bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Recent Finds at Beisan
Authors: Rowe Alan
Published: August 2016

Ever since the year 1921 the Palestine Expedition of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania has been engaged in the excavation of the ancient city of Beth-Shan, at present called Beisan, which lies in North Palestine at the eastern end of the Valley of Jezreel. The site consists of an enonnous mound, named Tell el-Hosn, or ‘Mound of the Fortress’, and an extensive cemetery—one of the largest in Palestine, which has been proved to contain burials of all periods, from the early Bronze Age to the Byzantine era. In the tell itself have so far been found the remains of nine superimposed citadels or city-levels :—I, Arabic (mosque), Crusader, etc., 636 A.D.-19th century A.D.; II, Byzantine (circular church), 330 A.D.-636 A.D. ; III, Hellenistic (temple), Jewish and Roman, 301 B.C.-329 A.D.; IV, Late Ramesside, Philistine, Israelite, Assyrian, Scythian, New Babylonian, Old Persian, etc., 1224 B.C.-302 B.C.; V, Rameses 11 (two Canaanite temples,-northern one, ' House of Ashtaroth ' of I Samuel, xxxi, 10, and southern one ‘Temple of Dagon’ of I Chronicles, x, 10), 1292 B.c.-1225 B.C.; VI, Seti I,—two levels, late Seti, early Seti (Canaanite temple), 1313 B.C.-1292 B.C. ; VII, Amenophis III, etc. (Canaanite Temple), 141 I B.c.-13 14 B.C. ; VIII, pre-Amenophis III, 1446 B.c.-1412 B.C.; and IX, Thothmes III (two Canaanite temples,-southern one for ‘Mekal, the god of Beth-Shan’, and northern one for his female counterpart), 1501 B.C.-1447 B.C. It will thus be seen that there have been discovered altogether nine sacred buildings on the tell, that is to say, an Arabic mosque, a Byzantine circular church, a Hellenistic temple, and six Canaanite temples. All the Canaanite temples have been unearthed since the year 1925, the two temples of Thothmes III being excavated in the 1927 season.
Stone Cists
Authors: Crawford O. G. S.
Published: August 2016

Cists are often met with on the open moors of Britain, and a brief account of them may therefore be of interest.

First, a few words about terminology. Our predecessors used also the words ‘Kist’ and ‘Kist-vaen’, and indeed the latter word still survives in some of our remoter western districts. ‘Kist-vaen’ is however an impossible word ; it was invented by antiquaries to whom all prehistoric monuments were ‘Celtic’, requiring therefore a Celtic name. Since the original name was unknown, new ones had to be invented. In the days when the words of Authority were heard with undue respect and awkward questions were seldom put, those spurious terms obtained wide currency. The word ‘cist’ has long been used by Scottish archaeologists, and it is the one adopted by the British Ordnance Survey.
‘Old England’, Brentford
Authors: Wheeler R. E. M.
Published: August 2016

Whether Brentford was at one time Brigantford, or the ford of the Brigantes, is a question which the modern etymologist would not hesitate to scorn; nor is the identity of the site with the ford whereat conquering Caesar crossed the river on a celebrated occasion as substantial as the granite monument which now commemorates the event at the head of the ferry-stairs. Nor yet again is the name ‘Old England’, which the Ordnance Survey ascribes to the water-meadow on the Middlesex shore some 400 yards above the present junction of Thames and Brent, of authenticated antiquity. Nevertheless here and hereabouts, as our museums can show, was a great losing of swords and spears in prehistoric times, and here too, as we now know, were riverside dwellers at the end of the Bronze Age and, again, in Roman and later times. The name ‘Old England’ may stand.
The Beginnings of Egyptian Civilization
Authors: Brunton Guy
Published: August 2016

Ever since the first discovery of predynastic cemeteries in Egypt by Sir Flinders Petrie at Naqada in 1895 it was realized that the beginnings of civilization in the Nile Valley had not been found, and that remains of earlier stages might come to light. For nearly thirty years, in spite of active and more or less scientific excavation in all parts of Egypt and Nubia, no earlier settlements or cemeteries were discovered which could then be classed as older than predynastic. Flintwork of palaeolithic man abounded, especially on the high desert; and the flints of the Fayyum, in great variety, were recognized as mainly neolithic. But the ancestors or forerunners of the predynastic people seemed to have left no other trace. Probably the advance of the cultivation with the gradual rise of the mud level had obliterated all that they had left behind them. Steep slopes of desert are obviously covered less quickly than the flatter areas. The eastern desert fringing the cultivation in the Badari district of Middle Egypt presents a succession of more or less high spurs intersected by dry watercourses or wadys running down from the cliffs to the fields. It is here, and so far here only, that the much sought for precursors of the predynastic Egyptians have been revealed to us. They have been called Badarians to distinguish them from the well-known predynastic people (Amratians, Gerzeans and Semainians) with whom they are closely akin both in culture and physical type.
The Gospels and their Oldest Manuscripts
Authors: Burkitt F. C.
Published: August 2016

To write about the Gospels, explaining their origin and transmission, within the compass of an article in ANTIQUITisY o nly possible by expounding the writer's own views on this much discussed and in many parts highly controversial subject in a somewhat peremptory and dogmatic fashion. I therefore make my apologies beforehand to such of my readers as may hold other views, which the inevitable limits of space make it for me impossible to discuss. The main problems I have to consider are : (I) how did the Gospels come to be written, (2) in what ways were they preserved, and (3) what are the chief texts actually extant ?
Population and Agriculture in Roman Britain: A reply
Authors: Randall H. J.
Published: August 2016

It is with great diffidence that I venture to make a few criticisms upon certain aspects of Mr R. G. Collingwood's most suggestive paper in the September number of ANTIQUITY on 'Town and Country in Roman Britain'. He is an expert, I am an amateur; he has probably forgotten more about Roman Britain than I ever knew; but the points that I desire to discuss are matters of general inference rather than of expert knowledge.
The End of the Maya Old Empire
Authors: Mitchell J. Leslie
Published: August 2016

The early nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable reversal of judgment on the American pre-Columbian cultures. Prescott's romantic histories and Lord Kingsborough's monumental Mexican Antiquities are inspirations of earlier and less sceptical eras. Such pleasing imaginings as that the Spaniards ‘overthrew in Mexico a greater civilization than their own’ received scant support from the archaeologist who had displaced the antiquary, or from the critical historian who interpreted him. Dr Robertson1 summed up the verdict of the new investigators;:—‘The inhabitants of the New World were in a state of society so extremely rude as to be unacquainted with those arts which are the first essays of human ingenuity in its advance towards improvement’. He characterized Cortes's ‘emperors’ as ‘headmen’, the gorgeous palaces of the Conquest as ‘huts or mounds of rubble’, the Aztec Empire as a ‘league of primitive tribes’. Research, both among the ruins of the Mexican Valley and in the histories of the more prosaic conquistadores, established a singular lack of anything on the pre-Columbian continents which could be described as other than a tawdry barbarism.
The First Monasteries
Authors: Sawyer E. H.
Published: August 2016

In the ‘Era of Martyrs’ at the end of the third century the persecuted Copts, the Christians of Egypt, suffered death or fled into the desert; but they found life possible only where there was water. The most favourable of these few oases was Nitria, today called ‘Wadi Natrun’ or Valley of Soda, a shallow depression of twenty-two miles by five in the Libyan desert surface. It is situated a camel journey of a day and a half along the ancient track which leaves the Delta near Terenthus, the modern El Tarrana. In it there are eight small lakes, some of whose waters contain soda, others salt. They lie about seventyfive feet below sea-level and are fed not by the Nile, but, as Dr Ball has recently shown, by desert subsoil water flowing from the southwest. Wells dug in their vicinity yield water, brackish but drinkable, and on the shore of one was the town of Nitriotis, the habitation of the sodaworkers and glass-blowers, existing since ancient Egyptian times, Now the desert is crossed by a light railway, run by a company that exploits the salt and sodium carbonate.
Concerning Orientation
Authors: Engleheart George
Published: August 2016

If the possessor of a set of Archaeologia will open volume 25, for 1834, he will find over 40 pages, with many admirably drawn plans and plates, explaining some of the chief megalithic structures in England and Brittany as Dracontia, or temples of serpent-worship, a name and attribution which had originated with Stukeley a century earlier. This is but one example of the fantasies of the antiquaries of those times. We should, however, be slow to ridicule those old inquirers; they lacked our nova organa of excavation and comparison, the eyes and brain of modern archaeological science; though it is difficult to understand why they abandoned in these studies the sounder reasoning which served them in every-day affairs.
British Excavations at Constantinople
Authors: Rice D. Talbot
Published: August 2016

The study of the archaeology of eastern Christendom is as yet still in its infancy and the students of east Christian and Byzantine art have been few and far between in England. But of recent years there has arisen a new and more general interest in the civilization which was so violently condemned by Gibbon, and work both of a theoretical and of a practical character has been undertaken on a wider scale. With the theoretical or purely scholastic aspect we are not here concerned; but it seems of interest to present a brief survey of the actual work which has been undertaken by British investigators at Constantinople, the very centre of the Byzantine civilization. During the last four years excavation on a larger or smalIer scale has been in progress, and six separate sites have been examined more or less elaborately as funds have permitted. In 1927 and 1928 a large Expedition, supported by the British Academy, was in the field. In 1929 and 1930 funds were raised in England for work of a more modest nature, but the results were none the less interesting and in one instance discoveries were made which can well be classed within the realms of the sensational.
The Faiyum Depression
Authors: Ball John
Published: August 2016

With the publication of Sir Hanbury Brown’s Fayoum and Lake Moeris in 1892, it was widely believed that the problem of the situation and extent of the Lake Moeris of antiquity had been finally solved. Sir Hanbury Brown pointed out that the shore-lines of an ancient lake could be traced in the Faiyum at a level of about 22 metres above sea; he concluded that this lake, which must have covered almost the whole of what is now the Faiyum province of Egypt, was the ancient Lake Moeris, and that the remarkable gravelly ridge known as the ‘Idwa Bank was the remains of an artificial embankment which had served to reclaim from the lake a comparatively small area around the present town of Medinet-el-Faiyum. Sir Hanbury Brown’s views received ready acceptance, because whilst satisfying all the modern levelling and other observations which had up to that time been made, they were also in tolerable accord with the account of Lake Moeris given by Herodotus and copied by subsequent classical writers.
The Ordnance Survey
Authors: Close Charles
Published: August 2016

The connexion between Maps and Archaeology is of a very obvious and straightforward nature. All distributional problems must, for instance, be studied on maps. If we want to find out about the distribution of the beaker folk, we must plot on a map the finds of the beakers; or if we desire to learn the area covered by examples of the ‘lanternes des morts’, a map of France is essential; the same applies to the study of long barrows and to a very great variety of archaeological studies. Moreover, in a more restricted sense, maps of sites are of the essence of the study of antiquity; we cannot understand the strength of the defences of the ancient Jebusite city unless we pore over the map of the excavations on the spur of Ophel. The excavations of every site are unintelligible without an accompanying map. In a still more restricted sense, each ‘find’ requires to have its position stated by the three co-ordinates of map-making: namely, its distance north or south, east or west, from—and above or below—some datum point in the excavations. Further, the maps themselves may furnish the only record left of some relicof antiquity. And,lastly ,ancient maps—and our present-day maps will one day be ancient—are valuable records of the past, of the culture of the age they represent, of population, human distribution and settlement, and, to some extent, of the science and art of the times. It is much to be regretted that so little mapmaking was done in ancient days. We should give a good deal for accurate contemporary plans of Rome of the time of Nero or of the battle of Hastings. And how much more for a contemporary map of Jerusalem and its surrounding country, before the destruction of the Holy City by Titus !
The Chiltern Grim's Ditches
Authors: Crawford O. G. S.
Published: August 2016

Quite a long time ago the Editor received an article on certain liner earthworks in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. The author, Mr M.W. Hughes, developed a reasoned hypothesis to account for the facts, basing his argument on the assumption that the course of the ditches marked on the Ordnance Maps was as correct and complete as possible. It seemed desirable, however, to test this in the field, and the Editor therefore applied to the Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey, with very satisfactory results. The course of each ditch was followed on foot, and its characteristic features recorded on the 6-inch map. The investigation thus initiated was carried on until nearly all the Grim’s ditches of Wessex, and some others as well, had been traced. The information thus obtained proved to be of considerable value ; many miles of new entrenchment were discovered, and these will be incorporated on the new (5th) edition of the one-inch Ordnance Map now being prepared, and will also appear in due course on the Ordnance Map of Anglo-Saxon Britain, now in preparation. It also became evident that the name Grim was attached to at least two quite distinct types of entrenchment. The date of each can, as a rule, only be determined by means of excavation; some of these examined are probably prehistoric ; others fall probably within the extreme limits of the years A.D. 350-700. Those dealt with in the present article are almost certainly either late Roman or Saxon.
Museums Old and New: some personal impressions
Authors: Crawford O. G. S.
Published: August 2016

Most readers of ANTIQUITYw ill have heard of the Pergamon Museum at Berlin; its opening was the chief event of the centenary celebrations of the German Archaeological Institute (see Mr R. G. Collingwood's note in ANTIQUITY, 1929, III, 339). Those, however, who have not actually seen it can hardly realize what an outstanding achievement that museum already is, even in its present unfinished state; nor perhaps do they know that the Pergamon reconstitutions do not stand alone. There are similar reconstitutions of other classical buildings and also of Middle Eastern remains. About five large rooms are at present opened, and their contents represent the high-water-mark of museum-craft in Europe, and are an objectlesson to the world ; but to me their significance seemed even deeper, marking the triumphal emergence of a new craft. I have seen many museums, but here for the first time in my life I felt completely satisfied. The ideal aimed at seemed to have been achieved; there was nothing to find fault with. Here at last was a thoroughly honest attempt to reconstruct ancient masterpieces of architecture, and to exhibit them without irrelevant distractions. The technique of exhibition achieves its end through simplicity and common sense. The lighting is admirable ; the floors of marble slabs (pink in the Altar-room and white or grey elsewhere) are thoroughly pleasing ; the walls are delightfully bare, with nothing but the briefest of labels carved in admirable lettering. The effect of the whole is over-whelming .
Balloon Photography and Archaeological Excavation
Authors: Guy P. L. O.
Published: August 2016

It is a great help to the understanding of a piece of country, a town or a building to get to some high point in the vicinity and look down upon it, and the more nearly vertical one's point of view the more accurate is one's impression. In the ‘nineties, as a boy, I used to spend hours at the top of the spire of Rouen Cathedral gazing down upon the city below, and it was only a step from this to record such a view photographically; but it was some time before I took my first truly vertical photograph.

About 1904, a friend who was engineer on the construction of the Rothesay Dock near Glasgow asked me to photograph for him the concrete foundations of a part of this dock: I could not get a proper view of these from anywhere on the ground, so I asked if I might utilize a great crane which stood nearby. It was probably against all the rules of the Clyde Trust, but I was thereupon swung high in the air over my subject, and plate 1 shows the result obtained with a no. 2 Bullseye Kodak.
The Guilloche
Authors: Seaby Allen W.
Published: August 2016

Any child provided with his first pair of compasses essays a row of tangential circles: if he adds a second row touching the first and maybe a third row, he has constructed the geometric basis of the classical Guilloche. The term is sometimes used to cover not only circular bands but crossing ones as well, and interlaced ornament generally.

While the engravers of La Madeleine were working on their bones, and the women sewing skins together with their bone needles, in Egypt and Western Asia the decorative arts were being perfected. Fig. I is a sketch of a motive on the gold-foil covering of a flint knife from a grave of the predynastic period. In Elam this can be matched on a seal with a pair of lions, ‘sejant rampant regardant’, their tails intertwined (fig. 2). A non-representational treatment is seen on an early Sumerian votive plaque (fig. 3). Disregarding its symbolic content, the strictly geometric construction may be noted. This ‘twist’, as a single row of circular bands is termed here, occurs in Cretan art of the 16th century B.C., and later, in Assyrian art. It may be surmised that, with other motives, as the rosette, lotus and palmette (but not the fret), the twist was handed on to the Greeks from the East. It reached Scandinavia, where it is found on hanging bowls, and is seen inlaid in coral at the base of the Gaulish flagon in the British Museum. The lip of that vessel bears a very rare variety of the twist, an angular one.
Remarkable Discoveries in the Athenian Agora
Authors: Shear Theodore Leslie
Published: August 2016

The second campaign of excavations in the Athenian Agora, which was begun in January 1932, has produced important results in many fields of art and archaeology. The work is conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and it enjoys the cooperation of the Greek Archaeological Society through the presence on the staff of Professor A. D. Keramopoullos of the University of Athens. During the present season an area of about one and one-half acres, which had been occupied by twenty modern houses, has been cleared by the removal of 10,000 tons of earth.
The Distribution of Gaulish and British Coins in Britain
Authors: Brooke George C.
Published: August 2016

The origin of the British coinage has in recent years broken loose from the tradition of an early 2nd century date. Its date is necessarily dependent upon the dating of the Gaulish coinage from which it is derived ; the link with Gaul has militated against the simpler view of the British coinage which would result from bringing the earliest issues into closer relation with those that bear names of princes known to history. The coinage of Gaul has lost perspective by the attempt to make it span the wide gap between Philip 11 of Macedon and the Roman conquest ; a very slow development of type has been assumed, and devious trade routes have been created to bring the gold stater from Macedon into Gaul.
Ostia in the Light of Recent Discoveries
Authors: Calza Guido
Published: August 2016

Twenty years have gone by since I was first appointed Director of Excavations at Ostia, and I feel that I have devoted the better part of my activity as an archaeologist to the great task of bringing the dead city back to life.

All that was known about Ostia when scientific investigation was first started there was the legendary tale of its foundation at the mouth of the Tiber by Ancus Marcius, fourth King of Rome ; its probable expansion under the republic, although the growth of Pozzuoli and the clogging up of the river’s bed would support the theory of a period of decline for Ostia at that time ; and its tremendous development under the Empire, especially in the second century. Of this there was proof in the vestiges of imperial constructions rising above ground and in the historically ascertained fact that Ostia was Rome’s trading centre and outlet on the sea. Little or nothing was known of the later period of the city, nor of its decline and final disappearance.
Waggons and their Ancestors
Authors: Lane R. H.
Published: August 2016

The main purpose of this article is to put
on record material from two collections of
photographs, made by Mr O.G.S. Crawford and by the
writer. As the ‘ exhibits ’ were varied and
numerous, it seemed desirable to make a selection
that would link up with what has already been
published on the subject in ANTIQUITYpr, oducing
in the process some shadow of an evolution. For
any opinions that are advanced, however, the
writer, and not Mr Crawford, must be held entirely
responsible.
Prehistoric Antiquities of Malta
Authors: Randall-MacIver David
Published: August 2016

There was certainly room for a well
illustrated work, providing at once a conspectus
and a review of early Maltese archaeology. Only an
unusual library can supply simultaneously to the
reader the Papers of the British
School at Rome, three or four
volumes of
Archaeologia, the
official reports on the excavations, Ebert’s
Reallexikon, and
Zammit’s Prehistoric
Malta, to mention only the
indispensable minimum. Even with all these the
student has not enough pictorial material to
enable him to visualize the whole
subject.
The Roman Orient and the Far East
Authors: Seligman C. G.
Published: August 2016

Compared with the civilizations of Egypt and the Near East, Chinese civilization as we know it is not of great age. Authentic history does not begin until about the ninth century B.C. (a commonly accepted date is 841 B.C.), nor have we archaeological finds that we can reasonably date prior to the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.c., though the beauty and mature style of the earliest known bronzes indicates a history of at least hundreds of years before this.
Vasa Samia
Authors: Waagé F. O.
Published: August 2016

It appears to be necessary for the human mind to temper the rigours of the scientific method with certain irrationalities. In archaeology, terminology usually performs this function of safety-valve, as witness the treatment of Greek place-names or the use with ‘B.C.’ of the ill-matched ‘A.D.’, especially in the monstrosity ‘such and such a century A.D.’ When these aberrations cause no confusion of meaning, the logical mind can only hold its breath and swallow hard, knowing that reform is hopeless, but when they lead to equivocation and thereby violate the primary rule of scientific terminology, no protest can be too emphatic.
The Mexican Indian Flying Game
Authors: Gallop Rodney
Published: August 2016

The first historical account of the JUEGO DE LOS VOLADORES of the Mexican Indians is to be found in Fr. Juan de Torquemada's De la Monarquía Indiana. The relevant passage, which internal evidence shows to have been written in 1612, is to be found in book 10 chapter 38. Preserving the complexities and angularities of the style it may be translated as follows:-

Among other forms of diversion, which these Western Indians had and with which they increased the solemnity of their festivals and gave pleasure to those present, was a manner of flying which they had, describing circles through the air, fastened by cords which hung from a stout, tall mast; and for the greater solace of the reader I will describe in words how it was done.
Some Anglo-Saxon Potters
Authors: Myres J. N. L.
Published: August 2016

The study of Anglo-Saxon pottery in the pagan period in England has probably received less attention, and has certainly made less progress, than that of any other archaeological epoch. Our knowledge of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age ceramics has been revolutionized in the last ten or fifteen years, and it is now possible to use the pottery of these periods, as it should be possible to use the pottery of any period, as the most ignificant and sensitive element in the cultural evidence for the time. With some types of Roman pottery it is possible to go still further, and to treat them not only as a barometer to indicate the varying cultural pressures, so to speak, of different areas and sites, but even as a chronometer for the close dating of the different phases in their occupation. But with Anglo-Saxon pottery at present we can do none of these things. Apart from certain rare and peculiar forms recently studied by Roeder: we know about as much and about as little about it as was known when Neville published his Saxon Obsequies in 1852, or Kemble first drew attention to the continental parallels in a pioneer paper in Archaeologia in 1856.
Umm el-Jamal
Authors: Horsfield George
Published: August 2016

Four kilometres within the boundary dividing the British Mandated Territory of Transjordan from Syria, 1000 metres above sea level, and on the northern limit of the plain south of the Jabal Druze (Hauran), lie the ruins of Umm el-Jamal. The city is twenty kilometres from Mafrak, where the pipe-line and road from Iraq cut the Hijaz railway on their way to Haifa on the Mediterranean. The Druze Mountain dominates the plain from the north and this monument lies at the foot, the most westerly of a series of ruined basalt-built towns and the most interesting.

The surrounding plain is not a desert of sand. Its ancient fertility is shown by the old field boundary stones, now wasted by wind-erosion and neglect, leaving a dry exhausted soil thinly sprinkled with desert plants and strewn in parts with basalt boulders grey with lichen. Nowadays the rainfall in these parts is negligible and an attempt some years ago to restart cultivation around Mafrak failed; for the soil was just dust, carried off by the wind in great clouds when ploughing was attempted. Mafrak is now inhabited, water having been found some hundreds of metres down by boring; and it was the outpost from which men and materials went forward to build the road and pipe-line now stretching down the corridor between Syria and Saudi Arabia to Iraq. Ancient trade routes converged in this neighbourhood and the name ‘Mafrak ’ signifies the ‘Junction’. It was in antiquity a strongly fortified site and later a station on the Haj route.
The Churches of Palestine and their Influence on Early Christian Architecture
Authors: Schneider Alfons Maria
Published: August 2016

The churches of the Holy Land play a very special part in the lengthy controversies as to the origin and formation of the Christian basilica, since particular significance is attributed to them as constituting a norm from which the basilica type developed. For example, Wulff remarks :l ' If any region anywhere played a leading part in the development of the early Christian basilica, it is Palestine, including the whole coast of Syria to Philistia, where, under Constantine the Great, building was already developed with the express purpose of fostering the cult in the holy places '. This view, illuminating in and for itself, is today generally accepted ; it cannot, however, be maintained against the result of recent excavations. In this article chief emphasis is laid on the churches of Constantine, which are of especial importance not only because of their age, but in particular because they stand on the most sacred places of Christendom.
Ancient Fields in Manaton Parish, Dartmoor
Authors: Shorter Alfred H.
Published: August 2016

In the district around the valley of the West Webburn stream which cuts north-south through eastern Dartmoor, Grimspound seems to attract most attention. I have found no reference to the old field boundaries and terraces which lie in this district, mostly within the western part of the parish of Manaton. This article deals with fields within, or adjacent to, the Manaton parish boundary, but there are also sets of terraces which I have observed, but not yet explored, mainly to the east of the Widecombe-Grimspound road, opposite Blackaton Manor. These terraces appear to be very similar to those described here, and as they are outside Manaton parish the connexion between the terminations of some sets of terraces and the parish boundary which, from the plan, appears to be significant, must not be emphasized.
Bronze Age Stone Monuments of Dartmoor
Authors: Brailsford J. W.
Published: August 2016

The lofty expanse of heather, bog and bare granite which forms the region under discussion in this paper, contains a numerous and in many ways unique group of prehistoric antiquities. Although Devonshire archaeologists have for many years been doing good work in this district, it has never, to the best of my knowledge, been comprehensively dealt with in the light of modern methods and experience. Consequently, the prehistory of Dartmoor still presents something of a mystery. After describing the material at our disposal, I shall here make a few tentative suggestions which seem to resolve some of the difficulties encountered in the interpretation of the archaeological evidence, and which may throw some light on the prehistory of the rest of southwest England.
Ancient Rome and Northern England. A Historical Summary
Authors: Richmond I. A.
Published: August 2016

On the northwest frontier of the Roman Empire, the upland country of northern England always belonged to the military zone. Even today, anyone traversing the wild fells of Pennine or Cheviot, which form its backbone, can soon appreciate why this should be: and understanding becomes complete when imagination has pierced the dark vista of medieval forest and outlaws’ haunts and apprehended a state of affairs when the bounds between man and nature were still more loosely defined. No Anglian settler had yet begun to clear the overgrown dales for farm, hamlet and township. Man was eking out an unenviable existence between forest and fell, selecting where he could the limestone shelves whose natural drainage afforded him good pasturage and meagre tillage. Two closely related factors thus determined the political character of the country. Forest and fell not only gave cover to enemies and outlaws but at the same time prevented the growth of flourishing agricultural communities, such as were capable of developing social instincts receptive of civilization. The result was chronic unrest and potential hostility to civil government.
The Strategy of Anglo-Saxon Invasion
Authors: Dauncey K. D. M.
Published: August 2016

The regions of England in which the Anglo-Saxons first settled have their separate histories. In more than one of these recent archaeological discovery has brought new ideas of how the invasion took place; in the East Midlands, however, what may be called the standard interpretation of the invasion lags somewhat behind the general structure of theory which has been accepted for other areas. As offering a new approach to the study of this region no apology is proffered for the submission of fragmentary evidence which has by chance come to light, incomplete though any form of archaeological study must necessarily be in time of war. It does not, however, follow that no apology is due for the temerity with which the facts have been interpreted ; for this latter only indulgence can be claimed, in that the time and circumstance justify some hazarded interpretation which may be fortunate enough to survive until more adequate examination and digestion are possible.
Notes on Minoan Chronology
Authors: Hutchinson R. W.
Published: August 2016

Most statements on the subject of Aegean chronology depend and will continue to depend on the Minoan system evolved by Sir Arthur Evans, who based his absolute dating chiefly on synchronisms with Egypt according to the chronology laid down by Dr Eduard Meyer.
Minoan Chronology Reviewed
Authors: Hutchinson R. W.
Published: August 2016

The system of Minoan chronology proposed by the late Sir Arthur Evans remained almost unchallenged for many years. The first hint that it might not be equally valid for all sites in Crete was given by the excavations of Dr Joseph Hazzidakis at Tylisos where he found three archaeological strata, the first corresponding to Evans’ Early Minoan I, II and III and Middle Minoan Ia, the second to M.M. Ib, M.M. II, M.M. III and L.M. I and the third to Late Minoan III. On the basis of this M. L. Franchet proposed a new classification consisting of Early Neolithic (representing a site examined by Franchet himself), Late Neolithic, Bronze I, II, III and IV and Iron Age. This was tacitly ignored by most scholars, partly because the author was an authority on ceramics rather than on Aegean prehistory, partly because of the cavalier fashion in which this theory had been expressed. That Franchet’s opinions were not entirely without substance, however, was demonstrated later by L. Åberg in the far more serious and detailed criticism of Evans’ chronology expounded in his Bronze-zeitliche und Fruheisenzeitliche Chronologie, where he divided Evans’ Minoan periods into Pre-Palatial (E.M. I to M.M. Ia), Early Palatial (M.M. Ib to pre-earthquake M.M. IIIb) and Late Minoan or Late Palatial (including Evans’ post-earthquake M.M. IIIb). Within these three periods Åberg considered the various stylistic subdivisions to be contemporary. Åberg’s complaint that the earlier periods were not well stratified at Knosos was replied to by Pendlebury who in his Archaeology of Crete, published in 1939, tabulated significant and unmixed deposits at Knosos of E.M. I, II and III, M.M. ra, M.M. Ib, M.M. IIa, M.M. IIb, M.M. ma and M.M. IIIb pottery. So far Evans’ chronology had been shrewdly attacked but adequately defended so far as Knosos was concerned, though Pendlebury had admitted that certain categories were luxury wares and might be absent from other parts of the island.
Some aspects of Museum Laboratory Work
Authors: Plenderleith H. J.
Published: August 2016

In 1920 a research laboratory was established by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at the British Museum under the direction of Dr Alexander Scott, F.R.s., to carry out a particular task, namely, the restoration of museum objects which had suffered as a result of an enforced evacuation underground during the last war. Several years were required to complete the work, which involved the development of safe methods of arresting the decay of materials as diverse as paper, vellum, leather, wood, bone and ivory, stone, fur and feathers and metals.
Homer and the Odyssey Another Point of View
Authors: Hardie Colin
Published: August 2016

British scholars have tended to believe in a single author of the Iliad and Odyssey more perhaps from right feeling than on a sound basis of argument. In his article Mr Casson frankly begins by ‘begging two separate questions’—that Homer wrote the Odyssey and that he was a single poet. The first is not so welcome an answer as the second. Mr Casson is not of course concerned to argue about either and only mentions in passing one argument-the oblique method of description in ‘both’ the Iliad and the Odyssey. Examples of it he calls ‘hints’ that make it easy for him to disregard half the contro-versy about Homer. The purpose of his article is, however, different, to show that Homer visited Ithaka. The aim of the present one is not primarily to reply to his main thesis except by the way, but rather to supplement it and suggest in outline another point of view than that implied by him.
The Earliest Buddhist Shrines
Authors: Piggott Stuart
Published: August 2016

Among the earliest monuments of the Buddhist faith as propagated through India by king Asoka in the third century B.C. is a peculiar class of structure known as a stupa, and since Fergusson (1) first put forward the idea at the end of the last century it has been vaguely realized that these monuments were in all probability a formalized version of nothing more or less than a specialized type of prehistoric (and pre-Buddhist) round cairn. The possible implications of this prototype's peculiar features in reference not only in oriental, but in European archaeology, were pointed out by Mr Harold Peake with characteristic acumen (2), but no convenient summary of the relevant Indian material has appeared in an English archaeological journal, and a recent discovery in Jaipur State has thrown most interesting light on the subject at large. It seems therefore desirable to bring the results of the Bairat excavations before a wider archaeological public than that reached by the original report by the excavator, the late Rai Bahadur D. R. Sahni, and to consider it in relation to the wider question of the origins of the stupa and of the curious features which are presented in formalized guise on the elaborate monuments which represent the supreme artistic achievements of the Sunga Dynasty in the closing centuries of the pre-Christian era. I am deeply indebted to Mr Peake not only for material amplifying his original thesis, but for stimulating discussion and correspondence on the whole question. The latter part of this paper is in fact to such a degree based on his ideas that it amounts to an appendix in which I have paraphrased views exprcssed by him and shared by myself.
The One-tree Boat at Appleby, Lincolnshire
Authors: Dudley Harold E.
Published: August 2016

The valley7 of the Anchlome, a few miles east of Scunthorpe, in notthwest Lincholnshire, consists of a great stretch of flat, low-lying ‘Carrs’ between the Oolites of the Lincolnshire Cliff on the west and the Chalk Wolds on the east. The geological evidence suggests that in early times the river Ancholme was a tidal arm of the estuary of the Humber, being much wider than at present. Until the seventeenth century the area was flooded for several months in the year, for it was not until the sixteen-thirties that the first really serious draining operations were commenced, the main feature of this work being the construction of a ‘New Cut’, or New River Ancholme, which (together with the old river, now little more than a large drain) joins the Humber at Ferriby Sluice.
The Settlements of the Celtic Saints in South Wales
Authors: Bowen E. G.
Published: August 2016

A Considerable literature has grown up in an attempt to interpret the Lives of the Celtic Saints. It is, however, concerned almost exclusively with hagiological, textual and literary problems and very little attempt has been made to appreciate the part played by these pioneers in determining the pattern of settlement and culture reflected in the earliest written accounts of native Welsh society.

If we accept the view held by most students of the Celtic church that ancient churches and chapels now bearing the names of Celtic Saints owe their foundation in the first instance to the fact that the saint in question, or one of his immediate followers, actually visited the site and established thereon a small religious community which became the forerunner of the modern church, then, by plotting on a map all the churches known to be, or to have been, dedicated to a particular saint, we possess at once a readily available means of studying both the extent of a saint's influence—the distribution of his cult—and, at the same time, the relationship of his churches to relief and to other elements in the physical and cultural environment. This approach has, in addition, the further advantage of allowing the investigator to be independent of the entirely unsatisfactory material preserved in the Lives of the various saints, the vast majority of which were written in the 12th century, several hundreds of years after the events they purport to describe, by Norman monks eager to re-orientate local legends to their own particular theological and ecclesiastical prejudices.
Concerning Unicorns
Authors: Riddell W. H.
Published: August 2016

‘To travel hopefully’ says Robert Louis Stevenson ‘is a better thing than to arrive’: and whoever would track a legend to its source must needs be an optimistic traveller, for his prospects of reaching his destination are remote. The man who indulges in this form of sport—and it has its fascinations—soon becomes aware that amid the records of the Ancients, which form his Happy Hunting-ground, inaccuracy and credulity abound; whereas dependable facts are few and far between. Somewhere or other a story starts—the narration of some actual incident or spectacle outside the common run. It passes from mouth to mouth, amassing a gradual increment of falsehood as it goes; until, by the time it crystallizes into legend it has become a fabrication inseparable from fiction, except perhaps for the survival within it of some chance and apparently superfluous detail, which gives us a clue to its origin and to the incident which give it birth.
The Royal Barrows at Jelling Excavations made in 1941, 1942 and 1947, and finds and findings resulting therefrom
Authors: Dyggve Ejnar
Published: August 2016

In line with other endeavours expressive of the spirit of self-assertion aroused in the Danish people at the occupation of Denmark by foreign troops during World War II, the Danish National Museum, subsidized by the State Employment Department and the Carlsberg Foundation, undertook a series of thorough and methodical excavations of the two famous Royal Barrows at Jelling in East Jutland (FIG. I), dating from the middle of the 10th century A.D.

Earlier excavations here, in 1821 and 1861 (1), had been inconclusive. Ample room still remained for hypotheses and suggestions, and divergent views gradually produced quite a literature on the subject (2). Through the recent examination, the most extensive excavations of their kind in Scandinavia, of the southern barrow, the so-called King Gorm Mound, excavated in 1941, and the northern barrow, the so-called Queen Tyre Mound, in 1942 (3), it became possible to eliminate several doubtful points which had confronted people interested in history for more than a hundred years. At the same time, a solid foundation was laid for the future understanding of the Jelling monuments—the barrows and the runestones—the most significant in Danish history, because they bear witness to the kings who united the smaller Danish Kingdoms into one realm (4).
Peru before Pizarro
Authors: Bushnell G. H. S.
Published: August 2016

Two notable events in Peruvian archaeology, which are of wide general interest, have recently taken place. One was the discovery of pre-ceramic horizons on the Peruvian coast, and the other was a conference held in New York in July 1947, at which several acknowledged experts felt that the time had come to explain the known facts in terms of a general scheme of development, and attempted to do so independently with strikingly similar results. The papers read at the conference on this and other matters have recently been published, and they include the fullest summary so far available of the preceramic discoveries.

Mr Junius Bird has long been known for his work on the prehistory of unpromising and difficult regions in South America. He has studied successions in Tierra del Fuego and on the southern end of the Chilean mainland, which contain stone and bone artifacts but no pottery, from which he estimates, by such methods as the rate of rise of land and of accumulation of deposits, that human occupation began about 5000 years ago, i.e. at the beginning of the 3rd millennium B.C.. His methods of course involve some very large assumptions, but the results are reasonable when considered in relation to the usual estimate of about 10,000 years for Folsom man. He has also discovered non-pottery and non-agricultural horizons in the middens of the north part of the coast of Chile, but these may not be of any great age and their poverty may be due to the inhospitable nature of the region.
Some Primitive Structures in Achill Island
Authors: Piggott Stuart
Published: August 2016

During a visit to Achill Island in 1946 the writer made notes and drawings of certain primitive types of buildings still surviving in ruin or in use, and of which no adequate record had been made. The intrinsic interest of these, as well as their significance in the wider comparative study of peasant architecture in the British Isles, makes their publication desirable.

Achill Island is in Co. Mayo, off the west coast of Ireland, though now joined to the mainland by a bridge and road across Achill Sound. The buildings described here all lie in the neighbourhood of Dooagh and Keem, at the western end of the island. The most important series is that associated with the practice of ‘booleying’, or the transference of cattle to summer pastures, which approximates to the use of shielings in the Scottish Highlands or of the hafod in Wales. This custom, and its associated folk-lore, has been discussed in a series of articles in Irish and English which includes a study of the area under discussion, though without adequate plans or structural details of the buildings involved.
The Campignian Tradition and European Flint-mining
Authors: Gabel W. Creighton
Published: August 2016

In 1872 the name ‘Campigny’ appeared in archaeological literature for the first time, and the industry to which this site gave its name has been a subject of controversy ever since. At Campigny (Seine-Inférieure) were discovered pits containing worked flint and the remains of crude pottery. In a short time similar flintwork was discovered on other sites in north France. The typical implements were axes with the cutting edge formed by a transverse blow and heavy picks. Mortillet was the first to illustrate the analogy between French tranchet axes and those from Danish kitchen middens. In time typologically similar material was found from Britain to the Soviet Union.
Vergilian Cities of the Roman Campagna
Authors: Tilly Bertha
Published: August 2016

The tract of country bordering on the area of the Anzio beach-head, part of the wider Roman Campagna, stretching from the confines of Ardea to the banks of the T Tiber, is the scene of the dramatic action of the last six books of the Aeneid, the field of strife whereon is played to its finish the struggle for the foundation of the Roman race, and for the birth of Rome. On this soil still remain the Vergilian city of Ostia, which lies near the Tiber's mouth and was the port of Rome in antiquity, of Ardea and Lavinium, ancient settlements standing on the last seaward tufa ridge of the Alban massif and having their origin in the early Iron Age, and of Laurentum, the site of which was early lost in classical times, and cannot yet be located with any certainty.