The question of ancient artificial dwellings or huts has been the subject of lively scientific discussion recently, though notices of their discovery at various palaeolithic sites in Europe have appeared in the literature from time to time throughout the past thirty years. Most of the archaeological evidence on the subject has been collected by Soviet workers whose discoveries of traces of ancient huts (in the course of extensive excavations at several palaeolithic stations in the U.S.S.R., both in Europe and in Siberia) have extended the history of domestic architecture to the remotest times. This journal contained a detailed account of these discoveries in V. G. Childe’s article ‘Cave Men’s Buildings’ (ANTIQUITY, XXIV, 4-11). I can now report on the latest excavations at the well-known upper-palaeolithic mammoth hunters’ settlement on the Pavlov Hills near Dolni Věstonice (south Moravia, Czechoslovakia), where fresh evidence of ancient artificial human shelters has come to light during the past few years. Before doing so, I should like to point out that the identification of these hut-sites in the course of excavations is surely a sign of considerable advance in archaeology, its methods of research and principal aims. While former excavations often exploited cultural horizons with the sole object of collecting the greatest possible number of relics of ancient cultures, and particularly of rarities, recent researches have a more fundamental object: to reveal behind the mere artifact the living man and artificer himself, and thereby the conditions of his life, and the development of human society. For this reason archaeological research to-day, employing modern methods in cooperation with experts in allied sciences, endeavours first and foremost to amplify material finds by a most detailed description of the circumstances of discovery, and by a study of the inter-relation of these finds with each other and with the site. It is this that constitutes progress in archaeological science, and at the same time indicates why hut-sites were not recognized during the previous systematic excavations directed at Dolni Věstonice by Dr K. Absolon in the years 1924-38. These excavations, surely carried out in masterly fashion (for their period), are principally known through the rich collections furnished by them for the Moravian Museum at Brno, which contained many objects of considerable cultural and scientific value. The remains of huts failed however to be recognized then, although Dr Absolon expected to find evidence of dwellings of permanent construction. Dolni Věstonice is therefore chiefly known in international palaeolithic literature as the site of great accumulations of mammoth-bones, of small baked clay figurines of animals, of statuettes of women (the Vëstonice Venus, 1925), of a carved female portrait of mammoth ivory (1936), and of the oldest musical instruments.

The Byzantine ruins known as Tsaritsin Grad (the fortress of the Emperor) lie near Leskovats in southern Serbia, between Nish and Skoplje. The excavation of the site was begun by Professor Petkovits between 1937 and 1940. Work was resumed in 1947 as part of the plan laid down by the Archaeological Institute of the Serbian Academy of Sciences. The direction in that year was in the hands of Professor A. Deroko and Professor C. Radojtschits; from 1949 work has been continued by Dr Mano-Zisi. The progress up to 1950 is shown on the air photograph (PLATE I).

The earlier excavations had already led Professor Petkovits to the conclusion that the site was Justiniana Prima, the city which Procopius describes in the following words: ‘Among the Dardanians of Europe … close to the fortress which is called Bederiana, there was a hamlet named Taurisium, whence sprang the Emperor Justinian, the founder of the civilized world. He therefore built a wall of small compass about this place in the form of a square, placing a tower at each corner, and caused it to be called, as it actually is, Tetrapyrgia. And close by this place he built a very notable city, which he named Justiniana Prima—thus paying a debt of gratitude to the home that fostered him . . . In that place also he constructed an aqueduct and so caused the city to be abundantly supplied with ever-running water. And many other enterprises were carried out by the founder of this city—works of great size and worthy of especial note. For to enumerate the churches is not easy and it is impossible to tell in words of the lodgings for magistrates, the great stoas, the fine market places, the fountains, the streets, the baths and the shops. In brief, the city is both great and populous and blessed in every way—a city worthy to be the metropolis of the whole region, for it has attained to this rank. It has also been allotted to the archbishop of Illyricum as his seat, the other cities conceding this honour to it as being first in point of size’.

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.

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).