, and the second indicates how the major problems may best be tackled. Its span in time appals the mere historian. It ranges from the Palaeolithic Age to the 7th century of the Christian Era, from the so-called ' eoliths ' to the so-called ' Kentish jewelry '. No single scholar would have been competent to discuss all the problems raised, and no single scholar is competent to criticize the work of this team of specialists.
Canterbury Excavations, 1944–8
Authors: Frere Sheppard
Published: August 2016

On 1 June 1942, occurred the German air-raid which destroyed about one-fifth of the old part of the City of Canterbury. It was soon realized that a unique opportunity existed of discovering something of the archaeological past of the city before rebuilding again concealed the wide areas now exposed.

It was not only an opportunity but a duty ; for modern rebuilding, with its deep foundations, would be bound to destroy a very large part of whatever evidence had survived until the present. The Canterbury Excavations Committee was accordingly formed by the initiative of the local Archaeological Society, and excavations under a supervisor lent by the Ministry of Works began in August 1944, and have continued three times a year up to the present.

Canterbury is one of the few Romano-British towns where there are good grounds for supposing a continuity of occupation through the Dark Ages. Thus though there was little to hint at any pre-Roman occupation, from the Roman, Saxon, and Medieval periods much was to be expected. Yet such a prediction has not turned out wholly true. On the one hand evidence for a pre-Roman Belgic settlement is accumulating ; but little of Saxon date has been found, and the circumstances of the excavations have limited the extent of the medieval discoveries.

The town could not be investigated purely as an archaeological problem, digging on sites which seemed promising and following out the plan as on an open site like Silchester or Verulam. There was a double call. Rebuilding was ever imminent, and the first sites to be rebuilt were likely to be along the main street-frontages. Attention was necessarily devoted first to them.
The Origin of the British People:
Archaeology and the Festival of Britain
Authors: Hawkes Jacquetta
Published: August 2016

A hundred years ago, when Paxton's Crystal
Palace went up among the elms of Hyde Park, it
would never have entered the mind even of the
Prince Consort that it should contain a section
devoted to British Antiquity. The Great Exhibition
was a glorification of the Present, of Progress,
and its most conspicuous salute to the past took
the form of a proliferation of Gothic ornament,
and Pugin's gorgeous Medieval Court. The 1951
Festival of Britain exhibition on the South Bank
will include a pavilion illustrating the
Origin of the British
People with material drawn almost
entirely from the discoveries of British
archaeology made since 1851. I do not think that
this can be regarded as a tribute to the progress
of our subject in any simple sense, rather it is a
result of the development of the historical
consciousness so characteristic of our time, and
of which this progress itself forms a part.
However, without further metaphysic, it remains a
fact that one of the two official lines of entry
into the South Bank Exhibition will be through a
pavilion where many hundreds of thousands of
people will find it difficult not to give at least
a passing glance at a display of British
prehistory.
Archaeological History: a review
Authors: Crawford O. G. S.
Published: August 2016

These three books between them nearly
cover the whole effective range of British
archaeology, from the gropings and fumblings of
medieval monks to the era of pollen analysis and
radio-carbon. There is a gap of nearly a century,
however, between the death of Stukeley in 1765 and
the beginning of Dr Daniel's hundred years. That
is the unfortunate but inevitable result of
adopting the rigid yard-stick of a century for
measuring what in fact is the growth of living
knowledge.
The Gorsedd of the Bards of Britain
Authors: Peate Iorwerth C.
Published: August 2016

Professor Stuart Piggott ends his
admirable study of William Stukeley with these
words: ‘It was a Druidic dream-world which has
left an oddly tangible relic today in the Welsh
Eisteddfod with its Gorsedd Circle, invented by
Iolo Morganwg in response to romantic Welsh
patriotism a century or so ago, but in the end to
be derived from Stukeley …’. When I pointed out to
Professor Piggott that, in this form, his
statement was not strictly accurate, he suggested
that a brief note on the Welsh Eisteddfod and
Gorsedd would prove of value.
The Silver Spoons from Sutton Hoo
Authors: Ward Gordon
Published: August 2016

There were found in the great ship burial two silver spoons, ten inches long, of a type well-known about the 6th century A.D. They have inscribed on them in Greek the names SAUL and PAUL (FIG. I). Although several spoons of this character are known to students, their precise use remains obscure. Since they mostly bear the names of saints it is possible that they served some special liturgical purpose, but it is equally possible that they were strictly comparable to the christening mug of later ages (see discussion by Ernst Kitzinger in ANTIQUITY for March 1940). At Sutton Hoo the spoons were closely associated with a set of silver bowls bearing a cruciform decoration and were placed close to the right side of the position which should have been occupied by the head of the deceased. R. L. S. Bruce Mitford of the British Museum (Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology, Vol. XXV, 1949), writes as follows:— ‘We may accept the spoons without hesitation as a present for a convert—not a Christening gift for an infant, but as a gift intended to mark the baptism of an adult convert relinquishing his pagan state, and no doubt a royal convert’.
The Symbols carved on Stonehenge
Authors: Crawford O. G. S.
Published: August 2016

Last summer an archaeologist, Mr R. J. C. Atkinson, taking photographs at Stonehenge, made a most remarkable discovery. He was preparing to photograph a name carved on the inward-facing (northwest) face of Stone 53, one of the Great Horseshoe Trilithons; for this purpose he had remained there after 5 o’clock on July 10th, waiting for the sun to move round and shine on it. Looking not directly at the stone itself but at the image on the glass of his reflex camera, he suddenly saw the dark outline of what appeared to be a dagger, and beside it that of an axe. The carvings were deeply cut and the edges smoothened by the erosive action of more than thirty centuries of British weather (PLATE I). Closer inspection revealed several more axes and some other markings, all probably artificial but now too much weathered for decipherment. Two days later a ten-year-old schoolboy, David Booth, found an axe on the outer face of Stone 4, one of the stones of the Outer Circle, and subsequent search revealed ten more axes on the same face (PLATES II, VI A). Later still, while engaged in making casts of the axes already discovered, Mr R. S. Newall has found many more, bringing the total for Stone 53 up to 12 and for Stone 4 to 25, including on the latter one exceptionally large axe measuring 14 inches in length and 10½ inches across the splayed cutting edge. He has also verified three axes like the others near the bottom left-hand corner of the outer face of Stone 3 (PLATE III B).
Archaeological Discoveries on the Blue Nile
Authors: Addison F.
Published: August 2016

In a recent article in this journal Mr O. G. S. Crawford referred to the people of the Sudan as a people without a history, and he drew attention to the possibilities of filling some of the lacunae in their history by the excavation of sites south of Khartoum especially along the White Nile. It is, of course, true, as the responsible authorities are well aware, that a good deal of exploration remains to be done in the Sudan and awaits only the necessary funds. It is probable, also, that many ancient village sites in the area between the Blue and White Niles now lie beneath the cotton fields of the Gezira Irrigation Scheme. It is therefore the more unfortunate that some archaeological discoveries which have been made have either been inadequately published or their publication has been inordinately delayed.

In this latter respect archaeology has been singularly unfortunate in the district round Sennar, on the Blue Nile, a region which appears to have been important throughout the history of the Sudan. It is doubtful if the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom penetrated as far south as this, though their descendants may have done so in New Kingdom times ; but the area was certainly a centre of civilization in the heyday of the Meroitic kingdom, about the beginning of the Christian era, and, nearer our own times, it was the headquarters of the powerful Fung kings of the 16th to 18th centuries.
George Grant MacCurdy
Authors: Hooton Earnest A.
Published: August 2016

This appreciation of George Grant MacCurdy does not purport to record either the main facts or the details of his long and fruitful life. It is merely the appraisal of the man, the teacher, and the scientist by one who was his junior friend and colleague for more than a third of a century. It is designed to supplement the admirable biographical sketch written by Dr Hugh Hencken for the Bulletin $16 of the American School of Prehistoric Research.
What was Murrhine?
Authors: Bromehead C. N.
Published: August 2016

In 1855 C. Müller published the first volume of hisGeographi Graeci Minores: in the introduction to the ‘Periplus of the Erythraean Sea’ he states that he has studied six hundred writers on the question’ what was murrhine, but that it may be now regarded as certain that murrhine vases were made of fluorspar’. Since, however, the opinions which Müller discarded have been revived by writers entitled to respectful consideration, some of whom have also given reasons for rejecting the identification with fluorspar, it seems desirable to review the matter and to put on record certain new evidence.
Sutton Hoo—a rejoinder
Authors: Bruce-Mitford R. L. S. , Allan John
Published: August 2016

Dr Gordon Ward says that my paper ‘Sutton Hoo-Recent Theories’ is described by me as ‘embodying the official views about Sutton Hoo’ and ‘thus claims very particular authority’. What I said in fact was (op. cit., p. 1) that, since opposite opinions had recently been expressed on certain critical aspects of the find (Pagan or Christian ? Grave or Cenotaph ? English or Swedish ?),’ it is desirable that an official assessment of the issues should be offered to students, even though it cannot be regarded as final’. Anyone who can get into print can say what he likes about Sutton Hoo. Those officially engaged on the study and definition of the material naturally bear a greater responsibility for their utterances. They should also be acquainted with the facts, which not all commentators have been. By ‘official assessment’ I meant no more than that, as a sympathetic reader must at once have seen.
The Horn of the Unicorn
Authors: Humphreys Humphrey
Published: August 2016

Though everyone now agrees that the unicorn never existed, this unanimity is quite recent. All through the 19th century there were periodic reports of its presence in darkest Africa or on the Asiatic steppes, and hopes that it would turn out to be a reality died hard. But if there never was such a creature why did the men of the Middle Ages believe in it so firmly and depict it so often? As Christians it was incumbent on them to do so, for it was mentioned in the Old Testament and, therefore, must be real. Its presence there was due to the authors of the Septuagint, the Hellenised Jews who, at Alexandria, in the centuries between the city's foundation and the Christian era, translated their sacred books from Hebrew into Greek and on seven occasions used the word μονόκερως (Greek for unicorn).
The Discovery of Inscribed Clay Tablets at Mycenae
Authors: Wace A. J. B.
Published: August 2016

That a system of writing had been in use in the Mycenaean civilisation on the mainland of Greece had been known ever since the then existing evidence was collected by Tsountas and Manatt in The Mycenaean Age, published in 1897. Further evidence thereafter slowly accumulated. An inscribed stirrup jar was found at Orchomenos in 1903. In subsequent years others were discovered at Tiryns, Thebes, and Eleusis; but in the fourth volume of The Palace of Minos, published in 1935, Sir Arthur Evans could only say as regards the Greek mainland ‘ the absence of clay tablets should be rather set down to the accidents of discovery or to climatic causes ’. Four years later in 1939 Professor Blegen found in the newly discovered Palace of Nestor at Pylos an archive room with several hundred inscribed clay tablets. This number he has further increased in his resumed excavations in 1952. In recording the discovery of the House of the Oil Merchant at Mycenae in 1950 I ventured to prophesy that if the excavation of that house could be completed it was quite likely that inscribed clay tablets would be found in its ruins. In the complete excavation of that house at Mycenae in the summer of 1952 the prophecy was fulfilled and thirty-eight clay tablets were found in two of its rooms. This is a discovery of the first importance; in conjunction with the tablets from Pylos it shows that we must expect to find inscribed clay tablets in any Mycenaean palace or large private house on the Greek mainland. There must have been tablets in the palace at Mycenae but that site was badly damaged by later building above it and subsequent denudation. At Tiryns too there must have been tablets, but that site like the Mycenae palace was excavated in the 1880’s when archaeologists were not so alive to the possibilities of what might be found. A clay tablet in the earth or even just out of the earth is barely recognizable as such. Consequently the excavator himself must have a good eye for such things and train his workmen to observe and preserve even the most insignificant looking objects of clay. It is probably too late now to find tablets at Tiryns, but some presumably must still lurk in the ruins of the palace at Thebes if that site can ever be fully excavated. The Acropolis of Athens with the palace of Erechtheus presumably once had tablets, but the classical buildings and the excavations of the last century there have destroyed any hope of their survival.
Hoddom
Authors: Radford C. A. Ralegh
Published: August 2016

HODDOM lies in Dumfriesshire on the east bank of the Annan, about 10miles from the Solway. The valley, which now carries the main road and the railway from Carlisle to the north, has always been an important line of communication and Hoddom lies at a point where the river is easily passable. The name first appears in records of the 12th century, when the church of Hoddom was claimed as a possession of the See of Glasgow. But the importance of the site is far older as is shown by the magnificent series of crosses, illustrated in this article. The tradition of Glasgow would carry the story of Hoddom even further back, connecting the church with St. Kentigern, the founder of the See. The crosses have been found at various times in and around the site of the demolished parish church. The finest pieces, after a chequered history, unhappily disappeared during the second world war. It has therefore seemed desirable to publish a rather fuller record of the more important monuments, illustrating them with the excellent series of photographs taken by Dr 0. G. S. Crawford in 1936, when they were preserved at Hoddom Castle1. I am much indebted to Dr Crawford, who suggested the prepara- tion of this account and placed at my disposal his series of photographs. At Hoddom I had the assistance of Mr R. C. Reid, who made arrangements with the Dumfriesshire County Council and the Church of Scotland for the removal to the Burgh Museum of Dumfries of the later stones, which still lay in the kirkyard. In the course of unearthing stones half buried in the soil, opportunity was taken to re-examine the masonry of the medieval church. I would express my best thanks to Mr Reid and to all others con- cerned, to Mr A. E. Truckell, Curator of the Burgh Museum, and Miss B. Blanche for assistance in the preparation for publication of the later stones ; the drawings of the later stones are by Miss Blanche. Fig. I is reproduced, by kind permission of the Ashmolean Museum, from the late W. G. Collingwood's original drawing (Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age, fig, 51).