Field-Names, the common and convenient term for minor names which have not achieved the status of place-names, often preserve information important to the historian and to the archaeologist. Their value is well recognized by specialists but not always clearly understood by others. Since field-names are generally found in local, as distinct from national, records, local historians are especially qualified to help in the accumulation of a collection of such names. After a few sentences of advice to secure uniformity of method and to ensure co-ordination, the members of any local historical society, acting as a group or even singly, may build up a valuable collection of field-names. Such work, pursued on systematic lines, would be a real contribution to scholarship, and is already in progress in one or two areas. The following notes attempt to illustrate how the study of field-names may contribute to historical knowledge. They do no more than outline the possibilities and they are confessedly written in the hope that more non-professional Societies will add the formation of a field-name collection to the list of their activities.

One of the many notable results of the Maiden Castle excavations was the formulation of the ‘Sling-stone theory’ to account for the building of multiple ramparts round Early Iron Age camps. The excavations revealed that the Iron Age A2 camp, at first on the eastern knoll only, but later extended to include the whole hill, was surrounded by a single rampart, and that this, at some period in the 1st century B.C., was suddenly reinforced and encircled by two outer ramparts, thus producing the massive defence works to be seen today. The nature of the construction ofthe new defences led the excavators to the conclusion that they were the work of a ‘foreign dynasty’ of, invaders of the fort, and not of the A2 inhabitants. It was found, however, that this ‘sudden structural change’ was not associated with a similar sudden cultural change, as might have been expected. There was a change, represented by the introduction of the first traces of Iron Age B pottery, but this was slight at first and only gained in importance with the passage of time. The A2 pottery remained but became more and more influenced by the B forms until the latter gradually became ‘dominant and characteristic’.

In a well-known passage Plutarch (quoting Dikairchos) tells us that when Theseus landed in Delos with Ariadne, daughter of Nlinos, on his return from Crete, he and his young companions danced a dance which was called ‘The Crane’. This dance, as I hope to show, was an integral part of a cultural pattern of sacrificial and funerary ritual which was widespread throughout Europe and Asia and extended in modified form at least as far as Malekula in the New Hebrides. Unquestionably it was associated with the Labyrinth. Its winding figures represented the hero's wanderings in the Labyrinth on Crete.

The alphabet is the most highly developed, the most convenient and adaptable form of writing. It consists of a number of purely conventional signs or symbols called letters, each one denoting a single sound, at least theoretically. Alphabetic writing is now universally adopted by civilized peoples; its use is acquired in childhood with ease–it is obviously much easier to learn 22, 24 or 26 signs than, for example, 45,000, or 10,000, or even 3000 Chinese symbols. The alphabet may also be passed from one language to another without great difficulty. It is no longer an exclusive prerogative of the priestly or other privileged classes, as ancient ideographic scripts were. Education has become largely a matter of reading and writing and is possible for all.

The article by Mr J. N. L. Myres in Antiquity (December 1942), discussing the earlier articles by Mr K. D. M. Dauncey (March 1942), and by Mr Dayrell Reed (June 1942), has revived, among other matters, the vexed problem whether the Hengist and Vortigern story is true, and whether the earliest settlement of Saxon invaders in this country was in Kent or elsewhere.

Mr Dauncey claimed that the evidence from the cremation cemeteries of Norfolk and Lincolnshire indicated a primary military settlement in those areas. Mr Dayrell Reed, while rejecting the specific conclusions of Mr Dauncey, proceeded to assert, largely on the strength of citations from medieval writers, that the cremation cemeteries in question were evidence that Hengist's mercenary army was established by Vortigern in that region to fight against the Picts shortly after the year A.D. 446.