The Neolithic settlement of Auvernier on the shores of Lake Neuchltel in Switzerland, first described in 1854 (Keller), is archaeologically dated by imports from the Schnurkeramik civilization (‘corded’ complex) (JCquier and Strahm, 1965).

The Siren Vase, an Attic red-figure stamnos by the Siren painter (PL. xvra), was made between 490 and 480 BC, and is now in the British Museum. Odysseus is shown bound by his own order to the mast of his ship, the only man to hear the Sirens’ irresistible song and to survive it. Their ears stopped with beeswax, his crew row stolidly on.

I have done some varied seafaring in different kinds of odd craft and so have some idea of the difficulties involved in earlier days. In the summer of 1925 I was at sea in a Fleetwood trawler, which was fishing the Ioo-fathom line from St Kilda to the Blaskets. On I July, we were off Galway Bay; it was a fairly calm day with a big Atlantic swell running. A three-man curragh from Inishmore (one of the Aran Islands) came alongside and the crew begged for fish.

The views of Jacquetta Hawkes give vent to the uncomfortable feelings that many older archaeologists have been harbouring against the ‘intrusion’ of science into their exclusive domain of ‘humanistic’ archaeology. I am not so bothered here about the protests of the ‘passing generation’ which is ‘suffering from universal decay’ (using her own words) as with the problems of the two cultures, the methods and meaning of archaeology, its relation with other sciences and the direction towards which it is heading.

When 0. G. S. Crawford investigated a length of bank and ditch in Kincladie Wood near Dunning, in Perthshire, he observed that ‘the possibility that it might be a fragment of a Roman camp cannot be excluded’ (1948, 59). Kincladie Wood is 2 km. from the hill at Duncrub, a locality that has been equated philologically with the early historical Dorsum Crup (Watson, 1926, 56). We are assured by philologists that Mons Craupius, too, can be added to the equation.* The case which follows for identifying the hill at Duncrub with Mons Craupius, in which the philological proposition is supported by archaeological evidence, is offered to mark the 50th anniversary of Crawford’s appointment as first Archaeology Officer in the Ordnance Survey.

In discussing contemporary wool production the Elder Pliny comments (NH, VIII, 192): 'oddments of wool from the fullers" coppers are used for stuffing bolsters-an invention of the Gauls, I think; at any rate, the process is distinguished by Gallic terms today.'