Every prehistorian has heard of the famous volcanic rock of the Eifel from which querns were made in prehistoric and later times. The source from which the querns came has several names, and we read of Andernach, Niedermendig and Mayen lava. Actually, Andernach is merely the Rhineland town nearest to the quarries; there is no lava there. Niedermendig has lava quarries, but they did not begin to be worked until the Middle Ages, and then the output was only about one third of that of Mayen. Since however the output of Mayen passed through Niedermendig on its way to the Rhine, the latter name got attached, and we in Britain usually write of ‘Niedermendig lava’. But all prehistoric and Roman querns came, not from there but from the Mayen quarries, which are still being worked. During a visit to Germany in July 1953, I was conducted round them by Dr J. Röder of Koblenz. The following account, though made possible by that visit, is not an original composition but is derived from an authoritative article by Dr Röder and others, which has kindly been abstracted for me in English by Mr J. D. van der Waals of Amsterdam. I wish also to thank Dr Röder for the loan of illustrations, especially the blocks for FIGS, 1 and 3.

The archaeological background of the people of what is now Scotland south of the Forth and Clyde in the Roman period was a La Téne one, and specifically chiefly Iron Age B. This links them intimately with the Britons of southern Britain in the conglomeration of Celtic tribes who called themselves Brittones and spoke what we call the Brittonic or Ancient British form of Celtic, from which are descended the three modern languages of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. To the north of the Forth was a different people, the Picts. They too were Celts or partly Celts; probably not Brittones however, but a different branch of the Celtic race, though more closely related to the Brittones than to the Goidels of Ireland and (in later times) of the west of Scotland. Not being Brittonic, the Picts may be ignored here. Our southern Scottish Brittones are nothing but the northern portion of a common Brittonic population, from the southern portion of which come the people of Wales and Cornwall. Some historians speak of the northern Brittones as Welsh, following good Anglo-Saxon precedent, but this is apt to lead to confusion. The best term for them, in the Dark Ages and early Medieval period, as long as they survived, is ‘Cumbrians’, and for their language, ‘Cumbric’. They called themselves in Latin Cumbri and Cumbrenses, which is a Latinization of the native word Cymry, meaning ‘fellow-countrymen’, which both they and the Welsh used of themselves in common, and is still the Welsh name for the Welsh to the present day. The centre of their power was Strathclyde, the Clyde valley, with their capital at Dumbarton.

These two articles which deal respectively with the chronological basis of Patagonian prehistory and with its rock pictures, are by the well-known prehistorian who today is Professor of Prehistory in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature in the University of Buenos Aires. They set out a scheme of outstanding importance for the prehistory of Patagonia which strengthens our opinion, already backed by evidence from all over America, of the great antiquity of Man in the New World.

It is inevitable that, when a European archaeologist has transferred his activities to the New World, he should see everything with European eyes, and look for parallels with the cultures he knew in the Old World. Thus it is natural that, in the few years which Professor Menghin has spent in Argentina, his untiring energy should have produced finds and theories of undoubted interest. These are summarized in a table in the first article, which boldly attempts to correlate the cultures of Patagonia with those of the Upper Palaeolithic and later periods in Europe.

A few years ago I was talking to a friend of mine in our club. It was obvious that he had, as we say, something on his mind. ‘Do you realize’, he said, ‘that in this technological age we still have no comprehensive history of technology?’ I paused for a moment, but before I could speak he had answered my thoughts. ‘I don't mean economic history—there are plenty of books about that; technology and economics are quite different’. I asked him to expand this. ‘Well, take any farm you know. An economic survey of it would cover everything on the farm—field-workers and their wages, birds, animals, dung, crops, carts, ploughs, reaping-machines, dairy utensils. But if it's to be a technological survey you concentrate on the carts and ploughs, how they're made, and how they work. What you are then concerned with is how things on the farm are done and made’. When he thus explained it the distinction became obvious. Seeing what was in his mind I murmured : ‘A History of Technology is going to be a big thing’. ‘It is’, he said, ‘for the world is my farm, the human race my farmers and field-workers, and the farm has been a going concern for many millennia’.

The aim of this note is to bring to the attention of English readers a Roman building of large size, whose impressive ruins are well preserved, but whose purpose is uncertain and existence little known.

The Roman road from Tours to Bourges ran along the north bank of the river Cher and for much of its length is followed by the modern N76. Two settlements or posting-stations lying on this road and marked on the Peutinger map under the names Gabris and Tasciaca can be located at the villages of Giévres and Thésée respectively. At this latter place, otherwise called Thézée or Tézée, 31 miles east of Tours, the main road, following the course of the Roman route, runs close beside the river, with the railway line separating them and low, bare hills rising immediately to the north. The towns of Montrichard to the west and St. Aignan on the east are respectively 4 and 5 miles away, and the village lies in the Loir-et-Cher département.

Like many other spectacular monuments, Zimbabwe Ruins has attracted more attention through speculation than through research. Many of the so-called ‘archaeological excavations’ in the early days were little more than licensed treasure hunts, whilst the amount of unauthorized fossicking for gold which went on until 1902 (when the ruins were protected by legislation) destroyed acres of archaeological deposits. Two people only have published reports of widespread excavations on scientific lines at Zimbabwe: the late Dr D. Randall-Maclver, who dug there for a few weeks in 1905 and Miss G. Caton-Thompson, whose careful work during the dry season of 1929 forms the basis of our present archaeological knowledge of this site. Considering the great area involved—about 100 acres of actual buildings—and the obvious importance of the site, surprisingly little is really known about it. For the past 18 years the site has been under the protection of the Southern Rhodesian Monuments Commission and excavation has been very wisely discouraged, although on the other hand the exploration and excavation of other sites has proceeded apace. Both Maclver and Caton-Thompson agreed that the building was African. Maclver dated the ‘Temple’ (the principal single structure) as ‘not earlier than the 14th or 15th century’, but admitted that an earlier settlement prior to the present buildings was a possibility. Miss Caton-Thompson gave as her earliest date for the whole complex the 9th century A.D., or possibly a little earlier, and also considered a pre-ruin culture not unlikely. Wieschhoff after reviewing all the preceding evidence and undertaking excavations at a number of other sites found himself fully in agreement with Maclver as regards dating whilst the present writer, with still more field evidence from other Rhodesian sites, felt inclined to shorten Wieschhoff's dating still more.