The staple food crops of Saxon and Norman England included rye, barley, oats, millet, beans, and peas. Wheat also was not unknown. In fact, a few carbonized grains have been found upon Neolithic sites. But, even as late as the thirteenth century, wheaten bread in more than one region of England was a luxury food, enjoyed by the mass of the agricultural population only on boon days or religious festivals. The porridges and cereal soups, or flat-baked cakes and small loaves, which accompanied the peasants’ daily cheese, sausages or herring, were usually made from a coarse meal composed of rye, or rye mingled in some proportion with wheat, barley, oats or beans.

On 6 June I started from Southampton to carry out an investigation of the Roman roads and sites in Scotland from the air. For several years, as part of my official duties, I have been examining these on foot, in pursuance of a plan to publish a third edition of the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain. It is intended to prepare the way for this map (which may be published on a slightly larger scale—10 miles instead of 16 miles to the inch) by the publication of maps of special regions on the scale of 4 miles to the inch. The drawing of the first two of these (Scotland, Sheet 3 [Forth and Tay], and Sheet I [The Border]) had been finished; but many doubtful points remained even after intensive field-work, and it seemed probable that a short air reconnaissance under favourable conditions would solve some of them. This opinion was amply justified by results. About a dozen new Roman sites (including as ‘ sites ’ new stretches of Roman road) were discovered; about 50 new sites in all, including many native forts, were placed on the map; and valuable results of a general character were obtained.

West of the Provadia hills in Bulgaria is the valley of Shumen. The northern part of this valley belongs to the basin of the Provadia river, the southern to that of the river Kamtchia. The present railway line from Shumen to Kaspitchan serves as an ideal boundary between these two regions, but the two valleys are best known because of two historical sites, Preslav and Aboba (now Pliska).

The rivers of the Aboba plain have very little water during the summer season, but during winter and in time of heavy rains they overflow and cover great parts of the barren valley. The winter there is cold and severe, the surnmer dry and hot. In the plain, north of Kaspitchan railway station, are the ruins of Aboba. Eshberiich or Isperich (Asparuch), the younger son of Kurt (644–702), in his march southwards stopped there, and founded the first capital of the Bulgarian khans, later to become the magnificent Pliska.

It is now ten years since the French archaeological expedition under M. Claude Schaeffer first started digging at Ras Shamra, on the north coast of Syria. The present is therefore a suitable moment in which to take stock of what has so far been discovered.

Our best point of departure is provided by the series of annual volumes in which the excavator’s reports and the epigraphists’ primary studies have been conveniently gathered together from the pages of the periodical SYRIA. It must be borne in mind, however, that these excellent publications represent a preliminary and not a final stage in the interpretation of the materials. The literature grows from day to day, and the contributions made by other scholars are equally important for a correct appreciation of the subject. Among these special mention should be made of the work of Albright, Montgomery, Harris, Goetze and Gordon in America, of Ginsberg and de Vaux in Palestine, of Friedrich and Eissfeldt in Germany, of Hrozný in Prague, Aistleitner in Budapest and Cassuto in Italy. In this country studies have been published by the late Father Burrows, Dr J. W. Jack, of Edinburgh, Professor S. H. Hooke and the present writer.

There has been for a good many years an uneasy sense that all was not well with the theory of the Italian terremare as propounded by the original explorers. Writers of general works have continued to accept and to pass it on, in perfectly good faith, as if it were a coin of full value, worth the same now that it was thirty years ago. But those who had the best opportunities of knowing were aware that there had been a very serious depreciation. It was strongly suspected that, like the dollar, it had sunk to at least 59 per cent of its nominal value; but there seemed to be no one who was at once willing and able to state the exact degree of devaluation. Pigorini’s staunchest followers, of whom the last survivor died a few years ago, began to admit that there was a considerable percentage of loss; while more impartial outsiders wondered whether the terremare coin had not become totally valueless.

The story of the discovery of Mapungubwe, which led to its systematic excavation, makes reading as vivid and exciting as any adventure-fiction of our youth.

The site is one of many precipitous sandstone kopjes which rear their almost perpendicular sides some 200 ft. above a valley-floor tributary to the Limpopo, which lies only a mile distant, at the point where the Shashi river, flowing from Rhodesia, joins forces with it. Messina—archaeologically famous for its pre-European copper mines—lies about 50 miles west, and it overlooks the meeting point of Transvaal, Bechuanaland and Southern Rhodesian territory. Fortunately for science, British administration being parsimonious in these matters, the hill lay within the Transvaal border.