In the year 1849 a Trustee of the British Museum, Mr W. R. Hamilton, at that time a man of 73 noted for his great interest in archaeology, particularly that of Greece and Egypt, was giving evidence before a commission enquiring into the affairs of the Musuem. ‘Have you’, he was asked, ‘ever turned your attention to the question of extending and improving the collection of British antiquities in the British Museum as distinct from all others?’ ‘I have not’, answered Mr Hamilton.

British archaeological literature has often been unfavourably contrasted with that of Central and North European countries in that it lacks modern, detailed and fully illustrated books dealing with particular periods or cultural groups. Thanks to Professor Piggott, students of European prehistory now find in their hands a book on the Neolithic cultures of the British Isles which will not suffer from comparison with the best continental manuals-in fact, is all the better for the delay in its production.

The Roman road from Legioliuna (Castleford) to Calcaria (Tadcaster), and its modern descendant, the Great North Road, cross the Cock Beck at Aberford, eight miles north-east of Leeds, Yorkshire (FIG. I). The crossing is defended by a triple system of southward facing banks and ditches which total some 4½ miles in length. The main bank, distinguished by the steepness of its scarp, still rises to 25 feet above the bottom of its ditch, and shows in places the stonework which originally revetted it.

The system of Minoan chronology proposed by the late Sir Arthur Evans remained almost unchallenged for many years. The first hint that it might not be equally valid for all sites in Crete was given by the excavations of Dr Joseph Hazzidakis at Tylisos where he found three archaeological strata, the first corresponding to Evans’ Early Minoan I, II and III and Middle Minoan Ia, the second to M.M. Ib, M.M. II, M.M. III and L.M. I and the third to Late Minoan III. On the basis of this M. L. Franchet proposed a new classification consisting of Early Neolithic (representing a site examined by Franchet himself), Late Neolithic, Bronze I, II, III and IV and Iron Age. This was tacitly ignored by most scholars, partly because the author was an authority on ceramics rather than on Aegean prehistory, partly because of the cavalier fashion in which this theory had been expressed. That Franchet’s opinions were not entirely without substance, however, was demonstrated later by L. Åberg in the far more serious and detailed criticism of Evans’ chronology expounded in his Bronze-zeitliche und Fruheisenzeitliche Chronologie, where he divided Evans’ Minoan periods into Pre-Palatial (E.M. I to M.M. Ia), Early Palatial (M.M. Ib to pre-earthquake M.M. IIIb) and Late Minoan or Late Palatial (including Evans’ post-earthquake M.M. IIIb). Within these three periods Åberg considered the various stylistic subdivisions to be contemporary. Åberg’s complaint that the earlier periods were not well stratified at Knosos was replied to by Pendlebury who in his Archaeology of Crete, published in 1939, tabulated significant and unmixed deposits at Knosos of E.M. I, II and III, M.M. ra, M.M. Ib, M.M. IIa, M.M. IIb, M.M. ma and M.M. IIIb pottery. So far Evans’ chronology had been shrewdly attacked but adequately defended so far as Knosos was concerned, though Pendlebury had admitted that certain categories were luxury wares and might be absent from other parts of the island.