‘Gunpowder, Printing and the Protestant Religion’, said Thomas Carlyle in 1827, are ‘the three great elements of modern civilization’. I wish we could be as contentedly concise about the more ancient varieties. What indeed are the primary qualities of urbanity? At what definable point did Man step across that thin borderline between rus and urbs ? The question matters; the moment at which Man first became something more than a brigand or a hind (without necessarily losing either of those characters) was a climactic one. It counts for a great deal in our estimate of human achievement.

An up-to-date book on Stonehenge by Mr Atkinson is indeed a great acquisition; it is a book for the intelligent reader as well as for the archaeologist, and is by far the best book on the subject that has so far been written.

The author explains how a potsherd or stone, when carelessly thrown away, will gradually sink owing to the action of earth worms, through the earthy top-soil till it reaches an impermeable layer, so that where, as here, the soil is shallow a layer is formed containing objects of all periods. Such a statement made in the 1920’s was laughed at. Further, he goes on to say (p. 168) : ‘The one thing about Stonehenge upon which everyone is agreed is that it is primarily a “temple,” a structure in which it was possible for man to establish contact and communication with extra-mundane forces or beings’. No one in the nineteen-twenties could have made such a statement and survived. Abercromby said it in his book (Bronze Age Pottery, 1912), and his chapter on Stonehenge is still well worth reading, but it is never quoted or referred to. It was Abercromby, not the present reviewer, who first pointed out the importance of the south-westem end of the axis. The only obvious error noticed (p. 195) is the statement that Colonel Hawley was Director of the Society of Antiquaries. However, this slight error is amply made up for by the forty photographs, all but six of which reveal some feature never before published and probably not even photographed; one of them (plate II : Stonehenge from the north) has an artistic quality that no other photograph I can recall has ever had. The effect of light and shade is most beautiful.

The difficulty of building in mountainous country has resulted in similar solutions over a very wide area, and certain houses and farm buildings in western Britain have many features in common with those in Scandinavia, the Vosges, the Black Forest, Switzerland, Spain, Macedonia and even in the Himalayas. The most obvious method of building in hilly terrain is to create a level platform either entirely by excavation or by excavating the upper portion and using the earth removed to build up the lower part of the platform. A single-storeyed building on such a levelled site may then be identical with any lowland type.

Primitive ‘platform’ sites dating from the Dark Ages have been recorded from several parts of Wales, notably those excavated by Aileen Fox on Gelligaer Common, Glamorgan. These homesteads, each consisting of from one to three buildings erected on platforms levelled into the hillside, were sited on a little shelf at the junction of the moorland plateau and the valley scarp at an elevation of about 1,300 feet. Each house was divided into two parts by an almost central cross-passage and the ridge-pole was supported by two or more upright posts. Dark Age and medieval houses of the platform type are known from twenty-six sites in Glamorgan, three in Radnorshire and two near Llanbadarn Fynydd, whilst many smaller homesteads of a similar character have been discovered in Caernarvonshire by Hemp and Gresham.

This paper outlines the beliefs associated with Elf-shot and the influence these had on the treatment of cattle disease and the pattern of field ploughing. The subject may conveniently be introduced and partially defined by way of two examples. In the late Autumn of 1884 a Buchan farmer was heard to complain ‘I’ve gotten an ill job this mornin’ in the deth o’ a fine stirk by elfshot, an’ the pity is he wasna fasent to a hair tether (a halter made of hair) fan the wapin wad a fa’en short o’m’. When asked whether it might not have been due to quarter-ill, he replied ‘that could na be, my neebor an’ me opent up the beast, an’ there was a hole through his hert’. Some few years before in 1867 a Mr Hew Morrison saw a cow which was said to have been killed by the fairies. When he pointed out to the farmer that her death had been caused by rolling over, and her long horns penetrating the ground had kept her in a position from which she could not rise, he was told that was the common way in which cows fall when struck by the saighead sithe or fairy arrow.

The saints in Greece occasionally have curious epithets. In Attica all know St. John the Hunter. In Naxos there is St. George the Drunken and in Thessaly you will find St. Nicholas the Murderer. Now too in Argolis you will hear of St. George the Vampire.

The little church or rather shrine dedicated to that saint is in a kind of open cave which is really the entrance to a Mycenaean rock cut chamber tomb and it lies on the outskirts of the village of Thymari at the base of the tangle of hills at the western foot of Mount Arachnaeus. If you go to the village and visit the shrine you will probably be told fantastic tales of the Vampire and the English archaeologist who was afterwards killed fighting the Bulgarians. The exact circumstances of the case you will probably not be able to discover. Even those of the village most closely connected with the events which led to the dedication of the shrine have allowed more freedom to their imaginations than they should. The village priest Athanasios nowadays is in his dotage and his cups, and not competent to give a credible or even a coherent version of what really took place and the part he played. Evesham himself is dead, because as you know he was killed on the Salonika front in 1917.

When we study the end of the Roman occupation of Britain we tend to glue our eyes so closely to the nnumismatical and archaeological evidence that there seems to be some danger of giving the literary authorities rather less attention than they deserve. But the relevant passages of Zosimus are of capital importance, and it is proposed to examine them here.

It will not be denied, I think, that Zosimus is one of the most incompetent of the Greek historians. Nevertheless, as in the case of all ancient historians, we are bound to suppose that Zosimus’ statements are accurate unless we have some sufficient reason for doubting them. It is a mistake in method to ascribe errors to him when there is no evidence for doing so. Now in the passages under discussion he is supported by other writers in some particulars and he is our sole authority in others. It does not follow that where he is our only authority his statements are necessarily wrong. His source here is Olympiodons, who, though an Egyptian Greek, seems to have dealt mainly with Western events in his History. Born c. 365, he was an exact contemporary of the last days of the Roman administration of Britain. His History in 22 books covered the fateful years 407–25, and an examination of his fragments (mostly preserved by Photius) gives good reason for supposing that he was a writer of exceptional interest and reliability. It would be folly to ignore the narrative of such a writer, even though that narrative survives only at second hand.