The great cultural unit of the Hallstatt (A–;B) Period in southern Germany and its neighbourhood is now considered to be the cradle of the Celts. The latest discussion of the problem is that by P. Bosch-Gimpera. A special variety of this culture seems to be represented in the country lying between the Alps and the Jura, extending from the lake of Constance to the lakes of Savoy. It is found in the lake-dwellings which came to an abrupt end somewhere about 700–650 B.C. The top layer in many of these is marked by evidence of burning, indicating a catastrophe that must have been wide-spread and general. This type of habitation, once so prevalent, was never revived; there are no signs of it in the following period (Hallstatt C–D). From the Late Bronze Age onwards there was a continuous development in the lake-dwellings, whose last stage is called in Switzerland the Latest Bronze Age (contemporary with the Rhenish Hallstatt B).

To the anthropologist, the dating of the fossil remains of prehistoric man in the Far East has always seemed a vague and haphazard business. So far as Europe is concerned, we have accepted the correlations between cultural sequences and stratigraphical data which have been worked out after many years of intensive work by geologists and archaeologists. Indeed, so well has the evidence been clarified for us that we even feel we can to some extent assess the validity of arguments put forward for the chronological position of this or that piece of human fossil. But the Far East is very different. The cultural sequences characteristic of Europe are not to be found there, the animal and plant remains found at different stratigraphical levels have a strange oriental appearance and differ specifically too much from those in the European Pleistocene to permit of direct faunistic correlations, and in the tropical regions such as Java the fluctuations of climate related to the glacial periods were not striking enough to provide a reasonable time scale by reference to any deposits so distinctive as boulder clay. Thus the anthropologist in the past has simply noted the personal opinion of local geologists on the antiquity of fossil man or palaeolithic cultures in the Far East, without really being clear as to the evidence on which the opinion was based (and suspecting, sometimes, that the geologist was not always quite clear himself).

In this publication the Director of the National Museum of Wales describes in detail a highly important find of Early Iron Age objects, made on a remote site in Anglesey in 1943 during wartime building operations. As its significance deserved, the discovery was given a good press at the time and readers of ANTIQUITY will already be familiar with it from the article reprinted in the June, 1944, number. But the title records that this too is an interim report: the final account, in which presumably will appear additional objects, one at least of which is of astounding quality, will be awaited with interest.

Vortigern of Gloucester is perhaps the most maligned figure of British history. There can be little doubt that his reign ended in widespread disaster, but that very fact may have made him a traditional scapegoat. Some at least of the charges against him can readily be disproved—for instance, he certainly was not the father of the British-born Gallic Bishop, Faustus, by his daughter or anyone else. Faustus and Vortigern must have been born within a very few years of each other. Perhaps the Gildasian epithet of infuustus tyrunnus, applied to Vortigern, served as a starting-point.

For its importance in throwing light upon a dark period of history, and for the intrinsic beauty and archaeological significance of its contents the Sutton Hoo Ship burial has been rightly described as the greatest find ever made in England. The Ship was fully excavated in July and August 1939, and the treasures found therein were taken to the British Museum, where the most urgent preservative measures were immediately undertaken. During the War these valuable finds were hidden underground. Recently they were returned to the British Museum, where they are now being unpacked, cleaned, and made ready for exhibition. In anticipation of their full publication it has been decided to make a report upon some individual pieces when, from time to time, they become available for exhibition.

King Cerdic of Wessex (more accurately, of the Gewissae) is perhaps the most enigmatic figure in the whole of British history. He appears as a chieftain with an Anglian pedigree but an indubitably Welsh name, having Jutish kinsfolk, with whose aid he establishes a Saxon kingdom, which nevertheless seems to remain archaeologically British (i.e. non-Teutonic) for a half-century or more after the supposed date of his conquests. Such a series of anomalies may be treated either as evidence of Cerdic's mythical origin, or as the hallmarks of a reality which is under no obligation to be lucid and uncomplicated. In either case, he symbolizes a chapter of half-forgotten history, obscure but crucial.