The 1938–9 excavations at Calleva, of which Mrs Aylwin Cotton's report has recently appeared (1), show how much more can be learnt about a Romano-British town when modern scientific excavation technique is used to supplement the efforts of earlier antiquaries. George Fox, St. John Hope and Mill Stephenson (to whom all honour) achieved the complete plan, labouring from 1890–1908 each year for months at a time at the total excavation of the hundred acres within the city walls. Now Mrs Cotton by selective excavation and a study of stratigraphy has built up the outline chronology so urgently required : thus we have now both a Map and a Time-Chart for this city. Mrs Cotton's report shows that the original Roman city extended up to the outer earthwork, hitherto thought to be of pre-Roman construction, covering an area of some 230 acres (2), and that the walls with a slightly earlier bank behind them are a contraction of the latter half of the 2nd century A.D. (3) The evidence was clear ; the metal of the streets and layers of dark occupation soil of Hadrian-Antonine date continued under the bank (4)) and the streets continued on the same alignment in the space between the wall and outer earthwork (5). Of the street plan Mrs Cotton observes (6) inter alia that the chessboard ‘ is singularly rectangular ’ and that ‘ it did not exist, at any rate in its later form when the Bath Building in Insula XXXIII was built about the reign of Nero ’. It was these two comments and their footnotes that sent me searching the shelf with Archaeologia ranged heavily along it, and that prompted this article.

The use of pairs of straight or curved timbcrs to support the ridge-pole of a primitive Td welling affords one of the most fundamental of all house types. In England, Scotland and Wales, it developed into the complex cruck framework which, although it has many close analogies in north-western Europe, is a unique feature of peasant architecture, Detailed studies of the cruck buildings of northern England have been made by Addy (1), Innocent (2) and, more recently, by the writer of the present paper (3)) whilst Sigurd Erixon has published an excellent comparative study of analagous types (4). The object of this paper is primarily to trace the evolutionary stages through which the cruck building and its allied forms passed.

In line with other endeavours expressive of the spirit of self-assertion aroused in the Danish people at the occupation of Denmark by foreign troops during World War II, the Danish National Museum, subsidized by the State Employment Department and the Carlsberg Foundation, undertook a series of thorough and methodical excavations of the two famous Royal Barrows at Jelling in East Jutland (FIG. I), dating from the middle of the 10th century A.D.

Earlier excavations here, in 1821 and 1861 (1), had been inconclusive. Ample room still remained for hypotheses and suggestions, and divergent views gradually produced quite a literature on the subject (2). Through the recent examination, the most extensive excavations of their kind in Scandinavia, of the southern barrow, the so-called King Gorm Mound, excavated in 1941, and the northern barrow, the so-called Queen Tyre Mound, in 1942 (3), it became possible to eliminate several doubtful points which had confronted people interested in history for more than a hundred years. At the same time, a solid foundation was laid for the future understanding of the Jelling monuments—the barrows and the runestones—the most significant in Danish history, because they bear witness to the kings who united the smaller Danish Kingdoms into one realm (4).

It is a mark of a discipline's maturity when scientists begin to show an interest in I the history of their science. This book by a distinguished archaeologist.might then be welcomed if only as a mark that archaeology has reached that degree of maturity. But of course the book's merits go far beyond that and will indeed appeal to many who are not archaeologists in any sense.

The story of archaeological exploration in Mesopotamia is highly instructive and romantic, but also tragic. The author tells it well in an attractive prose style with a few happily chosen illustrations reproduced from early 19th century originals. More than half the volume is occupied by biographical accounts of those who laid the foundations of Western knowledge of the monuments of Iraq, from 16th century merchant-voyagers who casually mentioned them to Botta and Layard who began to excavate them. Lloyd has the power to pick out and vividly recapitulate such incidents in the actors’ lives as shall bring out their characters without distracting attention from the central theme. At the same time he uses their descriptions of scenery and customs, often sharply contrasted with those he knows so well today, to build up a rich and variegated panorama of the natural and human background of Mesopotamian archaeology. Students of Near Eastern civilization who have not themselves had the opportunity of visiting even Mosul, Baghdad, Ur and Basra will find these passages, in which 19th century observations are illuminated by comparison with contemporary experiences, extremely helpful.