The royal tombs that have been discovered at Ur this winter are remarkable not only for their contents but for their construction, and for the light they throw on Sumerian funeral customs unguessed hitherto.

We have dug some nine hundred graves in this cemetery and the types are well established. There are a certain number of clay coffins; they form a small proportion of the whole and tend to be commoner in the late than in the early period, but do occur even in the earliest time. The normal grave is a rectangular shaft measuring little more than 1½ metres by I metre; the bottom of this may be lined with matting and the body, wrapped in a mat, simply laid in it, or there may be a coffin, generally made of wickerwork with wooden stays, occasionally of wood: it contains the body and the more personal ornaments, while the rest of the offerings are deposited by the side of it in the grave-shaft.

One of the problems that students of Maltese archaeology have to face is the meaning of the numerous cart-tracks furrowing most of the barren rock-surfaces. These tracks are scarce on Gozo and non-existent on the islands of Comino and Filfola.

They consist of pairs of parallel grooves running for long distances on the hard coralline limestone patches, now straight and now curved as if avoiding an obstacle or having to change their direction. The grooves are mostly v-shaped, usually from 10 to 20 inches wide (25–50 cms) on the surface, and about 4 inches (10 cms) at the bottom. Between the two grooves, measured at the middle part, the distance is nearly always 4 feet 6 inches (1.37m). Naturally the depth of the grooves varies with the lie of the ground; if there is a strong tilt sideways, one of the grooves is shallow whilst the other is very deep.

The standard Roman histories, especially when written by authors who have an undisguised contempt for archaeology, give very little idea of the civilization and development of Italy before the later days of the Republic. They are histories of Rome but not of Italy. And so the reader is subconsciously led to suppose that the Romans were the most important and the most advanced people on the peninsula, who gradually extended the benefits of their superior civilization over a series of more or less barbarous neighbours. This is a complete inversion of the real facts. The Romans of the Republic were a rather backward people, and it was hardly before the second century B.C. that they could begin to rank as the equals of the Italian provincials in general refinement and culture. Incessantly occupied with the wars which were essential to their very existence, the Romans had no leisure, even if they possessed the inclination, to cultivate the arts and humanities. But, while the future head of the world was struggling for bare life, a rich Italian civilization had been born and developed in the independent territories which had not yet fallen under her sway. Before ever they came under the organizing and levelling domination of the central capital, Etruria, Venetia, Lombardy and Picenum had each evolved its own distinct and very valuable local culture; while the whole south from Naples to Brindisi had been civilized by Corinthian and Ionic influence. Rome when she conquered and annexed these territories in due sequence fell heir to a fully finished product. Italy had been created, but not by Rome; the task that fell to the Romans was much more suited to their peculiar abilities—they had to organize and administer the country.

On the continent as in Britain the later phases of the Bronze Age are marked by the spread of large cremation cemeteries generally termed urnfields. One of the several groups of urnfield cultures in Central Europe occupies such a pre-eminent position that it may even claim to be the parent of all the rest. It is known as the Lausitz or Lusatian culture after the area where it is most richly and typically represented—a strip in eastern Saxony and western Silesia.

Here the bodies were cremated in ustrina close to the cemetery, and the ashes, carefully purified from cinders, were enclosed in clay ossuaries or cinerary urns. The ossuary was closed with an inverted dish, but in all early burials a hole was carefully bored in its walls. It is supposed that this aperture was intended to allow the ghost to escape, and hence it has been called a ghost-hole (Seelenloch). The urn, with its cover, was buried in the ground with many accessory vases, presumably containing provisions for the journey into the next world. A barrow might be raised over the tomb, but in all cases the graves form regular cemeteries.

Bavaria is a country that is very rich in prehistoric fortifications. In our early histories the construction of these is attributed almost without exception to the Romans; it is only the more intensive study of genuine Roman work that has enabled us to distinguish between pre-Roman, Roman and post-Roman remains. Moreover other fortifications, which are today invisible, have been re-discovered by a systematic investigation of the ground. These fortifications were evidently not constructed regularly throughout the prehistoric era but appear at intervals in large numbers, from which we can readily trace their erection to political causes. Two main types can be distinguished at once: circular camps that are built on a hilltop or plateau, and promontory camps, built to protect the landward approaches of a mountain spur or of a spit of land bounded on its other sides by valleys or river-beds. We also find one other type, the rectangular, which was unknown until the late La Tène period and survived for only a short time.

The British Museum, jointly with the University Museum of Philadelphia, is carrying out at Ur ‘of the Chaldees’ what is now, since a slower pace has set in with the work of Evans at Knossos, the most important British archaeological excavation. Nothing like the recent discoveries at Ur has indeed been seen in a European museum since the appearance of Schliemann's finds at Mycenae, and no such rich find of gold objects has been made since the discovery of the wealth of Tutankhamon. Like Mycenae and Knossos, Mr Woolley's discoveries tell the archaeologist a very great deal that he did not know before. They may justly be claimed as the most important work of the kind now being carried on by any British or American museum or society, whether singly or jointly. The personnel is now wholly British, but Philadelphia pays half the piper and calls half the tune. This ‘ fifty-fifty ’ relation of absolute parity between the two museums is as it should be, and the two nations are to be congratulated on their harmonious partnership in the most important archaeological excavation in the world. I stress this for I do not think that the great importance of Mr Woolley’s finds is sufficiently realized. Not merely because they contain a lot of gold, as they do (and since gold of itself doth attract a journalist, this fact has received some public attention), but because they tell us so much that is new, which Tutankhamon, for all his splendour, did not. We may find this fact appreciated now that Mr Woolley’s first provisional publication of this year’s (1927) finds has appeared in the January (1928) number of the Antiquaries’ Journal, to which I must refer my readers for detail.

Except for some trenches dug in 1865-6, when the Thirsk and Malton railway was constructed, no systematic excavation of the Roman station at Malton has ever been made until 1927. Although casual Roman finds have been plentiful, few of them have been published and little is definitely known about the site and its history, the current Ordnance Survey map merely marking the Fortress as ‘Supposed Roman Camp’. Many of the statements made about it in the past have been purely conjectural. As a result of recent investigations, the writers believe that the time has come when some general statement can profitably be made as to the extent of the site, its importance in Roman times, and the nature of the occupation of the neighbourhood.

Amongst those who have written of the antiquities of Malton in the past, one writer, Rev Dr Young (History of Whitby, 1817) shows unusual judgment and penetration in an age when antiquaries were only too ready to repeat the guesses of their predecessors. The exact position and extent of the Malton fort were unknown before 1927, and few finds are recorded before the 19th century, yet Dr Young recognized it as a place of importance and guessed its position correctly.