The small state of Hunza is the most northerly in British India. It consists for the most part of a close-packed mass of unscaled and unscalable mountain peaks over 20,000 feet, seamed by untrodden rivers of snow and ice ; as might be anticipated, it is mainly uninhabited. Its frontiers march with Afghanistan on the northwest and with Chinese Turkestan on the north and northeast. But where the Hunza river has cut its way down from the Pamirs to join the Gilgit river and ultimately the Indus, there remain, clinging to the mountain sides, a few sloping, rocky terraces which, if water can be brought to them, can with diligence be rendered fit for human habitation. These oases of green amidst the barren desolation of rock and cliff and mountain peak are the habitat of a sturdy mountain people, the Burusho, speaking a difficult but extremely interesting language, of so great antiquity that no affinity between it and any other known form of human speech has yet been traced by the comparative philologist.

This splendid volume contains the definitive record of the excavations carried out by Dr and Mrs Wheeler at Verulamium between 1930 and 1934, and it was complete in every essential save publication at the time of Mrs Wheeler's death in April 1936. It forms the final monument of an archaeological partnership which had astonishingly developed the technique of large-scale excavation on Roman sites in this country in a series of operations whose major landmarks were at Carnarvon, Brecon, Caerleon, and Lydney ; excavations distinguished from others of their kind not so much perhaps by the technical skill of their direction, though in this matter too they have been second to none, as by their pre-eminent excellence as training schools of archaeological method to the students who flocked to them, and as aids to right thinking by the ever-widening archaeological public which they did so much to create. Mrs Wheeler has her memorial in many places : publicly in the London Institute of Archaeology and privately in the hearts of all who knew her ; but many will think of this volume as peculiarly instinct with her genius, for every page of it bears witness to the comprehensiveness of her organization, the discipline of her energy, the patience of her leadership, and the vital sureness of her touch. Non extinguetur in nocte lucema eius.

So far as is known to the writer, the only published studies of this subject are one by himseIf, made many years ago, and a more recent one by Professor André Pochan, though references to the appearance and colour of the stones are not uncommon. Thus both Jomard (who climbed the pyramid) and Maspero (who apparently did not climb the pyramid, but relied upon Jomard's description) both say that the portion of the casing of the pyramid of Chephren, still remaining in place at the apex, is coloured reddish in patches by lichen, the identification of this apparently having been made by the well-known botanist Delile, who accompanied Jomard on his climb up the pyramid.

Professor Pochan, who also climbed the pyramid of Chephren, 2nd examined the stones at the apex, states that he saw lichen, but only on the north side, where the colour was blackish, and that the stones in general are of a reddish-brown colour. No proof that the black was indeed lichen is given, and the very dry situation would seem to make the presence of lichen improbable, unless it is growing on the patches of bird excrement that Jomard noticed, which, however, are not likely to be confined to the north side.

In the fertile region between the Danube and the Balkans occur numerous Byzantine fortified posts, which are shown by occasional finds of coins to date mostly from the sixth century. All have a common form in that skilful use has been made of natural features of terrain, such as isolated mountain-tops or practically isolated spurs, so that with a minimum cf artificial strengthening they have considerable defensive power. A favourite situation for them is at points where narrow canyon-like valleys of the streams that flow into the Danube have afforded good natural advantages.

From the military standpoint these sites can easily be divided into two groups, A and B, according to their topographical situation. To the first belong those which occur on the great natural trade-routes, and, like a modern Sperrfort, rake the roads with a commanding view over the surrounding district. The second and much more numerous group consists of posts situated off the trade-routes, often so much concealed by the lie of the land as to be invisible from the great roads.

N a recent article in the English Historical Review (vol. LII, pp. 193 ff.) Mr C. E. Stevens has examined the question of the ‘Twenty-Eight Cities of Britain’ which are spoken of by Gildas (‘De Excidio’, chap. III) ; and, on the basis that Gildas knew of some Romano-British Notitia Britanniarum, has attempted with considerable success to discover what cities these must have been. Bede (Hist. Eccl. I, I) and Nennius (Hist. Britt., ed. Mommsen, pp. 147 ff.) both repeat Gildas' remark in much the same words ; and in Section VI of the Historia Brittonum their names are given, with the heading Haec sunt nomina omniurn civitatum quae sunt in tota Brittania, quarurn numerus est xxviii. They are in Old Welsh of about the eighth or ninth centuries, and can therefore be contemporary with the compilation of the Historia Brittonum. Each is described as Cair, the Welsh equivalent of civitas in the late Latin sense. Another version of the Historia Brittonum has made the number into thirty-three, no doubt by misreading XXVIII as XXXIII ; the deficiency is filled up with five extra names also in Old Welsh. Some of the forms are however rather younger than in the first version (e.g. Cair Lion for Cair Legion), and the Expanded List may be a century or so later than the original.

T was Boucher de Perthes and some of his precursors who originated the idea of an age of worked stone : previously the only stone implements recognized as such were polished axes, arrowheads and a few particularly well-made flint knives. On the other hand it is generally agreed that, besides worked stone, which as a rule is all that has survived, fossil man must have used wood for many of his weapons and implements ; though with the exception of a pointed stake from Clacton (preserved in peat with remains of Elephas antiquus) nothing made of this material is known until we come to the neolithic piledwellings. Mainly as the result of the excavations of Lartet and Christy in the Dordogne (1863) it was learnt that hard animal substances such as bone, ivory and deer's horn, which were preserved by the limestone matrix of caves and rock-shelters had also played a large part in the industrial activities of man. This already advanced industry must have been far removed in time from the first utilization of bone, for it shows a technique that is highly developed—a technique in which the splitting of bone is first associated with and then superseded by sawing with gravers and smoothing with scrapers. There can be no doubt therefore that the stilettos, spear-heads, etc., of the Later Palaeolithic period must have had more ancient prototypes of worked bone. In fact the only Middle Palaeolithic examples known today of bone-working by means of attrition and scraping are few in number—rib-bones sharpened by rubbing, occasional awls similarly sharpened—and the two large spear-points from the Upper Mousterian of Castillo (Spain) and La Quina (Charente, France).

Not least in interest among subjects of archaeological study is that which has to do with the types of fortification constructed by organized communities in the past. These, once the habit of town-dwelling had become fixed, seem to have tended to fall into two major classes : the arx, acropolis, or citadel, one of whose functions it was to provide a temporary refuge in emergency; and the enceinte or city-wall proper, designed to afford permanent protection to the group living within it. Sometimes the two forms occur in combination; more often, singly.

The first type we frequently, though by no means always, find situated on a height ; the acropolis of Athens and the Capitoline Hill at Rome are familiar examples. The second class, on the other hand, seems to have developed more especially in those alluvial plains on which sprang up the great river-valley civilizations of the Ancient World. To it belong the tremendous earthworks constructed slightly over two thousand years ago about the city of Ch‘ang-an (meaning ‘Long Peace’ ; possibly Ptolemy’s ‘Sera Metropolis’), the capital of the then recently established Chinese empire.