The School's main excavation of 1967 was at Knossos, where work was resumed after an interval of five years. In addition, under the sponsorship of the School, Mr E. S. Higgs's excavations in two Palaeolithic caves in Epirus were rounded off and Dr P. Warren excavated an Early Minoan settlement on the South coast of Crete. Outside Greece, the School sponsored further survey work at Tocra in Libya and a supplementary excavation season at a Byzantine-Frankish castle in Cyprus.

The latest radiocarbon datings available confirm that the Asprochaliko and Kastritsa caves are to a large extent complementary. Only the former includes Middle Palaeolithic deposits (one of them dated around 40,000 BC), but for the Upper Palaeolithic period the two together have provided the only known full succession between France and the Levant. At Kastritsa, the 1967 campaign exposed successive beaches within the caves formed by periodical changes in the level of the Lake, the latest datable about 22,000 BC.

The excavation of the Clickhimin site in the Shetland Islands by the Ministry of Public Building and Works revealed the arrangement of living quarters inside a small stonebuilt fort occupied between the 4th and 1st centuries BC [I]. With the exception of a large communal stonebuilt hut in the centre of the enclosure, the inhabitants dwelt in a series of half-timbered storeyed ranges attached to the inner face of the fort wall (FIG. I). The pent-roofs of these ranges were supported by a dwarf, or casement, wall built on the wall walk, and access between the rooms at first-floor level and the walk was obtained through a series of doorways. Two stonebuilt duns in the Western Isles, Dun Ringill and Dun Grugaig, still retain the jambs of such doorways and at Clickhimin a similar door was preserved in the blockhouse guarding the fort entrance though here it led to a passage which gave access to a stair to the parapet walk at second-floor level [2].

Urban archaeology in Britain is still in its infancy, conditioned on the one hand by a concentration on the Roman period to the detriment of later centuries, on the other by a lack of close co-operation between historians and archaeologists. Only since the last war has archaeology begun to be accepted in Britain as an important source of evidence for the history of towns. This growth of interest in urban archaeology is partly due to the example set by European scholars working in the same field.

Many of our important towns were founded during the Roman occupation and this has given to their archaeology a character wholly different from that typical of the towns of northern Europe. The needs of Romano-British archaeology have dominated the excavation of towns, partly because classical studies have been fundamental to British education, and partly because medieval historians have not regarded archaeology as relevant to their interests.

The actual nature of the Cretan bull sports can scarcely be in doubt. The wealth of representations of all stages of this extraordinary exhibition are clear enough as far as we are concerned with what actually happened. There remain, however, many unclarified questions about its motivation and purpose, the identity of its performers, its frequency, and above all its location. There has been much speculation on this point, which, reduced to its essence, seems to postulate that the sports took place either in the Central Courts of the great palaces or in some other, as yet unidentified, arena. Evans [I] and Pendlebury [2] both suggest the existence of a temporary wooden palisade outside the palace (at Knossos, on the level ground to the east). Their objections to the Central Court as the site of the bull sports are largely of a practical common-sense nature. An excited bull is a dangerous creature, and extremely difficult to control. To get it on to the court, through the narrow corridors and ornately painted and furnished rooms by which the court is approached, would pose formidable problems ; but once arrived the difficulties could be even greater.

The essence of historical research is the search for the cause of a major event. The same applies to prehistoric research, except that the documents cited in evidence lack written records and may require greater speculation.

One of the major events in the history of Greece was the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, which occurred about 1200-1100 BC and ushered in the Greek Dark Ages, when populations in the former Mycenaean lands were small and political organization dispersed. Although falling, strictly, within the historic period, thanks to the recent decipherment of Mycenaean written documents, the available records merely illustrate some of the business transactions of several flourishing kingdoms they give no clues to the cause for the abrupt demise of the culture.

It is on this subject, with its paucity of direct evidence, that Professor Rhys Carpenter introduces some speculations drawn from natural science-the notion that climatic change in southern Greece caused repeated failure of crops and the consequent breakdown of the Mycenaean economy.